Do you use SharePoint as a data source? I bet you do. 🤩 If you do then let's talk about the importance of keeping those list sizes as small as possible and how you can use Power Automate cloud flows to help archive off those unnecessary items.
Why Archive SharePoint List Items?
Archiving isn't just about tidying up; it's about optimizing your app's performance and enhancing the user experience.
1. Overcoming Power Apps Delegation Limits
If you've worked with Power Apps and SharePoint, you've likely encountered delegation limits. By default, Power Apps functions like Search can only work with the first 500 records of your data source (though you can bump this up to 2,000). This means those operations are limited to just those records, leaving the rest of your data untouched.
Why is this a problem? Because if your SharePoint list has more than 2,000 items (and let's be honest, they grow faster than weeds), your app can have challenges with data beyond that limit. This can lead to incomplete data views and frustrated users.
2. Boosting App Performance
Large datasets can slow down your app. Each time your app loads, it pulls data from your SharePoint list. The more data it has to fetch, the longer it takes. By archiving old or unnecessary items, you reduce the load on your app, making it snappier and more responsive.
The way I have always explained this is for every 1,000 more items in your SharePoint list you can feel a slowdown in overall app performance. Purely a Shane made up stat but, that is what it feels like to me. So shrink them lists!
3. Enhancing User Experience
Nobody likes sifting through thousands of records to find what they need. A cluttered app can overwhelm users and decrease productivity. Archiving helps keep your app clean and user-friendly.
Seriously, I get questions about why can't I have 1000's of items in my dropdown? WHY! Because for starters what users wants to scroll through that much data? Find a way to only show them what they actually need.
4. Compliance and Data Retention
Archiving isn't just about performance; it's also about compliance. Many industries have regulations around data retention. Archiving ensures you're keeping necessary records without cluttering your active workspace.
So many compliance rules here, I will not even try to list them. But make sure if you are storing data, you are following the rules. Not only for how long you might need to keep it but also who can see it.
How to Archive SharePoint List Items Using Power Automate
Alright, now that we've covered the "why," let's get into the "how." We'll use Power Automate to create a flow that automatically moves items from your main SharePoint list to an archive list based on criteria you set.
Why Power Automate for archiving? The best answer is because it is included. The same license that is letting you build those Power Apps on top of SharePoint lets you use Power Automate cloud flows. So, building a flow to archive your SharePoint lists items is not only easy but it is also "free".
If you want step-by-step for building a flow to archive SharePoint list items then click the link to the video.
Now building the flow can be easy or it can be hard. That really depends on your level of comfort with Power Automate and the type of SharePoint columns you are using.
Most of your common SharePoint columns are easy and just plug and play. Your flow gets the item to be archived and then has a step to create a new item with that dynamic content. You play connect the dots and boom. You can also delete the item if you want.
Now for columns like multiple choice they throw a bit of a curve ball. For those you have to use the Select action to get the exact data out and then insert that output into the field.
Attachment Column
And then finally you have the hardest of the hard, attachment column. It requires a lot of moving parts and multiple actions. I am not even going to try to explain it, if you need to do attachments you will have to watch the video. And then just make sure you go slowly, easy to get confused.
Wrapping It Up
There you have it! By archiving your SharePoint list items using a Power Automate cloud flow, you're not just cleaning house—you're optimizing your app's performance, enhancing user experience, and sidestepping those annoying delegation limits.
So go ahead, give your app (and your users) the boost they deserve!
Need a hand setting this up? We're here to help! Click the Contact us button. We can help you with this or any of your Power Platform challenges. We offer 30 minutes Teams calls all the way to full on project consulting.
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