Alteryx not reading in SharePoint Person or Group columns

Question

Hi All,

I have a lot of workflows where I read in information from SharePoint lists. I was out last week so I'm not sure when the issue began, but my person or group columns are all coming in blank. I've rebuilt the columns and views. They do have data in them. This is also true of the system-generated Created by or Modified by columns which I've never had trouble reading in prior to this week. I saw that several others noted similar issues in 2018 but I did not see a resolution. I'm on SharePoint 2013 and Alteryx 2020.1 x 64. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can resolve this issue? Thanks in advance!

jillrgallo · Answer

Hi @blakecasey thank you so much for your follow up and response. I reviewed the two posts that you included and their issue seems to be slightly different than the one I am reporting. I have had luck outputting to People and Group columns in SharePoint (although I should check that those workflows are still working as expected). My issue is that Alteryx is not reading People and Group columns INTO the workflow reliably. I've included an image to give you a better sense of what I mean. The results window is my data immediately following my SharePoint input tool. The last four columns are People and Group SharePoint columns, all single-select. The first two columns "TSSProducer" and "TSSFacilitator" were created by me. They are set up exactly the same way, but for reasons that are beyond me, one is reading in data and the other is not. I have deleted and rebuilt them several times as well as the view I am using for the workflow. Modified by and Created by are system-generated (also People and Group) and are not being read in, although I have successfully gotten them to be read in previously. Not sure if this changes your guidance, but thank you in advance for your time in considering this additional info!

blakecasey · Answer

Hello @jillrgallo,

Thanks for posting this issue - it increases awareness and also helps give us an idea of how often an issue (such as this one) is occurring. I'm sorry you are seeing this though. We have identified this as a defect that occurs with Designer versions 2019.3 and later (Defect number DE27716). We haven't officially found a workaround for this issue, but I did find another Community post where a user has a suggested workaround. This post also details the same issue.

Please feel free to give this workaround a try, but otherwise, just know that we will be working to provide a solution to this issue as soon as possible, and to make it available in a future update.