Power Automate: Using Arrays as Environment Variables

Introduction

In Power Automate/Power Platform, environment variables within solutions are essential for managing and configuring flows across different environments. However, there is no direct way to declare an environment variable as an array. This blog post will cover how to use JSON to store arrays as environment variables, enabling you to manage complex data structures efficiently.

Available Environment Variable Types

Power Automate offers various types of environment variables you can select and configure:

  • X2 Decimal number
  • {} JSON
  • Text
  • Yes/No
  • Data source
  • Secret

For more information about the different types, refer to Power Platform Environment Variables.

Using JSON to Store Arrays

Fortunately, JSON can store data objects or arrays. By declaring the environment variable with the type JSON, arrays can be defined.

Step-by-Step Guide

  1. Declare the environment variable with type JSON and assign the default value:
{"Approvers": ["reshmee.auckloo@contoso.co.uk",   "rauckloo@contoso.co.uk",   "testuser@contoso.co.uk",   "testuser2@contoso.co.uk",   "testuser3@contoso.co.uk" ]}

Array as Environment Variable

  1. Add the Parse JSON action

Add the folloing schema:

 {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
        "Approvers": {
            "type": "array",
            "items": {
                "type": "string"
            }
        }
    }
}

Alternatively, you can click on Generate from Sample and paste the JSON from step 1 to automatically generate the schema.

Parse JSON

  1. Use the Parsed JSON

Refer to the parsed json within any action, in the example below, it is assigned the array to a variable.

body('Parse_JSON_-_Approvers_environment_variable')?['Approvers']

Initialise Approvers