Flow failing between Forms and Power BI. Any help much appreciated.

[SimpoPower]

I am trying to configure a flow from Microsoft Forms to Power BI.  I have this working ok, but when I add branching questions in Forms, I start receiving errors.

To explain further:

I essentially have a form containing a question with 3 options, A, B and C.  If the user selects A, the branching rules open all the subsequent A questions, then hides all the subsequent B and C questions.  Simialrly if B or C is selected.

I have a mixture of Text and Numerical answers, however the flow always fails when one of the subsequent B questions is set as a 'Number' response in Power BI's dataset and also one of the subsequent C questions set as a 'Number' response.

(Note there are no 'Number' format questions in the subsequent A questions.  I also have the Historical Data Analysis setting 'on' as I require allot of answers to be stored for review)

A sample error is shown below:

{

"error": {

"code": "InvalidRequest",

"message": "Error parsing request for dataset sobe_wowvirtualserver|590941f8-8b6e-4502-b3ec-e424243a4562: Conversion error on column '<pi>Requirements Clear</pi>': <pi>Input string was not in a correct format.</pi>"

}

}

If I change all the format settings to all questions in Power BI to 'Text' then the flow passes and outputs in Power BI.  However it then views the inputted numbers as text in Power BI.  

Does anyone know how I can fix this so I can have multiple 'Number' format branched questions in Forms, and for the flow to succesfully output these to Power BI without the above error?  Let me know if you need any further information.

[v-piga-msft]

Hi @SimpoPower ,

It seems that you're create the streaming dataset in power bi service.

By my test, I'm afraid that there is only three data type for the stream.

So I don't think we could load the text type and number type in one column in power bi.

You may set the answers as text type and then load in power bi as a workaround to fix the error.

Best Regards,

Cherry

[SimpoPower]

Hello Cherry, thanks for replying.

Maybe I wasn't clear (or correct me if you have understood you wrongly), I'm not trying to create a data type from one question/answer in the form that contains both text and numbers.  The questions/answers are always distinct as either numbers or text.  The problem is when I add the branching rules (hiding and showing specific questions depending which original option is chosen) to the microsoft form, the flow always fails due to questions left un-answered set as number format (in the power bi data set). 

I have created another form/flow/power BI which has no branching rules, with questions containing numbers, also questions containing text and this has no problems.  Therefore the issue appears to be when the branching rules are applied.

If I set all the question outputs to be text with the branching rules, then also no problem.  However in Power BI the numbers are then in text format so I can't use various number features such as averaging etc.

Therefore the aim is to be able to have seperate questions with numeric answers, seperate questions with text answers (set in Power BI), and branching rules (created in Microsoft form), and have the flow work between them all.

Hope that makes sense.  Very new to all of this so any help appreciated how to fix.

[asomers21]

@SimpoPower did you ever figure this out? I'm having the same issue and don't want to be restricted to using only text fields within branching sections. Thanks!