How to query person column based on a person column from another list in Workflow?

Question

I have issues retrieving a person stored in one column based on the value (person) in another by workflow (SPD2010) The real scenario looks like this:

1. In the first list we store name of the team member (people picker field).
2. When the item is stored, the mail should be send to a Team Lead. Information about who is whose Team Leader is stored in another list in a form Team Member - Team Leader (two separate columns)
3. My approach was to bind a workflow on a create action and depending on the value from the originating item (first list) send an email to a person who is set as a current Team Lead in the second list.

The issue is - lookup action seems to not returning anything (it simply sends e-mail with empty "To" field).

The step itself looks like this at the moment

I tried changing "Return field as" to different values - Display Name, Login Name, User Id - but with no success.

The question would be, of course, how can I in SharePoint Designer 2010 in Workflow query a person column based on an another person column from different list?

Answer 1

The meaning of the lookup action in your screenshot is to find the “Manager” field from the second list which the value of this column (is returned as email address type) is equals to the value of “Responsible People” field of the current Item (is returned as string type).

I logged the different returned value type of a person field for your reference:

They return different value of a user profile. So you would not get the result as expected.

About this requirement, I have some questions:

1. If the “Responsible Person” is the leader of this member, why do you still want to query this leader’s email address from another field form another list?

2. What the relationship between the two list? Or what the relationship between the “Manager” field and “Responsible Person” field?