Action at given times/dates

[cceavsi]

Hi folks

I designed a flow where for every email I receive from a specific address (trigger) the flow sends out 84 emails over the time of 3 months.

While I’ve managed to do everything, get email address from trigger email and fetch data from excel to the body of the new email. I can’t figure out how to crack the timing for each email. For instance, I want the first email to be send when the trigger is activated. The second after a day at a specific time and the third and so on after 2,3,4 days and again at specific times eg 9pm 11pm. Any help how to design that bit? I’ve tried to fetch dates from excel but that didn’t work

[v-litu-msft]

Hi @cceavsi,

Have you tried the Delay until action?

The Delay until action could input a timestamp to make the Flow keep running at this step until the time up. You could store these timestamp into the Excel file, then put the timestamp column into the field to make the Email send on time:

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Lin Tu
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[cceavsi]

Hi @v-litu-msft 

This is exactly what I've tried to do, but it didn't work for some weird reason. Plus, the more I think about it, I don't think fetching the dates from excel will work for me because if the trigger get activated today the next email will be send tomorrow (19/2) whereas if the trigger gets activated tomorrow the next email that will be send on the 20th. In other words I need to make the delivery dates dynamic in a way?

Also this is what i've done so far:

[v-litu-msft]

Hi @cceavsi,

So the Delay until action didn't work, what's the performance of it?

If you want to set the date in the Excel column dynamically, there is a Recurrence trigger could be set to run at a specific time to update the column of Excel table every day.

According to your description, I think maybe these date-and-time-functions could be a solution, using the expression to set the Email send time.

And if you could explain the "The second after a day at a specific time and the third and so on after 2,3,4 days and again at specific times eg 9pm 11pm." more clear, it will help to let me give you a more specific solution.

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Lin Tu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[cceavsi]

Hi @v-litu-msft and thanks for the prompt reply.

The issue I am having is that Delay Until doesn't take the timestamp from Excel. If you look below in the attached image, you can see a few of the dates/times I want the emails to be delivered. What I've done so far: I created a column called Time where I combine a column which uses the =Today()+1,2,3 etc. function and another one which is time PM/AM - I also added on the Date column the T and Z  letters. In the beginning I thought it was the seconds format that was stopping the flow from executing, but even when I removed the seconds from the format I still got the same issue.

 

If I could solve the delay until bit, then I could use your solution where I set Excel to update the Date column at specific times, e.g. every night at 23:59 and then automatically Date column will change. However, will the new times be applied to running flows? I speculate no - cause that's what I want.

I hope this is clear 🙂

Vassilis

[v-litu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @cceavsi,

Thank you for your explanation and screenshots.

I reproduced the Excel file and the Flow, but the Time column doesn't come from the combine the Date and PM/AM columns, I type them manually, because when using the Flow to get the calculate column would cause many issues.

There are the excel and Flow I created in the following:

Run result:

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Lin Tu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.