cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Reply
Scott_Mikus
Microsoft
Microsoft

Recurrence only on weekdays

I would like to create a flow that allows me to send emails to my team that are already pre-written. They will be the same 5 or 6 emails sent every day at the same times each day but I only want to send them on the weekdays and not the weekends. I have only been able to find the recurrence item to allow for timing of actions in the flow tool. But this does not allow for specific days to be excluded when creating Flows. I am looking for a way to time an email to be sent at say 8:00 AM an email to be sent at 11:00 AM an email to be sent at 2:00 PM and an email to be sent at 5:00 PM repeating daily Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and Friday then excluding Saturday and Sunday then starting up again Monday and so on. I am unable to find any way to do this thus far. I have found other tools that can do this of which I won’t name names as I am a Microsoft employee and would very much like to use our own products above any of our competitors. But I am unable to find the simplest of triggers in the Flow framework. I would think a feature like days and time or a recurring event would be one of the first things that would be included in an automation framework. If someone could please point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it! Thank you in advance for you time and effort.

 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Screen Shot 2017-05-29 at 10.54.31 AM.png 

 

Hi @Anonymous, @Scott_Mikus,

 

I was able to get the desired behavior working in the above flow.

 

Instead of having a flow only triggering on weekdays, I trigger the flow every day and check that it's a weekday before doing any work.

 

The part that's doing the work is the advanced query @contains('12345', string(dayOfWeek(addHours(utcNow(), -8))))

 

To break it down, we first find the current time when the flow is triggered in UTC time with utcNow().

 

Then I convert that to my local timezone (PST) by subtracting 8 hours with addHours(utcNow(), -8)

 

We can then get the day of the week with dayOfWeek(addHours(utcNow(), -8)) which returns a number representing the day of week (0 = sunday, 1 = monday...)

 

We can then compare the day of the week with the weekdays by comparing the string (text) value of the day of the week with the weekday values (1-5).

 

I wasn't super happy with having to convert to a string. I was hoping to do an array comparison with @contains([1, 2, 3, 4, 5], dayOfWeek(addHours(utcNow(), -8))). According to the documentation that should be possible, but I wasn't able to get that to save. There's probably something I missed there, but the above solution will definitely work.

I hope that helps with your flows!

 

There's really a whole lot that's opened up through advanced queries, but the debugging experience can be pretty difficult. We're always looking for ways to expose these advanced control capabilities in the designer to save users from having to dig into the query language to get what they want done.

But in the meantime, anyone looking to learn more about advanced queries can find more information here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/logic-apps-workflow-definition-language

 

Best,
Travis

View solution in original post

9 REPLIES 9
v-monli-msft
Community Support
Community Support

Hi Scott,

 

It is true that Flow does not have such recurrence to allow you specify the days of the week or the date and time. It would be much more convenient for the user if the recurrence trigger could be more flexible. 

 

As you know, Flow is still a preview product and you could always submit your feedback to Microsoft to help improve Flow. Here is the feedback forum link:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/idb-p/FlowIdeas 

 

Best regards,

Mona Li

Community Support Team _ Mona Li
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.
Anonymous
Not applicable

The approach I'm looking into is using a reocurreing calendar appointment to trigger a flow.  Havn't figured it out yet though maybe this approach will "light the spark" for someone who knows the fundamentals of flow more than I do.

Screen Shot 2017-05-29 at 10.54.31 AM.png 

 

Hi @Anonymous, @Scott_Mikus,

 

I was able to get the desired behavior working in the above flow.

 

Instead of having a flow only triggering on weekdays, I trigger the flow every day and check that it's a weekday before doing any work.

 

The part that's doing the work is the advanced query @contains('12345', string(dayOfWeek(addHours(utcNow(), -8))))

 

To break it down, we first find the current time when the flow is triggered in UTC time with utcNow().

 

Then I convert that to my local timezone (PST) by subtracting 8 hours with addHours(utcNow(), -8)

 

We can then get the day of the week with dayOfWeek(addHours(utcNow(), -8)) which returns a number representing the day of week (0 = sunday, 1 = monday...)

 

We can then compare the day of the week with the weekdays by comparing the string (text) value of the day of the week with the weekday values (1-5).

 

I wasn't super happy with having to convert to a string. I was hoping to do an array comparison with @contains([1, 2, 3, 4, 5], dayOfWeek(addHours(utcNow(), -8))). According to the documentation that should be possible, but I wasn't able to get that to save. There's probably something I missed there, but the above solution will definitely work.

I hope that helps with your flows!

 

There's really a whole lot that's opened up through advanced queries, but the debugging experience can be pretty difficult. We're always looking for ways to expose these advanced control capabilities in the designer to save users from having to dig into the query language to get what they want done.

But in the meantime, anyone looking to learn more about advanced queries can find more information here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/logic-apps-workflow-definition-language

 

Best,
Travis

You can also use the switch-case here. 

 

  1. Recurrence - Whatever time you need to send out the notification. 
  2. Add a switch case for the expression dayOfWeek
    1. Case equal 0,6 - then do nothing.
    2. Default - Perform the action. e.g. Post message to teams. 
Radoslavov
Skilled Sharer
Skilled Sharer

You can select Run the flow every week and then use Preview feature On these days and select the days of the week that you want the flow to run on.

 

1.PNG

If that help, please mark it as Usefull/Answer 

samlab
Advocate I
Advocate I

All,

 

It seems like this has now been solved within Microsoft Flow to allow only certain days to be selected through the Frequency: Week.

 

Thanks,

 

Weekday Occurrence.png

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi @TravisB 

 

I try to set up the same condition,

could you explain in detail what you fill(ed) in the 3 entry fields/boxes?

 

First one is empty   > i filled {"source":"la-draft-clipboard","value":[{"tokenKey":"02594F73-54D8-4517-B17F-8D3EF7FB19F4","type":"literal","tokenExpression":"string(dayOfWeek(addHours(utcNow(),-8)))"}]}

 

Second is drop down, e.g. contains  > i filled contains

 

third one is empty   > i filled 12345

 

Regards,

 

Rutger

Anonymous
Not applicable

Is Flow--er sorry, Power Automate, an actual big-boy product or someone's school project? The simple stock clock app on my phone has the ability for me to make an alarm only sound on certain days of the week. Don't make people come up with hacky solutions to make up for your lack of features, M$.

holmesmatthew
New Member

holmesmatthew_0-1639629570613.png

 

Helpful resources

Announcements

Power Platform Connections - Episode 7 | March 30, 2023

Episode Seven of Power Platform Connections sees David Warner and Hugo Bernier talk to Microsoft MVP Dian Taylor, alongside the latest news, product reviews, and community blogs.     Use the hashtag #PowerPlatformConnects on social media for a chance to have your work featured on the show!      Show schedule in this episode:    0:00 Cold Open 00:30 Show Intro 01:02 Dian Taylor Interview 18:03 Blogs & Articles 26:55 Outro & Bloopers    Check out the blogs and articles featured in this week’s episode:    https://francomusso.com/create-a-drag-and-drop-experience-to-upload-case-attachments @crmbizcoach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3522H834Ro​/  @pranavkhuranauk https://github.com/pnp/powerapps-designtoolkit/tree/main/materialdesign%20components @MMe2K​ https://2die4it.com/2023/03/27/populate-a-dynamic-microsoft-word-template-in-power-automate-flow/ @StefanS365 https://d365goddess.com/viva-sales-administrator-settings/ @D365Goddess https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=megel.mme2k-powerapps-helper#Visualize_Dataverse_Environments @MMe2K    Action requested:  Feel free to provide feedback on how we can make our community more inclusive and diverse.    This episode premiered live on our YouTube at 12pm PST on Thursday 30th March 2023.    Video series available at Power Platform Community YouTube channel.    Upcoming events:  Business Applications Launch – April 4th – Free and Virtual! M365 Conference - May 1-5th - Las Vegas Power Apps Developers Summit – May 19-20th - London European Power Platform conference – Jun. 20-22nd - Dublin Microsoft Power Platform Conference – Oct. 3-5th - Las Vegas    Join our Communities:  Power Apps Community Power Automate Community Power Virtual Agents Community Power Pages Community    If you’d like to hear from a specific community member in an upcoming recording and/or have specific questions for the Power Platform Connections team, please let us know. We will do our best to address all your requests or questions.       

Announcing | Super Users - 2023 Season 1

Super Users – 2023 Season 1    We are excited to kick off the Power Users Super User Program for 2023 - Season 1.  The Power Platform Super Users have done an amazing job in keeping the Power Platform communities helpful, accurate and responsive. We would like to send these amazing folks a big THANK YOU for their efforts.      Super User Season 1 | Contributions July 1, 2022 – December 31, 2022  Super User Season 2 | Contributions January 1, 2023 – June 30, 2023    Curious what a Super User is? Super Users are especially active community members who are eager to help others with their community questions. There are 2 Super User seasons in a year, and we monitor the community for new potential Super Users at the end of each season. Super Users are recognized in the community with both a rank name and icon next to their username, and a seasonal badge on their profile.  Power Apps  Power Automate  Power Virtual Agents  Power Pages  Pstork1*  Pstork1*  Pstork1*  OliverRodrigues  BCBuizer  Expiscornovus*  Expiscornovus*  ragavanrajan  AhmedSalih  grantjenkins  renatoromao    Mira_Ghaly*  Mira_Ghaly*      Sundeep_Malik*  Sundeep_Malik*      SudeepGhatakNZ*  SudeepGhatakNZ*      StretchFredrik*  StretchFredrik*      365-Assist*  365-Assist*      cha_cha  ekarim2020      timl  Hardesh15      iAm_ManCat  annajhaveri      SebS  Rhiassuring      LaurensM  abm      TheRobRush  Ankesh_49      WiZey  lbendlin      Nogueira1306  Kaif_Siddique      victorcp  RobElliott      dpoggemann  srduval      SBax  CFernandes      Roverandom  schwibach      Akser  CraigStewart      PowerRanger  MichaelAnnis      subsguts  David_MA      EricRegnier  edgonzales      zmansuri  GeorgiosG      ChrisPiasecki  ryule      AmDev  fchopo      phipps0218  tom_riha      theapurva  takolota     Akash17  momlo     BCLS776  Shuvam-rpa     rampprakash  ScottShearer     Rusk  ChristianAbata     cchannon  Koen5     a33ik  Heartholme     AaronKnox  okeks      Matren   David_MA     Alex_10        Jeff_Thorpe        poweractivate        Ramole        DianaBirkelbach        DavidZoon        AJ_Z        PriyankaGeethik        BrianS        StalinPonnusamy        HamidBee        CNT        Anonymous_Hippo        Anchov        KeithAtherton        alaabitar        Tolu_Victor        KRider        sperry1625        IPC_ahaas      zuurg    rubin_boer   cwebb365   Dorrinda   G1124   Gabibalaban   Manan-Malhotra   jcfDaniel   WarrenBelz   Waegemma   drrickryp   GuidoPreite    If an * is at the end of a user's name this means they are a Multi Super User, in more than one community. Please note this is not the final list, as we are pending a few acceptances.  Once they are received the list will be updated. 

Register now for the Business Applications Launch Event | Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Join us for an in-depth look into the latest updates across Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform that are helping businesses overcome their biggest challenges today.   Find out about new features, capabilities, and best practices for connecting data to deliver exceptional customer experiences, collaborating, and creating using AI-powered capabilities, driving productivity with automation—and building towards future growth with today’s leading technology.   Microsoft leaders and experts will guide you through the full 2023 release wave 1 and how these advancements will help you: Expand visibility, reduce time, and enhance creativity in your departments and teams with unified, AI-powered capabilities.Empower your employees to focus on revenue-generating tasks while automating repetitive tasks.Connect people, data, and processes across your organization with modern collaboration tools.Innovate without limits using the latest in low-code development, including new GPT-powered capabilities.    Click Here to Register Today!    

Check out the new Power Platform Communities Front Door Experience!

We are excited to share the ‘Power Platform Communities Front Door’ experience with you!   Front Door brings together content from all the Power Platform communities into a single place for our community members, customers and low-code, no-code enthusiasts to learn, share and engage with peers, advocates, community program managers and our product team members. There are a host of features and new capabilities now available on Power Platform Communities Front Door to make content more discoverable for all power product community users which includes ForumsUser GroupsEventsCommunity highlightsCommunity by numbersLinks to all communities Users can see top discussions from across all the Power Platform communities and easily navigate to the latest or trending posts for further interaction. Additionally, they can filter to individual products as well.   Users can filter and browse the user group events from all power platform products with feature parity to existing community user group experience and added filtering capabilities.     Users can now explore user groups on the Power Platform Front Door landing page with capability to view all products in Power Platform.      Explore Power Platform Communities Front Door today. Visit Power Platform Community Front door to easily navigate to the different product communities, view a roll up of user groups, events and forums.

Microsoft Power Platform Conference | Registration Open | Oct. 3-5 2023

We are so excited to see you for the Microsoft Power Platform Conference in Las Vegas October 3-5 2023! But first, let's take a look back at some fun moments and the best community in tech from MPPC 2022 in Orlando, Florida.   Featuring guest speakers such as Charles Lamanna, Heather Cook, Julie Strauss, Nirav Shah, Ryan Cunningham, Sangya Singh, Stephen Siciliano, Hugo Bernier and many more.   Register today: https://www.powerplatformconf.com/   

Users online (1,294)