Trigger Reminder Email When Email Received

[AdamPV]

Hello there,

New to Power Automate and I'll be honest I'm not too sure where to start.

I'm looking to create and send an email based on the following steps:

1. A user creates holiday request on our internal system which kicks out an email to say 'Request submitted'. This comes with specific working from a particular mailbox and would be used as the trigger.
2. When that email arrives on the mail server I want Power Automate to send another email to the same person/recipient with a specific message and title (reminding them its their responsibility to organize cover).
3. This would happen for all members of staff in the business, so it can't be client side.

How would I go about doing this please?

Regards,

Adam

[Sundeep_Malik]

Hey @AdamPV, what you can do with these emails is, keep the subject similar for all the mails related with the above case. So, when you trigger the 2nd flow, which will run after a mail is received, then only it will trigger.

So, what I mean is the person who is sending the mail with the Holiday request, you can keep the subject same for these type of emails, lets say: Holiday Request, would be the Subject for your case. Then the 2nd flow will only trigger when a mail with the subject Holiday Request is received. I am suggesting this method because you will be receiving many mails daily, so with the common subject value, power automate will differentiate that the mail received is of holiday request category or its of any other category. 

[AdamPV]

Hi @Sundeep_Malik,

Many thanks for reading and responding.

So the holiday emails that arrive will always be from the same address (its automated) and will always have the same title as you've suggested. The only time we'd want to avoid sending the second email is if there's a discussion over email between manager and user, and I'd suggest the 'RE: Holiday Request' (re:) would differentiate it from the original email.

So this being covered, how would I go about creating the flow? Is there a specific template I can use as a starting point? If so what would I need to add to that to make this work?

Many thanks once again,

Adam

[Sundeep_Malik]

Templates are a good way to take help, but I will suggest never to use templates for your flows. For your flow you can take the trigger when an email is received. Plus there is one more functionality you can use. Its of Approval action. You can use Approval action to send an approval notification to the respective manager when request is started. The manager from the mail itself can approve or reject it. 

Rest these were the things I can suggest you for the moment. 

[AdamPV]

Hi @Sundeep_Malik,

We don't need to go as far as adding approvals, that is already accounted for within our internal system. We just want a second email to be sent to the recipient with fixed content when the first automated email arrives on the server from a specific mail address with a specific title.

So;

email arrives on the mail server with specific sender and title

flow is triggered by this

flow sends second email to the recipient saying 'please make sure you organised cover'.

Nothing else is required. I just need to know where to start. Can you/anyone suggest a starting point?

Regards,

Adam

[AdamPV]

So I've tried to create a simple flow but this just fails to work with no obvious reason why (I'm sending the dummy holiday to myself to the same mail box, I'm guessing it doesn't really matter where it comes from if its defined in such a way).

Can anyone tell me why this just doesn't work?

Thanks,

Adam

[Anonymous]

Hi Adam, I don't understand the reason its not working as checking up all your explanation from above everything makes sense. What error message are you getting

Kind regards 

[AdamPV]

Hi @Anonymous,

It's now working for me; great! It just doesn't work for anyone else, yet the recipient is left as blank and so I assumed it would apply across the business. Am I wrong?

Regards,

Adam

[Anonymous]

Hi @AdamPV   the solution works I build the flow. I guess its universal, since the fields are not mandatory. Its great as it can handle dynamic email address. Just remember one needs to keep the header consistence (Only the first words of your header, there can be other things in the header that differentiate the email from others the flow will pick up the email even if it has other things after it. For example  "Holiday Cover - 2022/10/08 Lebogang" the flow filter will still pick it up even it has other reference within the header. Just make sure the atleast the first two words or variables used as headers are consistent.

[AdamPV]

It will work only for the owner with a specific connection (a single email address). So if I wanted this to work for all users across the business I'd have to share a template for the flow, they'd have to be owners, and they'd have to add their own email as a connection. I can see the same issue discussed here from years ago and it seems its never been considered or implemented. 

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Power-Automate/Outlook-When-New-Email-Arrives-V3-does-no...

Kinda makes the whole thing useless for this application unfortunately.

[VictorIvanidze]

Hi @AdamPV,

the company-wide solution  can be created if you are ready to wait several minutes between flagging and sending.

[AdamPV]

Hi @VictorIvanidze, could you elaborate please?

[VictorIvanidze]

Create a scheduled cloud flow that runs every 5 minutes. Scan your inbox for the flagged emails. 

[AdamPV]

Unfortunately the email goes directly to the user and not to a shared mail box. The challenge is that the way the 365 outlook connection works is for a single email address. Unless you know something I don't?

Our workflow would go like this:

• User logs into our cloud based holiday planner.
• User submits a holiday.
• The holiday planner sends an email to the manager to be approved.
• The manager approves/rejects the holiday.
• The holiday planner submits and email to the requester telling them their holiday has been approved/booked.
• Here we want a flow to notice there's an email to the requesters mail box, and then send a second email telling them to arrange cover.

Now I can make this work for myself as I've show above without the need to populate an email address for the recipient, assuming this will work for just anyone. But because I have to use my own personal email address as a connection for the 365 outlook trigger, the flow is only available and working for me.

I need to be able to have a single flow and it work for the entire business without having to share/create/link it to absolutely everyone's email in that connection. I hope that makes sense?

If you have a suggestion as to exactly how we could work around this I would be very interested to hear it.

Thanks,

Adam

[VictorIvanidze]

Hi Adam,

you can do the following.

1. Create an application account that has access rights to all user mailboxes

2. Create a scheduled flow that runs as the application account. The flow runs every several  minutes. It scans all user's Inboxes and does what you want.

Is this acceptable?