Use User Email for the person that triggered the flow to Send and email(V2)

[Silviu_B]

Hello,

I'm very new at creating flows and I'm not a programmer.

I'm trying to create and approval flow and I want to use the e-mail address of the person that triggered the flow in Send and email (V2).
In the tests I'm doing I am the owner of the flow and the one that triggers the flow.
As a test, I used Created by in the To section the flow worked; it only fails when I use User email.

 
When I run  the flow I get this message.

Could you tell me what I'm doing wrong?

[RobElliott]

The Sewnd an email (V2) action will always send the email from you as you are the owner of the flow. You cannot send it from someone ese unless you have "send as" proivileges on that user's email account.

Rob
Los Gallardos
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[Pstork1]

Who the email will be sent from is dependent on the trigger that you use.  If you use an Automated trigger it will come from you.  If you use a manual trigger it will come from whoever triggers the flow.

[Silviu_B]

Thank you for your responses.

The flow gets triggered by a button that I added. When I test I am the one that presses the button.
Can you tell what I need to change in the flow so that I can use the e-mail of the person that triggered and send an e-mail back to them?

[Pstork1]

If its triggered by a button then whoever presses the button to manually trigger the flow should be the one the email comes from.  Try testing with a different account.

[Silviu_B]

@Pstork1 , I have asked somebody else to run the flow by pressing the button and the same thing happens.
Any ideas on why this is happening?

[pstork]

I looked back at your original screenshot. The error you are getting is because the field you are using for the To: in the email isn't an email address.  If you hardcode that email address does the flow run?  I thought you were trying to use the email address of the person initiating the flow to SEND the email from.  But it looks like your problem is the TO.  I suspect the field you are using is some kind of a Lookup field rather than an actual email address.

[Silviu_B]

Yes, the problem is with the TO. In there I am using the User email dynamic content as I thought this would return the e-mail of the user that has started the flow.
It seems that this is not to case.
Is there a way extracting the e-mail of the person that started the flow and use it in the TO: section?

It works if I hard code an e-mail or user a different dynamic content for the e-mail.

[Pstork1]

OK, now that I'm looking at the right problem I know what your solution is.  The issue is that the email address is being sent as a Base64 encoded string.  So to get the actual TO you need to use the following.

base64ToString(triggerOutputs()['headers']['x-ms-user-email-encoded'])

Sorry for the delay and confusion.

[Silviu_B]

@Pstork1 , thank for your help.

So the answer is to type 

base64ToString(triggerOutputs()['headers']['x-ms-user-email-encoded'])

in the To: box?

I'll ask some more questions:

1. Can I covert the data from the User email dynamic that comes out as Base64 encoded string into an another dynamic content which I can these use in my flow for e.g. send e-mail, out fill file properties with the name of the person that started the flow?
2. If yes, could you tell how to do it in step by step guide? Sorry, I'm very new at this.

 

[Pstork1 · Accepted solution]

No, you would type it into the Expressions Tab of the dynamic content box.  

triggerOutputs()['headers']['x-ms-user-email-encoded'] 

is the User Email Dynamic contents field.  You are just putting it through a function to dencode it. You can either use the formula wherever you want the email address or you can put the formula in a Compose or variable and use it elsewhere.  The user name etc is also encoded so you would use the same Base64ToString() to decode them.  But the field name would be different.

[Silviu_B]

@Pstork1 , thank you very much for your help!

That worked.

[powerpritish]

@Pstork1  When the app is shared with users, do we need to share the flow as well. I'm only getting an option to make them as flow co owner. When i click the button I'm getting an email sent to me by me but others users email are not sent to me 

[powerpritish]

Issue resolved

[MihaelaDobre]

Hi @powerpritish , 

Yes, you need to share the flow with the users.

What code do you use for "TO" to send an email to the user who triggered the flow? 

[powerpritish]

@MihaelaDobre , sorry I wasn't trying to send the email to responder but to me as approver but I will post back if I find a solution

[Pstork1]

The App and flow should be created in a solution. If you then share the app with users you will not need to share the flow. When they aren't in a solution together you may need to share the flow to them as owners. So you should use a solution.

[Pstork1]

If you use a solution for the app and the flow you don't need to share the flow with users. This is the way its designed to work.

[MWoodPBI]

Thanks @Pstork1! I'm surprised this isn't more streamlined in the Power Automate flow. The only documentation I've found that indicates I need to convert from base 64 in an expression is... your post above. Do you know of a better way to find out this information? Thanks!

[Pstork1]

This is completely dependent on the trigger being used. In this case the trigger being used has very minimal information in the trigger and its mostly encoded. There is no other way to do it for this trigger that I'm aware of.