Send email reminders from Microsoft Lists using Power Automate

In this blog post, I will show how to send email reminders for Microsoft Lists items based on a date column using Power Automate. I am using the Microsoft Lists Issue Tracker template for this blog.  Automated email reminders give users time and opportunity to intervene in the business process prior to expiration or end dates. In this demo, we will base our Power Automate Flow on the “Due Date” column and will send reminders 30 days in advance of the date.

Issue Tracker setup

You can get started with the Issue Tracker by navigating to Microsoft Lists, select New list and then select Issue tracker.

Review the sample and select Use template.

Provide a Name, Color, Icon and storage location (i.e. Save to) (OneDrive aka My lists or SharePoint) and then select Create. I am using My lists in this example.

We will add a Due Date column to connect our reminders to. From Issue Tracker to the right of the Date reported column select + Add column or + and select Date and Time from the dropdown list of column types. 

Set Name to Due Date and select Save.

Flow build

Create a new Flow by selecting Automate > Power Automate > See your flows.

Select New > Scheduled–from blank.

Provide a Flow name, I.e. Issue Tracker -- Daily, set Starting to 10:00 AM, Repeat every to 1, Day and select Create.

Select New step, search for Variable and select the Initialize variable action. 

Set the Name to varNumDays; Type to Integer and Value to 30.

Select New step, search for Variable and select the Initialize variable action.  

Set the Name to varReminderDate; Type to String and Value to the following expression:

addDays(utcNow(), variables('varNumDays'), 'yyyy-MM-dd')

Select New step, search for SharePoint and select the Get items action. 

Set the Site Address and List Name to your Issue Tracker site and list.  Use the Advanced options to set Filter query to the following ODATA filter query:

DueDate eq '@{variables('varReminderDate')}'

Where @{variables('varReminderDate')} is the varReminderDate variable. 

Select New step, search for Office 365 Outlook and select the Send an email (V2) action.

Set To to Person or group the issue is assigned to Email (from the SharePoint Get items action). Power Automate will put this into a Apply to each loop so it can send multiple emails based on the previous Get items action.

Set Subject and Body to something similar to the image below.

My completed Flow looks like the image below.

Save and test the Flow. If you have items due in 30 days the owner will receive a reminder email.

This Flow is relatively simplistic in design and function but illustrates how value can be added to existing business processes by automating tasks and giving users an opportunity to act prior to a due date.

Thanks for reading.

NY

Adapted from normyoung.ca