Are you tired of manually sending reminders to people when tasks are late? Learn how to automate it with this flow, taken from my Power Automate fundamentals course on Pluralsight!
FULL Course on Pluralsight on the fundamentals of Power Automate
Video Summary
Here are the key points from the video:
- Introduction to the Demo: The demo focuses on a SharePoint list called “Work Progress Tracker” with items that have progress statuses and due dates.
- Creating the Flow: Using Power Automate, a flow is created to loop through the list items and send reminder emails for overdue tasks that are not marked as completed.
- Setting Up Conditions: The flow includes conditions to check if the task’s progress is not completed and if the due date has passed, using expressions like
UTC Nowfor the current date. - Sending Reminder Emails: If both conditions are met, an email is sent to the assigned person reminding them to update or complete the task.
- Testing and Conclusion: The flow is tested successfully, sending an email for an overdue task, and the demo concludes by highlighting the use of advanced logic operators in Power Automate.
For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!
Video Transcript
In this demo, we will play with a list that I have in this SharePoint site called the Work Progress Tracker. I have three different items, each with a progress column that can either be completed, in progress, or blocked. Since we’re tracking work progress, they also have a start date and an end date. What we will do in this demo is use some of the different things we just learned in the slides. We will create a flow that will loop through all of the items in this SharePoint list. If the due date has passed and the progress is not completed, we will send a reminder email to the person this task is assigned to, reminding them to either update the date or actually finish their task.
Let’s get started. I will go into Power Automate and create a new flow. In production, you would probably schedule this to run every Wednesday and Friday, for example. But in our demo, we will make it an instant cloud flow so we can trigger it right away. I will select to manually trigger a flow. Let’s wait for it to load. Let’s add a new step and search for “Get items” because I want to get all of the items from a SharePoint list. I will select the site, which is the “Getting Started with Microsoft Power Automate” site, and then select the “Work Progress Tracker” list. Now we have all of the items in that list.
Next, we need to loop through each one of them. I will add a new step and search for “Loop” or go under the control connector to find the “Apply to each” loop. We will loop on the list of items we got previously. Now, I need to add an action to get the information on the specific item I’m looping on. I will search for “Get item” (without the “s” at the end) and select the correct one. It will ask me for the site, which is still the “Getting Started with Power Automate” site, and the list name, which is the “Work Progress Tracker.” Then, I will use the ID from the dynamic content to specify the item to act on.
Next, I need to add a condition. I will go under control and select the condition. I will set the condition to check if the progress value is not equal to “Completed” and if the due date is less than the current date (using the UTC Now function). If both conditions are true, it means someone has a task that is not completed and is past due. I will then add an action to send an email to the assigned person, reminding them that their task is late. I will use the dynamic content to get the assigned person’s email and include the task title in the email body.
I will save the flow and rename it to “Reminder for Overdue Tasks.” After saving, I will check the flow using the flow checker, which will give warnings or errors if there are any issues. In this case, it suggests using an OData filter for better performance, but since we only have three items, it is not necessary.
Finally, I will run the flow. I have one task, “Demo Plan,” that is in progress and overdue by five days. I should receive an email for this task. After running the flow, I check my email and see that the reminder email has arrived, indicating that the flow worked successfully. The demo concludes by highlighting the use of advanced logic operators in Power Automate, such as loops and expressions, to follow the logic of a business process.
