We’ve now looked at manually triggered flows, and we’ve looked at ways that we can trigger them, but how cool would it be to build a flow that automatically triggers when we do something? This is a powerful way to help with numerous things, and save time performing repetitive tasks.

Today, we are going to look at creating a task in our Planner when we flag an email. There are a ton of ways that we can create and manage our tasks, such as using a search defined search folder in Outlook or using Microsoft To-Do. My preferred method is using Planner, so this is the Flow I have created to make it a little easier on myself.

Starting Our Automated Flow

We are going to start like we did last time, by either selecting our app out of the waffle or by going to flow.microsoft.com and selecting your create option. This time though, we are selecting Automated Flow.

An Automated Process is something that is going to trigger as soon as we perform the selected action. After we have selected this, we will name our Flow, and select the action that we want to trigger the Flow, which in this case will be flagging an email.

Once we have created our first step, the only thing that we need to do is point it at which folder in your Outlook that you would like it to trigger from. You would probably keep it in your Inbox, as it will include all of your subfolders as well.

If you select the advanced options, you can select if you only want to create the task when it is from certain people, or if it contains certain things in your subject line.

Today, we are just going to focus on if we flag anything.

Creating a Task in Planner

For the final step of our Flow, we are going to get it to create the task in Planner for us. To do so, search for Create a task and make sure that we are selecting the Planner option.

Once we have done this, we have a few fields that we need to fill out. The first one is going to be the Group ID, which will simply be which group do you want your plan to go into. I have a personal Planner in Marketing, so I am going to select that group.

The next part is going to be your Plan ID, which is what planner you want it to go into directly. Mine will be going to the marketing tasks.

The Bucket ID is next, as we want to make sure we put it in the right planner before we worry about titles. This will allow us to select which bucket we want to place this task. I will select the bucket that I have created for myself.

We then need to decide how we would like to title this task. You can filter it down quite a bit if you would like, but I simply like to use the flagged email's subject line as the Title of the task, as it makes it easier to refer back to the email if I require.

To do that, simply go into your dynamic content, and select Subject.

The final thing that we need to complete is assigning our User ID, which is as easy as putting in our Email that we use for Microsoft 365. This will assign the task to ourselves. Our full final product is going to look something like this:

Testing the Flow

We’ve made it this far, so now let’s see if it works. Go into your Outlook and flag an email that you would like to create a task for. Once you have done that, go into the bucket that you have created, and it should show up there, with your ID assigned to it, and now, any time you flag an email, it will create your task in that bucket with the task named to the subject line.

As you can see, Power Automate can do so many things with automation. We have touched on some of the more basic Flows that can make your day a little easier, but Power Automate can automate numerous tasks at once, and we here at Bloom Softwart can help you out!

Reach out to us, and we can show you what we can do.