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Scheduling emails from a SP list for new item entries throughout the day

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Posted on by nerdyplayer

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I have a SP list where I want to notify users that new items were created. It's tied to a powerBI dashboard, and group wants to do scheduled refresh and 30mins later send out the emails for new created items.

We originally used the refresh PBI dashboard connector with an send email to send the notification for each item for the specific person. Issue is the resource across our organization gets really high middle of the day causing delay and didn't want to add to the load.

So goal is to do a scheduled refresh with PBI, and an automate for scheduled email for newly created items to the recipient.

So my simple flow so far is

recurrence everyday at 2, 6, 10, 16

Get items

apply to each, send an email to recipient.

Thoughts is I will need a trigger condition so i wouldn't run every single item. Restrict that to (today), I'm struggling to figure out how I won't run any that was sent out earlier in the day. So if before 6am, 3 items were created 6am schedule will send out 3 emails. Between 6-10, 2 items were created I'd want to send out the 2 emails, not 5. There's my dilemma, Trying to figure that out, thank you.

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Pstork1 69,159 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Trigger the flow to run at those specific times every day using a recurrence trigger. In the Get Items filter the list based on the Creation Date/Time being greater than the current time - the time interval since the previous run (for most it looks like 4 hours). Send emails based on the items returned. You won't need a trigger condition because the get items is filtered. if no items are returned then the apply to each doesn't run because the array is empty.

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ninihen 21 on at

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A robust pattern is to track "emailed yet" on the item itself. Add an EmailSent Yes/No column to the SP list, default No. Then your scheduled flow does:

Get Items with $filter=EmailSent eq 0 (or eq false depending on how SP serializes booleans for your tenant) - only pulls items that have not been notified yet, regardless of when they were created

Apply to each -> Send email

Update Item -> set EmailSent to Yes immediately after the email succeeds

Benefit:

A skipped or failed run is recoverable - the next run picks up everything still flagged No

Backfilled items get caught automatically

Manual additions outside the recurrence window also get caught

You can audit "what's pending" at any time by filtering the list on EmailSent eq false

Remember to put the Update Item inside the Apply to each, not after it, so a partial failure mid-loop does not re-send already-sent items on the next run.

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11manish 943 on at

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Your current flow:

Gets all items

Sends emails every run

So it reprocesses old items again

The issue is that your flow reprocesses the same items each run because there’s no tracking of already emailed records in Microsoft Power Automate.

Best solution

Add a column in your SharePoint list:

EmailSent (Yes/No) or EmailSentOn (DateTime)

Filter items:

Only today’s items

Only those not yet emailed

After sending email → update the item to mark it as sent

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Haque 1,520 on at

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HI @nerdyplayer,

I believe your recurrence setup would be like below and I support @ninihen idea for better clarity. It SentEmail flag will reduce cost of your filter query and you can quickly take good measure based on emal has been sent for which items or not.

I am sure some clues I tried to give. If these clues help to resolve the issue brought you by here, please don't forget to check the box Does this answer your question? At the same time, I am pretty sure you have liked the response!

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nerdyplayer 162 on at

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Thanks again all. Was over thinking, so created a new column and added the filter query into the get items.

Also created a Compose that would count the numbers of cases that need to be sent. If 0, it will terminate the flow, if more it will send out the emails.

Thank you all again.

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Pstork1 69,159 Most Valuable Professional on at

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If you filter by the Created date/time (for new items) or the Modified date/time (for changes) you really don't need to track the email being sent in an extra field.

It will work, but its not necessary.

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If this Post helped you, please click "Does this answer your question" and give it a like to help others in the community find the answer too!

Paul Papanek Stork, MVP
Blog: https://www.dontpapanic.com/blog

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