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Help with Power Automate Flow to Monitor Folder Structure and Trigger Notifications

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Posted on by TM-03112143-0

Hi,

I’m trying to set up a Power Automate flow that watches a folder structure in our SharePoint site and sends a notification when a file named Southroads.txt appears.

Here’s what I need the flow to do:

Trigger when a new folder is created inside the 2025 folder of the General Log Billing Information library.

Check that the new item is a folder, and that its path includes /2025/.

Look inside that folder for a subfolder called Month.

Keep checking inside the Month folder until a file or folder named Southroads appears.

Once it’s found, send a notification (email or Teams message) to someone.

I’ve tried exporting a JSON version of the flow, but I need help packaging it into a ZIP file that Power Automate will accept for import. Can you help with either:

Creating the ZIP file correctly, or

Confirming if this logic is doable in Power Automate, especially the part where it keeps checking until Southroads file shows up?

Let me know if you need more details.

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Using flows

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Michael E. Gernaey 52,965 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Help with Power Automate Flow to Monitor Folder Structure and Trigger Notifications

Hi @TM-03112143-0

So what you would do is set the trigger to fire for the Root (Document library) only

Then it will fire for all documents created. You will then use a Condition to check if it has the path you want, so you would want to use Environment variables for the 2025 for instance as thats where you want to start.

Then you would have a condition that would check if a file startswith doclibrary/2025 etc and it can be deeper level than 2025 because you set it at the root level

If you point it at a specific folder it will NOT go deeper.

You could even setup a Trigger condition to only fire if the path has your dynamic value of 2025 in it (or whatever you configure), then you would use a condition or logic to ... process it how you want emails or whatever

If these suggestions help resolve your issue, Please consider Marking the answer as such and also maybe a like.

Thank you!
Sincerely, Michael Gernaey

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TM-03112143-0 2 on at

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Help with Power Automate Flow to Monitor Folder Structure and Trigger Notifications

Thanks for the response. I appreciate the guidance.

The logic makes sense, especially around triggering at the root level and using conditions to filter paths dynamically. I’m still getting familiar with Power Automate, and my first attempt ended up sending out 200 emails, one for every file added to the folder. So I’m trying to refine the conditional expressions, particularly the dynamic path filtering.

Here’s the folder structure I’m working with:

Root: Document Library/2025/

Subfolder: SF-2509, SF-2510, etc. (new ones created monthly)

Inside each: Month folder (based on subscription type)

Inside that: Southroads.txt

So each SF folder eventually contains a Southroads.txt file, and I want to detect when a new one appears

What I’ve tried so far:

Trigger: When a file is created (properties only) [SharePoint]

This correctly triggers on new file creation.

But filtering down to just the new Southroads.txt inside the correct SF folder is proving tricky.

I’m now considering whether it’s better to detect when a new folder is created under 2025 (e.g., SF-2511) and then send a notification like “Hey, there’s been an update!” That way, I avoid the flood of emails from individual files.

Still unsure how to best structure the condition to avoid triggering on every file. Any tips on using dynamic path values or trigger conditions to limit this would be super helpful.

Screenshot 2025-1...

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Michael E. Gernaey 52,965 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Help with Power Automate Flow to Monitor Folder Structure and Trigger Notifications

Hi @TM-03112143-0

So if you are simply trying to verify that the new thing is either a file or folder that has SouthRoads in it,

then you have a couple of options

I think the 1st is easier

1. Use the Spilt function on the full path property of the trigger, which creates an Array

Then you would check if the
contains(toLower(ArrayName[length(arrayname) -1]), 'southroads')

so if the thing in the path string ends with contains the string SouthRoads (folder) or SouthRoads.XXX and I purposely put toLower so that there are no typo issues, then do your work, (yes side of condition) if not do nothing. you could even make this a Trigger Condition and it won't even trigger unless its true

2. You could just try to use endswith, but you would have to know every possible variation of how it could end.

splitting the path and checking if the last entry(remember arrays start at 0, hence why I am using length and subtracting 1 to get the last entry) is better

hope that helps.

If these suggestions help resolve your issue, Please consider Marking the answer as such and also maybe a like.

Thank you!
Sincerely, Michael Gernaey

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