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Need to check whether a reply was sent from a distribution group

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Posted on by Sheela1

We have a distribution group, and I want to check if an email received by the group is replied to within 4 hours. If no reply is sent within that time, I need to send a reminder to all the members to address the email. I am not sure if this is possible in Power Automate. Is there any way to check whether a reply has been sent to an email?

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David_MA 14,586 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Are you referring to a distribution list or a shared mailbox? If you are asking about a distribution list, what you want to do would not be possible because the replies would go to the person who used the distribution list to send the e-mail. Even you had a shared mailbox and used that to send the e-mail to the distribution list so the replies come to it, I am not sure it would work either as the replies would only contain the time the reply was sent and not the date/time when the person received it in their mailbox.

What you would probably need to do is this. Note I wrote the information below, but I asked Copilot to make what I wrote clearer. Unfortunately, when I pasted it into the message it used these colors, and I cannot seem to change them. However, it is more understandable than what I originally wrote, and Copilot agrees this is most likely the easiest approach (for what that is worth).

Create a Shared Mailbox: Set up a shared mailbox specifically for sending and receiving emails related to the distribution list (DL).

Create a SharePoint List: This list will store the details of the emails sent to the DL. Include fields for the subject, body, message/conversation ID, and the time the email was sent.

Workflow to Send Emails: Create a Power Automate flow that triggers when an item is added to the SharePoint list. This flow will:

Send the email from the shared mailbox to the DL.

Update the SharePoint list item with the message/conversation ID and the time the email was sent.

Workflow to Monitor Replies: Create another Power Automate flow that triggers when a new email arrives in the shared mailbox. This flow will:

Use the "Get items" action in SharePoint to retrieve the corresponding item based on the message/conversation ID.

Check the time difference between when the original email was sent (stored in SharePoint) and when the reply was received.

If the reply is received within the 4-hour window, update the SharePoint list item to indicate that a reply was received.

If no reply is received within the 4-hour window, send a reminder email to the DL members.

This approach leverages the shared mailbox and SharePoint list to track and manage email replies effectively. While it may require some initial setup and testing, it can help ensure that emails are responded to within the desired timeframe.

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Sheela1 88 on at

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Hi David, thanks for the response. I will try. Thanks.

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David_MA 14,586 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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I just thought of one thing, you will need to create a third workflow that is scheduled and runs every hour to get all items in the SharePoint list for items where a reply has not been received. I think the easiest way to create a Boolean field called Reply Received and set the default value to no. When the flow runs each hour, it gets all items where Reply Received is no and then in apply to each it sends the e-mail again.

The flow that runs when a reply is received, will need to update the above field to yes. This is why we humans are still smarter than AI :-)

I hope this step makes sense...

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