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Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Automate - Using Flows / Scheduling an Instant ...
Power Automate - Using Flows
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Scheduling an Instant Flow

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Posted on by GlennBullion 146

Tried searching, but can't quite seem to find what I'm looking for.

 

We have a Flow, which receives inputs from a Power App. The flow builds a calendar and sends an email.  So the end-user can do this whenever they want. All works very well.

 

But, would also like to schedule this somehow. So, instead of the end-user having to remember going into the Power App on Friday every week, and generating the calendar to send to the manager, the Flow behind all that could be automated instead.  

 

Can't quite figure out how to schedule an already existing instant flow.

  • Verified answer
    Pstork1 Profile Picture
    Pstork1 66,015 Most Valuable Professional on at
    Re: Scheduling an Instant Flow

    That wouldn't be any different than the scheduled flow itself.  There would still be the question of where it would get the parameters to call the instant flow.  

  • GlennBullion Profile Picture
    GlennBullion 146 on at
    Re: Scheduling an Instant Flow

    How about a scheduled flow that calls an instant flow?

  • GlennBullion Profile Picture
    GlennBullion 146 on at
    Re: Scheduling an Instant Flow

    Was afraid you'd say that. 🙂 All good though. The "on demand" will work.

  • Pstork1 Profile Picture
    Pstork1 66,015 Most Valuable Professional on at
    Re: Scheduling an Instant Flow

    It does.  You can't have a single flow that runs both on demand and on a schedule.  The triggers are different and the source of information for the flow are different also.

  • GlennBullion Profile Picture
    GlennBullion 146 on at
    Re: Scheduling an Instant Flow

    It sounds like this remove the ability for the end-user to create a calendar on demand though? If I remove the Power Apps trigger and inputs?

  • Pstork1 Profile Picture
    Pstork1 66,015 Most Valuable Professional on at
    Re: Scheduling an Instant Flow

    To do this you'll need to do two things.

    1) You need to replace the current Power Apps trigger with a Recurrence trigger. Set the Recurrence trigger to run at the time and interval you want.  It sounds like Weekly.  Note: the Start time has to be entered as UTC time zone.

    2) The input the flow normally gets from the Power App needs to be stored in some data source until the flow runs.  SharePoint would be a good choice here it its not already stored somewhere.  When the recurrence flow triggers the flow it will have to go to this data source and gather all the pertinent information.  Probably the enties where the Modified date is within the last 7 days.  Then use that information to send the email.

     

    The other thing to notice is that the recurrence flow will probably send multiple emails, where the power apps triggered flow only sent one each time it ran.  

     

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