Send an email with options: trigger for no response

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Posted on by IF-06091959-0

Hi, I have this flow set up so that it sends an email with options "Confirm" and "Reject", and I want to trigger a follow up email if no response within a certain amount of time, but it just waits for a response and triggers nothing if I don't select an option. How do I do this?

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Pstork1 69,125 Most Valuable Professional on at

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This is normally done by setting up a Do Until loop in a parallel branch to send a reply after a certain period of time. In the loop you check to see if the reply was received in the other branch before actually sending the email. This screenshot is for an Approval demo, but the concept is the same.

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David_MA 14,085 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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If you follow @Pstork1 advice, which is how I also do this, I would switch to using an approval with custom options instead. The reason I recommend this, if you send a reminder e-mail, then the person is going to have to find the original e-mail you sent with the options. If they happened to have deleted it and emptied their deleted items folder, they may not be able to reply without recovering the deleted e-mail. If you use an approval, in the e-mail reminder you can include the link to the approval, and it is not something they can delete since the link takes them to the approvals center in Power Automate (therefore, they could delete the e-mail they get for the approval, but it is still in Power Automate under approvals).

Since most people I work with agree to doing it this way, if you really need to use the send an e-mail with options action, I have thought of how I might handle this. This I have not tested, but you could try this approach:

Create a Boolean variable in your flow named "Response Received" and set the default value to false.

Put the e-mail with options into a do until action and set it to run until the variable Response Received is true.

Follow this with a set variable action and set the variable Response Received to true.

Add a parallel branch below the e-mail with Options with a delay of 1 minute.

Configure the delay so it only runs if the e-mail with options action times out.

Set the timeout on the e-mail with options to how long you want the delay to be before a reminder is sent (in this case it really will not be a reminder).

A do until action can loop 60 times before itself times out. If you set the timeout on the e-mail with options to three days, the do until would work for 180 days, which is beyond the 30-day limit of a flow run. This way, you send a fresh e-mail with the options each time and the person doesn't need to find the original one you sent.

If you try this and it works, let me know.

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IF-06091959-0 34 on at

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Unfortunately, I can't do approvals because my organization does not allow it for external users. I have to use send email with options. Is there a way to use the do until action with send an email with options?

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David_MA 14,085 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Yes, you can do this with the send email with options in a do until as I outlined in my reply below. Just note, it may require some tweaks as what I proposed is not something I have implemented.

If it helps, I ran what I proposed by two AI agents, and both replied pretty much the same that this method is creative and should work. Both also said the approval method would be a better alternative, and that you need to remember that the Do Until action will itself timeout after 30 days. Thus, you may want to build in logic to handle if no response is received within the 30-day limit of Power Automate flows, so the flow does not fail.

What I did not outline below, is to put the steps to process the response after the do until action along with anything else you need to do.

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VictorIvanidze 13,079 on at

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Hi @IF-06091959-0,

did you try this approach:

1 people found this reply helpful.

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VictorIvanidze 13,079 on at

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Hi @IF-06091959-0,

any comments?

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CU22100314-1 4 on at

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Hi everyone. I'm trying to do this now but am stuck on the basics...

My Flow (Sends an email to everyone in a List, asks them to choose from three options and then updates the list) works well but only without the added 'Do until' feature. I want to send the message, wait for three days, send a reminder with the same options, and three days after (if no response) then update the list with 'Did not answer'. I don't know how to:

Follow this with a set variable action and set the variable Response Received to true.

Add a parallel branch below the e-mail with Options with a delay of 1 minute.

Configure the delay so it only runs if the e-mail with options action times out.

Set the timeout on the e-mail with options to how long you want the delay to be before a reminder is sent (in this case it really will not be a reminder).

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CU22100314-1 4 on at

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This worked:

A version of the approach suggested by @VictorIvanidze. Only problem is I get a 'Run Failed' notification if either of the 'Timed Out' options are triggered.

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