Automated Email for Locations with Target Opening Dates

[dmattia]

Greetings,

I manage a SharePoint list containing facility details like location names, Target Opening Dates, Lease Dates, and more. I'm seeking guidance on how to set up an automated email notification. This notification should trigger when a location's Target Opening Date falls within the next 100 days but does not have an associated lease. Could someone kindly assist me in creating this workflow?

[Ryan_B]

@dmattia 

You will need to use the "Get items" action with a filter query to select these rows. This filter query should do the trick for you:

TargetOpeningDate lt 'addDays(utcNow(),100)' and LeaseDate eq null

This will get today's date, add 100 days to it, and get any rows where the Target Opening Date is less than this new date, as well as those rows that do not have a Lease Date.

[dmattia]

@Ryan_B  - Thank you. 

I attempted to write the expression with the column field names, but hitting this error.

[Ryan_B]

@dmattia 

What is the exact name of the Target Opening Date column?

[dmattia]

Target Opening/Redev is the title on the list column; however, the schema for this column is TargetGo_x002d_LiveDate.

[Ryan_B]

@dmattia 

Ah, I see what happened. You are trying to place the whole thing in the expression bar, which it doesn't like. You will need to paste the whole formula into the actual Filter Query bar, delete the "addDays(utcNow(),100)" part (leave the single quotes), select the space in-between the single quotes, then move over to the expression tab and enter the "addDays(utcNow(),100)" part there.

[dmattia]

Can the process be adjusted to only send an email on the 100th day, rather than sending one every day for the duration of 100 days?

[Ryan_B]

What determines the 100th day? Do you have a process that does this already? If so, then you will just need to change it to this:

TargetOpeningDate eq 'utcNow()' and LeaseDate eq null

If you aren't setting the 100th day, then you will need to perform this action based on your requirements. I'm not sure if these rows are generated automatically or manually through a form of some kind. If you're using Power Automate, you can use the part of the formula from above that gets the date 100 days from now:

addDays(utcNow(),100)

[dmattia]

I'm uncertain whether this addresses your query, but in the scenario where there is a Target Opening date set for 100 days from today and no lease has been signed, an automatic email notification should be generated. This email would alert me that the location is approaching its opening date without a lease in place. It's important to note that the automation should refrain from sending daily emails for each day the lease remains unsigned. A single alert would be sufficient in this context.

The sharepoint list that the flow is looking at is just a standard tracker. I manually add items to it. 

This is what I currently have set up.

[Ryan_B]

It sounds like you are manually selecting a date to be the Target Opening Date, which is going to be more than 100 days out, correct? If that's the case, then you will need to use the Date Difference expression to determine how many days away the target date is from today. If this number is 100, it will perform the remaining steps to send the email notification. Any other number will be ignored.

It took a little bit to figure out, but here is the new formula that should work:

'int(first(split(dateDifference(formatDateTime(utcnow(),'d'),formatDateTime(TargetOpeningDate,'d')),'.')))' eq 100 and LeaseDate eq null

This will subtract your target date from today's date, split the value into only days, convert it to a number, and check to see if it equals 100. This should only return rows where the value is 100, meaning you will only get one email on the 100th day.

[dmattia]

Thanks - when I enter the below as an expression, it gives me an error. 

'int(first(split(dateDifference(formatDateTime(utcnow(),'d'),formatDateTime(TargetGo_x002d_LiveDate,'d')),'.')))

I replaced

TargetOpeningDate

 with

TargetGo_x002d_LiveDate

and received the following

[Ryan_B]

I accidentally left the single quotes in when copy-pasting, so you will need to remove the single quote at the beginning of the expression. I also forgot to put single quotes around the column name. Below should be the proper expression, but when I try it on my end it throws an error about the date not being ISO 8601 format. Which is confusing because it's a SharePoint Date and Time column, so I would assume it would work as is.

int(first(split(dateDifference(formatDateTime(utcnow(),'d'),'TargetGo_x002d_LiveDate'),'.'))) eq 100 and LeaseDate eq null

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out where the problem is, so we may need to have some additional help on this.

[dmattia]

Thank you! Could it be that the columns in sharepoint are not always "Date and Time' columns? Some are single line text, but dates. 

Sorry - I meant to mention this earlier. 

[Ryan_B]

I'm not sure, I was trying the above formula with a date and time column. I didn't try it with a single line text column.

I was able to get it to work using a manual input trigger and selecting a date, but when swapping that out for a column in SharePoint it ceased to work. I even tried to format the column to be in ISO 8601 format, but it still errored out. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what the issue is, probably something to do with the "Get items" action being an array. I tried to select the column using "item()?['TargetGo_x002d_LiveDate']" but it gave me an error stating it was null.

Honestly, I'm at a loss as to what the issue is with this. The formula works, just not with the SharePoint column for some reason. Sorry I can't be of more help when the solution is so close.

[Ryan_B]

@dmattia 

This isn't as elegant as the previous potential solution, but this will at least fulfill your requirements:

Create a new column in your SharePoint list called NotificationDate. The above portion of the flow will be right after your Reoccurrence trigger and before your email portion. This will get all the rows where the NotificationDate is blank, take the TargetGoLiveDate column and add 100 days to it, and set this value in your NotificationDate column. You will then get the entire list again, but this time filter it where the NotificationDate is today and the LeaseDate is blank. Then you will take these rows and send an email for each one, and you will only receive one email per row.

[Ryan_B]

@dmattia 

Just checking in to see if my previous solution worked out for you, or if you still require more help.