Calendar invites

[GaryHounslow]

Good afternoon,

I am creating a flow which is triggered from by a form being filled out.

On this form the user picks a date they wish to attend an event.

I have created the flow to send them a calendar invite (I created the events in the calendar first).

The first issue I had was that it was cancelling the event for any previous attendees whenever a new person booked on.  I resolved this by adding a Get event (V2) action and then on the Update event (V2) action I added both the Required attendees (grabbed from the Get event (V2) action and also the responders email grabbed from the Forms response.

The only issue doing it like the above is that the existing attendees all get an update notification on the event whenever somebody new books on to that slot.

Is there a way round this?  Am I doing this wrong?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Many thanks

Gary

[v-bacao-msft]

Hi @GaryHounslow,

When using Update event action, updating the Required attendees field is not an append operation, but a direct replacement, so your solution is valid.

But as you mentioned, this will result in duplicate notifications to Required attendees that have been added before.

At present, this cannot be avoided, because every time the event is updated, regardless of the update time or attendees, it is necessary to send a notification to all attendees to serve as a reminder.

I am afraid that the issue cannot be resolved by Flow at present.

Best Regards,

Barry

[GaryHounslow]

Oh that is disappointing, thought I was on to a winner there 😞

Seems odd that this functionality is not available.

Thanks for the reply.

Gary

[v-bacao-msft]

Hi @GaryHounslow,

Unfortunately, your needs cannot be achieved through Flow's existing actions currently.

If you want to function that you mentioned to be supported in Microsoft Flow, please submit an idea to Flow Ideas Forum:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/idb-p/FlowIdeas

Best Regards,

Barry

[Anonymous]

@v-bacao-msft 

Hi Barry,

I'm having the same issue, and was wondering if a solution has been found for this since?

Cheers!

[Dahousemon]

This really needs to be addressed. Still nothing Microsoft? 

[catherineb]

Hi @GaryHounslow, @Dahousemon,

I figured out a workaround. Basically it involved forwarding an event rather than updating an event.

It's a bit cumbersome but it I found it to work i.e. an email invitation went out to new people only.

• First create your events in Outlook. It helps to give them a common subject line e.g. "Training: Power Automate", " Training: Excel" etc.
• Invite someone to these events (this could be your personal email or a colleague).  This is so you know what event to forward later.
• Create an Excel file in your OneDrive. Make a table with at least 2 headings: Message ID and Subject. 
• Now create a Flow to
  1. Get emails (Outlook)
     • Folder is Sent Items
     • To: the email address you sent the invitations to
     • Subject Filter: your common word such as 'Training'
  2. Add row to a table (Excel)
     • Point to the table in excel you just created
     • Match the Message ID (this is what you will need later)
     • Match the Subject (this helps you identify the email)
  3. Save your flow and run it. Open up your spreadsheet which should now contain a few rows of content.
• Now go back to your Flow where you are collecting the responses. 
• Add a condition based on if someone responded to the first option on the form - say 'Power Automate Training on 1 January'.
• If yes, add the step 'Forward an email'. 
  • Message ID - take this from your spreadsheet for the relevant invitation. In this case it's the message ID for "Training: Power Automate"
  • To: the form's 'Responder's Email'.
• Keep adding conditions for each form option/event.

Catherine