Remove email duplicates when sending an email based on expiry date

[DGregory]

Hello all,

Before I start - I have spent a week or so looking for a resolution to this issue but have to admit that my knowledge of the tool isn't good enough to implement the many solutions that appear across forums like these. No case is similar enough for me to understand the nuances, and so im here asking for a pointer.

The flow im creating should do the following: Notify multiple users by email, based on a ‘review date’ expiring (or due to expire) for a document sat in a library on a SharePoint Online site.

Setup:

I have two columns, Lead Author and Contact, both of which can contain multiple users. (See below). For example, in my SPO document library I currently have two test items (Fire and Flood .docx) - These match the review date criteria to trigger the flow for each, and therefore an email to be sent for each. 

 

My flow is as follows:

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Ive used 'scoping' boxes to be able to quickly copy and paste the flow to work with a number of triggering time frames. For example, 3 months, 2 months and 1 month before the review date expires.

The Issue:

When i receive the email, each one contains my email address and the other test user email address multiple times. This seems to relate to the number of items that match the trigger criteria.

 

Expected Result:

Ideally, the Lead Authors and the Contact's should appear once in the To and CC fields of the email.

From what I've picked up so far, this may be due to the array operating in the wrong place or being immediately converted to a string? - Again im not familiar enough with the tool to see a way out of my specific example.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[ManishSolanki]

Hi @DGregory 

To remove duplicates emails, you can use combination of union() & join() functions for both 'To' & 'CC' variables. Here is an example:

Below expression needs to be added in the expression box as highlighted in the above screenshot:

join(union(split(variables('LeadAuthorEmailAddress'), ';'), split(variables('LeadAuthorEmailAddress'), ';')),';')

Similarly, use the below expression for CC parameter:

join(union(split(variables('ContactEmailAddress'), ';'), split(variables('ContactEmailAddress'), ';')),';')

If this helps & solves your problem, please remember to give a 👍 and accept my solution as it will help others in the future.

[DGregory]

Hi @ManishSolanki , Thank you for taking a moment to look into this.

The solution you gave partially works, it does indeed remove the duplicate entries from the 'To' and 'CC' fields! However - the flow emails all users all reminders. Let me show you by way of example:

Looking at the same Document library from before, now with 3 test documents and a combination of LeadAuthors and Contacts we have:

Note: Specifically following the top document, 'Flood', it has Lead Author as Daniel Gregory and the Contact as Test 365. Other documents have other combinations of Lead Authors and Contacts, specifically including the DEV1 DG user.

All 3 of these documents trigger the flow as they all fit the same criteria/trigger. When the email(s) are received, specifically the reminder email regarding the 'Flood' document - I see the following:

The 'To' and 'CC' fields seem to include the contact details of all the documents that triggered at the same time. Similarly, the other two reminders setup for the other two documents include the same contacts in the To and CC fields.

Im beginning to think i've set this up all wrong, and not sure how to proceed from here. Again, it feels very array related.

[DGregory · Accepted solution]

I have a solution - I'll try to mark as solved so that others can find it.

My flow is now set up like this:

This flow will now send a single email for each 'item' to the people listed in the Lead Authors and Contacts columns.