Send Teams with multiple email addresses from different columns

[roscoeroscoe]

Hi ,

I have a table several columns:

Email (with repeats of different email addresses in the rows)

Columns of data that form an HTML data

Supervisor Email

I want to send each unique user and their supervisor a Teams message with flow bot with the unique HTML table filtered to that user. Thus far I have:

Recipient Outputs here is from Each Email, Message Output is the HTML table

This flow works, but when I add the supervisor email to the Recipient, it then auto creates a new Apply to Each Control, and sends each user and the supervisor the same message with HTML table for as many times as there are rows of data for that unique user. I think I need to filter using each Email of the Supervisor email so that only one message is sent, but I can't figure out how to make that flow work. Any tips?

[creativeopinion · Accepted solution]

@roscoeroscoe You are very close. However, the reason your Post message in a chat or channel action is nesting itself inside an Apply to Each action is because of the dynamic content you've selected. I'm not sure what you are using the Parse JSON action for—I'm not using it in my example flow below.

Take a look a this YT Tutorial I recently uploaded: 3 Mistakes YOU 🫵 are Making with the Apply to Each Action in your Microsoft Power Automate Flow

In this video tutorial I’ll go over how to avoid these common mistakes when using the Apply to Each action in a Power Automate flow:

1️⃣ Looping through a Single Item

2️⃣ Creating Unnecessary Nested Loops

3️⃣ Looping through an Unfiltered Array

At the end of the video I share a few helpful insights when it comes to using the Apply to Each action in your flow.

I'll also cover:

✅ How to avoid the Apply to Each action with a single item array

✅ How to use the item() function to access dynamic content in an array

✅ How to prevent unnecessary nested Apply to Each action loops

✅ How to use the Select action

✅ How to convert an array to a string with the Select action

✅How to use the Filter Query field

✅ How to count the number of items in an array

✅ How to use a condition control

✅ How to use the concurrency control

✅ How to set a top count

✅ How to use Compose actions for troubleshooting

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Select Supervisor Email

In your Select action, you need to select the Supervisor email as well.

Run a test. Your output will output both the Email and Supervisor Email for each row.

Get Unique Values

Assuming that any time an email is repeated in your table, it's the same supervisor for that email address. When you use the union() function, it will combine the array returned from the Select action above with itself and remove any duplicates.

Loop through Each Unique Email

Add an Apply to Each action. Insert the output from the Compose action that is storing the unique email addresses. 

To better understand what's going on in your flow. Insert a Compose action to store the Current Item dynamic content. This will show you what the Apply to Each action is looping through. Run a test.

As you can see, it loops through each Array item from the Select action. This action is optional. You can leave it (can help with troubleshooting) Or you can delete it now that you can see what the output is of the Current Item.

Compose Dynamic Content

You can add Compose actions to store the Email and the Supervisor Email values if you'd like. Again, these are optional.. however whenever I'm looping through a Select action or Filter Array action, I like using Compose actions to hold the dynamic content I'll be using in the rest of my flow.

Tip: Remember to rename your actions especially when using multiple instances of the same action in your flow. 

Insert an expression:

item()?['']

Enter the dynamic content key between the single quotes. The dynamic content key is the red text between the double quote marks from the output of the Current Item action.  

Repeat this for the Supervisor email. 

Run a test. Review the output of the Compose actions.

Group Actions (optional)

Add a Scope action to your flow. I like using Scope actions in my flow to group actions together to keep my flow organized.

Add as many as you need in your flow. Note: You cannot nest initialize variable actions within other actions—they must be initialized in the root of the flow.

Scope actions allow you to quickly collapse multiple actions with a single click and reduces the vertical space the actions take up in a flow.

Filter Table Items

Just as you had in your previous flow, use the Filter Array action to filter out the rows from your table. Insert the output from the compose action storing the email address into the second value field. To learn more about how to use the Filter Array action, please refer to this recent YT Tutorial I uploaded.

Post Message in a Chat or Channel

Actually, you aren't able to Post a message in a chat or channel to multiple recipients. It can only be sent to a single recipient.

You'll need to use two Post message in a chat or channel actions. One for the email and another for the supervisor. 

Hope this helps!

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[roscoeroscoe]

Fantastic! This works. Thank you, thank you.

I guess an alternative if I want to send a group message is to post as user after creating a chat? 

[creativeopinion]

@roscoeroscoe Yes you could do that if you wanted. However, I always recommend when testing flows that send out emails or teams messages, you should always put your email address in the recipient field. 

Insert a line of text in the body of the email or message to indicate who you will be sending a message to. This way users aren't receiving any test messages until you've fully tested out your flow. In this case, I'm not sure if you can create a chat with just yourself. 

However, you could easily store the outputs you currently have in the Members to add field into a Compose action and run a test. This way you can preview how many chats would be created and see if it would make sense to have that many chats. 

Another thing to consider is that if a Supervisor is assigned to more than one row—you might be creating quite a few chats for the supervisor. You'll have to test it out to see.