Trigger Conditions - Certain Time of the Day

[allrounder799]

 Hello Everyone,

I receive a bunch emails with various performance reports attached, every 2-3 hours. I want to save these reports to their respective folders in OneDrive. The last of these emails come between 20:00 & 21:00 containing the final performance for the day. I want to save the attachments of these emails which come between 20:00 & 21:00 hours daily.

I created a Flow with the trigger as "When Email Arrives" for Office365 but I don't know what expression to put in the "Trigger Conditions" field so that the trigger is only active between 20:00 & 21:00 hours.

Your help would be appreciated. Thank You 

[ChristianAbata]

hi @allrounder799  unfortunally you can't use time conditions in outlook trigger.

Could be a great idea.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Automate-Ideas/idb-p/MPAIdeas

[v-alzhan-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @allrounder799 ,

We couldn't use the trigger condition currently however we could add the condition under the trigger to check the email received time, if the received time is besides 20:00 & 21:00 hours, save the attachments in the OneDrive, if not, do nothing.

Best Regards,

Alice

Community Support Team _ Alice Zhang
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[allrounder799]

Thanks for the Reply.

I thought that simple time-based trigger conditions would be available. Anyways will put that into the features request link you sent. 

[allrounder799]

@v-alzhan-msft

Well this will solve my problem. Thanks for the solution. The only thing that concerns me is hitting "Trigger Limits" on my Free plan. I receive 4 types of reports, 3 of them 6 times in a day and one 13 times. I did the calculations and the Flow would be triggered approx 930 times in month and theoretically run 120 times/month. I checked out the limitations  page but couldn't understand them clearly. Can you please tell me whether this will be the problem?

[DavidHorsky]

Hello, better late than never I say. The trigger condition you're looking for is:
@if(and(greater(FormatDateTime(utcnow(),'HH:mm'),'20:00'),less(FormatDateTime(utcnow(),'HH:mm'),'21:00')),true, false)
You can use these time expressions in triggers (maybe you couldn't 2 years ago), i tested it myself.
Watch out, you might have to adjust it to your GMT. For example I live in Central Europe (GMT+1), so if I want it to trigger between 20:00 and 21:00 local, I'd set it up for 19:00-20:00.
Also, since you're comparing strings as greater/lesser, always use 09:00 instead of 9:00, or it'll break.
See ya

[Poojavemula]

Hello All,

I want to put trigger condition to shared mailbox...i have used "when a new email arrives in shared mailbox" but the requirement was to send automatic mail after business hours which I need to put from 5:01 PM Est to 6:59 AM est ..iam using received time as base time and converting to EST and using converted time in condition in flow and it's working..

• but now iam worried that it will trigger for each mail receives in office hours also..can someone help me with trigger condition to only trigger in those EST timings please @v-alzhan-msft @DavidHorsky @ChristianAbata 

[Poojavemula]

Tried below formula but expression itself is invalid it's saying.. please help on this.

@if(and(greater(FormatDateTime(utcnow(),'HH:mm'),'21:00'),less(FormatDateTime(utcnow(),'HH:mm'),'10:59')),true, false)

@DavidHorsky 

[DavidHorsky]

Hi, @Poojavemula
tell me if I understand it correctly:
You want to send people writing you email outside of bussiness hours (7AM-5PM) an automatic reply to say something like "I'll get to you in the morning, have a nice evening".
Well if you don't set up trigger condition, the When a new email arrives will indeed trigger with every email.
It should be:
@or(greater(FormatDateTime(utcnow(),'HH:mm'),'17:00'),less(FormatDateTime(utcnow(),'HH:mm'),'07:00'))
In layman's terms, if the time is more than 17:00, or less than 7:00 trigger the flow.
Watch out, there is difference between 'hh:mm' and 'HH:mm'. First one is 12 hour format, avoid it at all costs. 
Of course, you should adjust for the time zone. (I do it manually, but there is a function for that).
i.e. If you live in GMT+5, its gonna be:
@or(greater(FormatDateTime(utcnow(),'HH:mm'),'12:00'),less(FormatDateTime(utcnow(),'HH:mm'),'02:00'))
(just ask yourself, if GMT+5 is 17:00, what is GMT+0, always solves it for me)
Hope it helps

[Poojavemula]

Thank you so much for your response David..yes that's working..But the problem is about the weekends..on weekends it should send automatic mail whole day irrespective of timings.how to manage that part . please help me on this..

[Poojavemula]

Thank you so much for your response David..yes that's working..But the problem is about the weekends..on weekends it should send automatic mail whole day irrespective of timings.how to manage that part . please help me on this.

@DavidHorsky 

[Poojavemula]

Thank you so much for your response David..yes that's working..But the problem is about the weekends..on weekends it should send automatic mail whole day irrespective of timings.how to manage that part . please help me on this.

@DavidHorsky 

[DavidHorsky]

Well then you should use the dayOfWeek(utcnow()) function.
This function should return 1 on monday, 2 on tuesday, etc. For better understanding, I'll put it on two lines.
@Anonymous(
or(greater(FormatDateTime(utcnow(),'HH:mm'),'12:00'),less(FormatDateTime(utcnow(),'HH:mm'),'02:00')),
or(eq(dayOfWeek(utcnow()),6), eq(dayOfWeek(utcnow()),7)))
Hope you get the idea 😉

[Poojavemula]

Hello @DavidHorsky 

Thank you so much..with small modification it worked.can i have your linkedin profile here if possible.Thank you.