Trigger a flow when an Outlook Email is categorised using color coding

[RameshMukka]

I would to trigger a flow when an email is categorized (color coding) for which there isn't any trigger. If it isn't possible, I am also ok if the flow can be triggered when an email is manually moved to a folder when arrived which as well is not possible. I don't want to filter email with sender or subject to categorize them as the business case doesn't allow. Only feasible option I see is when email is flagged but how can we categorize it? How can I find information related to the flag from flow? There isn't any dynamic properties available regarding any flagging. I ultimately want to create tasks in several buckets in planner for categorized emails. What all options am I left with?

[mobashee]

Dear Partner,

This is not currently achievable from flow can you please submit your idea below

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

Did I answer your question? Please consider to mark my post as a solution to help others.

Regards,

Mohamed Sanuj Basheer

[joost_s]

Hello,

Has the above request been made possible already? I'm looking to do exactly the same thing but I couldn't find any solution yet.

Best wishes,

Joost

[RameshMukka]

@joost_s 

Not possible yet. I had to go for alternatives like create Shared Mailboxes for every category I had and forward emails to them and write flows for all those categories.

[joost_s]

Okay, thanks!

[lisaneilson82]

This is the very thing I'm looking for.  We have a shared mailbox for all requests to come back to work in the office but they are categorised by department and we want to forward them to the named department

[BadtzMari]

@RameshMukka wrote:

I would to trigger a flow when an email is categorized (color coding) for which there isn't any trigger. If it isn't possible, I am also ok if the flow can be triggered when an email is manually moved to a folder when arrived which as well is not possible.

Create a flow for when an email arrives and put the search folder as your subfolder?

I am doing something similar. I use the trigger for when an email is flagged, but put the search folder my subfolder. That gives me a little more control to intentionally flag items. For example, I have a subfolder of my inbox called Printing. I move manually move print requests into that folder and then flag them and my flow creates a new to-do on my Printing planner. I have another folder for "Websites,"  that adds to-dos to the Websites Planner. 

It works for what I need to do, but it is not that scalable or dynamic. You need to set up the flows with 1-1 information mapping, and I don't think you can dynamically read in the subfolder variable and use that to map it to the appropriate planner/bucket/etc.

I wish MS had the functionality of gmail/zapier/trello to create tasks based on Gmail labels, but there is no feature like that yet to use Outlook categories.

[mcundiff]

This should have been made possible by now.

[vazexa]

Any news with this?? Including enail categories as triggers will be very useful for a lot of users!!

[mcundiff]

Insane there are so many options that can be a trigger, yet one as simple as Color Category isn't one of those options.

[vazexa]

I know! I wouldnt imagine that categories are not flow triggers yet!

[rickythomas]

Any update on this?

[mcundiff]

Hey Microsoft, 

Can you get this to happen or what?

[lisaneilson82]

not that i know of 😞

[kayhowe_]

Do any of you know if there is an update in the works to add a Category trigger?

[oudeh]

Hi, 
2.5 years later... can you tell me if this is supported now?

[FabioCoelho]

Hi, any word if this feature is supported by now? Can we get an update or at least know if this is due to be implemented? 

[RicardoLuengo]

Something that might might be helpful here. I created actions in outlook to move and flag an email with shortcuts.

Ex. Crtl+Shift+1 move the selected mail to a folder and flagged at the same time (well, after it has moved).  So finally the taks is created in the planned i associated to the Folder.   

I hope it helps.

[PawelL]

Hi, I would like to share my workaround to trigger an action when mail is categorized.

the idea is to create a loop which checks if arrived emial has a category.

when a new emial arrives get emial ID and then send http request to get metadata of this mail, then parse json and create a variable with category

in next step create a loop with do until. The value is a variable with category, the loops will run as long as category is not blank. You can also setup a timeout (in my case it's 7 days)
In the loop add a delay to determine how often it should refresh, after that send another http request to get details of this mail, then parse json and set variable with category. If the category is not empty flow will get you to next step.

in the last step I used switch so depending on the name of category you can do different things. Personally I'm using adaptive cards to inform via teams specific person that emial was assigned to them, but you can also add an action to move this mail to specific folder. Keep in mind that when you parse json you will get your category in format ["Category"] so when setting variable i used expresion: 

first(body('Parse_JSON')?['categories']) to get Category.
above flow is setup for sharedmailbox if you want to do the same with personal mailbox just use this http request:
https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/messages/mailID

hopefully you will find is useful 🙂 

[krzysztof-p]

Thank you, Paweł. I've just adapted this solution by adding the creation of a Planner task for different teams, based on a manual approach with Outlook categorization labeling.