Grabbing Group Emails - TAKING AGES TO TRIGGER?

[jed76]

Anyone else having any issues with powerautomate today? I've got a process which uses the When a new email arrives to a group trigger and it normally works fine. However, for the past few days it seems to be triggering hours after the email group has received an email?

[LLinx]

Absolutely. However, in our case, users are used to sending mails to the group mailbox email address. We didn't want to change the procedures, as to avoid confusion and errors.

Probably a combination of both would be best (creating a new mailbox, informing the users and temporarily installing a forward rule that forwards any mail still sent to the old address to the new one).

[jed76]

Ah I see. Many thanks. 

I think I will try creating a new shared mailbox. I just use it for staff members to CC to just so that my PowerApp collects the conversation. I could just give them a different mailbox address for this. Best wishes. 

[jed76]

Does the SHAREDMAILBOX trigger, trigger straightaway? I have just created a test and the trigger doesn't appear to be triggering at all?

[LLinx]

Yes, it seemed to trigger instantly for us. (or at least checks once every minute)

Are you sure the account has the necessary privileges to the shared mailbox?

[jed76]

They really don't make it easy do they?

So, I've created a new flow using the SHAREDMAILBOX (V2) trigger. However, with the GROUP trigger, it seems to ignore "FW" and "RE" in the subject line which is very useful as I am filtering the subject line to pull a specific number with or without the RE or FW. However, with the SHARED MAILBOX, it doesn't seem to ignore the RE: and FW: !!

[LLinx]

Yeah the group mailbox realizes what a mail "thread" is better than the SharedMailbox does.

While it's annoying that those parts are not removed from the subject line, that's nothing a replace() can't fix, I guess?

Or you could extract the number via a regex using Excel Scripts, that's also an option.

[jed76]

Thanks. Any ideas how to do this? 

Currently, I use a compose action to get just the first 5 digits of the subject line. So for example "12345CBA - Quote" would just pull 12345 and then I can use this to grab the correct record based on this number using the STARTSWITH ODATA command. This works until someone hits REPLY or FW: !

[jed76]

Ignore that - I have sorted it with a nested REPLACE function. Many thanks. 

[LLinx]

As for the replace() option, it's just a matter of replacing all different options for RE/FW that you notice are appearing by blank text. eg: replace(replace(MYSUBJECT, 'RE:',''),'FW:','')

However, keep in mind the RE/FW can be different if the mail comes from an outlook client with different language settings. I think French has TR for FW for example.

As for the Excel regex solution, I'd suggest looking at this blog post. Then it's just a matter of finding the correct regex expression. If you're looking for a 5-digit code, you could use [0-9]{5}. However, if the code you're trying to find always is 5 digits, 3 letters, you're better off using [0-9]{5}[A-Z]{3}, and then selecting the first 5 digits as you had done before. Otherwise another number with 5 or more digits in the subject could trigger the regex as well.

[jed76]

All sorted - many thanks. 

I've decided to forward from the original GROUP mailbox to my new SHARED one rather than having to ask staff to remember another new address!

Best wishes. 

[jed76]

Hi

So I’ve been using the replace function when grabbing the subject line but im seeing more and more and more different options such as FW[2], {External} and all other combinations. Is there a better way to just pull the 5 digit number from the subject line as my replace already about 10 combinations! Many thanks.

[LLinx]

Hey Jed

If you're down to that many Replace functions, it might be better to go with the Excel Script Regex method I mentioned earlier.

You will only need to use the first option of that blog post, as you want to extract the specific information from the text, not replace it. Using the regexPattern [0-9]{5} will probably be sufficient to find the 5 digits.

[jed76]

Sounds great. Sorry - can you explain where I would place this function in the flow? Is it an expression the same as replace? 

[LLinx · Accepted solution]

This is an other blog post that better explains how to set up the Excel with script and use it in a flow step by step: https://andersjensen.org/how-to-use-regex-in-power-automate/

In your specific case, when you're actually using the "Run Script" action, you just need to refer to the Excel file, the Regex function/script, your mail subject as inputstring and the pattern [0-9]{5}. As for the flags input, you probably don't need anything there since you're only looking for numbers, although you may want to use "g" if there can be multiple 5-digit codes in the subject.

[jed76]

Thank you so much! Will give it a try now!

[jed76]

I've noticed that the output of the script is now "12345" whereas I just need 12345. Any ideas? Replace doesn't seem to work!

[LLinx]

Hey Jed

The Results output of the Excel script is an Array of Text Strings, because there can be multiple matches for the regex. The " are to indicate the fact that it's a String. If you need it as a number, simply use the formula int(numberastext).

If your Excel actually returns an Array, e.g. "Result":["12345"], you will want to do first() on the result before including it in the int() formula.