Send an email from a shared mailbox unless I am already listed in the 'To' and/or 'Cc' fields.

[paulalexn92]

Hi there,

I am trying to set up an email notification system that, when an email is received to shared mailbox I work in, I get a notification to my personal inbox. I want to set up a condition though that, if my email address is already present in the 'To' or 'Cc' fields of the email sent to the shared mailbox, I don't get an email notification.

I have set up the flow like this:

It seems to work fine with only the one option (either 'To' or 'Cc') but as soon as you add more than one field for it to read, the flow fails with the notification:

"Unable to process template language expressions for action 'Condition' at line '0' and column '0': 'The template language function 'contains' expects its first argument 'collection' to be a dictionary (object), an array or a string. The provided value is of type 'Null'."

I'm not very proficient in Power Automate so any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Matthy79]

Hello @paulalexn92 

It’s because Cc doesn’t always have a value. Also you would have to check for “OR” not “AND” because in most cases your address won’t be mentioned twice.

You could use an expression to check for null or in your use case I would delete the second condition and write “To” and “Cc” in first left condition.

[SanmeshG]

Hi @paulalexn92 ,

Change the condition to OR instead of And.

Thanks,

[paulalexn92]

Hi @Matthy79 and @SanmeshG 

Thanks for the advice so far. I have changed it to "OR" instead of "AND" and the same issue is still occurring.

@Matthy79 I understand what you mean that because the CC field doesn't always have a value it's trying to find something that isn't there. I realise now that this is the main reason the flow is failing. 

So I would need to have an initial check to see if there is a value in the CC field first? Then, if true, I would need it to check whether my email address appears in the CC field? Seems like a condition in a condition.

I'm not sure how to use an expression to check any of this 😅 

[Matthy79]

As I said: In your use case I would delete the second condition and write “To” and “Cc” in first left condition.

[SanmeshG]

First add a condition with cc and see is not equal to null or is not equal to blank(you can leave the RHS of condition blank for this).

If the first condition satisfies then you can add the above condition(from screenshot) with OR and that should be fine

[Matthy79]

Why does it have to be that complicated? This will do the work:

Normally you don't use Power Automate for things like that. Creating an email rule would be the way to go.

[paulalexn92]

@Matthy79 and @SanmeshG thanks again.

Sorry I'm clearly not doing something right. I have tried both your suggestions and neither seems to work. 

@SanmeshG your suggestion caused to the flow to fail, as it has done in the past.

@Matthy79 forgive my ignorance but I have tried several options and I cannot seem to get To and CC values in the same value field. It just overrides with the latest option I choose. 

Yes, I understand that I can configure Mail Rule and Alerts to do this kind of thing for me but I guess I am approaching this from a convenience factor in that I just want it to skim the mailbox and notify me without modifying the email in any way, as I don't look at it very often. Rules and Alerts only allows a forwarding option as far as I can tell. If that's how it has to be though, then so be it. 

[Matthy79]

Try to hit a space, an enter or a comma after the first dynamic value and add the second one right after it.

[paulalex92]

Just replying from my other account.

Yep tried all those things and it just overrides. Cheers.

[Matthy79]

How do you write more than one dynamic content in any other action? (Like compose)

[Matthy79 · Accepted solution]

You could paste this inside the left part of the condition:

@{triggerOutputs()?['body/toRecipients']}@{triggerOutputs()?['body/ccRecipients']}

or you could use this expression:

concat(triggerOutputs()?['body/toRecipients'], triggerOutputs()?['body/ccRecipients'])

[paulalexn92]

@Matthy79 thanks man.

The concat has worked and now the flow is functioning as expected.

Thanks so much for your patience and helping me get it resolved. It's much appreciated!