delaying an action by a month?

[jagostinho_CT]

Hello,

I would like to build a flow that it sends an email 1 month after a user submits a form answer to follow it up. I am using the Delay action.

But is it wise to delay a flow action for such a large amount of time?

Would there be better ways of doing this?

Thank you

[trice602 · Accepted solution]

Hi @jagostinho_CT ,

I prefer to do this with two flows:  1) the flow that accepts and processes form data and 2) the flow that runs the followup reminders.  You don't want to a flow running for 30 days on a delay.

In this scenario, you can have a simple excel table or SharePoint list with a "last reminder" column and your second flow can check this date column and if the value is greater than or equal to today's date, send a reminder.   So your second flow will run on a monthly recurrence basis.  See if this will work for you, I think you will be happy with this framework.

[jagostinho_CT]

I agree. your solution sounds better.

I am going to give it a try.

Thank you

[trice602]

Nice!  Let me know if I can help with anything else.  

[jagostinho_CT]

thank you.

after a bit of a think, I think this may take me longer to implement and test than I initially thought.

so, the process is as follow, the way I see it now, at least....

1. user submits form

2. add user name and submission date to a list

3. have a flow running, say, every 2 weeks, for checking which users have a submission date > 1 month

4. send an email to those users

5. delete those users form the list. this is so that I do not email them again 2 weeks later

so, I will be using a temporary list that gets dynamically updated as users submit forms and emails get sent.

which is the best action for me to do these checks on a Sharepoint list and edit it? any recommendations?

[trice602]

Hi @jagostinho_CT ,

I like the idea of a temporary list and it will be easier to implement.  In your Form to List flow, you will need a column that shows if this has been completed/submitted/processed/etc - whatever you call it and then if completed, remove the entry from your follow-up list.

[jagostinho_CT]

I was trying to use this expression to get all the items in the temp List that are older than 1 day but I am getting an error.

It should have picked up the two highlighted items, below, should it not?

Thank you

[trice602 · Accepted solution]

Hi @jagostinho_CT ,

I think the issue is with formatting, please modify your expression to read:

formatDateTime(addDays(utcNow(),-1),'yyyy-MM-dd')

Please also mark this reply as a second solution on this post!

[jagostinho_CT]

yup. it was the formatting, alright. together with a missing " ' " after the function field.

This formatting worked.

addDays(utcNow(),-1,'MM/dd/yyyy')

Thank you very much @trice602 

[trice602]

Nice!  Have a great day!