Trigger Flow only for first message in the conversation, not for replies

[Anonymous]

I want to trigger flows for new email and create items in sharepoint. I should do this only for the first message in the conversation. No action needed for replies. 

What is the best way to fail flows for reply emails?

Condition to check reply("RE:") in email subject is one option I know. Any suggestions on a better approach.

[v-bacao-msft]

Hi @Anonymous,

I am afraid that it may be the most effective way to solve your needs by checking whether the subject of the email starts with "Re:".

Flow does not have such a trigger to recognize whether the message is the first message in the conversation currently.

If you want to feature that you mentioned to be supported in Microsoft Flow, please submit an idea to Flow Ideas Forum:

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

Best Regards,

Barry

[GabrielStJohn]

Hello, @Anonymous!

Thank you for posting on the Flow Community Forum! If you have already posted your idea to the Flow Community Ideas Forum or found an existing idea to upvote, then you need to post the URL to the idea’s thread as a reply to this thread. Then click "Accept as Solution" on the reply if you approve it as a solution to your issue so that other users may vote for the Flow Idea and identify the information easily within this thread.

Thank You for being an active member of the Flow Community!

-Gabriel
Flow Community Manager

[takolota]

Anyone looking for a solution to this that can't easily be messed up by users, try a trigger condition formula like...

@not(and(and(contains(triggerOutputs()?['body/bodyPreview'], 'Subject:'), contains(triggerOutputs()?['body/bodyPreview'], 'Sent:')), contains(triggerOutputs()?['body/bodyPreview'], 'From:')))

(Edited to include the correct trigger condition formula)

[VictorIvanidze]

Hi @takolota,

are you sure your suggestion is correct?

I use "When a new email arrives in a shared mailbox (V2)" trigger and bodyPreview exists for the first message in the conversation. Why do you think that some messages have bodyPreview and other haven't?

[takolota]

@VictorIvanidze 

When I tested it, there were not any body preview values in the 1st message. But once the message was a reply, it included the body preview of the 1st message, thus it was no longer empty.

I believe this field holds the values of previous email message bodies in the thread. You know, the dropdown/extension where you can view all the previous messages in a new message item?

[VictorIvanidze]

My experience is opposite, sorry. And don't be offended, but your assumption looks really strange.  The preview is just the preview of the body of this message. The very first message has something in its body, and preview reflects the body.

Test yourself please.

[takolota]

@VictorIvanidze 

You're right, I made a mistake in the 1st test that allowed the 1st message to still trigger.

But I noticed the general idea still works because the 1st message body & preview body do not contain the previous message information or anything referencing a Subject or previous senders. So the following trigger condition does work as expected:

@not(and(and(contains(triggerOutputs()?['body/bodyPreview'], 'Subject:'), contains(triggerOutputs()?['body/bodyPreview'], 'Sent:')), contains(triggerOutputs()?['body/bodyPreview'], 'From:')))

I'll update previous posts to reflect this.

Thanks,

[VictorIvanidze]

It will work but quite unreliable. What if your correspondent has edit the message and remove "Subject:"?

What if the "Subject" will be in a foreign language?

I believe the proper way is checking if "In-Reply-To:" headers exists in the SMTP headers of the message.

[takolota]

@VictorIvanidze 

I think it’s more likely a person will change the reply subject line than go to the bottom of their email, click the dots to expand previous messages, then remove all the previous messages.

Multiple languages is a good point, so I’m using both trigger conditions for my case.

Someone would really have to be trying to get around things if they both removed the RE / FW from the subject line and all the previous message history.

There may be a way around the multiple languages bit though. The message history also includes a From: Name <Email> line. So checking for something like concat(‘<‘, from email, ‘> linebreak-characters’) may work for different languages.

@not(contains(triggerOutputs()?['body/bodyPreview'], concat('<', triggerOutputs()?['body/from'], '>')))

This could also add an interesting difference in functionality where if someone was later added to a thread in a reply message or forward message, then the flow could also trigger the first time they respond in the thread.
So this could be set where the 1st email receives an automatic reply message, then anyone new who responds to the thread also receives the automatic reply message on their 1st response.