Learning about email connectors and actions

One of the most common scenarios for end user automation is email. Microsoft Power Automate can connect natively to different types of email systems, such as the following:

• Office 365
• Outlook.com
• Gmail

Additionally, there are third-party plug-ins such as MailParser that further enhance the ability of Microsoft Power Automate to process messages.

When processing a mailbox, there are several types of actions available, depending on the data source. Popular actions include the following:

• Creating or deleting a calendar event
• Creating or deleting a contact
• Flagging an email (such as the Importance flag)
• Forwarding and replying to an email or sending a new one
• Marking an email as read

As you saw in the previous chapter, you were able to access dynamic content—properties, metadata, and content related to a unique item. When manipulating mailbox content, you have many types of objects available to you as parameters. For example, when retrieving messages using the Get Emails (V3) action (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/office365/#get-emails-(v3)), you can then work with these parameters (among others) of a message:

• Folder (folder containing a message)
• To (To recipients of a message)
• CC (CC recipients of a message)
• From (sender of a message)
• Importance (message importance)
• Subject (message subject)
• Search Query (message body filtering)

By working with those parameters or fields, you can create flows with customized or personalized content, as well as evaluate the parameters to ensure flow only executes when certain conditional constraints are met.

For a complete list of the hundreds of connectors and actions available, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/. 

In the next section, we're going to start exploring some of the possibilities of the Office 365 email connector (though many of the functions and concepts will be applicable when working with Outlook or Gmail connectors).