Really simple – Transfer your email to Teams

We’ve been using Teams in our organisation for 12 months now but it often surprises me when a colleague chooses to email me. A recent example included a group email where discussion began and before we knew it there were 10 or so replies and the ordering of the conversion was out of sync as colleagues replied to one, replied to all, what’s going on? I then thought, what if I could have diverted this thread to Teams Chat at the click of a button?

The simplest way for me, to transfer the conversation from Outlook and trigger a flow, was to use “When an email is flagged” trigger. Therefore I can simply flag an email in Outlook and take the conversation onto Teams.

With the variables provided by the email trigger, I compose the to and from fields in order to get all mail recipients and simply replace the semi colon with a comma, this is needed for the next and final step.

Finally using the “Post your own adaptive card as the Flow bot to a user” step, I am able to send an adaptive card notification in Teams to myself and provide a summary of the email I am transferring, from, subject and body preview and in my case the option to start a 1:1 chat with the sender or a group chat if there are more than one recipients of the email. This is done using the Deep Link feature of Teams.

I have supplied a copy/paste option at the end of my post that will allow you to replicate this in your personal PowerAutomate / Teams environment in a matter of seconds. **NOTE** make sure you update the TO field in the post adaptive card action as it’s currently set to youremail[at]yourdomain[dot]com.

So, what does it look like?

The PowerAutomate

The User Experience

If you want to give this a go yourself, create a new cloud flow with the trigger “when an email is flagged” or the trigger of your choice and then copy and paste the code into the clipboard of Power Automate. **NOTE** make sure you update the TO field in the post adaptive card action as it’s currently set to youremail[at]yourdomain[dot]com.

{"id":"f616b2c7-1645-4360-aff5-1710-a2bfb6a1","brandColor":"#8C3900","connectionReferences":{"shared_office365":{"connection":{"id":"/providers/Microsoft.PowerApps/apis/shared_office365/connections/shared-office365-2c7a215d-616e-4cc2-9dab-9d05f14c21a5"}},"shared_teams_1":{"connection":{"id":"/providers/Microsoft.PowerApps/apis/shared_teams/connections/shared-teams-c32e6b36-e3dd-4ca6-806d-5969ba7e6dee"}}},"connectorDisplayName":"Control","icon":"data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMzIiIGhlaWdodD0iMzIiIHZlcnNpb249IjEuMSIgdmlld0JveD0iMCAwIDMyIDMyIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPg0KIDxwYXRoIGQ9Im0wIDBoMzJ2MzJoLTMyeiIgZmlsbD0iIzhDMzkwMCIvPg0KIDxwYXRoIGQ9Im04IDEwaDE2djEyaC0xNnptMTUgMTF2LTEwaC0xNHYxMHptLTItOHY2aC0xMHYtNnptLTEgNXYtNGgtOHY0eiIgZmlsbD0iI2ZmZiIvPg0KPC9zdmc+DQo=","isTrigger":false,"operationName":"DamoBird365_Transfer_Email_To_Teams","operationDefinition":{"type":"Scope","actions":{"Get_All_To_and_From_Emails":{"type":"Compose","inputs":"@replace(tolower(concat(triggerOutputs()?['body/toRecipients'], ';', triggerOutputs()?['body/from'])), ';', ',')","runAfter":{}},"Post_your_own_adaptive_card_as_the_Flow_bot_to_a_user":{"type":"OpenApiConnection","inputs":{"host":{"connectionName":"shared_teams_1","operationId":"PostUserAdaptiveCard","apiId":"/providers/Microsoft.PowerApps/apis/shared_teams"},"parameters":{"PostAdaptiveCardRequest/recipient/to":"youremail[at]yourdomain[dot]com;","PostAdaptiveCardRequest/messageBody":"{\n    \"type\": \"AdaptiveCard\",\n    \"body\": [\n        {\n            \"type\": \"TextBlock\",\n            \"size\": \"Medium\",\n            \"weight\": \"Bolder\",\n            \"text\": \"Transfer Email to Chat\",\n            \"wrap\": true\n        },\n        {\n            \"type\": \"ColumnSet\",\n            \"columns\": [\n                {\n                    \"type\": \"Column\",\n                    \"items\": [\n                        {\n                            \"type\": \"TextBlock\",\n                            \"weight\": \"Bolder\",\n                            \"text\": \"@{triggerOutputs()?['body/from']}\",\n                            \"wrap\": true\n                        },\n                        {\n                            \"type\": \"TextBlock\",\n                            \"spacing\": \"None\",\n                            \"text\": \"@{triggerOutputs()?['body/subject']}\",\n                            \"isSubtle\": true,\n                            \"wrap\": true\n                        }\n                    ],\n                    \"width\": \"stretch\"\n                }\n            ]\n        },\n        {\n            \"type\": \"TextBlock\",\n            \"text\": \"@{triggerOutputs()?['body/bodyPreview']}\",\n            \"wrap\": true\n        }\n    ],\n  \"actions\": [\n    {\n      \"type\": \"Action.OpenUrl\",\n      \"title\": \"Start Group DM in Teams\",\n      \"url\": \"https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=@{outputs('Get_All_To_and_From_Emails')}&topicName=@{triggerOutputs()?['body/subject']}&message=Hi, regarding your Email (@{triggerOutputs()?['body/subject']}). \"\n    },\n    {\n      \"type\": \"Action.OpenUrl\",\n      \"title\": \"Start 1:1 DM in Teams\",\n      \"url\": \"https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=@{triggerOutputs()?['body/from']}&topicName=@{triggerOutputs()?['body/subject']}&message=Hi, regarding your Email (@{triggerOutputs()?['body/subject']}). \"\n    },\n  ],\n    \"$schema\": \"http://adaptivecards.io/schemas/adaptive-card.json\",\n    \"version\": \"1.2\"\n}","PostAdaptiveCardRequest/messageTitle":"Transfer Email To Teams"},"authentication":"@parameters('$authentication')"},"runAfter":{"Get_All_To_and_From_Emails":["Succeeded"]}}},"runAfter":{},"description":"***Please make sure you update the TO: in the Adaptive Card***"}}

What do you think? Could this work for your adoption? How else might you trigger this Cloud Flow / PowerAutomate?