Power Automate | Create Email Recipient List

In this tutorial, Jonathon Silva from Pragmatic Works demonstrates how to use Power Automate to create an email recipient list using various data sources like SharePoint, Excel, or SQL. This step-by-step guide will show you how to collect email addresses from a data table and send a single email to multiple recipients at once.

Overview

Power Automate makes it easy to automate workflows and tasks like sending emails to multiple recipients. This tutorial focuses on creating an email recipient list from a data source, such as SharePoint, and sending an email to all recipients in one step without needing to loop through each email address individually.

Key Steps in the Process

The following steps are involved in creating an email recipient list using Power Automate:

1. Set Up the Data Source: The data source could be SharePoint, Excel, Dataverse, or SQL. In this example, a SharePoint list is used to store email addresses.
2. Create a Flow: Start by creating a manual or recurrence trigger in Power Automate to kick off the process.
3. Retrieve Data: Use the "Get Items" action in Power Automate to fetch the records from your data source. You can filter and order the items based on certain criteria, such as the most recent records.
4. Initialize a Variable: Create a variable to store the email addresses as an array. This allows you to collect and manipulate the email data later.
5. Append Email Addresses to the Array: Use the "Apply to Each" action to loop through each email address and append it to the array variable.
6. Join the Email Addresses: After gathering all the email addresses in the array, use the "Join" action to combine the email addresses into a single string separated by semicolons.
7. Send the Email: Use the "Send an Email" action to send the email to the joined email addresses. You can place them in the To, CC, or BCC fields as needed.

Detailed Step-by-Step Process

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the process:

1. Step 1: Set Up the Data Source
   Jonathon uses a SharePoint list as the data source, but this process can work with any table format from Excel, Dataverse, or SQL. The email addresses are stored in a column, ready to be used in the email.
2. Step 2: Create a Manual Trigger
   A manual trigger is used to start the flow, but you can also use a recurrence trigger for scheduling the task. This trigger initiates the flow to grab the email addresses and send the email.
3. Step 3: Retrieve Data
   The "Get Items" action is used to retrieve the rows from the SharePoint list. Jonathon demonstrates ordering the items by ID in descending order to grab the most recent entries.
4. Step 4: Initialize a Variable
   Jonathon initializes a variable named "VAR Email Array" to store the list of email addresses. The variable is set as an array to hold multiple values.
5. Step 5: Append Email Addresses
   An "Apply to Each" action is added to loop through each email address from the SharePoint list. For each entry, the email is appended to the array variable.
6. Step 6: Join the Email Addresses
   Once all the emails are collected, Jonathon uses the "Join" action to combine the emails into a single string with semicolons separating them. This makes it easy to use the emails in the To, CC, or BCC fields of the email.
7. Step 7: Send the Email
   Finally, Jonathon demonstrates how to send an email using the joined email addresses. The list of emails appears in the body of the email for testing, but they can easily be added to the To field for real-world use.

Conclusion

Using Power Automate to create an email recipient list from any data source is a powerful way to automate communication. Whether you are working with a SharePoint list, Excel, or another table format, you can streamline your email processes and send bulk emails to multiple recipients in a single step. With Power Automate’s intuitive flow-building capabilities, tasks like this can be easily automated, saving time and reducing manual effort.

Stay tuned for more tutorials from Pragmatic Works as we continue to explore the capabilities of Microsoft Power Automate and other automation tools.