Event Reminder with Local Time

A Power Automate tutorial by Peter Kalmström

Sometimes you want to get a reminder when a contract has to be re-negotiated, an important event needs to be remembered or a subscription needs to be renewed. All such reminders can be automated through Microsoft Power Automate. SharePoint Online has some built-in flows that can send e-mail reminders, but for more advanced remiders you need a custom flow.

In the demo below, Peter Kalmström, CEO and Systems Designer of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, shows how a flow can send e-mail reminders to events created in a different time zone. The e-mail has an event link and the event time expressed in the local time.

The flow runs automatically every morning, but it should only send an e-mail if there is a meeting today. Power Automate was new when the demo was created and the limitation to today's events were created with a condition before the e-mail sending.

In the book SharePoint Flows from Scratch we have a more efficient solution: to filter the action that fetches events from the calendar. This makes the flow quicker if there are many events to run through, so the steps below are from the book, not describing the demo.

Another difference between the demo and the book is that the book uses the new Design page and the modern calendar, the one you get when you create a Calendar list in a modern site. It has the internal and UI name "Start" for the time when the meeting starts. In the 'classic calendar, which is shown in the demo, the internal name is "EventDate" and the UI name "Start Time".

In Power Automate, times are automatically converted to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Therefore, Peter needs to set the local time in two places in the flow, for the calendar and for Outlook.

Steps to create a Reminder flow with local time:

Start with a 'Scheduled from blank' flow.
Set the frequency and time for when the flow should run.
Set the time zone in the trigger
Add the action 'SharePoint, Get items', which will get items from the SharePoint calendar. The items to be fetched are limited in the Filter query field:
1. Type Start and the ge operator and, within single quotes, add the expression formatDateTime(startOfDay(utcNow()), 'yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ').
2. Type and.
3. Type Start and the lt operator and add, within single quotes, the expression formatDateTime(addDays(startOfDay(utcNow()),1), 'yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ').
(Use 'EventDate' instead of 'Start' for the classic calendar.)
Add and configure the action 'Date Time – Convert time zone'. It will be automatically encapsulated in a 'For each' action with the output 'body/value'.
1. At 'Base time', add the dynamic content Start.
2. At 'Source time zone', keep the default UTC.
3. At 'Destination time zone', select the local time you want to be displayed in the reminder e-mail.
4. At 'Time unit, select how you want to have the time mentioned in the e-mail.
Add and configure the action 'Send an email (V2)'.
1. In the 'To' field, enter the user(s) who will get a reminder e-mail when the condition is true.
2. For the e-mail subject, type some general text and add the dynamic content 'Title'.
3. Insert the e-mail body text. You can make it dynamic by using the available parameters of the flow.