Flow that Sends E-mails Based on SharePoint List Items

As you probably know, the kalmstrom.com YouTube channel has many subscribers, currently nearly 15.000, and I am glad that my demos attract such great interest. I am often asked to create demos on specific topics, but I have no possibility to comply with all requests without charging for it.

However, a couple of days ago I read a question that really interested me: how to send e-mails from a shared mailbox with content based on SharePoint list items. If you don't allow e-mail attachments, this is easily managed with a flow that picks e-mail data from a SharePoint list item.

But this subscriber wanted to include attachments in the outgoing e-mails. That makes it a lot more complicated, and this is what intrigued me. I decided to find out how to manage the process the subscriber asked about – for my own sake! I began searching and found inspiration from several sources, but a blog post by Django Lohn put me on the right track. You can see the result in the demo below, and as usual there is also an article in the kalmstrom.com Tips section.

So, why did I find this question so interesting? It was not only that I did not know how to do it from the beginning. Letting users add e-mail data to a SharePoint list is in some cases better than letting them send from a shared mailbox:

• Using a SharePoint list and a flow gives better control of what is sent.
  
• The data of the outgoing e-mails is gathered in a SharePoint list, where it can be sorted, filtered, searched and displayed in different views – something that is more difficult to do in a shared mailbox.
  
• You don't have to give a lot of people access to the shared mailbox. They only need permission to create items in the SharePoint list.

This demo is created for my upcoming book about SharePoint Flows, and it will be one of the most advanced ones. I have listed the Flow steps in the Tips article, so please give it a try!

By Peter Kalmström
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions