Using the New Set a Reminder Flow for SharePoint
There’s a new Flow on the block that’s all about helping you send reminders based on a date in your SharePoint lists. Some useful scenarios for this type of Flow include:
- Get a notification the day before a Task is due
- Get notified 30 days before your driver’s license expires
- Receive a notification 60 days before a contract expires
Limitations
There are a couple things to point out about this Flow. The Flow is set up to send the notifications to the person who set up the Flow. It doesn’t give you the option to send to a certain set of users. For example, if you have a SharePoint list with employees names and the date that their driver’s license expires and you want to send a reminder to each individual employee when their license expires then this Flow will not get you that out of the box. You would have to make some modifications to the Flow in order to make a scenario like that work.
Another thing to point out is this Flow does not give you the ability to send Overdue reminders. It only gives you a text box to specify the number of days before to get the reminder.
Configuring The Set a Reminder Flow
In order to use the set a reminder Flow, you must have a SharePoint Modern list that has at least one Date field type in it. The date field is what will be used to determine when to send the reminder. If your SharePoint list does not have a Date field in it, then you will not see the option for this particular Flow type.
To set up the reminder flow, go to your SharePoint list, click the Flow Button and Set a Reminder. When you hover over the Set a Reminder option, a list of all of the Date fields in your SharePoint list will appear on the right hand side. Select the Date field that you want to use to determine the reminder send date.
A configuration screen will pop up on the right hand side. It only requires two inputs: a name for your Flow and the number of days in advance that you want to be reminded. If you click see details it will show what connections the Flow will be using. Fill out those options and click Create.
The pop up screen will disappear and your Flow is created. To see how the Flow is set up or to edit it, you’ll need to go to the Flow screen (flow.microsoft.com). You should see your new Flow listed at the top like so. Select the edit option to examine the configuration.
How the Flow is Set Up
After examining the Flow you’ll notice that it’s set up as a Recurring Flow which runs every day. You can adjust the recurrence settings to run at whatever time you’d like by changing the “At these hours” property.
The Flow is getting your profile information from O365 Users, setting some variables and getting the SharePoint list items that are overdue (that is nested inside the Scope). It’s then putting all of those results into a table then sending out a notification.
The End Result
After the Flow runs it will send you a nicely formatted email with a summary of all of the items that meet your reminder criteria:
Hi, I’m trying to use this in Australia but it doesnt seem to be functioning. Is it not available in all locations yet? Even when i try to create a manual flow, there are no templates that already exist with the above so i’m assuming it’s not widely available yet.
Hi Brad,
It’s my understanding that this functionality should be available globally now. One thing to note, it won’t show up as a template in Flow. You can only configure it by going to the SharePoint list/library directly and selecting the Flow dropdown from there. Also, the option will only show if your SharePoint list in question has a Date field in it. Hope that helps.
Thanks for your reply April! 🙂 I am literally sitting in a cafe now playing with this again now.
Yes, i do have a date and yes i’m trying to set it up from the list itself and not Flow…..still not working 🙁
Maybe it’s Chrome. I’ll give it another go in a different browser.
Thanks – i’ll let you know!
Brad
Thanks for this post. I am also having no luck getting it to launch. After clicking Flow – I see the ability to drag to set a reminder and choosing my date field – but nothing happens. Where you able to resolve this issue. I have also tried multiple browsers and lists.
Hi, April –
I have a list in which we track the expiration dates of 22 different certifications. Here is my problem: Each has 4 different reminders – 45, 30, 14, and 7 days from expiration.
I had created my own flows from scratch, learned a lot, and ended up with an identical flow to your example here. What I am trying to do is have a single flow that checks all four dates for each certification so that I am not creating 88 different flows! So far, none of my ideas have been successful. Do you have any ideas?
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