How to Create a Scheduled Cloud Flow in Power Automate?

If you want to know how to use the scheduled cloud flow in Power Automate, then check out this Power Automate tutorial. Here, I have explained, step by step, how to create a scheduled cloud flow in Power Automate.

I will also show you, what are the options or parameters available in the Power Automate scheduled cloud flow in the Recurrence trigger.

Also, I will discuss an example of creating and executing a Power Automate scheduled cloud flow.

Power Automate Scheduled Cloud Flow

Before creating a scheduled cloud flow within Power Automate, I will explain some points regarding how it works and what it is.

• Power Automate Scheduled cloud flow is a type of flow that triggers and runs by a specific date and time.
• We can run a flow per a particular scheduled frequency like Every Month, Week, Day, Hour, Minute, and Second. Also, we can set the frequency to a custom value manually, like 48 Hours, 15 days, etc.
• These are Recurrence triggers that mean it will run the workflow at regular time intervals of frequency.
• It is a default set of triggers that are found under the Built-in category of Schedule.

Recurrence trigger Options:

1. Interval: We can set the number of intervals that a flow can run for a particular frequency.
2. Frequency: From this option, we can select the period for a flow.
3. Time Zone: We can select various time zones from the drop-down of this option.
4. Start time: Here, we can give the date and time when we can start the flow.
5. On these days: Through this option, we can specify the days of a week or a month to run this flow. (Example like Every Monday etc).
6. On these Minutes: We can also give the specifications to run the flow at a particular Minute of an hour.

Frequency – Hours:

• The hour’s frequency will only show the Time Zone and Start time from the show’s advanced options.
• I have taken the Interval as 3, which means the flow will run every 3 hours.

Frequency – Minutes and Frequency – Seconds :

• These both will show the same pattern as Hours; it will also display a Time zone and Start time.

Frequency – Day:

• The Day frequency will show the Time Zone, Start time, At these hours and these minutes.
• Here, I have taken the Interval as 15, which means the flow will run each 15 days.
• At these hours, we have taken as [3,4], and At these minutes, we have taken [15,30]. It means the Scheduled cloud flow will run at 3:15,3:30,4:15 and 4:30 for every 15 days.

Frequency – Week:

• This will also follow the same pattern as Day.
• This will show On these days in addition to other parameters. We can also take one or more days a week to run the flow [Example: Wednesday, Saturday].
• At these hours, we have taken as [12,7], and At these minutes, we have taken [15,30]. It means the Scheduled cloud flow will run at 7:15,7:30,12:15, and 12:30 on Wednesday and Saturday for every 4 weeks.

Frequency – Month:

• This follows the same pattern as we have seen in Hours, but the difference is it only runs on will run each X number of months.
• We have given Interval as 4, which means the flow will run every 4 months.

Example of a Scheduled Cloud Flow in Power Automate

In this section, I will discuss some examples of Scheduled cloud flow in Power Automate.

Examples:

1. If we want to send a report every Monday (weekly basis), we can use a Scheduled cloud flow, which will trigger the flow and deliver the report every week.
2. If we need to send weather reports every day, then we can use Scheduled cloud flow in Power Automate. This Power Automate flow will send email notifications on weather forecast reports to the user with all the temperature units daily at a particular time.
3. A scheduled cloud flow example will be taken in such a case that if someone wants to send Good Morning wishes to their team in Microsoft Teams daily, then he/she can use scheduled cloud flow, which will notify to the team.

Here, we will discuss how to achieve the first example that is mentioned above:

• Sign in to your Power Automate through Microsoft credentials.
• In the Power Automate page, Click on + Create -> Select Scheduled cloud flow.

• Next, provide the below details:
  • Flow name: Enter a name for the flow.
  • Run this flow: In this, we can give the details like Date, Time and frequency to repeat the flow.
  • This flow will run: It will display when the flow will run.
• In our scenario, we are taking the example of sending an email notification to the user every week on a particular day. (Select Frequency of a week in Repeat every section).
• We have Selected Monday under the On these days section.
• Click on Create

• We can also see Time Zone, Hours, and minutes for a Scheduled flow from the “Show advanced options”.

• Select +New step, to add the action.

• Select Send an email(V2)’ action of the Office 365 Outlook connector under Actions in Choose an operation.

• Next, configure the properties of the Send an email (V2) action of Office 365 Outlook.
  • To: Specify an email address to whom the email should notify about weekly reports (Provide user email address).
  • Subject: The content in the Subject column displays what an email notification is exactly about (Weekly Reports of a Patient).
  • Body: It represents detailed information displayed in the user’s email about the reports, where we can also give a link.
• Once it is done, click on Save.

• It will pop up a successful notification as your flow is ready to go. We recommend you test it. Click on the Test icon at the top right of the flow as shown in the screenshot below:

• In the Test Flow box, select Manually click on Test.

• If there are no failures, it will show the notification as Your flow ran successfully and sends an email message to the user about a patient’s reports every Monday of each week.

This is about Power Automate Scheduled cloud flow and an example of scheduled cloud flow to send an email notification to the user.

Conclusion

I hope I have provided full information on Scheduled cloud flow in Power Automate. Also, we have touched on :

• Power Automate Scheduled cloud flow parameters.
• How to create a scheduled cloud flow in Power Automate with an example.

You may also like the following tutorials:

• Initialize a Date Variable in Power Automate
• Send Birthday Emails from Excel using Power Automate
• How to Initialize String Variable in Power Automate
• Create an Instant Cloud Flow in Power Automate