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Change to Team's Channel "Email Messages" folder naming convention.
When you directly email a Teams Channel you'll find those email in the File tab of that channel in a system generated folder called "Email Messages", which was great. However, as of yesterday, if you now email the same channel the system creates a date-stamped folder and puts the messages in there instead.
Example of new Folder Name: EmailMessages_2_2021
It looks like each month it will create a new folder (March 2021 I guess will be EmailMessages_3_2021).
This is causing us a major headache as I've 25 Power Automate flows that trigger on emails arriving in "Email Messages" not these newly created folders.
Does anyone know why this is now the case or if it can be turned off? We only want a single "Email Messages" folder that Flow can monitor.
Cheers, Ellya
- I'd definitely contact support first and complain about the change.
However, in the meantime, e-mails come into the folders as eml files, you should be able to just create a flow that triggers on files coming into the library regardless of folder then "Create a copy" into the e-mail folder so it triggers your existing flows, then deletes the file after. Moving might work depending on the trigger of existing flows, but I would look into something like that to just pick them up and move them for you in the meantime.
- Has anyone tried using the MS Teams channel post (if your email is also posted as a message to the channel) as a trigger instead?
I can't use the variable expression as my trigger was based on the folder name. Now, I am having to update the trigger to the new folder every month. Is it possible to use something like a wildcard in the folder ID field?
- I've abandoned using Team Channels for automation. Also as KKSUS mentioned above, it's going to get real messy over time to keep any order. I've now switched to using good old reliable Shared Mailboxes.
We do not have Flows on out Folders but this will make the sharepoint folder in channels very anoying to use in a few months / years as you will not find the manuel created folders in this mess of automatically genereated folders.
I understand the performance problem, but why not make a folder strukture with subfolders like:
EmailMessages
- 2021_02
- 2021_03
....
Maybe the even the flows could find the folders better?
Now you will get eventueally hundreds of folders in the main structure for the cannel and the folders are not even sorted be year but by month instead.
EmailMessages_1_2021
EmailMessages_10_2021
EmailMessages_11_2021
EmailMessages_12_2021
EmailMessages_1_2022
EmailMessages_2_2021
EmailMessages_2_2022
EmailMessages_3_2021
EmailMessages_3_2022
....
ManualCreatdFolder1
ManualCreatedFolder2
Some manuel created folders will be bevore und most after the automatically created folders
the only way to find these Folders Quickly will be to add some sorting characters in front wich i find very annoying.
1_ManualCreatdFolder
2_ManualCreatedFolder
....
This is really generating some noise for us now. We have several departments with flows that stopped working. Where was the communication of this change? It has interrupted business process and created more work for flow owners who have no clue how to troubleshoot and find workarounds. If its going to be low code then you can't just start changing things around for low-coders to figure out.
- Absolutely!
Ellya_Gold Spoke with MS Support and they advised this change was made by the product team for performance reasons. Going forward the folder naming convention will be be EmailMessages_month_year.
We have multiple Power Automate flows impacted by this change and one work-around is to use a variable and expression to get the correct folder name for each month. For example:
concat('EmailMessages_',replace(utcNow('MM'),'0',''),'_',utcNow('yyyy'))Though we do have to update all the flows to add this, I think we should be set going forward.
Hi Rehan Alibux, thanks for your suggestion. Will it work in October (10)?
I was thinking about an option : create a scheduled flow that rename the previous folder (e.g EmailMessages_2_2021) to the new name (e.g. EmailMessages_3_2021) so that I only keep one folder and it is created before the first email is sent so I can update my triggers.Does someone know how to do that?
Thanks!Can you please give a visual as to where you are placing this into your flow? Rehan Alibux
dcoulbourne Please see attached a moving files example. Our actual flow runs when a new item is added, but for testing manually triggering a flow here.
- They should have at least put the folder inside the e-mail messages folder, not a bunch of folders in the channel root.....ugh.
ChrisWebbTech exactly this!
In my case, I'm syncing the entire folder structure to a local PC and, instead of using Graph, I'm parsing the emails with Python. If the new folder was nested in the existing one, it would have been a fairly trivial change to crawl the tree.
This has been handled badly. I can find no reference to any performance related issues in folders that, iin my circumstances, barely hold 1,000 messages let alone the massive volumes that Sharepoint purportedly allow!
I`ve moved the flow trigger to trigger off the folder one step above from the `Email Messages` and this seems to work.
I had thought the trigger wouldn`t work recursively previously but it does now.Ellya_Gold The problem is recognized by the Teams development group. In the interim, I've published https://office365itpros.com/2021/02/09/microsoft-changes-storage-location-email-teams-channels/ to warn others.
Ellya_Gold No problem. To report something to the Teams development group, you need to document what's happening and explain the problem. It didn't take much extra work to create the full blog post.
I adjusted my flow. In the first step, I removed the reference to the "Email Messages" folder.
It now refers only to the channel folder.
My next steps rename the file as always and copy it to the "Email Messages" folder which already exists, and deletes all other files.
The new e-mailed file now only appears in the "Email Messages" folder as before with its new name.
Hope this would work for you too.
- Same issue here. Logged a call Pernille-Eskebo Premium Support, hope to get things clear ASAP
Just got some very upset clients complaining about this. We use these channel emails to scan files from MFPs into Teams. People sometimes scan in a hurry and treat scan folders like a "dump", and don't come back to visit them way later. Or they could have administrative staff that goes over scanned files who can be behind by months too. They want every file to go to one predicable folder, not subject to be changed by Microsoft's discretion. The fact that this was changed suddenly without any option to revert is especially disappointing. We also have flows and logic apps that target this folder and they all broke, too.
