SOLVED

Change to Team's Channel "Email Messages" folder naming convention.

Brass Contributor

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

 

31 Replies

@Ellya Gold 

I just noticed the same behavior impacting a channel of ours beginning today, 2/5. As with you, it is an unwanted surprise because we have Azure runbook automation that retrieves and evaluates the newly arrived email in this folder. Now we'll have to add logic based on the date to check if a new folder has been spawned that it needs to retrieve from. 

I am in the exact same situation and am quite let down by this change, nor any notification of an impending change..

@Ellya Gold 

Any thoughts of a work around in microsoft flows to automatically detect this change to the folder?

best response confirmed by ThereseSolimeno (Microsoft)
Solution
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.

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.

@Chris Webb 

Hi Chris,

I have 25 channels on that Documents library and each with their own flow triggered by a new email arriving in their respective channel. It how we identify which bank has emailed statements. If I have one flow triggered on the entire library I won't have a clue which bank sent in the statements. I get 100's of emails per day, never from the same email address or with a consistent subject line to id them. Hence giving each bank a unique email address (ie channel) to email. 

A workaround in this sense would require 25 Teams, instead of 25 channels. It also means we've got to contact 25 banks to get them to change the email address they use for us. 

Cheers, Ellya

Good point. Forgot each channel had its own folder for attachments. Yeah then at that point might as well update each existing flow. Bummer it would just change like that.

@Chris Webb 

I logged a call with Microsoft on Friday and chased up with our account manager, but just tumble weed on this so far....I'll post back once I hear anything.

Same issue here. Logged a call @Pernille-Eskebo Premium Support, hope to get things clear ASAP

@Ellya Gold 

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.

@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.

@Tony Redmond 

Nice blog, thanks for taking the time for getting that out there.

Chees, Ellya

@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`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 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.

They should have at least put the folder inside the e-mail messages folder, not a bunch of folders in the channel root.....ugh.

@Chris Webb Perhaps an idea for the next round of performance enhancements!

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.

1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by ThereseSolimeno (Microsoft)
Solution
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.

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