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

[Ellya Gold]

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

[#2]

@Chris Webb 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!

[#3]

@Rehan Alibux - I did try to use variable in our Logic app as suggested but then we are getting 

"The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable" error. We are using "List Folder - SharePoint connector" in our Logic app.

I checked in the Teams and the folder we are looking for is present. Any thoughts?

[#4]

@Aurun Thirumeni Are you able to output what the full path incorporating the variable is? Does this work if you hard code the path to the resource?

[#5]

@Rehan Alibux Apologies, I should have informed you. I have managed to fix the issue I was facing.

The reason for the failure was when I manually entered the path with slash (/) there was an encoding issue which returned as an invalid path. I had to replace slash (/) with '%2f' in my variable initialization which builds up my Folder path and flow started working ok.

Reference: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Flows/sharepoint-list-folder-fail/m-p/585936#M77026

[#6]

@Aurun Thirumeni Thank you for the update, and great to hear you resolved the issue. Thanks also for the explanation and reference link.

[#7]

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.

[#8]

Absolutely!

[#9]

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

....

[#10]

@Ellya Gold 

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?

[#11]

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.

[#12]

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! 

[#13]

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?