Microsoft Lists - Connecting to Outlook

Copper Contributor

Hi 
I am playing around with Microsoft lists to see what it can provide and its looking like a really good organisation tool and communication tool to keep everyone up to speed.

I created a simple list of work to be done and a start date and end date.   It would be really useful if when something is added to the list it puts something in the calendar in outlook... 

But I cant find a document that says this is how to do it in simple steps.   Anyone got any ideas

7 Replies

@MarkRichardsUK with a flow in Power Automate you can easily create an event in your Outlook calendar when a new list item is added. So we have a tasklist. It must be created first in SharePoint so the flow can find it, but after that you can use it within Lists:

0-SP-List.png

 

Then in Power Automate  go to My Flows in the menu on the left then click New flow at the top and create a new cloud instant flow - I never use the templates as they don't tend to get updated and some have errors.

Every flow must have 1 trigger - the thing that starts it running - and then a number of events.  Our trigger is "when an item is created" and you select your site and the list. 

 

1-Flow.png

 

The first action is to get the details of that item with the "get item" action and again you select your site and the list. Click in the Id field and select ID from the dynamic content box that appears on the right:

1a-Flow.png

 

You then a couple of Compose actions to grab the start and end date of the item. In the first Compose action (which I've renamed to ComposeStart) click in the inputs field and over in the dynamic content box click on the Expression tab and enter the following expression (don't just type it into the field, it MUST go into the box in the Expression tab:

formatDateTime(outputs('Get_item')?['body/Start'], 'yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss')

 

For the second Compose action (which I've renamed to ComposeEnd) add the following expression:

 

formatDateTime(outputs('Get_item')?['body/End'], 'yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss')

2-Flow.png

 

Then add the Outlook "create event (v4)" action. Select your Calendar and for the Subject field select Subject from the dynamic content box. For the Start time field, from the dynamic contents box select the Outputs from the ComposeStart section. and for the End time field select the poutputs from the ComposeEnd section of the dynamic contents box. Finally select your timezone from the dropdown.

 

3-Flow.png

 

So whenever a new item gets added to your list it will autmatically add it to your Outlook calendar:

 

4-Calendar.png

 

 

Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User

Hi @RobElliott 

Firstly many thanks for your help on this.. as a complete novice to this your help and instructions are really helpful.

If I may ask for your help one more time when you have a minute that would be great.

I have put together the list and taken the steps in power automate as you suggested (I think), however when I ran it in test mode it failed with the following:

"Unable to process template language expressions in action 'Compose' inputs at line '1' and column '27852': 'The template language function 'formatDateTime' expects its first parameter to be of type string. The provided value is of type 'Null'. Please see https://aka.ms/logicexpressions#formatdatetime for usage details.'."

Now I have noticed that in Lists the dates are all in US format and as you can probably guess from my user name I am in the UK.  So my outlook would be UK format, date and time.   I have had a look around online and in here to see if I can change my lists to be in UK format so the two match in case that's the issue but with no success.   

So if you have any ideas that would be great...

Many thanks again

@MarkRichardsUK ; @RobElliott

I am wondering  if anyone helped solve this problem?  I am having the same problem --

"Unable to process template language expressions in action 'Compose' inputs at line '1' and column '27852': 'The template language function 'formatDateTime' expects its first parameter to be of type string. The provided value is of type 'Null'. Please see https://aka.ms/logicexpressions#formatdatetime for usage details.'."    I am not very familiar with this yet and would love some direction before I invest a lot of time trying to figure out a problem that may already be easily solved. 

Thank You

Hi @Kvmck   No I had not come back on this as yet but it was not a business-critical issue so we have had to park it until we can find a solution.   If you manage to solve it then it would be great if you could let us know 

@MarkRichardsUK 

Hi,

Hi,
I think you could use this solution to create UK format date columns and then replace the original ones in your flow with the ones that have the right date format for you.

Hope that helps.

@RobElliott

 

I got an error in the "Get ID" stage:

 

Kyana2475_0-1700517135525.png

 

 

I believe because I have a list field with multiple selections. Is there a way to get the ID and ignore this field, or another way around this?

 

Thanks

 

@MarkRichardsUK
To add an element to this, if I had a People column in my List of "responsible person", would there be a way to have the Outlook event add the Responsible person into the event as Required attendee?