Working with Email

Over the years, many business processes have been developed that use email as a storage, tracking, or processing mechanism. These processes have relied upon a combination of manual activities, third-party plug-ins, component object model (COM) add-ins, and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) scripting. As you learned in Chapter 1, Introducing Power Automate, connectors are used to attach to data sources and endpoints (either to receive, retrieve, store, or send data). Connectors are structured configuration files (typically formatted as JavaScript Object Notation or JSON) that define how Power Automate will interact with another service for automation tasks. 

So what makes Power Automate different from previous automation technologies?

A Power Automate-based solution strength lies in the cloud, as it doesn't rely on any desktop or local computer components to be installed or running, isn't dependent on particular versions of an Outlook or other desktop client, and can be built in a codeless (or near codeless) manner using an extensible, componentized architecture.

This chapter will focus on using Power Automate to manage email:

• Learning about email connectors and actions
• Working with email

By the end of the chapter, you should be able to connect Power Automate to an email account and perform common tasks such as saving and sending messages.