How to automate a reply to a Teams channel message thread on schedule

[derekjarrett]

I have the following flow setup:

... and it works, but I can't figure out how to just have this message sent as a reply to the thread Each week, a new thread is created, which is far from ideal. How can I get the weekly message just sent as a reply to the thread?

[Nived_Nambiar]

I hope you can try this approach 

when a message is added in teams channel, bot will autoamtically reply to it like below

Hope this what you expects 🙂

[derekjarrett]

Hi @Nived_Nambiar - thanks for that. The next question then is where or how can I add the Message id to that flow as it's static (I assume) as the thread already exists. I may be missing the fundamental way this works here, so forgive me if that's the case.

[Nived_Nambiar]

Actually it is dynamic so i have used a trigger here, whenever someones put some conversation, flow will trigger obtain the message id dynamic content and use reply action to reply back to thread that's how it is working 🙂

[derekjarrett]

Yes, I've seen that elsewhere but for my use case, I wanted to do this on a schedule, so that won't meet my need. Thanks for the reply though.

[Nived_Nambiar]

So 

Your bot should send reply to new threads scheduled to run each week in a channel 

Right ?

[derekjarrett]

No, the aim is to have it reply to the same thread each week, to remind the team to do something. I've been sending out a new thread automatically thus far as I cannot work out how to automate a reply to a particular thread only (not for any new threads in a channel).

[Nived_Nambiar · Accepted solution]

Hi @derekjarrett 

that is possible here is how you can do that

1. Use Get Messages action to get all messages (thread main messages) from the channel.

2. Next use Message List dynamic content in compose which is output from Get Messages action like below

3. Now after running, the results will be a json structure like this (for a single message )

looking at the content (which would be parent message), you can identify the message and then you can take the id (which is highlighted in JSON) value 

Since you told you want to reply to same thread every week , then you can use that id and then pass to reply teams message action like below (as number itself)

here 1234 is the message id which i got from JSON (just demo values, not real). which you can hardcode and then use in the above action 🙂

Hope this helps 🙂

Mark it as solution if it resolves your query !

[derekjarrett]

Thanks @Nived_Nambiar - that worked! Really appreciated.

[flotey]

Hi,

How can I address the issue of responding to a specific post among several in a channel?

For instance, there are posts with subjects like "Application On-Prem" and "Application Cloud." As the number of these posts is increasing, manually obtaining their IDs becomes impractical. While I've presented two examples, the actual count is higher and continues to grow daily. Hence, I require a method to determine the "ID" by referencing the post's "Subject" within the channel.

Currently, the "Message List" provides me with the JSON data for all the posts within the channel. My aim is to interpret this JSON data, extract the correct ID, and then use it to post a reply in the appropriate thread/post.

I've attempted this by utilizing the "Parse JSON" function and subsequently applying a "condition" that checks if the "'Subject' contains 'my value'." Through this, I intend to retrieve the "ID" associated with the post. I possess the knowledge of the subject's name, which I can employ as "my value."

However, my attempts with the "Parse JSON" approach have not yielded success. Do you have any insights on how I might overcome this challenge? Am I moving in the right direction with my current approach?

[hemchander007]

Hi @Nived_Nambiar ,

I tried and it's working when a new message is posted in a channel , but when the string is posted in a thread ,flow is not working , could you pls suggest how to make it work when same string is matched in a thread .