Scheduled and automated flows

Introduction to Power Automate

Anushika Agarwal

Cloud Data Engineer

Scheduled flows and the Recurrence trigger

Real screenshot of the Recurrence trigger card in Power Automate showing Frequency, Interval, Start time, and Time zone fields configured, with the Time zone dropdown highlighted in a red box

Scheduled cloud flow = runs on a clock
Powered by the Recurrence trigger
Set Frequency, Interval, Start time

Always set the Time zone explicitly. Default is UTC

No trigger outputs

Recurrence has no trigger outputs
Dynamic content panel after the trigger is empty
Use expressions to generate dates and values

addDays(utcNow(), -1) → yesterday's date

Real Power Automate Dynamic content panel after a Recurrence trigger, cropped to focus on the panel itself with a red box around the NO DYNAMIC CONTENT AVAILABLE header and the There is no content available row, followed by the INCLUDING DYNAMIC CONTENT explanatory paragraph

Automated triggers

Fire when an event happens in a connected service
- "When a new email arrives" (Outlook)
- "When an item is created" (SharePoint)
- "When a response is submitted" (Forms)

Unlike Recurrence, automated triggers have rich outputs: the event data.

Real Power Automate Dynamic content panel after a When a new email arrives trigger showing populated tokens From, To, Subject, Body, Importance, Has Attachment with a tight red box around the full token list and a tight yellow box around the See more 39 expansion link, contrasting the empty Recurrence panel on the previous slide

Choosing the right trigger

When you need to…	Flow type	Trigger you'll pick
Run a task on demand with a button click	Instant cloud flow	Manually trigger a flow
React to an event in a connected service	Automated cloud flow	"When a new email arrives", "When an item is created", etc.
Run a flow on a regular schedule	Scheduled cloud flow	Recurrence

Let's practice!

Introduction to Power Automate