If you buy your Microsoft products like Word, Excel and PowerPoint with an Office 365 license you get far more for your money than just those applications. Most of the Office 365 plans come with a host of other useful applications.
One of these applications allows me to automatically do what I’m very bad at remembering to do! To keep my records in order I copy each of the invoices I get from my regular suppliers into a folder for that supplier. This way I can always refer to them and know where they are. However, I usually forget to make the copy. So I’ve set up some “Flows” to do the work for me. As I find this very useful I assume that others will too. So here’s how to do it……
1. Log in to your Microsoft account
2. Select Flows
3. You will be presented with a list of existing flows. Towards the top of your screen you will see –
4. Select this option –
5. You will see this screen –
Microsoft Flow already knows my credentials. You may have to enter your Office 365 Email address and password.
6. Click on “Create Flow” at the bottom of the screen.
7. A flow has now been created but it doesn’t do what you want it to. So click on –
8. You will see a screen like this –
This is where we start to modify the flow to do exactly what we want.
9. Our first job is to change the name of the flow – e.g. “Save Invoices from mysupplier”.
10. Then click on the “On new email” box. Then select “Show advanced options”. You should see something like –
11. Now start to fill in the various boxes. You don’t need to fill them all in, only the ones that will impact your flow. So for the example I’m demonstrating here –
Folder: I’ve left as “Inbox”
To: I’ve left blank. The flow will therefore start to look at any email that enters my Inbox.
From: This is where I put the email address of the sender. e.g. Account@mysupplier.com
Importance: I’ve left as “Normal” as that is how my invoices seem to arrive.
Has Attachments: I’ve left this as “Yes” – my invoices are always attachments.
Include Attachments: Again I’ve left as “Yes” so that my attachment goes forward to the next part of the flow.
Subject Filter: Again I’ve left this as blank as the only emails I get from this particular email address are invoices.
12. Saving the File
We now look at what to do with the attachment from the file –
13. Click on Create File, you will see –
14. This default is nearly ready to go. We just need to set up the Folder Path. Click on the folder to the right of the box –
15. Click on the arrow to the right of “Root” and navigate around your OneDrive for Business to select the folder that you want to store your Invoices in.
16. Once you’ve done this click on “Save Flow”.
Your flow is now set up and will run automatically.
There is, of course, much more to learn about Microsoft Flow and if you have any questions please contact me here at Sussex Data Solutions.
Alternatively we can set up automatic Flows for you, just get in touch.with us via our contact page