Power Automate: Pause Weekend Notification and Proceed on Next Weekday

This blog will discuss the way to pause the notification for the weekend. It means it stops the notification for the weekend and continues on Monday to send the notification.

Requirement

We had a requirement to notify when the case status is updated to urgent. But the case status is updated to ‘Urgent‘ when the case is not picked up or worked by anyone for 24 hours using the ‘Not Started‘ status. Pause the notification that was specific to the one time zone.

For example, Case created on Friday at 9 AM, Friday evening clocks stop counting and continue Monday at 8 AM. In this case, 24 hours will be calculated as

Fri 9 AM to 6 PM – 9 Hours

Mon 8 AM to 11 PM (Mid Night) – 15 Hours

Case Status will be updated  to Urgent on Monday 11 PM.

Solution

• Find the Upcoming Friday Evening based on record created date
• Find the Upcoming Monday Morning based on the record created date
• Calculate the number of hours before the weekend
• Calculate the number of hours after the weekend
• Decide whether to change the status

Power Automate Flows

We have two flows for this use case.

1. Scheduled Flow – Runs every x hour to set the Status to Urgent
2. Automated Cloud Flow – Runs when the record is modified to send a notification

Now will walk through the flow of each action

Flow 1: Scheduled Flow

Flow Chart to calculate the number of hours Before and after the weekend

Flow Explanation

• Initialize below variables

• List rows and loop through the records

• Find Upcoming Friday and Monday

We need to find upcoming Friday and Monday based on the record-created date time. The below section will run for each record to be within each loop.

• Formulas are used to find upcoming Friday and Monday

Set CreatedOn

items(‘Apply_to_each_Account’)?[‘createdon’]

Set Current Time

utcNow()

Compose CreatedOn

formatDateTime(variables(‘CreatedOn’), ‘yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.fffZ’)

Compose Current Time

formatDateTime(variables(‘Current Time’), ‘yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.fffZ’)

TargetTimeNow

convertFromUtc(variables(‘Current Time’), variables(‘Target Time Zone’))

UpcomingFriday

convertToUtc(formatDateTime(concat(string(addDays(outputs(‘Compose_CreatedOn’),  sub(5, dayOfWeek(outputs(‘Compose_CreatedOn’))), ‘yyyy-MM-dd’)), ‘ 18:00:00’), ‘yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss’),  variables(‘Target Time Zone’))

UpcomingMonday

convertToUtc(formatDateTime(concat(string(addDays(outputs(‘Compose_CreatedOn’),  sub(8, dayOfWeek(outputs(‘Compose_CreatedOn’))), ‘yyyy-MM-dd’)), ‘ 08:00:00’), ‘yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss’),  variables(‘Target Time Zone’))

• Condition Target Time less Than Upcoming Friday

less(outputs(‘Compose_Current_Time’), outputs(‘UpcomingFriday’))

• Set Before Weekend

div(sub(ticks(outputs(‘TargetTimeNow’)), ticks(convertFromUtc(outputs(‘Compose_Createdon’),  variables(‘Target Time Zone’)))), 36000000000)

div(sub(ticks(outputs(‘UpcomingFriday’)),  ticks(outputs(‘Compose_Createdon’))), 36000000000)

• Condition Target Time Greater Than Upcoming Monday

greater(outputs(‘Compose_Current_Time’), outputs(‘UpcomingMonday’))

• Set After Weekend

div(sub(ticks(outputs(‘Compose_Current_Time’)),  ticks(outputs(‘UpcomingMonday’))), 36000000000)

At this time, we have several hours before the weekend and after the weekend. So now add both together.

add(if(less(variables(‘BeforeWeekend’),0),0, variables(‘BeforeWeekend’)), variables(‘AfterWeekend’))

Outputs(‘Compose_Total_Hours’)

• Update the status to urgent when the total hours are more than 24 hours

It’s a simple flow that is triggered when a record is modified and sends a notification.

Conclusion

We can calculate the number of hours with no weekend.