Flow of the Week: Sick day button
Today, in our Flow of the Week series, we will show you how to use a button flow. If you aren't familiar with button flows, they are an easy way to kick off a workflow from your iOS or Android device with a single tap. To use a button, download the app for Android or iOS. This flow will do two things for you:
- Using Office 365, send an email out to call of your colleagues that you will be out sick today. The flow finds out who your colleagues are by looking up your manager's direct reports.
- Block out the next 8 hours on your Office 365 calendar with an Out of the Office event.
If you don't have Office 365, you can instead try out this template that blocks out your Google Calendar or this template that blocks out your Outlook.com calendar.
Getting started
The first step is to select the template:
Start with the Sick Day button template for Office 365
On the template page, if this is the first time that you are using Microsoft Flow you will have to connect to Office 365. If you've already used Microsoft Flow you can just re-use your connections to the services.
As you connect, you should see a green checkmark next to the connection. This indicates that the connection has been successfully tested. Then, once you have connected, select Continue.
Filling out the flow settings
Now that you have connected to your services, you only need to configure one step in the flow. In the Create Event card, select which calendar you want to add the 8-hour event to:
If you choose, you can also customize other aspects of the flow. For example, you can add a more tailored, customized email message in the Send an email step by clicking the Edit button on that card. Once you are done, select Create flow at the top of the screen.
Running your flow
Finally, running the flow is easy. On your iOS or Android device, select the Buttons tab at the bottom of the screen, and then tab the flow you just created. Please note, this will immediately send out an email to all your colleagues, so only do it if you're actually going to be sick.
Let us know what you think about this flow and suggest other ideas on the forum.