How to schedule a flow in Power Automate: step by step

João Barros 05 de July de 2026 4 min read

Automating repetitive tasks often starts with a simple question: how do you schedule a flow in Power Automate so it runs on its own, always at the same time? A scheduled flow — the so-called scheduled cloud flow — uses the Recurrence trigger to run actions on a fixed schedule, such as sending an email summary every morning, without anyone having to press a button. Below we build one, from scratch to the first automatic email.

Prerequisites

A Microsoft 365 account with access to Power Automate (make.powerautomate.com).
A license that includes the Office 365 Outlook connector (part of most Microsoft 365 plans).
The email address you want to send the summary to — it can be your own.
No programming experience: the whole flow is built in the visual editor.

Step 1: Create a scheduled flow

Sign in at make.powerautomate.com. In the left-hand menu, choose Create and then Scheduled cloud flow. Give the flow a clear name — for example, Daily summary — so you can find it easily later. In this same window you can already set the start date and the frequency; for now, leave it repeating every 1 day and click Create. Choosing the scheduled type (rather than automated or instant) is what guarantees the flow is triggered by the clock and not by an event.

Step 2: Configure the Recurrence trigger

The first card in the flow is the Recurrence trigger, which defines when everything happens. Open the advanced options to fine-tune the schedule: set the time zone (for example, (UTC+00:00) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London), the hour and the minutes. For a summary at 8 a.m. on every working day, use a configuration like this:

Interval: 1
Frequency: Week
On these days: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
At these hours: 8
At these minutes: 0

Setting the time zone avoids the most common beginner mistake: the flow firing at the wrong time because Power Automate uses UTC by default.

Step 3: Prepare today's date with an expression

So the email shows the current date in a readable way, add a Compose action (the Data Operation group). In the Inputs field, open the Expression tab and type:

formatDateTime(utcNow(), 'dd/MM/yyyy')

The utcNow() function returns the current instant and formatDateTime converts it into text in day/month/year format. We will reuse this result in the email body, keeping it always up to date.

Step 4: Send the email with the summary

Add the Send an email (V2) action, from the Office 365 Outlook connector, and fill in the main fields:

To: the destination address.
Subject: fixed text such as Daily summary followed by the result of the Compose.
Body: a short message with the information you want to receive.

To insert the date, click the field, open the dynamic content list and choose the result of the Compose action (it appears as Outputs). The subject will read, for example, Daily summary — 05/07/2026.

Step 5: Save and test without waiting

Click Save in the top-right corner. To check everything without waiting for the next day, use Test → Manually → Save & Test. Power Automate runs the flow immediately and shows the status of each step as it goes.

Check the result

After the test, check the destination inbox: a message with today's date in the subject should have arrived. In Power Automate, open the flow's run history (it keeps the last 28 days) — each row shows the time and displays a green check when the run succeeded. If any card appears in red, click it to read the error message; in most cases you just need to confirm the connector's sign in.

Conclusion

In just a few steps you created a flow that runs on its own and sends an email every day at the right time — the foundation of almost all scheduled automation. From here, replace the fixed text with real data: add a Get items action from SharePoint or a database query before the Compose, and the summary will start reflecting up-to-date numbers. Which repetitive task in your day would you like to schedule next?