Use Microsoft Forms For Event Registrations And Send Calendar Invite To Attendees Using Power Automate

When it comes to organizing a virtual event, it becomes difficult to maintain the attendee data list and send personal meeting invites.

This article will briefly help you in how you can maintain the attendee’s data in SharePoint list and send attendees calendar invites via mail.

I am leveraging Power Automate - automated flow to automate this process, Microsoft Forms - to get attendees information, SharePoint List - to store attendee data, Outlook - to send calendar invites to attendee

In this article you will see a few easy steps which will take attendees data from Microsoft Form > Store data in SharePoint List > Store the calendar invite (.ics file) in OneDrive > send the invite to attendee via mail

Let’s look at the high-level Automation flow from Fig 1.1, then will look at trigger and actions in details

Fig 1.1 - High-level Automated Flow Steps

Before jumping into the details of the Power Automate flow, create a Microsoft Form for your event as per your requirement and needs. As shown below in Fig 1.2, a sample Form created for reference

Fig 1.2 - Sample Microsoft Form

Now, as you have the Form ready, share it with the required audience by choosing the correct permissions before sharing as shown in Fig 1.3

Fig 1.3 - Select any one of the options for sharing Forms

It’s time to dig into Automated Flow and investigate more details,

Step1: Choose the trigger from Forms (When a response is submitted).

In Fig 1.4. Select from the list of the Forms, I have selected the sample form which I had created

Fig 1.4 - When a new response is submitted

Step2: Now you have the Form, let’s get the response details. So, select Get response details connector

In Fig 1.5. For Form Id - Select the Form again and in Response Id: dynamically give the unique response id as its value

Fig 1.5 - Get response details

Step3: Now you have the response of each attendee from the above step, So, let's store the attendee data in SharePoint list. For this, choose ‘Create an item’ SharePoint connector

In Fig 1.6 - Add the Site URL where your SharePoint list resides, Add List name,

For Title and other SharePoint column fields, select the appropriate Form response data dynamically, refer Fig 1.6

                              

Fig 1.6 - Create item in SharePoint List

Now it’s time to create a Calendar invite file of (.ics) format

Navigate to your Outlook desktop app > create new appointment > with meeting start time and end time and meeting link as shown in Fig 1.7.

Fig 1.7 - Create .ics calendar file

Add this .ics calendar file to your OneDrive as we need to use this in our Power Automate Flow in upcoming steps

Let’s move on to the next step,

Step4: In this step, select ‘Get File metadata’ connector of OneDrive

In Fig 1.8 - Give the location of where the calendar file (.ics) is stored in OneDrive

Fig 1.8 - Get File metadata stored

Step5: Select ‘Get File Content’ connector of OneDrive. This will get the file content

In Fig 1.9 - Select dynamically the Id from the above connector

Fig 1.9 - Get File content

Step6: Send an email to the attendee with the calendar invite stored in OneDrive. For this, select ‘Send an Email’ connector of Outlook or you can also choose ‘Send email’ Gmail connector.

From Fig 1.10 - In, To field - as we want to send this mail to attendees of the event - Select Email Id of an attendee (dynamically) as we have stored in the list I have selected dynamic content of SharePoint

Add an appropriate Subject for your Email and a Body message

Now let’s add (.ics) calendar file as an attachment. Select Attachment Name as Name dynamically from OneDrive File metadata and Attachment Content as Body from OneDrive File Content.

Fig 1.10 - Send email in outlook with calendar invite for attendees

It’s time to test our Flow, Let’s look at the final mail an attendee will receive. Shown below is the final outcome of the Flow after an attendee fills the Form.

I hope this article will help many users and event organizers for hosting a virtual event on how you can share a Form, save attendee data and send out the calendar invite to the attendees.

Stay tuned for my upcoming blogs.

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