Automate Outlook Draft Emails with Power Automate and Graph API | Step-by-Step Tutorial

Stop sending emails instantly—start creating Outlook draft emails automatically with Power Automate and Microsoft Graph API! In this quick, hands-on tutorial, you’ll learn how to generate draft emails in your Outlook mailbox, giving you total control to review, edit, and personalize before hitting send.

We’ll walk through how to use Power Automate’s low-code workflow automation to build a flow that creates draft emails using the Graph API. No more worrying about typos or last-minute changes—this approach is perfect for anyone who wants to streamline business process automation (BPA) while keeping a human touch. Whether you’re responding to Microsoft Forms or automating communications from SharePoint lists, this method unlocks new flexibility for digital transformation and citizen development.

What You’ll Learn:
✔️ Build a Power Automate flow that creates Outlook draft emails using Graph API
✔️ Customize email content dynamically with JSON and cloud flows
✔️ Integrate with Microsoft Forms or SharePoint lists for automated, editable responses
✔️ Avoid common pitfalls of sending emails directly from automated workflows

Timestamps:
00:00 – Instantly Create Draft Emails in Outlook with Power Automate & Graph API
01:16 – Why Drafts? Benefits Over Sending Emails Directly
02:18 – Exploring Microsoft Graph API Documentation for Draft Emails
03:16 – Step-by-Step: Building the Power Automate Flow
05:00 – Testing: Watch Your Draft Email Appear in Outlook
06:00 – Real-World Use Cases & Next Steps

#PowerAutomate #workflowautomation #LowCode #PowerPlatform #digitaltransformation

Ready to take control of your automated communications? Try out this Power Automate solution and let me know in the comments how you’d use draft emails in your own workflows! Don’t forget to subscribe for more Power Platform and workflow automation tips.

Additional Links:

🫠 About me:
👋 Hi, I'm Damien Bird — Power Platform Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft ☁️
🧠 Former Forum Super User (2021/22) & Business Applications MVP (2022)
🎤 Speaker at conferences across Europe, the US, and local UK user groups
💡 Passionate about sharing knowledge, solving problems, and empowering the community with the Power Platform!

📚 Explore more:

[TimothyGraupmann]

Worked like a charm! It was a bit of a struggle to get expressions to work. I used dynamic variables and then saved the peek code. Then I added replace expressions and saved that peek code. Then I did a diff to figure out the right syntax. All that because the dynamic vars needed to have escaped strings. Now I have drafts saving with content that has HTML.

[surffishnj]

FYI. The Graph API action "Send an HTTP Request" for Office 365 Groups will no longer work for this. That Action only works for Group requests now. They created a new Send an HTTP Request under Outlook 365 that has to be used instead. However, existing flows that use the old action seem unaffected and work fine. They made it backward compatible. New flows won't work though. The microsoft documentation has not been update yet to reflect this change.

[favito]

This is great and leads to a lot of possibilities.

[annascala]

hello, thanks for the video. can you also apply sensitivity labels?

[heretic]

Very helpful. Worked very well.. Thank you.

[elizabeththomas]

This was so helpful, thank you! Would there be a way to add a CC field to copy a certain set of people on emails?

[montalbaconsulting]

Very handy - I'm using it to create bulk email to a group of contacts from SPO List.

[charlchavez]

Awesome,

Is there a possibility to create a draft email for shared mailbox using this approach? What would be the graph api url?

[JeffreyJack-gf]

Hi there,
Great day,
URI is not working for me.
Could you please help me on it?
Thanks

[smiya]

What a piece of wonderful tips it is! Thanks a lot.

[prvs]

I did this, but now the outlook draft folder crashes when I attempt to open one of the drafts.

[AnushaS-ov]

How change font text color in mail body.Im using font or style tag but i'm getting an error.please guide me how to change the text color

[alvaromoya]

Thanks so much for this. Can the same be done to draft an calendar invite?

[kanurikrvk]

Great Video.
May I know the process on how to create a draft in shared mail box?
I was not able to find the property to edit sender details in the body of JSON.
Thanks in advance!

[williamcook]

What about with an attachment???? I am having a rough time figuring it out. the documentation says its possible I keep getting deserialize errors

[awantideshpande]

It worked!! Can you please tell me how to integrate it with SharePoint? I want to open a draft in outlook when I select a value in my sharepoint list.

[ryanho]

This is a great video I have been looking for. One question, what is the URI if I need to create a reply in inbox without using the reply to email action? Thanks in advance.

[ParulSaini-lh]

I am getting error in URI while using the above URI. Could you help me to fix the issue

[chulaninalaka]

Good Video and helps a lot, Will you be able to explain how we can create a draft email using Power Automate in a shared mailbox as well?

[Eduardo-xegt]

Having a hard time attaching files.

Can you post a picture of your step by step breakdown, save it somewhere and share the link?

I am getting the error: "Flow save failed with code 'InvalidTemplate' and message 'The template validation failed: 'The inputs of template action 'Send_an_HTTP_request' at line '1 and column '6236' cannot reference action 'Attachment'. Action 'Attachment' must either be in 'runAfter' path or within a scope action on the 'runAfter' path of action 'Send_an_HTTP_request', or be a Trigger.'.'.
"

Thanks!