Create a dynamic HTML table for e-mails

 Posted on February 17, 2024

Learn how to create a dynamic table with SharePoint list data

The use case

Each week we want Power Automate to send out an e-mail to the manager with all of the projects that still has the status open.

We want to present the data in a table style

Since the number of open projects are not always the same, the table needs to be build dynamically.

This is how my SharePoint list looks - 3 projects are Open and 2 projects are Closed

SharePoint projects list showing three items with Open status and two with Closed status

This is the e-mail output we are aiming for

Email showing a styled HTML table with columns for project name, status, and customer, listing only the open projects

Power Automate

The first thing we need is to get all the open projects, by using the get items action, and then filter the status value with open

If you would like the items to be presented in the specific order, use the Order By option

Power Automate Get items action filtered by status equal to Open with an Order By option configured

Building the table rows

Next we are going to insert a select action so that we for each value in our get items is building a table row.

We are going to use inline styling for our HTML, since I experienced that f.ex. G-mail does not read the styling if we use standard CSS

Power Automate Select action mapping each item from Get items to an HTML table row string with inline styles and dynamic content for title, status, and company

Here is the code for creating the table rows

<tr>
<td style="font-family: Open Sans, sans-serif; border: 1px solid #dededf; background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; padding: 5px;">TITLE</td>
<td style="font-family: Open Sans, sans-serif; border: 1px solid #dededf; background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; padding: 5px;">STATUS</td>
<td style="font-family: Open Sans, sans-serif; border: 1px solid #dededf; background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; padding: 5px;">COMPANY</td>
</tr>

In your select action write html in the left site, and on the right site, insert the code above.

TITLE, STATUS & COMPANY should be replaced with your dynamic content. (refer to the picture above)

With the select action we have build a table row for all of the values we received in our get items.

Later on we are going to join all this code into a single string, so insert another select action

Second Power Automate Select action using the output of the first Select as its From value and item html as the Map expression to prepare rows for joining

From should be the output from our previous select action, but the Map value we have to write ourself as an expression:

item()?['html']

Building the table

Our next action is going to be a compose action

Power Automate Compose action containing the full HTML table markup with header row and a join expression inserting all dynamically built table rows

Here you should insert the following code

<table style="font-family: Open Sans, sans-serif; border: 1px solid #dededf; height: 100%; max-width: 50%; table-layout: fixed; border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 1px; text-align: left;" width="100%" height="100%" align="left">

    <tr>
    <th style="border: 1px solid #dededf; background-color: #eceff1; color: #000000; padding: 5px;" bgcolor="#eceff1">Project name</th>
    <th style="border: 1px solid #dededf; background-color: #eceff1; color: #000000; padding: 5px;" bgcolor="#eceff1">Status</th>
    <th style="border: 1px solid #dededf; background-color: #eceff1; color: #000000; padding: 5px;" bgcolor="#eceff1">Customer</th>
    </tr>
    HERE WE ARE GOING TO INSERT AN EXPRESSION
</table>

This code is building the table header, and is implementing all the table rows we made earlier - Again, we are building the table with inline styling, to be sure that it looks correct in most e-mails.

Replace Project name, Status, and Customer with your own headlines.

Join expression
We are going to join all of the table rows that we created earlier in one long string, by using the following expression

join(body('Select_HTML'),'')

Finally we have build a dynamic table that we can insert into our e-mail like this

Power Automate Send an email action with the Compose output inserted into the email body as the dynamic HTML table

Test out your new Power Automate, and enjoy your new dynamic table

Email showing the final result with a styled HTML table listing only the open projects with project name, status, and customer columns

Here is my entire flow

Overview of the complete Power Automate flow showing all actions from Get items through Select, Compose, and Send an email

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SharePoint  Beginner  Power Automate 

See also