How to Use Power Automate Delay Action + Examples

In this tutorial, I will explain a Delay action in Power Automate and how to use Power Automate Delay action with various examples. Also, we will discuss the below topics such as:

• Power Automate Delay vs Until Delay
• Power Automate Delay milliseconds
• Power Automate Delay email

Power Automate Delay Action

• The Power Automate Delay action will pause or delay the Flow until the specified timestamp is over.
• In Power Automate delay action, we can manually set a time in either Months, weeks, Days, Hours, Minutes, or Seconds to wait for the flow before completing the following action. 

How to Set Delay Action in Power Automate

Here, we will use how to set a delay action using Power Automate.

In Power Automate, create an instant cloud flow, choose the trigger as Manually trigger a flow, provide the flow, and select the create option.

• Select an action to initialize the variable, enter the variable name, and choose the variable type as  String, as displayed below:
• In the Value field, Pass the string values as highlighted below:

• Then click on (+New step) to add a one-minute delay action, which will pause the flow for one minute before proceeding to the next action.
• Select Delay action and then count one and a unit as a minute. Here, you can set your delay as per the requirement.

Then add the compose action and choose the input as the initialized variable so that it will return the initialized values.

Select the Save -> Manually Test -> Run flow option to test and run the flow.

Once the flow runs, we can see the expected output in the compose action after the delay action is performed.

This is how to set a delay action using Power Automate.

Power Automate Delay vs. Until Delay

Let us discuss the difference between Delay and Until Delay actions in Power Automate.

The above table defines the difference between delay and delay until action is taken in Power Automate.

Power Automate Delay milliseconds

Let us see how we can set a delay of milliseconds in Power Automate.

In this example, we will initialize the variable to get the current date, the flow will wait for 20 milliseconds, and then we will return the variable value in the compose action.

• Create an instant cloud flow in Power Automate. Once the flow has been created, select the +new step, search, and select the initialized variable option.
• Now enter the variable name and choose the variable type as  String, as displayed below:
• In the Value field, Pass the expression utcNow() as highlighted below, which returns the current date value:

• Then click on (+New step) to add a 20-second delay action. In the count, enter the integer value as 20 and the unit as a second.

Select +new step, add compose action, and choose the input as the initialized variable to return the value initialized, which consists of the current date.

Save and run the flow by selecting Save -> Test -> Run flow options.

The screenshot below shows the expected output, which returns the current date value (i.e., 01-06-2023) in the compose action after the delay action performs for 20 milliseconds.

This is how to set a delay of milliseconds in Power Automate.

Power Automate Delay Email

Here, we will see how to send an email after a delay action in Power Automate.

In this example, we will send an email to a user after a delay action is performed; here, we will set a delay for 2 minutes so that the flow will pause for the mentioned timestamp.

In Power Automate, create an instant cloud flow and add a new step to initialize the variable. Later, enter the Variable name, Variable type, and Variable value as shown below:

Then click on (+New step) to add a 2-minute delay action, which will pause the flow for 2 minutes before proceeding to the next action.

• Select +New step to add send an email action and then select the option for HTML code in the body of the send email action.
• It will show us the code view in the HTML format.

Now, we will save and test the flow manually by selecting the Run flow option.

Once the flow ran successfully, we can see the email received for the mentioned user. Also, we can see that the delay action pauses the flow for 2 minutes and sends the email.

In the below screenshot, we can see that the mentioned user received an email as displayed:

This is how to send an email after a delayed action in Power Automate.

In this Microsoft Power Automate Tutorial, we discussed what Power Automate Delay Action is and how to work with Delay Action in Power Automate. Also, we learned the difference between Power Automate Delay and Until Delay action and so on.

You may like the following Power Automate tutorials:

• Set Variable Based on Condition in Power Automate
• Get Last & First Item ID from SharePoint List in Power Automate
• Create a CSV Table in Power Automate
• Create a Zip File Using Power Automate
• Create SharePoint List Using Power Automate
• Convert UTC to Local Time Zone in Power Automate

Preeti Sahu

Preeti Sahu is an expert in Power Apps and has over six years of experience working with SharePoint Online and the Power Platform. She is the co-author of Microsoft Power Platform: A Deep Dive book. As a Power Platform developer, she has worked on developing various tools using Power Apps and Power Automate. She also makes Microsoft 365 videos and shares them on YouTube.