SharePoint Hosted Add-in: Send Email using visual studio workflow

This SharePoint Add-in tutorial explains. how we can send email in visual studio workflow in SharePoint online through a SharePoint hosted add-in.

Before proceeding further make sure to visit the below article where I have explained step by step how we can create a workflow using visual studio 2015/2017 as a SharePoint hosted add-in and how we can deploy the workflow to host web.

• Develop SharePoint workflows using visual studio as SharePoint hosted App

As we all know to work with Add-in model with the visual studio we need first a developer site for local debugging. If you are new to this, then you can check the below articles:

• Create developer site in SharePoint Online

SharePoint Hosted Add-in: Send Email using visual studio workflow

Once you follow the above article and create your first workflow, the workflow screen will appear like below where as a developer you can add activities.

From the toolbox from the left side, I have added two “WriteToHistory” activities from SP-Utilities section like below. In those “WriteToHistory” activities I have put some message which will be written to our Workflow History List.

Inside these two activities, I have added one “Email” activities from SP-Utilities section from the toolbox. The workflow now looks like below:

Here in the above screen, you can see an error mark which is coming because we need to add the mandatory properties inside the Email Activity.

Here if you will look at the properties, you can see there are few optional properties, as well as few Required properties are there. Apart from that Display Name is also there, which we can change.

Here properties like Subject, Body will take string parameter. But properties like To, CC, BCC will take Collection of Strings as a parameter.

So If I will simply put in To as a string like below, it will through me an error.

To resolve this we need to convert the string to a collection of strings. You can write like below:

new System.Collections.ObjectModel.Collection() { "[email protected]"}

The full email properties will look like below:

Here for future propose, I have given Full Control Access in AppManifest.xml file.

Now right click on the Project -> click on Deploy.

Once it is deployed successfully. It will ask you to trust the App like below. Click on “Trust It”.

Once you trust it, the workflow or the app will be available in all lists and libraries. In my developer site, I have a list name as MyTestList.

Now Open the list and then go to the Workflow Settings page. Here you can see two Apps: This List and [Your App Name]. Click on your App name and then click on Add a workflow.

Here in the Add a Workflow page, It will show you the workflow templates, since I have only one workflow it is showing one. Then give a name for the workflow, choose the Task List, History List and choose the Start Options for the workflow.

Then click on OK.

Now go back to the list and add one item to the list. Since the workflow will trigger on item add, you can see the details of the workflow.

Click on the … -> Advanced -> Workflows like below:

In the details page, click on your App, then you will be able to see the completed apps like below:

Click on it to see the full details of the workflow. Check out the history list, it has added the messages which we wrote inside the WriteToHistory activity.

Now if you will check the email, you can see the messages like below:

You may like following SharePoint workflow tutorials:

• SharePoint Hosted Add-in: Send Email to SharePoint group using visual studio workflow
• Create a Web API for SharePoint Online and Deploy to Microsoft Azure using Visual Studio
• Call Web API from SharePoint Online using httpsend workflow activity
• Workflow App Identifier in SharePoint Online App Permissions
• SharePoint designer workflow examples Create workflow using SharePoint designer 2013 video tutorial
• How to Trigger Sharepoint 2013 Designer workflow on a list item by calling REST API using jQuery?
• How to hide approve reject workflow approval button from ribbon in SharePoint online using css?
• SharePoint Approved and Rejected buttons not appearing in task form in Visual Studio 2015 workflow

Hope this article will be helpful to send an email in Visual studio 2015/2017 workflow in SharePoint hosted add-in in SharePoint Online Office 365.