Gmail

Gmail is a web-based email service from Google. With the Gmail connector, you can perform actions such as send or receive e-mail messages, and trigger flows on new e-mails.

This connector is available in the following products and regions:

Authentication and Bring your own application

The Gmail connector now supports multiple authentication types:

• Use default shared application
• Bring your own application

The default shared application uses a Google Client application maintained by Microsoft. In this case, when you sign into your Gmail account, you'll be asked to consent to the Microsoft Power Platform application.

With "Bring your own application" option, you can use your own Google OAuth Client application instead of the one managed by Microsoft. Doing so will allow you to control permissions and enable certain limitations on the use of the connector.

To use your own Google OAuth Client application with the Gmail connector, you'll need to perform the following steps:

1. Create an OAuth client application using Google's API Console
2. Use the application in the Gmail connector

Creating an OAuth Client Application in Google

To create your own Google OAuth client application, you'll need to first sign in to https://developer.google.com. Navigate to Google's API Console — which is where you can manage access to Google APIs — and create the OAuth application. This process is explained in Google's Gmail API Developer Guide. Google provides a setup tool to guide you through the process of creating a project for you, enable the Gmail API for your project, and create an OAuth client application and the credentials for it. Here's some information you'll find useful when going through the tool:

• Read and agree to the Terms of Service if needed.
• Select an existing project, or the tool will create a new one called "My Project".
• The tool will enable the Gmail API in the project.
• The tool will try to find out the credential type you need. You'll need to get an OAuth Client application.
  • Select Gmail API for the API you'll be using (if not already selected).
  • Select Web server for the where you'll be calling the API from.
  • Select User data for the data you'll be accessing.
• The tool will walk you through the set up an OAuth consent screen.
  • Select the user type (Internal or External). If you are using a Gmail consumer account, you cannot select Internal.
  • Provide a name and, optionally, a logo for your application.
  • Click on Add Scope and add the Gmail scope (https://mail.google.com).

    Note

    Based on your usage need, you can select an appropriate subset of the permission scopes here.

  • Add azure-apim.net as one of the authorized domains.

    Note

    This is the domain on which the Gmail connector is hosted, as defined here.

  • Optionally, provide the other information.
• The tool will let you define and add an OAuth 2.0 client credential.
  • Provide a name for your OAuth Client application.
  • Add "https://global.consent.azure-apim.net/redirect" for the Redirect URI.

Once you're done, navigate to the created OAuth client from the Credentials page. You'll find the Client ID and the Client secret of your app. You can now use those values in your Gmail connection.

Using your own application in the Gmail connector

Once you create the Google OAuth client application, you can use it while creating a Gmail connection.

• Select Bring your own application.
• Specify the Client ID and Client secret values from your application.

Click on Sign in to sign into your Gmail account. This will prompt you to sign in to your Gmail account, and then authorize access to the Google app that you created above.

Known issues and limitations

Trigger limitations for large number of incoming emails

The When a new email arrives trigger may skip emails if you are receiving more than 300 emails per 30 seconds interval. Consider configuring your flow with additional filter parameters to reduce number of emails.

The When a new email arrives trigger may intermittently skip emails with attachments if you are using a Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) account. This happens because in some case Gmail API takes a long time to process emails (possibly due to security scans of attachments), so the emails are received with a certain delay.

As possible workaround please try the following:

• Use tiny emails (without attachments), try to send them not so frequently

• Use another consumer Gmail account and configure auto-forwarding from the Google Workspace account to this new consumer Gmail account. Configure the trigger against this new account. Since this is a consumer account, we believe that the delay will be minimized and the trigger will not skip such emails.

• Use a custom connector to ListMessage API with a q parameter:

  • Create an action to list messages for the last 5 minutes. You can do so using q parameter. Example of q param value - after:1649457986. You should provide current time - 5min epoch time as the action input.

    • 1649457986 is the epoch time that represents "Friday, April 8, 2022 3:46:26 PM GMT-07:00".

  • Check nextPageToken value from the response until it is empty. If it is not empty then you need to call the same API with pageToken parameter value set to the nextPageToken from the response. You can do so using "Until" loop for example.

  • Filter out those messages IDs which have already been processed in previous runs (e.g. you can use Azure Table Storage connector to store already processed IDs)

  • Use Get email details action to get email content by ID

Using Gmail connector with consumer Gmail accounts

In compliance with Google's security and privacy policy, customers using consumer Gmail accounts (Accounts ending in @gmail.com and @googlemail.com) can only connect to a limited set of services within Power Automate and Logic Apps. Customers using Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) accounts are not impacted by this change. If you need to use the Gmail connector with services not specified in the below list you will need to register your own Application id with Google. Below is the list of the current approved services, do note that this list is subject to change in the future in accordance with Google's policies:

• Google services: Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Google Drive, Google Sheets, Google Tasks
• Built in actions and triggers: Control, AI Builder, Data operations, Date Time, Number Functions, Power Virtual Agents, Power Apps, Request, Schedule, Text Functions, Variables, Flow button, Location
• Limited set of Microsoft services: OneDrive, Sharepoint, Excel, Dynamics, Microsoft Teams, Office 365, SQL, SFTP and FTP

In Power Automate if you create a flow with a non-compliant service the flow will end up being saved in a disabled state.

Calculating work units

The connector has a throttling limit (refer here) on the number of work units that can be consumed in a day.

The logic on how these work units are calculated for each operation is shown below:

• When a new email arrives trigger : 10 + (5 * attachmentsCount);
  • If trigger returns new email: 5 units to list messages + 5 units to get message + 5 units * attachments count.
  • If trigger doesn't return new email: 5 units to list messages.
• Send email (V2) action : 100 units.
• Reply to email (V2) action : 105 + (5 * attachmentsCount);
  • 5 units to get original message + 100 units to send reply message + 5 units * inline attachments count in original message.
• For all other actions: 10 units.

Connector in-depth

For more information about the connector, see the in-depth section.

General Limits

Creating a connection

The connector supports the following authentication types:

Bring your own application

Auth ID: byoa

Applicable: All regions

Sign in using your own Google app. For more details see https://docs.microsoft.com/connectors/gmail/#authentication-and-bring-your-own-application.

This is not shareable connection. If the power app is shared with another user, another user will be prompted to create new connection explicitly.

Use default shared application

Auth ID: shared-application

Applicable: All regions

Sign in using the standard Google app.

This is not shareable connection. If the power app is shared with another user, another user will be prompted to create new connection explicitly.

Default [DEPRECATED]

Applicable: All regions

This option is only for older connections without an explicit authentication type, and is only provided for backward compatibility.

This is not shareable connection. If the power app is shared with another user, another user will be prompted to create new connection explicitly.

Throttling Limits

Actions

Delete email

Get email details

Move email to trash

Reply to email (V2)

Reply to email [DEPRECATED]

Send email (V2)

Send email [DEPRECATED]

Triggers

When a new email arrives

Definitions

DetailedReceiveMessage

Attachment