How to: Remind me to reply to messages in Microsoft Teams

Being a user that migrated from Slack to Microsoft Teams many years ago, there's one key capability that I kept missing out on. Namely, the ability to remind yourself about any given message, and specify when you want to be reminded about it - that way I can forget about it temporarily and stay productive.

In this short post, I'll explain how you can achieve the same experience in Microsoft Teams.

Here's how you set up and use a "Remind me" functionality, so you don't have to mark every message as "Unread" until you've replied. Fire and forget your scheduled reminders and keep your Teams notifications properly governed.

Create a new action

To set this up, you need to create a new action. Here's how:

In Teams, select any message in any chat conversation.
Click the three dots (...)
Click "Create new action":

Screenshot of the "Create new action" button in Microsoft Teams

Browse the "Create new action" dialog
Select "Follow up on a message", which was created by Microsoft:

Screenshot of the workflow named Follow up on a message

Give the workflow a name.
This is the name that will be displayed on messages when you select the action.
Connect it to your Microsoft Teams and Office 365 accounts by clicking the links that say "Sign in" - when done, you'll see the green check marks:

Screenshot of creating a new action for the reminder app in Microsoft Teams

Voila. The setup is done.

Try it out: Remind yourself of a message

The configuration was easy, and now it's time to take this for a spin.

From Teams, open any chat or conversation.
Click the menu of a message (...)
Discover the workflow/action with your name. Mine is unsurprisingly Remind me!:

Screenshot of the reminder capability in Microsoft Teams

Enter a time, date and any notes you want to associate with the reminder.
These details will later be presented in the notification in Teams:

Screenshot of the dialog to configure reminders in Microsoft Teams

FYI: The time is in your local time zone, which I discovered by editing the workflow. More on that further down in this post.

When the time is due for the reminder, Microsoft Teams will send you a notification, showing up as an "Activity". Clicking this notification will bring you directly to the message you wanted to get a reminder about, and Microsoft Teams also highlights it when it loads.

Screenshot of the notification when the reminder is due in Microsoft Teams.

Voila - that's it. You've now configured a simple workflow in Microsoft Teams to remind you about messages posted in any chat.

Manage and edit your existing workflows

You can manage your new action/workflow as you manage all Teams apps.

From Teams, click "Apps"
Click "Manage your apps"
Click "Power Automate"
Click "Personal app":

A screenshot of how to configure and manage a Power Automate workflow app in Microsoft Teams

From here, you can enable/disable the app, and configure it further.

Click on the app name (Remind me! in my case):

Screenshot of your Power Automate workflow apps in Microsoft Teams

You're seeing the page with an overview of the Flow, the recent run history, how it's connected to your accounts, and more:

Screenshot of the Power Automate Flow overview page.

Click on Edit to make any adjustments or modify the actual behavior of the flow when you want to remind yourself about a message. At this point, you can add any custom steps here. For example, if you want to inject steps to e-mail you a reminder as opposed to getting a Teams notification, that could be an option here.

Screenshot of the editor view of the Power Automate workflow for reminders in Microsoft Teams.

That's all there's to it - enjoy this short post.