Power Automate Flow - Photos sent in Teams chat to a SharePoint Folder

Hi @Hunter, Melissa,

Regarding your inquiry, this can be done with Power Automate, but the key point is to first understand where Teams stores the photo. When a file or photo is shared in a Teams chat, it is stored in the sender’s OneDrive for Business. When a file is shared in a Teams channel, it is stored in the team’s SharePoint folder instead.  

Because of that, the general situation is: 

• If your team is sharing project photos in a chat, the flow normally needs to work from the location where those chat files are stored first and then copy them into the target SharePoint folder. 
• If your team is sharing photos in a channel, the files are already stored in SharePoint, which is usually a better fit for project retention and shared access. 

At a high level, the general approach in Power Automate is: 

• Create an Automated cloud flow in Power Automate using the cloud flow designer. 
• Set the trigger to the source location where the shared files are initially stored in Teams. 
• Add a condition so the flow only continues for specific image types, such as .jpg, .jpeg, or .png. 
• Use the SharePoint – Create file action to automatically save a copy of the images into your designated long-term project repository. 
• Rename the files dynamically (optional) by using a date expression like formatDateTime(...) in the file name field to keep things organized. 

Please be advised that photos posted in a Teams chat are stored in each sender’s OneDrive rather than a SharePoint library, making chat-based designs more complicated for long-term project storage. For future recurring projects, it may be more manageable to share photos in a Teams channel instead; this stores files in the team’s SharePoint folder from the start, making shared ownership, retention, and project organization much easier. 

For the exact implementation, I would strongly recommend also posting this in the Power Automate Community. In practice, the success of this solution depends on the exact trigger, the connector behavior, the source location, the file filter logic, the naming expression, and the permissions in your environment. Those are the areas where Power Automate specialists, community experts, and MVPs can usually give much more precise build guidance than a general Microsoft 365 forum can provide. 

Therefore, I would view the Power Automate forum not as a bounce, but as the right specialist path for the implementation stage. Here, the general guidance is that the scenario is achievable, and the storage behavior of Teams is the main design factor. In the Power Automate forum, you are more likely to get the detailed connector-level and expression-level advice needed to actually build the flow successfully and make it reliable going forward.

I hope this helps and provide you the right direction. Should you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out.

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