Huge licensing problem: Power Automate for Power Apps

[jzcase]

I discovered today that a ton of my Power Automate workflows are being flagged as "Needing a premium license," e.g., 

I use a Power Apps per User license and all of my Power Automate workflows work access data from the Dataverse instance for my apps (both Model Driven and Canvas).

According to Microsoft's Power Automate Licensing FAQ, I am allowed to use Premium Licenses (e.g., Dataverse) as long as they "run within the context of the app, which refers to using the same data sources for triggers or acti...

It appears that the affected workflows seems to be ones where only the trigger uses the Dataverse connector. E.g.,

Almost all of these are workflows that use Child Flows in order to help with application lifecycle management. Otherwise I would have to duplicate workflows for all of the different triggering contexts. And the FAQ says I need to use application data for triggers OR actions, not both! 

Many of these workflows are YEARS OLD and never had a problem until now. What is going on?

[jzcase]

UPDATE

At the moment, it appears that opening the workflows and saving them is making the error go away.

Welp, that's 211 workflows I need to open and save. 

My ticket with Microsoft is still opening and I will report how it goes here.

[jzcase · Accepted solution]

OK, we have a resolution. From Microsoft tech support:

 We sincerely apologize for the time you have spent troubleshooting this. Am glad none of your flows are disabled as a result of this warning. 

I was able to engage the Product team regarding this issue. They reached out and informed me that this is a bug and that they will be fixing it before the end of the week. 

Please be rest assured we are working on it internally and you don’t need to purchase a Power Automate per-user plan license for this particular instance. For your flows, it will still continue to run in the context of the app. If there are any changes, however, the documentation will be updated also. 

Thanks for your understanding. Do enjoy the rest of the day. 

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[wnzn]

Thanks for the update. I have faced similar issues with AI Builder showing that kind of banners while there are ample service credits.

[Ventit]

I have a workaround that prevents the need for all my users needing a Premium subscription.  I have an average of 200 users connecting at any one time so a premium subscription is too costly, when you put this on top of our E3 licenses.  I simply have them patching to one row SharePoint List.  In the patch they load to various columns with the data for a subsequent flow based on a trigger "When a new item is created or modified".  I then have one flow with a switch statement that builds the require actions etc.  The last action of the flow deletes the new record which keeps the list clean.  The net effect of this approach has meant I now no longer need to the Flow in powerapps.  I just patch. It also means only my premium license is used for all my flows. I have found so many random connections issue with powerapps and flow that is really cleans it up.  I try to keep my switches to about 10,  although it will do up to 21 (I think) and when I reach that number I just create another list to more.

Note I have found the trigger When a new item is created to be clunky and often seem to fail to work (no logic for it),  that is why I use the other trigger.

[FollowTheLion]

I seem to be having a similar issue now (about a year after the original post).

I have received 18 emails so far telling me that my flows are being turned off because I don't have a license.

I pay for Power Apps Per User plan and Dataverse (premium).

Do these emails indicate that I need additional paid licensing for Power Automate?  I've been using it for two years without an issue and now Microsoft seems to have changed something and it's preventing several flows from running and it's also saying that the flows will be automatically turned off soon.

[WillboBaggins]

I too am having the same issue described by @FollowTheLion 

Today, none of our accounts with the Power Apps Premium license can make edits or turn on flows. All flows indicate that the flow owner does not have the adequate license. Yet, in the Flows page of make.powerapps.com, there is a green banner saying:

Your admin granted you a premium license. You can now use premium flows. Find flows with premium icon in the name and activity suspended in the modified column and turn them on.

This message conflicts with the message that appears when inside the flow:

This flow will be turned off in 114 days because the owner doesn't have a premium license.

I have created an incident request with Microsoft.

[FollowTheLion]

I ended up solving it by editing any flows that have the premium "jewel" symbol and just clicking save.  Just Edit and Save.  I don't know if that will work for you.  It sounds like it's not letting you even make edits.

I still don't know what Microsoft did that triggered all of this, but this did seems to solve it for me.  It was really annoying because I kept getting emails all day for different flows and I had to take each one seriously as it represented another issue.  I think there was something like 20-30 of these emails (I have quite a few flows).

I'm not even sure if the issue is solved because now when I go to Power Automate, instead of the annoying green message saying that the admin had granted me privileges (which didn't make any sense), I'm now getting a message that says "Your premium flows require a premium license. Purchase, extend, or renew a Power Automate license or submit a request to your admin."  So maybe it's broken again.

What is Microsoft doing here?

[FollowTheLion]

It went from the green message to another bad message, but now I just went back into Power Automate and checked again and it's back to the green message, so I guess I'm okay - maybe.  This is nuts.

@WillboBaggins Please let me know if you get a useful response from Microsoft on a permanent solution, even if your situation is slightly different.  Thanks so much!

[MJL1]

I too, am having this problem.  I was actually in the midst of developing a PowerAutomate flow that Triggered by creation of a Cognito Form and moving the data into an MS SQL database.  In the morning things were working fine.  In the afternoon I was experiencing the problem others have described.  I can't save changes to the flow or turn it on.  Existing flows that are turned on are working fine.
The flow says this;

My subscriptions says this;

[WillboBaggins]

Ok, so I have solution to this. After having a conversation with Microsoft Support, they confirmed that an additional license is now required for Power Automate. The change came into effect last week. The additional license is called Power Automate Premium and it is required to create, edit, and turn on flows that use their Premium connectors. Which is pretty much everything....

Previously, the Power Apps Premium license was enough to develop both Power Apps and Power Automate.

After I added the Power Automate Premium license, my ability to develop Flows have been restored.

[MJL1]

I can confirm that this is the case.  The IT department in my org issued me a Power Automate Premium license and now I'm back in business.