Is Power Automate a portable solution?

[jordaniza]

Hi community!

Trying to deploy a Power Apps/Power Automate combo as a solution and just ran into what looks like a major difficulty for us with Power Automate:

As I understand it:

• CDS and Power Automate can be deployed together in a managed solution - this seems to have been a feature since mid last year
• For anything other than CDS connectors:
  • A user downloading the app would have to manually reconfigure connections in Power Automate.
  • Any updates to Power Automate would not be patched to users.

From the Power Apps Documentation: (Updated 10/28/2019)

"Importing a solution containing a flow will not automatically create or associate required connections. The flow must be edited to fix the connections."

"If using managed solutions, this creates an active customization in the unmanaged layer. Therefore subsequent solution updates to the flow will not be reflected."

Is there a workaround for the 300+ other Power Automate connectors? Seems like a major potential headache for any developer supporting an application with Power Automate, to have to either not use Power Automate, or to have to manage  that all users have out of date solution components?

Please tell me I'm missing something here!

[efialttes]

Hi!

My experience: I have exported some flows and sent them to some of my colleagues. THey have imported them, no issue found.

Please note when importing a Power Automate Flow, you need to explicitly select your own connectors, but this is part of the import procedure, can be done through a menu. As an average I have 3-4 connectors per flow and takes short time to do it: for sure the more connectors you have in your flow the long it takes the process, but I haven't found yet anybody implementing a Power Automate Flow with more than ¿8? connectors, and I've seen flows with more than 50 action blocks.

But... if I were you I would implement a dummy solution, and see if current export/import process match your requirements

Hope this helps

[Jcook]

Hi @jordaniza 

You can deploy the Flow separately.

Couple of things to note:

- If the Flow has a Power App trigger. When deploying the Power App, your Flow will be packaged with it.

- If the Flow has any other trigger. You can deploy the Flow separately.

—Josh
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[jordaniza]

Thanks both, couple of further questions:

@efialttes 

When you sent flows to colleagues, are you managing these flows on their behalf as a managed solution? Or is this more exporting the functionality for them to manage?

@Jcook 

When deploying a flow separately, how are updates to the flow handled from the perspective of a managed solution?

[efialttes]

@jordaniza 

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When you sent flows to colleagues, are you managing these flows on their behalf as a managed solution? Or is this more exporting the functionality for them to manage?

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My coleagues import the flow, they add their credentials and run on they own. So different instances of the same flow run in paralel, each own with different owner's credentials. A manual alternate method of distribution to Templates

Hope this helps