Licensing - Premium automated Flow with service principal owner?

[asfesrsgadgrehg]

Hi everyone,

I have a very simple question. As documented by Microsoft, automated flows with premium connectors only need a "per user" licence on the owner of the flow:

Automated and scheduled flows always run in the context of the flow owner regardless of who starts the flow or what accounts are used for connections inside of the flow. 
If an automated or scheduled flow uses a premium connector, only the owner needs to have a premium license.

Now the question is, if my flow is deployed using ALM (Using Azure DevOps pipelines and Power Platform Build Tools) the owner of the flow becomes the service principal that was used by the pipeline to deploy the solution, which means there is no physical user on which to assign a license, how are we supposed to licence this flow?

We asked Microsoft and they essentially told us we need to use a "Per Flow" license in this particular case, but to be honest I have a hard time trusting this answer as it makes no sens in terms of cost. Imagine a solution with 5 premium automated flows in it, that solution would cost 19.20$/month when deployed by a regular user, which is roughly 230$/year. That same solution would cost 640$/month when deployed by a service principal (ALM), which is roughly 7680$/year, and this is for one environment. If your ALM strategy includes a DEV and STG environment, you need to add twice that amout which brings us to 23 040$/year, how is that making sens? To recap:

Solution deployed by	Flow(s)	Per user license(s)	Per flow license(s)	Total
User	5	1	0	19.20$/mois or 230$/year
Service Principal	5	0	5xDEV 5xSTG 5xPRD	1920$/month or 23040$/month

So we are talking 22000$+/year difference for the same solution, simply because its deployment is automated. Am I missing something here or am I correct?

Thanks!

[sandeepstw · Accepted solution]

Hi There,

Flows that are automated or scheduled and released through Azure DevOps by a service principal do need a "Per Flow" licence if they use premium connectors, which can make the cost go up by a lot.

Because a service provider is not a person, a "Per User" licence cannot be given to it.

Please give kudos and mark as solution if it helps.  

Thanks, 

Sandeep Mishra 

[asfesrsgadgrehg]

About 100 times more expensive to be precise in my particular scenario, I wish Microsoft could address this because right now it defeats the purpose of using ALM at all, I mean I understand businesses can afford licensing but no one wants to pay 100 times more for fun...

[sandeepstw]

Agree, there should be some suitable conditions. 

[carl1to]

But it is not enforced to add a 'per flow license' to these service-principal deployed flows right?

Will this be enforced in the future?

Are there any limits in respect to API consumptions for these flows since no license is attached?

I'm asking because we have the exact same scenario that we typically use DevOps ALM for the deployment of solutions.

[asfesrsgadgrehg]

I also found multiple usecases where licences were not enforced, from what I understand this is because Power Platform is under a "transition period" (has been for years...) but after the transition period everything should be enforced :

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/power-automate-licensing/types#transition-per...

However it is unclear what is being enforced and what not during that period.

[asfesrsgadgrehg]

@carl1to Looks like Microsoft just updated their documentation with an exact timeline for enforcements, something I had been waiting forever:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/power-automate-licensing/faqs#enforcement

This precise line answers this thread :

Enforcement Type	Admin notifications	Maker notification (+30 days)	Grace period	Enforcement - Flow turn off
Premium Sevice principal flows without a per flow/ Process licenses	March 15, 2024	April 15, 2024	14 days	Aug 15, 2024

This confirms that premium service principal flows must have a per flow license and also explains why it didn't seem like anything was enforced!