Premium licenses necessary?

[kkowal]

Hello community,

I have a question about licensing and about avoiding the usage of premium licenses?

I know this is maybe not a question that microsoft could like, but I have a szenario where I have a

Flow which technically needs a premium connector. So I would need to buy additional licenses for

300 users, which would cost me a lot for a workflow that is not even triggered often.

All my other flows are not using any premium features and are licensed over a E3 license.

Is there any technical and official way to avoid buying 300 premium licenses in this szenario?

Greetz and thank you in advance!

[powercorner · Accepted solution]

Hello kkowal,

well it really depends on your usecase. Do you need to implement this automation as a Power Automate Flow? Can it maybe be created in an Azure Logic App?

Maybe buying the licenses could give the users more space to create their own better business cases, cause they are not limited to standard connectors!?

I think this investment could have a bigger impact on your userbase and maybe ist worth to invest the money?

But in case you do not see the improvement, you can do some things I have seen in different use cases.

I dont know your exact usecase, but…

1. If you are using SharePoint or Dataverse as your database you could directly create a logicapp that triggers on changes, deletions or new items.
2. I have also seen power automate flows which are connected to logic apps via a dataverse or a sharepoint list. So you could trigger your flow as you would like and in the moment you need to use a premium connector, you just store an item to sharepoint list that triggers the logic app. The logic app then makes your „premium call“ and sends the information back the sharepoint list, where another power automate flow is waiting to get triggered. Its dirrty but it works.

I think you can create theses kind of scenarios to avoid high costs on the licenses, but think about the ALM and about how you want to maintain your flows. Such „dirrty“ flows/processes/structures make your life really hard and the administration costs are higher, then using premium connectors in Power Automate flows. So I am usually telling my customers that this possibility exists, but it is not recommended!!!

Maybe you can go a bit more into detail with your usecase?

With regards

Kevin

[VictorIvanidze]

Hi @kkowal,

I'd like to add a word to @powercorner answer. 

If your flow handles emails,  you can build it  the way that will require only one premium license.