Seemingly Random Steps Breaking in my Flow

[shammock]

I've been using Power Automate for a few months and I'm getting pretty confident with using it now.  However, I was editing a Flow I haven't touched in a few weeks today, and three of the email steps were suddenly broken.  I had just saved the flow with no issues a couple of minutes earlier, and nothing was broken then.  I didn't change anything related to the steps that broke.

They were greyed out with none of their fields showing and the connector logo was a generic connector logo instead of the outlook logo it had been before.  It showed an error message: "Request failed with status code 500."  I fixed these steps and saved the flow, and then another step broke in the same way.  This time it was a Dataverse Add a new row step.  I fixed that one, and nothing else broke.  Here's an image of the Dataverse step in its broken state: 

The broken Dataverse step

Has anyone else ever experienced this?  What causes something like this to happen?  I had other email and Dataverse steps in my flow that were unaffected.  There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what breaks and what is unaffected.  I'm just hoping this doesn't become a regular occurrence.

[Joseph_Fadero]

Hi @shammock ,

Good day I trust you are good, 

The fact that all others weren't affected but certain ones were seems a bit strange, Maybe you should ensure that all your Email and Outlook actions use the same connection, It could also be possible that those connections for those specific actions timed out, But if they are all using the same connectors, You would atleast be sure if it breaks in one place it would break everywhere.

Kindly feel free to like my response and mark as a solution if it fits your requirement

[shammock]

I've been doing more troubleshooting.  I went back to the flow, and more steps are broken now.  This is what the Flow checker says: 

I tried doing a test run of the flow, and the steps actually still work.  Here's one that appears to be broken but works in a run.  I still can't save the flow without recreating the whole step though.

 Here's another example of a broken step in the editing mode.  Both this one and the one above are List rows steps for Dataverse.

[shammock]

Yeah, I checked the connections.  Here they are: 

As you can see, there is only one instance of a connection for each connector.  I can't see what connections the broken steps are using, as their details seem to disappear when they break.

Side note: I just went back and checked the flow, and a step that was broken a couple of minutes ago is fine now without me changing anything.  It seems like every time I open the flow a few steps are broken, but they are different steps every time, and the flow still runs.  This is the most bizarre issue I have ever had with Power Automate.

[shammock · Accepted solution]

I believe I have figured out the issue.  There is not a problem with the flow.  There is a problem with the server or network.

If you are having the same problem as I described, do not edit your flow.  Click the back button in the upper left and retry editing your flow.  The issue is with the server, not your flow.

I began to suspect that this might be the issue because I started having the same problem in another flow and because of the 500 error code.  I also noticed that my flows and other pages in Power Automate were loading very slowly.  I believe what is happening is that there is some kind of problem with the server or network, and the browser client is not receiving the data it needs quickly enough. 

Since it does not receive the necessary data to display some flow steps, it assumes they are broken and displays them in error.  This would also explain why some steps fix themselves and how others are randomly broken every time I reload the flow.  The client may miss different parts of the data if you try again.  Sometimes it may even receive all of the data.  

All of this is consistent with what I have experienced, so I am pretty confident in saying that the problem is a server error or overload.  I have had success with retrying until the flow loads properly.