How long do connectors stay active?

[VBiermann]

Hi,
We had a case where an important flow could not run because the connection wasn't active anymore. We'd like to avoid that and give other flow builders in our company best practices regarding connectors.

Should we use a service account for just flows? and one for everything or one for each team?

And do the connections have to be refreshed(i.e. by logging into my SharePoint Account)? and if so, how often?

I couldn't find any clear information regarding that.  

Thanks in advance 🙂

[trice602 · Accepted solution]

Hi @VBiermann ,

There's a lot of information there and I probably won't cover every topic in the discussion but here's some tips and general information to help:

In Power Automate, connectors remain active as long as they are being used in flows and the credentials used for these connectors are valid.  A connection can become inactive if here is a change in licensing (such as a person leaving the company and is the owner), an inactive flow for 28 days, a PW reset, connector software updates that require a refresh, and more.  For the most part, I haven't seen a lot of challenges with connectors.

I do recommend you move your flows to a solution and run them under a service account for your important flows.  This will help prevent the issue you had recently.  I will typically make the service account the owner and I'm the co-owner so I can still develop/update/repair under my account.  I also recommend one connector for each type, such as, you can have one connection to Outlook or SharePoint for your service acct that all flows use.  This way, if there is maintenance or PW resets, you can update one connection and all your flows and apps that use the connection will also get the update.

Here's a general walkthrough and further explanation:  Manage connections in Power Automate (contains video) - Power Automate | Microsoft Learn

Managed solutions:  Solution concepts - Power Platform | Microsoft Learn

Let me know if I can answer anything more specific here.

[VBiermann]

Hi @trice602,

thank you for all this. I have a question about the service account. If I can confirm it I'll mark the answer as a solution.

The question is about the service account. Does someone have to login regularly into the service acct? Or does account inactivity not matter at all? 

Thank you again

[trice602]

Hi @VBiermann ,

Typically no but it depends on your organization policies (it's not specific to Power Automate).  So as an example, as I mentioned you can make the owner of the flow the service account and you and others co-owners as needed.  The account doesn't have to be logged into but you will need to change your PW to meet org policy limits, if any.