Grant access flow completes successfully but sometimes permissions are still missing

[drmk]

Hello,

I have a flow which grants access to a certain item in a list (items have unique permissions, everyone who uses this has at least contribute permissions for the site/list levels). Normally it works okay, but every now and then even if flow has completed successfully - some users don't have permissions (they are not shown if I check permissions from SharePoint and I have to add them manually). So far I haven't noticed any pattern for when this happens, for example it failed for 1 out of 10 users for a certain item and for certain person it worked for all other runs. This action block is in "Apply to each" loop and it can be that only one of the loop instances "fail". It is crucial that permissions are shared correctly and what confuses me most is that there's even no error message. I'm pretty sure that no one removed permissions manually from SP side (access to the site is very limited, users use app and don't even have link to SharePoint behind). This is automated flow (SP trigger: When item is created) that runs under my account and I have administrator rights for the site. Below are screenshots of the action and instance which did not work. Outputs in the failed instance show no differences from the actually successful ones.

Did someone else experience something like this? Does anyone have any hints on what can be done here? In the mean time I've added pause and same action afterwords and hoping for the best. Thanks in advance

[ChristianAbata]

hi @drmk unfortunately that is a Bug, you can open a MS support case 

[yhaugom]

This still happens to me today, more than a year later. Is this bug still present?!?

[yhaugom]

@drmk - did you find a solution to this?

[drmk · Accepted solution]

Hello,

In my case the issue was caused by flow timing. Basically there's one automated flow on main item that makes its permissions unique and another automated flow on related tasks that give assigned person permissions to that item. I found out that if main item and task are created at similar time, workflows might start in reverse order. So when task flow tries to assign permissions to the item - item might still be inheriting permissions (in which case it's just impossible to assign them additionally but there's no error about it).

To go around it, I added a 2 min delay (probably could be shorter depending on how long first workflow usually runs) in task workflow so that permissions are assigned definitely after first workflow is finished. Didn't hear any complains regarding permissions since. Hope it helps in your case too.

[yhaugom]

Thank you very much for your quick response!
I was wondering if it could be some sort of timing issue too. I do remove permission from the item, then grant permission to a user and then to a group (via HTTP-request) in the same flow. 
I cannot add 2 minutes delay, but I will try a shorter one maybe.

This is my actions for now. I will try to change it up and update this thread with my findings for others to see.

Thanks again.

[yhaugom]

My flow is pretty large and a bit complex, so I ended up splitting the grant access action into a separate flow for better management. The new flow seems to work, and it uses only the "Send an HTTP request to SharePoint" action, instead of the "Grant access to an item or a folder" action.

I think that was the trick for me, to avoid using the "Grant access..." action.

Also just found another thread with a similar solution, which could be seen here: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Power-Automate/Intermittent-error-on-quot-Grant-access-t... 

Here is the overview of my flow.