Power Automate - Child Flows
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Power Automate
Aug 28, 2023 6:00 PM

Power Automate - Child Flows

by HubSite 365 about David Wyatt [MVP]

Senior Staff Engineer - Intelligent Automation Developer

Citizen DeveloperPower AutomateLearning Selection

One of Power Automates great strengths is its abilities to create small, simple yet highly beneficial automations. Other RPA tools often require a high return t

Power Automate is notable for its ability to create small yet highly beneficial automations. Due to its low development investment, Power Automate can easily accommodate low return opportunities. However, in cases where the tasks aren't as simple, there may be some limits, such as debugging challenges and lack of start points.

To combat this, Child Flows are used. They address these concerns and additionally emphasize speed and reusability in the process. Child Flows are essentially manual button trigger flows that are called from another flow, provided they have a respond action.

It's important that the connections are set to the flow owner and you can't delegate connections and select 'Provided by run-only user'. These flows should be situated in Dataverse to ensure they are solution aware.

  • No Break Points
  • No Start from points
  • Browser rendering issues
  • Debugging challenges
  • Feature updates

The button inputs are transferred by the flow whilst the respond inputs are visible in the flow as an output. This output data can be returned using 'Respond to Power App or Flow' or 'Response' actions where the prior is recommended for its ease of use, while the latter could be more suitable for arrays.

Deep Dive into Power Automate's Child Flows

Power Automate's Child Flows essentially enable more complex and larger projects to become manageable by breaking them down into smaller, reusable parts. Through this, not only is debugging made simpler but there's also a significant improvement in processing time, thereby increasing efficiency.

More specifics include it necessitating a respond action to be categorized as a Child Flow, thus making it either a Power App or Virtual Agent service. Furthermore, setting up the connections to the flow owner ensures responsibility, enhancing security.

The critical component in using Child Flows effectively lies in ensuring that they are correctly placed in Dataverse, as it makes them solution aware. This provides additional power to the user, offering them more control over their procedures.

 

Read the full article Power Automate - Child Flows

Learn about Power Automate - Child Flows

Power Automate is a great tool for creating small, simple yet highly beneficial automations, with a low development investment. However, there are certain limitations, such as no break points, no start from points, browser rendering issues, debugging challenges, and feature updates. To overcome these limitations, Child Flows can be used. These are manual button trigger flows that are called from another flow, with the flow owner's connections set. It must be in Dataverse (solution aware), and the button inputs are passed by the flow, and the respond inputs are visible as an output. The Respond action is easier to use, but the Response action may be better for arrays. Child Flows offer the added benefits of speed and reusability across the process or multiple processes.

 

More links on about Power Automate - Child Flows

Create child flows - Power Automate
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Create a new solutionGive your solution a name and select a publisherClick on your solutionAdd a flow to your solutionCreate the child flowAdd an inputSelect type number for your inputAdd a ...Create a new solutionGive your solution a name and select a publisherClick on your solutionAdd a flow to your solutionCreate the child flowAdd an inputSelect type number for your inputAdd a ...Create a new solutionGive your solution a name and select a publisherClick on your solutionAdd a flow to your solutionCreate the child flowAdd an inputSelect type number for your inputAdd a ...
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Jan 1, 2023 — The solution to this tedious problem is to create one flow with the steps needed to complete that sub-process, then just simply use one action ...
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Jul 14, 2022 — Child flows are a great way to re-use logic and break a process down into manageable parts. ... Over 20 year experience at being passionate about ...

Keywords

power automate, child flows, break points, start from points, browser rendering, debugging challenges, feature updates, respond action, return data actions