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Power Automate Work Queues for Complex Processes

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Posted on by cnmacfadyen

Hi there,

I am exploring the features of Work Queues in Power Automate. I am trying to figure out if there is a way to use work queues to orchestrate a complex process that needs to use multiple desktop flows. The structure would be something like the following:

1. 'Scheduled cloud flow 1' triggers 'Desktop flow - Add Items to Queue' to add items to the Work Queue, setting them as 'Ready for Process 1'

2. 'Scheduled cloud flow 2' triggers 'Desktop flow - Process 1' which carries out Process 1 (picks up all items that are 'Ready for Process 1', does the relevant case processing then sets the successful items as 'Ready for Process 2')

3. 'Scheduled cloud flow 3' triggers 'Desktop flow - Process 2' (picks up all items that are 'Ready for Process 2', does the relevant case processing then sets the successful items as 'Processing Complete')

As far as I can see, the 'Dequeue' action in cloud flows as well as the 'Process Work Queue Items' action in desktop flows do not have any options for dequeuing items based on a particular criteria or status. For example, at step 3 above, we would only want to process items which have the 'Ready for Process 2' status.

Is there any way to achieve this desired functionality? Or would it involve complex manipulation of cloud flows?

I would also like to know if 'Process Work Queue Items' on desktop or 'Dequeue' on cloud could run simultaneously on several concurrent runs of a flow, and is there any risk of the same work queue item being picked up by concurrent runs of a desktop or cloud flow? It would be vital that there is no risk of the same queue item being processed twice.

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Building flows

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Michael E. Gernaey 53,433 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi

While you can in fact run multiple dequeues at once, you have to make sure your concurrency is configured properly and no it shouldn't let 2 things grab the same thing.

However, it would be interesting to see how to give your items a unique id to pull from. Relatively speaking you aren't going to pull them out in a batch or easily discernable way based on what you are asking.

Simply because its a Queue, and is looking for FIFO type of processing.

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cnmacfadyen 12 on at

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Thanks a lot for your answer, @FLMike!

Do you have any more info on how to configure the concurrency? I also read that five parallel dequeue options are currently supported - what would be the risk if we were to exceed 5?

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SaiRT14 1,990 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Here is the suggested steps:

Cloud Flow 1: Add items to the queue with status "Ready for Process 1".

Cloud Flow 2: Retrieve all work queue items, filter for status "Ready for Process 1", and send the list to Desktop Flow - Process 1.

Desktop Flow - Process 1: Process the items and set their status to "Ready for Process 2".

Cloud Flow 3: Retrieve all work queue items, filter for status "Ready for Process 2", and send the list to Desktop Flow - Process 2.

Desktop Flow - Process 2: Process the items and set their status to "Processing Complete".

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