Run Other Desktop Flow not working？

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Posted on by En-Huei_Wu

Using Power Automate Desktop on single machine:

I have, say, 3 desktop flow A, B, and C, each with input parameters;

my process will start from flow A, then it will call flow B using the "Run Desktop Flow",

and inside flow B it will further call flow C.

My problem is that flow A is calling flow B normally, but inside flow B it will "possibly" fail to call flow C.

After searching for a while I can't find a clear explanation and solution, so making this post here~

* I suspect it may be related to the "dependency flow limit", but I can't find a formal calculation method of that.

* by looking at the error message from flow C during runtime test, it turns out that some parameter not passed correctly (blanked in flow C, but absolutely having certain value in flow B)

* checking that the "Run Desktop Flow" block details, weirdly the setting of the input and output variables of wanna-run desktop flow is not displayed, I do have set them up before, that time they are displaying normally, but now they are not so I can't check them out again...

(missing parameters)

(error due to blanked input variable which should be passed to other desktop flow)

Sincerely

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Power Automate Desktop

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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Someone else in the forums have already reported that the Run desktop flow action has lost the input variable fields with the latest update (2.38). Seems like a bug and should be reported to MS Support. I suggest you do that.

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robroi2000 11 on at

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It still does not work with version 2.39.

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En-Huei_Wu 30 on at

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I just tried something brutal to walk around it:
* The first observation is that some Run desktop flow actions set previously with the old version are still working, so I infer that the problem is not due to the runner but because that we couldn't correctly set the actions with new versions anymore.
* It looks like the newer version didn't solve that, so I started to try copying out the action to RAW TEXT Editors (like built-in Notepad or other apps), and then after interpreting the meaning and format of the content, I wrote it in the text editor and copied them back to the PA editor, the format for Run desktop flow action would be something like:

@@flowname: '{your flow name}'
External.RunFlow FlowId: '{your flow id}' @variable name1: {your variable name to pass} @variable name2: {your variable name to pass}...

* finally I test them in several ways to ensure that the action has been set correctly. That's a somewhat annoying(?) and ugly workaround but if Run desktop flow actions are that important and urgent (previously I just copied the contents of intended-to-call flows into the caller-flow, that was a lot of space compromise...), then doing so looks like dealing with the problem now.

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robroi2000 11 on at

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Thank you.
It works like a charm.
I defined the variable as number, but I always get a text value in the called flow.
Do you know how to define an input parameter as number?

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robroi2000 11 on at

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Sorry, I had a bug in my flow.
Using numeric input parameter is working.

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En-Huei_Wu 30 on at

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Glad that you found the bug, I'm not sure how you set them but in principle the type of variable you pass from the caller must coincide with the setting in the called flow.
(There's no type "DateTime" in the input parameter setting though, which I hope it does have it...)

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Beren 12 on at

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I haven't been able to get my action pasted back into the PA designer, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. My flow has a text variable OverrideDate and the flow I want to run has an input variable OverrideDownloadDate. Anyone willing to share a sample of how you're formatting your @variable section?

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Beren 12 on at

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Thanks in advance and Happy Holidays!

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En-Huei_Wu 30 on at

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it would be something like:

@@flowname: '{your flow name}'
External.RunFlow FlowId: '{your flow id}' @OverrideDownloadDate: OverrideDate

also note that the type of OverrideDownloadDate of called flow should be set to text as well

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Beren 12 on at

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Thanks! That let me paste the action back into PAD, but when I run the flow, I get a 'Failed to run flow' error. The details of the error are referring to one of the other input variables, but all the other input variables have default values. Any idea how to accept the defaults on other variables?

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