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Set manual duration limit to unattended flow

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Posted on by iveliart

Hello, I have unattended desktop flow called by cloud flow. The desktop flow is made in a way that it almost never fails but it could get stuck and running more than 1 hours which is not ok because I have only one bot and several queuing processes. Is there any way to define in the cloud flow that the desktop flow should run not more than 10 min and should fail

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Power Automate Desktop

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Pstork1 69,579 Most Valuable Professional on at

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In the settings for the action that calls the desktop flow you can set the timeout for the action. You can then use an action with the runafter settings configured to do something when it times out. This won't terminate the desktop flow, but will let you do something if the desktop flow runs for too long.

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VJR 7,635 on at

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Here is a post which shows the timeout setting in Cloud Flows.

How to adjust the 3 hour timeout on calling unatte... - Power Platform Community (microsoft.com)

Is there a specific action in your Desktop Flow where it gets stuck each time?

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momlo 1,527 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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Hi @iveliart
While the timeout approach given by @VJR and @Pstork1 will work - this will literally terminate/kill your desktop flow.
If this is not an issue for you - then it is not an issue 🙂
But my approach would be to identify the part of the flow that gets stuck and why and use actions timeouts to manage the termination process accordingly (gracefully exit the apps, log the part/action that got stuck so i could build the flow in a way it handles those situations.)

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VJR 7,635 on at

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@momlo I just pointed it out where the timeout settings are using an already existing post.

If you can see the last line of my post I am also more keen on where the flow is stuck and what can be done there :). So yes @iveliart please share details about the action causing the flow to get stuck.

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iveliart 35 on at

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Thank you all! I'm pretty aware that the best decision will be if the desktop flow fails with timeout on some of its steps but unfortunately it works with custom app and most of the steps are 'send keys'. So no matter what happens it will always send keys and never fails. Unfortunately its impossible to make this app working with UI elements, processes otherwise failing process will not be an issue.

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momlo 1,527 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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Sure thing! Did not mean anything wrong, just wanted to make sure OP understands that handling that on the PA action level has drawbacks in a form of lack of control over termination process.

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