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Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Automate / Executing child flow b...
Power Automate
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Executing child flow based on the content of a variable

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Posted on by 7
Hi there,
 
I am struggling with what I assumed would be a fairly easy process to automate although it may well be down to my lack of knowledge.    Within a cloud flow, I need to run a child flow based on a variable name.   The "Run Child Flow" action only provides a drop-down listing existing flows / custom value as a selection but I am looking for this to be driven from the content of a variable derived in the parent.
 
For example:
 
Parent flow is called with a payload: {"childflow": "xxxxx"} 
 
Parent flow performs base logic as required then has a block to execute the child flow, based on the payload property "childflow".     I simply want to have a single block to execute any childflow without the need to have multiple if/then or switch blocks to cater for however many child flows there may be.
 
I can see how the flows are referenced but GUID but cannot seem to get the flow to interpret a variable, as it passes the text defining the variable instead of parsing it and passing it through.
 
Any ideas please?
 
Cheers and thanks.
 
Andrew
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  • Verified answer
    SaiRT14 Profile Picture
    1,992 Super User 2025 Season 1 on at
    pls try the following:
     
    Enable HTTP Access in Child Flows: Open each child flow you want to call dynamically. Add a "When an HTTP request is received" trigger as the first action in the flow. This will expose an HTTP endpoint for the flow. Define the expected payload in the trigger schema. Example: {
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
            "key1": {
                "type": "string"
            },
            "key2": {
                "type": "string"
            }
        }
    }
    Save the flow, and copy the generated HTTP POST URL.
     
    Create a Dataverse table, SharePoint list, or Excel file to map child flow names to their  respective HTTP endpoints. Example:
    Child Flow Name Endpoint URL
    ChildFlow1 https://prod-00.westeurope.logic...
    ChildFlow2 https://prod-01.westeurope.logic...

    Populate this table with the names and URLs of all your child flows.

    In the parent flow, after retrieving the child flow name (e.g., xxxxx) from the payload, use a Get a Row (Dataverse) or Lookup action to fetch the corresponding endpoint URL from the config table. Use the HTTP action to call the child flow dynamically: Set Method to POST. Use the retrieved URL as the endpoint. Pass the necessary data as the body (in JSON format). Example  {    "key1": "value1",  "key2": "value2"}
     
     
     
     
     

     

  • Suggested answer
    bscarlavai33 Profile Picture
    786 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at
    Unfortunately this is not possible as Power Automate tries to validate the Child flow on save of the parent flow.
     
    You would instead need to use an HTTP Trigger for your Child flows which will assign a unique URL to each child flow. Your parent flow can then make an HTTP Request with a dynamic url to trigger the right child flow.

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