Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working on SAP GUI automations using Power Automate Desktop in an enterprise environment.

I'm trying to make my automations more autonomous, but I've encountered several limitations and would like to know if anyone has faced similar issues.

1. Unable to trigger SAP flows from Power Automate Cloud

I successfully connected my machine to Power Automate Cloud, but whenever I try to run a desktop flow from the cloud, I get an error related to RDP / remote session requirements (screenshot attached).

Because of this, I'm currently unable to launch any flow from a cloud flow.

2. Child Session mode not working

I also tried using Child Session mode, but it can't even start executing

3. Picture-in-Picture works, but has limitations

Picture-in-Picture is currently the only mode that works for me.

However, many SAP interactions rely on physical keyboard actions such as:

Send Keys
Tab
Enter
Function keys

In PiP mode, these actions can be unreliable and sometimes depend on window focus, making SAP automation difficult to maintain.

Any advice or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Categories:

Power Automate Desktop

Your screenshot points right at the cause. The troubleshooter cleared the service and required services but flagged RDP configuration and policy problems, and that one thing explains both issue 1 and issue 2.
Issues 1 and 2 (cloud trigger and Child Session): When you trigger a desktop flow from the cloud, Power Automate creates an RDP session on the machine to run it, and Child Session works the same way. So if RDP is blocked by policy, neither can start. This is almost always an IT / group-policy fix:

Open that RDP section in the troubleshooter (arrow on the right) to see the exact problems, then take them to your admins.
Make sure the run-as account is in the Remote Desktop Users group and isn't blocked by a "Deny log on through Remote Desktop Services" policy.
One easy-to-miss gotcha: on Windows 10/11, unattended runs fail if there's any active or even locked user session on that machine. If someone's logged in, that alone breaks it.

Issue 3 (PiP Send Keys): The real fix here, and it removes the focus problem entirely, is to stop using Send Keys and switch to SAP GUI Scripting. Power Automate Desktop has dedicated SAP actions that drive SAP directly through its scripting API, so they don't depend on which window has focus, including Enter, Tab, and function keys (sent as VKeys straight to SAP). Have your SAP admin enable scripting (set sapgui/user_scripting to TRUE via RZ11, make it permanent via RZ10), enable it in the SAP GUI client options, and confirm your account has the S_SCR authorization. Then rebuild those keyboard steps with the SAP actions. It's far more reliable and is the recommended way to automate SAP in PAD.
So: fix the RDP policy with IT to unblock cloud and Child Session runs, and move your SAP interactions to SAP GUI Scripting to kill the focus issues. Hope that helps.