How Much is Too Much?

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Posted on by SCastille

Hello,

I am very new to Power Automate (PA) and am loving it so far. Question: How many steps is too many?

I have a MS Group Form to collect report requests.

I have a flow with a condition based on the response to one of the form questions, will send 2 emails that each use a different string variable to populate the body. I also have an array variable to collect and attach to the emails documents uploaded to the form response. All of this works well.

I have a separate flow to do the following:

-Create Sharepoint list item

-Attach any documents from the form to SP list item.

I would like to know if I can combine these 2 flows into one. The reason I am asking is because what I would like to do (if possible) is collect the contents of a Sharepoint list calculated column and insert it into the subject line of the emails. (For reference, the calc col is a unique ID field.)

So in the end, the flow would have to do all of the following:

1. collect Forms response

2. Create SP list item

3. Attach attachments from form response to SP list item

4. Collect the value of the calculated ID column from the SP list item

5. Based on a condition, send 2 separate emails with attachments (body of email comes from string variables)

6. Insert the collected value of the calculated ID column from the SP list item into the reference line of the emails.

Here is the flow without the SP steps. This is the flow I would like to add to, but would it be too much?

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SanmeshG 1,956 Moderator on at

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Hi @SCastille ,

You can consider adding the create item and add an attachment steps(actions) to the same flow itself rather than having two separate flows.

In fact having two separate flows becomes difficult to manage and not a recommended approach since the no of actions are few here. So you are thinking in the right direction!.

As long as the flow's logic is clear and can be understood easily I think you can add the actions(a maximum of 500 actions are allowed per flow- but not recommended to have a better performance).

To know more on the limits checkout the below documentation from Microsoft.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/limits-and-config#flow-definition-limits

If this helps , do give this a thumbs up and mark this as a solution.

Thanks,

Sanmesh
David_MA 15,528 Super User 2026 Season 2 on at

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To add on to what @SanmeshG said, you want to consider how long it will take your flow to run. For the flow you show above, this shouldn't be an issue as it looks like it runs and is completed in minutes. However, if you have multiple approvals or include delays in your flow, you need to make sure it completes within 30 days or it will timeout. Note that approvals timeout after 28 days.

You need to consider cases where you have multiple approvals or there can be long delays between when another action needs to occur. For example, there is a date field in your flow, and you have the flow wait until that date to send an e-mail. If that date exceeds the timeout limit from when the flow started, you will want to create multiple flows to extend how long the entire process can take.

For example, I have a process that has a number of approvals. Depending on the value of the request, the approvals can take some time to complete. Currently this process includes these flows:

By breaking each approval into its own workflow, it essentially allows the approvals to take almost a year instead of 28 days if they were all in one flow. This also allows more flexibility since if something breaks in one flow, it doesn't break everything. It also makes it easier to add in flows to do specialty tasks that come up after you go live.

With all of the approvals in the above solution, if an approval times out, the workflow considers this as a rejection by the approver and does what the process owners have requested if the person had actually chosen reject for the outcome.
SCastille 44 on at

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Thank you so much for the thoughtful reply. Fortunately, there are no approvals related to the form at this time.