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Extreme variation in flow duration without loops

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Posted on by AnttiKai

Hey,

I'm being bothered by a curious issue that has been brought up in the forum several times with no answer (links below).

My flow usually takes about 1-30 seconds to run depending on a few if-clauses. But sometimes (no visible pattern) it may take 4-5 minutes even with the "shortest route". This is bothering as sometimes users are waiting for the (usually quite fast) flow to complete to move on with their work but end up reporting a bug as it is not completed within that half a minute or so.

Flow structure

All conditions have a similar sctucture and take 5-15 seconds each when triggered

Other people with a similar issue found from the forum with no clear answer:
https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Power-Automate/Long-duration-but-fast-performance-for-each-step/m-p/1945749
https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Using-Flows/Random-long-duration-spikes-slow-performance-warning/m-p/1800976
https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Using-Flows/Extremely-varying-duration-time-quot-update-a-row-quot/m-p/2016538
https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Power-Automate/Flow-duration/m-p/1425714
https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Flows/Flow-Duration-Massively-Increased/m-p/697040

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AnttiKai 64 on at

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Re: Extreme variation in flow duration without loops

Hi @grantjenkins we checked the process insights, quite nice and hadn't looked into it before. But well, there was no help for this case.
As I found out now, the flow steps don't take any longer time than in usual cases, but the total run time is much longer. E.g. flow steps take 13 seconds, flow run time is 4:51. Curious.
AnttiKai 64 on at

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Re: Extreme variation in flow duration without loops

Hi @VictorIvanidze

This is a normal run with step times

These are the steps from a run that took 04:51 to complete --> it looks like something else than the steps take this long time. What might it be?
grantjenkins 11,059 Super User 2025 Season 1 on at

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Re: Extreme variation in flow duration without loops

I'd suggest going into details view of your flow and clicking on Process insights (top menu) which can give you some analytics on bottlenecks, etc. You can also select particular flow runs (if you know the Id), etc.
VictorIvanidze 12,205 on at

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Re: Extreme variation in flow duration without loops

What action takes extra time if you open an item in the History?