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Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Automate / Managing connection be...
Power Automate
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Managing connection between users of a solution

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Posted on by 41
Greetings everyone,
 
Would you like to share your expertise on the following issue and questions I struggle to find answers to?
I segmented my post in the hope it will help to structure the information. Feel free to skip to the Questions at the end.
 
Background information:
I work in a corporate using Microsoft products but we do not have any developers.
As a result, I spent few weeks learning and building Power Automate Flows (outside of a solution).
 
Flow details:
The flows pilot MS Lists on various sites, and send emails from different inboxes depending on conditional statements.
The flows are meant to be used by my team (5 users), and they all have access to the Lists and SP sites.
 
Issue:
Having recently learnt about "solutions" it felt appropriated to use the environment.
The import into a solution broke a lot of things.
I had errors about using connections and not connection references, therefore I created the new set of connection reference, and made changes on the relevant action flow actions.
When I tried testing, the flow worked from my machine, but did not for another user (tests done on the unmanaged solution - I feel it may be important and may be the issue).
From the machine of my colleagues, I check the connection references menu in the unmanaged solution and they all pointed to nowhere (connections are here but no MS account is designated for the Outlook connection for example), while they are still pointing to the right place on mine.
 
Questions:
Do I need to create all these connection references from all the MS accounts of my colleagues?
This sounds labour intensive and unpractical so I am sure I am missing something, which may be:

Do I need to import the solution as a managed solution for other people to use the same way as I do?
Would that pack all the working connections with the solution itself so anyone could use the solution?
 
Learning by trial and error is a long journey, your contribution to facilitate this apprenticeship will be GREATLY appreciated.
 
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  • Suggested answer
    Michael E. Gernaey Profile Picture
    53,452 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at
    Hi
     
    So unless you share all the connections to everyone, the flows have to be associated to Connections that everyone has access too.
     
    The best way to do this, is to have a Service Account. Think of it simply as an account, with licenses, that the people doing the "dev", have access to the password etc.
     
    Then to do work, you open an incognito browser and log that in as the Service Account. Now everyone is using the same connections throw the same permissions etc for that account.
     
    Also, never have versions of an unmanaged solutions in different environments. So hopefully you are not having people import an unmanaged solution for them all to change as you will never be able to merge those back together (without a robust ALM process).
     
    After you are done coding. you would export it as a Managed solution for the other environments. Doing it this way, they will be prompted to create the connections (as them) in the other environments and thats fine.
     
    But if its shared environments, then you want to import the managed Solution as the Service Account you coded with, OR another Service Account for that environment.
     
    Think of it this way. Managed is what you use to give to people. Unmanaged is for single Dev or Multi-dev same environment solutions.
     
    So if you started from scratch
    1) create solution
    2) create connections
    3) add connection references into the Solution
    4) build flows and apps
    5) use connection references not connections in Flow
    6) publish all customizations
    7) Export as managed solution
    8) person imports as themselves into their or shared environment
    9) on import they will be prompoted to recreate the connections the first time since they wont be there.
    10) next imports will GIVE them the option to change the connections or simply to leave them as they have before, unless the dev added more, then they have to add the new ones.
     
     
  • Suggested answer
    SaiRT14 Profile Picture
    1,990 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at
    Check out the following:
     
    • Connection References Setup:  Yes, each user who runs the flows needs to have the connection references set up for their own accounts. This ensures that the flow can authenticate with their individual permissions

    • Using Managed vs Unmanaged Solutions:  Managed Solutions do not allow modifications and are typically used for deploying finished apps.  To ensure your team can use the flow s, you should keep the solution unmanaged if your users will need to modify or update the flows.  A managed solution doesn't carry user-specific connection references. Each user still needs to authenticate with their credentials the first time they use the flow

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