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Avoid deactivation of unused flows

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Posted on by MarHar

Hi,
in our company there are some teams with regulary changing members.
To keep the overview and for documentation for the boss, I have created two flows for each team:
1. new member joined the team
2. member has left the team

These flows then post a short message for info in a private channel that only the boss and I (site admin) can see.

There are 22 teams in total - so 44 almost identical flows for that.
A bit inelegant - but works great.

But if a flow has not been executed / triggered for 90 days because no new member has joined or left the corresponding team, I get the mail that the flow will be deactivated in 30 days.

You could set the expiration limits up, but our central company IT does not want to do that for me.

I am now looking for a solution how to regularly trigger all flows once without sending a message to the privat channel.

One idea would be to add a dummy user to all teams once a month and remove it a little later.
However, I would like to avoid dummy users.

I was hoping if I cyclically have all flows deactivated and reactivated once a month by another Flow, that the 90-day-timer would start counting again - unfortunately that is not the case.

Unfortunately it is not possible to build a second trigger into each flow, which only triggers the flow and lets it run "empty

Does anyone have a clever idea how I can elegantly work around this problem?

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yashag2255 24,769 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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Hi @MarHar

You can try setting up a flow:
1. Runs on a schedule every 30 days
2. Use the power automate management connector and search for the Turn Off flow action. Provide the environment name and the select the flow from the dropdown.
3. Add a delay of 2 minutes
4. Using the power automate management connector, now search for the Turn On Flow action. Provide the environment name and select the flow as in step 2 from the dropdown.

The above flow will turn off the flow and turn it on every 30 days and so you will not have a problem with the flow turning off in 90 days if it was not run.

Hope this Helps!

If this reply has answered your question or solved your issue, please mark this question as answered. Answered questions helps users in the future who may have the same issue or question quickly find a resolution via search. If you liked my response, please consider giving it a thumbs up. THANKS!

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MarHar 15 on at

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Hi @yashag2255

That is exactly what I meant by this:
I was hoping if I cyclically have all flows deactivated and reactivated once a month by another Flow, that the 90-day-timer would start counting again - unfortunately that is not the case.

the only difference is that there is no 2minutes timer between off and on in my script.
But by the time the last flow is finished, about 40s have passed before the flow starts activating one flow after the next again.
Unfortunately, this does not work - the countdown of the last execution continues 😞

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MarHar 15 on at

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I tried the whole thing again last night and waited 15 minutes between deactivating and activating the flows.
Today the next mail came that a flow has not been executed for 90 days.
(Currently the 90 days are running out for many flows).

So, unfortunately, deactivating and reactivating the flows does definitely not reset the 90-day timer. Too bad.
Any other ideas?

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MarHar 15 on at

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Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to prevent the deactivation -> so I have now solved it that way that I simply reactivate the flows automatically as soon as they have been deactivated and report this to me by mail:

I have the annoying "will be deactivated in 30 days" and "has been deactivated" emails filtered into their own folder via Outlook rule, so I don't notice about them.
Likewise the control-mails that the floy "xyz" has been reactivated (generated by the flow itself).

I intentionally trigger this reactivation-flow whenever an email from "PowerAutomateNoReply@microsoft.com" arrives (not filtered by subject or anything else). This guarantees that the flow will start once without doing anything even when the warning "will be deactivated in 30 days" arrives.
This avoids that the reactivation flow itself is inactive for too long.

It's a pity that the solution has to be so cumbersome - MS probably still has room for improvement here.

Edit:
Automatically deactivated flows get the status "Suspended" (not "Stopped") -> therefore here the correct array-filter-expression:
@And(or(equals(item()?['properties/state'], 'Stopped'), equals(item()?['properties/state'], 'Suspended')), contains(item()?['properties/displayName'], 'D-'), contains(item()?['properties/displayName'], 'Mitglied'))

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