Power Automate flow not triggering when retention period ends

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Posted on by CU28021544-0

We have a flow that’s supposed to trigger when an item reaches the end of its retention period. We’ve published retention labels across our SharePoint sites, and the expected behavior is that once the retention period ends, the flow kicks in.

We now have items with retention labels where the retention period has definitely expired (confirmed in the compliance details), but the flow isn’t firing.

Some of these labels were auto-applied, while others were applied manually. Retention is configured to start either from the item’s creation date or from when the label was applied, depending on the case.

All items are properly labeled, and in the compliance details we can clearly see that the retention period has ended (and in some cases, passed quite a while ago).

Has anyone else run into this issue, or know what might be causing the flow not to trigger?

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David_MA 14,614 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Please share a screen shot of your flow, especially the configuration on how it triggers. Unless we can see your flow, there isn't much to help you with since we don't know what you're doing in the flow. If you just have questions about retention labels, you should post your question in the SharePoint forums at SharePoint | Microsoft Community Hub.

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JM-26080015-0 4 on at

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I have been researching this feature quite extensively and here are my findings:

- It takes 7 days or more after the retention period expires for the flow to trigger (this is actually in the documentation)

- Although the trigger emits SharePoint, OneDrive and Exchange as possible sources, only SharePoint triggers (this includes OneDrive for Business which is just SharePoint anyway) so no email support

- The trigger has been in preview for 3 years or more, so support is limited/non existent, and according to Microsoft themselves it shouldn't be used in production! Preview connector frequently asked questions for Azure Logic Apps, Power Automate, Power Apps, and Copilot Studio - Connectors | Microsoft Learn

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JM-26080015-0 4 on at

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I don't know how to reply to my own post, but another thing to check is: the user who created and published the retention label MUST be the user who creates the PowerAutomate flow.

So you should basically be doing it all as an admin service account - this isn't documented and definitely should be!

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