Starting flows based on Trigger Conditions

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Posted on by sudosaurus

1,599 Super User 2024 Season 1

Hello,

I have 3 flows that must be started in a specific order.

Flow 1 is run automatically once a new Microsoft Forms response has been made.
At the end of this flow, I have an 'Update item' action that fills a plain text field named "WF2" with the value of 'No'.

Flow 2 has a trigger condition set to the following.

@not(equals(triggerBody()?['WF2'],'No'))

So if the value of 'No' had been entered at the end of Flow 1 then Flow 2 will start.
At the end of the flow I have an 'Update item' action that fills a plain text field named "WF3" with the value of 'No'.

Flow 3 has two trigger conditions set to the following:

@not(equals(triggerBody()?['StartWF'],'No'))

The first Trigger Condition is used to re-trigger the workflow is an Approval item later in the Flow hasnt been approved after 29 days (this is to get around the 30 timeout limit).

@not(equals(triggerBody()?['WF3'],'No'))

The second Trigger Condition is used to check whether the field "WF3" (applied at the end of Flow 2) has been filled with the value of 'No'.

The Problem I seem to be facing here is that Flow 3 appears to be triggering before or at the same time as Flow 2 and because specific things are not being applied in Flow 2 first, this is causing Flow 3 to not run correctly. Flow 3 shouldn't be running until Flow 2 has completed.

Any thoughts on how I can get around this?

I wouldn't be surprised if there's an issue in my Trigger Condition expression for WF3

Categories:

Building flows

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RobElliott 10,416 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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@sudosaurus it seems to me that you should be using child flows to trigger the second and 3rd flows. Have a look at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/create-child-flows

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sudosaurus 1,599 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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@RobElliott I've had a look at this and it doesnt seem to suit my requirements.

At the end of each flow I don't have a requirement to respond back to the first flow with any information.

Flow 1 should finish, then flow 2 should start and so on.

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RobElliott 10,416 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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@sudosaurus that's not possible; without using child flows you can't specify the order in which flows should run as, if they are standalone flow, there is no logical connection between them. There is no action Power Automate to trigger another flow unless you use child flows. You don't need to pass anything back to the parent for first child flow.

You could have the first flow that saves the item to a SharePoint list, then a second flow that has a "when an item is created" trigger. Then you'd need some sort of trigger for flow 3.

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sudosaurus 1,599 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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@RobElliott - for child flows, is it possible to call another child flow from the first child flow? or can they only be called from the parent?

In terms of my current setup,

Flow 1 trigger is 'When a new response in submitted'.
Flow 2 trigger is 'When an item is created'.
Flow 3 trigger is 'When an item or file is modified'.

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