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How to get the rest of my flow to go on running after calling a child flow inside a loop?

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Posted on by Lexicon_320

If I'm not wrong, power automate flows will sit at the Run a Child Flow action until the child flow has finished running. I can't afford that time delay though, I'd like my child flows to run concurrently.

My Run a Child Flow actions are inside Conditions which are inside an Apply to each loop. I can't use parallel branching to let the rest of my flow go on running while the child flow runs.

My flow looks like this. What I'm trying to do is not a point of discussion, I'm just showing how my 3 Run a Child Flow actions are laid out and why parallel branching won't help much.

I have Run a Child Flow - User License pulled out to the right side in a parallel branch, so that one has a chance to run concurrently with Run a Child Flow - User License 2. But the Condition action that contains them is still going to pause there until both child runs are done. And because I'm using variables, I have to set my Apply to Each loop concurrency to 1, so the whole flow it going to take ages.

Is there a way to force the next action after the Run a Child Flow to just keep going while the child runs in the background? I do not care about the child flow's returned results.

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Building flows

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rzaneti 4,241 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi,

If you are not expecting any outputs from the Child flow, a possible alternative to use a When a HTTP request is received trigger in your child flow. If you don't add a Response action at the end of this child flow, it won't stop your parent flow run. The downside of this approach is that you won't have a child flow anymore: any other flows from out of your solution will be able to initialize it via HTTP request.

Example below:

Child flow (simply takes 1min to be executed):

Parent flow (calls the child flow 10 times):

Parent flow run (only 5s to initialize child 10 times):

Child flow run history (10 flows running at the same time):

Let me know if it works for you or if you need any additional help!

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Lexicon_320 7 on at

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@rzaneti THANK YOU! This is perfect! :D

For anyone else reading this for the same issue, make sure the HTTP action in the parent flow is set to Method: POST.

If your child flow needs trigger inputs, the child flow's When a HTTP request is received trigger should look like this:

and your HTTP action in the parent flow should look like this:

Not having the Respond to an app or flow action in the child flow is important for the parent flow to keep on running, otherwise you'll still encounter the wait.

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