Will Power Automate enforcement licensing kill your flows?

In a recent message to affected customers in the Microsoft Messaging Center, Microsoft are clarifying that some Power Automate Flows may be deactivated and in worst case also removed. Parts of this will happen during the summer of 2023, why I decided to write a first short blog article on the subject with a more in-depth version later, which may also be a recorded presentation.

Power Automate, like all online services, needs to be licensed. Power Automate can, of course, be purchased just by itself, but it is also included as the main automation tool for Power Apps and Dynamics 365. Until now, the licensing has been rather lax with focus more on the honored based licensing, ie you should license correctly but there is no technical enforcement.

This is what is changing. There are three different aspects to this, depending on if you;

I will walk through these one by one.

This is the scenario that is the default scenario if the user owning the Flow does not have any Dynamics 365 licenses or Power Apps licenses. This can also occur if a person making a flow has had a full or trial license which no longer is active. From 18:th of July makers will start getting notifications (presumably by email) and by August 2:nd, they will be shut off.

Notice that as service principals or application users cannot be assigned any licenses, any Flows being owned by these will need to be either assigned a per-Flow license or put into the context of an app (see below). This is also the recommended approach for Flow ownership when deployed using pipelines, although they can be user-owned in this scenario.

As this is just in the period of the Swedish summer holiday, I would recommend handling it before going on holiday.

There are two licenses that can be used for direct licensing of Power Automate:

Any Flows that have been turned off for not being licensed, can quickly be activated again if the owner of the Flow is assigned a Power Automate per User license or the Flow itself is assigned a Power Automate per Flow license.

If the user that owns the Flow has a Power App per User or Power Apps per App license, the Flow is licensed as part of the Power Apps license. This is only true if it falls under specific conditions which are specified in the Power Apps licensing guide and the Flow is within the context of the app. What this means I will describe below. In this case, any Flows being used that are not in-context will be deactivated on October 16. Note that this is later than if the user has no license at all.

Just as the Flows are included in the Power Apps licenses, they are also included in the Dynamics 365 license for supporting the Dynamics 365 Apps. It is not entirely clear if this only is valid for the first party apps or any apps that are built and used for a user with Dynamics 365 license. The timeframe for deactivation of Flows are the same as for Power Apps.

What is an app in-context Flow? This means that the Flow is logically a part of the app. It needs to use some of the triggers, actions or connections that the App uses. If the Flow is triggered directly from the App, it will automatically be associated to the app. However, if the Flow for instance is periodic or triggered automatically then it will need to be associated with the App manually. Currently this can only be done with a Power Shell script, and soon also using the UI in the maker portal, according to the message referenced above.

To find out if there are any Flows that are in risk, there is a Power Shell script that you can run on your environment (or ask us or your partner to do it).

Review your environments and Flows to see if there are any Flows, especially any critical that need to be fixed.

Any customers with an ongoing support or continuous services agreement with us at CRMK will be contacted with a recommended action list.

If you do not have an ongoing support or continuous services agreement, then feel free to contact us directly.

Gustaf Westerlund, MVP
Founder of CRMK