The Love-Hate Relationship with Power Automate Flow: A Developer’s Tale.
In recent years, I’ve had the pleasure (and occasional misfortune) of working extensively with Power Automate Flow. If you’re a developer who’s ventured into the world of Microsoft’s automation platform, you probably know exactly what I mean.
Why do I say both pleasure and misfortune?
Well, on paper, Power Automate looks like the Swiss Army knife of automation—there’s a connector for just about everything you can imagine. Need to send an email? There’s a connector. Want to update a SharePoint list? Connector. Integrate with Twitter, Salesforce, or even your toaster (okay, maybe not the toaster yet)? Connector. It’s automation heaven… until it isn’t.
Flow Failures I
Imagine this: you’ve spent hours crafting a beautiful, elegant flow. You come back the next day, ready to bask in the glory of your automation genius, and BAM! Your flow has failed. The error message?
If you’re lucky, you get something like “Bad Gateway” (more on that below) or “Internal Server Error.” If you’re unlucky, you get… nothing. Just a sad little red X and the vague feeling that your flow is mocking you.
I’ve had flows vanish, all the actions just disappeared. Luckily, I exited and reloaded the flow and it was still intact.
I’ve had all the connectors between my actions disappear. Once again, reloading the flow was the solution.
It’s like your flow (or the designer) decided to take a coffee break right in the middle of execution and forgot to come back.
Flow Failure II – The “Bad Gateway” Mystery
Over the years, I’ve developed flows for several clients, and one thing remains constant: the dreaded “Bad Gateway” error. It’s the Power Automate equivalent of “It’s not you, it’s me,” except it’s definitely the flow’s fault.
The flow works 95% of the time, then randomly fails like a toddler refusing bedtime. You scour forums, inquire with the Dev Team, you even try turning it off and on again (because why not?), but the cause remains elusive.
It’s the automation version of Schrödinger’s cat—until you check, you don’t know if it’s alive or dead, and even then, you’re not sure.
Price – I See Expenses In Your Future
Power Automate/Flow/Azure Costs starts off looking like a bargain. The pricing is reasonable, the free tier is generous, and you think, “Hey, I’m gonna automate all the things!”. However, costs can quickly grow as you need more processing power (DTU), need to use those ‘Premium’ connectors, …
It’s like ordering a small coffee and ending up with a triple-shot, extra-whip, caramel macchiato with a side of “surprise, that’ll be $50.”
So be careful or your wallet may be in for a real surprise!
Then again, if these tools enable you to automate processes and save you time and frustrations that money is well spent!
Help/Support
If you’re used to the rich, detailed support ecosystems of platforms like Access, Excel or PHP, Power Automate’s help system might feel like wandering a desert with a broken GPS.
Oh, Microsoft has a nice forum, but getting knowledgeable people that can actually answer my questions has been an epic struggle.
Inline Documentation
After all these years, it still baffles me that there’s no inline documentation inside the Flow designer.
Some actions have a Question button in the action header that simply pushes the action description into the Help side menu and offer an “Ask a chatbot” link (read more about that below), but no option to actually go to the documentation/support page for that action which is what developers need!
For instance, you want help documentation for the “When a HTTP request is received” action? Good luck! You’ll end up Googling for 20 minutes!
Moreover, All the help in the top navigation is generic leading to general webpages and good luck finding anything from there.
I’ve found better help most often comes from private bloggers’ websites as Microsoft’s site for Flow is a nightmare to navigate and locate things on.
So the most basic thing, documentation, remains elusive via the designer which is where developers actually need it!!!
Chatbot – The “Help” That Isn’t
In recent months, Microsoft integrated a chatbot into Flow and it is less than useless!
I like to think of it as the AI equivalent of a Magic 8-Ball: “Ask again later,” “Cannot predict now,” and “Reply hazy, try again.” Just turning in circles and getting nowhere fast.
Every single question I have attempted to get help with has resulted in me simply wasting my time with it. Why Microsoft put that hunk of junk in place is mind blowing!
If you want to waste time and increase your blood pressure, give the Flow Chatbot a try.
To put it simply, Power Automate – Flow offers the worst help/support I have ever used.
Their AI is VERY stupid, but I have found to get the help page for actions using the following prompt format seems to work (obviously replace the quoted action name as required):
That said, I have had cases where the link provided points to 404 pages …
For instance, I asked: “What is the official support documentation URL for the “Initialize variable” action” and the chatbot replied: “You can find the official support documentation for the “Initialize variable” action on the Microsoft Learn website. Here is the URL: Initialize variable Documentation.”, but sadly for me, that page returns:
404 – Page not found
We couldn’t find this page.
So just because you get an answer with a URL doesn’t actually mean it is correct. As I said, MS’ chatbot is just pure crap and obviously not internally tested!
What’s funny though is I pumped the exact same question into a 3rd party AI and got a proper URL! Once again, no words! So Microsoft can’t find it’s own webpages, but 3rd parties can.
Personally, I recommend turning towards a normal search engine (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, …) and/or a 3rd party AI as you are more likely to actually get a helpful answer there.
The Small Expression Builder
One other things making working in Flow more challenging than it need to be is the fixed width of the Expression builder. Not only is it a fixed width, but even when you exceed the size of the input it never offers scrollbars! Your only means is to use the arrow keys on your keyboard.
Why doesn’t that pane resize to take up all the available space?
Why is the pane not resizable?
Why is there no scrollbar?
It’s just one more element that makes for an overall less than ideal development process.
Final Thoughts: Love It, Hate It, Live With It
Power Automate Flow is a powerful tool, when it works. It can automate tedious tasks, streamline workflows, and save you countless hours. But it also comes with quirks, mysteries, and multiple frustrations that can make you question your life choices.
If you’re diving into Power Automate, here are some tips from a seasoned (and slightly battle-weary) developer:
- Watch your budget
Keep a close eye on your usage and premium connector costs - Build Your Own Support/Documentation
Since inline help is pretty much useless, maintain your own notes, cheat sheets, links to useful support/documentation sites - Take Breaks
Working with Flow can be challenging (to be polite) at times, so step away and take breathers to keep your sanity
Happy flowing!
Sounds Familiar
It should, I’ve blogged about several of these issues before:
and several more.
This post was meant to be a type of Power Automate – Flow status update, Where do we stand today? Have things improved over the years?
Enhorabuena por el blog. Me parece de lo mejorcito que te puedes encontrar por la web. Códigos bien estructurados, temas bien explicados y actualidad comentada. Lo dicho, enhorabuena.
(Un fiel seguidor anónimo)
Gracias!
Power Automate is the worst crap i have ever used. And the Copilot is so bad, it can’t setup the actions correctly.
If you try to look up an action, it’s not sorted.
Often when you add an action, it doesn’t show up in the flow.
It has tremendous potential, but it seems, like with all things Microsoft, it is rolled out into production without proper testing and there are lots of bugs. I’ve also found documentation to be weak and finding help challenging (would be putting it mildly!). As you mentioned, the CoPilot AI is just garbage!