With the continuous expansion of connectivity to many different apps and services, Power Automate flows have enjoyed increased adoption rate from all levels of developers in the organization. One challenge often associated with the rapid adoption of Power Automate flows is the flow ownership. Power Automate requires that every flow must be owned by an active member in the organization’s Active Directory.

Per best practice, when a Power Automate Flow owner leaves the organization, one of the offboarding steps should be to assign the ownership of the flow to a new owner. When this important step is not complete prior to the flow owner leaving the organization, the flow becomes an orphaned flow with no active owner. Issues associated with orphaned flows are listed below but not limited to:

1. Flows are not visible inside solutions.
2. Flows cannot be edited.
3. Any approval action that uses the flow creator’s credential will fail because the credential is invalid.
4. Any flow action that uses the flow owner’s credential will fail because the credential is invalid.

This blog post is about a few different strategies that can be employed to assign the Power Automate flows to new owner(s).

Via Admin Center

Security Role Required: System Administrator, Power Platform Administrator, Global Administrator

1. Navigate to the Power Platform Admin Center.

2. Navigate to the environment where the flow is located. Click on the 3 dots … to select Resources and then Flows.

3. Select the flow and click the Share button or click on the 3 dots … to select Share.

4. Add in in the name or address of the new owner and click Save.

5. The new owner is now assigned to the flow.

Via Advanced Settings

Security Role Required: System Administrator, Power Platform Administrator, Global Administrator

1. Navigate to the environment where the flow is located.

2. Navigate to Advanced Find.

3. Under Look for, select Processes. Under Category, select Modern Flow. Remove all other filters. Note that this search applies to the Cloud flows.

4. Click on the Result button. This step brings back a list of all the Cloud flows and their owner details.

5. Select the flow and click on the Assign Processes button.

6. Select the Assign to and User or team values. Click on the Assign button.

7. The flow is now assigned to the new owner.

The strategies listed above are used to assign new owner(s) to orphaned Power Automate flows with no active owner. A proactive approach to preventing orphaned flows is to include the flow ownership reassignment as part of the knowledge transfer process prior to the flow owner’s departure. New owners can be added to flows in the Owners section of the flow.

Another proactive approach often employed for flows used in Power Platform projects is to leverage service accounts to create flows. When a service account is used to create a flow, the flow owner is the service account that does not expire in Active Directory. Hence, regardless of the Active Directory status of the individual creating the flow, the flow remains active and functional.

We hope you find these tips and strategies helpful. Many more great Power Automate resources are available on our blog under the Power Automate category.