This documents contains Microsoft Flow Basics, Operational Errors and Troubleshooting Help. Learn about how MS flow operates, and common errors that you can get while working or monitoring MS Flows.

1. MS Flow Basics,
Troubleshooting and
Operational Errors
By : Isha Kapoor
http://learningsharepoint.com/
2019

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Contents
Introduction to MS flow......................................................................................................................2
Sharing a Flow....................................................................................................................................2
Update Connection owner..................................................................................................................3
Flow Quota........................................................................................................................................4
Flow License and Permissions..............................................................................................................4
Flow Frequency..................................................................................................................................5
Team Flows and Flow Sharing..............................................................................................................6
Testing and Troubleshooting Flows......................................................................................................6
Flow and SharePointViews .................................................................................................................7
Creating a Flow - Triggers andActions..................................................................................................9
Apply to each................................................................................................................................10
Switch case...................................................................................................................................10
Compose string variables...............................................................................................................10
Do-until........................................................................................................................................10
Filter arrays..................................................................................................................................11
Scopes..........................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction to MS flow
Microsoft Flow is a service that helps you create automated workflows for cloud-based apps
such as Office 365, Dynamics 365, PowerApps, Dropbox, Facebook, OneDrive for Business,
SharePoint, Twitter, SQL Server, and many others.
The main types of flows are automated, button, scheduled, and business process flows.
With Microsoft Flow Designer, you can easily:
 Create flows to get notifications, Create new items, and, trigger manual and scheduled
responses.
 Share flows among users in your company.
 Explore the conditions that trigger the flow, and, the actions that results from that event.
You can add or delete actions, move them around, and connect them by adding a New
step.
 Use any of more than 150 data sources that Microsoft Flow supports to create your own
flows from scratch.
 Use Peek code feature that allows anyone to take a closer look at the code that's
generated for all actions and triggers in a flow.
 Use different connectors to exchange data between SharePoint and various Microsoft
and third-party services.
 Use templates to create new items and documents and approvals for the items in
SharePoint Online, as well as send notifications whenever these items are created or
updated.
 Run flows on a scheduled time by using out-of-the box trigger.
 Trigger a flow based on an email and its properties.
 Share files between SharePoint and OneDrive, Dropbox, and even SharePoint itself.
Sharing a Flow
A Flow typically runs under the context of user who creates the flow. You can however share
your flow with multiple people in your organization so they can collectively work on it.
Create a team flow by adding others in your organization as Owners. Select the Share button in
the Flow’s main window and then add Owners in the Owners screen.
All OWNERS of a team flow can perform the following actions:
 Manage the properties of the flow i.e. assign new Owners by further sharing the flow or
update credentials for a connection used within the flow.
 Edit the definition of the flow (for example, add or remove an action or condition).
 Add and remove other owners (but not the flow's creator).
 Delete the flow.

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Update Connection owner
You might need to change the credentials used in establishing connections in your flow if the
person who created the flow has left the company. An un-shared Service account can be used
for flow connections to make it less depend of individual users and their License status.
Follow these steps to switch the connections of a flow:
1. Select the flow that contains the connection you want to update from the Team flows list.
2. Select See all or Edit from the OWNERS list (on right).
3. Select Manage connections from the Embedded connections list.
4. Search for the connection you want to update, and then select it.
5. Select ... (more commands), and then select Switch account.
6. Remove the existing Invalid Connection from Embedded Connection in the Owners
window.
7. Use your new Connection by editing your flow and select your connection from “…”
eclipse menu of your flow’s triggers. Sign in with the connection id if required.

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Flow Quota
MS flow assigns you a quota as per the Flow plan your company has purchased. If you're on a
paid plan, runs are pooled across all users in your organization.
There is no provision to expose available quota and usage across an organization as if now.
Microsoft is working on making this option available.
If you exceed the quota, Microsoft Flow throttles your flow runs.
A flow run is, whenever a flow is triggered, whether by an automatic trigger or by manually
starting it, this is considered a run. Checks for new data don't count as runs.
Flow License and Permissions
A flow is typically created or edited by an Office 365 user who is also licensed for a Flow Plan.
Once created, a flow runs without any direct user interaction and there is no prompt for
credentials. So, the Flow typically ends up running under the license level of the user who last
edited and saved the Flow.
Make sure the person who last edited or saved the flow has permissions to the SharePoint
sitelistlibrary where flow is deployed, and, the ID for that user is valid with E3(or flow) License
assigned.
Known Issues:
 Flow does not run.
 Some of the connections are not authorized yet. If you just created a workflow from a
template, please add the authorized connections to your workflow before saving.
 There's a problem with the flow's trigger. Fix the trigger
Cause: The context under which the flow is running is Invalid.
Resolution:
 Verify if the user who created or last edited the flow has a valid user Id.
 Verify if the user’s password is not expired, or, if the user is assigned a valid Office 365
and a MS Flow License.
 Switch the connections (triggers) in the flow to a working Service Id, if the flow user has
left the company. See Update flow Connection above.
 Assign additional Owners to allow them to edit flow definition. The Connections in a flow
should utilize Flow Service Id for all Flows. See Sharing a flow above.

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Tip
You can identify Issues with MS flow by navigating to the flow app
(https://us.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/) and select “Show all Activity” under
notification icon (upper left).
Flow Frequency
The flow frequency defines the maximum interval of time in which the automated flow trigger will
check for changes for all MS flows. This maximum is based on the license level of the user who
last edited and saved the Flow. As per Microsoft, your plan determines how often your flows
run. For example, your flows may run every 15 minutes if you're on the free plan. If a flow is
triggered less than 15 minutes after its last run, it's queued until 15 minutes have elapsed.
For Office365 E-3 level licenses, this maximum frequency is 5 minutes. This means, for any
connections that uses a trigger, that fires automatically, the check for the trigger’s condition (e.g.
item created, row inserted, item updated, etc.) will only take place a maximum of once every 5
minutes.
Known Issues:
 The flow does not run immediately after the trigger (i.e. on Item created or Item updated,
etc.) but runs within the span of next 5 minutes after the trigger.
Cause: MS Flow triggers as per maximum Flow Frequency.
Resolution: MS flow checks for triggers in all flows as per the maximum frequency (5 minutes
in our case). If no triggers were detected, flow sleeps and re-checks in next 5 minutes. Flow will
run all triggers concurrently once detected.

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Team Flows and Flow Sharing
Team flows (a tab in MS flow) make it possible for multiple people to own and manage a flow
together, and, if someone leaves an organization, the flows they created can continue to run
after a Connection change by any of the Flow Owners.
With Team flows, any owner of the flow can contribute connections to the flow, make changes
and re-own the flow by changing trigger connections.
All Connections can be viewed from Embedded Connection in flow’s Owners window.
Known Issues:
 The flow is not visible to Team Members or not listed under Team flows.
Cause: The flow is not shared with any of the Owners in the company.
Resolution: If the flow is not visible under Team flows, it is probably not shared with the user or
team. Verify under Microsoft Flow Admin Center->Environments->the current
Environment->Resources->Flows, to see if the flow exists there. Share the flow with Owner’s
group or individual users so it gets visible in Team flows.
Testing and Troubleshooting Flows
Flow when fails, can generate error emails that are send to the Owners of the flow or to
the last user who edited and saved the flow.
Known Issues:
 E-mail: [Bulk] 1 of your flows have failed.
 E-mail: The flow(s) listed had an unusual number of failures in the past week and may
need your attention.
Cause: There is a problem in running the flow that you created.
Resolution: Flow might have issues causing an email to go out to a user (usually to the flow
creator). You can identify the exact issue by navigating to the MS flow
(https://us.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/) and select “Show all Activity” under notification icon (upper
left). See below.

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In the Activity page, select Failures to access the list of failed flows. Select the failed flow
to get a detailed error.
Flow and SharePoint Views
A Flow might fail when a SharePoint View does not render in Get Items or Update Items
triggers. when fails, can generate error emails that are send to the Owners of the flow or to the
last user who edited and saved the flow.
Known Issues:
 message": "The query cannot be completed because the number of lookup columns it
contains exceeds the lookup column threshold enforced by the
administrator.rnclientRequestId:"
Cause: The number of dynamic Content that you are retrieving or updating via a Trigger hits the
list view threshold limit of your list. The default view has more than 8 lookup columns added to it
in our case.
Resolution: Create a new default view which lies within the limits of list view Threshold.

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In the flow, In Get Items Action, under “Show Advanced Options”, use “Limit Columns by View”
and use the view that has limited number of lookup columns or items in it.

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Creating a Flow - Triggers and Actions
When adding a new action in your Flow, you can either add a trigger that will kick off a
change on your data, or, select from a list of Conditions to act upon the data from your
previous actions (generated from Get items or a Trigger action in most cases).
Triggers and Conditions (under Actions tab) can be accessed from the “Choose an
action” menu that popups up when you add a new Action in your workflow steps.
Brief explanation on list of ConditionsActions that can be performed on data is below.

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Apply to each
When you get a list of items returned by an action, for example, you could get a list of
items based on a filtered criteria from your previous steps, or a list of search results from
a search API. An apply to each loop makes it possible to access the list of items that
you repeat over. You can also use a condition inside of an apply to each to filter the
array.
Switch case
Inside a Switch Case you will select a value from the trigger or a previous step to switch on.
For example, if you want to get Title from list of items that you retrieved from the previous
step, the switch will be on the Title from Get Items.
Below the Switch On, you can add as many cases you want. There is also a Default case that
will run if the value is not found in any of the cases that you define.
Compose string variables
If you have a single value that you want to re-use many different times throughout your
flow (for example, a single message that you want to reuse in several emails you send
out), you can now compose a string variable:
Do-until
A do-until loop allows you to repeat a step until a certain condition is met. The most
common reason to use this is in approval scenarios. For example, you can create a new
record in a database, wait until a certain field in that record is “Approved”, and then
continue the flow.

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Filter arrays
There is a single native filter step that can make sure that every item in the list matches
some expression that you define, for example, that importance is high.
Scopes
Scopes are a simple way to group two or more actions together. When you put actions
inside a scope, they can be visually collapsed so that you cake make the presentation inside
of the designer much simpler.