Working with Shared Flows

Up to this point, all of the flows that you have created or seen have been associated with your particular Office 365 user account. These types of flows are individualized and may rely on your identity to authenticate.

However, if you are part of a team or share responsibility for a work process, you may find it necessary to create flows that others can also see and manage. This is where shared flows, formerly known as team flows, can help us.

In this chapter, you’ll learn the basics of shared flows as we cover the following topics:

• Understanding team flows
• Sharing a cloud flow
• Sharing a desktop flow
• Sharing a flow with run only permissions
• Managing shared flows

Team flows are important to enable business continuity in the event that one or more parties of a flow change roles or leave the organization altogether. By the end of this chapter, you’ll know how to share and manage team flows.

...

Understanding shared flows

As mentioned in the introduction, shared flows enable multiple individuals to manage the activity and configuration of a flow. Shared flows also enable multiple individuals to view the run history and provide credentials for connectors.

Both cloud flows and desktop flows can be shared.

There are, however, some interesting features and caveats for shared flows:

• Other users, groups, or SharePoint lists can be made co-owners of a flow. The creator of the flow cannot be removed by another co-owner. If you are granting access to a SharePoint list, that site must be connected to the flow (such as being used to save a file).
• Co-owners of a flow can view a flow’s run history.
• Co-owners of a flow can add or delete actions, conditions, or other co-owners.
• Co-owners of a flow can manage the properties of a flow (for example, whether it’s enabled or disabled, its descriptions, and other general properties).
• Co...

Sharing a cloud flow

Now that you’ve got an understanding of what additional features a shared flow provides, let’s work on sharing a flow with some team members.

In this example, we’re going to take the Expense Reports flow we created in Chapter 3, Working with Email, and update it to be a shared flow:

1. Log in to the Power Automate web portal (https://flow.microsoft.com) and select My flows.
2. Select the Expense Reports flow you created in Chapter 3, Working with Email, and then click the share icon. You can also click the ellipsis and select Share from the context menu:

Figure 7.1: Sharing a flow

3. In the Owners section, under Users and groups, begin entering the name or address of a user or group to whom you will grant access and click to select it:

Figure 7.2: Adding co-owners to a flow

4. When adding new members, you’ll be prompted to click OK to acknowledge what access to the connectors...

Sharing a desktop flow

Power Automate Desktop, as mentioned in Chapter 2, Getting Started with Power Automate, can be used to create and manage desktop flows. At this time, there are some caveats and limitations:

• The Power Automate desktop application only shows and allows you to edit desktop flows. You cannot see cloud flows in the Power Automate desktop app.
• The Power Automate web portal shows you both cloud and desktop flows. You can edit cloud flows in the browser, but editing or running a desktop flow requires the Power Automate desktop application.
• You can share desktop flows within the Power Automate web portal interface. You cannot share desktop flows from the Power Automate desktop application.

As the product continues to mature, some of these caveats may change.

In order to complete this exercise, we’ll first need to create a very basic desktop flow.

Creating a basic desktop flow

We’re going to get more into desktop...

Sharing a flow with run only permissions

The Run only permissions feature allows you to grant a very limited set of permissions to manually triggered flows (such as button and instant flows).

Run only permissions are not available for automated flows.

With this option, users can only execute the flow. They cannot edit or modify any part of the flow and will only be granted permission to trigger it.

To grant a run only permission to a button or instant flow, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the Power Automate web portal (https://flow.microsoft.com) and select My flows.
2. Select the ellipsis for a button or instant flow, such as the Out Sick instant flow you created in Chapter 5, Creating Button Flows. Select Details to open the Details page:

Figure 7.15: Opening the Details page

3. In the Run only users section, click Edit:

Figure 7.16: Flow details page

4. In the Manage run-only permissions panel, add...

Managing shared flows

All co-owners of a flow can manage its various properties. In this exercise, we’ll look at how a team flow looks to a sharing recipient.

Once a flow has been shared with you (or you have shared a flow with others), you can manage it like any other flow using the My flows | Shared with me page of the Power Automate web portal. One of the most important changes comes when the creator of the flow is no longer available. After the account of a creator has been removed from the organization, connections that utilize that credential will need to be updated.

In the following screenshot, notice how the status of the Office 365 Users and SharePoint connections are displayed with a red exclamation mark to denote failing credentials:

Figure 7.18: Sharing page showing invalid connectors

To resolve the situation and update the credentials, follow these steps:

1. In the Embedded connections section, select Manage connections.
2. Select...

Summary

In this chapter, we introduced the concept of shared flows (formerly called team flows). Shared flows allow you to share the management and ownership of a flow in your organization. Shared flow owners can manage all aspects of the flow, including adding and removing other owners and updating actions. You also learned how to manage the credentials of a shared flow after the owner’s account has been removed from the Microsoft 365 organization. This process is critical to allow organizations to continue running shared flows.

In the next chapter, we’re going to expand on how to use conditions in flows. Conditions will allow you to start adding both complexity and flexibility to your flows, building on the core skills you’ve already developed.

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