Remote event receivers Vs Power automate cloud flows

john john 931 Reputation points
2022-10-28T19:15:03.617+00:00

I am a big fan of remote event receivers as it is a very solid approach to implement business logic for SharePoint online lists/libraries. But recently, each time i start a new project >> customers ask to use Power Automate flows instead of remote event receivers. Since they do not have to pay for hosting the RER and they think Power automate will allow none-IT people to manage their business logic if they are trained, unlike remote event receiver which require a developer with coding skills.

But after using Power Automate for more than 3 years, i found those weaknesses compared to RER:-

1) If we have a complex business logic >> then we will end up having a very complex Flow which will be hard to manage. And we can end up with hundreds of actions and a sequence of steps. For example if i want to define a unique permission for a list item after been added >> and grant all current users Read-Only >> and grant certain users contribute >> i will end up having 6 actions, while in RER this can be done in 4 lines of codes!

2) Power Automate flows, do not allow us to prevent an Insert, update or delete if certain rules did not meet, unlike RER which allow use to control the adding, updating and deleting and prevent them based on our business logic.

so can anyone advice about the RER vs Power automate flows? and are my above 2 points valid?

Thanks

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  1. Tong Zhang_MSFT 9,116 Reputation points
    2022-11-01T06:51:10.43+00:00

    Hi @john john ,

    According to my research and testing, Remote event receivers (RER) can handle events that take place on items​ (Lists​/List Items​/Add-Ins). You can use remote event receivers to handle events in the SharePoint Add-in model. Use AppInstalled and AppUninstalling events to set up or remove SharePoint objects and other event receivers your add-in needs.

    Here is a document about use remote event receivers in SharePoint, you can refer to it: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/solution-guidance/use-remote-event-receivers-in-sharepoint

    Hope it can help you. Thanks for your understanding.

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