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The flow owner plays a vital role in the management, control, and maintenance of Power Automate flows. They have the authority to make changes, assign permissions, monitor performance, and ensure the flow meets the organization's requirements. When a flow is created, the creator is automatically set as the flow owner.
The following list includes flow owner responsibilities:
- Flow management: Full control over the flow, including the ability to edit, manage, and delete it. They can make necessary modifications to the flow, update its triggers and actions, or troubleshoot any issues that might arise.
- Permissions and sharing: Determines who can access and use the flow. They can share the flow with other users or teams within the organization.
- Monitoring and troubleshooting: Monitoring their flow's performance, reviewing run history, and addressing errors or exceptions.
- Licensing: The licenses associated with the owner can affect the flow.
In cases where ownership needs to be transferred, such as when a flow owner leaves the organization or changes roles, providing a new flow owner ensures a smooth transition. The previous flow owner can transfer ownership to another user to maintain continuity and avoid disruptions in flow management.
If an administrator wants to make changes to a flow, they must first make themselves an owner or co-owner. Regular users usually own flows, but if you need to change the owner to a Service Principal application user instead, go to Change the owner of a cloud flow to a Service Principal application user.
Change the owner of a solution-aware cloud flow
An owner, co-owner, or admin can change the owner of a solution-aware flow to another user to ensure business continuity. After the change of ownership completes, the original owner and the new owner become co-owners of the flow.
You can change the owner to an individual (not a distribution list) or a user account used as a service account. If the flow uses a service account, ensure it's licensed correctly to avoid multiplexing.
Follow these steps to change the owner of a flow.
Important
To perform this action, the flow must be a solution-aware flow.
Sign in to Power Automate.
On the menu to the left, either select My flows, or select Solutions and locate a solution the flow is referenced by.
Select the flow for which you're changing the owner.
In the Details section, select Edit.
In the Primary owner section, remove the current owner.
Enter the email address of the new owner.
Once assigned, the new owner gets access to the run history and connection references. The new owner can update the flow or reassign it to other users.
If the flow is a scheduled or automated flow, after the owner changes, the flow runs under the license of the new owner and uses their Power Platform request limits. This change can take up to seven (7) days to become effective. If you need the new owner to take effect immediately, edit the flow, and then save it to force the flow to use the new owner’s license.
If the flow is a manual flow, the flow runs under the license of the user who runs the flow. The plan section shows whose license plan the flow uses.
Change the owner of a non-solution cloud flow
You can't change the owner of a non-solution cloud flow in place because the owner is part of the flow identity.
- If your environment has Dataverse, add the flow into a solution so you can change ownership.
- If your environment doesn't have Dataverse, create a new non-solution cloud flow by using export/import, Save as, or Send a copy.
Ownership and licensing
If you change flow ownership to a new owner who doesn't have a premium license and the flow uses premium features, a warning appears with information about next steps.
You can still assign the flow to the new owner. The flow runs for 30 days, giving the new owner time to purchase a license. If the new owner doesn't have a premium license after the grace period, Power Automate turns off the flow. They can turn it on anytime after purchasing the license.
Change the owner of a cloud flow to a service principal application user
The following sections describe various scenarios for changing ownership.
Service principal application users
A service principal is a non-human security identity that represents an application or service that can own and manage resources within Azure and the Power Platform. To use a service principal within the Power Platform, create a service principal application user that represents the service principal through the portal or through API. An application user can have connections shared with them and own resources such as flows.
A service principal application user is a non-interactive user, so it can't have a user license associated with it. It's also subject to non-licensed user limits.
Service principal application user ownership of flows
Power Automate supports service principal application users owning and running flows. This capability gives organizations more flexibility and stability in administering Power Automate flows. When flow owners change roles or leave the organization, you need to change flow ownership to a different user or set of users. If the flow owner is a service principal application user, the ownership isn't tied to a user that could leave the organization.
You need to share the flow connections with the Service Principal application user for them to run the flow successfully.
Because a Service Principal application user is a non-interactive user without a user license, it’s subject to non-licensed user limits and has special licensing and request limit implications.
Change the owner of a flow to a service principal application user
To change the owner of a flow to a Service Principal application user:
Open the Details edit dialog.
Replace the Owner with the name of the Service Principal application user.
You can't make a Service Principal application user a co-owner of a flow. You won't find a Service Principal application user in the Owners edit dialog.
Enable a service principal to own and run a flow
To have a Service Principal own and run a flow, follow these steps.
Create a service principal application user representing the Microsoft Entra service principal.
Share connections with the service principal application user.
Change the owner of the flow to the service principal application user by using the steps in this section: Details > Edit > Owner.
Turn on the flow so it's ready to run.
Adjust licensing to deal with request limit implications as needed.
Examples include turning on Pay As You Go, associating the flow to an app, considering a Power Automate Process license (previously Power Automate per flow), or sharing a Process license across multiple flows with a flow group.