Power Automate Request Limits and Allocations - what is a step Action

[colinrippey]

Hi,

We are buidling a Flow to handle the processing of emails, we expect we'll receive as many as 1,000 emails per day.

Each email contains some raw text that needs to be parsed (basic name/value pairs) and then once all the fields are parsed the resulting set of name/value pairs are used to populate a SharePoint list.

My concern is the sheer "size" of the Flow in terms of the number of Actions I've had to add to process all the raw text in the email. I am looking at upwards of 50 Actions (mostly Compose actions) some of which are contained inside a Apply to action that will loop through as many as 50 times (so easily in one Flow we could see 1,000 individual Actions executed).

When I read the following article:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/power-platform/admin/api-request-limits-allocations

I note that this point is highlighted:

What is a Microsoft Power Platform request?

Requests in Microsoft Power Platform consist of various actions which a user makes across various products. At a high level, below is what constitute an API call:

• Connectors – all API requests to connectors from Power Apps or Power Automate
• Microsoft Power Automate – all Power Automate step actions
• Common Data Service – all CRUD operations, as well as special operations like "share" or "assign". These can be from any client or application and using any endpoint SOAP or REST. These include but are not limited to plug-ins, async workflows, and custom controls making the above mentioned operations.

Can anyone explain what is a step action? Does this mean every single action including standard Compose actions?

I am quite concerned that the Flow we have built will only cope with processing a Few emails and then be "stopped" by the API request limit.

Has anyone experienced a Flow that runs so many times and/or has so many Actions that it has reached the daily API limit? We are looking to procure the Power Automate Per Business Process license but even this only gives you 15,000 daily API calls.

Thank you for taking this time to read this.

[colinrippey · Accepted solution]

It “looks like” the details on the Logic Apps pricing model define what a step action is:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/logic-apps-pricing

Consumption pricing model

For new logic apps that run in the public, "global", multi-tenant Azure Logic Apps service, you pay only for what you use. These logic apps use a consumption-based plan and pricing model. In your logic app, each step is an action, and Azure Logic Apps meters all the actions that run in your logic app.

For example, actions include:

• Triggers, which are special actions. All logic apps require a trigger as the first step.

• "Built-in" or native actions such as HTTP, calls to Azure Functions and API Management, and so on

• Calls to managed connectors such as Outlook 365, Dropbox, and so on

• Control workflow actions such as loops, conditional statements, and so on

Given that a Flow is a Logic App then I am going to assume that I should be able to work out my billing from the above.