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Anonymous5
Helper III
Helper III

Running Flow from a Shared Account

I have been using Power Automate now for a few months and can see the huge potential for myself and all my team. I have been especially impressed using the SQL connector to Get and Transform data to create custom reports. These have been a benefit to me personally but I'd like to think bigger on how it could benefit my team. 

 

For example, I have set up a recurrent SQL query to get and manipulate data, format into an HTML table and email out to our group. Presently, this relies on my gateway and my Outlook account (report is emailed from me). The problem is, I am traveling a lot for work so my computer may or may not be on and logged in at the scheduled time of this trigger. When this occurs, there is a gateway error and the Flow fails. As for the email address issue, I realize this could be handled with a shared email address or by using the "Send Email Notification".

 

What I envision is using Flow from a shared account on a resource that is always on and connected to keep the gateway open at all times. Have any other users run into this issue? Unfortunately my IT group is not terribly familiar with Power Automate and how it works so it has been difficult to explain. As an added benefit, if this headless version of Flow were always on and connected, it could be assigned an email account that cold be used for future Power Automate flows using the Outlook connector. In this way, Flow would work more like a Service rather than per-User application.

 

I'd like to think I am not the first person to run into an issue such as this but I have a feeling I am not able to properly articulate it to get the information I need searching Google or the forums. I appreciate any help that can be offered here.

2 REPLIES 2
v-bacao-msft
Community Support
Community Support

 

Hi @Anonymous5 ,

 

Power Automate (MS Flow) is really a service, it is not a personal application that depends on the local machine. From the message you provided, the unexpected situation arises because the data source is not connected properly.

We know that it may be because the gateway is not in a normal connection and working state. This is actually about how to use the gateway effectively.

 

Documents with MS Flow may not be particularly rich in Gateway's propaganda. You could refer to the introduction of Gateway in Power BI related documents. It is mentioned that Gateway is not recommended to be installed on a personal PC. As you mentioned, if you are out of the office, the data source may not be able to connect properly. Please consider installing the gateway in a more suitable location:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/data-integration/gateway/service-gateway-install

 

Best Regards,

Community Support Team _ Barry
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

Hi Barry,

I agree that my laptop is not suited to run scheduled flows with my personal schedule being so unpredictable. I work for a large corporation and when I explain the use of Flow to our IT personnel they are a bit perplexed by the requirement to have a constantly on logged in connection to our company network as this runs counter to many of our IT security policies.

The next thought would be a server environment but that is also listed as not workable in the gateway installation literature.

Are any other users out there in a similar situation as myself where a typical "user" with an Office 365 account would not have a constantly logged in network connection? How do you schedule automated flows where the execution relies on an open gateway?

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