Slow Performance of Flow. BadRequest + ActionFailed error

[kittiphotutum]

Hello Power Automate Community!

I have reports scheduled to be sent via email attachment from another website to my inbox every hour. There are about 30 reports in .xlsx format.

I use a flow to trigger when an email arrives in this particular folder, then it saves the attachments to SharePoint, and then deletes the emails.

This flow had been performing quite well, but soon stopped working. Emails with the reports would continue building up in my folder, none being saved to SharePoint or being deleted. I saw that my flow's performance was slow during a particular period and had several errors.

Any ideas on how to interpret these errors? Are my file attachments too big and slowing the flow? I am considering upgrading my Performance profile plan, but only if it would fix this issue. Do you think it is a viable solution, or my issue is related to something else? Since then, I have not scheduled and reports to come to my inbox, so that is why this screenshot is from the end of August.

Any help or feedback is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

[wskinnermctc]

Are these 30 reports coming in 30 separate emails every hour? If so, do they come into your inbox about the same time like within a 5 minute window?

The Outlook Connector isn't always instant and can take a few minutes to trigger, or up to an hour. Then it could be that it is happening too fast. Especially if the flow is trying to download attachments and delete them.

Check out good info here Outlook Connector Known Issues and Limitations 

Setting Include Attachments to Yes causes the connector to wait for all attachments to be downloaded. When many emails with attachments arrive around the same time, the connector can timeout while downloading these attachments.

To avoid this, the trigger should be changed to set Include Attachments to No, and the logic should be changed to add the Get Attachment (V2) action to download the attachment.

Additionally, LogicApps authors should ensure that the Office 365 mailbox and the LogicApp are hosted in the same region to reduce attachment download time.

I don't know if that is exactly your issue, but it seems very likely. Upgrading a plan doesn't change how the connector functions. You might try spreading out the reports over time, or maybe putting delay steps after the trigger and after the create file. Might help give PA some time to process.

[kittiphotutum]

Hi thanks for your reply and for the information!

Yes, all these reports come each in their own email roughly all at the same time every hour (:00) on the dot.

The thing is, I have another flow which does the same thing but it just handles a different type of report coming to another inbox and being saved in another place on my SharePoint. This 2nd flow handles 70+ reports that come to my inbox also in their own individual emails every 30 minutes (:00). Usually this 2nd flow has no issues, maybe 10 reports max don't get saved during a period of a week.

So why is it that this flow works well while the first flow isn't saving the attachments at all, not a single one. Is PA unable to process the first flow because of my second flow? Does file size of the attachment to be saved have any impact on this as well?

Thanks!

[wskinnermctc · Accepted solution]

Yes, you could be running into a couple if issues at the same time. I don't know exactly how to tell why one takes priority over another.

The Power Automate has a limit of api calls per minute as well as per account. 

The Outlook connecter has a limit of api calls per minute as well as data transferred.

The Outlook app has message and attachment size limits.

Read more about Power Automate Flow Limits for what can be done by flows on an account.

Read more about Working with Attachments for the Outlook connector.

Read more about Outlook Exchange Limits for the Outlook app.

The first thing you can try is to change your flow so that it uses the 2 steps as recommended. 1. When a new Email Arrives 2. Get attachments. By separating this into two steps it allows the attachment to download into the email box.

I think that you will need to adjust how you approach this. You are trying to use email as a data transfer method which is ok in small quantities, but at larger scale you will have issues. Especially with this happening at same time constantly.

Maybe try to think about new processes like -

• Change Flow - Every 45 minutes pull outlook email folder and attachments.
• Change Report Quantity - Does every report have to be hourly or 30 minutes? Can some be daily?
• Change Source Connection - can the source download to a folder instead of email? Can you connect to the source with power automate or something like SQL Server or Dataverse?

The process will have to change to relieve some pressure on the trigger. Even a solid trigger like "When a New Item is Created" in SharePoint would have issues if it got hammered 100's of times in a short period of time. Adding file attachment data as well as Outlook inbox limits will be even more susceptible to problems.

Wish I had an easy button answer, but I think the system limitations will require a change of approach or expectations to get your desired results.

[kittiphotutum]

Thanks for all this information, I really appreciate it! I'm very new to all this Power Automate stuff, so I'll go over the reading you suggested, and rethink how some of these flows/processes could be changed! One more question though: so we concluded that upgrading my plan won't solve my problems - but when do you advise someone do upgrade their plan? Again, I read about what you can get by upgrading, but its not all clear to me.