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Jleebiker's avatar
Jleebiker
Iron Contributor
Dec 11, 2019

Ownership?

As we are starting to dabble with Power Automate and Flow more, a question came to mind. What happens when an employee who owns a Flow or Automate leaves the org? Doesn't it become orphaned? How do we maintain continuity?
If there isn't a good way to transfer the Flows to another user, we may have to clamp down on people creating them and then we're back in the same boat of having to go through a central body that creates and maintains them. Thanks all!

  • DaithiG's avatar
    DaithiG
    Steel Contributor

    I  use a service account for all these. Individual users can use make flows but anything business crucial (needs to work if user leaves the company) has to be under the service account. 

     

    It can be annoying. On the one hand I'd like staff to examine Flows more but that could end up with them creating flows and not notifying me to check it so it seems like I'm limiting their access to it.

    • Damien_Rosario's avatar
      Damien_Rosario
      Silver Contributor

      Awesome DaithiG! That was my understanding too.

       

      Service account seems to be the smart way to ensure business wide flows are not impacted by individual users accounts being disabled.

       

      Cheers

      Damien

  • Damien_Rosario's avatar
    Damien_Rosario
    Silver Contributor

    Hi Jleebiker 

     

    I've been tackling the same thinking too as I am the primary PowerApps and Power Automate engineer for my company and have been making things from my individual account.

     

    I'm worried if my account were ever to be disabled or deleted, the Flows and PowerApps may go with it as my individual account is the owner.

     

    I've read that for Power Automate, if it's shared (co-owners) then one of them will default to being the owner and apparantly to transfer ownership of a PowerApp you will need to log a ticket with Microsoft (https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/support/).

     

    The other option I'm considering to transition my company wide flows and PowerApps to the new service account I have created, is to share my flows and PowerApps with the service account. I would then go into my service account and Save As the flows/PowerApps so that the service account now owns a copy of them.

     

    From there I could disable the original flows in my own account as the new service account has taken over and then share access back to my individual account so I could work on the flows/PowerApps as normal (ownership issue resolved).

     

    I may be overthinking this approach though I'd reckon it's a fairly quick process doing one flow/app at a time, and it will give my service account the control over the flows/apps moving forward.

     

    I'm open to a better way to do this if anyone else has a better answer?

     

    Cheers and best wishes

    Damien

    • Jleebiker's avatar
      Jleebiker
      Iron Contributor
      I’m thinking the service accounts as well. I’m hoping it’s an easy process to change ownership.
      • Damien_Rosario's avatar
        Damien_Rosario
        Silver Contributor

        I hope so too but if not, then that workaround is my go-to for transitioning my work Jleebiker!

         

        Cheers

        Damien 

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