Create Child Flows in Power Automate

With the new October release, Microsoft has added support for Child flows. This is awesome as this allows for flow to be better structured and broken down into a smaller set of reusable actions. Let’s dive into how it works.

Where can you build them: in Solutions, This feature is only available in CDS solutions as of now.

what is required for a flow to be a Child Workflow : 

Trigger: Child flow needs a Trigger which can accept a request, two ways to do it is:

      • Manual Trigger: Using “Flow Button” trigger:
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      • Request Trigger: Using Http Request trigger

Response: Child flow needs to have a response back, you can do it in two ways:

      • Respond to a PowerApp or flow Action:
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      • Http Response Action:

 

How to trigger them: you can use the new action “Run a Child Flow”  and select a Child flow to run. 

New action which allows you to trigger a Child Flow

For a flow to appear in the list of Child flow, they need to meet below criteria:

      1. Flow should have a Request or Manual trigger
      2. Flow should have a Response action
      3. Flow should be part of a Solution, same solution or a different solution
      4. Flow should be enabled.

If your Child Flow trigger is based on HTTP Request you can also trigger is using HTTP action in your Master Flow as you could do earlier.

Child Flow with HTTP Request as Trigger

once the flow is created copy the POSt URL and us HTTP action in the master Flow to trigger the child flow

Trigger a Flow from a Flow using HTTP action as before

Child Flows are great as it helps in putting structure around Large Flows as well as allows to create Flow as Modules.

One of the common use cases is when a Flow can get triggered using multiple criteria or scenario’s you can abstract the set of action in a Child Flow and trigger them using other Master Flow.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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