Your premium flows are turned off. Purchase, extend, or renew a Power Automate license or submit a request to your admin.

Did you also experience “premium flows are turned off” automatic? It seems “in context of” license terms for Power Automate found in #Dynamics365 and #PowerApps license guide are starting to get enforced by #Microsoft… it’s time to deep dive into the Microsoft #Powerplatform license guide if this is new to you!

Is “in context of” license lingo new?

I could not find an exact date for when Flow (definition of flow within app context) appeared in the Dynamics 365 & Power Platform license guide, but I found some references that suggest it was sometime around October 2019, so this is not new. October 2019 was when Microsoft announced some changes to Power Apps and Power Automate licensing that included the concept of app context.

Deep dive into “in context of” of Power Automate license lingo here which leads to “Your premium flows are turned off”:

Flows created to support apps built with Power Apps must run within the context of the app, meaning the flow must use the same data sources for triggers or actions as the app. Flows that are triggered from the app are automatically considered as being in context of the app.

Example of Dynamics 365 license using Power Automate outside a Dynamics 365 application context

Example of Power Automate use outside of an app created using Power Apps context

Example of Dynamics 365 license using Power Automate within a Dynamics 365 application context

Example of Power Automate use within an app created using Power Apps context

Options to Fix “in context of”/premium flows are turned off

This Frequently asked questions about Power Automate licensing have a lot of information on how to understand the Power Automate licensing including “in context of” alternatives

1. option: Bring flow in context. Is the flow created to support the Power Apps/Dynamics 365 app? If automated or scheduled cloud flows are created to support the app and are in context of an app aka. can the flow be deleted if the corresponding apps are deleted? if yes then link the flow to the apps using a PowerShell script
2. Option: Buy “Per User” licenses or “Per Flow” licenses. Read more here on the options Pricing | Microsoft Power Automate. The number of licenses needed are dependent on the use case of the flow and are dependent on the Multiplexing license ruleset. if you run a setup of Service accounts with “Per user” license you are in a high chance of breaching Multiplexing ruleset

What is Multiplexing

This Microsoft brief https://download.microsoft.com › download › Lic… try to explain how Multiplexing may impact the licensing needs of Microsoft customers, below is an extract of this from a Power Automate Point of view:

Summary of Licensing_Brief_PLT_Multiplexing.pdf focused on Microsoft PowerApps:

• Multiplexing is when users access data or services indirectly through another device, software/Automation, instead of directly using a licensed product.
• Multiplexing does not reduce the number of licenses required for accessing Microsoft products, including PowerApps. Users who access data or services through multiplexing need to be properly licensed.
• Multiplexing can occur in different scenarios, such as using a portal, a web service, an API, a middleware, a bot, or an app that connects to PowerApps or other Microsoft products.

Scenario: User A is appropriately licensed and wants to distribute data to colleagues (unlicensed) and import the
modified data back to the original service.

Example 1
User A manually exports data from Dataverse and uploads to external storage location or sends data via email to
colleagues. The colleagues consume/edit data. User A manually imports the data back to Dataverse.
Not Multiplexing: Since User A is manually performing all steps in the distribution of data, and they have the
appropriate licenses, it does not matter who they are sending data to.

Example 2
User A has Power Platform (or other automation) export data from Dataverse and uploads to external storage
location or sends data via email to colleagues. The colleagues consume/edit data. Power Platform (or other
automation) imports the modified data back to Dataverse. Multiplexing: Since Power Platform (or other automation) is performing all the steps in data distribution, the end user should have the appropriate license to access the original data and import back the modified data.

Example 3
User A has Power Platform (or other automation) export data from Dataverse and uploads to external storage
location or sends data via email to colleagues. Before the distribution of data, User A decides “Go/No-Go” and
manually hits send/perform on Power Platform (or other automation) to complete task. The colleagues
consume/edit data. Power Platform (or other automation) import data to Dataverse, before finalizing, User A
decides “Go/No-Go” and manually hits send/perform on Power Platform (or other automation) to import the data
back to Dataverse. Multiplexing: Even though User A is performing a manual step in the process, they are not performing all steps
and there is an automation step. Since there is an automation step, the end users accessing data need the
appropriate licenses