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For one cloud flow, open its details page and use Run history for individual executions, then use Analytics for trends. For every flow in an environment, use the Power Platform admin center’s Monitor experience. If the standard 28-day history is too short, store run metadata in Dataverse or send telemetry to Application Insights. Use Purview audit logs only for lifecycle and permission changes—not for runtime executions.
Choose the monitoring view that matches your question
Power Automate exposes several monitoring layers. Selecting the wrong one is the most common reason teams miss failures or expect data that the view does not contain.
| Method | Best scope | What you can learn | Important limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flow details and Run history | One flow | Individual run status, action durations, inputs, outputs and errors | Standard run data is available for 28 days by default |
| Per-flow Analytics | One flow and recent trends | Run volume, success and failure rates, duration and bottlenecks | Rolling 30-day summary, refreshed approximately every 24 hours; not real time |
| Admin center Monitor and analytics | Environment or administrator oversight | Cross-flow failures, usage and environment patterns | Requires appropriate administrative access; report availability varies by view |
| Dataverse FlowRun records | Queryable history and retention | Status, start and end time, duration, trigger type, error code and message | Must be configured; retention and feature limitations depend on your tenant |
| Application Insights | Deeper observability | Flow, trigger and action telemetry, diagnostics and custom alert conditions | Requires environment-level setup and eligibility/licensing checks |
| Purview audit logs | Governance | Who created, edited, deleted or changed permissions on a flow | Does not contain individual runs, action executions or connector calls |
Inspect a single flow’s runs
Open Run history
- Go to Power Automate and open My flows (or the solution/environment view where the flow is managed).
- Select the cloud flow to open its details page.
- In Run history, select an execution. The list shows whether the run succeeded, failed, was cancelled or is still running, along with start time and duration.
- Expand the run diagram and select actions to inspect their inputs, outputs, status, retry information and timing.
Begin diagnosis with the first action that actually failed. A later action can be marked failed because a prerequisite failed, even though it never executed. The first error usually identifies the connector, expression, permission or data problem that must be fixed.
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Open the flow’s Analytics view to see aggregate run volume, success and failure rates, execution time and potential bottlenecks. Microsoft documents this report as a rolling 30-day run-history summary with an approximately 24-hour refresh cycle. It is useful for spotting a rising failure rate or a slow action, but it cannot replace a live dashboard. The feature is not currently available in government and sovereign clouds.
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Monitor all flows in an environment
Use the admin-center Monitor experience
When the question is “Which flows failed across this environment?”, use the Monitor experience in the Power Platform admin center. Microsoft describes it as the route for seeing every failed run, avoiding the exclusions that apply to per-run email notifications. Admin-center analytics also provide environment-level usage and run patterns; the documented environment analytics window is the last 28 days.
Access and report scope depend on your role and tenant configuration. If a team needs operational visibility, define which environments and flows it must see before assigning permissions.
Do not confuse analytics with live operations
Both individual-flow Analytics and admin analytics are reporting views. Their refresh and retention behavior means an incident responder should investigate the selected run in Run history rather than wait for a chart to update.
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Why a failed run may produce no email
Per-run failure notifications are sent for some known, fixable issues. They are not a complete alerting system: general action failures, cascade failures and other conditions may not generate an immediate message. A notification therefore starts an investigation; its absence does not prove that all runs succeeded.
Check the alert settings and cooldown
- Confirm that failure notifications are enabled in the flow’s settings.
- Check the flow’s notification history before creating duplicate rules.
- Microsoft documents a 28-day cooldown during which another per-run alert may not be sent for the same flow.
- Use the documented weekly digest when you need a summary of failures across environments rather than one message per run.
Find the real cause of a failed or missing run
When a run is marked failed
- Open the failed execution from Run history.
- Expand actions from the top of the run and locate the first action with a genuine error.
- Read the connector response, expression error and HTTP status (when present).
- Check the action’s inputs for missing or incorrectly typed values, then check outputs for a service-side error.
- Review retry behavior and duration. A timeout or exhausted retry policy points to a different remedy than an invalid expression.
- Correct the trigger, connection, expression or data mapping, save the flow and reproduce the event in a controlled test.
When “no runs appear in run history”
Separate a trigger problem from an action problem. Verify that the triggering event really occurred, that the flow is turned on, and that the trigger’s conditions did not filter the event out. A trigger condition that evaluates false produces no run to inspect. Also check that you are viewing the correct environment and flow version.
When later actions show failure
Do not repair every red action independently. Dependent actions can inherit a failed state after an earlier action stops the run. Follow the dependency chain back to the first error, then rerun after correcting that cause.
Keep run data longer than the standard window
Dataverse cloud-flow run history
The standard run-history view has a 28-day default availability window. Microsoft’s Dataverse cloud-flow run-history option writes FlowRun records that can be queried for start and end time, duration, status, trigger type, error code and error message. It is appropriate when operations, compliance or reporting requires history beyond the standard view.
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Retention is configurable but is not one universal number: review your tenant configuration and the current feature limitations before promising a specific duration. Design a cleanup policy so long-lived records do not grow without control, and restrict access to the run metadata your operators actually need.
Application Insights for telemetry and custom alerts
Application Insights, through Azure Monitor, can collect flow, trigger and action telemetry at environment level. It supports deeper performance and failure diagnostics and custom alert conditions that are not available in the basic flow page. Because it requires configuration, verify feature eligibility, licensing and regional availability for your environment before making it the incident system of record.
Purview for governance events
Use Microsoft Purview audit logs to answer questions such as who edited a flow, deleted it or changed its permissions. Purview does not record individual runtime runs, action executions or connector calls. Pair it with Dataverse run records, Application Insights or admin-center monitoring when you need execution evidence.
Assign the right access
The Power Automate Operator role provides visibility into cloud-flow run metadata through Dataverse. It does not grant the detailed runtime history served by the flow runtime. Operators cannot see per-action inputs and outputs, expression evaluation results, retry details or the complete trigger payload, and they cannot resubmit or cancel a cloud run. Match the role to the job: metadata reporting can use an operator-style role, while detailed debugging requires the permissions that expose runtime action data.
Build a practical monitoring workflow
- Define the scope. Use Run history for one flow, Monitor for environment-wide failures, Dataverse for queryable retention and Application Insights for telemetry-driven alerting.
- Set an incident path. Route a notification or dashboard signal to an owner, then require investigation of the first failed action.
- Record the useful fields. Capture flow name, run identifier, trigger type, start and end time, duration, status, error code and error message.
- Separate absence from failure. A missing run usually indicates a trigger, condition, environment or enablement issue; a failed run has an action-level cause.
- Review retention. Export or configure Dataverse history when a 28-day window is not sufficient.
- Test the monitor. Create a controlled failure and verify that the intended view, alert, query and owner all receive it.
Performance, reliability and cost considerations
- Refresh delay: Analytics reports update approximately every 24 hours, so use individual run details for current incidents.
- Retention: The standard view and environment analytics cover documented 28-day periods; longer retention adds configuration and storage responsibilities.
- Alert completeness: Email notifications are selective and subject to a 28-day per-flow cooldown; combine them with Monitor or custom telemetry for broader coverage.
- Diagnostic detail: More detailed runtime payloads improve troubleshooting but require tighter permissions and may contain sensitive data. Limit access and retention accordingly.
- Scale: Queryable Dataverse records and Application Insights help when manually opening hundreds of runs is impractical, but both need a defined schema, retention policy and ownership.
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FAQ
Can I use Analytics as a real-time failure dashboard?
No. The documented report refreshes approximately every 24 hours, so investigate current incidents in Run history or Monitor.
Which tool shows who changed a flow?
Purview audit logs cover creation, edits, deletion and permission changes. They do not show runtime executions.
What should an operator see?
Operators can receive Dataverse run metadata, but detailed action inputs, outputs, expressions, retries and trigger payloads require additional runtime permissions.
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