Tracking Down Sprawl in Power Automate Flows

A single Power Automate flow is easy to keep track of. After a year of active use, the reality in most companies looks different: dozens to hundreds of flows are spread across multiple environments, created by different business units, often without any central overview of who owns them, whether they're still running, or how often they fail. This sprawl rarely results from carelessness. It's the flip side of exactly what makes Power Automate so successful: anyone with the right license can build their own automations, without ever involving the IT department.

Before you set up governance rules or switch off unused flows, you first need a reliable inventory. Microsoft offers two complementary tools for this: the native inventory feature in the Power Platform Admin Center and, for deeper analysis, the CoE Starter Kit. Just as with human employees, the same applies to digital ones: without an overview of who is responsible for what and who is still actively working, you don't really have control, you're just hoping nothing goes wrong. This article shows how to use both approaches to make your flow landscape visible again.

Why the Flow Landscape Grows Unnoticed

Power Automate deliberately lowers the barrier to entry for automation so far that even business users without a development background can become productive. That's the core of the platform's success, but it has a downside: flows are created in different environments, with different naming conventions, often as an individual's personal project. If someone leaves the company or changes department, the flow often just keeps sitting there, technically active but with no one maintaining it or even still aware of it. Without a central view across all environments in a tenant, this state is hard to recognize, let alone fix systematically.

Using the Inventory Feature in the Power Platform Admin Center

The most important starting point is the Power Platform inventory in the Admin Center. It gives tenant administrators a unified view of all agents, apps, and flows created across the entire organization on the Power Platform, including filtering, search, and sorting functions. Specifically, it helps with tasks such as:

• Identify experts: You immediately see who is creating the most resources and can specifically involve these people in governance decisions.
• Prevent orphaned resources: You find flows and apps whose owners have left the company before they turn into an operational risk.
• Enforce compliance: Resources created in unapproved regions can be filtered out specifically.
• Prioritize governance: You can see at a glance which environments have particularly many resources and tackle those first.

The inventory can be reached via Manage > Inventory for the tenant-wide view, or via Manage > Power Automate > Flow Inventory specifically for cloud flows. According to Microsoft, newly created, changed, or deleted resources appear within about 15 minutes, which makes the inventory noticeably more up to date than the classic analytics reports. Access requires a tenant-wide administrator role, specifically Power Platform Administrator or Dynamics 365 Administrator; without one of these roles, the inventory remains inaccessible.

Analyzing Usage Data and Errors

Where the inventory shows *what* exists, the Analytics for Power Automate cloud flows show *how* it's being used. In the Admin Center, you'll find six reports under Manage > Power Automate:

• Runs: daily, weekly, and monthly run data for all flows in an environment.
• Usage: which flow types are used how often, including the names of the creators.
• Created: newly created flows with creation date and email address.
• Errors: recurring error types, error counts, and time of the last occurrence.
• Shared: shared flows and usage trends.
• Connectors: call counts per flow and connector, for both standard and custom connectors.

The error report in particular is worth its weight in gold when hunting for sprawl: a flow that has been failing on every run for months and nobody has noticed is a classic symptom of uncontrolled growth. There are two limitations you should know about before relying on the numbers. First, the reports refresh only about every 24 hours; they don't provide real-time data. Second, they currently don't include flows created as part of a solution; for a complete picture, you also need to check these flows via the inventory or directly within the respective solution.

The CoE Starter Kit: When the Extra Effort Still Pays Off

For organizations that invested before the native inventory feature was introduced, the CoE Starter Kit remains in use. Important for context: Microsoft now explicitly points out that the kit is no longer being actively developed; its core functions have become part of the Power Platform Admin Center. The transition guide maps the former CoE functionality to today's Admin Center building blocks:

• The former CoE inventory now corresponds to the inventory environment.
• The CoE usage evaluation corresponds to the usage experience in the Admin Center.
• CoE monitoring corresponds to the monitoring environment for heavily used resources.
• Recommendations and policy enforcement correspond to the actions (Power Platform Advisor).

For new governance projects, it's therefore worth starting with the native Admin Center features first, they're fully supported and actively developed. The CoE Starter Kit still makes sense where it closes gaps that managed environments don't yet cover, such as bulk updates of permissions, structured cleanup of orphaned resources via an approval process, surveys of the maker community, or calculating the ROI of individual automation ideas. If you already use the kit, you don't need to replace it right away, but you should be aware that reported issues are no longer reviewed or fixed.

Cleaning Up Orphaned and Unused Flows

Once you've identified the conspicuous flows via inventory and analytics, the actual cleanup step follows directly in the Admin Center. According to Microsoft's guide on managing Power Automate flows, here's how to proceed:

1. In the Power Platform Admin Center, sign in and open Manage > Environments.

2. Select the affected environment.

3. In the Resources web part, click Flows.

4. Select the desired flow from the list.

5. Use Details to view the owner, connections, and other information.

6. Choose the appropriate action: Share, Turn off, Turn on, or Delete.

For these steps, you need the role Environment Admin, Global Administrator, or Power Platform Administrator. Before deleting, it's almost always worth briefly contacting the listed owner, because, according to Microsoft, the owner column in the inventory currently shows the person who originally created the flow, not necessarily the current person responsible. Deactivating instead of deleting immediately also gives you a safety buffer in case someone comes forward who actually still needs the flow.

Frequently Asked Questions

What permission do I need to see the Power Platform inventory?

You need a tenant-wide administrator role, specifically Power Platform Administrator or Dynamics 365 Administrator. Without one of these roles, the inventory page in the Admin Center remains inaccessible to you, even with environment administrator rights for individual environments.

Do the analytics reports really show all flows?

No, not entirely. According to Microsoft, the analytics reports for runs, usage, and errors currently don't include flows created as part of a solution. For a complete inventory, you should therefore also use the Power Platform inventory, which generally captures all cloud flows in the tenant.

Is the CoE Starter Kit still worth it for a new governance project?

For getting started, it's no longer really the first choice. Microsoft no longer actively develops the kit and no longer reviews reported issues. Instead, start with the native features in the Power Platform Admin Center and only then check whether the CoE Starter Kit still closes real gaps, such as bulk updates of permissions or structured cleanup processes for orphaned resources.

How current is the data in the inventory and analytics?

According to Microsoft, the inventory shows new, changed, or deleted resources within about 15 minutes. The classic analytics reports for runs, usage, and errors, on the other hand, only refresh about every 24 hours; they don't provide real-time data.

Can I delete a flow directly in the Admin Center without opening the flow itself?

Yes. Via Manage > Environments, the relevant environment, the Resources web part, and then Flows, you select the relevant flow and click Delete. This requires the role Environment Admin, Global Administrator, or Power Platform Administrator.