Thursday, March 27, 2025

How to Increase the speed of Power Automate Flows

Supercharge Your Flows with Concurrency Control!

Are your Power Automate flows taking too long to process, especially when handling large datasets? If you've ever been stuck waiting for an Apply to each loop to finish, this game-changing Concurrency Control feature will revolutionize your workflow execution speed.

 

✨ The Problem: Sequential Processing Slows You Down

By default, loops in Power Automate execute sequentially, meaning each iteration has to wait for the previous one to complete before starting. This can drastically slow down performance when working with:

  • SharePoint Lists
  • Dataverse Records
  • API Calls
  • Bulk Notifications or Approvals

If your loop is processing hundreds or thousands of records, execution can take minutes or even hours!

 

🚀 The Solution: Enable Concurrency Control

By enabling Concurrency Control in Power Automate, you allow multiple iterations of the loop to run simultaneously instead of sequentially. This means:

  • Your workflow executes much faster.
  • You utilize system resources more efficiently.
  • Bulk operations complete in a fraction of the time.

 

🎯 How to Enable Concurrency Control

1.     Open your flow in Power Automate.

2.     Locate the Apply to each action.

3.     Click on the three dots () in the top-right corner.

4.     Select Settings.

5.     Toggle on Concurrency Control.

6.     Adjust the Degree of Parallelism (default is 20, max is 50 for premium users).

 

⏳ When Should You Enable It?

📈 Best Use Cases for Concurrency Control

When execution time needs to be minimized. 

When order does not matter (e.g., bulk updates, notifications, approvals). 

When processing large datasets in SharePoint, Dataverse, or APIs

When integrating with systems that support concurrent requests.

 

❌ When Should You Avoid It?

Scenarios Where Sequential Processing is Required

When actions depend on the previous iteration’s output.

When handling transactions requiring strict order.

When using APIs that don’t support parallel processing.

 

💡 Real-World Example: SharePoint List Updates

Imagine you have a SharePoint list with 10,000 records that need to be updated.

  • Without Concurrency Control: Each update happens one at a time, taking hours.
  • With Concurrency Control: You can process multiple records at once, reducing execution time to just minutes!

 

🎯 Key Takeaway

By enabling Concurrency Control and optimizing the Degree of Parallelism, you can make your Power Automate flows execute 10x faster or more! This is a must-know optimization for anyone working with bulk data processing.

 

👀 Your Turn!

Have you tried Concurrency Control in your Power Automate flows? Share your experiences and let us know how much faster your flows run now! 🚀💪