How to Export & Import Power Automate flows

Deploying artifacts from one environment to another is an integral part of application life cycle management. If the development is carried out in solutions (which is the recommended way) all the flows and apps can be exported and imported in one installment.

In some cases like Sharepoint form customization, the app will be created in the default environment and for the small task, the workflows might be created outside solutions, in such scenarios the flows or apps can be exported individually and can be imported to other environments.

While importing the artifacts to the production environment, it is advisable to log in with “Service Account”. Because all the connections will be created as signed-in user permissions.

Moving the flows in the same environment

In some organizations, all the activities will happen in the same environment. For Eg, if the flow is mapped with SharePoint then moving to prod means, reconfiguring the actions to the production SharePoint site.

All the dev site constants like site URL, list should be declared in variables as follows,

Select the “Save As” link and change the workflow name,

Open the workflow, update the site URL, list name and turn on the workflow,

Moving the flows in the other environment – Create as New

Select the export link on the workflow, it will show two options once you click the spanner icon,

1. Create as New – If the flow is going to be deployed freshly in the new environment.
2. Update – If the flow is already available in the new environment.

We are going to export as “Create as New”

Navigate to the other environment and select Import,

Select the setup type and update the connection account.

Open the workflow and update the variables and test the workflow,

Moving the flows in the other environment – Update

Now to demonstrate the “Update” setup, a new action is added to the workflow in the dev environment,

Export the flow in the “Update” setup,

Import the Zip file in the QA environment and select the setup as “Update” and update the connections.

After deployment, the configurations which we have made will be reverted to the dev environment configurations and it has to be changed. The new action is added.

The above approach seems good for one or two workflows, If there are more workflows it is recommended to create inside the solutions.

Kindly refer to the other posts related to deployment, deploying app, deploying solutions.

Please post your queries in the comment section. Happy Building 🙂