Clarified Rules Add to Power Automate Licensing Uncertainty

• Power Automate licensing rules have been quietly clarified and tightened.
• Organizations should review their usage to ensure that they comply.
• The set of users who need Power Automate licenses may be impossible to determine.

The licensing rules governing Power Automate usage, as defined in the official monthly Product Terms document, have been vague and are not properly defined, leaving some customers at risk for license under-purchase. In May 2022, Microsoft unofficially clarified some Power Automate rules, expanding which users in an organization need a Power Automate license. The rules will adversely affect many existing deployments. However, the rules are still ambiguous, and determining exactly how many licenses an organization needs is nearly impossible, as the rules are susceptible to frequent changes.

Power Automate Defined

Power Automate is a graphical workflow automation engine that runs in Azure and shares technology with the Azure Logic Apps service. Power Automate originally benefited knowledgeable subject matter expert users in creating lightweight workflows (called “flows”) in Dynamics 365, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft 365 Apps, but its scope has expanded to include more general application integration, machine learning, and unattended process automation.