AI automation handover: check three owners before a contractor leaves
Check who owns the flow, its connections and its license and request limits, then run one item on your own connections.
Key points
- List owners of flows, email and AI links
- Check automatic flows on the new license
- Run one item, then remove the contractor
Overview diagram in preparation
Contents
Changing the owner leaves the old connections in place
A&A perspective
Taking over an automation means receiving a flow that a contractor built and runs, in a state where it keeps running under an in-house person's account. One flow is a series of steps, such as receiving an email, summarizing it with AI and writing to a table.
A&A perspective
Rewriting the owner field of a flow to an in-house person does not get you to that state. The connections a flow uses to reach email and storage may remain tied to the account of the person who created them.
From the sources
Microsoft's documentation describes connections used in Power Automate, Microsoft's automation service, and others as the stored sign-in credentials for accessing the service a flow connects to.
From the sources
It also says the owner can be changed to another person after the person who created the connections has made the flow able to run.
From the sources
Another page, on sharing a flow, says that even a co-owner of a flow cannot modify the sign-in credentials of a connection that another owner created.
From the sources
If the person who created a flow leaves the organization, the flow keeps running as long as a valid owner remains. The documentation adds that steps using the leaving person's connections can fail.
A&A perspective
Automate & Augment (A&A), which writes this article, reads from this that the owner of a flow and the owner of its connections are managed separately.
A&A perspective
Even if nothing happens on the day the owner is changed, steps that use the contractor's connections may fail on the day the contractor's account is stopped.
Hypothetical example
As an example, consider a small home builder with 4 staff. A contractor built 2 flows. One runs when an inquiry email arrives: AI summarizes it and adds 1 row to a project table.
Hypothetical example
The other moves the invoice PDFs that arrived to a shared storage location every morning and renames them. The contract with the contractor ends at the end of the month.
A&A perspective
There are three owners to check: the owner of the flow, the owner of the connections, and the owner of the license and request limits. Before taking over, write down for each flow which steps connect to what, and whose account created each connection.
A&A perspective
That is one row per destination: the email inbox, the AI call, the project table and the storage location. This list becomes the basis of the table that records, flow by flow, what was received in the handover (the handover sheet).
Scheduled and automated flows run on the owner's license
A&A perspective
License and request limits means the license (the contract for using the automation service) and the cap on how many operations within flows can be used. When you change the owner, which license and request limits each flow runs on changes as well.
A&A perspective
Automatic flows here means both flows that run at a set time and flows that start from an event such as an email arriving. They are distinguished from flows that a person starts, for example with a button.
From the sources
According to the documentation, the owner can be changed in place only for flows inside a solution, a container that manages flows together. In some environments, a flow outside a solution can first be added to one and then have its owner changed. Where that is not possible, the flow is rebuilt as a new flow, for example by export and import.
From the sources
For an automatic flow inside a solution, changing the owner makes it run under the new owner's license and what Microsoft calls request limits.
From the sources
It says the switch can take up to 7 days, and that editing and saving the flow again makes it use the new owner's license right away. A flow that a person starts, for example with a button, runs under the license of the person who starts it.
From the sources
If you move a flow that uses a paid feature to someone who does not hold that license, a warning appears. The move is allowed and the flow runs for 30 days; the documentation says the flow stops if no license is provided in that time.
A&A perspective
A&A reads this as follows: even if a flow is running on the day the owner is changed, the check of license and request limits is not yet done.
A&A perspective
That is because the switch can take days and, with a missing license, the flow stops only after 30 days, so it is easy to miss until then. Before taking over, check whether the new owner's contract covers the features the flow uses.
Hypothetical example
In the home builder example, the inquiry flow runs automatically when an email arrives, and the invoice flow runs on a schedule every morning. If both are in a solution, changing the owner to an in-house person makes them run on that person's license and request limits.
A&A perspective
The same question applies to the AI call. If the summary runs on an API key for an AI service that the contractor issued under its own contract, the charges and limits stay attached to the contractor's contract.
A&A perspective
This is not in the documentation; it is an addition by A&A. A&A suggests reissuing the API key under your own contract and recording it in the "AI API key and its license and request limits" row of the handover sheet.
| What to check | What it means for the inquiry flow | Sign that it is done |
|---|---|---|
| Owner of the flow | Move from the contractor to an in-house staff member | The staff member is an owner and the contractor is removed |
| Email connection | Created under the contractor's account | Recreated under the in-house staff member's account |
| Project table connection | Created under the contractor's account | Recreated under the in-house staff member's account |
| Automation service license and request limits | Runs automatically when an email arrives, so it runs on the owner's license and request limits | Confirmed that the in-house staff member's contract covers the features used, and saved the flow again |
| AI API key and its license and request limits | An API key issued under the contractor's contract | An API key reissued under the in-house contract |
| 1 item after handover | 1 test inquiry email | The run history and the project table show 1 row |
Run one item on your own connections, then remove the contractor
A&A perspective
Handover ends when you confirm from the run history that 1 item has passed through an in-house person's connections. Removing the contractor as an owner comes after that.
From the sources
According to the documentation, when you change the owner of a flow inside a solution, the original owner and the new owner become co-owners. The new owner gets access to the run history and to the settings that tell each step which connection to use.
From the sources
The page on sharing flows says that when a flow uses the connection of an owner who is being removed, you change that connection to someone else's so that the flow keeps running.
From the sources
The same page says that when you send a copy of a flow, connections are not shared.
A&A perspective
A&A takes this to mean that even after the owner is changed, the contractor is still inside the flow.
A&A perspective
If you recreate the contractor's connections as in-house connections and remove the contractor as a co-owner only after seeing a record of 1 item passing through, you can let go after confirming that the flow works without relying on its predecessor.
A&A perspective
When a flow is rebuilt from a copy, the connections are created under in-house accounts from the start. So that the same email is not handled by two flows, the original flow is turned off at the moment the copy is switched on, with the contractor present, and 1 item is run right then.
Hypothetical example
In the home builder example, an in-house staff member sends 1 test inquiry email. They check in both the run history and the table whether the AI summary added 1 row to the project table.
Hypothetical example
For the invoice flow, they wait for the next morning's scheduled run and check whether the PDF moved to the storage location.
A&A perspective
You do not stop a connection that is running in production on purpose to test it. You check with 1 test item, or with 1 real item while the contractor is present. The result is recorded on the handover sheet for each flow.
A&A perspective
The handover sheet has a row for the flow's owner, a row for each destination, a row for the license and request limits and a row for the final item, so it has more rows than the three owners. The table below is a hypothetical handover sheet for the inquiry flow, written by A&A.
Summary
A&A perspective
Even after you change the owner of a flow, the connections to email and storage may remain tied to the account of the person who created them. For each flow, write down the flow's owner and the owner of its connections.
A&A perspective
Automatic flows run on the owner's license and request limits. Check the new owner's license and the contract for the AI API key.
A&A perspective
Remove the contractor as an owner after you see a record of 1 item passing through an in-house person's connections.
Handing over AI automation is not finished when the owner field is rewritten. Write down the flow's owner and the connection owner separately, check that automatic flows run on the new owner's license and request limits, and remove the contractor only after seeing a record of 1 item passing through in-house connections.
FAQ
Would it be faster to just receive the contractor's account password?
It is not recommended. The flow would keep running under the contractor's name, and after the contract ends it would be unclear who stops that account and who operated it. In-house staff recreate the connections under their own accounts.
Do the same checks apply to automation tools other than Power Automate?
The three things to check are the same. Which types of flow can change owner and the license terms differ by tool, so check the owner, connection and pricing sections of the documentation for the tool you use.
If the contractor's maintenance contract continues, must we still recreate the connections?
Recreating them is recommended. Even with ongoing maintenance, if the contractor's person in charge changes or the account is stopped, steps that use that person's connections may fail. With the flows running on in-house connections, the maintenance you ask for can be limited to fixing what the flows do.
Sources & editorial note
Primary pages read for this article. Publication dates below belong to the sources; access dates record our research.
- Change the owner of a cloud flow
Microsoft Learn · Updated 2026-09-25; original publication date not stated
Accessed 2026-11-04 - Manage orphaned flows when the owner leaves the organization
Microsoft Learn · Updated 2026-06-15; original publication date not stated
Accessed 2026-11-04 - Use a connection reference in a solution with Microsoft Dataverse
Microsoft Learn · Updated 2026-01-09; original publication date not stated
Accessed 2026-11-04