Automatically re-enable Suspended Power Automate Flows with a Scheduled Flow

In Power Automate, flows that do not run for 30 consecutive days are automatically turned off by the platform. This behavior can unexpectedly disrupt business-critical processes, especially for flows that run monthly, quarterly, or only on specific events.

Imagine a monthly billing flow or compliance report that silently stops working simply because it hasn’t run recently.

To avoid this risk, we can build an administrative automation that automatically detects and re-enables suspended flows.

This article shows how to use Power Automate itself to automatically monitor and re-enable inactive flows.

Objective

Create a daily scheduled cloud flow that:

• Scans environments for suspended flows

• Identifies flows disabled due to inactivity

• Automatically turns them back on

• Prevents business interruptions

Scenario

You maintain several business-critical flows that:

• Run once a month

• Trigger quarterly

• Execute only when rare events occur

Since they don’t run frequently, Power Automate may automatically disable them after 30 days of inactivity, causing:

• Missed reminders

• Delayed approvals

• Broken integrations

• Manual intervention

To prevent this, we build a self-healing automation that keeps these flows active.

Step-by-Step Implementation in Power Automate

Step 1: Create a Scheduled Flow

1. Go to Power Automate.

2. Click Create > Scheduled cloud flow.

3. Enter Flow Name: Auto-Reenable Suspended Flows.

4. Set Recurrence to once per day.

5. Click Create.

Step 2: Recurrence Trigger

Action: Recurrence

Purpose: Defines how often the flow should check for suspended flows.

Configuration
Interval: 1

Frequency: Day

This ensures the flow runs once a day to scan for suspended flows.

Step 3: List Flows as Admin (V2)

Action: List Flows as Admin (V2)

Purpose: Fetch all flows from the selected environment.

Configuration
Environment: xyz (default)

Expand Suspension Info: Yes

Include Soft-Deleted Flows: No

This action retrieves the list of flows with their statuses and suspension information for the specified environment.

Step 4: Filter Array

Action: Filter array

Purpose: Identify only the flows that are currently in a "Suspended" state.

Configuration

From: value (output from previous step)

Condition: item()['properties']['state'] is equal to Suspended

Filters the fetched list and isolates only the suspended flows.

The primary states of flows are as follows, each indicating a different health status for your automation

1. Started (Enabled) : This is the active state. The flow is running, listening for triggers (e.g., email arrival), or executing on a schedule.

2. Stopped (Disabled) : This state indicates that a user (owner or admin) has manually turned off the flow. The flow is inactive. No new runs are initiated.

3. Suspended (Auto-Disabled) : This state is a special type of "stopped" status where Microsoft automatically disables the flow, usually due to errors, policy violations, or inactivity.

State	Who Controls?	Behavior	Cause
Started	User/System	Active	Normal Operation
Stopped	User/Admin	Inactive	Manual turn-off for maintenance
Suspended	System (Microsoft)	Inactive	Errors, Throttling, DLP Violation

Step 5: Apply to Each

Action: Apply to each

Purpose: Iterate over each suspended flow to prepare for re-enablement.

Input: Output of the filtered array (Suspended flows).

Inside the loop:

1. Compose - Flow Display Name
   Action: Compose
   Purpose: Store and optionally log the display name of the flow.
   Expression: items('Apply_to_each')?['properties']?['displayName']

2. Compose - Flow Name
   Action: Compose
   Purpose: Get the internal name (GUID) of the flow needed to perform admin actions.
   Expression: items('Apply_to_each')?['name']

3.Turn On Flow
Action: Turn On Flows

Configuration

• Environment: xyz (default)

• Flow: Value from Compose - Flow Name action.

Output Summary

Example

• Before the flow run - one flow in my current environment was "Suspended".

• After the flow runs:

  • All flows that were suspended are automatically turned back on.

  • This prevents interruptions due to inactivity-based auto-disablement.

  And Status for the flow is "On".

Conclusion

Using Power Automate to re-enable suspended flows helps keep low-frequency automations alive without manual checks. It’s an efficient way to ensure your automations stay reliable, especially for scheduled or rarely triggered workflows.