iHatePowerAutomate.com

"Low-Code" They Said. "It'll Be Easy" They Said.

The unofficial community hub for everyone who's ever screamed at their monitor because a trigger didn't fire, an expression threw a cryptic error, or the UI decided to have an existential crisis. You're not alone.

∞
Hours Lost to Debugging
1000+
Connectors (Half Broken)
5-15 min
Trigger Delay "By Design"
$15/mo
For "Premium" Frustration

The Hall of Shame: Top Unsolved Issues

⏰Triggers That Don't Trigger

SharePoint triggers silently fail on subfolders. 'When an item is created or modified' doesn't fire until you manually save the flow. Triggers just... stop. No warning. No error. Nothing.

CRITICAL

🎨The New Designer Disaster

"The new Power Automate designer is a complete failure for beginner onboarding. It breaks the most fundamental low-code promise: that users can build flows without writing expressions." — Actual Microsoft Q&A Post

CRITICAL

😵Expression Editor From Hell

Click into a Condition field? Expression mode locks in. No undo. No reset. Dynamic content panel doesn't load. The tiny textbox doesn't show your full expression. One typo = start over.

CRITICAL

📊Conditions Don't Show Inputs

Your flow fails. You check the logs. The condition returned false. What were the inputs? A mystery! "Gee, that's useful, thank you." Now add a Compose action and re-run.

HIGH

🔗Connections Randomly Break

Working flow yesterday. 'There is a problem with the flow's trigger' today. Password didn't change. Nothing changed. Microsoft just felt like ruining your automation.

HIGH

🔄No Undo Button

2026 and there's no undo in the new UI. Delete an action by accident? Too bad. Mess up a configuration? Start over. Basic software feature missing.

HIGH

🐌Throttling & Delays

Free tier: 15-minute polling. Office 365: 5 minutes. Premium: 1 minute. Users report 6+ HOUR delays even on paid plans. "It's a feature, not a bug."

HIGH

📁SharePoint File Lock Nightmare

"If a file has been opened by a user recently on SharePoint, Power Automate can't move the file because it will say the file is locked. Even the next day." Still unfixed.

MEDIUM

📋Switch Copy-Paste Broken

You can paste INTO a Switch from outside. You can paste FROM a Switch to outside. You cannot paste INSIDE a Switch between branches. Why? Nobody knows.

MEDIUM

🔢Auto Apply-to-Each Insanity

Write an expression. Power Automate decides it's an array. Auto-wraps it in Apply to Each. It's not an array. You can't remove it. Everything breaks.

MEDIUM

📈Power BI Data Caching Issues

Since October 2025, flows fail to pull updated data from Power BI. Query caching now enabled by default means DAX queries return stale cached results instead of live data.

CRITICAL

🔐Authentication Certificate Expiry

Flow triggers and actions fail if not updated for 6 months due to expired authentication certificates. No warning, no notification. Just silent failure.

HIGH

Community Rage: Real Quotes from Real Sufferers

“Power Automate is the worst crap I have ever used. And the Copilot is so bad, it can't set up the actions correctly. If you try to look up an action, it's not sorted. Often when you add an action, it doesn't show up in the flow.”

— DevHut.net Review, October 2025

“I have no idea how you dare to suggest that this whole PowerApps / Flows / SharePoint business is in any way user friendly enough for any user to use. I am a database developer for a living, and I can't get any of it to work. It's a complete and utter joke.”

— Power Platform Community Forum

“Posting to the forums for Excel or Power Automate is like shouting into the void, as no one from Microsoft ever responds there.”

— Microsoft Q&A Trainer Complaint

“This is one reason I feel that Power Automate is a substandard development platform—more brittle than the old GW-BASIC days, and that's saying something.”

— Bullseye Consulting

“Getting the error message is anything but simple. I created a Chrome/Edge extension to make it easier called Power DevBox Exception. The honest truth is it probably should be easier, and I hope the Power Automate team focus on this.”

— Microsoft MVP, DEV Community

“If you're used to the rich, detailed support ecosystems of platforms like Access, Excel or PHP, Power Automate's help system might feel like wandering a desert with a broken GPS.”

— DevHut.net

“Desktop flows are particularly prone to breaking, often due to updates in operating systems or applications that alter UI elements. Users have reported flows that worked perfectly suddenly encountering errors, with configurations inexplicably changing.”

— Toolstac.com Real-World Evaluation, 2025

“The platform's 'honeymoon period' can quickly give way to difficulties. This unreliability can lead to users abandoning the platform entirely.”

— Industry Review, 2025

The Error Message Museum

Cryptic, unhelpful, and eternally frustrating. Collect them all!

The template language expression 'body('Parse_Approvers')['ApprovalGroup/Value'][0]['FirstApprover']['Email']' cannot be evaluated because property '0' cannot be selected. Property selection is not supported on values of type 'String'.
Unable to process template language expressions in action 'Compose' inputs at line '1' and column '6309'
The input parameter(s) of operation 'Apply_to_each' contains invalid expression(s). Fix invalid expression(s) for the input parameter(s) of operation 'Apply_to_each'.

(Which expression? Where? Good luck!)

There is a problem with the flow's trigger. Fix the trigger.

(Fix what exactly? The error provides no details.)

Sorry, there's been a disconnect!

(Ah yes, the classic. Works for some users. Not for others. No explanation.)

The workflow with 'Response' action type should not have triggers with 'splitOn' property defined
Flow run timed out. Please try again.

(Spoiler: The flow is still running. The UI just gave up.)

InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions for action 'Get_items' at line '1' and column '1749': 'The template language function 'items' expects its parameter to be a string. The provided value is of type 'Null'.'

(Thanks for the helpful line number of '1'...)

The Infamous Five: Worst Design Decisions

1. The Clunky User Interface

Can only view one action at a time in the new designer. No zoom overview. Cluttered with Copilot taking up screen real estate. Moving actions around is a nightmare. The old designer was better, but Microsoft is sunsetting it anyway.

2. Expression Syntax Nightmare

Want to get a value? Hope you memorized the difference between outputs(), body(), items(), triggerBody(), and triggerOutputs(). Don't forget the question marks: outputs('Action')?['body']?['value']. One wrong bracket and everything fails with a useless error.

3. JSON Everywhere

Power Automate forces you to understand JSON deeply. Parse JSON actions. Schema generation. Drilling into nested objects. For a "no-code" platform, you sure need to write a lot of code-like expressions to handle data.

4. Everything Takes Longer Than Expected

Simple task? 30 minutes. Medium task? 4 hours. Complex task? Abandon all hope. The documentation is scattered, incomplete, and often outdated. The help chatbot gives 404 links.

5. You Cannot Disable Actions

Want to temporarily skip an action during testing? Too bad. Your only options: delete it (and lose configuration), or wrap it in a condition that's always false. Every other workflow tool has this feature. Power Automate doesn't.

Premium Pain: Paying For Problems

🔒Premium Connectors Lock Basic Features

Want to use HTTP requests? Premium. Custom connectors? Premium. On-premises data gateway? Premium. The free tier is a demo, not a product.

HIGH

🎫License Confusion

Per user? Per flow? Microsoft 365? Dynamics 365? Power Apps? Each comes with different Power Automate limits that Microsoft changes periodically. Good luck figuring out what you actually have.

HIGH

⚡Throttling Doesn't Disappear

Even premium plans have API limits. Hit them and your flows silently fail or queue indefinitely. The limits aren't clearly documented and vary by connector.

HIGH

Where Fellow Sufferers Gather

Official Forums (Good Luck Getting Answers)

Status & Outage Tracking

Blogs Documenting The Pain

Troubleshooting Guides (You'll Need These)

Reviews & Comparisons

Survival Tips From The Trenches

💾Save Obsessively

Save after every single change. Power Automate loves to lose your work. The error messages about what broke are vague, so save frequently to narrow down which change caused the issue.

🔍Use Compose Actions Everywhere

Add Compose actions before complex steps to see what data you're actually working with. It's the only reliable debugging method since the run history hides inputs.

❓Learn the ?[] Notation

Using outputs('Action')?['value'] with the question mark prevents crashes when properties are missing. Without it, one null value kills your entire flow.

🔌Turn Off & On Again

Seriously. When triggers stop firing, turn the flow off, wait, turn it back on. Sometimes delete and re-add the trigger. It's ridiculous, but it works.

📦Export Your Flows

Export flows as ZIP backups regularly. You can edit the underlying JSON if the UI breaks, and you'll have a restore point when Microsoft pushes a breaking update.

🛡️Implement Try-Catch Patterns

Use Scope blocks as 'Try' and 'Catch' containers. Configure 'Run After' settings to handle failures gracefully. Otherwise, one error kills everything with no notification.

Exit Strategies: Alternatives to Consider

When you've finally had enough:

  • Zapier — More intuitive UI, better error messages, but expensive at scale
  • Make (formerly Integromat) — Visual workflow builder, more flexibility, better pricing
  • n8n — Open source, self-hostable, full control
  • UiPath — For serious RPA needs, actual enterprise support
  • Tray.io — Enterprise-grade, complex workflows, real customer support
  • Workato — IT-friendly, good governance, steep learning curve
  • Pipedream — Developer-friendly, code-first approach, generous free tier
  • Activepieces — Open source alternative, self-host or cloud, growing fast