When you are using Power Automate for some time, you will reach at point where you want to reuse a flow. Especially coming from programming background, the reuse of flow comes naturally to your mind. It is like a function or method call.

Nevertheless it is not that intuitive to reuse flows in Power Automate. This guide shows you click by click how to create a parent flow with a Power Automate child flow.

Parent and child flow setup

In case you just want to know what you have to care about, here it is:

You need a solution: Parent and child flow need to be in the same solution
Parent flow: Use ‘Run a Child Flow‘ to trigger the child flow
Child flow: Use ‘Respond to a PowerApp or flow‘ to pass data to the parent flow

Step by step: How to use Power Automate child flows

Understand everything it takes to reuse a flow. This very simple example shows you the necessary steps without adding unnecessary complexity.

You will learn how to:

Create a solution

Pass data from the parent flow to the child flow
Pass data from the child flow to the parent flow

This guide shows you exactly how to create a solution, a child flow and a parent flow. The parent flow passes a number to the child flow. The child flow duplicates this number by 2 and passes the result to the parent flow.

Create a new solution

Click ‘New Solution’
Give your solution a name and select a publisher

Create your solution
Click on your solution

Select your solution

Add a flow to your solution

New Instant Flow
Create the child flow

Create flow
Add an input

Click on ‘Add an input’

Select type number for your input

Click on Number
Add a new step

Click on ‘New step’
Add ‘Respond to a PowerApp or flow’ operation

Respond to a PowerApp or flow

Add an output

Add an output
Select type Number

Click on Number
Enter expression: mul(triggerBody()[‘number’],2)

Set expression for output

Save flow

Click save
Go back

Go back
Add another flow

Create flow

Add an input

Add an imput
Select type Number

Click on Number
Select operation ‘Run a child flow’

Run a Child Flow

Select your child flow

Child flow selection in Run a Child Flow
Pass the number of your trigger to the child flow

Set input of Run a Child flow
Save flow

Click ‘Save’