ArcGIS Power Automate Connector with No Option to Set "Search In" Does Not Discover Expected Feature Layer

[CatHeindel]

Hi everyone,

I'm running into an issue with ArcGIS Connector in Power Automate and wanted to see if anyone else is experiencing the same thing.

When setting up a trigger that connects to a feature service, I'm noticing two problems:

1. Not all eligible services are showing up — some feature services that should be available (and are owned by my account) are missing from the list.
2. Services that shouldn’t be eligible are appearing — specifically, services that do not have "Track Changes" enabled are showing up as options for the trigger, even though they shouldn't be valid for that use case.

I'm using ArcGIS Online, and I've confirmed that the missing services are properly configured. Has anyone else seen this behavior? Is this a known issue with the connector or possibly a bug in the latest release?

Any insights or workarounds would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

UPDATE 11/18

For anyone who comes across this post and is experiencing the same issue, ESRI was able to replicate the issue and they are looking into it.

Update 11/20

ESRI created a bug ticket for this issue, but based on @AkshayHarshe response below there may or may not be a bug. Just an opportunity to improve ArcGIS Connectors where specifying search in "My Content" or "My Organization" is not available to select such as the trigger and the connector "Fetch Updates, Changes, and Deletions". For now, the work around to use the feature layer REST service URL did work.

[CatHeindel]

For anyone who comes across this post, ESRI was able to replicate the issue and they are looking into the issue.

[AkshayHarshe]

@CatHeindel Just to clarify, the trigger should show all the feature services your user has access to regardless if they have editing and changes tracking enabled or not. This is by design, as it is expensive for us to filter out services with editing and changes tracking enabled. It will let you select the service but will complain after you save your flow.

Do you have access to more than 1000 feature layers? if so then it might not load all of them in the Power automate dropdown. Start typing the name of the layer in the dropdown and see if it shows up. 

If that doesn't work you can always copy the Feature layer url `featureServiceName/layerID`  and past as a manual input and Power Automate should pick it up. Hope that helps.

[CatHeindel]

@AkshayHarshe. thank you for your reply. I will get back to you if we have over 1000 layers. In regards to your response, the help message in Power Automate is misleading then as it says "Feature layers owned by the user that have changes tracking enabled". this would lead me to believe I should only see feature layers that have tracking changes enabled   I tried typing in the service I was looking for with no luck and no reason it would be unavailable. 

I will try typing the whole url and see the IntelliSense picks up the service. When the intellisense does not pick up the service we have trouble using the Fetch Updates, Changes, and Deletions as the change url is automatically populated.

We have not had this issue before of being to being to use the intellisense to connect to services where the intellisense will not find the service.

[AkshayHarshe]

I see what you mean, The text still holds true and is phrased that way because we used to get many requests asking why the trigger is not working when the layers you select doesn't have those setting enabled. We are limited by power automate dropdown on how long the text can be. For some reason, when the text is longer than the dropdown it doesn't show a tool tip. I will see if we can revise the text.

Unfortunately, how the dropdown renders and searches is completely dependent on Power Automate. Sometimes it take a long time to load too. I will either recommend you to favorite the layer in your Portal and change the search inside Favorites instead o my content. Which is much faster at times if you have lot of items in your content.

If you paste the layer up to the layer id it should pick it up, give it a second to populate or try saving the flow.

[AkshayHarshe]

I was thinking of other actions where that option is available. I agree, the Fetch action could use the filter dropdown from where to choose a layer from. That said, it will only be useful for an admin user who can create webhooks on feature layers shared to the organization. For others users webhooks can only be created on feature layers you own or have access to.  Are you using an admin user?

Update: I tested this and yes the dropdown lists all the layers in the organization and if your organization has more than 1k layers rest of the layers will not show up in the list. I agree that we need a filter there to filter content from My Conent. I will add it to our next release.

[CatHeindel]

@AkshayHarshe The triggers (trigger flow upon update, trigger flow upon create, ect.) need it too. 

[CatHeindel · Accepted solution]

@AkshayHarshe Your work around to use the feature layer REST URL did work. The account I use to sign into the ArcGIS Connector is an admin and the organization I log into does have over 1000 feature layers. Still odd even typing in the layer name does not find the service or layer I was after.

[AkshayHarshe]

Yes, all the triggers and the Fetch updates changes action can use the filter. It makes sense then that not all the layers are visible or searchable as there is a limit of 1000 items for the dropdown.  I will need to confirm with a dev but, the Power Automate dropdown loads once you click on it and searches only within the results loaded in the UI and cannot dynamically send "/search" calls as you type the layer name, like you do in ArcGIS.

In any of the actions if you can't find your feature layer even if it has a filter (your "My Content" could still have more than 1k layers) it is a good idea to copy and paste the layer URL. Loading that many items in the dropdown significantly impacts the performance. You will see the performance drop in geocoding action while selecting the spatial reference. 

We will discuss the best solution in these actions and implement that. Again thanks for letting us know.