SharePoint list triggers still fire more often than most flows expect
Reviewed by Helen Jones
Microsoft’s SharePoint Online connector documentation remains the main reference for how Power Automate talks to lists and libraries. It covers triggers such as when an item is created and when an item is created or modified, plus actions for items, files, and lists. The docs note that modifications, permissions, and column behaviour affect when a flow runs. In practice that means a created-or-modified trigger can run on system updates, several field writes, or permission changes, not only on the one business edit the maker had in mind. Trigger filters and conditions have to be designed on purpose. List settings such as versioning, concurrent edits, and required fields are easy to miss in the designer, and those gaps show up later as duplicate notifications or repeated actions.
For many internal processes, a SharePoint list is the whole database. Makers often pick “when an item is created or modified,” test one manual edit, and assume the flow only cares about that kind of change. Colleagues then get extra Teams pings, status fields get written twice, or an approval path restarts because the list kept changing under the flow. What the connector model makes clear is that the trigger reports SharePoint activity, not your business meaning. Without a condition that checks the fields or status values you actually care about, every technical update looks like work to do. That is why a flow can pass a demo and still feel unreliable a week later.
Analysis
Treat this as a reliability fix, not a new feature chase. Open each production flow that uses SharePoint “created or modified,” and add one trigger condition or early condition that continues only when the status or columns your process owns actually changed. Then run a real multi-edit test and confirm run history shows one intentional path, not a burst of noise.
Source note
Pulse published by Collab365 Spaces, reviewed by Helen Jones on . Cite as "SharePoint list triggers still fire more often than most flows expect", Collab365 Spaces. 2 sources referenced.