PL-900 Practice Question: Demonstrate the capabilities of Power Automate
A company has a Power Automate flow that processes incoming emails and creates tasks in Microsoft Planner. The flow includes a 'Parse JSON' action to extract information from the email body. The flow has been working correctly, but after a recent update to the email template, the flow fails with a 'BadRequest' error at the 'Parse JSON' action. What is the most likely cause?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
The email body structure changed and no longer matches the JSON schema
The most likely cause is that the email body structure changed and no longer matches the JSON schema defined in the 'Parse JSON' action. The 'BadRequest' error indicates that the input provided to the action is not in the expected format, which would happen if the email template was updated. Option A is incorrect because expired credentials would cause an authentication error (e.g., 'Unauthorized'). Option C is incorrect because lack of permissions would result in a 'Forbidden' or 'Unauthorized' error. Option D is incorrect because Planner API unavailability would cause errors at the task creation step, not at the parse step.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The email connection credentials have expired
Why it's wrong here
Expired credentials produce an authentication or 401 error at the connection, not a BadRequest from Parse JSON. Credentials govern access to the mailbox, not schema validation. This would be correct if the flow failed before reaching Parse JSON, when retrieving the email itself.
- ✓
The email body structure changed and no longer matches the JSON schema
Why this is correct
Parse JSON validates incoming content against a defined schema. When the updated email template altered the body's structure, the payload no longer conformed to that schema, so the action rejected it with a BadRequest error rather than parsing the fields.
- ✗
The flow does not have permission to read emails
Why it's wrong here
A BadRequest at Parse JSON means the action's schema no longer matches the email body, not an authorisation failure; permission errors surface as 401/403 at the trigger or Outlook action. Read-emails permission is genuinely required when a flow must retrieve messages from a mailbox it has not yet been granted access to.
- ✗
The Microsoft Planner API is unavailable
Why it's wrong here
Planner unavailability would break the create-task action downstream, not Parse JSON, which runs before Planner is called and fails on schema mismatch. Checking Planner service health is the right step when task creation itself returns 5xx errors after parsing succeeds.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PL-900 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the PL-900 exam.