PL-900 Practice Question: Demonstrate the capabilities of Power Automate
A Power Automate cloud flow is used to process invoices. It uses an 'Apply to each' action to iterate over line items from a SharePoint list. The flow is taking a long time to complete. Which action should you use to run multiple iterations in parallel and reduce the total run time?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is thinking that any loop-related action can improve speed; only the concurrency setting on 'Apply to each' actually parallelizes iterations.
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
✓
Enable concurrency control on the 'Apply to each' action
Concurrency control on the 'Apply to each' action allows multiple iterations to execute at the same time. When line items are independent and the downstream actions can handle parallel calls, enabling concurrency with an appropriate degree of parallelism significantly shortens the flow's overall run time compared to sequential processing.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Change the trigger to a Recurrence trigger
Why it's wrong here
Switching to a Recurrence trigger changes when the flow starts, not how fast the loop inside it runs. The bottleneck is the sequential processing of line items, which a different trigger does not address. This option would alter the schedule but leave the slow iteration behavior unchanged.
- ✗
Add a 'Delay' action inside the loop
Why it's wrong here
A Delay action pauses execution for a specified duration, which increases the total run time rather than reducing it. It is useful for rate-limiting or waiting on external systems, but it does nothing to parallelize iterations. In this scenario it would make the slow flow even slower.
- ✗
Use a 'Scope' action around the loop
Why it's wrong here
A Scope action groups actions for error handling and lets you configure 'run after' behavior, but it does not change how iterations execute. Wrapping the loop in a Scope will not make it run faster or in parallel. It is a control-flow construct, not a performance feature.
- ✓
Enable concurrency control on the 'Apply to each' action
Why this is correct
The 'Apply to each' action has a concurrency control setting that allows multiple iterations to run simultaneously. By turning it on and setting a degree of parallelism, the flow can process several line items at once instead of one at a time, which reduces total duration when iterations are independent. This is the intended feature for speeding up loops.
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Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Microsoft exam blueprint
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