PL-900 Practice Question: Demonstrate the capabilities of Power Automate
An administrator manages a Power Automate cloud flow that uses the SharePoint 'When an item is created' trigger. The flow occasionally processes the same item twice, creating duplicate records in a downstream system. The administrator wants to prevent duplicate processing without changing the trigger. What should the administrator configure?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is assuming that concurrency control or split-on settings prevent duplicate processing, when they actually govern parallel execution rather than record-level duplication.
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
✓
Use a unique identifier from the item as an idempotency key and check it against a Dataverse table or SharePoint list before creating the downstream record.
Duplicate processing occurs when the same source record is delivered to the flow more than once, which can happen with retries or trigger polling behavior. The reliable fix is to make the downstream write idempotent by recording a unique key and checking it before writing. This preserves the existing trigger and prevents duplicate records regardless of how many times the item is seen.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Use a unique identifier from the item as an idempotency key and check it against a Dataverse table or SharePoint list before creating the downstream record.
Why this is correct
Storing the item's unique identifier and checking it before the create step makes the flow idempotent. If the same item is delivered again, the check finds the existing key and skips creation, preventing duplicates. This directly targets the root cause without altering the trigger, which matches the administrator's constraint.
- ✗
Configure the trigger's split-on setting to off and set a trigger condition on the item ID.
Why it's wrong here
Turning off split-on changes how array payloads are expanded into separate runs, and a trigger condition on the item ID would either allow all items or block all items depending on the expression. Neither setting records prior processing, so duplicates caused by retries or re-delivery would still occur.
- ✗
Enable concurrency control on the trigger and set the degree of parallelism to 1.
Why it's wrong here
Concurrency control limits how many runs execute in parallel, but it does not prevent the same item from being picked up by two separate runs. Duplicate processing here is caused by the same item being returned more than once, so constraining parallelism does not address the root cause and may even slow legitimate throughput.
- ✗
Add a 'Get item' action and check whether the item already exists before creating the downstream record.
Why it's wrong here
'Get item' retrieves the source item again but does not track whether the flow already processed it. Without a stored marker or idempotency key, the flow cannot distinguish a first run from a retry, so this check would still allow duplicates to be created in the downstream system.
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Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Microsoft exam blueprint
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