Azure Resource Nightly Start/Stop Scheduler

Overview

This solution cuts cloud spend on idle non-production environments using Azure Resource Manager (ARM). It ships as two scheduled cloud flows in one solution: an evening stop flow that deallocates tagged non-prod VMs at end of day, and a morning start flow that powers them back on before the workday. Both skip anything carrying the keep-on opt-out tag and post a Teams + email summary of what was acted on, with an estimated-savings figure.

Why it matters: Dev/test VMs left running overnight and on weekends waste real money. Tag-driven auto start/stop captures that saving on a schedule, with an auditable summary, without anyone remembering to shut things down.

> Connector-first note: Azure Resource Manager has no Power Automate connector in this tenant, so ARM calls use the built-in HTTP action with `ActiveDirectoryOAuth` (a service principal) — the documented FlowLibs ARM pattern. Teams and Outlook use their standard connectors. No Dataverse table is required.

Use Case

An IT/platform team wants non-prod compute powered down outside working hours and back up before the team starts, with cost visibility and a safe opt-out tag. Resources are selected by an environment=dev tag and protected by a keep-on=true tag.

Flow Architecture

Environment Variables

Connectors & Connections

Connector	API name	Actions used
Microsoft Teams	shared_teams	PostMessageToConversation
Office 365 Outlook	shared_office365	SendEmailV2

Note — All connections are referenced as solution connection references; the flow is portable between environments as long as a connection is mapped at import time.

Customization Guide

Almost every realistic variant of this flow can be implemented by changing environment variable values. A few cases require small edits inside the flow definition — those are called out explicitly below.

Per-team windows

Clone the flow pair per team tag and time zone for staggered start/stop schedules.

Other resource types

Extend the ARM calls to scale down AKS node pools, pause Azure SQL databases, or stop App Service plans (different provider paths + power operations).

Holiday calendar

Add a lookup that skips the run on company holidays.

Real cost data

Replace the flat hourly-cost estimate with a Cost Management query for actual rates per VM SKU.

Weekend mode

Add a day-of-week condition to keep resources off across weekends.

Key Expressions

The flow is intentionally light on Power Fx / WDL gymnastics — the heaviest expressions are the branch-name concatenation and the approval outcome check. They are listed below in the order they appear in the flow.

@first(split(parameters('EnvVar_EnvironmentTag'),'=')) and @last(split(parameters('EnvVar_EnvironmentTag'),'='))

@and(equals(coalesce(item()?['tags']?[variables('varEnvTagName')],''), variables('varEnvTagValue')), not(equals(toLower(coalesce(item()?['tags']?[variables('varKeepOnName')],'')), toLower(variables('varKeepOnValue')))))

@{concat(variables('varArmBase'),'/subscriptions/',variables('varSubscriptionId'),'/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines?api-version=',variables('varComputeApiVersion'))}

@{concat(variables('varArmBase'),items('Apply_To_Each_Target_VM')?['id'],'/',variables('varPowerAction'),'?api-version=',variables('varComputeApiVersion'))}

@{concat(variables('varArmBase'),'/')}

@mul(mul(length(body('Filter_Target_VMs')),float(variables('varHourlyCost'))),float(variables('varOffHours')))

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