SharePoint 2013 workflows have a way of hanging around. Microsoft has set April 2, 2026 as the date for retiring them in SharePoint Online, and I still regularly come across tenants where they're running. Not only on test sites, either. Some of them sit inside business-critical processes that nobody ever documented properly. The 2010 workflow engine went away years ago, but 2013 workflows are a different story. They can do more, they were used far more widely, and in larger environments they tend to be hard to see. Admins often underestimate how many lists, document libraries and approval chains still depend on them, and they find out when something breaks or when compliance starts asking questions.

The Microsoft 365 Assessment tool finds SharePoint 2013 workflows

The first problem is always visibility. The SharePoint admin center hardly shows 2013 workflows anymore, and the usual PowerShell inventory scripts only give you part of the picture. This is where Microsoft's official Microsoft 365 Assessment tool with its workflow module comes in, and I'd consider it essential. You get it from GitHub, it's easy to keep up to date, and it crawls your entire SharePoint Online environment. You need SharePoint admin rights and some comfort with PowerShell (exporting and working through CSV reports helps too). In my experience it's the only reliable way to check every site for active or orphaned workflows.

The tool runs in stages. It first lists all sites, then looks for workflow definitions and usage, and at the end produces a report for you to go through. The process looks like this:

flowchart TD
    Start["Start assessment"] --> ScanSites["Scan all sites"]
    ScanSites --> DetectWF["Detect 2013 workflows"]
    DetectWF --> Report["Generate report"]
    Report --> Review["Analyse results"]

Figure: How the Microsoft 365 Assessment Tool finds SharePoint 2013 workflows.

When the report comes back, expect to find more legacy workflows than anyone guessed, many of them with no obvious owner and no documentation. From here on it's real work.

Not every workflow deserves a migration

You don't have to replace every SharePoint 2013 workflow one-to-one. Most of the tenants I've looked at have dozens of small flows that piled up over the years, things like notification emails, list item updates and simple approval chains. Plenty of them were hardly ever used, and some no longer serve any purpose. Be strict when you sort through them. Is anyone still using the workflow? Does it have an owner at all? Could something simpler do the job, or could the process go away entirely?

These are the workflows I usually see moved to the top of the migration list:

  • Approvals (leave requests, invoice sign-off, document reviews)
  • Notifications when lists or files change
  • Escalations or reminders for overdue tasks
  • Automated document filing in libraries

A migration is also a good opportunity to clean things up and simplify. For approvals in particular, have a look at the ready-made templates in Power Automate (Power Automate and SharePoint). You rarely need to rebuild a tangled 2013 workflow exactly as it was, and a lot of processes get better when someone takes a fresh look at them.

Power Automate replaces most workflows with standard connectors

For most SharePoint 2013 workflow scenarios, Power Automate is the obvious replacement. The good news for most organisations is about licensing. If your flows stay within Microsoft 365 data (SharePoint, Teams, Outlook and so on), your users' existing licences usually cover the standard connectors, so most migrations don't require an additional Power Automate licence. Premium connectors such as Salesforce, SAP or the on-premises data gateway are different, but classic SharePoint workflows rarely used them.

That doesn't mean every migration is easy. Complex flows with parallel branches, a lot of logic or connections to old on-prem systems can run into Power Automate's limits. For the large majority of M365-centric workflows it works fine, as long as you plan the new flows, test them and document them properly.

Practical tip: Begin with the workflows that users obviously still depend on and that have a business owner you can name. Don't spend migration time on flows nobody understands or needs. Clean those up instead.

If you want a quick look at your environment, the SharePoint Online Management Shell (role: SharePoint Admin) gives you a rough idea of where 2013 workflows are:

Get-SPOSite | ForEach-Object {
  Get-SPOWorkflowDefinition -Site $_.Url | Where-Object { $_.WorkflowType -eq 'SharePoint2013' }
}

It won't replace a full assessment, but it's useful for checking particular sites or libraries.

Workflow owners need to hear from you early

Finding the workflows is only half of it. After that you have to talk to the business. It's unusual for every workflow to still have a clear owner, and often the person who built it has left the company. What I recommend is a summary of all workflows you found, grouped by the business area they affect, and then an open question about which ones are still needed. Being transparent like this often turns up chances to clean up or modernise processes before anyone rebuilds a single flow. For critical processes, tell people about the retirement and the migration timeline well in advance. Don't leave it until March 2026. The earlier you start, the lower the risk for users who depend on that one workflow they forgot to tell you about.

If you can, put a process in place so nobody creates new SharePoint 2013 workflows over the next few months (nobody is actively promoting them, but old habits come back more often than you'd think).

The retirement gives you a reason to clean up SharePoint

The end of SharePoint 2013 workflows is a good reason to bring some order to your SharePoint Online environment. Treat it as a push to clean up and modernise rather than a box to tick. Microsoft has communicated the retirement clearly (see the announcement), and Power Automate is a current, supported platform that covers most use cases. Migrating takes effort. With the deadline this close, though, each workflow you move is one less legacy risk and gets you closer to a cleaner, more transparent SharePoint environment. If you're interested in SharePoint modernisation more broadly, I've written about SharePoint Advanced Management and Copilot access control.