4 Logic Apps That Save Azure Admins 10 Hours/Week (2025 Automation Guide)

How to Save 10+ Hours Per Week on Azure Operations

Azure admins managing enterprise environments spend 10-15 hours per week on repetitive operational tasks: checking for orphaned disks, monitoring certificate expiration, enforcing tag compliance, and verifying backup success. These tasks are critical but mindless—perfect candidates for automation.

This guide provides 4 production-tested Logic Apps that eliminate these manual operations entirely. Deployed across 44 Azure subscriptions managing 31,000+ resources, these automation workflows deliver measurable time savings and cost recovery:

Unused Resource Cleanup - Identifies orphaned disks, old snapshots, and unattached NICs. Recovered $4,200/month in wasted spend. Time saved: 3 hours/week.

Certificate Expiration Monitor - Daily scans of App Service and Key Vault certificates with 30/15/7-day alerts. Prevented 100% of certificate-related outages. Time saved: 2-4 hours per avoided incident.

Tag Compliance Enforcement - Automated detection and owner notification for missing required tags. Enables accurate cost allocation and FinOps reporting. Time saved: 10+ hours/week.

Backup Verification Report - Daily confirmation that Recovery Services Vault backups succeeded. Surfaces failures within 24 hours instead of during restore attempts. Time saved: 4+ hours per backup crisis avoided.

Each Logic App includes complete deployment scripts, KQL queries, and configuration instructions. Total cost: Less than $1/month. Total time saved: 10-15 hours/week. ROI: Immediate and massive.

This guide is part of our Azure Automation hub covering Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps practices.

Everyone writes about Logic Apps for business process automation. SaaS integration. Order processing.

Nobody writes about the boring operational tasks Azure admins deal with daily.

This post delivers 4 working Logic App implementations:

Unused Resource Cleanup - Stop paying for orphaned disks and stale snapshots
Certificate Expiration Monitor - Know before services break at 2 AM
Tag Compliance Enforcement - Make governance actually stick
Backup Verification Report - Backups fail silently until you need them

These run in production managing 31,000+ resources across 44 subscriptions.

Why These 4

Here's what actually breaks in production:

Cost Waste
- Disks detached from deleted VMs (still billing)
- Snapshots from 2 years ago
- Old NICs consuming IP addresses
- Result: Thousands/month wasted

Certificate Expiration
- App Service certs expire
- Key Vault certs expire
- App Registration secrets expire
- Result: 2 AM outages

Tag Chaos
- 5,000 untagged resources
- Chargeback fails
- Cost allocation impossible
- Result: Finance can't trust Azure reporting

Backup Failures
- Recovery Services Vault runs daily
- Some VMs fail silently
- Nobody checks until restore needed
- Result: No backup for 3 months

Let's fix them.

Logic App #1: Unused Resource Cleanup

What It Does:
- Scans all subscriptions weekly
- Identifies orphaned disks, old snapshots, unattached NICs
- Sends digest with deletion candidates
- Calculates potential savings

Why It Matters:
When you delete a VM, Azure doesn't delete its disk. Or NIC. Or snapshots from 6 months ago.

Result: Hundreds of orphaned resources billing silently.

At 31,000 resources, this recovered $4,200/month in wasted spend.

The Resource Graph Queries

// Orphaned Disks
Resources 
| where type =~ 'microsoft.compute/disks' 
| where properties.diskState == 'Unattached' 
| extend diskSizeGB = properties.diskSizeGB,
         sku = properties.sku.name,
         createdTime = properties.timeCreated
| extend monthlyCost = case(
    sku == 'Premium_LRS', diskSizeGB * 0.16,
    sku == 'StandardSSD_LRS', diskSizeGB * 0.08,
    diskSizeGB * 0.05
  )
| project id, name, resourceGroup, subscriptionId,
          location, diskSizeGB, sku, monthlyCost
| order by monthlyCost desc

// Old Snapshots (>90 days)
Resources 
| where type =~ 'microsoft.compute/snapshots' 
| extend createdTime = properties.timeCreated
| extend ageInDays = datetime_diff('day', now(), todatetime(createdTime))
| where ageInDays > 90
| extend diskSizeGB = properties.diskSizeBytes / 1073741824
| extend monthlyCost = diskSizeGB * 0.05
| project id, name, resourceGroup, ageInDays, monthlyCost
| order by ageInDays desc

// Unattached NICs
Resources 
| where type =~ 'microsoft.network/networkinterfaces' 
| where isnull(properties.virtualMachine) 
  and isnull(properties.privateEndpoint)
| project id, name, resourceGroup, subscriptionId,
          privateIP = properties.ipConfigurations[0].properties.privateIPAddress

Deployment Steps

# Create Logic App
$resourceGroup = "rg-automation"
$logicAppName = "la-unused-resource-cleanup"

az logicapp create `
  --resource-group $resourceGroup `
  --location eastus `
  --name $logicAppName

# Enable managed identity
az logicapp identity assign `
  --resource-group $resourceGroup `
  --name $logicAppName

# Assign Reader role
$principalId = (az logicapp identity show `
  --resource-group $resourceGroup `
  --name $logicAppName `
  --query principalId -o tsv)

az role assignment create `
  --assignee $principalId `
  --role "Reader" `
  --scope "/subscriptions/$(az account show --query id -o tsv)"

Logic App Flow

Trigger: Recurrence - Weekly (Monday 8 AM)
HTTP: Query Resource Graph for orphaned disks
HTTP: Query Resource Graph for old snapshots
HTTP: Query Resource Graph for unattached NICs
Compose: Calculate total monthly cost
Compose: Generate HTML report
Send Email: Weekly digest to admins

Expected Output

Every Monday at 8 AM:

Subject: Weekly Unused Resource Report - Potential Savings: $4,187

SUMMARY
â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”
Resource Type           Count    Monthly Cost
â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”
Orphaned Disks            47       $3,240
Old Snapshots (>90d)     156         $892
Unattached NICs           23          N/A
â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”
TOTAL                    226       $4,132

TOP 10 ORPHANED DISKS
1. disk-old-prod-vm-01    512 GB Premium    $81.92/mo
2. disk-backup-2023      1024 GB Standard   $51.20/mo
3. disk-dev-archive       256 GB Premium    $40.96/mo

Value: 3 hours/week saved, $4,000+/month recovered

Logic App #2: Certificate Expiration Monitor

What It Does:
- Scans App Service + Key Vault certificates daily
- Alerts 30/15/7 days before expiration
- Posts to Teams with severity color-coding
- Includes owner information

Why It Matters:
Certificate expiration is the #1 cause of preventable outages.

Services break at 2 AM. Nobody knows why. Certificate expired 4 hours ago.

This prevents that entire class of incident.

The Certificate Query

// App Service Certificates
Resources 
| where type =~ 'microsoft.web/certificates' 
| extend expirationDate = todatetime(properties.expirationDate)
| extend daysUntilExpiry = datetime_diff('day', expirationDate, now())
| where daysUntilExpiry <= 30 and daysUntilExpiry >= 0
| extend severity = case(
    daysUntilExpiry <= 7, 'Critical',
    daysUntilExpiry <= 15, 'High',
    'Medium'
  )
| project id, name, resourceGroup, expirationDate,
          daysUntilExpiry, severity, tags
| order by daysUntilExpiry asc

Deployment

$logicAppName = "la-certificate-monitor"

az logicapp create `
  --resource-group $resourceGroup `
  --location eastus `
  --name $logicAppName

az logicapp identity assign `
  --resource-group $resourceGroup `
  --name $logicAppName

$principalId = (az logicapp identity show `
  --resource-group $resourceGroup `
  --name $logicAppName `
  --query principalId -o tsv)

# Reader role
az role assignment create `
  --assignee $principalId `
  --role "Reader" `
  --scope "/subscriptions/$(az account show --query id -o tsv)"

# Key Vault Reader (if monitoring Key Vault certs)
az role assignment create `
  --assignee $principalId `
  --role "Key Vault Reader" `
  --scope "/subscriptions/$(az account show --query id -o tsv)"

Teams Webhook Setup

Go to Teams channel â†’ Connectors
Add "Incoming Webhook"
Name: "Certificate Alerts"
Copy webhook URL
Use in Logic App HTTP action

Logic App Flow

Trigger: Recurrence - Daily at 6 AM
HTTP: Query App Service certificates
HTTP: Query Key Vault certificates
Parse: Group by severity
Compose: Teams Adaptive Card
HTTP: Post to Teams webhook

Expected Output

Daily Teams notification:

ðŸ”´ CRITICAL - 7 certificates expiring within 30 days

CRITICAL (< 7 days):
ðŸ”´ app-prod-ssl | App Service | 4 days | @john.smith
ðŸ”´ api-auth-cert | Key Vault | 6 days | @jane.doe

HIGH (< 15 days):
ðŸŸ  api-backend | Key Vault | 12 days | @bob.jones
ðŸŸ  auth-service | App Service | 13 days | @alice

MEDIUM (< 30 days):
ðŸŸ¡ dev-wildcard | Key Vault | 25 days | @charlie
ðŸŸ¡ test-ssl | App Service | 28 days | @diana

Value: Every cert-related outage prevented, 2-4 hours/incident saved

Logic App #3: Tag Compliance Enforcement

What It Does:
- Scans all resources daily for required tags
- Groups non-compliant by owner
- Emails resource owners with remediation links
- Tracks compliance over time
- Escalates repeat violations

Why It Matters:
Without tag enforcement, FinOps dies.

Cost allocation fails. Chargeback fails. Backup policies fail.

At 31,000 resources, manual cleanup is impossible.

The Tag Query

Resources 
| extend environmentTag = tostring(tags['Environment']),
         costCenterTag = tostring(tags['CostCenter']),
         ownerTag = tostring(tags['Owner']),
         applicationTag = tostring(tags['Application'])
| where isnull(environmentTag) or isempty(environmentTag)
     or isnull(costCenterTag) or isempty(costCenterTag)
     or isnull(ownerTag) or isempty(ownerTag)
     or isnull(applicationTag) or isempty(applicationTag)
| project id, name, type, resourceGroup, subscriptionId,
          ownerTag
| order by subscriptionId, resourceGroup asc

Deployment

$logicAppName = "la-tag-compliance"

az logicapp create `
  --resource-group $resourceGroup `
  --location eastus `
  --name $logicAppName

az logicapp identity assign `
  --resource-group $resourceGroup `
  --name $logicAppName

$principalId = (az logicapp identity show `
  --resource-group $resourceGroup `
  --name $logicAppName `
  --query principalId -o tsv)

# Reader for queries
az role assignment create `
  --assignee $principalId `
  --role "Reader" `
  --scope "/subscriptions/$(az account show --query id -o tsv)"

# Optional: Tag Contributor for automated remediation
az role assignment create `
  --assignee $principalId `
  --role "Tag Contributor" `
  --scope "/subscriptions/$(az account show --query id -o tsv)"

Logic App Flow

Trigger: Recurrence - Daily at 7 AM
HTTP: Query all resources for missing tags
Parse: Group by Owner tag
For Each Owner:
Compose personalized email
Include direct Portal links
Send with 7-day deadline
Compose: Admin summary
Send: Summary to admins

Expected Output

To Resource Owners:

Subject: Action Required: Tag Compliance

Hello John Smith,

Resources missing required tags:

RESOURCE          GROUP           MISSING TAGS           ACTION
â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”
vm-prod-app-01    rg-production   CostCenter, Owner      [Add Tags]
storage-backups   rg-storage      Environment, App       [Add Tags]
sql-prod-db       rg-databases    CostCenter             [Add Tags]

Required: Environment, CostCenter, Owner, Application
Deadline: 7 days

Value: 10+ hours/week saved, FinOps reporting actually works

Logic App #4: Backup Verification Report

What It Does:
- Queries all Recovery Services Vaults daily
- Identifies backup job failures in last 24 hours
- Groups by vault, VM, and error type
- Highlights consecutive failures

Why It Matters:
Backups fail silently.

You discover failures when you need to restore. Too late.

This surfaces failures within 24 hours.

Deployment

$logicAppName = "la-rsv-backup-report"

az logicapp create `
  --resource-group $resourceGroup `
  --location eastus `
  --name $logicAppName

az logicapp identity assign `
  --resource-group $resourceGroup `
  --name $logicAppName

$principalId = (az logicapp identity show `
  --resource-group $resourceGroup `
  --name $logicAppName `
  --query principalId -o tsv)

# Reader + Backup Reader roles
az role assignment create `
  --assignee $principalId `
  --role "Reader" `
  --scope "/subscriptions/$(az account show --query id -o tsv)"

az role assignment create `
  --assignee $principalId `
  --role "Backup Reader" `
  --scope "/subscriptions/$(az account show --query id -o tsv)"

Logic App Flow

Trigger: Recurrence - Daily at 9 AM
HTTP: Query Resource Graph for all RSVs
For Each Vault:
Query Backup Jobs API
Filter for Failed status (last 24h)
Parse error details
If failures:
Compose HTML report
Send high-priority email
If all successful:
Send confirmation email

Expected Output

When failures occur:

Subject: ðŸš¨ ALERT: 3 Backup Failures (Last 24h)

BACKUP FAILURE REPORT
â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”
Vault              VM Name           Error Code
â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”â”
rsv-prod-backups   vm-sql-prod-01    UserErrorVmNotFound
rsv-prod-backups   vm-app-prod-03    UserErrorDiskQuota
rsv-dev-backups    vm-test-server    UserErrorVMAgentOffline

COMMON FIXES
UserErrorVmNotFound     â†’ VM deleted, remove from policy
UserErrorDiskQuota      â†’ Increase storage, review retention
UserErrorVMAgentOffline â†’ Check agent, restart VM

ACTION REQUIRED: Remediate within 24 hours

When successful:

Subject: âœ… All Backups Successful (Last 24h)

Total Vaults: 12
Total Successful Jobs: 247

No action required.

Value: 4+ hours per restore crisis avoided, compliance verified

Deployment Strategy

Don't deploy all 4 at once. Prioritize by pain:

Week 1: Backup Verification

Highest risk - deploy first
- Test with existing vaults
- Validate email delivery
- Run for 1 week

Week 2: Certificate Monitor

Outage prevention
- Set up Teams webhook
- Test with expiring cert
- Run for 1 week

Week 3: Unused Resource Cleanup

Cost savings
- Review first report
- Identify safe deletions
- Calculate savings

Week 4: Tag Compliance

Organizational buy-in
- Socialize with owners
- Information-only mode
- Enable enforcement after 2 weeks

Cost Analysis

Logic App Costs (Consumption):
- ~$0.012 per Logic App/month
- All 4: ~$0.05/month

Connector Costs:
- Office 365: Included with M365
- Resource Graph: Free
- Teams: Free

Total: < $1/month

Value:
- Unused resources: $4,000/month recovered
- Certificates: Outage prevention
- Tags: FinOps enablement
- Backups: Compliance verified

ROI: Infinite

Common Issues

Issue 1: Permission Errors

HTTP 403 Forbidden

Fix:

# Verify identity
$identity = az logicapp identity show `
  --resource-group $resourceGroup `
  --name $logicAppName

# Re-assign role
az role assignment create `
  --assignee $identity.principalId `
  --role "Reader" `
  --scope "/subscriptions/$(az account show --query id -o tsv)"

Issue 2: Email Not Sending

Check spam folder
Verify email address
Re-authenticate O365 connector:
Go to API Connections
Edit connection
Re-authenticate
Check O365 audit logs

Issue 3: Query Timeout

Split by subscription:

// Query specific subscription
Resources 
| where type =~ 'microsoft.compute/disks' 
| where subscriptionId == 'YOUR-SUB-ID'

Bottom Line

Stop clicking buttons. Build these 4 Logic Apps.

Unused Resource Cleanup - Recover thousands/month
Certificate Monitor - Prevent outages
Tag Compliance - Enable FinOps
Backup Verification - Verify before you need it

Running in production managing 31,000+ resources.

They work.

Cost Management & FinOps:
- Azure FinOps Complete Guide - Enterprise FinOps framework for cost visibility and optimization
- Azure Cost Optimization: What Actually Works - Real tactics beyond Azure Advisor recommendations
- Azure Chargeback Models - Chargeback strategies that business units accept
- Tag Governance: The 247 Variations Problem - Solving tag standardization at scale

Automation & Operations:
- PowerShell 7 Migration Guide - Complete migration checklist with time savings calculator
- Azure Command Finder - Interactive troubleshooting tool for instant solutions

Questions? Leave a comment or reach out.

Want more automation? Check out azure-noob.com for practical Azure ops content.

4 Logic Apps That Save Azure Admins 10 Hours/Week (2025 Automation Guide)

How to Save 10+ Hours Per Week on Azure Operations

Why These 4

Logic App #1: Unused Resource Cleanup

The Resource Graph Queries

Deployment Steps

Logic App Flow

Expected Output

Logic App #2: Certificate Expiration Monitor

The Certificate Query

Deployment

Teams Webhook Setup

Logic App Flow

Expected Output

Logic App #3: Tag Compliance Enforcement

The Tag Query

Deployment

Logic App Flow

Expected Output

Logic App #4: Backup Verification Report

Deployment

Logic App Flow

Expected Output

Deployment Strategy

Week 1: Backup Verification

Week 2: Certificate Monitor

Week 3: Unused Resource Cleanup

Week 4: Tag Compliance

Cost Analysis

Common Issues

Bottom Line

Azure Admin Starter Kit (Free Download)

💰 Stop Guessing at Azure Costs

How to Save 10+ Hours Per Week on Azure Operations

Why These 4

Logic App #1: Unused Resource Cleanup

The Resource Graph Queries

Deployment Steps

Logic App Flow

Expected Output

Logic App #2: Certificate Expiration Monitor

The Certificate Query

Deployment

Teams Webhook Setup

Logic App Flow

Expected Output

Logic App #3: Tag Compliance Enforcement

The Tag Query

Deployment

Logic App Flow

Expected Output

Logic App #4: Backup Verification Report

Deployment

Logic App Flow

Expected Output

Deployment Strategy

Week 1: Backup Verification

Week 2: Certificate Monitor

Week 3: Unused Resource Cleanup

Week 4: Tag Compliance

Cost Analysis

Common Issues

Bottom Line

Related Resources

Azure Admin Starter Kit (Free Download)

💰 Stop Guessing at Azure Costs

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