A cloud-based automation program called Power Automate can automate a variety of tasks, including processing invoices and forms, data entry, and reporting. All of this while outperforming outdated methods in speed and cost.
What is Power Automate from Microsoft?
With a little coding, Power Automate is a robust platform that creates beautiful, intelligent, and contemporary programs. It is an automation tool that increases productivity by rapidly combining actions and triggers. The tool secures and scales automation efforts using intelligent workflows. Even people with limited coding experience can construct automation activities with Power Automate.
When a specific action occurs in an Outlook email, you might want to initiate another action, such as extracting data from the email and transferring it to a SharePoint list or database. This is an example of automation using Power Automate. Alternatively, you may have OneDrive automatically save the email attachment. Microsoft Power Automate may be used to automate any task.
Features That Microsoft Power Automate Provides
Power Automate may be opened from Office 365 by selecting App Launcher -> All Apps. Power Automate is located there. Simply click “Power Automate” to see the Power Automate homepage.
Using Microsoft Power Automate: An Overview
There are numerous highlighted template collections available. These templates cover many topics, and you may also view an assortment of services that you could automate.
Templates: Pre-defined actions and triggers are included in templates to boost efficiency. Click “All flows” to browse a variety of templates, then select the one that best fits the automation task. For example, users can find all associated templates by typing outlook/OneDrive/SharePoint into the box. The benefit of templates is that they allow users to make exact edits and modifications as needed. Looking through these templates is the greatest way to acquire a feel for Power Automate.
Linkages
According to Microsoft, a connector is “a proxy or a wrapper around an API that enables communication between the underlying service and Azure Logic Apps, Microsoft Power Automate, and Microsoft Power Apps.” It gives users the ability to link their accounts and create apps and processes using a library of prebuilt actions and triggers.
In order to enable smooth data interchange, connectors link with a variety of apps, services, and data sources and serve as a bridge between them. Microsoft offers more than 450 connectors to link various data sources. Two varieties of connectors exist.
- Standard Connectors: The apps and flows can be run by any user.
- Premium Connectors: Apps and flows can only be executed by users with a premium licence.
Lows Power Automate offers various Flow types tailored to commercial use cases:
- Flows of Business Processes Desktop Flows
- Automated Flows in the Cloud
- Scheduled Flows and Instant Flows
Flow of Business Processes
Business process flows, which lead users through specific processes like the sales process, enable the user experience flow. As an illustration of a sales process, suppose a lead enters the sales system and needs to be qualified first. Before the qualification step is prepared to proceed to the next sales process, it may involve a number of steps and actions.
Business process flows are divided into two phases: the first comprises steps within the stages and qualifies, develops, and closes. The main feature of business process flows is their broad applicability. The Business Process Flows are limited to those database tables and are only applicable to Dynamics 365 or model-driven applications. They are specifically designed for database applications.
In addition to a sitting or included version of Power Automate within your Microsoft 365 licences, such as your e3s or business premium, you need additional licencing if you wish to use a business process flow. Users must pay Business Process Flows or a per-flow plan. The ability to develop Business Process Flows and the necessary licencing is included in some Dynamics 365 plans because of their close integration with the software.
Workspace Flows
Desk Flows take advantage of RPA. You must install the Power Automate desktop application in order to construct these kinds of flows. Desktop Flows uses a bot to automatically record and record actions that you take on your computer. Applying Power Automate to systems without cloud access requires using the desktop program. Users of Windows 10 can download Desktop Flows for free. It is sufficient to have a Microsoft or Windows 10 account in order to use Power Automate desktop for automating personal scenarios. Only premium licencing is available for certain cases.
Cloud Flows
Modern apps that have any exposure to APIs—which enable them to make API calls and connect to any application via back-end APIs—prefer to use Cloud Flows.
The most prevalent kind of flow is automated flow. These Flows hold off until something happens at the data source. This event acts as the catalyst to initiate the workflow. You may want this to automatically start a workflow process to start approval when a file is added to a SharePoint document library or when an item is added to a list on SharePoint. This can be as simple as a flow. We have access to more than 450 distinct connector types. The important point is that since everything is handled at the connector or data source level, the user cannot initiate processes through this procedure.
- Instant Flows: The workflow in these Flows requires some sort of interaction. Various triggers can be used to start instantaneous flows. One manual method from Power Automate. Flow Buttons are a type of trigger that we can utilise with Instant Flows.
- Scheduled Flows: These flows can be started at any point from the second level to the day level and all points in between. They are executed according to a set schedule. Setting up automated reminders is the ideal illustration.
AI Developer
A part of Microsoft Power Automate and Power Apps is AI Builder. Even without coding knowledge in machine learning or data science, users can integrate this component. Through the use of a wizard-style interface, the user can create AI models. AI Builder is composed of two parts.
- Build: Start from the beginning with a model and train it.
- Models: Include pre-trained models that users can utilise right away.
