Power Automate

Microsoft Power Automate is a no-code/low-code iPaaS solution that’s part of the Microsoft Power Platform line of products (it was called Microsoft Flow until 2019). As its name suggests, it helps IT save precious time by automating repetitive manual tasks. It’s also an excellent tool for streamlining your business processes and ensuring productivity.

With Power Automate, you create automated workflows between apps and services—including Microsoft 365, of course—to easily synchronize files, collect data, and schedule notifications. In this article, we’ll present six workflows that serve as perfect Microsoft Power Automate examples to simplify your IT admin life.

The Power Automate flow creates an automated approval process whenever a new document is uploaded to SharePoint, aggregating and automating all approvals. This is the perfect solution to avoid your team sending you a message manually whenever they need to request permission for a document upload.

With this flow, you can automatically receive an approval request from your team members via Teams whenever a new document is uploaded to SharePoint. You can also automate a notification to team members when the approval is completed. Here’s how to create it:

Step-by-step instructions

1. From the Microsoft Power Automate menu, select the Templates section.
2. Search for the template “Start approval for new documents and notify via Teams”.
3. In the smaller box, connect SharePoint, Teams, Approvals, Office 365 Users, and Outlook to Power Automate.
4. In the SharePoint box, fill out the site address and the library where the file will be created.
5. In the Teams box, determine the team and channel where people will be notified.
6. Create the notification message or go with the default one.
7. In the Approval box, create a title for the process and select the approval type (either if all notified people should approve the file or just the first to respond) and the assignees.
8. In the Condition box, set up “Response is equal to Approve”.
9. In the final Teams box, set up a notification for the approval/rejection of the document by choosing the team and channel to receive it and customizing the message to be sent.

How Does Microsoft Power Automate Work?

Automations are either started manually, scheduled, or triggered by an action. These automations, called Flows, can occur in the cloud (Cloud Flows) or locally to a device or VM (Desktop Flows). While Cloud Flows run in remote Microsoft datacenters (the same ones as Azure) and don’t require an interface, Desktop Flows are accomplished through a more traditional robotic process automation (RPA) capability. The cloud- and desktop-based solutions are built to work together and address the many diverse needs of organizations.

Here are the automation tools inside of Power Automate:

·         Cloud Flows:  Automations managed from your web browser that can be started manually, triggered, or scheduled. These are the best method to incorporate third-party cloud services, APIs, and AI Builder

Cloud Flow Designer

·         AI Builder:  A highly advanced, AI and machine-learning-based optical character and image recognition tool that can be incorporated into solutions to extract, categorize, and process files. Though this isn’t technically a piece of Power Automate, it is a feature unique to the Power Platform and can easily be incorporated into Flows.

AI Builder Homepage

·         Desktop Flows:  With this flow, users can automate an interface on a desktop or VM by recording their screen, and the visual flow designer will automate mouse and keyboard clicks. Desktop Flows are dependent on the interface of the device or VM they are running on and are considered Power Platform’s “pure RPA” solution. Anything you can’t solve with Cloud Flows can be solved through Desktop Flows; some good examples include intricate data manipulation and legacy technology like green screens. Desktop Flows can be triggered or automated via Cloud Flows through their Unattended Add-On functionality.

Desktop Designer

·         Business Process Flows:  A method to automate people processes. Display the required steps for a specific business scenario via a model-driven app to a user every time it occurs. Cloud flows can be incorporated into these steps as well. For example, when a user marks a stage of the Business Process flow “complete”, an automated email is sent to their manager for approval. This allows your users to focus more on the quality of their work and interactions and less on the nitty-gritty details.

·         Process Advisor:  Feed Power Automate and other process data into this tool to discover bottlenecks, efficiencies, and new automation opportunities you might not have thought of.

Automate Anytime and Anywhere

In addition to web and desktop, Microsoft Power Automate’s diverse solution suite allows you to expand your automation capabilities to Microsoft Teams and mobile devices.

Monitor incoming emails

 Exercise - Monitor incoming emails - Training | Microsoft Learn