Aaron Guilmette - Workflow Automation with Microsoft Power Automate: Use business process automation to achieve digital transformation with minimal code, 2nd Edition

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Early Access Publication: Workflow Automation with Microsoft Power Automate

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1. Chapter 1: Introduction to Power Automate
2. Chapter 2: Getting Started with Power Automate
3. Chapter 3: Working with Email
4. Chapter 4: Copying files
5. Chapter 5: Creating Button Flows
6. Chapter 6: Generating Push Notifications
7. Chapter 7: Working with Team Flows
8. Chapter 8: Working with Conditions
9. Chapter 9: Getting Started with Approvals
10. Chapter 10: Working with Multiple Approvals
11. Chapter 11: Posting Approvals to Teams
12. Chapter 12: Using a Database
13. Chapter 13: Working with Microsoft Forms
14. Chapter 14: Accepting User Input
15. Chapter 15: Automating Azure AD
16. Chapter 16: Introduction to Robotic Process Automation
17. Chapter 17: Introduction to AI Models
18. Chapter 18: Exporting, Importing, and Distributing Flows
19. Chapter 19: Monitoring and Troubleshooting Flows

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Business activities in the Information Age are filled with repetitive tasks: receive an email, generate a purchase order, send a message, route a document, approve a time-off request. In many cases, these activities don't generate real value, though they do need to get done to help support business goals.

Computers introduced the promise of helping us do more, but a lot of that has resulted in there being more to do in order to get the same value. What if we could use technology to handle routine tasks and save our strength for doing the things that require skill and thinking?

In this book, we're going to learn the basics of Microsoft Power Automate, a tool designed to help you automate repetitive tasks and get you back to generating value.

This chapter focuses on getting an understanding of some of the basic concepts of Power Automate:

• What is Power Automate?
• Choosing what to automate
• Reviewing general terminology
• Learning Power Automate terminology

By the end of this chapter, you will have been introduced to the components of Power Automate and when we might use them to streamline daily operationsfrom the basics of email management to more complex business operations.

Power Automate, part of the Power Platform family of products, is a workflow engine that can be used to automate common business processes or sequences based on conditions or scenarios. Power Automate (formerly known as Microsoft Flow) is primarily a web-based tool designed to interface with a growing library of software from both Microsoft and other vendors. Due to its no-code/low-code design, Power Automate can be approached by individuals with any technical skill levelincluding office or business users with no coding experience, system administrators, and programmers.

Power Automate Desktop

In early 2021, Microsoft introduced Power Automate Desktopa product that could be used to help automate processes on legacy computer applications using Robotic Process Automation. Microsoft has now made that Power Automate Desktop application a native part of Windows 11 as well!

Many readers may be familiar with the concept of SharePoint workflows. On the SharePoint platform, you can use products such as SharePoint Designer and Workflow Manager to kick off business processes based on work activitiessuch as a document being checked in to a particular library. One of the great things about SharePoint workflows is that they can automate business processes and tasks inside the SharePoint environment. However, one of the drawbacks of SharePoint workflows is that they only automate business processes and tasks inside that SharePoint environment.

While some vendors have created integration packages to tie SharePoint workflows to external products or have developed full replacements for SharePoint Designer and Workflow Manager, many of them are limited to interfacing with data inside SharePoint.

This is where the power of the Power Automate platform really shinesit has native connectivity to hundreds of applications out of the box and isnt dependent just on SharePoint. Not only does it have native integration for the worlds most popular applications, but it's also extensible: you can develop your own connectivity solutions to work with your organizations custom apps.

Power Automate's capabilities are limited only by your imagination and the services offered by the applications you wish to integrate.

You can see that in the following diagram, a sample purchase order workflow ties together the SharePoint, Outlook, and Microsoft Approvals apps:

This basic workflow, connecting three disparate applications, is just the beginning of what Power Automate can do for you.

Frequently, people do work that they don't need to do. It's important to differentiate between