Getting Started with Microsoft Power Automate
Power Automate, formerly known as Microsoft Flow, is an online tool used to build automatic workflows between apps and services to synchronize files, get notifications, and gather data. It is a part of the Microsoft 365 applications and add-ins.
This article helps develop automated solutions through no-code methods with the help of Flow. Anyone who is familiar with the fundamentals of office suites like Microsoft Office may build flows to automate their everyday work.
Examples of Use Cases for Power Automate
Power Automate is powerful enough to be used as a layer that connects PowerApps with backend services. Currently, there are more than 3000 services that Flow can connect with, and with custom connectors, you can connect with any service online or on-premises.
Automated processes include, for some instances:
- After receiving any Outlook email attachments, save them to OneDrive. Power Automate can save any client-related attachments that are sent to the appropriate SharePoint folder. Because it will be kept in the appropriate document library, you will spend less time searching through emails to discover what you need.
- Control requests and approvals for holidays. It would be advantageous to have an automated approval process in order to efficiently manage time off throughout the year. When an employee seeks to leave, Power Automate enables an automated request to be sent to the manager, followed by a notification of the manager’s response.
- Utilize Teams to alert staff members and request approval for new papers. Sending critical documents may require approval, which can be a time-consuming process and entail contacting multiple staff members. When a new document is submitted to SharePoint, approval can be sought at any time using Power Automate to automate this process. Teams notify team members once it is finished. An example of when this might be applied: A project may begin with a number of documents that must be created, approved, and transmitted before it can proceed. You could create the necessary papers, put them in a SharePoint file, and then Microsoft Teams would immediately advise the necessary team members that this document needs their approval. Once the approval is done, they can take further action, and you will be notified.
- Keep track of your online mentions. It can be part of your job to regularly gather trending tweets that mention your business or a particular product. But doing this manually can take a lot of time. If a tweet contains a specific keyword and is retweeted more than 20 times, Power Automate can send push notifications. This may, for instance, be activated by brand mentions, enabling you to track the effectiveness of your brand on social media. The Power Automate program must be installed in order to use this template.
- Configure a CRM system to send weekly notifications on financial operations and sales data. In this scenario, Flow will send automated weekly emails to display financial operations and sales data. This flow can be adapted and customized to include other relevant information.
- Copy files between two cloud data sources. For example, you can copy files between Dropbox and SharePoint; it can be done whenever you create a new one in either of them, and it will automatically copy to another.
How it works
Let's take the example of if we want to read some information from the file placed on SharePoint and send a message on Microsoft Teams to an individual/within the team. In order to automate this situation Power Automate required a connection with SharePoint and MS Teams. So to make the connection there are Connectors and their respective actions are available, with help of this we can create an automated flow.
There are more than 150 Data Sources (or Connectors) available. With the help of Connectors/Data Sources, we can do things like gathering data, synchronizing files, getting notifications, etc. By using the Connectors we can build a custom multi-step flow or pick from hundreds of templates. Advice: Try the Power Automate Cookbook if you can’t find a certain template.
Once a process is configured in Power Automate, it works in the background to accomplish required automated tasks, upload files, and notify you of specific notifications.
Workflows in Power Automate are dependent on triggering events. Any of the following scenarios could occur:
- Scheduled — Create a cloud flow that performs one or more tasks Once a day, an hour, or a minute. On a date that you specify, after a number of days, hours, or minutes that you specify.
- Instant (AKA Button click) — Create instant flows in Power Automate and then at any time it can be run from anywhere on your mobile device. Instant flows were previously called button flows.
- Automated flow — A good way to get started is to use a template that is suited to your organization’s scenario. You can choose from a collection of templates to find the one that best matches your scenario. Search all templates or browse by category to find your scenario, and then follow the steps in the template to create a cloud flow from the template.
- Desktop flows — Power Automate becomes wider with the feature of Desktop flows And enables you to automate all repetitive desktop processes. It’s quicker and easier than ever to automate with the new intuitive Power Automate desktop flow designer using the prebuilt drag-and-drop actions or recording your own desktop flows to run later.
Components of Microsoft Flow :
- Connectors — Connect services With Data gateways we can connect to on-premise applications. We can create custom connectors as well
- Triggers — Triggers are the events that start a flow when they occur. Flows can also be manually triggered or scheduled.
- Actions — An action/job a flow performs like get, list, create, edit, etc.
- Conditions — A condition depending on which a flow action is performed
- Templates — Existing flow templates to quickly create commonly used flows.
- Approvals — Approvals are a way of approving something in a flow.
Summary
Power Automate is a no-code/low-code platform that is used for the creation of automated workflows between apps and cloud services to synchronize files, get notifications, and collect data. There are already predefined Connectors and Templates available that help to create automation in a faster way.
Support Resources
Below are the Microsoft Documentations Links which help to guide you to explore more in Power Automate.
