A Beginner’s Guide to Automation Using Power Automate
With the increase of the latest technological trends, tools that act as the mere backbone to new advancements become more and more complex with the passage of time. Especially for an individual who may have relatively less or zero experience with complex tools with requirements such as backend knowledge of programming and their respective languages (based on the tool you are using).
This post will be giving an in depth introduction on automation and how anyone can automate unique tasks (depending upon the complexity) irrespective of technical background or not. This will include some hands on examples.
What is automation?
When we talk about automation we (mostly tech enthusiasts or those with a background in tech) generally think about topics such as Internet of Things (connecting obsolete technology or modern appliances and giving them certain intelligence through the power of the internet), Artificial Intelligence or certain complex programs that oversee numerous complicated tasks. The concept of automation has now exceeded to robotics that can oversee industrial development on a high end scale. However, if we talk about automation in a nutshell it is basically defined as:
A procedure or process that requires minimum human effort.
What is Power Automate?
Power Automate (initially known as Microsoft Flow) is a service created by Microsoft that automates your daily and even corporate work flows. This includes (but not limited to) auto-synchronization of your favorite applications to and fro, collect data, oversee analysis and have responses and reviews operated.
This is a tool that is mostly utilized by corporations who need to handle their evaluations, approvals and other proceedings in a much more efficient way. This comes in handy especially for rising startups that have little manpower or less infrastructure. This all comes under the concept of Business Process Management and the respective softwares & programs that improve, analyze and manage business processes in an effective way.
Let’s consider a minor example for automated workflow:
Suppose that a person is conducting a survey on how the employees of different companies work to study a pattern of work, now collecting and organizing the data especially at such a high number would be an extremely tedious task especially. However, through Power Automate one can simply create a workflow that will not only collect data but store it an excel sheet for the person to view later on.
Platform overview
In this part, we will be going through an overview of the Power Automate platform. This will give the user an idea of how the platform looks like. However, please do keep in mind that the platform is subjected to new updates.
Before getting started please ensure that:
- You are running a good reliable browser such as Firefox or Chromium Edge.
- Stable internet at hand.
- You have a Microsoft account and are signed in.
So first you’ll need to is head to https://flow.microsoft.com/ that will direct you to Power Automate.
The Home Screen:
This is the main screen of Power Automate where on the left you can switch to different pages and explore Power Automate’s different functionalities. However, the amazing thing about Power Automate is that you can either custom build your own flow or use one of the templates which includes ready-to-use on the go flows.
Connectors:
Connectors are certain services that allow the Power Automate platform to utilize such as sending files locally from your computer to your OneDrive without human involvement. Apart, from that one of these connectors also include the functionality to connect with your phone such as to provide notifications about your workflows while you’re on the go.
Despite of the many possibilities at hand, one must remember that Power Automate features exclusive or premium services as well.
AI Builder:
Now at times, there are certain tasks that may require certain intelligence to produce a proper result. This is where Power Automate’s AI Builder feature comes into play! AI Builder allows your flows to predict certain output and enhance business performance of any corporation. The feature is powered by Microsoft AI which provides the user a click and point experience. In short, you don’t need to have any pre required experience or knowledge!
You can either use AI Builder from scratch or use one of the previews and examples, as shown above, based on your preference.
Data:
This page is an overview of what services the user has connected power automate. The options are many! The limitations are only to the extent of your requirement.
The image below shows all of the services I have used throughout my meddling with Power Automate. However, users are always have the ability to update or disconnect any services.
A few demonstrations!
Now that we have gone through the basics, let’s get to some wicked automation! But first….
A few important concepts to remember!
Normally the two important operations of an automation that we use are the follow:
- Trigger is something that allows a process to take place. In short, it’s a starting point. Triggers are either time — based or when a certain activity is performed.
- Action is something that is invoked when a trigger occurs or any prompt by a user.
With that being said, let’s head to some basic examples:
Example 1: Automated notifications for new emails received
In this example, we will be showing how anyone can enable automated notifications for any emails that a person receives. This is the most basic way to get started with Power Automate. So with that said, let’s begin:
Here we will be selecting an automated flow which occurs when a certain condition is met.
Once you have selected, automated flow you will receive a prompt to name your flow and choose the trigger of your preference. You can name your flow to anything you want, there are no limitations!
Over here, we have selected when a new email arrives trigger which you will see later on in the next images.
As mentioned before, we have selected the required trigger and now we need to decide the kind of action that will occur when a new email arrives so here we have selected notifications as highlighted above.
Now once we have selected our action which is send our phone a notification. Afterwards, simply place in the message in the Text box that you want to use as a notification followed along with a link to your email.
Tip: The link to your email can be found when you try to open your email service through your browser. If you have multiple emails, do ensure that you change the number i.e. u/0/ to u/(email number)/. For example if we have let’s say three emails and we want to utilize our second email then we should type in u/1/ and similarly for our third email it would be u/2/. This numbering totally depends upon the number of emails you are using and the email service you are using.
Now as shown in the given image below, here we are sending a random email saying “Hello World!” to the targeted email that we specified earlier.
Now once it is sent, after a few minutes we will a notification to our device as show below:
However, if you have downloaded the Power Automate app you can check the status of your flow through your phone as well:
Now if we click on the specified link shown in the image above we will be redirected to our email which will show us the email we have received!
Now if we were to head over to the Power Automate website, we can easily check the details of our working flow as shown below. This is what we can consider as the central hub of our flow where we can check whether our flow was successful or not, what type of connections are being used and how many users own the flow.
Example 2: Form submission verification-Internship form example
Now that we are out of the basics, we’re heading to a much more exciting and commonly used automation. But before that, you probably have noticed that whenever someone fills any official form, let’s say a form to apply for an internship at a big company, we instantly receive the notification telling us that our application has been submitted (with some additional details included). In this example, we’re going to recreate that method using Power Automate.
The below image shows an example form that asks for details and the domain of interest of the person who is apply for the internship (over here we have used Microsoft Forms).
Now if we go back to Power Automate and follow the similar steps as shown in Example 1 previously our flow should look like as the image below:
The selected trigger here is when a new response is submitted and our selected action is send an email notification. However, in this case there must another action before that which is called Get response details. In the trigger, we have to add the ID of our form which we created and then add in the necessary dynamic content based on the requirements.
If we click at the small button called Add dynamic content the following box will pop up:
Once everything is selected, it is highly important to save the flow otherwise we may lose all of our work.
Now coming back to our form, once we fill the form as shown below:
Once we have submitted our form. We will receive the following email:
And if we go back and check Power Automate:
It shows that our automation process has been successful. In short, we have finally recreated an internship form and automated a process used by most major corporations!
Behind the scenes!
So with all said and done, we have finally achieved how to automate various tasks using Power Automate. But is it really that?
What we think automation looks like:
What it actually is:
In short, we have achieved to automate things without the need to learn how to code or have any backend technical knowledge.
What if my flows does not work or fails in between?
This is a question alot of people have when they get they started working with Power Automate. When a flow fails during a process or simply doesn’t work you will be notified via email that your flow has failed. As shown in the image below:
This removes the tedious necessity to go back to Power Automate and keep checking the progress of your flows. In fact, this is a time saver if you’re a corporate person looking to increase the efficiency in your respective organization.
Want to learn more about Power Automate?
If you want to learn more about Power Automate and other Power Platform tools I do recommend visiting Microsoft Learn which is an official site of Microsoft that enables students & professionals learn about the latest technologies such as Cloud Computing, Low Code Development and much more for free. Fun fact: You get to earn some cool badges and trophies along with the huge line of learning content. So learn away!
Let’s connect!
For any questions or queries or just for a random talk on all things tech, feel free to hit me up on the following:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/usmanaslam712
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/usman-aslam-u712a/
