Get Started with Microsoft Power Automate

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Microsoft Power Platform

Power Automate Platform is an intuitive, collaborative, and extensible platform of low-code tools that makes it easy to create efficient and flexible solutions.

Power automate
  • Power BI – Discover intelligent insights in diverse data
  • Power Apps – Build low – code solutions to business challenges
  • Power Automate – Streamline processes with no-code automation
  • Power Virtual Agents – Handle routine inquires at scale with no-code chatbots

Introduction to Power Automate

Power Automate is a no code/low-code platform used to automate repetitive business processes. Beyond simple workflows, Power Automate can send reminders on past due tasks, move business data between systems on a schedule, connect to 600 plus data sources or any publicly available API, and can even automate tasks on your local computer like computing data in Excel.

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Get to know about the key elements of Power Automate

Below are the two important operations of an automation that we use.

Trigger

Trigger is something that allows a process to take place. It’s a starting point. Triggers are either time based or when a certain activity is performed.

Action

Action is something that is invoked when a trigger occurs or any prompt by a user.

Flow

A flow is a process containing series of tasks to be performed while execution.

Understand different types of flows

Below are the different types of flows available in Power Automate.

  • Cloud Flows
  • Desktop Flows
  • Business Process Flows

Cloud Flows

Cloud flows are created when you want your automation to be triggered either automatically, instantly, or via a schedule. Below are the 3 different types of cloud flows.

Flow typeUse caseAutomation target
Automated flowsCreate an automation triggered by an event such as an arrival of an email from a specific person, or a mention of your company in social media.Connectors for cloud or on-premises services connect your accounts and enable them to talk to each other.
Instant flowsStart an automation with a click of a button. Automate repetitive tasks from your Desktop or Mobile devices. For example, instantly send a reminder to the team with a push of a button from your mobile device.Wide range of tasks such as requesting an approval, an action in Teams or SharePoint.
Scheduled flowsSchedule an automation such as daily data upload to SharePoint or a database.Tasks that need to be automated on a schedule.

Desktop Flows

Desktop flows allows to automate tasks on the Web or the desktop. Desktop flows broaden the existing robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities in Power Automate and enable 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.

Business Process Flows

Business process flows provide a guide for people to get work done. They provide a streamlined user experience that leads people through the processes their organization has defined for interactions that need to be advanced to a conclusion of some kind. This user experience can be tailored so that people with different security roles can have an experience that best suits the work they do.

Use Case

Employer wants to receive an email notification alert whenever his Employee_Info list holding the employee information is modified.

Below is the sample data of the Employee_Info List:

Power Apps Let’s try to implement the above use case using power automate flow.

Use case Implementation

  • Login to Power Automate portal. Power Automate Homepage: To create flow in power automate sign into the power automate portal using the below link. https://make.powerautomate.com/ and the below is the home page.
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Create the flow as per the requirement

Choose the create option and you can see multiple options to create a flow as shown below.

Power automate As our use case suggests automatically send email alert when the list is modified, Automated flow will fit best to this use case.

Click on Automated flow and a new window will pop up asking for flow name and to select the triggers from the list of available triggers as shown below.

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Step 1: Provide name under Flow name and under the ‘choose your flow’s trigger’, select the trigger named “when an item is created or modified” and click on create. Provide the share point path and site name as below.

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Step 2: Add one more step to the flow by selecting the action named “send an email“ under choose an operation.

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Step 3: Once you select the send an email action, update the required fields as shown below like mail id of the user to whom the alert has to be sent, subject and body of the email.

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Step 4: Click on save and test the flow.

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Step 5: Test the flow by modifying/creating any item in the Employee_Info List. Power Apps

As soon as the list is modified, an email is triggered as per the flow as shown below. 

Power Apps

Conclusion

This way, we can automate our tasks by creating a flow with actions and triggers thereby saving a lot of manual effort and human intervention.

The above use case has been implemented within 10 mins and without writing even a single line of code. This automation will approx. save 1 FTE/month efforts. To implement the same automation in other technologies, it may require complex coding skills along with technical knowledge and additional efforts.

Author : Mrs. Uma
Sr. Power platform Developer and Trainer

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