Aug 5, 2020
Getting Started with Power Automate(Concepts)-Part1
This article is the first part of the Power Automate discussion series which focuses on giving you a brief introduction about Power Automate. For hands-on exercises, Please check out the second article in the series here
What is Power Automate?
It is a Cloud-based SaaS(Software as a service)offering from Microsoft which allows you to automate various workflow-related tasks by just a few clicks.
“Power Automate is an online workflow service that automates actions across the most common apps and services.” - Microsoft
How does it work?
In simple words, you may take Power Automate as a tool that does certain actions based on the defined Trigger.
This Trigger can be a manual(an Instant), an automated event, a scheduled event, UI Flow , Business Process flow. Instant event is something which requires human intervention i.e. you go to the portal and execute the defined flow whereas Automated event executes on its own when it detects certain events such as posting of a new Tweet on Tweeter or Addition of a new File in a Share point/One drive Directory or any other data-driven system alerts etc. Scheduled flows are created for the tasks which require automation on scheduled events such as sending e-mails on a daily batch load on the database. UI Flows are created for desktop and Web applications that do not have APIs available for automation and Business Process flows are created for tasks such as business approvals, service requests, etc.
In the diagram ahead, you will get a basic understanding of the two different flows where the left-hand side is based on the manual Trigger while the right-hand side is the automated one.
How it can add value to your organization?
Well, the following uses(which I will be covering in detail in my next article) of the Power Automate will enable a clearer understanding of its functioning.
We can easily connect Power Automate with many native Microsoft and a few non-Microsoft applications and create flows to perform various automated actions as per the requirement, say -
· We can connect to the dataset using defined database connectors and send e-mail notifications to the desired recipients on your behalf on completion of a certain Batch load.
· We can call Stored-Procedures and perform DML( data manipulation language) operations such as Insertion/Deletion/Update on the database tables based on certain conditions.
· We can call Power Automate flow within Power Apps to perform writeback operations on related Tables and even do the bulk data upload on the table using an Excel file as a source.
· We can send e-mails on detecting any important sales lead on Dynamic365 or Salesforce.
· We can analyze Survey Data - you can create feedback/quiz surveys on Microsoft Forms which can be embedded into the Power BI for further Survey Data Analysis.
· We can Instantly respond to high-priority notifications or emails.
· We can Copy all email attachments to your OneDrive for Business account.
· We can Collect data about your business and share that information with your team.
· We can create an Automated approval workflow.
Conclusion
With Microsft Power Automate, We get enough flexibility to create customized workflows as per the business need. This is a very powerful tool that helps in addressing various real-time complex business problems without even writing large pieces of code. It is a subscription-based service that requires a license to be purchase either at the user level or at the flow level which you can find here.
If the license is not the bottleneck for you then you must go and explore the powerful capabilities of the Power Automate. (you can always start with the 1-month free trial)
Happy to share, Happy Learning, Cheers !!!
References
