Business Process Automation Tools - Power Automate

What do you think when we hear business process automation?

Business process automation is transforming organizational operations with ease to do more with less while scaling in alignment with business growth. So, automation is all about turning outdated processes into automated. There are many good tools in market that we can use to automate most repetitive tasks example Power Automate, Zapier, IFTTT, KissFlow, etc.

In this blog I will elaborate Microsoft’s Power Automate-

What is Power Automate?

Microsoft’s Power Automate (Previously called Microsoft Flow) is all about automation. In very simple words it’s a tool that allows you to automate any task or process.  

1. Power Automate can be very simpler task or process:

Consider sending automatic reminder emails about weekly meetings to your team Or a complex process like downloading all attachments from a specific type of email and putting it into google drive for let's say 90 days and after that archive it. It can be automated with Power Automate.

2. Task or Process can go between any kind of applications:

The cool thing is you can use any kind of application with Power Automate, Like take an Outlook email and post it on Teams or like based on specific keywords in slack messages send an email         to someone. Power Automates have hundreds of connectors for applications like Slack, Skype,            Twitter, File System, Outlook, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc. If you don’t find any connector         available, Power Automate supports third party api to connect two different types of                   applications.

3. Task can be personal or business one

Task can be very personal like sending reminder daily or monthly for some medicine or birthday.                It can be business specific for any complex process like automating invoice process.

4. Tasks are interactive

Tasks can interact with different people or events. Consider invoice payment we don’t want to    automate if payment is in million. So, we can have an approver flow. We can have conditional              flow if the invoice amount is greater than $500 it will seek permission from the Manager.

5. Task can be on desktop or website.

Power Automate’s Flow can take control of your desktop, then can control mouse, access files , do backup etc.

What skills do I need to use Power Automate?

Any basic business users who know how to use Office 365, IT Professionals can create automated business processes using Power Automate’s  no-code/low-code platform

Features of Power Automate

1. Ease of use – No code/Low code, very simple interface so you can define workflow, just with drag and drop.
2. Comprehensive - Power Automate has UI to design flow, provides hundreds of connectors, Supports third party.
3. Powerful – We can design any complex workflows with many conditions, loops and approvals.
4. Scale – Highly scalable. Example new employee can use existing Flow instead of learning complex business process.

What is Workflow/Flow?

Workflow (also known as Flow) basically stating an action which in turn triggers an Event. Every task has a Trigger on which Action is done. For example, you want to create a flow where on some Tweet we want to send email to yourself. In this case Trigger can be a Tweet and Email will be Action. Trigger can be just based on Button click or Time based. Example daily 9 am you want to move a desktop file from Location A to Location B.

Types of Flows

1. Instant – Triggered on Button Click
2. Automated - Triggered with an event. Can automates any tasks
3. Scheduled – Triggered on scheduled time and mostly its recurring
4. UI – Triggered by Button click or an Event or specific recurring Time

What is Power Automate Templates?

Power automate templates are pre-built Flow provided by Microsoft that cover the most popular uses. It will allow you to automate a process in minutes.

What are Connectors?

Connectors allow users to integrate and connect directly to any kind of apps within the Microsoft Office 365 suite or third party

Conclusion:

Microsoft Power Automate is a great tool for business process automation.  It's very easy, powerful yet scalable, and comprehensive. Any basic business user or technical users can use it to automate repetitive tasks whether it's simple or complex.

Microsoft provide ready to use Workflow Templates that covers most popular uses and there are hundreds of connectors to use.

I will soon publish another post about creating your first flow. Stay tuned.

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