Power Automate is a user-friendly, WYSIWYG task automation tool. Power Automate provides you the ability to pre-program tasks that are repetitive, standardized, time-consuming, or straight-up boring. Power Automate is reasonably easy for an everyday worker with no programming or technical experience to use to their advantage.
Power Automate is especially good for approval workflows, integrating multiple apps and services, and automating time-consuming and monotonous tasks. Power Automate can be used for something as simple as routing a document for approval by your manager or as complex as onboarding a new employee at your organization. Power Automate flows can be personal (only for you) or shared (made available for everyone in a department or company).
Some of Power Automate's strongest attributes include its template store (because why reinvent the wheel?), connectors that can speak to both Office 365 and non-Microsoft services (e.g., Google Apps, DropBox, Salesforce, DocuSign, Twitter), and its ease of use. You can even use Power Automate to program bots in Microsoft Teams, for free, all without coding.
Power Automate has opened up work automation to the masses in a way few other apps have in the past, for its price. Power Automate is the successor of SharePoint Designer workflows, though it is not meant to be a replacement.
Resources
- Power Automate Learning Paths [Microsoft]
- Flow of the Week blog [Microsoft]
Similar applications
- IFTT
- SharePoint Designer workflows
- Nintex
Feedback
- Power Automate Ideas forum [Microsoft]
- Microsoft Flow Community [Microsoft]
Author
- Matt Wade, Office Services MVP
