Power Automate
DAPI
Maria J. Trujillo
POWER AUTOMATE
Automating business process is becoming very common in companies throughout
the world, no matter which sector they belong to such as banking, health,
telecommunications and more. This is the focus of one of the pillars of Power
Platform, named Power Automate, a Microsoft service that helps you automate
workflows.
The platform offers the following types of workflows: Automated flows, Button
flows, Schedule flows, Business process flows and UI flows. All types mentioned
have similar features that are going to be presented, except the Business process
flows that have a different approach than the others, for that reason it will not be a
topic of discussion of this document.
Automated, Button and Scheduled flows are created from connectors available on
the platform. The connectors use API services to execute specific actions and can
interact with Microsoft and third-party services. There are a huge number of
connectors, but in case that you do not find your requirement, you can configure a
Custom connector according with your needs. Each connector has actions
associated to it, which vary depending on the APIs that interact and the actions
that can be executed on it. Summing up, to create those kinds of flows it is as
simple as selecting the connector and the action to be executed, fill up the required
parameters associated to each action and the flow will be ready to run.
You are probably wondering what the creating flows from scratch and start
difference is between those three working on the existing ones.
kinds of flows, and the answer is, the Not all the processes that you will
event trigger of each them. have to automate would be able to be
Automated flows are triggered when a created with connectors and here is
defined event previously created when appears UI flows. Unlike other
occurs. Schedule flows, as its name flows this one interacts directly over
implies are programmed to run the interface of the computer,
according to a define schedule. simulating the actions that a person
Finally, Instant flows initiate the can do like clicks, open applications,
execution after a button click, which is navigate through a website, etc.
created inside the flow. Something Before creating the first flow, it is
relevant to mention is that Power necessary to install Ui Flows in the
Automate has the application flow, machine and perform some setup
available for Android and iOS steps. Later the first step to create the
mobiles, from which the user can Ui flow is selecting either the
access created buttons and initiate a automation will be over a desktop
workflow. application or a web browser. This
feature in medium or large processes,
The three flows mentioned above are that normally involve the two types of
an easy and quick alternative to applications can make the automation
automate a process that allows to be process tedious because the solution
automated through connectors. will be to create separated flows for
Compared to other software this have each kind of application and then
some advantages, the first one being invoke them in an Automated, Button
the more than 275 connectors or Schedule flow.
available on the platform, which
includes a wide range of commonly
used applications on business
process. The second one is the
platform has a friendly user interface,
helping people that are not familiar
with coding. The third and one of the
most important is that the platform is
a cloud service, so it does not require
to be installed on your computer. The
fourth one is the integration with
mobile systems which is a big plus
and lets the automation run from any
place and any moment according with
the user needs, as well as, to see the
results on real time. The fifth one is
the large quantity of process
templates that are useful to avoid
compete with the big RPA software,
potentially it will become a robust and
powerful tool to automate process
and combined with the other flows of
Power Automate it will be a leader in
this field.
Ui flows may fall short in front of other
RPA software given it has some
limitations to the automation with
some actions and scenarios, an
example of this is that doesn’t have
mouse moves, mouse hoover, click
and draft and double clicks that are
important for some cases. Also, it
does not work on virtual machines like
remote desktop or Citrix and does not
allow to have more than one instance
per applications with the same
window name, the last disadvantage
is that doesn’t have features to
manage failures, which is very
important on the RPA world to
prevent errors for exceptions.
Although Ui Flows still have features
to improve and create to be able to
