What is Power Automate?
Power Automate, part of the Power Platform family of products, is a workflow engine that can be used to automate common business processes or sequences based on conditions or scenarios. Power Automate (formerly known as Microsoft Flow) is primarily a web-based tool designed to interface with a growing library of software from both Microsoft and other vendors. Due to its no-code/low-code design, Power Automate can be approached by individuals with any technical skill level—including office or business users with no coding experience, system administrators, and programmers.
Power Automate Desktop
In early 2021, Microsoft introduced Power Automate Desktop—a product that could be used to help automate processes on legacy computer applications using Robotic Process Automation. Microsoft has now made that Power Automate Desktop application a native part of Windows 11 as well!
Many readers may be familiar with the concept of SharePoint workflows. On the SharePoint platform, you can use products such as SharePoint Designer and Workflow Manager to kick off business processes based on work activities—such as a document being checked in to a particular library. One of the great things about SharePoint workflows is that they can automate business processes and tasks inside the SharePoint environment. However, one of the drawbacks of SharePoint workflows is that they only automate business processes and tasks inside that SharePoint environment.
While some vendors have created integration packages to tie SharePoint workflows to external products or have developed full replacements for SharePoint Designer and Workflow Manager, many of them are limited to interfacing with data inside SharePoint.
This is where the power of the Power Automate platform really shines—it has native connectivity to hundreds of applications out of the box and isn’t dependent just on SharePoint. Not only does it have native integration for the world’s most popular applications, but it’s also extensible: you can develop your own connectivity solutions to work with your organization’s custom apps.
Power Automate’s capabilities are limited only by your imagination and the services offered by the applications you wish to integrate.
You can see that in the following diagram, a sample purchase order workflow ties together the SharePoint, Outlook, and Microsoft Approvals apps:
Figure 1.1: Sample purchase order workflow
This basic workflow, connecting three disparate applications, is just the beginning of what Power Automate can do for you.
