Workflow Automation with Microsoft Power Automate E-Book

Aaron Guilmette

• Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 295

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

MS Power Automate is a workflow automation tool built into MS 365 to help businesses automate repetitive tasks or trigger business processes without user intervention. It is a low-code tool that is part of the Microsoft applications framework, the Power Platform.

If you are new to Power Automate, this book will give you a comprehensive introduction and a smooth transition from beginner to advanced topics to help you get up to speed with business process automation. Complete with hands-on tutorials and projects, this easy-to-follow guide will show you how to configure automation workflows for business processes between hundreds of applications, using examples within Microsoft and including third-party apps like Dropbox and Twitter. Once you understand how to use connectors, triggers, and actions to automate business processes, you’ll learn how to manage user input, documents, and approvals, as well as interact with databases. This edition also introduces new Power Automate features such as using robotic process automation (RPA) to automate legacy applications, interacting with the Microsoft Graph API, and working with artificial intelligence models to do sentiment analysis.

By the end of this digital transformation book, you’ll have mastered the basics of using Power Automate to replace repetitive tasks with automation technology.

Leseprobe

Workflow Automation with Microsoft Power Automate

Second Edition

Use business process automation to achieve digital transformation with minimal code

Aaron Guilmette

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

Workflow Automation with Microsoft Power Automate

Second Edition

Copyright © 2022 Packt Publishing

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Contributors

About the author

Aaron Guilmette is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, helping customers adopt the Microsoft 365 platform. He primarily focuses on collaborative and automation technologies, including Microsoft Teams, Exchange Online, Power Automate, and Azure Active Directory. Aaron lives in the Detroit, Michigan area with his five children. When he’s not busy solving technical problems, writing, or running his children to events, he’s likely making a pizza.

I want to dedicate this book to my kids: Liberty, Hudson, Glory, Anderson, and Victory. Without them, my life would be too quiet. I especially thank my partner, Christine, for continuing to support me throughout my career. If anyone deserves an award, it’s her. I also want to thank everyone in the Power Automate community who has endeavored to make us more productive at work so we can be more present with our families.

About the reviewers

Benedikt Bergmann is a Solutions Architect and Developer working for CRM Konsulterna in Stockholm, Sweden. He is originally from Germany, but moved to Sweden in 2017 with his wife.

Benedikt has his roots as a .NET developer with some front-end elements. He has worked within Dynamics and Dataverse since 2014 and now implements solutions based on Dynamics and the Power Platform. Benedikt shares his knowledge actively with the community through his blog, YouTube channel, and presentations. At the beginning of 2021, Benedikt was recognized as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in Business Applications.

Mohamed Abdel Ghaffar is a Solutions Architect with over 14 years’ experience with Microsoft technologies and platforms (including web development, integration architecture, big data analytics, and the Power Platform). He has architected, designed, and developed enterprise solutions for governmental, banking, and telecommunication entities in Egypt and the Gulf region. Mohamed has achieved certifications related to the cloud, data analytics, and the Power Platform. In his free time, Mohamed likes to play chess and football and spend quality time with his family.

Learn more on Discord

To join the Discord community for this book – where you can share feedback, ask questions to the author, and learn about new releases – follow the QR code below:

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Contents

Preface

Who is this book for?

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Get in touch

Introducing Microsoft Power Automate

What is Power Automate?

Choosing what to automate

Reviewing general terminology

Business process

Workflow

REST

Learning Power Automate terminology

Flow

Connectors

Triggers

Steps

Actions

Conditions

Dataverse

Gateways

Templates

Packages

Branching

Getting Power Automate

Summary

Getting Started with Power Automate

Logging in to Power Automate

End user web portal interface

Mobile app interface

Power Automate Desktop interface

Admin interface

Creating your first flow

Understanding the flow components

Creating and executing the flow

Examining the flow

Summary

Working with Email

Learning about email connectors and actions

Working with email

Reading email

Handling attachments

Creating the flow

Verifying completion

Sending email

Summary

Copying Files

Learning about file connectors and actions

Working with files

Copying files to SharePoint

Verifying results with Test Flow

Verifying the results manually

Publishing files to Dropbox

Verifying the results

Summary

Creating Button Flows

Learning about button flows

Creating a button flow to email a manager

Executing a button flow

Summary

Generating Push Notifications

Learning about push notifications

Configuring a notification for emails from your manager

Introducing conditions

Creating the flow

Reviewing a notification

Reworking the flow

Summary

Working with Shared Flows

Understanding shared flows

Sharing a cloud flow

Sharing a desktop flow

Creating a basic desktop flow

Sharing a desktop flow

Sharing a flow with run only permissions

Managing shared flows

Summary

Working with Conditions

Understanding condition operators

Evaluating objects

Using expressions and multiple conditions

Adding multiple conditions

Adding condition groups

Using a switch condition

Summary

Getting Started with Approvals

Understanding Dataverse

Creating an approval flow

Creating a SharePoint site and list

Creating an approval

Adding calendar events and notifications

Starting the flow

Responding to approvals

Summary

Working with Multiple Approvals

Working with sequential approvals

Working with parallel approvals

Working with advanced scenarios

Mixed approval types

Everyone must approve

Creating a basic sequential approval

Configuring the prerequisites

Creating the flow

Creating the trigger

Creating the first-stage approval

Creating the second-stage approval

Completing the flow

Testing the flow

Adding parallel branches

Summary

Posting Approvals to Teams

Understanding the flow

Configuring prerequisites

A SharePoint site

Power Automate app for Teams

Configuring an approval flow to use Teams

Getting the requester’s information

Creating the approval

Returning the response

Testing the flow

Requesting approval

Approving the request

Reviewing the response

Summary

Using a Database

Understanding database connectors, triggers, and actions

Triggers

Actions

Connecting to a database

Creating a server

Creating a database

Creating a database table

Creating a connection to a database

Adding content to a database

Creating the flow

Executing the flow

Verifying the flow

Reviewing the run history

Reviewing the SQL data

Summary

Working with Microsoft Forms

Understanding the Forms connector triggers and actions

Triggers

Actions

Creating a basic form

Processing a form with Power Automate

Testing the flow

Verifying the result

Reviewing the run history

Reviewing the SQL data

Summary

Accepting User Input

Understanding the user input options

Creating a flow that uses all input types

Configuring the prerequisites

Creating the flow

Executing the flow

Verifying the flow execution

Expanding further

Summary

Automating Azure AD

Technical requirements

Learning about connectors and actions

HTTP action

Parse JSON

Create CSV table

Configuring prerequisites

Configuring an Azure AD application

Creating a client secret

Creating an HTTP flow

Gathering the data

Parsing the output

Creating a report

Testing the flow

Verifying the flow

Expanding further

Summary

Introducing Robotic Process Automation

Technical requirements

Learning about actions and variable passing

Run a flow built with Power Automate for desktop action

Variable passing

The Power Automate recorder

Configuring prerequisites

Configuring Power Automate Desktop

Configuring a Microsoft Access database

Configuring the Microsoft on-premises data gateway

Configuring an RPA flow

Configuring the flow framework

Configuring an application to open

Running the Power Automate recorder

Updating the variables

Finishing the flow

Testing the flow

Verifying the flow

Summary

Introducing AI Models

Learning about AI models

Technical requirements

Configuring prerequisites

Creating a Forms survey

Creating an Excel workbook

Creating a sentiment analysis flow

Testing the flow

Reviewing the output

Expanding further

Summary

Exporting, Importing, and Distributing Flows

Exporting a flow

Importing a flow

Distributing a flow

Sending a flow via Power Automate

Publishing a flow to the template gallery

Summary

Monitoring and Troubleshooting Flows

Monitoring flows

Viewing the run history

Resubmitting a flow

Reviewing email error reports

Resolving authentication errors

Examining detailed errors with the flow checker

Understanding error codes

Finding additional resources

Summary

Other Books You May Enjoy

Index

Landmarks

Cover

Index

Preface

Microsoft Power Automate is a business productivity tool designed to bring automation capabilities to both cloud and on-premises applications. The ubiquity and proliferation of cloud-based software-as-a-service technologies has resulted in organizations using a myriad of disconnected tools as part of their business operations.

Throughout this updated and revised book, you’ll learn how Power Automate can be used to drive efficiency in automation by connecting all these disconnected parts and help you reduce the time spent performing repetitive tasks.

Who is this book for?

This book is for individuals who are new to the Microsoft Power Platform (including Power Automate, Power Apps, and Power BI). Readers can have little to no experience in coding, automation, or software development practices. This book will walk readers through very basic tasks to gain an understanding of the tools and leave them with completed workflows that can be exported and used in their daily work or further refined and adapted to more complex processes.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introducing Microsoft Power Automate, introduces the basic concepts of workflows and automation.

Chapter 2, Getting Started with Power Automate, dives into the Power Automate interface and application components.

Chapter 3, Working with Email, explains how to configure Power Automate to process and interact with emails and attachments.

Chapter 4, Copying Files, explores how to use Power Automate to copy files between cloud-based services.

Chapter 5, Creating Button Flows, demonstrates how to use button flows (also called manual or instant flows) and shows how they can be executed from mobile devices.

Chapter 6, Generating Push Notifications, explains how to configure flows with push notifications to mobile devices.

Chapter 7, Working with Shared Flows, covers how to share and co-manage flows with your peers.

Chapter 8, Working with Conditions, explains how to enable multiple outcomes for flows based on criteria evaluation.

Chapter 9, Getting Started with Approvals, discusses how to use approval workflows for documents.

Chapter 10, Working with Multiple Approvals, builds on the knowledge gained in the previous chapter and expands it using conditions, branching, and sequential approvals.

Chapter 11, Posting Approvals to Teams, demonstrates how to integrate approval workflows into Microsoft Teams.

Chapter 12, Using a Database, covers connecting to a database and using it to store or retrieve information as part of a flow.

Chapter 13, Working with Microsoft Forms, demonstrates how to use Power Automate to process response data from Microsoft Forms.

Chapter 14, Accepting User Input, explores configuring a button flow to accept a variety of user input types.

Chapter 15, Automating Azure AD, introduces connectors for working with Microsoft Graph.

Chapter 16, Introducing Robotic Process Automation, demonstrates capturing screen, keyboard, and mouse data to automate legacy desktop applications.

Chapter 17, Introducing AI Models, introduces the Sentiment Analysis AI model for evaluating text.

Chapter 18, Exporting, Importing, and Distributing Flows, discusses how to import, export, and transport flows between environments.

Chapter 19, Monitoring and Troubleshooting Flows, contains troubleshooting tips for when things go wrong.

To get the most out of this book

To get the most out of this book, you should have a Microsoft 365 subscription with access to a premium Power Automate plan to enable access to premium connectors, AI models, and Robotic Process Automation.

You should also have an internet-connected computer with a modern browser such as Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome. You can obtain a free Microsoft 365 subscription from https://aka.ms/e5trial.

For Chapter 2, Getting Started with Power Automate, and Chapter 4, Copying Files, you will need accounts on Twitter and Dropbox, respectively.

For Chapter 16, Introduction to Robotic Process Automation, you will need a Power Automate license that includes unattended Robotic Process Automation.

For Chapter 17, Introduction to AI Models, you will need AI Builder capacity. The unattended Robotic Process Automation licensing includes a base level of AI Builder capacity suitable for completing the examples.

Download the example code files

The code bundle for the book is hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Workflow-Automation-with-Microsoft-Power-Automate-2nd-Edition. We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781803237671_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. For example: “Update the prompt to say Please enter today's date.”

A block of code is set as follows:

{"type":"thumbnail","fileName":"FavoriteThing.jpg","fieldName":"Picture","serverUrl":"https://learningpowerautomate.sharepoint.com/sites/FavoriteThings","serverRelativeUrl":"@{decodeUriComponent(decodeUriComponent(outputs('Add_attachment')?['body/Id']))}","id":"@{guid()}"}

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on the screen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. For example: “A gateway is a software application installed on an on-premises computer.”

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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1

Introducing Microsoft Power Automate

Business activities in the Information Age are filled with repetitive tasks: receive an email, generate a purchase order, send a message, route a document, approve a time-off request. In many cases, these activities don’t generate real value, though they do need to get done to help support business goals.

Computers introduced the promise of helping us do more, but a lot of that has resulted in there being more to do in order to get the same value. What if we could use technology to handle routine tasks and save our strength for doing the things that require skill and thinking?

In this book, we’re going to learn the basics of Microsoft Power Automate, a tool designed to help you automate repetitive tasks and get you back to generating value.

This chapter focuses on getting an understanding of some of the basic concepts of Power Automate:

What is Power Automate?Choosing what to automateReviewing general terminologyLearning Power Automate terminology

By the end of this chapter, you will have been introduced to the components of Power Automate and when we might use them to streamline daily operations—from the basics of email management to more complex business operations.

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.

Choosing what to automate

Frequently, people do work that they don’t need to do. It’s important to differentiate between work that doesn’t need to be done at all and work that needs to be done, but doesn’t require you to do it.

From both the administrative and end user perspectives, there are a number of activities, processes, and tasks in Office 365 and other line-of-business applications that can be automated through the use of Power Automate.

Automation is a key business technology to reduce the impact of repetitive, low-skill tasks on the workforce. Consider the following diagram:

Figure 1.2: Candidates for automation

When looking at business processes, they can generally be divided into one of the four quadrants:

High value, low skill: Requires minimal specialist skill, but is critical or produces high-value output.High value, high skill: Requires human intelligence or processing to determine value, skills, and relationships.Low value, low skill: Requires minimal specialist skill and also produces an output of small value.Low value, high skill: Requires a high degree of focus or skill but produces an output of small value.

As you examine tasks in your daily routine, you can evaluate them against the preceding matrix to help understand whether it is something that can or should be automated. Items that fall into the “low skill” quadrants are very good candidates for automation.

Consider the following examples:

Running a report of the previous day’s sales totals is a repetitive task that requires low specialist skills. If possible, you should seek to automate this task.Calling a customer for a follow-up on a demo unit that was sent. This is a high-touch, high-value activity, but requires the personalization and complexity of human relationship management to execute effectively. This task may not be a good candidate for automation.

As you can imagine, using a tool such as Power Automate to reduce repetitive data manipulation tasks frees up time for people to add real value to business processes and relationships.

Next, we’re going to get familiar with the terminology and interface of Power Automate and then learn how to connect to common applications to solve business problems.

Reviewing general terminology

You’ve already seen a few terms, and if you’re familiar with SharePoint or other collaboration tools, they may be recognizable. But just to make sure we have a solid foundation on which to build, we’re going to go over some basic terminology, and then we’ll start getting into specific Power Automate terminology.

Business process

A business process is any sequence of tasks needed to accomplish the business’s purpose. This may be something as simple as submitting a timecard or getting a signature on a purchase order. Business processes generally fall into three categories:

Primary or operating processes: These typically result in some sort of customer value delivery, such as a customer placing an order and the business shipping a product. They also may include things such as product design and engineering.Support: These processes are necessary for the primary or operating processes to take place. For example, purchasing materials to make a product, or training an employee would generally be regarded as support processes.Management: These are processes to oversee the operating and support processes, or to improve those processes. Examples of management processes might be reviewing and making recommendations about the procurement or employee onboarding processes.

Automation can be used with processes in all of these categories. Power Automate can be used to automate some or all parts of many types of business processes.

Workflow

A workflow can be thought of as the individual steps to achieve a particular business process. For example, employee onboarding may be a business process, and ordering a new computer may be a workflow task associated with completing the employee onboarding business process.

Power Automate can be used to automate some or all parts of a workflow.

REST

REST is an industry acronym for REpresentational State Transfer. It is used to describe a method for interacting with computer systems. In a REST-based system, client devices generally send HTTP verbs (or actions) to a target system uniform resource identifier (URI) to input or retrieve data.

Deep dive into REST

For more information on the history and design principles of REST architectures, refer to https://restfulapi.net/.

Like many technologies on the Microsoft 365 platform, Power Automate utilizes REST to enable a high volume of performant transactions.

Next, we’ll look at Power Automate-specific terminology.

Learning Power Automate terminology

As we begin working with Power Automate, it will be important to understand the core terminology that is being used. It’s also important to note that terminology periodically changes, so if you started using Power Automate a few years ago, you may want to read through and make sure you’re using current terminology and concepts.

The following terms are generally organized in the order that you’ll encounter them in the book, which also corresponds to their increasing complexity and usage. You’ll need to understand them so you can choose where to apply the correct business logic and processes. As you go through this book, if you encounter terms you don’t recognize, you can refer back to this section.

Flow

A flow is simply the logical grouping of conditions and tasks used to automate a process. Flows can be identified using a variety of characteristics, such as where they originate (cloud or desktop), what types of activities they perform (technical automation or business processes), when they occur (automated or scheduled), or the types of tools and technology they employ (robotic process automation or artificial intelligence).

Here are some examples of how you can describe or categorize flows:

Automated: Flows that happen based on triggers or events, either cloud or desktop-based.Button: Also known as instant or manual, these occur when initiated by a user.Cloud flows: Flows created from the web interface, typically requiring no local desktop computing power or access.Scheduled: Configured to occur at specific time intervals.Approval: A process where requests are routed through an approval chain.Business process: A high-level process comprising smaller tasks and workflows.Robotic Process Automation: Also known as RPA or User Interface (UI) flows, RPA is typically used to automate non-REST apps. RPA was announced as generally available in 2020.AI Builder: Artificial intelligence (AI) technology used to help make decisions during a flow’s execution. AI Builder was announced as generally available in 2020.

Each flow type has different use cases, triggers, and configuration capabilities.

Connectors

Connectors are the components used to directly interface with both source and target systems. Connectors contain the configuration information required to interact with applications. Examples of connectors are shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 1.3: Power Automate connectors

Connectors are generally broken down into two tiers: standard and premium. Standard connectors are generally included with all Power Automate plans (such as Power Automate for Office 365), while premium connectors have additional costs associated with them (either from Microsoft or from the connector’s vendor).

Expanding Power Automate

In addition to using the included standard and premium connectors, you can also build your own connectors to interact with your applications and services. While that type of development is outside the scope of this book, you can learn more about it at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/custom-connectors.

Triggers

Triggers are the activities that cause the flow to begin. Triggers are frequently used to categorize the type of flow being used. The core types of triggers are:

Automated: An automated flow happens automatically based on a particular type of event (such as a new file being uploaded to a site or an email being received).Instant: Also known as a manually triggered flow or a button flow, instant flows are triggered on demand by a user.Scheduled: This time-based option happens on a recurring basis.

Keep in mind that the availability of automated triggers may depend on which connectors are being used – generally, your business requirement will most likely determine what type of flow and triggers you’ll use.

Steps

Steps are comprised of the individual evaluations and actions that a flow executes. They are ordered in a methodical manner. Steps frequently use output data or variables from actions performed previously. Here are some examples of steps:

Posting a Teams channel messageReading an emailSaving a filePerforming a calculationEvaluating a conditionConverting a time or dateEntering a value in a database record

Every flow is made up of one or more steps. Each activity or process in a flow (trigger, action, or condition) is considered a step.

Actions

Actions describe the types of activities performed by a flow (such as copying a file, posting to a Teams channel, or sending an email). From a technical perspective, a step is a group of one or more actions. Many people, however, use the terms actions and steps interchangeably.

Conditions

Conditions are used to evaluate and select the circumstances under which actions will be performed. Conditions may operate on a number of data types, such as time or schedule constraints, values received through user input or parsing files, variables from previous actions, or other calculated values. Conditions are frequently used when the result of an evaluation needs to determine which series of actions should be performed.

Dataverse

The Dataverse (previously known as the Common Data Service or CDS) is a storage mechanism similar to database tables that allows organizations to store business data. The terminology has changed several times as well, so it’s important to make sure you’re on the same page.

The following table shows the legacy CDS terminology as well as the more current corresponding Dataverse term:

Legacy CDS term

Current Dataverse term

Entity

Table

Field or attribute

Column

Record

Row

Option set, multi-select, or picklist

Choice

Two options

Yes/No

Table 1.1: Terminology update

A variety of applications, such as Dynamics 365, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI can use data stored in Dataverse. Advanced Power Automate scenarios, such as working with Dynamics 365 entities, may require access to Dataverse.

Gateways

A gateway (also known as a data gateway) is a software application installed on an on-premises computer. This application is used to facilitate access for the Power Platform services to data sources located in an on-premises environment. For example, a data gateway may be used to allow Power Automate to read items from an on-premises SharePoint Server list.

The following diagram shows the data gateway presenting on-premises data to Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Apps services:

Figure 1.4: Data gateway

The data gateway, shown in Figure 1.4, acts as a conduit between the on-premises data sources and Power Platform services (such as Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Apps).

Templates

A template comprises a set of connectors, triggers, and actions designed to accomplish a predefined purpose. Templates allow standardized deployments and the reuse of common components and configurations. Templates are generally published in the Power Automate template gallery (https://us.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/).

Packages

Similar to templates, packages allow you to save and export a flow for reuse. You can share a package either internally or externally. Packages are also useful if you develop flows in a test environment and then need a mechanism to deploy them in production.

Branching

Branching is used to describe the concept of different series of steps or actions that can happen. You may decide to invoke branching through the use of conditions, such as in the form of an if-then construct: if yes, do action 1; if no, do action 2. In other instances, you may decide to use parallel branches (different sets of actions or logic that execute simultaneously) if you have long-running processes or the output of one branch isn’t needed to continue the workstream of another branch.

Figure 1.5: Example of branching

Understanding the terminology, both business- and Power Automate-specific, will help you as we move toward creating flows.

More information

While we have covered the basic Power Automate terminology you’ll encounter in this book, there is even more to discover at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/glossary.

Getting Power Automate

Before you get started, you’ll need to make sure you have licenses that support the type of flows you want to create.

As mentioned previously, Power Automate contains the concepts of standard and premium connectors. Standard connectors are available for all Power Automate plans, including the Power Automate plans that come with Office 365 (also sometimes referred to as seeded licenses). Premium connectors (or features such as AI Builder and RPA) may require the use of a separate standalone Power Automate license:

Power Automate per user plan Power Automate per user with attended RPA planPower Automate per flow planLegacy Power Automate P1 or P2 plan

A per user plan is best for organizations that have broad adoption of Power Automate and wide usage. A per flow plan may be more appropriate for organizations that only have a few flows that are used by everyone in the organization. For up-to-date licensing details and guidance, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/powerapps-flow-licensing-faq.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into the platform!

Summary

In this chapter, we discussed the high-level concepts of Power Automate, including how it relates to solving problems (such as business processes or workflows). We also covered introductory knowledge concepts such as actions, triggers, and conditions. Understanding the types of triggers and connectors will help you design flows and business processes that reduce repetitive work and produce value in your organization.

In addition to understanding the features and terminology, we covered some of the updates and changes to Microsoft Power Automate since the last revision of this book, including the introduction of Power Automate Desktop and the general availability of both RPA and AI Builder.

We also touched on the licensing necessary to take advantage of Power Automate features.

In the next chapter, we’re going to begin exploring the Power Automate interface and use it to create simple flows.

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