One of the most demotivating and frustrating aspects of business operations is the daily execution of repetitive tasks that should have been automated long ago. Often, we encounter a peculiar mindset among business owners who prefer these tasks to be performed by employees rather than "automatons."
This mindset is usually rooted in two reasons: a lack of trust in technology and a lack of knowledge about available solutions. Many organizations that work within the Microsoft 365 environment are unaware that they have a powerful automation tool at their disposal: Power Automate.
In this article, you will learn:
- What tasks are worth automating
- What Power Automate is
- How it can be used for various actions and processes
Identifying Tasks Worthy of Automation
It is often said that you should automate everything, that's possible. The most common argument supporting this claim is time savings. However, should we really automate everything? To determine this, we answer two questions:
- Is the task time-consuming?
- Is the task repetitive?
If both answers are positive, the task is a good candidate for automation. Nevertheless, it is essential to examine the task or process more thoroughly to assess whether automation is a good idea. We can categorize tasks into the following groups:
- Tasks that have high value, are critical to the organization, and require minimal specialized skills.
- Tasks that generate high value but also demand high-level skills.
- Tasks that have low value and do not require highly skilled individuals.
- Tasks that require a high level of concentration and skill but produce a product or service of low value.
For example, verifying overdue payments and sending email notifications to customers when a payment is overdue is a repetitive task of high value that does not require specialized skills. If possible, automation should be pursued. On the other hand, contacting a customer over the phone to verify the correctness of a delivered item is also a task of high value but requires personalization and knowledge of relationship management complexities. Such task may not be suitable for automation.
Once we have answered these questions and evaluated the value of a particular process, we need to determine if Power Automate can be used for automation.
Power Automate - A Member of the Power Platform Family
Power Automate is a tool designed to automate repetitive business actions and processes. It is one of the members of the Power Platform, which aims to make automation accessible to less technical users or, more specifically, those without programming knowledge. That's why Power Platform is often referred to as a Low-Code environment. With Power Automate, many tasks can be accomplished without coding, using the popular "drag and drop" method. From a licensing perspective, the cheapest Microsoft 365 plan, Business Basic, is sufficient. Interestingly, if you use Dynamics 365 Sales or Power Apps per user, you also have the right to use Power Automate, albeit with slightly narrower capabilities.
Power Automate is available as a browser service, a desktop application called Power Automate Desktop, and a mobile version for triggering instant flows manually.
The process of creating automation in Power Automate involves arranging sequences of actions to be executed based on specific conditions. Power Automate supports over 300 connectors, with new ones constantly being added. These connectors include both Microsoft solutions and third-party offerings. Some connectors are available in the premium tier, requiring the appropriate license. Power Automate provides a vast library of templates that can be used by entering necessary data and customizing them to specific requirements.
If templates are not suitable, the process of building a flow starts with selecting the flow type, which includes:
- Cloud flows, categorized as:
- Automated: triggered automatically based on events like receiving an email from a specific person or completing a form on a website.
- Instant: manually triggered on-demand, such as starting a virtual machine in Azure running an ERP system.
- Scheduled: triggered according to a defined schedule, for example, every day at 11:00 AM.
- AI Builder flows generated based on description (currently available in preview).
- Desktop flows created using Power Automate Desktop.
- Business Process Flows, often associated with Dynamics 365 Sales, where individual steps of a sales process can be defined.
Examples of Power Automate Use Cases: The range of scenarios where Power Automate can be used is vast. It starts with simple processes that are still performed manually, moves to two- or three-step approvals, and extends to automatic provisioning of permissions and Microsoft 365 group memberships after a customer accepts an invitation to your tenant. Moreover, users can improve their own work by creating their flows, such as automatically saving email attachments to dedicated folders in OneDrive. The cloud nature of Power Automate makes it highly compatible with solutions based on Dataverse. For instance, Power Automate can generate various documents (e.g., offers, orders, contracts) in Word format based on data from Dataverse (Dynamics 365 solutions). The same applies to Excel, where a flow can add data from Dataverse to an Excel spreadsheet, such as data for regular inventory reports, and automatically send it to decision-makers via email.
In the realm of business, noteworthy applications include:
- Approval processes like internal orders, leave requests, or reviewing a project document before sending it to a client.
- Onboarding processes where welcoming a new employee via email and introducing them to the team, providing information about procedures and IT tools, and sharing useful contacts can all be automated. This sequence can be triggered automatically once a new employee is added to the employee list in SharePoint.
- Debt collection processes where automation can handle the first and second reminder, and if those fail, human intervention takes over.
- Renewal processes are perfect scenarios for scheduled flows that check lists for renewal dates and send reminders based on specific conditions (e.g., 10 days before renewal). This approach can be applied to all IT tools used by a company on a subscription basis.
- Marketing processes, such as approving social media posts, receiving notifications when our company is mentioned, collecting survey data, saving and storing new email addresses, sending webinar reminders, or notifications in Teams or emails when competitors publish new posts. The possibilities are vast.
Automation at Your Fingertips
Despite initial impressions, Power Automate is a powerful tool for automating repetitive tasks. Even when considering a dedicated user license that allows access to all available connectors, the cost can be justified with the time saved by optimizing a specific process. Furthermore, the service is continually evolving and being enhanced with features like AI. Power Automate's Copilot, for example, can generate complete flows based on a description. We no longer have to choose specific triggers and actions; it is enough to describe our needs to Copilot. Additionally, we can automate processes that interact with older API-less IT systems using Power Automate Desktop. It has a "point and click" interface that records mouse and keyboard movements, which are then transformed into an automated action sequence. Integration with Dynamics 365 Business Central is also worth mentioning, as defining a flow to automate a process is often faster and cheaper than engaging in extensive programming modifications.
If you are interested in Power Automate or have additional questions, whether you have started creating your first flow and need assistance or want to learn more about costs and licenses required for specific scenarios, feel free to contact us via our contact form to arrange a free consultation.
