Among the most common challenges faced by today's businesses are increasing customer expectations, such as response time, the need to adapt existing systems and tools to the growing prevalence of remote work, and difficulties in keeping up with rapidly changing business environments. Automation can help meet these requirements. The Microsoft ecosystem has enormous potential to optimize nearly all processes within your company. Discover how you can save time and money and unleash your employees' potential through automation.
Microsoft Tools Used in the Automation Process
Let's take a closer look at the Microsoft solutions most commonly used in creating automated workflows. The foundation is Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), the world's most popular suite of office tools. For low-code application development, we use Power Apps. Another tool we'll delve into in this article is Power Automate. It is used to automate tasks and workflows between various applications and services. In the example workflow described below, we will also utilize the Dynamics 365 Business Central system. All these tools work in synergy, collectively creating an ecosystem that can significantly streamline your work.
What is Power Automate?
The Power Automate mechanism operates on the basis of triggers and actions to be taken when specific conditions are met. For instance, we can program that when a new email is received (trigger), the message will be posted in a chat or card in Microsoft Teams (action). Triggers and actions can be selected from predefined lists or added individually, depending on the specific needs of the company. Of course, you can create workflows of varying complexity composed of multiple sequential steps. Hundreds of ready-made connectors are available, as well as the ability to integrate with external products, pre-made automation templates, and thousands of pre-built actions. In addition to fully automated flows based on a trigger, as mentioned earlier, you can create processes that are manually initiated or run on a scheduled basis (e.g., once a day). The "automate" button, allowing for the creation of automatic workflows, is available from within the Business Central system, but remember that you can automate processes in all Microsoft business applications and connect them together.
3 Steps to Automation
To start implementing automation, the first step is to identify the problem you want to solve. It's worth seeking assistance from an experienced partner, who can help select the tools that will enable the solution. Often, the automation process can be completed much faster and at a lower cost by harnessing the potential of tools already in use within the company. The final step is the implementation of the solution.
Example of Automation Using Power Automate in Business Central
Imagine a scenario in which you gather information about potential customers from various sources. After inputting their details into the system, it's valuable to verify whether a particular lead is genuinely interested in purchasing from you. Upon approval, such a customer is added to Business Central as a contact. The last element we'll examine is managing documents associated with a given contact. What might such a process look like using the tools discussed?
In the first step of our sample workflow, we will use a form created in the Forms application to collect information about potential customers. Each time the form is filled out, the person responsible for the workflow will receive notifications in Teams and Outlook regarding the appearance of a new potential customer, along with their information and a request for approval. Once approved, new records will automatically appear in the "Contacts" section of Business Central. You can also schedule the creation of separate channels in Teams for each of the new potential customers and attach contract templates to them, for example. A shortcut to the contact details created in Business Central will also appear in the channel, allowing you to open the record from Business Central directly in Teams.
