Microsoft Power Automate – Use Cases
Blog: Microsoft Power Automate – Use Cases
Power Automate (PA) is a relative newcomer to the Robotic Process Automation – field, but – considering its origins – a formidable one. The technology is owned by Microsoft, a powerful player in any area it chooses to focus on and a guarantee of quality.
PA is live on the cloud and requires no installation, only an Office account. This low barrier to entry, no-code development, and competitive user-based pricing help organizations tap into new opportunities – for example, by automating individual tasks or processes previously considered too expensive to automate.
Microsoft’s vision is to power citizen development at a scale; the inclusion of all employees in automation development. This exciting approach, however, comes with some practical challenges when it comes to quality management and the scalability of developed solutions. Visit here to learn how to prepare for the organizational demands of citizen development, avoid pitfalls and benefit from the growing inclusion of business users to development work.
Today, Power Automate is best suited for on-demand execution of short workflows in systems with existing API connectors and within Microsoft’s products or attended automation for individuals and teams. PA is also an excellent complementary tool to other RPA technologies.
In this article, we explore Power Automate through a couple of use cases to help you get started with the technology.
Power Automate – Use Cases
Case 1: Event-based automation
Whenever your business process begins with an unpredictable event. Using Power Automate to start the automation flow is a good idea.
Because PA is very affordable, it offers a great way to improve your cost-efficiency by optimizing the use of other RPA licenses. This is particularly easy to demonstrate with event-based automation where a process is triggered by an unpredictable event – for example, a received email.
Consider the following situation:
A company has automated a process that has an email trigger and a tight SLA. Their solution has required the use of 3 traditional RPA robots to ‘poll’ 24/7 an Outlook inbox. Whenever an email is received, the RPA bot executes the automated workflow from start to finish.
Connecting Outlook with Power Automate and using it to push items into the queue of the pre-existing industrial RPA solution removes the need for polling. This more elegant solution to the problem cuts the number of traditional RPA robots being used to automate the process and saves up the organization thousands of euros in licensing costs.
Watch the video below to see how Blue Prism RPA and Power Automate can be used in the described situation.
Case 2: Automating Microsoft ERP tools
Working in MS Dynamics is somewhat complex with traditional RPA tools, and the connection isn’t always optimal.
Instead of modeling MS Dynamics in a traditional RPA tool’s application modeler, an organization can choose to build a connector between Power Automate and the traditional RPA tool. The connector would then allow PA to retrieve data from MS Dynamics and push it into the process flow.
Redesigning the logic and using PA as a complementary tool in the described situation leads to …
- faster case handling and
- better reliability
Want to know more?
There are many things to explore about Power Automate: Follow closely our events to pick up on free training sessions we organize together with Microsoft or book a meeting to discuss your needs!