POWER AUTOMATE

Automating business process is becoming very common in companies throughout the world, no matter which sector they belong to such as banking, health, telecommunications and more. This is the focus of one of the pillars of Power Platform, named Power Automate, a Microsoft service that helps you automate workflows.

The platform offers the following types of workflows: Automated flows, Button flows, Schedule flows, Business process flows and UI flows. All types mentioned have similar features that are going to be presented, except the Business process flows that have a different approach than the others, for that reason it will not be a topic of discussion of this document.

Automated, Button and Scheduled flows are created from connectors available on the platform. The connectors use API services to execute specific actions and can interact with Microsoft and third-party services. There are a huge number of connectors, but in case that you do not find your requirement, you can configure a Custom connector according with your needs. Each connector has actions associated to it, which vary depending on the APIs that interact and the actions that can be executed on it. Summing up, to create those kinds of flows it is as simple as selecting the connector and the action to be executed, fill up the required parameters associated to each action and the flow will be ready to run.

You are probably wondering what the difference is between those three kinds of flows, and the answer is, the event trigger of each them. Automated flows are triggered when a defined event previously created occurs. Schedule flows, as its name implies are programmed to run according to a define schedule. Finally, Instant flows initiate the execution after a button click, which is created inside the flow. Something relevant to mention is that Power Automate has the application flow, available for Android and iOS mobiles, from which the user can access created buttons and initiate a workflow.

The three flows mentioned above are an easy and quick alternative to automate a process that allows to be automated through connectors. Compared to other software this have some advantages, the first one being the more than 275 connectors available on the platform, which includes a wide range of commonly used applications on business process. The second one is the platform has a friendly user interface, helping people that are not familiar with coding. The third and one of the most important is that the platform is a cloud service, so it does not require to be installed on your computer. The fourth one is the integration with mobile systems which is a big plus and lets the automation run from any place and any moment according with the user needs, as well as, to see the results on real time. The fifth one is the large quantity of process templates that are useful to avoid creating flows from scratch and start working on the existing ones.

Not all the processes that you will have to automate would be able to be created with connectors and here is when appears UI flows. Unlike other flows this one interacts directly over the interface of the computer, simulating the actions that a person can do like clicks, open applications, navigate through a website, etc. Before creating the first flow, it is necessary to install Ui Flows in the machine and perform some setup steps. Later the first step to create the Ui flow is selecting either the automation will be over a desktop application or a web browser. This feature in medium or large processes, that normally involve the two types of applications can make the automation process tedious because the solution will be to create separated flows for each kind of application and then invoke them in an Automated, Button or Schedule flow.

Ui flows may fall short in front of other RPA software given it has some limitations to the automation with some actions and scenarios, an example of this is that doesn’t have mouse moves, mouse hoover, click and draft and double clicks that are important for some cases. Also, it does not work on virtual machines like remote desktop or Citrix and does not allow to have more than one instance per applications with the same window name, the last disadvantage is that doesn’t have features to manage failures, which is very important on the RPA world to prevent errors for exceptions.

Although Ui Flows still have features to improve and create to be able to compete with the big RPA software, potentially it will become a robust and powerful tool to automate process and combined with the other flows of Power Automate it will be a leader in this field.

DAPI

Maria J. Trujillo