Microsoft Power Automate? … Microsoft Flow?
There are many doubts among users about the related names. Maybe you are researching and still feel more lost than before?
You are now wondering if they really are the same tool? What’s their purpose? What are their differences?
Continue reading this post to find out more.
Contents
What is Power Automate?
As a brand new Microsoft enterprise system, Power Automate allows synchronizing data analysis and applications and integrating in an automated way. The goal is to improve productivity and to be very efficient in business deals.
Besides automating tasks and processes straightforwardly and intrinsically, Microsoft Power Automate also ensures a functional, continuous and adaptable work flow.
With this tool, you can connect two or more applications, no matter if the apps are from Office 365 or any third-party suite, in order to execute actions that automate business processes.
Power Automate facilitates multiple functions like:
- moving data across systems;
- sending reminders about tasks;
- supporting data from any API;
- automating tasks from a local device.
What Was Microsoft Flow?
Microsoft Flow was a tool from the Office 365 suite mainly dedicated to improving the worker’s productivity by automating numerous tasks.
Microsoft Flow also combined various cloud applications and services. The possibility of obtaining notifications, collecting data, and synchronizing files is now enabled thanks to the creation of automated workflows.
And Microsoft decided that it is time to rename Flow and to include it in the Power Platform. It became an ingredient of the Microsoft Power Automate system.
Microsoft Flow is now rebranded as Power Automate. This tool is allowing users to automate processes and tasks within their Office 365 workflow. Microsoft 365 (Office 365) has a wide range of applications required for businesses and thousands of organizations. Applications like:
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Microsoft Outlook
- Microsoft OneNote
- Microsoft OneDrive
Other Microsoft products do their job as well, but each application exists in its own “bar” and generally does not communicate with other applications.
Power Automate/Microsoft Flow allows each of these applications to talk to each other and take action based on activators from other applications.
What Does Power Automate Do?
Microsoft Power Automate is a great tool that enables the automation of processes and tasks by connecting different applications and platforms. Users can associate Microsoft Office 365 apps with each other or with an extensive library of other cloud based software.
Automation can be created quickly and easily, which means that even users with a minimal understanding of Microsoft Office 365 are able to develop basic automation to make everyday business life more manageable.
Advanced users can utilize Microsoft Power or Power BI applications to create their business processes.
Using workflows, users can quickly lay out the template of how applications should communicate with each other.
Workflows, Templates, and Connectors
Workflow, at the primary level, is defining an action that in turn triggers an event. An example might be that when a user receives an email from a colleague with an attachment, the attachment is uploaded to SharePoint.
The event receives an email from a team member, and the event sets up a SharePoint attachment.
Workflows can be as simple as two steps or incredibly complex, involving multiple steps and applications. Flow templates are pre-built automation provided by Microsoft that covers the most popular uses for Power Automate.
Hundreds of built-in templates are available, even for some of the most popular software such as Salesforce, Dropbox, Google Drive, social media platforms, SQL server, etc.
Connectors allow users to fully integrate and connect to many apps in the Microsoft Office 365 suite and across the network.
The ever-growing list of connectors includes Facebook, Salesforce (and other CRM systems), Azure, Google products like Drive, Gmail and Spreadsheets, Slack, YouTube, WordPress, and more.
Benefits of Using Microsoft Power Automate
Increase productivity
With Microsoft Power Automate, you can now create time-saving workflows – all with the perfect integration through a legion of predefined connectors. The workflows can vary from individual tasks to large-scale systems.
Faster and safer automation
You have the ability to enable all the users you consider to create safe workflows thanks to a guided experience with just programming. This facilitates the automation of robotic processes (RPA).
With faster and safer automation, you can now facilitate workflows with all the users you consider, thanks to a guided experience in programming. It also assists with the automation of robotic processes.
Smart workflows
Artificial Intelligence is moving our world towards technological advancements, and Microsoft is well aware of it. So, with the possibilities offered by Artificial Intelligence, you can now automate manual tasks requiring significant time of performance.
It allows you to ease your operations and you can focus better on other strategic responsibilities that require more significant resource allocation.
Using automated business workflows
The ability to work well with Power Automate is fast becoming a valuable skill in any company. Business process automation can increase productivity across departments, inform stakeholders, and facilitate day-to-day operations. Power Automate can:
- Notify sales teams of new opportunities and deals in CRM;
- Push notifications when high priority email arrives;
- Archive and organize documents;
- Track social media accounts and automate marketing features;
- Remind users to take daily, weekly or quarterly activities.
If you are willing to learn Power Automate, there are numerous courses available online that can be of use when developing your skills.
However, you should always be aware of unwanted mishaps like deleting crucial data or security issues. Treat these with extreme care and consideration, take precautions and make sure you have backups in place to see you through any situation you may encounter.
Remember that Microsoft is not performing the backup for Microsoft 365 (Office 365), so you should consider acquiring an Office 365 backup partner to be fully secured with Microsoft 365.
Conclusion
Power Automate eases the processes for anyone to quickly create the workflow that benefits them the most, sends a friendly response, adds them to a spreadsheet, is emailed to you for approval, and then adds their contact to the Salesforce or Dynamics 365 process.
And this simplified authorization process works with data of approval works with data on Twitter, Microsoft Teams, Excel, and more than a hundred other services.
