Best automation tool from Microsoft
We use Power Automate solution to automate workflows for SharePoint online solutions. Few business problems that addressed using Power …
Starting at $15 per month per user
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What is Microsoft Power Automate?
Microsoft Power Automate is an advanced automation platform offering a range of features, including AI-powered automation, robotic process automation (RPA), business process automation (BPA), digital process automation (DPA), and process/task mining. The platform aims to empower organizations to securely automate…
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Pricing
Power Automate Premium
$15
Cloud
per month per user
Power Automate Process
$150
Cloud
per month per bot
Hosted RPA add-on
$215
Cloud
per month per bot
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://powerautomate.microsoft.com/pri…
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $15 per month per user
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powerautomate.microsoft.com
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Microsoft Power Automate?
Microsoft Power Automate is an advanced automation platform offering a range of features, including AI-powered automation, robotic process automation (RPA), business process automation (BPA), digital process automation (DPA), and process/task mining. The platform aims to empower organizations to securely automate their operations at scale by leveraging low-code and AI technologies.
Capabilities
(DPA) digital process automation through cloud flows to connect apps, data, and services.
Automates repetitive tasks using UI-based automation with (RPA) robotic process automation through desktop flows.
Ensures consistency with business process flows—the (BPA) business process automation capability in Power Automate.
Process advisor: Power Automate also includes process and task mining capabilities to analyze and optimize workflows.
AI Builder: Power Automate uses AI to automate tasks that are repetitive or time-consuming. For example, its AI can automatically extract data from documents, generate reports, or answer customer questions.
The "describe it to design it" feature allows users to create flows by simply describing them in natural language, making it faster and easier for users to create flows, to produce flows that are more likely to be used.
The Power Automate platform offers a wide range of connectors, so users can more easily integrate existing applications and systems.
Microsoft is now adding two new features to Power Automate:
Copilot, an AI-powered assistant that suggests actions, connectors, parameters, and supports flow debugging.
"Create text with GPT," an AI-powered action used to generate text for various purposes, including content creation, feedback gathering, and document information extraction.
Power Automate Process Mining (launched August 2023) - Optimizes operations and uncovers opportunities for automation.
Microsoft Power Automate Features
- Supported: (DPA) Digital Process Automation - Cloud Flows
- Supported: (RPA) Robotic Process Automation - Desktop Flows
- Supported: (BPA) Business Process Automation - Business Process Flows
- Supported: AI Builder
- Supported: Process Mining - Process Advisor
- Supported: Task Mining - Process Advisor
Microsoft Power Automate Screenshots
Microsoft Power Automate Videos
Microsoft Power Automate is a cloud-first, comprehensive automation platform powered by low-code and AI with GPT, designed to accelerate development without comprising visibility and control, modernize business processes, and integrate operations at scale. Key features: advanc...
Show More Al Builder's new Azure OpenAl service model enables businesses to integrate intelligent text generation capabilities into their Power Automate and Power Apps solutions. With pre-built templates, users can incorporate relevant prompts into their workflow.
Microsoft Power Automate Integrations
Microsoft Power Automate Competitors
Microsoft Power Automate Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android, Windows Phone |
| Supported Countries | Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, South America, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States |
| Supported Languages | English, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, Spanish, Estonian, Basque, Finnish, French, Galician, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Lithuanian, Latvian, Malay, Norwegian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian (Cyrillic script, Serbia), Serbian (Latin script, Serbia), Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional) |
Frequently Asked Questions
Microsoft Power Automate is an advanced automation platform offering a range of features, including AI-powered automation, robotic process automation (RPA), business process automation (BPA), digital process automation (DPA), and process/task mining. The platform aims to empower organizations to securely automate their operations at scale by leveraging low-code and AI technologies.
Microsoft Power Automate starts at $15.
UiPath Automation Platform, SS&C Blue Prism Intelligent Automation, and Automation Anywhere are common alternatives for Microsoft Power Automate.
Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 9.
The most common users of Microsoft Power Automate are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Reviews and Ratings
(227)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-5 of 5)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
June 18, 2024
Best automation tool from Microsoft
We use Power Automate solution to automate workflows for SharePoint online solutions. Few business problems that addressed using Power automate: 1. SharePoint Approvals flow 2. Capture audit version from the SharePoint items 3. Read email attachments and upload to SharePoint 4. Monitor the field status change in the SharePoint list and send email notifications to users for action
- Automate SharePoint Approval flows
- Integration with Outlook
- Item updates in SharePoint list
- File uploads to Document library
- Integration with RPA tool like UiPath
- No activity disable feature in the workflow, this would have saved lot of time
- Allow turn off feature to not trigger any pending runs in the queue or add new feature to just run pending runs when the workflow is turned off
- Allow easy copy and paste activities from UI
- Integration with Teams
- Integration with Outlooks
- SharePoint online integration to create/edit/delete list items
- Trigger power automate using API calls
- Files upload to SharePoint list/document library
- Quickly design workflows for SharePoint solutions
- Connectors to different tools/systems like Outlook, teams, Database for different activities
- Allow any non-technical persons to build automation workflows
WE are now under consideration to try AI tools for image processing. Currently we have RPA tool UiPath but the extraction of texts from image processing which is not 100% accurate. We would like to explore soon Power Automate AI tools for better text extractions from image and PDF.
Power Automate is very well integrated with Microsoft office 365 suit, Teams channel and SharePoint online. The workflow UI is very user-friendly and the users from non-technical background can easily understand the tool and start automating any simple and complex workflows. This is the best tool compared to Nintex Workflow products.
1000
They represent different key business functions aim to automate different automation processes like workflow automations, notifications and alerts, document approvals workflows, integrations with RPA UiPath tool, outlook automated response, cross platform automations, SharePoint list updates, documents meta data column update, sending email remainders for bot identification expirations, calendars update notifications.
1000
Skills include some basic programming knowledge, issues analysis and troubleshooting skills. Users who have experience in any automation tools can provide support to this tool and also Business Analysts and citizen developers capable to support power automate workflow tool.
- SharePoint list updates
- Integration with RPA tool
- Sending auto reply emails from Outlook
- Sending teams alerts and notifications
- SharePoint document approval process
- Integration with RPA tool UiPath
- Sending auto reply emails from distributed email groups
- Integration with teams channel and chat groups
- Quality Assurance and Testing
- Integration with Database and execute query
- Customer onboarding process
No
- Cloud Solutions
- Scalability
- Integration with Other Systems
- Ease of Use
Power automate can provide seamless integrations with Microsoft products like O365, Sharepoint and teams. This provides flexibility in designing workflows and automating complex scenarios. This platform provides user-friendly with an intuitive interface that allows for easy creation, management, and monitoring of automated workflows.
Conduct a detailed cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the total cost of ownership (TCO) of Power Automate. Develop a scaling plan that accounts for organizational growth, additional use cases, and expanding automation capabilities over time. Review detailed use case analysis that includes identifying critical workflows, repetitive tasks, and integration points that could benefit most from automation.
- Implemented in-house
No
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled
- Version controls
- Audit history
- Monitoring and maintainence
- No Training
It is easy of learnings, provides No-Code/Low-Code Approach. The Power Automate community is active and supportive, offering forums, and other resources. Microsoft provides comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and learning paths for Power Automate. I would strong recommend this approach to other.
Take advantage of Power Automate's extensive library of templates and connectors. Templates provide pre-built workflows for common scenarios, while connectors enable integration with various applications and services (e.g., Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Twitter). Start with templates closest to your needs and customize as necessary. Incorporate error handling mechanisms within workflows to manage exceptions and ensure robust performance.
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
No - we have not done any custom code
I have not done any custom configurations
We did purchase premium support because to receive fast response time and prioritized handling of support requests. This is critical for resolving urgent issues and minimizing downtime in critical business processes.
Yes
Yes, workflow unable to access when it is accessed via modern view. The issue was later identified and addressed by Microsoft.
We had issues accessing the Microsoft power automate workflows due to some changes impacted the modern view of workflows. The issue was opened with Microsoft support since it was critical and impacting lot of business users, the issue was escalated to Microsoft support and the issue was immediately addressed by Microsoft team. Not only the issue was resolved fast, also provided the temporary work around to access the workflow files.
- Integration with Teams
- Integration with Outlook
- Integration with SharePoint
- Error handlings
- Integration with Legacy systems
- Integration with databases
- RPA UiPath tool
- Teams
- Outlook
- SharePoint
I have not participated in any negotiation with the vendor.
I have not interacted with the vendor
We use Microsoft Flow to automate internal processes such as material purchase approval flow, document file upload, customer data collection, technical teams communication when new documents are published in the file repository, and recently the integration between our chatbot to support technical and commercial teams, implementing in the bot the sending of emails with attachments and password validation by 2FA. All these automation have been integrated with Office365 products: SharePoint, Microsoft Forms, Outlook 365, Office 365 Users, and Microsoft Teams. Activity flows utilize various integration components such as HTTP webhook, Egnyte, Office 365 user, and groups search. As a result, we reduced the time spent on internal processes, with email exchanges and billing between teams, improved the dissemination of important documents, and expanded the resources and services available to our internal users.
- Easy to configure and implement the flows.
- Large catalog of addons and integration components.
- Ease of working collaboratively.
- Allows creation of custom flow components.
- Easy to share and distribute the flows.
- Depending on your license type, access to different integration components
- Documentation about some components, functions, and usage syntax needs to be improved.
- A tool for creating custom connectors.
- Poor visualization of complex flows with multiple steps and unfolding
- Native integration with office365 services.
- Active Directory-integrated security and permissioning.
- Automation of communication tasks, treatment and dissemination of information.
- Real-time alerts when new documentation material becomes available.
- Tracking and visibility of steps in a purchasing process.
- Insufficient documentation for lay users or beginners regarding formulas and connector configuration.
- Has an engaged community with multiple forums covering all aspects and features of Flow.
I have not yet used the existing AI resources in PowerPlatform, so far only the flow performance analysis has been interesting as it points out the average start-to-end execution times of each flow, and at which stage there were bottlenecks or longer processing times.The idea of using the Virtual Agent with some internal process flows is being studied and evaluated.
The tools competing with Microsoft flow have interesting features, but they fail when you need to use resources located internally in the company, such as databases and network file repositories, in your flow, in addition, the security, permissions, and authentication part is not integrated to the Active Directory used for user authentication on the network, it is even possible to implement this authentication integration, but this requires a level of access to the server environment and network services that ordinary users will not have. If you only want to use cloud services in your flow, some free tools can be useful, including the free license of the Microsoft flow itself.
10
The technical areas of the company, such as customer support, have created automations to streamline customer service and ensure that internal processes are respected, without employees needing to perform additional tasks, such as sending an email requesting approval or notifying other departments about a customer request. This has contributed to solving the internal communication problem between some departments. Another benefit achieved was saving these customer integrations in SharePoint, creating a centralized repository of information accessible to any technical area user.
2
People with a technical profile, knowledge of programming concepts and logic, contribute to the logical reasoning behind task execution. It’s important that they also have ideas about management and processes, or that their direct manager possesses this knowledge to ensure effective automation that meets expected requirements. Having knowledge of the Office 365 universe is an important advantage, as it allows insights into solutions and identifies the necessary tools to achieve them.
- Centralize the collection of internal requests through Microsoft Forms, storing demands and their evolution in a Sharepoint repository, notifying the responsible people and the requester whenever there is a change in the status of the request.
- Development of integration with chatbot accessed by customers, creating self-service routines, and step-by-step tutorials.
- Integration between BI report and managers' WhatsApp, always notifying them when there is a discrepancy in their subordinates' timekeeping
- Development of chatbot integration embedded in one of our web tools that is used by customers, consuming the Power Automate API, where the automation flow, in addition to recording key information about customer self-service in a Sharepoint repository, it consumes another API that provides the data requested by the customer.
- Integration with WhatsApp to send information to managers.
- Data collection and automatic communication to the areas involved in certain events.
- Consumption of proprietary API through a Power Automate flow
- Integration between database and collection of information requested or provided by customers
- Creating an application testing automation routine using RPA
No
- Cloud Solutions
- Integration with Other Systems
- Ease of Use
The ease of integration with other Microsoft products was decisive in deciding which tool to use to automate some processes. Another important point was security, which is integrated with the policies defined in Azure. The possibility of using on-premise gateways was a differentiator, as we were able to integrate legacy systems and databases into our cloud environment.
The main premises would still be the same: integration with Microsoft systems, integrated security (this includes single authentication), and the possibility of integrating legacy systems on-premise; on the other hand, cost can become a tiebreaker, when we compare the cost of PowerAutomate alone, competitor products become more attractive, such as Zappier and ServiceNow, but when we analyze the cost integrated into an Office365 subscription, Power Automate becomes the best choice.
- Implemented in-house
Yes
- learning the tool
- usability analysis and usage scenarios
- POC
- Small-scale implementation
- Expansion to other areas that would benefit from the solution
- usability analysis and usage scenarios
- POC
- Small-scale implementation
- Expansion to other areas that would benefit from the solution
Change management was minimal
The company already had well-defined processes, so the automation work was done in a way that would adapt to these processes, requiring small technical adjustments to the automation flow, such as releasing components that were blocked by global IT, and creating repositories and forms for use in automation, and not procedural adjustments or creating new internal rules.
- Power Automate integration connectors that have been blocked from use by our IT and Information Security team
- Simply publicizing the solution, without even quick training for some key people, resulted in a delay in the adoption of the solution by the departments.
- Watsonx Assistant
- green-api.com
- Proprietary API developed by the company
The most difficult integration was with WatsonX Assistant, due to the timeout for a return to Watson when it makes a request to the Power Automate API, which led us to simplify the flow steps and create parallel executions so that data was returned to Watson within 7 seconds, while the flow continued to be processed by executing routines and integrations with other components, such as writing data to a Sharepoint repository, were moved to the end of the flow, after the return was sent to WatsonX Assistant.
- Jenkins
There is no native Jenkins connector for Power Automate, the alternative is to create a custom connector that makes a call to the Jenkins publishing REST API.
- File import/export
- API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
Expand the file connector limitation, which is currently limited to 100MB files.
Allow the execution of parallel tasks when creating and defining variables, which today is only done sequentially and always at the highest level of the flow.
Allow the execution of parallel tasks when creating and defining variables, which today is only done sequentially and always at the highest level of the flow.
June 08, 2024
Microsoft Power Automate has come a long way - it is a solid process automation tool now
I use Microsoft Power Automate to help clients automate their business processes, such as onboarding/offboarding, employee recognition and others. We typically use Microsoft Power Automate in conjunction with a forms tool - usually PowerApps or Microsoft Forms - and store data in SharePoint Online and/or Dataverse. Power Automate can be effective in automating any process which is repeated at your business as long as the rules for the process are well defined.
- Workflow
- Email notifications
- Task management
- Approvals
- Connect to multiple data sources
- Integration difficult with on premises apps (e.g. Active Directory)
- Connectors to certain systems are not free
- Limitations on how many flows can run based on subscription
- Process automation
- Task assignment and tracking
- Integration with multiple systems
- Generally, very positive - saving time on processes at low cost
- Ease of development
We haven't worked alot with the AI tool to build automations yet. However, our experience to date has been that the tool is helpful, as long as an experienced Power Automate user is working with it and validating the output.
Nintex is a more powerful workflow tool, but Microsoft is closing the gap with Power Automate. Microsoft Power Automate can do simple tasks very well, and they both can connect to multiple other systems very easily.
20
Information technology. We are a consulting company who works with clients to improve their business processes and we use Power Automate at a large number of clients.
20
Our consultants are skilled in business process analysis as well as development. While you don't need to be a developer to use Power Automate it does help to have the basic understanding of computer science principals.
- Onboarding and offboarding employees
- Invoice processing
- Expense processing
- Time off requests
- None
- Integration with third party applications
Yes
We essentially replaced Nintex workflow with Power Automate. Power Automate is included with some Microsoft licenses so it was a more cost effective option and now the features and functionality are comparable to Nintex.
- Integration with Other Systems
- Ease of Use
It is a relatively easy solution to use. If you can understand processes and analyze how they flow then you can use Power Automate.
I don't think we would change anything about our evaluation.
- Implemented in-house
No
Change management was minimal
Change management isn't an issue with implementation of Power Automate. However, when you do automate a process with Power Automate there will be some change management required as users are converting from a manual (or otherwise automated process) to a new process.
- None
no
No
We have never contact Microsoft for support
- Task assignment
- Basic decision flows
- Status tracking
- None
Yes, but I don't use it
June 07, 2024
Microsoft Power Automate : remarkable tool
We use Power Automate mainly for handling the email communication from our clients. And the relay of e-mails to separate folders.
- (re)direct emails
- handle documents upon creation in a folder
- excellent connections with other software solutions
- event handling on unsurpassed level
- reading the content of pdf files. Not everybody is fluent in Regex commands
- Selecting variables grom the 365 enviromenr
- Boosted Productivity
- Error Reduction
- Consistency and Compliance
- Integration Excellence
- Flexibility and Customization
- Enhanced Collaboration
- Cost Savings
- Accessibility and Mobility
- Error reduction
- Time spent on routineous work
- Cost saving
- Employees well being
- Crystal clear communications
Oh yes. Certainly the solution where 5 or more examples are needed to get information out of a document is very helpfull and reduces a lot of time.
2
Finance
3d designer
3d designer
1
Logica thinking
- E-Mail handeling
- Documentprocessing
- 3D design parameters
- Simplify 3D design
- Product design
No
- Ease of Use
Excellent tutorials and examples availabel
I would take more time before implementation.
- Implemented in-house
Yes
Training
testing
implementation
testing
implementation
Change management was a minor issue with the implementation
Showing people the benefits
- Consistency
- Online Training
No nor needed the net gives excellent solutions
No
No
- E-Mail handling
- Creating documents
- None
Yes, but I don't use it
We needed a solution for our payables department to receive invoices from email attachments, going into a one drive folder. Microsoft Power Automate gave me the tools needed to design a product that achieves our end goal in simplifying payables document management. We linked it from our Exchange Online mailbox to our Microsoft OneDrive account.
- Allows you to create automation and scripts that speed up productivity in the workplace.
- Shows an overview of the workflow and job history.
- Has lots of plug-ins with other Microsoft and third party vendors' product's.
- Would like to see deeper integration with Exchange online, specifically the plugin realizing that an email is being sent via an alias address, not the primary SMTP address. We had to do a workaround that involved creating multiple single-member distribution groups to get power to automate to differentiate different email addresses going to the same mailbox.
- The interface is slow to load at times.
- Microsoft Exchange Online integration.
- Microsoft OneDrive integration.
- File handling ability.
- We've seen productivity increase 20% for our payables department, they no longer have to download email attachments and put them into folders.
We have not used any AI tools in our power automate jobs.
We were previously using on-prem Sharepoint and Exchange 2016. After migrating to 365 we realized it was hard to replicate this functionality without using power automate. We didn't look elsewhere because the license was included with our 365 subscriptions.
5
Only I directly use power automate. But the results of power automate's scripts are used by 5 people in our org. Mainly accounting and finance.
Just myself
- Email organization
- Attachment filing
- Invoice organization
- Email attachment filing and organization into Sharepoint
- Creating workflows for people in our manufacturing production shop
Yes
Power Automate replaced on-prem sharepoint email workflows with an on-prem Exchange server. We used to send invoices to email addresses created by sharepoint, and it would file them into folders on our old server. We moved to the cloud a few years ago, and it wasn't economical to keep old sharepoint running.
- Cloud Solutions
- Integration with Other Systems
It works with Office 365 and Sharepoint Online. It replaces what we've previously implemented on premise.
Power Automate was simply a product that "fell into my lap" and fit the bill. We didn't specifically search out competitors.
- Implemented in-house
No
Change management was minimal
I had to show the team how to use sharepoint online, its URLs vs our old system. But other than that, it was transparent to our users.
- It took a while to get our flow implemented because I wanted to use a single mailbox with multiple aliases. Initially Power Automate couldn't tell between what alias I was sending an attachment to. I had to tweak and test the script to have it figure that out.
We did not purchase premium support. We are not aware of that as an option.
No
I can not. I have not contacted Microsoft directly for support.
- The use of logic is presented in an orderly way which is easy to understand
- The integrations with microsoft and third party apps is well organized being grouped by product
- The advanced features like JSON and HTML parsing allows more advanced controls in flows, without having to write code.
- There are sometimes too many options when trying to perform an action. For example Microsoft Outlook, there are v2, v3, v4 without a clear indication on why you would want to use each.