What is the task?

In your business process document, write down what the task is. This should be the big picture, not the individual activities done to complete the task. (We'll get to those!)

Write down all the tasks you know of, and then work all these documentation steps for one task at a time. You might discover new tasks as you go.

Your Power Apps project doesn't have to tackle each step, but it's good to know what they are.

Note

If your task is done fully on the desktop, you can discover all the steps different people in your organization are performing to complete the task by using our process discovery functionality called process advisor. Process advisor visualizes your process in a process map and reveals bottlenecks and metrics for your process through an analytical report.

Example: Expense reporting tasks

For our expense report example, we wrote down these tasks:

• Employee creates expense report

• Employee submits expense report to manager

• Manager approves or denies expense report

• Manager sends expense report to Accounting for payment

• Accounting verifies expense report compliance

• Accounting posts expenses to Contoso Finance software

• Accounting creates weekly expense spreadsheet for quick reporting

• Accounting delivers weekly spreadsheet to CFO and department managers

• CFO reviews spreadsheet weekly and provides any notices regarding budget overage

We later discovered additional tasks through talking with other team members:

• Accounting looks up and records general ledger codes for each expense item

• Accounting archives the paper expense report in accordance with retention policy

• Audit team conducts semiannual compliance audit

Next step: Who's doing the work?