Project end-to-end scenario

Article
12/01/2022

The following test cases are full end-to-end processes.

Create an automation project request.
The request is approved or rejected. Approvals are sent to the business process owner or fallback if no business process owner is selected.
Project admin maps the automation project to a new or existing environment.
The maker creates a solution and develops the automation project.
When the solution is deployed to prod (manually until ALM Automation actions are available) the automation admin maps the solution to project by metering the solution and its artifacts.
After metering is turned on for the solution, the flow / process can be triggered, and data will sync back to main in near real time.
Verify in the main solution that the flow sessions are being synced.
Use Power BI to verify that the data calculations are correct.

User roles definition

Refer to the following table to see what roles and permissions are needed for each step.

Name	Security roles
Maker	Automation project contributor, basic user, environment maker
Approver/business owner	Automation project viewer
CoE admin	Power Platform admin (or system admin for all environments used)

Order materials and services (example 1)

Request automation project (maker)

Sign in to Power Automate and then change to your main environment.
Launch the Automation Project app from either of the following apps.
- Automation Console app
- Automation Project app
Create a new automation project request by selecting the + or selecting the New Project tab.
Fill in the details as the following table indicates.

Question	Value
Project Name	Order materials and services
Process Challenges	Complex, No API
Department	ANY
Improvement Driver	ANY
Processing Time	85
Process Category	ANY
Processing Frequency	Daily
Processing Peaks	monthly
Process Sub Category	ANY
Volume Per Process	5
Business Owner	Business Approver or leave blank for Fallback
ROI
Automation Steps	14
Number Of FTEs Needed	2
Rework Time in Minutes	35
AVG Error Rate %	15
Hourly Cost Per FTE	50
Working Hours Per Day	8
Working Days Per Year	200
FTEs Needed for Rework	1
Automation Goal	ANY
Maintenance Overhead %	10
Development Costs	1200

Select Save. After the save operation completes, the dashboard displays a list of flow runs and then calculates the ROI potential and complexity score, based on the information provided.
Select the Refresh button within the app until the ROI and score show up. These should show up in a few seconds.
Now, select the project record for approval, and then select the Submit Project button.

Now that the request has been submitted, it can be approved or rejected by the business owner, or if none was provided, the fallback approver is used.

If this is the first time an approval is being used within this environment, it'll take around 5 minutes for the approval solutions to initialize. This is only a one-time event, and you can avoid it by following the steps laid out in the setup steps.

Approve automation project request (approver)

Sign in as an approver in the main environment.
Open the approval from one of the following locations.
- Microsoft Teams (preferred)
- Power Automate actions tab
- Outlook email
Approve the request.

Map the automation project to an environment (dev)

Sign in as a CoE admin in the main environment.
Open the automation center app.
Select the automation project that was just approved.
Select the Related tab > Environments.
Map the record to an environment (dev).

Important

Perform step five only after the automation project is deployed to the test environment.
Map the automation project to the test environment.

Important

Perform step six only after the automation project has been deployed to the production environment.
Map the automation project to the production environment.

Create / Export solution (DEV/TEST)

Sign in as a maker into the satellite environment.
Go to the DEV environment and create a solution.
If the department publisher does not exist, create one for the department to use.
Create a desktop flow.

Create a cloud flow that will trigger the desktop flow. Name the cloud flow using the following naming convention: [CloudFlowName][AutomationProjectNumber][3digits].

CloudFlowName	Your meaningful name for your process
AutomationProjectNumber	Displayed in the automation project app
3digits	The last 3 digits can be used for advanced use cases and are typically 001 if you only have one solution per automation project. If you have multiple solutions for a single project, you could increase that number by 1 for each additional solution to distinguish them.

Note

The renaming process can also be done easier inside the Automation Solution Manager app.

The cloud flow should trigger the desktop flow based on the frequency defined in the automation request.

Test by running the cloud or desktop flows.
Deploy to test (manual).

Automation project gets mapped to the test environment

Maker exports manually and deploys to test.
Automation project gets mapped to the TEST environment manually by the CoE admin.
Maker does basic functional testing.

Automation project gets mapped to PROD app

Perform the following steps as a CoE admin in the satellite environment (PROD).

CoE admin maps the solution to automation project by metering the solution and its artifacts.

Open the Automation Solution Manager app.
Select the solution for your automation project and meter by selecting the +" icon.
Once metered, meter the artifact (the trigger cloud flow).
Go to the metered artifact (cloud flow), and then trigger it. (This will sync a flow session to main).
Wait for run to complete.

Verify data sync to main

Perform the following steps as a CoE admin in the main environment.

Open the Automation Center app.
Open the flow Sessions tab.
Filter on newest complete time if needed, and then verify that the run we triggered is there.

Next, we can validate the ROI calculations using Power BI and the Excel ROI calculator.

Take the same information you entered into the automation project app, enter it into the Excel ROI calculator.
Compare Power BI with the results from the Excel ROI calculator.