Describe how Power Automate cloud flows use connector triggers and actions
Power Automate provides several core components to handle any type of automation needs. This learning unit introduces key concepts like triggers, actions, and connectors, helping you understand how to initiate and manage flows effectively.
Triggers, actions, and connectors work together to automate tasks across different systems. Let's look at them more closely:
- Triggers: Initiate a flow based on specific events, such as receiving an email or adding a file to SharePoint.
- Actions: Define the tasks the flow performs after being triggered, such as sending a notification, saving a file, or updating a record.
- Connectors: Act as bridges between Power Automate and external applications, enabling triggers and actions to interact with tools like Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, Salesforce, and more.
For example, a flow could use the Outlook connector to trigger when a new email arrives, then use the OneDrive connector to save the attachment and the Teams connector to notify your team.
How triggers initiate cloud flows in Power Automate
Triggers are the starting point for any cloud flow in Power Automate. They act as the event that sets your flow into motion, allowing you to automate tasks based on specific conditions or actions. For example, receiving an email in Outlook can serve as a trigger to send a notification in Microsoft Teams, ensuring timely communication without manual effort.
Power Automate offers a wide range of prebuilt triggers for popular connectors like SharePoint, Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and third-party applications. These triggers make it easy to start flows based on events that occur in your favorite tools. For instance, you can use a SharePoint trigger to initiate a flow whenever a new file is added to a document library.
Types of triggers
Triggers come in different types, each designed to suit specific automation needs:
Instant/Manual triggers: Instant triggers allow you to start a flow manually, giving you control over when the automation runs. For example, you can tap a button on your mobile device to send a prewritten email to your team, making instant triggers ideal for on-demand tasks.
Scheduled triggers: Scheduled triggers run flows at specific times or intervals, making them perfect for recurring tasks. For instance, you can set up a flow to send a weekly sales report every Monday morning, ensuring consistent delivery without manual intervention.
Automated triggers: Automated triggers start flows automatically when external events occur, eliminating the need for user input. For example, you can configure a flow to save email attachments to OneDrive whenever you receive an email from a specific sender, streamlining file management.
How actions work in Power Automate
While triggers initiate a cloud flow, actions define what happens next. Actions are the tasks or operations that a flow performs after it's triggered. They're the building blocks of your automation, allowing you to define the specific steps your workflow should take to achieve its goal. For example, after a trigger detects a new email, an action could save the email attachment to OneDrive or send a notification in Microsoft Teams.
Actions are executed sequentially in a flow, meaning each action depends on the output of the previous step. Power Automate provides a wide range of prebuilt actions for various connectors, enabling you to interact with services like SharePoint, Outlook, Teams, and more. These actions allow you to perform tasks such as sending emails, update records, creating files, or post messages.
Types of actions
Actions can be categorized based on their functionality and purpose:
Data operations: These actions allow you to manipulate data within your flow. For example, you can use actions to filter arrays, format dates, or parse JSON data.
- Example: Extracting specific fields from a submitted form and saving them into a structured Excel file.
Connector-specific actions: These actions are tied to specific services or applications, enabling you to interact with tools like Outlook, SharePoint, or Salesforce.
- Example: Sending an email through Outlook or creating a new folder in SharePoint.
Control actions: Control actions help you manage the flow’s logic, such as adding conditions, loops, or parallel branches.
- Example: Using a condition to check if an email contains attachments before saving them to OneDrive.
Custom actions: If the prebuilt actions don’t meet your needs, you can create custom actions using HTTP requests or custom connectors to interact with APIs.
- Example: Sending data to a third-party CRM system via an API call.
The role of connectors in workflow automation
Connectors are what make Power Automate so versatile and powerful. They enable you to integrate tools and services that may not natively work together, creating seamless workflows across platforms. Whether you’re automating communication, managing files, or analyzing data, connectors ensure that your flows can interact with the right systems at the right time.
For example, a sales team could use connectors to automatically update their CRM system (like Salesforce) whenever a new lead is added to a SharePoint list. Alternatively, an IT department might use connectors to monitor incoming support tickets in Microsoft Teams and log them in an Excel spreadsheet for tracking.
Power Automate makes it easy to explore and implement triggers, actions, and connectors with its intuitive interface and prebuilt options. To get started:
- Choose a trigger from a connector that matches the event you want to automate (for example, "When a file is created" in SharePoint).
- Add actions from other connectors to define the tasks your flow performs (for example, "Send a notification" in Teams or "Update a record" in Dataverse).
- Customize the flow by specifying details like file paths, recipients, or conditions.
By using triggers, actions, and connectors together, you can build workflows that automate tasks, improve efficiency, and connect your favorite tools—all with minimal effort and no coding required.