Automate processes with Robotic Process Automation and Power Automate for desktop

Learn the basics of Power Automate for desktop flows. Additionally, learn how to build the first flow to help automate a repetitive task, freeing up time for more important endeavors.

Varying your input and output parameters allows your outcomes to change, or be variable, for every run of your flow. This module defines input and output parameters for desktop flows, which allows your flows to comprehensively handle tasks and processes with conditional input and output.

Implementing business processes or completing everyday tasks often requires you to use multiple systems, data sources, or a combination of desktop applications and cloud services. This module explains how to use gateways to connect desktop flows to other technology and cloud services and use robotic process automation (RPA) to its fullest potential.

A connector is a proxy, or a wrapper around an API, that allows a service to talk to Microsoft Power Automate and other applications. It enables you to take advantage of prebuilt actions and triggers that help build your desktop and cloud flows. For example, Outlook.com connector allows you to complete various actions such as send email, schedule meetings, and add contacts. This module explains how to build on an existing gateway to integrate Microsoft Outlook with a desktop UI flow.

This module explains how to integrate AI builder into an existing API-based flow to facilitate a robust automated process.

With Microsoft Power Automate, you can design an end-to-end robotic process automation (RPA), from automated emails and form processing to approvals and taking actions in desktop applications. Approvals are integral to many company processes, but preparing, requesting, and waiting for an approval can be time-consuming. Instead, you can build the process in Power Automate to reduce the time that you spend on necessary but repetitive tasks. Also, you can request an approval in Microsoft Teams, where you spend the most time collaborating and chatting. This module explains how to integrate Microsoft Teams and Outlook into an existing cloud and desktop flow to build an automated, end-to-end invoice approval process.

Some business processes require supervision or input that's impossible or risky to automate. However, you can fully automate other processes that don’t require human oversight or are inconvenient or impractical to constantly monitor. This module demonstrates the solution for these scenarios by explaining how to run your UI and API flows in unattended mode.

With the process advisor capability in Power Automate, you can record existing business processes and analyze them to increase efficacy by tracking completion times and mapping various actions that are involved. The first step to automating a solution is knowing the process, and process advisor helps simplify that task.