Plan and prepare for Power Automate in 2022 release wave 2
Important
This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, go to What's new in Power Automate?. For the latest release plans, go to Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans.
Important
The 2022 release wave 2 plan covers all new functionalities planned to be delivered to market from October 2022 to March 2023. In this article, you'll find the product overview and what's new and planned for Power Automate.
Overview
Microsoft Power Automate provides the tools that you can use to improve productivity in your organization by automating repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Power Automate provides a better way to get things done across your organization through cloud flows and robotic process automation (RPA). It is deeply integrated with the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and the rest of Microsoft Power Platform.
Power Automate is investing in several areas as a part of Microsoft Power Platform 2022 release wave 2 around the following four themes.
Automation for everyone – exactly where you need it: Today, the way that many people discover Power Automate is through integrations in other products, like Windows 11, SharePoint, or Microsoft Teams. During this release wave, we're making it easier to get started with automation through any application that you use in Windows or Microsoft 365.
Hyperscale Cloud RPA: From our biggest enterprise customers to small and medium organizations, everyone is increasing the scale of their RPA deployments. We'll make it easier to roll out RPA at scale - with features to make it easier to manage your machines and the credentials for your users and accounts in Azure.
Automation that lets you sleep at night: Fundamentally, the service must never go down. We'll deliver consumer-quality end-to-end experiences, and ultimately, everything about the platform needs to just work. All features will be reliable and consumable, and automatable by default (adhering to the API-first approach), so that you can "set it and forget it."
Anyone can get started: We'll make it easier for anyone to get started with automation when they launch Power Automate for desktop or go to PowerAutomate.com for the first time. In addition to relevant first-run experiences, we'll add more intelligence throughout the product, making it easier to process even complex documents.
For official product documentation and training for Power Automate, go to the following documents.
Updates to Power Automate 2022 release wave 2
Investment areas
Desktop flows
Desktop flows is the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solution within Power Automate. Desktop flows provides automation for Windows desktop applications, services, and experiences for orchestration and deployment within Power Platform. In 2022 release wave 2, we'll invest in desktop flows in the following ways:
- Drive adoption within large and small enterprises, delivering features that enable organizations to deploy their automations at scale.
- Provide citizen developers with delightful first run experiences with high ease of use and fast access to hosted resources to build or run their automations.
- Enable ISV integrations, opening new options for partners to build RPA solutions based on desktop flows decoupled from cloud flows.
Cloud flows
Cloud flows is a core automation capability in Power Automate that allows customers to focus on what matters and automate the rest. This product area includes:
- Integration with applications like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Dynamics 365 suite of applications, and more.
- Integration with the rest of Microsoft Power Platform, including the ability to invoke workflows from an app created using Power Apps, when a data alert is triggered in Power BI, or to take an action in Power Virtual Agents.
- Mobile applications that help customers receive notifications, perform approvals, and invoke and monitor automation runs on the go.
Power Automate was first released in 2016, and it's updated on a weekly basis. In 2022 release wave 2, we're focusing on making it easier to build and share automations, and help organizations drive adoption with confidence through deeper governance and privacy controls.
Process advisor
Process advisor quickly captures detailed steps for each process in your organization to help you better understand the opportunities to streamline your workflows. Process advisor includes both task mining and process mining capabilities.
To learn more about the entire set of capabilities being delivered during this release wave, check out the release plan for Power Automate below:
For application administrators
User-impacting features to the user experience enabled automatically
User-impacting features should be reviewed by application administrators. This facilitates release change management and enables successful onboarding of new capabilities released to market. For the complete list, look for all features tagged "Users, automatically" in the release plan.
Features that must be enabled by application administrators
This release wave contains features that must be enabled or configured by administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users. For the complete list, look for all features tagged "Users by admins, makers, or analysts" in the release plan.
Get the most out of Power Automate
| Helpful links | Description |
|---|---|
| Release plan | View all capabilities included in the release. |
| Product updates | Stay up to date on latest product updates. |
| Release calendar | Know important release milestones. |
| Licensing | Improve your understanding of how to license Power Automate. |
| Product documentation | Find documentation for Power Automate. |
| User community | Engage with Power Automate experts and peers in the community. |
| Upcoming events | Find and register for in-person and online events. |
| Product trials | Get started with Power Automate. |