Building Solutions with the Microsoft Power Platform

Chapter 5. Getting to Know Power Automate

The Power Platform consists of tools that will help you create end-to-end solutions. So far, we’ve been discussing building web and mobile apps with Power Apps, and we’ve seen how we can store data with Dataverse. Another crucial Power Platform tool is Power Automate, which will allow you to automate business processes. The ability to create systematic processes is the goal of every business. When you have a well-defined system for a process, your business operates more efficiently, communication is improved, and tasks are clearly defined and repeatable. Power Automate is a tool that can help you implement those systems.

When trying to figure out what types of processes to automate, many people focus first on the larger processes like employee onboarding, sales pipelines, and recruitment. Power Automate can help with all of those, but it can also help with the smaller solutions. For instance, let’s say that you have a process in place where a manager needs to approve all documents in a specific document library in SharePoint before they can be made public. As part of the process, you find yourself sending the same email over and over, and your manager replies with the same response. Sometimes, you need a document approved when your manager is unavailable (say, on vacation), and someone else—maybe their boss—needs to handle the approval. Scenarios like these can all be automated via Power Automate. With the click of a button or link, or ...