What Is Power Automate
Microsoft Power Automate, formerly known as Microsoft Flow, allows you to automate various recurring daily tasks by building flows to increase the efficiency of your work. It not only increases productivity but also makes day-to-day operations easier.
Until now, automating was something done by programming. For that purpose, you need to hire expert developers to ensure the proper working of the program. But thanks to Power Automate, anyone with basic knowledge of computers and the internet can make flows and automate various processes.
How Does Power Automate Work
Automation triggers are achieved by flows, through which user interface-based capabilities and APIs are joined together. Some of the automation flows within the program are
1. Scheduled Flows
Whenever a designated time is reached, the triggering of a process occurs, which is started and completed. A simple example of this process is emailing at a particular time and date.
2. Cloud Flows
These flows allow you to trigger automation by a specific event, whether on-premises or on the cloud, like a post from the corporate page on a social media platform. These types of flows use API Connectors.
3. Desktop flow
Using this flow, you can automate mouse clicks and keyboards on a desktop. The most common use of these flows is extracting data from pdf files or files from any folder on a desktop and then shifting these to an Excel file.
4. Business Process Flows
These flows are best suited for providing the end users with the right way of using a particular software to understand their roles better.
How to Create Workflows in Power Automate
Thanks to the availability of tons of templates, you can easily create workflows in this program with just a few clicks of the mouse. Here is how
Step 1: Selecting a Template
First, you need to select a template per your needs. You can filter these templates by searching for a specific one in the search bar.
Step 2: Specifying Details
Once you have selected the template, now you have to specify the actions and conditions in the chosen template according to your work. Once you are done with it click the “Save Flow” option, and your flow is ready to work.
One important thing to note here is that you can also custom-build your flow from scratch in addition to these templates in the program.
Error Handling in Power Automate
Most people are unaware of the ability of this program to handle errors as it is famous for the automation of tasks but can perform error handling equally well. Let’s at one of the examples of error handling.
Let’s say you create a flow to copy information from a particular HTTPS address that leads to a page, and if there is no information, you design it to show no data in response. What if the page is down? The flow will not be able to show any response.
Conditional Branching For Error Handling
To handle that error we mentioned, we need to use a parallel or conditional branching option that allows submitting two responses simultaneously. Another thing you can do is to configure run after program based on the first response.
Conclusion
Power Automate allows you to automate daily routine tasks, saving your time and increasing the work’s efficiency by eliminating human errors. In addition to automating different tasks, you can perform conditional branching for error handling.
