FormAssembly vs. Microsoft Power Automate

FA serves as the main platform for global students and staff to submit requests, with information sent to connected systems, primarily Salesforce. It is used by all current Oxford University students, not just those at SBS. Teams such as the CRM Team, Web Team, Entrepreneurship Centre, Goldman Sachs Team, and Programme Recruitment and BD teams use FA for various purposes, including degree programmes, open programmes, online programmes, and summer school. The MBA portal also uses FA. The system is user-friendly, easy to configure, supports branding, and incorporates business logic and rules, making it very helpful.

Incentivized

Very useful RPA tools for automating processes with minimal coding and drag-and-drop functionality, with a wide variety of triggers, including scheduled time-based triggers and activity-based triggers, such as modifying a file/list in SharePoint to run a Power Automate flow. Very easy-to-use UI with native integration with every Microsoft product, and a very low automation failure rate for deployed workflows.

Incentivized

• Salesforce prefill is a powerful way to prefill forms with records from Salesforce and prevent duplicate data entry.
• Salesforce submission connector allows us to create some pretty complex and powerful logic to process form submissions into Salesforce data.
• General form prefill options via query strings in the URL is a helpful feature.
• The ability to use custom CSS and javascript on the page makes the forms very extensible and has been helpful to give us even more functionality.

Incentivized

• Sending confirmation email to clients and user once the flow is triggered.
• Fetching or Dumping files from one location to another if the flow is triggered.
• Schedule flow helps to send alerts and triggers the flow at a specific interval of time to carry out the required task.
• Power Automate also be used to convert any file format to a specific file format and save it to the required location

Incentivized

• we could always use more styling options when it comes to the form builder
• in our past use of the form builder when adding attachments to a form, there was an upload limit of 35MB. It would be great if this limit was increased.

Incentivized

• Steep learning curve.
• It can be slow to develop simple solutions compared to other automation platforms such as Smarsheet.
• Troubleshooting and developing can be frustrating without proper access to edit the code directly.
• Only able to edit through the GUI and with expressions.
• Many ways to do the same thing can be frustrating when you need to rework your flow.

Incentivized

FormAssembly continues to meet our needs, and the product functionality continues to grow, providing us with new opportunities to utilize the software. We've built many forms and associated processes on FormAssembly. It would require a large effort to migrate to another platform. We have invested a lot of time in learning FormAssembly.

Incentivized

The tool is very useful when used with its various native connectors, taking great advantage of the integration between the components and systems of the Office365 universe. However, its cost is still high, and automation using more advanced components containing AI resources becomes unfeasible for some companies. Due to the financial crisis that many companies are currently experiencing, investment in automation systems or tools is taking a back seat.

Incentivized

FormAssembly is easy to get started with and very straightforward to use. It is easy to create forms, add questions and fields, and apply branding and logos. The data integrations are also robust, allowing us to pass information to Salesforce easily and quickly see when there is an error with the form in any way.

Incentivized

Power Automate features a clean and intuitive user interface that allows users to create, manage, and monitor workflows easily. The UI is designed to be accessible to both technical and non-technical users, with drag-and-drop functionality for building workflows. Power Automate supports integration with a wide range of Microsoft and third-party applications. This flexibility in integration allows users to automate workflows across various systems, enhancing overall productivity and efficiency.

Incentivized

While it's not a true development package and misses some features like ingestion of external data for lists, etc... the product is fast, stable, easy to use, and will suit the needs of anyone needing online form functionality with SalesForce and other connectors available for your marketing needs.

Incentivized

both Community support and Microsoft official support typically respond to (and resolve) reported issues in a VERY expedient manner, usually going above and beyond for education and bugfixing. I have been thoroughly impressed with the level of support I had been provided in the past.

Incentivized

after reviewing the main features of Power Automate, the Microsoft trainer focused on some of our real life use cases implementation, from simple to more advanced.

Incentivized

although it was productive, it is more difficult to stay focused and in a 7 hours a day online training (including screen share issues and the fact that the trainer just can't precisely show the exact location of your mistake)

Incentivized

I didn't participate in the implementation.

Incentivized

Overall, our experience implementing Microsoft Power Automate has been positive, with a relatively low barrier to entry and a fast time-to-value—especially because it integrates natively with Microsoft 365, which we were already using extensively. With Respect to migration, I had a very good experience where existing workflows were reviewed and simplified. Unnecessary steps were removed. Business rules were reimplemented using Power Automate logic. We migrated Approval workflows, email-based notifications, SharePoint-centric processes, and simple integrations.

Incentivized

Form Assembly allows for advanced data mapping, pre-filling forms with Salesforce data, and working with custom objects. FormAssembly excels in Salesforce Integration, as it is highly specialized and deeply integrated. Often considered the industry leader for Salesforce forms, Formstack has strong integration, but may not offer the same level of granular control as FormAssembly.

Incentivized

Microsoft Power Automate is worlds ahead of Zapier in so many ways. The looping, DOM access, and flow controls are much better. I feel that accessing different data within previous connectors used in a flow is much easier in Microsoft Power Automate as well. The custom connector creation process is a lot more pleasant in Microsoft Power Automate. The DateTime data type is handles MUCH better in Microsoft Power Automate, which is reason enough to use it.

Incentivized

I have not done any participations

Incentivized

Microsoft's professional services provide hands-on support throughout the implementation lifecycle of Power Automate.This includes initial setup, configuration, integration with existing systems, testing, and deployment. They ensure that workflows are correctly designed, optimized for performance, and aligned with security best practices.

Incentivized

• FormAssembly allows for us to take manual spreadsheet driven processes and standardize them in a scalable manner.
• FormAssembly allows for our customers to own a process of sales (print shipment allocations) that previously our reps were burden with.
• FormAssembly integrates well with our TechStack.

Incentivized

• You can automate a lot of process very easy like automatic mails for status updates and such. This will save a lot of time and is more accurate, faster and up-to-date than a user can be.
• Task approval is centralized and automatic reminders save us a lot of time.
• The ROI is good if you have a lot of use cases and things to automate

Incentivized