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Microsoft Power Automate

Microsoft Power Automate
Formerly Microsoft Flow

Overview

What is Microsoft Power Automate?

Microsoft Power Automate is an advanced automation platform offering a range of features, including AI-powered automation, robotic process automation (RPA), business process automation (BPA), digital process automation (DPA), and process/task mining. The platform aims to empower organizations to securely automate…

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Recent Reviews
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Power Automate Premium

$15

Cloud
per month per user

Power Automate Process

$150

Cloud
per month per bot

Hosted RPA add-on

$215

Cloud
per month per bot

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://powerautomate.microsoft.com/pri…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $15 per month per user
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Product Demos

Power Automate Guided Tour

powerautomate.microsoft.com
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Product Details

What is Microsoft Power Automate?

Microsoft Power Automate is an advanced automation platform offering a range of features, including AI-powered automation, robotic process automation (RPA), business process automation (BPA), digital process automation (DPA), and process/task mining. The platform aims to empower organizations to securely automate their operations at scale by leveraging low-code and AI technologies.

Capabilities

  • (DPA) digital process automation through cloud flows to connect apps, data, and services.

  • Automates repetitive tasks using UI-based automation with (RPA) robotic process automation through desktop flows.

  • Ensures consistency with business process flows—the (BPA) business process automation capability in Power Automate.

  • Process advisor: Power Automate also includes process and task mining capabilities to analyze and optimize workflows.

  • AI Builder: Power Automate uses AI to automate tasks that are repetitive or time-consuming. For example, its AI can automatically extract data from documents, generate reports, or answer customer questions.

  • The "describe it to design it" feature allows users to create flows by simply describing them in natural language, making it faster and easier for users to create flows, to produce flows that are more likely to be used.

  • The Power Automate platform offers a wide range of connectors, so users can more easily integrate existing applications and systems.

Microsoft is now adding two new features to Power Automate:

  • Copilot, an AI-powered assistant that suggests actions, connectors, parameters, and supports flow debugging.

  • "Create text with GPT," an AI-powered action used to generate text for various purposes, including content creation, feedback gathering, and document information extraction.

  • Power Automate Process Mining (launched August 2023) - Optimizes operations and uncovers opportunities for automation.

Microsoft Power Automate Features

  • Supported: (DPA) Digital Process Automation - Cloud Flows
  • Supported: (RPA) Robotic Process Automation - Desktop Flows
  • Supported: (BPA) Business Process Automation - Business Process Flows
  • Supported: AI Builder
  • Supported: Process Mining - Process Advisor
  • Supported: Task Mining - Process Advisor

Microsoft Power Automate Screenshots

Screenshot of Microsoft Power Automate (Interface Screenshot) - Work Queues, Initial pageScreenshot of Microsoft Power Automate (Interface Screenshot) - Signed-in web portal home pageScreenshot of Microsoft Power Automate (Interface Screenshot) - Signed-in web portal create pageScreenshot of Microsoft Power Automate (Interface Screenshot) - Desktop designerScreenshot of Microsoft Power Automate (Interface Screenshot) - Hosted RPAScreenshot of Microsoft Power Automate (Interface Screenshot) - Display of DLP violations (on Run)Screenshot of Microsoft Power Automate (Interface Screenshot) - Cloud flow designerScreenshot of Microsoft Power Automate (Interface Screenshot) - AI Builder homepage

Microsoft Power Automate Videos

Microsoft Power Automate is a cloud-first, comprehensive automation platform powered by low-code and AI with GPT, designed to accelerate development without comprising visibility and control, modernize business processes, and integrate operations at scale. Key features: advanc...
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Al Builder's new Azure OpenAl service model enables businesses to integrate intelligent text generation capabilities into their Power Automate and Power Apps solutions. With pre-built templates, users can incorporate relevant prompts into their workflow.

Microsoft Power Automate Integrations

Microsoft Power Automate Competitors

Microsoft Power Automate Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android, Windows Phone
Supported CountriesAsia, Australia, Canada, Europe, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, South America, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States
Supported LanguagesEnglish, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, Spanish, Estonian, Basque, Finnish, French, Galician, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Lithuanian, Latvian, Malay, Norwegian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian (Cyrillic script, Serbia), Serbian (Latin script, Serbia), Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional)

Frequently Asked Questions

Microsoft Power Automate is an advanced automation platform offering a range of features, including AI-powered automation, robotic process automation (RPA), business process automation (BPA), digital process automation (DPA), and process/task mining. The platform aims to empower organizations to securely automate their operations at scale by leveraging low-code and AI technologies.

Microsoft Power Automate starts at $15.

UiPath Automation Platform, SS&C Blue Prism Intelligent Automation, and Automation Anywhere are common alternatives for Microsoft Power Automate.

Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 9.

The most common users of Microsoft Power Automate are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(223)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-4 of 4)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
October 11, 2023

The wonders of Power Automate

PT
Phillip Templeton
IT Support Analyst
Guy Brown (Consumer Goods, 51-200 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) to automate business processes ranging from simple emails based on data entry to a full email survey system built using this software, Outlook, and Microsoft Forms. We use the vast amount of connectors to link our data to the solutions offered to create complex systems using very little code.
Pros and Cons
  • Connecting solutions
  • Data manipulation
  • Automation
  • Better error messaging for troubleshooting
  • More non-premium connectors to compete with the premium connectors
  • Clearer understanding of the limits within the flow and the ability as an administrator to adjust those limits on your environment.
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) is best suited for a low-code environment where you want to automate a solution that would normally require several systems. You can do this from a single solution and do so with little understanding of code. Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) does have some limitations where you would need to switch to Azure Logic Apps to obtain the right connectors for the job.
Return on Investment
  • Automating solutions has had a vast positive return on investment
  • Less manpower to do the same tasks
  • Full automation, which frees manpower to work on other tasks
Alternatives Considered
We are a full Microsoft Stack user. We use Power Apps for custom applications, Power BI for data analytics, Teams for communication and this software to tie all our solutions together. Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) has connectors into most, if not all, of the applications that we use, and we use it heavily to manipulate all applications to obtain our desired solutions.
Other Software Used
Microsoft Power BI, PowerApps, Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365)
Support Rating
10
There are many avenues for support for Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow). There is the support through Microsoft as well as forums and websites dedicated to providing support and information. The Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) docs pages are very useful for providing insight into what a function does and how to use it. You should be able to use all of these avenues to build a robust flow.
Usability
10
Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) is very user friendly. It is mostly just click to add functions or connections and then fill in pertinent information to ensure that the connector functions the way that you want. I was able to create my first flow within minutes just by looking through the connectors and piecing it together.
Easy Tasks
  • With Power Automate, you can create vast systems that would normally take a team of programmers.
  • You can scrape emails.
  • You can Automate emails based on other actions.
Difficult Tasks
  • Determining which connector to use as there are many to choose from.
  • The error messages aren't always the most useful.
Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions
Yes
The mobile interface seems to work well for basic tasks like approvals or if you need to trigger an automation. The mobile interface will also allow you to switch between environments if your organization has multiple environments to choose from. I think that for creating automations, it is easier to use the web interface.
October 11, 2023

Power Automate, reduce your interactions with your email beyond just using mail! then Automate all the things!

Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology
Education Management Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
There are always forms and reports that need to be moved out of one system, and imported into another one. Power Automate is the perfect tool to do this. A new item added to SharePoint, or Teams files? You can automate how to archive the information, how to notify people that there is new content.
Pros and Cons
  • If/then automation in the the Microsoft Office environment.
  • Linking different data systems outputs to automate data chains.
  • Link internal process to Internet sites and services.
  • Web Flows designer needs more development.
  • Process isn't always intuitive.
  • Product is powerful, but requires effort to dig into.
Likelihood to Recommend
Power Automate is great at any task in the Office eco-system where you need to perform repetitious work that needs to be moved from one system to another. It can link systems and data together very easily, change and produce notifications, change document types, or move a file from one location to another to kick off another process when the file is present.
Most Important Features
  • Detection and activation of flows.
  • Online and contained in Office.
  • Office integration.
  • Increased connection to non-365 content
Return on Investment
  • Allows easier creation of impromptu automation for sudden tasks that don't need the dedication of a full app or development team.
  • Allows more end users to interact and transform data faster than requiring programmers.
  • Proliferation of code libraries means that is is easy to re-duplicate the wheel inside an organization.
Implementation Rating
Beyond programming our own internal tools, we didn't have much in the way of process automation. Power Automate has allowed non- and low skill programmers to automate and increase the speed of data flowing between systems in the organization. Using the drag and drop interface for basic interactions This has empowered our users to be able to program data transfers without needing to rely on the ITS department.
Generative AI
We have not started implementing the AI tools into our organization, but given the use of AI to allow users to be able to describe the use case of the automation will expedite the development and deployment of data automation to more users than ever before. This use of AI isn't as troublesome as the use of ChatGPTesque tools that will create plausible information, rather than summarizing existing information.
Alternatives Considered
There are few programs that provide the same level of support of automation inside the Microsoft tenant. Most other automation software portals like IFTT (If this, then that) are concentrated on moving or reacting to data triggered in other domains or tenants. PA concentrates on automating and responding to events and data inside the Microsoft ecosystem, allowing you to interact with the Office suite, Teams or other Microsoft components as needed.
Other Software Used
Support Rating
7
Microsoft has provided a number of avenues for documentation and support to develop and grow the Power Automate infrastructure. Power Automate has available to it the 'application in an afternoon' fundamental courses that will help you to develop and support an entire application in one afternoon's virtual training session. Microsoft Learn provides a full documentation of Power Automate, it's functions and data types, as well as the more advanced topics of iterating through data as arrays, functions and variables.
Premium Support
We didn't purchase any premium support beyond what is available on line through Microsoft Learn and our built in enterprise support contracts provide. Power Automate is very much end user and community supported for extension and advanced functionality topics. I don't even think there is a level of premium support available for this product.
Bug Resolution
No
Exceptional Examples of Microsoft Power Automate Support
Microsoft has not had to provide any direct support to us for this product, the community of Microsoft engineers, developers and end users has provided plenty of free articles and community commentary on how to improve your data flows and programs. It is a vibrant and exciting time to start using the product.
Usability
8
Microsoft Power Automate has an easy to understand interface that allows the low or no code skill user to be able to create a data flow with little or no IT support to get started, but provides an advanced interface that will allow multi skilled programmers to bring high end data structures and programming techniques to bear on the problems they are seeking to resolve.
Easy Tasks
  • Integrating with Office and office products
  • Moving data between disparate systems
  • Notifying Teams and email about completion of data flows. Communication is Key!
Difficult Tasks
  • Using advanced data structures can be cumbersome
  • Modifying or compiling data can take some intermediate steps
  • Understanding the iteration of data inside a flow.
Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions
No
October 10, 2023

Great product, just needs to sand off some rough edges

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Outsourcing/Offshoring Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use Microsoft Power Automate extensively throughout the business. My usage of it is to streamline, schedule, and automate the evaluation, training, and onboarding of qualified individuals who meet the skillset required for the job. It addresses the primary business problem of being able to track/manage thousands of candidates in a way that works for a temp/outsourcing firm. It does everything from staged onboarding to scheduled mailings of bespoke examinations, to preparing emails to our customers for items such as employee terminations. My scope handles over 90,000 unique records.
Pros and Cons
  • "When an item is changed in a SharePoint list, do ____" - very easy to trigger massive flows of data based upon a one-field change on a SharePoint list.
  • Being able to manually trigger from a Microsoft PowerApp button press to perform actions.
  • Scheduled tasks - once a day, get every record in (LIST) with (Filters) and do (Stuff) to them.
  • The Power Automate tool can often take upwards of 10 minutes to start a "When an item is changed" flow, which is very frustrating when the action is time-sensitive.
  • The Power Automate builder's search is hot garbage - it only searches the names of the already-fetched Flows. so if you are looking for a flow with the word "Resignation" in it, you have to sit there and click "Load More", and wait ~30 seconds per click for it to fetch more data.
  • The documentation is Poor at best, and even the Forums can be rather incorrect.
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft Power Automate is Perfect for basic automation depending upon actions taken in a SharePoint list, or even to simplify your life. anything from "Once a week, back up any new documents in this folder to this other SharePoint", "on Monday morning, send trainees their login information", to "When someone books an event in my Outlook calendar, automatically schedule a 15m buffer meeting afterward to prevent meetings from overlapping". It's less appropriate for time-sensitive tasks that MUST be done immediately.
Most Important Features
  • SharePoint Integration.
  • Dataverse integration.
  • PowerApps integration.
Return on Investment
  • The project I am on would not have proceeded without PowerAutomate or a bespoke software solution.
Implementation Rating
10
implementing power automate was a bit tricky in learning the complexities, but the barebones is no harder than using Legos - grab a block, do a few settings, and wire them together. becoming a wizard took a few months and some research, but was really fast overall in getting up to speed.
Generative AI
we have not implemented the conversational AI tools within my scope of work. There are plans to investigate the AI functionality in the future however to move items closer to MS Teams and chat-based processing
Alternatives Considered
within my scope of work here, we did not evaluate competitive software. Primarily we looked at homegrown solutions that were massive shell scripts and nested code blocks... the power automate tool integrates MUCH better with the azure environment,
Other Software Used
Users and Roles
5000
every business function has at least one engagement with power automate
Support Headcount Required
50
our technical, HR, and IT Teams have this skillset.
Business Processes Supported
  • automation
  • data processing
  • bulk notifications
  • candidate management
  • onboarding
Innovative Uses
  • automating the user onboarding cycle
  • outlier detection based on large data models
Future Planned Uses
  • further streamlining processes
  • replacing low-effort job roles
Likelihood to Renew
10
my employer is absolutely fearful of ever changing anything, ever.
Products Replaced
Not Sure
Key Differentiators
  • Cloud Solutions
  • Scalability
  • Integration with Other Systems
the ability to integrate it easily within our existing microsoft investment was key in this regard towards selection
Evaluation Lessons Learned
I would not, our process worked well.
Implementation Details / Implementation Partner
  • Implemented in-house
Change Management Lessons
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled
our Change Advisory Board is very very strict in their requirements and what hoops we had to jump through
Implementation Issues
  • unexpected authentication issues
  • fetching data from sharepoint lists was ungodly complicated
Support Rating
9
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.
Premium Support
my employer purchased premium support, as that is our SOP for vendors and cloud services. no decision was made in this regard, that is simply our Standard Operating Procedure.
Bug Resolution
Yes
my issue definitely was solved in a very satisfactory manner, and it was really honestly quite quick to get the results back. I am very happy with the speed and quality of the overall responses i received.
Exceptional Examples of Microsoft Power Automate Support
when i thought i had discovered a bug in the power auto mate tool around its handling of JSONpath extracted variables as substrings, the support team was really very fast in pointing me at two potential solutions, and then they were able to get me on the right track towards a successful implementation and solution to my issue.
Usability
9
its a chaotic beast to tame, but once you do, its a WorkHorse!
Easy Tasks
  • basic design
  • wysiwyg flow between code blocks
  • low-code implementation
Difficult Tasks
  • advanced use cases
  • integrating with Live datasets
  • fetching more than 2,000 records to process from a Sharepoint List
October 10, 2023

Affordable and easy way to set up automations in a Microsoft environment.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Building Materials Company, 201-500 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We needed a solution for our payables department to receive invoices from email attachments, going into a one drive folder. Microsoft Power Automate gave me the tools needed to design a product that achieves our end goal in simplifying payables document management. We linked it from our Exchange Online mailbox to our Microsoft OneDrive account.
Pros and Cons
  • Allows you to create automation and scripts that speed up productivity in the workplace.
  • Shows an overview of the workflow and job history.
  • Has lots of plug-ins with other Microsoft and third party vendors' product's.
  • Would like to see deeper integration with Exchange online, specifically the plugin realizing that an email is being sent via an alias address, not the primary SMTP address. We had to do a workaround that involved creating multiple single-member distribution groups to get power to automate to differentiate different email addresses going to the same mailbox.
  • The interface is slow to load at times.
Likelihood to Recommend
The integrations for Microsoft products seem robust and reliable. It's well suited for workflows staying inside 365 products, but not as much when it comes to third-party integrations. Microsoft Power Automate also is not suited for IoT due to a lack of integration with those services.
Most Important Features
  • Microsoft Exchange Online integration.
  • Microsoft OneDrive integration.
  • File handling ability.
Return on Investment
  • We've seen productivity increase 20% for our payables department, they no longer have to download email attachments and put them into folders.
Implementation Rating
10
There are some quirks to how email aliases are processed in power automate. But once those were figured out, it worked flawlessly, and we haven't had any major issues with the implementation of our Power Automate routine.

My knowledge of creating automations is limited to GUI macro software like Jitbit macro recorder, and scripting in PHP and Powershell. The GUI is much easier to use for a beginner than writing a script
Generative AI
We have not used any AI tools in our power automate jobs.
Alternatives Considered
We were previously using on-prem Sharepoint and Exchange 2016. After migrating to 365 we realized it was hard to replicate this functionality without using power automate. We didn't look elsewhere because the license was included with our 365 subscriptions.
Other Software Used
Users and Roles
5
Only I directly use power automate. But the results of power automate's scripts are used by 5 people in our org. Mainly accounting and finance.
Support Headcount Required
Just myself
Business Processes Supported
  • Email organization
  • Attachment filing
  • Invoice organization
Innovative Uses
  • Email attachment filing and organization into Sharepoint
Future Planned Uses
  • Creating workflows for people in our manufacturing production shop
Likelihood to Renew
10
It's included free with our Microsoft license, we've had no problems with it, and it serves us well.
Products Replaced
Yes
Power Automate replaced on-prem sharepoint email workflows with an on-prem Exchange server. We used to send invoices to email addresses created by sharepoint, and it would file them into folders on our old server. We moved to the cloud a few years ago, and it wasn't economical to keep old sharepoint running.
Key Differentiators
  • Cloud Solutions
  • Integration with Other Systems
It works with Office 365 and Sharepoint Online. It replaces what we've previously implemented on premise.
Evaluation Lessons Learned
Power Automate was simply a product that "fell into my lap" and fit the bill. We didn't specifically search out competitors.
Implementation Details / Implementation Partner
  • Implemented in-house
Implementation Phases
No
Change Management Lessons
Change management was minimal
I had to show the team how to use sharepoint online, its URLs vs our old system. But other than that, it was transparent to our users.
Implementation Issues
  • It took a while to get our flow implemented because I wanted to use a single mailbox with multiple aliases. Initially Power Automate couldn't tell between what alias I was sending an attachment to. I had to tweak and test the script to have it figure that out.
Support Rating
6
Our support for 365 comes from our value added reseller, so my rating is based on that. Not Microsoft directly.
Premium Support
We did not purchase premium support. We are not aware of that as an option.
Bug Resolution
No
Exceptional Examples of Microsoft Power Automate Support
I can not. I have not contacted Microsoft directly for support.
Usability
10
Power Automate has an intuitive interface that is easy for novices to use. It doesn't require programming knowledge, however having that experience will help troubleshoot potential issues if they do arise. There are advanced features that allow the use of "code-like" steps that will help power users get more advanced automations set up quickly.
Easy Tasks
  • The use of logic is presented in an orderly way which is easy to understand
  • The integrations with microsoft and third party apps is well organized being grouped by product
  • The advanced features like JSON and HTML parsing allows more advanced controls in flows, without having to write code.
Difficult Tasks
  • There are sometimes too many options when trying to perform an action. For example Microsoft Outlook, there are v2, v3, v4 without a clear indication on why you would want to use each.
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