Item: Microsoft Power Automate
Rating: 7
Author: Sandro Silva

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Power Automate

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Microsoft Flow to automate internal processes such as material purchase approval flow, document file upload, customer data collection, technical teams communication when new documents are published in the file repository, and recently the integration between our chatbot to support technical and commercial teams, implementing in the bot the sending of emails with attachments and password validation by 2FA. All these automation have been integrated with Office365 products: SharePoint, Microsoft Forms, Outlook 365, Office 365 Users, and Microsoft Teams. Activity flows utilize various integration components such as HTTP webhook, Egnyte, Office 365 user, and groups search. As a result, we reduced the time spent on internal processes, with email exchanges and billing between teams, improved the dissemination of important documents, and expanded the resources and services available to our internal users.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Easy to configure and implement the flows.
Large catalog of addons and integration components.
Ease of working collaboratively.
Allows creation of custom flow components.
Easy to share and distribute the flows.
Depending on your license type, access to different integration components

Cons

Documentation about some components, functions, and usage syntax needs to be improved.
A tool for creating custom connectors.
Poor visualization of complex flows with multiple steps and unfolding

Most Important Features

Native integration with office365 services.
Active Directory-integrated security and permissioning.
Automation of communication tasks, treatment and dissemination of information.

Return on Investment

Real-time alerts when new documentation material becomes available.
Tracking and visibility of steps in a purchasing process.
Insufficient documentation for lay users or beginners regarding formulas and connector configuration.
Has an engaged community with multiple forums covering all aspects and features of Flow.

Implementation Rating

Implementing routines in Power Automate requires prior study and preparation, with many tests and validations at each stage. A free subscription helps in this phase of the project, as you can make sure that all integrations and automations will work when put into production. . The option to export the flow from one environment and import it into a new one is also a facilitator when putting the flow into production, or if you have offline team members or even outsourced people who create the integration routines. Once the automation routine is implemented in production, its maintenance occurs without problems, allowing the validation of calls to flows that resulted in an error, as well as the data used that resulted in the error. It is common not to require interventions after the final phase of implementation, routines run efficiently and fluidly, even with high workloads.

Alternatives Considered

Zapier, IFTTT, Make (formerly Integromat) and Automate.io

The tools competing with Microsoft flow have interesting features, but they fail when you need to use resources located internally in the company, such as databases and network file repositories, in your flow, in addition, the security, permissions, and authentication part is not integrated to the Active Directory used for user authentication on the network, it is even possible to implement this authentication integration, but this requires a level of access to the server environment and network services that ordinary users will not have. If you only want to use cloud services in your flow, some free tools can be useful, including the free license of the Microsoft flow itself.

Key Insights

Do you think Microsoft Power Automate delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Microsoft Power Automate's feature set?

Yes

Did Microsoft Power Automate live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Microsoft Power Automate go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Microsoft Power Automate again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Power BI, IBM watsonx Assistant

Likelihood to Recommend

For those who use Microsoft and Office 365 products, it is a great orchestrator and Automator of routines, running autonomously to integrate SaaS products, databases, and collaborative tools such as Teams and Sharepoint. Depending on the need, a Premium subscription is necessary, as it enables a series of native or third-party connectors and integration services. Integrations with third-party systems and services require you to have a subscription or license to these services. Microsoft Flow will be much better used in situations involving several teams, or manual processes with many steps, standalone use can automate many routines that should be done using a workstation, even if server components, such as Sharepoint, are required. Possible to create a flow integrating the components of these two environments. However, the workstation flow editor is not for beginners, it is a more complex tool that requires prior knowledge of the functioning of corporate systems and infrastructure and programming logic.

Using Microsoft Power Automate

Users and Roles

10 - The technical areas of the company, such as customer support, have created automations to streamline customer service and ensure that internal processes are respected, without employees needing to perform additional tasks, such as sending an email requesting approval or notifying other departments about a customer request. This has contributed to solving the internal communication problem between some departments. Another benefit achieved was saving these customer integrations in SharePoint, creating a centralized repository of information accessible to any technical area user.

Support Headcount Required

2 - People with a technical profile, knowledge of programming concepts and logic, contribute to the logical reasoning behind task execution. It’s important that they also have ideas about management and processes, or that their direct manager possesses this knowledge to ensure effective automation that meets expected requirements. Having knowledge of the Office 365 universe is an important advantage, as it allows insights into solutions and identifies the necessary tools to achieve them.

Business Processes Supported

Centralize the collection of internal requests through Microsoft Forms, storing demands and their evolution in a Sharepoint repository, notifying the responsible people and the requester whenever there is a change in the status of the request.
Development of integration with chatbot accessed by customers, creating self-service routines, and step-by-step tutorials.
Integration between BI report and managers' WhatsApp, always notifying them when there is a discrepancy in their subordinates' timekeeping
Development of chatbot integration embedded in one of our web tools that is used by customers, consuming the Power Automate API, where the automation flow, in addition to recording key information about customer self-service in a Sharepoint repository, it consumes another API that provides the data requested by the customer.

Innovative Uses

Integration with WhatsApp to send information to managers.
Data collection and automatic communication to the areas involved in certain events.
Consumption of proprietary API through a Power Automate flow

Future Planned Uses

Integration between database and collection of information requested or provided by customers
Creating an application testing automation routine using RPA

Likelihood to Renew

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.

Evaluating Microsoft Power Automate and Competitors

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Cloud Solutions
Integration with Other Systems
Ease of Use

The ease of integration with other Microsoft products was decisive in deciding which tool to use to automate some processes. Another important point was security, which is integrated with the policies defined in Azure. The possibility of using on-premise gateways was a differentiator, as we were able to integrate legacy systems and databases into our cloud environment.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

The main premises would still be the same: integration with Microsoft systems, integrated security (this includes single authentication), and the possibility of integrating legacy systems on-premise; on the other hand, cost can become a tiebreaker, when we compare the cost of PowerAutomate alone, competitor products become more attractive, such as Zappier and ServiceNow, but when we analyze the cost integrated into an Office365 subscription, Power Automate becomes the best choice.

Microsoft Power Automate Implementation

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Yes - - learning the tool
- usability analysis and usage scenarios
- POC
- Small-scale implementation
- Expansion to other areas that would benefit from the solution

Change Management Lessons

Change management was minimal - The company already had well-defined processes, so the automation work was done in a way that would adapt to these processes, requiring small technical adjustments to the automation flow, such as releasing components that were blocked by global IT, and creating repositories and forms for use in automation, and not procedural adjustments or creating new internal rules.

Implementation Issues

Power Automate integration connectors that have been blocked from use by our IT and Information Security team
Simply publicizing the solution, without even quick training for some key people, resulted in a delay in the adoption of the solution by the departments.

Integrating Microsoft Power Automate

Ease of Integration

Integration with IBM's Watsonx Assistant was simple, as Power Automate can be used as a webhook, which facilitated integration between these two systems. A critical point is Watsonx's requirement that a return to consumption of this endpoint occurs within 7 seconds, which prevents the creation of very long flows in Power Automate.

Systems Integrated With

Watsonx Assistant
green-api.com
Proprietary API developed by the company

The most difficult integration was with WatsonX Assistant, due to the timeout for a return to Watson when it makes a request to the Power Automate API, which led us to simplify the flow steps and create parallel executions so that data was returned to Watson within 7 seconds, while the flow continued to be processed by executing routines and integrations with other components, such as writing data to a Sharepoint repository, were moved to the end of the flow, after the return was sent to WatsonX Assistant.

Future Integration Plans

Jenkins

There is no native Jenkins connector for Power Automate, the alternative is to create a custom connector that makes a call to the Jenkins publishing REST API.

Types of Integration

File import/export
API (e.g. SOAP or REST)

Integration Lessons Learned

Expand the file connector limitation, which is currently limited to 100MB files.
Allow the execution of parallel tasks when creating and defining variables, which today is only done sequentially and always at the highest level of the flow.

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