Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Power Automate
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.
- 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
- 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
- Native integration with office365 services.
- Active Directory-integrated security and permissioning.
- Automation of communication tasks, treatment and dissemination of information.
- 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.
I have not yet used the existing AI resources in PowerPlatform, so far only the flow performance analysis has been interesting as it points out the average start-to-end execution times of each flow, and at which stage there were bottlenecks or longer processing times.The idea of using the Virtual Agent with some internal process flows is being studied and evaluated.
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.
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
Evaluating Microsoft Power Automate and Competitors
- 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.
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.