Preface

Microsoft Power Automate is a business productivity tool designed to bring automation capabilities to both cloud and on-premises applications. The ubiquity and proliferation of cloud-based software-as-a-service technologies has resulted in organizations using a myriad of disconnected tools as part of their business operations.

Throughout this updated and revised book, you’ll learn how Power Automate can be used to drive efficiency in automation by connecting all these disconnected parts and help you reduce the time spent performing repetitive tasks.

Who is this book for?

This book is for individuals who are new to the Microsoft Power Platform (including Power Automate, Power Apps, and Power BI). Readers can have little to no experience in coding, automation, or software development practices. This book will walk readers through very basic tasks to gain an understanding of the tools and leave them with completed workflows that can be exported and used in their daily work or further refined and adapted to more complex processes.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introducing Microsoft Power Automate, introduces the basic concepts of workflows and automation.

Chapter 2, Getting Started with Power Automate, dives into the Power Automate interface and application components.

Chapter 3, Working with Email, explains how to configure Power Automate to process and interact with emails and attachments.

Chapter 4, Copying Files, explores how to use Power Automate to copy files between cloud-based services.

Chapter 5, Creating Button Flows, demonstrates how to use button flows (also called manual or instant flows) and shows how they can be executed from mobile devices.

Chapter 6, Generating Push Notifications, explains how to configure flows with push notifications to mobile devices.

Chapter 7, Working with Shared Flows, covers how to share and co-manage flows with your peers.

Chapter 8, Working with Conditions, explains how to enable multiple outcomes for flows based on criteria evaluation.

Chapter 9, Getting Started with Approvals, discusses how to use approval workflows for documents.

Chapter 10, Working with Multiple Approvals, builds on the knowledge gained in the previous chapter and expands it using conditions, branching, and sequential approvals.

Chapter 11, Posting Approvals to Teams, demonstrates how to integrate approval workflows into Microsoft Teams.

Chapter 12, Using a Database, covers connecting to a database and using it to store or retrieve information as part of a flow.

Chapter 13, Working with Microsoft Forms, demonstrates how to use Power Automate to process response data from Microsoft Forms.

Chapter 14, Accepting User Input, explores configuring a button flow to accept a variety of user input types.

Chapter 15, Automating Azure AD, introduces connectors for working with Microsoft Graph.

Chapter 16, Introducing Robotic Process Automation, demonstrates capturing screen, keyboard, and mouse data to automate legacy desktop applications.

Chapter 17, Introducing AI Models, introduces the Sentiment Analysis AI model for evaluating text.

Chapter 18, Exporting, Importing, and Distributing Flows, discusses how to import, export, and transport flows between environments.

Chapter 19, Monitoring and Troubleshooting Flows, contains troubleshooting tips for when things go wrong.

To get the most out of this book

To get the most out of this book, you should have a Microsoft 365 subscription with access to a premium Power Automate plan to enable access to premium connectors, AI models, and Robotic Process Automation.

You should also have an internet-connected computer with a modern browser such as Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome. You can obtain a free Microsoft 365 subscription from https://aka.ms/e5trial.

For Chapter 2, Getting Started with Power Automate, and Chapter 4, Copying Files, you will need accounts on Twitter and Dropbox, respectively.

For Chapter 16, Introduction to Robotic Process Automation, you will need a Power Automate license that includes unattended Robotic Process Automation.

For Chapter 17, Introduction to AI Models, you will need AI Builder capacity. The unattended Robotic Process Automation licensing includes a base level of AI Builder capacity suitable for completing the examples.

Download the example code files

The code bundle for the book is hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Workflow-Automation-with-Microsoft-Power-Automate-2nd-Edition. We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781803237671_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. For example: “Update the prompt to say Please enter today's date.”

A block of code is set as follows:

{
  "type": "thumbnail",
  "fileName": "FavoriteThing.jpg",
  "fieldName": "Picture",
  "serverUrl": "https://learningpowerautomate.sharepoint.com/sites/FavoriteThings",
  "serverRelativeUrl": "@{decodeUriComponent(decodeUriComponent(outputs('Add_attachment')?['body/Id']))}",
  "id": "@{guid()}"
}

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on the screen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. For example: “A gateway is a software application installed on an on-premises computer.”

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Get in touch

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