You're reading from Workflow Automation with Microsoft Power Automate Drive digital transformation with AI-powered automation and low-code business workflows

Product type Paperback

Published in Dec 2025

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781836649632

Length 605 pages

Edition 3rd Edition

Tools

Power Platform

Concepts

Business Process Management

Author (1):

Aaron Guilmette

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Table of Contents (28) Chapters

1. Workflow Automation with Microsoft Power Automate: Drive digital transformation with AI-powered automation and low-code business workflows FREE CHAPTER

2. Chapter 1: Introducing Microsoft Power Automate

3. Chapter 2: Getting Started with Power Automate

4. Chapter 3: Working with email

5. Chapter 4: Copying files

6. Chapter 5: Creating Button Flows

7. Chapter 6: Generating push notifications

8. Chapter 7: Working with shared flows

9. Chapter 8: Working with Conditions

10. Chapter 9: Understanding Expressions and Functions

11. Chapter 10: Getting Started with Approvals

12. Chapter 11: Working with Multiple Approvals

13. Chapter 12: Posting Approvals to Teams

14. Chapter 13: Using Databases

15. Chapter 14: Working with Microsoft Forms

16. Chapter 15: Posting to Slack

17. Chapter 16: Accepting User Input

18. Chapter 17: Automating Entra ID

19. Chapter 18: Introducing Robotic Process Automation

20. Chapter 19: Contributing to an Access database with RPA

21. Chapter 20: Automating webpages with RPA

22. Chapter 21: Introducing AI Models and Generative AI

23. Chapter 22: Creating a sentiment analysis flow

24. Chapter 23: Using Copilot to create and manage flows

25. Chapter 24: Using Generative AI to summarize documents

26. Chapter 25: Exporting, importing, and distributing flows

27. Chapter 26: Monitoring and troubleshooting flows

28. Chapter 27: Governance in the Power Platform

Learning about actions and passing variables

In this chapter, we're going to introduce a few new concepts that relate to working with Power Automate Desktop, specifically around the action to run a Power Automate Desktop flow and how to pass variables from the cloud to the desktop application.

Run a flow built with Power Automate for desktop action

The Power Automate Desktop application can't read or use cloud triggers. Using the connectivity established through the data gateway, however, Power Automate Desktop can receive the instructions it needs to execute the flows it's responsible for.

Passing variables

Variables are a programming construct used to store temporary information. Programmers use variables as a kind of placeholder for content that changes (or varies) when an application, script, or process is run. Through the use of a variable, an application can substitute the actual value in place...