Название: Learning Microsoft Power Automate: Improving Productivity for Business Processes and Workflows (2nd Early Release)
Автор: Paul Papanek Stork
Издательство: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Год: 2023-04-10
Страниц: 300
Язык: английский
Формат: epub (true)
Размер: 11.2 MB

Processing information efficiently is critical to the successful operation of modern organizations. One particularly helpful tool is Microsoft Power Automate, a low-code/no-code development platform designed to help tech-savvy users create and implement workflows. This practical book explains how small business and enterprise users can use Power Automate to replace manual work that takes days with an automated process you can complete in a few hours.

Welcome to this introduction on how to use Microsoft Power Automate to automate how complete tasks in your daily work life. You’re about to take your first steps on a journey that will change the way you handle information every day. But like all journeys we need to start at the beginning. That means we need to understand what Power Automate is and how it fits into the broader Microsoft ecosystem.

Power Automate is a cloud-based application that can be used to create workflows. These cloud-based workflows (flows) can use connectors to access information stored in a variety of systems. Using these connectors, you can take manual tasks and convert them to automated workflows. Here are just a few examples of the kinds of everyday tasks that Power Automate can transform. It can:

• Automate the collection and processing of information
• Manage the approval process for documents/information
• Send automatic reminders for past due tasks
• Archive emails and attachments in an indexable system
• Automate interactive computer tasks that are normally done manually
• Visualize a staged process consisting of multiple steps

These are just a few of the many varied tasks that you can automate using Power Automate. The only real limit is your creativity and whether a connector is available for the data you are working with.

Paul Papanek Stork, principal architect at Don't Pa..Panic Consulting, provides a concise yet comprehensive overview of the foundational skills required to understand and work with Power Automate. You'll learn how to use these workflows, or flows, to automate repetitive tasks or complete business processes without manual intervention.

Whether you're transferring form responses to a list, managing document approvals, sending automatic reminders for overdue tasks, or archiving emails and attachments, these skills will help you:

Design and build flows with templates or from scratch
Select triggers and actions to automate a process
Add actions to a flow to retrieve and process information
Use functions to transform information
Control the logic of a process using conditional actions, loops, or parallel branches
Implement error checking to avoid potential problems