Название: Learning Microsoft Power Automate: Improving Productivity for Business Processes and Workflows (Final)
Автор: Paul Papanek Stork
Издательство: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Год: 2024
Страниц: 351
Язык: английский
Формат: epub (true)
Размер: 19.9 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 replace manual work that takes days with an automated process you can set up in a few hours using Power Automate.

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.

This book will show you how to use Microsoft Power Automate to automate repetitive, manual, and time-consuming tasks. 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, which was originally called Flow, 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. If a connector does not exist but an API does, then you can create your own custom connector. If an API doesn’t exist, then you can use a desktop flow to interact with the data. The result is a workflow engine that works with almost any information source, whether that system is designed by Microsoft or a third party. Power Automate is one of five applications included in the Microsoft Power Platform.

Here are just a few examples of the kinds of everyday tasks that Power Automate can transform:

• Automating the collection and processing of information
• Managing the approval of documents and data
• Sending automatic reminders for past-due tasks
• Archiving emails and attachments in an indexable system
• Automating interactive computer tasks that are normally done manually
• Visualizing a staged process consisting of multiple steps

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

Who Should Read This Book:
There are two primary audiences who will find this book useful. The first is a group Microsoft calls “citizen developers.” Citizen developers are defined by the following characteristics:

• They work in a position that is not part of the Information Technology (IT) organization in their company.
• They are not trained as professional developers.
• They use information in their daily work.
• They create software tools, for consumption by themselves or others, to make their work easier.

Citizen developers were clearly the audience that Microsoft focused on when designing and building Power Automate. But they aren’t the only ones who can benefit from using it. Professional developers and other technical users like IT administrators will also benefit from Power Automate. By using it, they can quickly develop prototypes or personal productivity aids that will free up additional time to concentrate on their main duties. In essence, Power Automate puts automation tools in the hands of every employee. It can transform the way your company deals with information and makes it possible for people to create their own problem solutions within an easy-to-use, low-code/no-code platform. Reading this book will help you learn how you can use Power Automate flows to automate the use of information in your own workload.