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About Microsoft Power Automate
Microsoft Power Automate is a comprehensive automation platform with RPA, DPA, AI, and process mining - powered by low-code and AI.
It helps to automate routine activities while saving time and cost. The flows work with external software and applications as well.
The interface may not be intuitive for some users. Some of the features are not very well explained.
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Filter reviews (189)
Power Automate for Secondary School-Wide and Classroom Information
Comments: In 2020 when school classes first moved online or students attended on a rotating basis, the rush of posting daily lesson plans while starting video calls and managing on premise students was an unneccesary stressor. I built Flows to automate that process - automatically posting the daily lesson to Teams (as channel posts as we were required, which could not otherwise be scheduled) at the beginning of each class, retrieved from a document I updated the day before. I have since expanded the use to school wide collection and distribution of announcements (Forms > Share Point > Teams, Outlook, HTML, RSS for students, staff, website, and TV displays), scheduling of resources in our Student Services departments, and various other time-saving applications. A rough estimate would be that my automations save me approximately 45 - 60 minutes of work each day. This time can be better spent actually interacting with students, rather than clicking through tedious yet necessary tasks.
Pros:
Power Automate has allowed me to offload some of the tedious and repetitive tasks that would otherwise take me away from my teaching duties and the time available to interact with students.
Cons:
A first attempt at Power Automate can quickly show even a seasoned technically-savvy individual just how much they do not know. Thankfully, there is a well-developed online support community, both from Microsoft and others, that documents and solves many of the common (and not-so-common) issues that users have experienced in their sometimes very-detailed automations.
Alternatives Considered:
Microsoft 365 users look nowhere else for process automation
Comments: Power Automate is my favourite tool on the internet. As a creative developer I am able to quickly turn ideas into reality and achieve outstanding results for my organisation.
Pros:
Power Automate is immeasurably saleable but also incredibly easy to use. Many staff I would not classify as particularly skillful with computers are able to build useful processes that speed up the flow of information across the organisation. Developers on the other hand can dive deeper into the power of the tool and its integrations to provide capability to the organisation not possible without such an excellent tool. The depth of integrations and easy of creating connections allows Power Automate to connect natively to any application across the Office 365 suite and also any API enabled tool outside the tenant, making it a super-versatile and powerful tool.
Cons:
Error messages could be more user-friendly. When pushing the tool with complex integrations it can sometimes be difficult to work out which amongst the myriad of actions or dynamic fields are causing the issue. One does learn how best to avoid these error over time through better development.
The customer experience has declined significantly both from a product design to customer support...
Comments: Automated a couple tasks but I'm struggling with several tasks on my list I cant seem to make progress on.
Pros:
Wide and diverse platform with growing multi-functional capabilities and dynamic product development.
Cons:
Unfortunately, needs to re-think and re-calibrate its business-governance, product development, marketing strategy, Customer Support, and business objectives due to recent decisions to begin charging fees on customers that want to produce their hard work in the .EXE format to run independently on a separate computer for their company or a customer. I don't believe this was the right revenue growth decision, and I believe they are feeling/will feel the pain from business customers migrating to more reliable platforms - I'm already shopping and others I know are as well. What were they thinking by charging a fee on something that the customer already paid for? ***What's next, fee for every job occurrence LOL?***. The Executive that made such bad management decision should go back to the Banking Industry. As a customer, to get more value from the product, I wouldn't mind paying a higher license upgrade fee or a upgraded Support fee, or they could make sizeable revenue from custom projects etc... there are tons of other revenue sources to tap, but charging a fee for .EXE will cause them major customer attrition - users won't upgrade to future versions because they have a new software in place. At the end of the day, users will simply pay for Python certification course and forget the growing WA bill.
Making Process Automation Accessible
Pros:
Has enabled us to automate so many manual processes or reduce the amount of steps taken for specific processes. We currently have it setup for invoice approvals that get sent out to managers that is received and accepted within Microsoft Teams. This saves us the time from having to email it and track when it is approved as it now appears all within Approvals in teams. It can be fairly technical at times when you want to work with more complicated things preventing anyone from picking it up, but once you get it working it is great. The new integration with AI helps save time in the preliminary setup of the flows, but as expected, still needs config but saves a lot of time nonetheless.
Cons:
Since the change to new UI, there are times where your old flows will not save and run unless you revert it back to the old UI.
Alternatives Considered:
Great cloud based tools for process Automation
Comments: Overall great experience and easy to use. Easy to integrate with other Office 365 products.
Pros:
Power Automate is great cloud based tool for process automation . This tool provides many connector which helps developer to connect to different LOB. It also provides ability to use custom connector to perform complex business logic . Calling Power Automate from Other Office 365 products like PowerApps /SharePoint Online is seemless
Cons:
Definitely there are some room to improve . Some time writing complex formulas on Power Automate editor is inconvenient .Approval process is also having some limitation like approval process cant run more thanks 28 days. For developer some time it is inconvenient to debug in case of error
Alternatives Considered:
Microsoft Power Automate
Comments: Power Automate is fairly new in the market compared to players like IFTTT and Zapier but will surely give the competition a good fight. My first automation is still active and given the chance, I would utilize it to automate menial tasks and processes. Besides, it is backed my Microsoft and you can be sure that it will continuously improve as it matures.
Pros:
I like that Power Automate is part of the Microsoft Suite. Integration between MS apps are seamless since PowerAutomate is native in the MS ecosystem
Cons:
If you are a new user, you'll find navigating through the user interface is quite daunting. Although, if you are serious with Power Automate, you will soon get comfortable with its functions and where to find them
Alternatives Considered:
Powerful Automation tool but difficult to use for user not advanced in IT
Comments: Overall I’m satisfied with the result once I get the automations working, but I’m still considering to change to another tool for automations.
Pros:
It allows me to reduce the amount of entries and manual managements I would normally have to do. It also allows me to configure various notifications very useful when dealing with multiple projects simultaneously.
Cons:
Even if Microsoft tried to make this tool user friendly, it is still very complex to configure automations with this tool. I’ve worked with automations tool a lot less complicated and with almost the same capacities.
Go for it, use it, love it!... then forget(Automate)
Comments: Overall I am quite happy with the ease of use for this software. I would have loved to use power automate to send emails through my Gmail to avoid using mail mergers. This is a money saving option and since most businesses actually use Microsoft Office, bundling it with Power automate saves even more.
Pros:
The biggest pro of this software is the cost, It will cost about $10 - $15. It is however better to bundle up the power automate license with the Microsoft O365 license to avoid purchasing 2 different licenses. Having MS 365 for business allows you to automate menial/repetitive tasks and takes away the "forgetting" part of the equation when it comes to everyday tasks. This software is very easy to use, can be set up by following a template or from scratch and I recently noticed that it has a new feature that sends you a message in chat in MS teams. It integrates very well with the other MS office apps. Power automate comes with the added advantage that it is customizable in the case where big automation tasks are to be done which simplifies the process. Couple that with the numerous templates provided and you have a very useful tool for automation.
Cons:
The biggest disadvantage is that power automate can only be used within the MS office environment. Would have been great if it could have been usable in the windows environment too. While using this app I also realized that large tasks are hard to automate, tasks that require multiple recipients also fail when it exceeds around 60 users and so I limit mine to about 20 at a time even if it means creating multiple flows.
Automate your workflows with ease with Microsoft Power Automate
Pros:
One of the most impressive features of Power Automate is its ease of use. With an intuitive, user-friendly interface, you can easily create custom workflows with just a few clicks. You can also use pre-designed templates to create workflows faster and easier.Power Automate is also very flexible and can be used to automate a wide variety of workflows, such as collecting data, sending notifications, creating tasks and more. In addition, it is compatible with many popular applications and services, such as SharePoint, Dynamics 365, OneDrive, Teams and many more.
Cons:
First of all, the user interface of Power Automate may seem a bit complex for new users. While the tool is designed to be easy to use, there can be a learning curve for users who are not familiar with creating automated workflows.In addition, Power Automate is a cloud service, which means that all data processed by the tool is stored on external servers owned by Microsoft. This can raise security and data privacy concerns for companies that handle sensitive data. Users should therefore be aware of this and take the necessary steps to protect their data.Finally, Power Automate is a paid tool and can be costly for small businesses or individual users who do not need extensive use of the tool. Users should therefore consider the costs associated with using the tool before deciding to adopt it.
Very powerful and easy to configure
Comments: Instead of doing manual and repetitive tasks, we have created workflows to do the same tasks on schedule and automatically, without human intervention. Using Microsoft Power Automate we have saved many hours monthly.
Pros:
It is easy to configure, people with no technical knowledde can create workflows. Is it powerful, you can create a lot of different kinds of tasks.
Cons:
The tracking and monitoring of the workflow execution can be improved.
Good product destroyed by poor management and support
Comments: Was good until v7 was released, now refuse to do business with them
Pros:
Easy to use, very functional, was easy to distribute but read Cons below
Cons:
Like others I am so disappointed by the direction WinAutomation has taken. Was a reliable product that would easily allow you to build and compile programs to perform your automation functions - we used it in various different areas. The when v7 was released they completely forgot about their customers and came up with the horrible idea of tokens (additional purchases) for each executable you wanted to compile, and worse they tried their damnedest to hide this from their users - so many of us upgraded to version 7 only to find out that we had been hoodwinked by this new licensing policy. And then they destroyed their user community further by killing their once-active forums where users would share ideas and methodologies - first they shifted it to LinkedIn, which never worked well, and then they realised their error and brought it back to their own domain, but they removed all the historic forum posts when they realised no one was upgrading but were still communicating solutions on the older version of the product - there just was not enough new functionality in v7 and onwards for people to justify their silly licensing decision. AVOID using this product! The company is untrustworthy and has made very poor business decisions to the detriment of a large user community. And just when they were starting to get good, too - such a shame. Other products on the market are just as powerful and less expensive.
Microsoft Response
5 years ago
Dear Joel, We are sorry to hear about your experience. One of our representatives will contact you shortly to find out more about your specific situation and see what we can do to make things right. You are correct that the original support portal was withdrawn because it was based on old technology. It was never our intention to cut our users off and a great deal of care was taken to check all the (old) forum topics one by one so that all useful information could be transferred to the new one. Only information related to very old WinAutomation versions were not transferred because they were less relevant. The replacement support portal (support.softomotive.com) gives users a much better experience by offering a much broader range of features. There are hundreds of useful knowledge base articles, a forums section intended for users to share with the community their feature requests, ask for tips on how to automate their processes, share, download or run automations.
Impressive facts of Power Automate
Pros:
Power Automate simplifies development by minimizing the need for users to write scripting languages, allowing them to focus instead on using its low-code visual interface to create workflows quickly and easily. Power Automate provides a wide variety of pre-built templates, enabling users to quickly and easily create workflows without having to start from scratch or spend time developing something from the ground up. It is a cost-effective automation tool compared to many others, which can help organizations save money on their automation investments. we can trigger different workflows at the same time. It's very easy to incorporate with other Microsoft tools.
Cons:
Power Automate is a simpler and more accessible automation tool compared to others, but it may not offer the same level of advanced functionality and customization as more complex tools. Power Automate integration with other Microsoft products may restrict its compatibility with third-party software and non-Microsoft solutions, which could limit its usefulness for some users.
A strong workflow and process automation tool for M365 users
Comments: For businesses already anchored in the Microsoft 365 world, Power Automate is a strong platform for workflow and process automation. The integrations keep getting deeper and broader, and the tool is getting more and more powerful. Along with the rest of the Power Platform, there is little reason to look elsewhere.
Pros:
Power Automate is easy to use, but can be leveraged for highly complex workflows and automations. The integration across the Microsoft suite is deep, and there is a growing number of external connectors.
Cons:
The biggest drawback for us is the dependence on user specific connections on the various connectors. This is a great model for power-user use (which the tool is intended for) - but inevitably the scope creep happens and flows become 'business critical' - the user-centric architecture makes it tricky to maintain and utilize flows at scale.
Easy Way of Automation using Power Automate
Comments: An organization can have this platform as an alternative workflow solution for a higher degree. This can provide a good solution for business-critical processes, which makes them attracted towards it. Overall, easy and efficient automation can be done with the Microsoft Power Automate Platform.
Pros:
Power Automate has every basic feature to satisfy an individual and an organization's needs such as sending reminders, getting updates from blogs, and sending emails for adding SharePoint lists.It has many connectors and independent workflow, which makes the tool easy to automate.
Cons:
Licensing can be difficult for small organizations. Workflows cannot be changed once you run it.The customization of forms is not available, and workflows are not long-lasting.
Features of Power Automate
Comments: We have created many automation flows like triggering automate mail and sending cards to teams.
Pros:
Using this power automation tool we can create automated workflows between different applications and services. It provides a user-friendly interface for designing and deploying these workflows, enabling businesses to streamline processes and improve productivity.
Cons:
The service lacks sufficient documentation and support, making it challenging to troubleshoot issues and find solutions.
Good For Business...
Pros:
Automated workflows. Streamlined repetitive tasks and actions. Reduce process execution and processing time. Reduce costs related to personnel dedicated to these tasks.
Cons:
Using it requires time and some basic knowledge.
Power automate is a great way to get more out of M365
Comments: Overall it’s been great. Being able to automate desktop and cloud processes and build our own business workflows without the need for dedicated software developers has made a lot of tasks easier.
Pros:
For us, the fact that power automate is built In to our Microsoft licensing makes it the perfect way to get more out of our M365 products. Being able to build custom workflows and automate manual processes around our Microsoft tools means we get more time back across the organization. Power automate is easy to learn and we’ve been able to get non programmers to start using it. We’ve been able to build our own ticketing systems and other custom tools with very little effort.
Cons:
Some of the additional licensing add on features are confusing to figure out what is paid for in which addon.
Microsoft Power Automate
Pros:
Microsoft Power Automate is a fantastic platform for automating workflows and streamlining processes. Then it offers a wide range of pre-built connectors and templates, making it easy to integrate with various apps and services. Its user-friendly interface and the ability to create complex automation scenarios with ease. Overall, it seems like a great tool to increase productivity and efficiency in your work processes.
Cons:
Some users have mentioned that the pricing structure can be a bit complex, especially if you need additional premium features or higher usage limits. It's important to carefully review the pricing plans and consider your specific requirements to ensure it aligns with your budget.
Alternatives Considered:
Business Automation made easy!
Comments: Not as good as enterprise automation systems but too good to not use in a world where most businesses use elements of Microsoft SaaS
Pros:
Fantastic for rapidly creating business processes involving data capture and follow on actions
Cons:
The no-code capabilities quickly run out of steam when processes start to get difficult
Didn't know how to code but needed to automate
Comments: When we purchased this, we were needing to automate many processes on the backend of our system. From file syncing and transfer to convert Log files from one format to another, we're using winautomation to automate 100+ processes a day. We've basically not had to higher another person just because of winautomation.
Pros:
All of the features it has available.
Cons:
The documentation is pitiful, which makes it VERY hard to figure out how to do some things. However, with some research time available, you can figure it out.
Powerfull RPA tooling when using Microsoft products
Comments: We use it on a daily basis to integrate with other MS tools. The ease of deployment and low failure rate of created workflows are pretty nice. When it comes to integrate with 3rd party tools, some other tools are more up to the job.
Pros:
Easy to integrate with native Microsoft tools like the O365 suite, MS Exchange, MS Teams, Sharepoint with low amount of coding involved.
Cons:
Large RPA tasks are more difficult to process in Power Automate. Especially when it comes to integrations with third party (not Microsoft) products.
Power Automate Review
Comments: Generally speaking I am happy with the product. It has been the principal programming I utilized for computerization and performing various tasks thus far I love it. I'm anticipating more enhancements later on to perceive what more can be automated.
Pros:
I like that this apparatus can be utilized to mechanize measures that are commonly done physically. Being able to computerize those cycles sets aside both time and cash and places the information into a sensible configuration for me to investigate.
Cons:
The greatest drawback is that force computerize must be utilized inside the MS office climate. Would have been incredible on the off chance that it might have been usable in the windows climate as well. While utilizing this application I likewise understood that huge errands are difficult to computerize, assignments that require different beneficiaries additionally bomb when it surpasses around 60 clients thus I limit mine to around 20 all at once regardless of whether it implies making various streams
Organization of files is much easier
Comments: Best in flow work organization and sharing.
Pros:
Work made in different departments can be organized and transferred to one folder and this much easier to make and work can easily be shared via Microsoft SharePoint.
Cons:
On the work board, Microsoft power automate created a community part where I can share my feedback and assistance is given through communities.
The Potential is Huge - but there are so many things you can't do
Pros:
Its integration with Teams. Power Automate allows you to do so much more with company communication than other software if you utilize it.
Cons:
The learning curve is pretty high. I've never found the documentation very useful, as they don't include many use cases. I have again and again returned to the tool with a need and have found a step that almost works. But I'll have to add 3 steps to make it work instead. For instance, "mention a tag", but you cannot "mention a channel". So you have to add the members to a tag to mention everyone in a channel.
Save your associates from repetitious tasks.
Comments: I've found Winautomation to be very useful. It is easy to simply record tasks. But also powerful enough to program complex decision making.
Pros:
Easy to use and powerful. Best of both worlds.
Cons:
Rarely, but on more than one occasion, all tasks disappear so can't run. Not a big problem, a simple reboot brings them back.