Types of Flows in Power Automate
If you are reading this, I hope you are aware of Microsoft Power Automate. If not, no worries lets first understand what is Power Automate?
Power Automate is a service that helps you create automated workflows between your favorite apps and services to synchronize files, get notifications, collect data, and more.
Just think about time saved once you automate repetitive manual tasks simply by recording mouse clicks, keystrokes and copy paste steps from your desktop! Power Automate is all about automation.
I would recommend you to read one of my old arctiles before we go into more details — “Microsoft Power Automate: An Introduction”
Now lets understand three types of flows in Power Automate:
- Cloud Flows
- Desktop Flows
- Business Process Flows
Cloud Flows
Create a cloud flow when you want your automation to be triggered either automatically, instantly, or via a schedule.
Lets further classify Cloud Flows into three different categories:
A. Automated Flows: An automation that is triggered by an event such as arrival of an email from a specific person, or a mention of your company in social media.
B. Instant Flows: If there is a requirement to start an automation with a click of a button. You can automate for repetitive tasks from your Desktop or Mobile devices. For example, instantly send a reminder to the team with a push of a button from your mobile device.
C. Scheduled Flows: Schedule an automation such as daily data upload to SharePoint or a database.
Desktop Flows (Power Automate Desktop)
Last year Microsoft acquired Softomotive and migrated its tool WinAutomation to Power Automate Desktop. Desktop flows are used to automate tasks on the Web or the desktop. Using Power Automate Desktop you can automate tasks on the desktop as well as the Web.
It allows you to automate both legacy applications, such as terminal emulators and modern web and desktop applications, Excel files, and folders. Interact with the machine using application UI elements, images, or coordinates.
Business Process Flows
With business process flows, you define a set of stages and steps that are then displayed in a control at the top of the form.
This provide a guide for people to get work done. They provide a streamlined user experience that leads people through the processes their organization has defined for interactions that need to be advanced to a conclusion of some kind.
It helps ensure that people enter data consistently and follow the same steps every time they work with a customer. For example, you might want to create a business process flow to have everyone handle customer service requests the same way, or to require that people get approval for an invoice before submitting an order.
I hope you have basic understanding of Power Automate and its flows now.
Learn RPA with Vikas Kulhari :-)
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