Dataverse for Teams

Dataverse for Teams is an important subset of Microsoft Dataverse. With Dataverse, users can:
• Deliver services with agility by using an extensible data platform that uses out-of-the-box common tables, extended attributes, semantic meanings, and an open ecosystem.
• Increase scale and efficiency by quickly developing applications, processes, and reusable data schemes. Also, easily build, validate, and deploy your applications using GitHub and Azure DevOps.
• Make your data work smarter by adding low-code AI tools to your process automation. Identify and resolve duplicated and conflicting data with a managed data platform that includes built-in business logic and rules.
• Rely on the security of a trusted platform with a robust security management infrastructure that provides critical security and compliance capabilities—advanced encryption, rich access control, and deep integration with Azure Active Directory.
As Figure 1 depicts, Microsoft Teams integrations offer development capabilities which range from full-code custom solutions to ready-made apps. The new Dataverse for Teams provides a balance for pro developers and citizen developers to create unique solutions to address business challenges.

Dataverse for Teams offers a suite of  embedded Microsoft Power Platform tools in Teams, including Power Automate.  With Dataverse for Teams, organizations can easily build low-code apps, automate processes, and deploy chatbots without leaving Teams.  All of this creative capability comes with rich administration, security, and governance. Microsoft Dataverse for Teams follows the existing governance rules established by Power Platform and offers access control through the Teams Admin Center.  Check out more more details about the Teams Admin Center.  Also learn more about  Power Platform admin center which provides more detail on Power Platform solutions and control, including monitoring dedicated capacity utilization. Since Dataverse for Teams entered preview in September, many organizations have been using Power Platform in Teams, driven by the ease of use of Dataverse for Teams as a low-code back end.  Let’s look at how Power Automate can be used in Dataverse for Teams.

 
Easily add automations to Dataverse for Teams App

With Power Automate’s integration to Dataverse for Teams, users can easily add automation to apps built with Dataverse for Teams.  Figure 2 shows the ‘solution explorer’ view in the Teams UI and the list of flows created using Dataverse for Teams for one team.  With Dataverse for Teams, the apps, bots, and flows are created by team members of a given team.  While a team owns the apps, bots, and flows, they can be shared organization-wide if desired.

Power Automate’s UI makes it very easy to create a step-by-step view of the automation a user creates.  That same easy to follow UI is available in Dataverse for Teams.  It is seamlessly embedded into Teams so users can create their automation right from Teams as shown in figure 3.  With Power Automate in Dataverse for Teams, users have the same rich experience offered by the native Power Automate service.  The seamless integration across the multiple connectors and ease of use in Teams, makes it easy to create powerful automations for apps right inside the Teams experience.  With Dataverse for Teams, automation for apps and bots is an easy, seamless process, and enabled within the collaborative environment of Teams.  It is a powerful example of the benefits of integration and combining collaboration and creativity.

Enhance Your Digital Transformation with Power Automate

Learn more about Power Automate by joining our growing Power Automate community and participate in discussions, provide insights, and even influence product roadmap. If you’re not already, begin following the Power Automate blog to get news on the latest updates.  To get started on your first flows, learn how to use Power Automate from our tutorials and our video channels hosted by Power Automate engineers who will demonstrate how to create sophisticated flows within a matter of minutes. Go to powerautomate.com, to get started with Power Automate today!

• Power Platform Mechanics Series
• A guide to building enterprise-ready flows
• Power Automate Community
• Power Automate Blog
• Learn Power Automate
• Power Automate Tutorials with Audrie Gordon
• Administering a PowerApps Enterprise Deployment Technical Whitepaper
• AI Builder

The post Automation made easy with Dataverse for Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Power Automate appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Launching Robotic Process Automation for Power Automate

Near the beginning of 2020, we announced the general availability of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for Power Automate.  We launched RPA in the form of UI flows to automate tasks on Win32 applications and Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge web-based applications.  The UI flows, which we now call Desktop flows, were offered in both attended and unattended modes (figure 1).  With attended RPA, users can automate task for legacy applications on their local machines.  In unattended mode, users can automate tasks without the need for any human intervention. Running RPA in unattended mode enables automation across single or multiple desktops or virtual machines.  With unattended RPA (figure 1), an automation bot logs in to a designated Windows device, executes the desired automation, and then logouts.  Key features for unattended mode include:

• Execution on a cluster of machines: This feature enables you to define a cluster of machines that increase capacity and reduce the management cost of running unattended automation.
• Centralized reporting: Users can centrally review job performance across their cluster of machines.

Softomotive Acquisition

To further enhance our RPA offering, we acquired the industry leading automation company Softomotive which immediately provided us with an additional 15 years of RPA expertise and the ability to integrate Softomotive’s proprietary WinAutomation RPA technology into Power Automate.  WinAutomation helped unlock additional options (figure 2) for RPA desktop authoring enabling Power Automate users to easily create bots and automate Windows-based tasks. The combined offering also broadened our RPA capabilities by extending automation to AS400, Java, SAP, Citrix and traditional green-screen terminal applications among others.  Also, we expanded web-based RPA to include the Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers.  To briefly summarize, with the acquisition of Softomotive, Power Automate was able to:

• Deliver comprehensive low-code desktop automation solution with WinAutomation – providing customers with additional choices for creating workflows in Power Automate. Now, anyone can build RPA bots with our existing browser-based authoring app or through a new desktop app with WinAutomation.
• Expanded the out-of-the-box UI automation drivers for commonly used apps and services – furthered out commitment to providing the most robust set of RPA capabilities in one platform and expanding the existing desktop automation experience with the addition of Softomotive’s robust set of connectors and applications.
• Enabling parallel execution and multitasking – enabled customers to execute multiple workflows and automations in parallel and on the same machine to reduce latency and improve the efficiency of their bots. This brings the same incredible scale from existing Power Automate API automation to UI automation.

Launching Power Automate Desktop

From the initial launch of Desktop flows and the subsequent acquisition of Softomotive, our combined teams were geared to quickly integrate and provide our customers with one of the best RPA services in the industry.  The diligent work of our engineers led to the quick integration and release of Microsoft’s Power Automate Dekstop.  Power Automate Desktop, extended the automation capabilities in Power Automate to on-premises processes and tasks, expanding the possibilities of desktop or web-based application. Power Automate Desktop offers a new drag-and-drop visual designer for 370+ actions that run on your desktop.  With the new Power Automate Desktop, users can:

• Accelerate automation with an easy-to-use visual designer: Power Automate Desktop allows users to automate tasks or processes from their machine. The drag-and-drop visual designer and live debugging tool make it possible to automate processes and displays the process steps helping turn ideas into reality (figure 3).
• Simulate multiple scenarios with the web and desktop recorders: Automate your favorite web apps with the Web Recorder, or capture on-screen elements for your desktop apps with the Desktop Recorder. The recorders track keyboard and mouse interactions and translates them into a clear automation path that can be replayed across web apps and desktop applications.
• Automate between Windows applications with key actions: Automate both modern, Windows applications and legacy systems with a diverse set of actions—without making changes to your current IT infrastructure. A single flow can support tasks across systems that include SAP, websites, and legacy terminals such as mainframes and AS/400, Citrix, and more.
• Reduce bottlenecks with flexible exception handling: Prepare for the unexpected by leveraging error-handling at any point in the automation process. Ensure automations run with precision and speed by setting up safeguards such as retries, alternate execution or notifications when errors occur. Each action in the script supports no-code error and exception handling, and execution logs that include error details and screenshots to help with troubleshooting.

New Analytics Reporting

To help ensure visibility and control over the new Power Automate RPA capabilities, we introduced new analytics reports available through the Power Platform Admin Center.  The following four new reports are available through the admin center:

1. Runswhich gives you an overview of daily, weekly and monthly desktop flows run statics, with trending lines and run results breakdown (e.g. success/failure/cancel) This report gives insights on how actively desktop flows are used in each environment.
2. Usage which shows you the desktop flows that being used most so you can get a good idea about your automation inventory.
3. Created which shows you analytics against recent created new desktop flows, so you understand how active your desktop flows makers and who they are. (Note, you must upgrade the Power Automate Desktopapp to the GA version, released 12/09/2020 or later to generate correct data for this report)
4. Errors which shows the top error types that have been caused failures in your desktop flows. (Note, you must upgrade the Power Automate Desktopapp to the GA version, released 12/09/2020 or later, in order to generate correct data for this report)

 
Public Preview of Process Advisor

One of the expanding features in automation services is process mining technology so that organizations can better understand which tasks to automate.  Ideally automation leads to greater savings of time and money, and that is achieved, through automating tasks providing the greatest return on investment (ROI).  To this end, Process Advisor was released for public preview, serving as a process mining capability in Power Automate that provides a deeper understanding of how people work and provides insights about time-consuming processes best suited for automation. Process Advisor enables users to visualize, identify bottlenecks, and gain insights into the various processes being created across your organization.  With Process Advisor users can:

1. Create: Identify and create the process about which you want to gain insights.
2. Share: Invite colleagues to collaborate and add new recordings.
3. Record: Record the actions either you or your colleagues take to complete the process at hand.
4. Annotate/Edit: Remove sensitive information, then group your actions into meaningful activities.
5. Analyze: Generate a process map where you can analyze it and get insights.

Process Advisor was one of final highlights for 2020.  There were many other features and capabilities we launched with Power Automate but we gave a glimpse of some of the most exciting features.  Be sure to catch us at Microsoft Ignite between Mar 2-4 to learn about some of the latest updates and new announcements.

 
Enhance Your Digital Transformation with Power Automate

Learn more about Power Automate by joining our growing Power Automate community and participate in discussions, provide insights, and even influence product roadmap. If you’re not already, begin following the Power Automate blog to get news on the latest updates.  To get started on your first flows, learn how to use Power Automate from our tutorials and our video channels hosted by Power Automate engineers who will demonstrate how to create sophisticated flows within a matter of minutes. Go to powerautomate.com, to get started with Power Automate today!

• Power Platform Mechanics Series
• A guide to building enterprise-ready flows
• Power Automate Community
• Power Automate Blog
• Learn Power Automate
• Power Automate Tutorials with Jon Levesque
• Power Automate Tutorials with Audrie Gordon
• Administering a PowerApps Enterprise Deployment Technical Whitepaper
• AI Builder

The post Looking Back on Power Automate’s 2020 appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

This Ignite, we are focusing on the new advancements we have made with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) which we launched in Power Automate earlier this year. Recently, we also acquired Softomotive to further expand and strengthen Power Automate’s RPA capabilities. Over the past few months, our engineering teams have focused on integrating Softomotive’s WinAutomation technology into Power Automate, and at Ignite, we’re going to give you some glimpses of how the new RPA capabilities enhance Power Automate and enable your organization to do even more (figure 1). Additionally, we’ll focus on how deep integration between Power Automate and Teams enables your end users to solve their business challenges more quickly and easily. There are also some great sessions which focus on other areas of the Power Platform which will provide you a look at the robust and nearly limitless possibilities with the Power Platform.

Figure 1.  The new Softomotive RPA integrated with Power Automate

Live Sessions

• Microsoft Power Platform: Fill the app gap and supercharge organizational agility
  • Live Tuesday Sept 22: 9:30 – 9:50 AM PDT
  • Replay Sept 22: 5:30 – 5:50 PM PDT
  • Replay Sept 23: 1:30 – 1:50 AM PDT

• Build Agile Business Processes with Power Apps
  • Live Tuesday Sept 22: 11:30 – 12:00 PM PDT
  • Replay Sept 22: 7:30 – 8:00 PM PDT
  • Replay Sept 23: 3:30 – 4:00 AM PDT

• Automate your desktop with Power Automate

  • Live Tuesday Sept 22: 1:45 – 2:15 PM PDT

  • Replay Sept 22: 9:45 – 10:25 PM PDT

  • Replay Sept 23: 5:45 – 6:15 AM PDT

• Amplify your pro developer skills with Power Platform
  • Live Wednesday Sept 23: 12:15 – 12:45 PM PDT
  • Replay Sept 23: 8:15 – 8:45 PM PDT
  • Replay Sept 24: 4:15 – 4:45 AM PDT

• How to responsibly scale Power Apps in your organization with a Low Code Center of Excellence
  • Live Tuesday Sept 22: 1:45 – 12:15 PM PDT
  • Replay Sept 22: 9:45 – 10:15 PM PDT
  • Replay Sept 24: 5:45 – 6:15 AM PDT

Session on Demand

• Automate Business Process with Microsoft Teams with Power Automate
• End-to-end intelligent automation with Power Platform

 
Enhance Your Digital Transformation with Power Automate

If you haven’t had a chance to try WinAutomation yet, check it out.  We’re looking forward to further enhancing the integration between WinAutomation and Power Automate and will be making more advancements soon, so stay tuned.   Learn more about Power Automate by joining our growing Power Automate community and participate in discussions, provide insights, and even influence product roadmap. If you’re not already, begin following the Power Automate blog to get news on the latest updates.  To get started on your first flows, learn how to use Power Automate from our tutorials and our video channels hosted by Power Automate engineers who will demonstrate how to create sophisticated flows within a matter of minutes. Go to powerautomate.com, to get started with Power Automate today!

• Power Platform Mechanics Series
• A guide to building enterprise-ready flows
• Power Automate Community
• Power Automate Blog
• Learn Power Automate
• Power Automate Tutorials with Jon Levesque
• Power Automate Tutorials with Audrie Gordon
• Administering a PowerApps Enterprise Deployment Technical Whitepaper
• AI Builder

The post Power Automate at Microsoft Ignite Virtual Conference appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Figure 1.  Automate invoicing process with Power Automate

There are many such routine tasks which include applications without APIs.  In our example, the legacy application was a Win32 app.  However, many legacy applications are not Win32 and many customers have processes which include these applications.  As part of our goal to create one automation service which can connect and automate an organization’s entire IT ecosystem, we looked to quickly expand Power Automate’s RPA capabilities.

Adopting a Leading RPA Technology

To help expand our RPA capabilities, we recently acquired Softomotive.  This addition to the Power Automate portfolio adds 15 years of experience on RPA technology, and more importantly for our customers, enables Power Automate to extend its RPA capability to a larger set of legacy applications.  Softomotive brings its flagship WinAutomation technology into Power Automate, enabling users to now automate processes which include:

• Java based applications
• Citrix applications
• AS400 and other terminal apps
• SAP

in addition to the RPA capabilities offered with UI flows.  Another key extension is on web automation offered with WinAutomation.  Now, in addition to the Web UI flows for web automation already available with Power Automate for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge,  WinAutomation additionally supports automation for Mozilla, Internet Explorer, and also Google Chrome.  With the combined capabilities of Web UI flows and WinAutomation web automation, customers can now automate tasks across a wider set of the most popular web browsers.  Over the next few weeks and months, you’ll see the continuing integration between WinAutomation and Power Automate.  Currently, any Power Automate customer with an RPA plan also gets the functionality of WinAutomation.  Users will see the new WinAutomation connector option appear when they want to create a new UI flow (figure 2).

Figure 2.  WinAutomation connector is available when users want to create a new UI flows.

Providing Multiple Methods for Desktop RPA

With 15 years of development experience behind it, WinAutomation is designed to provide an exceptional user experience.  WinAutomation includes the ‘Process Designer’ feature (figure 3) offering an easy drag and drop interface which enables easy process development and debugging capabilities.  With the Process Designer, users can:

• choose the actions the process needs to perform and drop them in the workspace
• use a visual debugger which offers a detailed UI which includes tooltips and help balloon to help users identify and remediate bugs
• easily pause an automation to assess process steps and even change variables while the process is running to get a real-time assessment on the process steps
• self-reliant Functions feature which makes it easy to create and maintain complex processes
• search and usage capabilities which accelerate process development time.

Figure 3.  WinAutomation Process Designer with easy to use drag and drop can debugging capabilities

WinAutomation also includes a Macro Recorder feature (figure 4) which enables users to simply record their mouse overs and click steps with certain desktop apps and then playback as part of the automated process.  The Macro Recorder offers two modes, ‘Smart Mode’ which records the user’s entire desktop interaction, and ‘Based on Coordinates Mode’ which records selected areas as the name indicates.  Users can also edit or modify the recording, enhance its logic with loops or conditions and merge it other automation steps. With the addition of WinAutomation’s Process Designer and Macro Recorder to Power Automate and its existing UI flows, we are excited to provide our customers with a variety of RPA options and an expansive set of applications which can now be automated.  It is an important step in our continued goal of offering the most comprehensive automation service available to the industry.

Figure 4.  Macro Recorder feature with WinAutomation in Power Automate

Enhance Your Digital Transformation with Power Automate

If you haven’t had a chance to try WinAutomation yet, check it out.  As we mentioned, it’s available to all our licensed Power Automate with RPA users.  We’re looking forward to further enhancing the integration between WinAutomation and Power Automate and will be making more advancements soon, so stay tuned.   Learn more about Power Automate by joining our growing Power Automate community and participate in discussions, provide insights, and even influence product roadmap. If you’re not already, begin following the Power Automate blog to get news on the latest updates.  To get started on your first flows, learn how to use Power Automate from our tutorials and our video channels hosted by Power Automate engineers who will demonstrate how to create sophisticated flows within a matter of minutes. Go to powerautomate.com, to get started with Power Automate today!

• Power Platform Mechanics Series
• A guide to building enterprise-ready flows
• Power Automate Community
• Power Automate Blog
• Learn Power Automate
• Power Automate Tutorials with Jon Levesque
• Power Automate Tutorials with Audrie Gordon
• Administering a PowerApps Enterprise Deployment Technical Whitepaper
• AI Builder

The post Digitally Transform Your Enterprise with Power Automate: Expanding Robotic Process Automation Capabilities with WinAutomation appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

• rich analytics capabilities in the Power Platform admin center
• custom dashboards built with the Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit
• layers of security
o tenant level
o user level
o how to set up an environment
o data access controls with the common data service
o data loss prevention policies.

Take a view minutes and check out the full video.

Video 1.  Microsoft Mechanics video on Power Platform Governance

Go Deeper on Power Platform Governance

You can go deeper on the Power Platform governance capabilities by checking out our recent sessions at the Microsoft Business Applications Virtual Summit:

• Managing and governing the ​ Power Platform at scale
• Data Loss Prevention for Power Apps and Power Automate explained.

Also, for a great technical deep dive into Power Platform governance, check out our recently updated whitepaper.  To get more details on the concepts that Julie discussed in her Mechanics interview, check out our documentation on Power Platform governance considerations.

 
Join Our Community and Get Started Today

Join the growing Power Platform Community so you can get the latest updates, join discussions and get ideas on how the Power Platform can help your organization.  Also, be sure to check out the Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit to learn how you can expand and customize your Power Platform governance capabilities.

Also, check out these other great Microsoft Mechanics videos featuring the Power Platform:

• Microsoft Power Platform: Get Started & Latest Updates
• Inside the Microsoft Power Platform: Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI and more
• Power BI – AI and Q&A updates, decomposition tree, and data prep
• Robotic Process Automation with Microsoft Power Automate, UI flows and AI Builder
• How to Build (automated, no code) Chatbots with Microsoft Power Virtual Agents

The post Governing Your Digital Transformation with the Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Figure 1.  Power Platform enables pro devs and citizen devs to combine their skills to create impactful business solutions

This year, the digital Build Conference will be aired live across three time zones, enabling our global audience to choose the time zone most convenient for them. Here is select list of Power Platform and Power Automate sessions at Build and the corresponding time zone. Each session is 30mins.

Table 1.  Selected Build Session Schedule (for full schedule, check out the Build website)

Enhance Your Digital Transformation with Power Automate

Hopefully, you’ve had a chance to learn about Power Automate and begin a free trial.    You can learn more about Power Automate by joining our growing Power Automate community and participate in discussions, provide insights, and even influence product roadmap. If you’re not already, begin following the Power Automate blog to get news on the latest updates.  To get started on your first flows, learn how to use Power Automate from our tutorials and our video channels hosted by Power Automate engineers who will demonstrate how to create sophisticated flows within a matter of minutes. Go to powerautomate.com, to get started with Power Automate today!

• Build Conference Registration
• Power Platform Mechanics Series
• A guide to building enterprise-ready flows
• Power Automate Community
• Power Automate Blog
• Learn Power Automate
• Power Automate Tutorials with Jon Levesque
• Power Automate Tutorials with Audrie Gordon
• Administering a PowerApps Enterprise Deployment Technical Whitepaper
• AI Builder

The post Power Automate at Build Developer Virtual Conference, 2020 appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Here’s a list of Power Platform and Power Automate sessions for Microsoft Business Applications Summit 2020.

Virtual Sessions with Live Q&A: 28 min sessions, Wednesday May 6^th, 2020

1. “Empower Your Organization with the Microsoft Power Platform” 9:15 AM PST — The Microsoft Power Platform is a low-code development platform empowering your employees to solve today’s most challenging business problems with ease and within the bounds of your IT governance. The Power Platform leverages seamless automation, low-code application development, engaging conversational AI, and enhanced data analytics and visualization tools to help plan, execute, and analyze your organization’s challenges to produce unique and often unimagined solutions. The Power Platform includes Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate and Power Virtual Agents. In this session, we showcase the foundational elements of the Power Platform, discuss its latest capabilities and also demonstrate how the global healthcare giant GSK is using the Power Platform to address one of its real-world challenges. This session will open you up to the possibilities your organization can achieve with the Power Platform and the nearly unlimited potential it can offer you!
2. “Managing & Governing the Power Platform At Scale” 11:15 AM PST — this session provides an overview of our big investments as well as some awesome demos of our latest features in Power Platform.
3. “Unlocking seamless automation across your enterprise​” 12:15 PM PST— Power Automate is Microsoft’s workflow and business process management platform, and recently introduced new Robotic Process Automation capabilities, with a new capability called UI flows. Power Automate is the connective glue that’s used by end-users and developers alike for digital transformation, no matter what application they are using, and in this session we will cover this vision in detail.
4. “Learn how Robotic Process Automation can Expedite Your Digital Transformation” 1:00 PM PST — Learn how to put both Attended and Unattended UI Flows to use in building a practice around robotic process automation (RPA) with best practices, tips, and tricks!

On-Demand Session, Thursday May 7^th, 2020

1. “Power Automate in 2020” — What you should already be using and what’s still to come — You spoke, we listened! Come and hear directly from the Microsoft Power Automate team about new features recently released, and our plans for the rest of 2020.
2. “Why Microsoft’s RPA?” — Learn how Microsoft’s robotic process automation (RPA) offering combines the strengths of API automation, intelligence, and legacy automation to achieve broad and deep scenarios with ease.
3. “Dive into how to make RPA work for you” — Learn how to put both Attended and Unattended UI Flows to use in building a practice around robotic process automation (RPA) with best practices, tips, and tricks!
4. “Business process automation that helps teams do more” — Learn how to create goal-driven Business Process Flows that streamline human processes and help your teams stay focused
5. “Introduction to digital transformation with Power Automate” — Join this session for an introduction covering UI flows, automated and business process flows in Microsoft Power Automate.

Enhance Your Digital Transformation with Power Automate

Hopefully you’ve had a chance to learn about Power Automate and begin a trial. You can learn more about Power Automate by joining our growing Power Automate Community and participate in discussions, provide insights, and even influence product roadmap. If you’re not already, begin following the Power Automate blog to get news on the latest updates. To get started on your first flows, learn how to use Power Automate from our tutorials and our video channels hosted by Power Automate engineers who will demonstrate how to create sophisticated flows within a matter of minutes. Go to powerautomate.com, to get started with Power Automate today!

• Power Platform Mechanics Series
• A guide to building enterprise-ready flows
• Power Automate Community
• Power Automate Blog
• Learn Power Automate
• Power Automate Tutorials with Jon Levesque
• Power Automate Tutorials with Audrie Gordon
• Administering a PowerApps Enterprise Deployment Technical Whitepaper
• AI Builder

The post Power Automate at Microsoft Business Applications Summit, Virtual Event 2020 appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Gartner recently identified hyperautomation as one of the top 10 strategic emerging technology trends of 2020.  According to Gartner, hyperautomaton is “end-to-end automation beyond robotic process automation (RPA) by combining complementary technologies to augment business processes.” Its emergence as a trend is tied to a combination of business and technology realities. The business reality is the need to remove siloes and seamlessly connect the data and information that an organization has across its different layers and business units. The technology reality is that solutions already exist to enable businesses to connect their data seamlessly. These two effects give rise to hyperautomation. Gartner believes that hyperautomation can be enabled by DigitalOps which they define as “a business process framework designed to simplify, measure, and manage processes across the enterprise.” DigitalOps includes RPA, business process management (BPM), workflow engines, decision management suites, process mining, low-code application platforms (LCAPs), and others.  Gartner’s extensive research will help enterprise architects and innovation leaders to:

• Define an automation journey
• Co-create a strategy to combine DigitalOps tools
• Augment business processes with AI

The Microsoft Power Platform perfectly aligns with the emerging need for hyperautomation, and Microsoft Power Automate serves as the critical automation service supporting an organization’s push for hyperautomation. In this month’s blog, we’ll take a look at how Power Automate and Power Platform can help enterprise architects define an automation strategy, leverage DigitalOps, and augment their business with AI.

Defining your automation strategy

Organizations often desire services with a broad and in-depth feature set while also streamlining and reducing the number of vendors and services they deploy. This same strategy applies to an organization’s automation needs. If one service can do three things, it’s better than three services each doing one thing.  According to Gartner, automation services must go beyond traditional RPA, extending to complementary technologies to deliver end-to-end automation. An optimal automation service ideally offers multiple automation capabilities and can do each of them well. To this end, Power Automate has been well ahead of the curve. In fact, for years, Power Automate has focused on being a leading digital process automation service. With the launch of RPA capabilities, Power Automate can now automate processes across data from non-API based applications with data from programmatic API-based services whether that data resides on-premises or in the cloud. Power Automate natively integrates with Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft 365, offering seamless automation for tools offering powerful compute and cognitive services, enterprise resources planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and productivity. Beyond the Microsoft ecosystem, we have over 300 connectors that enable automation for widely used enterprise applications. Power Automate has been a robust, multi-faceted automation platform from inception and was designed for hyperautomation, well before it became a trend, as seen in Figure 1 below. When deciding on your organization’s automation strategy, make sure to try Power Automate and explore its unparalleled potential. We’re confident Power Automate will fulfill the broad set of requirements and depth that your organization needs to unlock and enjoy the benefits of hyperautomation.

Combining Power Automate with other DigitalOps tools

The Microsoft Power Platform is a DigitalOps platform. The platform enables anyone in your organization to leverage the benefits of business intelligence and data visualization, low-code application development, seamless automation, and conversational AI as seen in Figure 2 below. These services share AI capabilities, a common database or the the common data service, and more than 300 connectors to help create powerful solutions to many business challenges. Your DigitalOps strategy can begin with the Microsoft Power Platform which is designed specifically to combine the powerful capabilities of multiple services to help create unique solutions. We demonstrated the end-to-end capability of the Power Platform at this year’s Microsoft Business Applications Summit. At the event, we shared a demo of how GSK, the global healthcare company, has fully embraced the Power Platform (0h:59m :1h 3m). This example is just one of many of how the Power Platform empowers today’s organizations with digital technologies to enhance their capabilities and reach with customers. Power Automate is a foundational component of the Power Platform and is embedded in a DigitalOps co-creation strategy. The advantage of Power Automate compared to other automation services is that by design, Power Automate is built for integration to a broader ecosystem of services that leverage automation as one element of a more expansive set of aptitudes. This means your organization has a head start on digital transformation and hyperautomation by choosing Power Automate and the Power Platform.

Augment business processes with AI

According to Gartner’s research, AI should also be included in a hyperautomation strategy. With Power Automate and the Microsoft Power Platform, AI is a core feature.  Not only does the Power Platform include AI, it offers low-code AI, enabling any user to leverage the benefits of AI in their solutions. AI Builder offers a wide variety of pre-built and customizable AI models that can be incorporated into your automated processes or applications. In Figure 3 below, we show how AI Builder’s form processing is able to read and extract relevant information from a customer invoice. This information can then be used in a flow to enhance a business process automation. Learn more about all the different models that are offered with AI Builder and begin imagining the sophistication you can add into your process automations. With AI Builder, Power Automate reinforces its focus on enabling organizations to digitally transform quickly. Additionally, it is perfectly built to support the emerging hyperautomation trend, enabling users to easily embed AI and augment any business process.

Enhance your digital transformation with Power Automate

Hopefully you now have a view into how Power Automate and the Power Platform are ahead of the curve for the hyperautomation trend. Be sure to download your copy of Gartner’s report, Move Beyond RPA to Deliver Hyperautomation. Both have been designed to support hyperautomation before it became a clearly identifiable topic or trend. Learn more about Power Automate by joining our growing Power Automate community and participate in discussions, provide insights, and even influence the product roadmap. If you’re not already, begin following the Power Automate blog to get news on the latest updates. To get started on your first flows, learn how to use Power Automate from our tutorials and our video channels hosted by Power Automate engineers who will demonstrate how to create sophisticated flows within a matter of minutes. Get started with Power Automate today!

• Move Beyond RPA to Deliver Hyperautomation
• Watch the Power Platform Mechanics Series
• Read the guide to building enterprise-ready flows
• Join the Power Automate Community
• Learn more about Power Automate
• Watch Power Automate tutorials with Jon Levesque
• Watch Power Automate tutorials with Audrie Gordon
• Read the Administering a Microsoft Power Apps Enterprise Deployment technical whitepaper
• Learn more about AI Builder

The post Digitally transform your enterprise with Microsoft Power Automate appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Seamless Automation Across Your Environment
A primary benefit of Power Automate is enabling automation across your entire IT ecosystem. Connectors are used to automate applications in the cloud, and our on-prem gateway (check out the monthly on-prem gateway updates) allows automation between cloud and on-prem data. In early 2018, Power Automate improved the admin experience by introducing Gateway High Availability. These high available gateway clusters ensure organizations can access on-prem data through groups of gateways. Grouping gateways eliminates the impact from any single point of failures’ access to on-prem data. With the enhancements to the on-prem gateway, Power Automate is a sophisticated yet easy to use automation service for API-based cloud and on-prem data.
With our announcement of the UI flows connector for robotic process automation (RPA), Power Automate can now also automate non-API based applications. This means your organization can now automate using a single automation service. Power Automate natively integrates with many of the most widely used enterprise applications, such as Sharepoint, Teams, and Dynamics 365. We recently shared a video demonstrating the incredible impact Power Automate can have on your organization’s productivity. As we shared in a previous post, automating the invoicing process, can lead to a 90% reduction in invoice costs. In our example, we automate (see figure 1) an organization’s entire invoicing process, from automating across API-based applications to a non-API based invoicing application. In the video, we demonstrated how Power Automate can do the following:

• Automatically open an email with an attached invoice
• Extract pertinent information from the invoice
• Send an approval request direct to Teams
• With an affirmative approval response, trigger the RPA process of updating the invoicing application

Figure 1. Automating the invoicing process with Power Automate (note the 2 min timestamp for length of process time)

The entire process is done in less than 5 minutes. Imagine how many invoices your organization has to handle daily, and the amount of time you can save, and the improved accuracy you can rely on by using Power Automate. RPA was the final piece to enabling Power Automate to offer seamless automation across the IT ecosystem. Our journey with RPA is just beginning, and we have exciting announcements about our RPA technology coming soon. Stay tuned!

Enhancing Collaboration with Integrated Automation
Microsoft Teams is one of the most widely used collaboration tools and has become an essential service for modern organizations. Since its launch, Teams has experienced remarkable user growth. This growth is indicative of Teams becoming an important and effective productivity tool for users with their daily tasks. Since 2017, Power Automate has offered the Teams connector, enabling sophisticated automation capabilities in our best in class collaboration service. In fact, many of the hundreds of templates of flows leverage the Teams connector as part of the automation process. In early 2018, we enhanced the Teams and Power Automate user experience by natively integrating Power Automate into Teams. Since Teams serves as the hub for the daily work of many users, having the ability to create, edit, and execute flows created with Power Automate, directly from the Teams app (figure 2) provides an unmatched level of convenience. This powerful integration ensures that users never need to leave Teams even when they need to create a process automation. Both Teams and Power Automate are designed to boost productivity and by offering this unique and unparalleled integration, Microsoft helps offer an unprecedented acceleration to a user’s productivity and ultimately your entire organization’s productivity.  Be sure to follow the updates on the tighter integration between Teams and Power Automate. There are more exciting enhancements we’re working on which are coming soon!

Figure 2. Create your flows by using Power Automate directly from the Teams app

Infusing no-code AI to Your Automation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most exciting emerging technologies today. In June 2019, we introduced AI to the Power Platform. AI Builder offers the far-reaching capabilities of AI without the need for complex technical coding knowledge typically required for AI. AI Builder is fully integrated with Power Automate (see figure 3) and comes with four customizable AI models and five pre-built models for specific scenarios such as reading a business card. In our automated invoicing example, we use the ‘forms processing’ model which extracts and stores data fields from an invoice. To create the model, a user simply uploads some invoices so the system can learn the form and determine which fields have important values to extract. Importantly, AI Builder can work with structured and unstructured data, providing an expansive range of use cases it can help with. The ‘form processing’ in our invoicing demo is just one of the many possible ways AI Builder and Power Automate can help your organization become more productive.

Figure 3. AI Builder models and use cases in Power Automate

 
Automating Approvals for Business Processes

As we summarized in a previous post, approvals processes are fundamental for business operations and quick and accurate turnaround for approvals is a requirement for business success. As such, automation of approvals is almost a foundational necessity to remain competitive in today’s fast paced environment. In fact, McKinsey research found that automation of 50-75% of tasks can lead to:

• 20-35% annual run-rate cost efficiencies
• reduction in straight-through process time of 50-60%
• a return on investments often in triple-digit percentages.

Approvals have been a core function of Power Automate since early 2017 and today, we offer several templated scenarios (see figure 4) for approvals across multiple applications such as Sharepoint, Teams, Dynamics, as well as a myriad of 3^rd party services. In fact, Power Automate provides eight types of approvals ranging from single person approvals to customized approvals responses. Even if your business leveraged Power Automate only for automating approvals, you would immediately enjoy the unparalleled efficiency benefits identified by Mckinsey’s research. Imagine how these greater efficiencies can help improve your business outcomes.

Figure 4. Examples of approvals process templates available with Power Automate

Offering Greater Efficiency and Functionality for Pro Developers

Many of the examples we have shared focus on enhancing productivity for end users. However, Power Automate also has integrations with Azure Functions, Azure API Management, and Azure Logic Apps. In 2017, Power Automate also introduced ‘expressions’ which could be added in-line, allowing richer functionality and the ability to create more advanced process automations (see figure 5). The expressions are built on the Workflow Definition Language which uses JSON. Check out the full list of available expressions functions in our schema guide.

Figure 5. Access and include ‘expressions’ functions in your flows

Power Automate also helps developers enhance, streamline, and expedite the application development cycle with the Azure DevOps connector (see figure 6). Using the DevOps connector, development teams can create custom or out-of-the-box automations for several use cases pertaining to the development lifecycle. Regardless of whether your team is in the planning, development, delivery, or operations stage of the development lifecycle, you can use it to automate mundane tasks such as sending a notification across the team when a new item is created, assigned, or even when a code check is complete. By automating these processes, developer teams are able to focus all their energy on creating applications which ultimately helps reduce the development time.

Figure 6. The Azure DevOps connector in Power Automate.

 
Enhance Your Digital Transformation with Power Automate

Hopefully you had a chance to read part 1 of this blog covering the foundational elements of Power Automate.   If you get the chance, be sure to join our growing Power Automate community and participate in discussions, provide insights, and even influence product roadmap. If you’re not already, begin following the Power Automate blog to get news on the latest updates.  To get started on your first flows, learn how to use Power Automate from our tutorials and our video channels hosted by Power Automate engineers who will demonstrate how to create sophisticated flows within a matter of minutes. Go to powerautomate.com, to get started with Power Automate today!

• Power Platform Mechanics Series
• A guide to building enterprise-ready flows
• Power Automate Community
• Power Automate Blog
• Learn Power Automate
• Power Automate Tutorials with Jon Levesque
• Power Automate Tutorials with Audrie Gordon
• Administering a PowerApps Enterprise Deployment Technical Whitepaper

The post Digitally Transform Your Enterprise with Power Automate: Our Journey to Enable Your Digital Transformation, Part 2 appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Power Automate Begins with You

Before looking at our history, we wanted to highlight the powerful relationship Power Automate has developed with its users.  Our users are important influencers for the features and roadmap we have developed.  This user community has grown to thousands of members and this core group of people have helped Power Automate grow into a service which enables many billions of process automations each month. If you are not yet a member, we hope you register community and help influence the future product journey of Power Automate.

A Growing Ecosystem of Connectors

Power Automate was first announced on April of 2016.  At the time, there were roughly 35 connectors to some of the most widely used enterprise applications.  Today, Power Automate has over 300+ connectors (figure 1).  Our goal has been to provide customers with a robust automation service which can provide automation across your entire IT landscape.  These connectors you to leverage Power Automate to automate processes for many of the apps you use each day.  Our ecosystem of connectors grows each month, averaging about 5 new connectors every month.  This ecosystem will continue to expand, ensuring you can automate more applications with Power Automate.  One of the important new connectors we have in public preview is the SAP ERP connector.  SAP’s ERP software handles enterprise business applications like accounting, sales, payroll, finance, production, human resources, etc.  With the SAP ERP connector you can connect your flows to an SAP ERP system – either SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA.  With this connector, you can automate business processes over data in SAP.

Figure 1.  Some of the top connectors available with Power Automate.  Today there are more than 300 connectors available.

The SAP connector is one example of the hundreds of connectors available with Power Automate, which help organizations enhance and expedite fundamental business processes.  Users are also not limited to the connectors that are available.  Since 2017, Power Automate has enabled you to develop your own connector.  Also, customer connectors can be created using the OpenAPI definition, the Postman Collection, or from scratch (figure 2).

Figure 2.  Creating a customer connector from scratch with Power Automate

Mobilizing Microsoft Power Automate

Soon after the initial announcement of Power Automate for the web, we offered the Power Automate mobile app.  The mobile app is one of the most important aspects of Power Automate as it enables real-time notifications for critical process updates on your smartphone and is available for iOS and Android systems.  Power Automate comes with hundreds of flow templates and you’ll see many of the most widely used flow templates are tied to notifications (figure 2).  One of the foundational elements of Power Automate is ease of use in building flows.  We executed on this theme after the initial launch of the mobile app by enabling users to create flows from their mobile phones.  Nothing can be easier and more efficient than creating an automated process directly from your smartphone, anywhere, anytime.  To further enhance the mobile experience, we also introduced ‘Button Flows’ which are flows that can be triggered with the push of a button.  Power Automate has supported powerful mobile capabilities for several years.  If you want to learn more details on how to get the most from the Power Automate mobile app, check out our video.

Governance and Security

We announced general availability of Power Automate in October 2016,  in conjunction with several sophisticated security and governance tools for the service.  Power Automate is designed for end users and pro developers, offering accessibility and functionality for technical and non-technical users.  Power Automate also supports the needs of IT admins who must manage the growing number of developers in their organization and scale with limited resources.  With this in mind, Power Automate has offered several important features from inception such as the ability to customize and create discrete flow environments, identity and access management through native integration with Azure Active Directory, and powerful data loss prevention (DLP) policies through Microsoft DLP.  We also launched the Power Automate admin center which provides admins visibility, control, and analysis of all the flows in the organization.  More recently, we launched the Power Platform admin center which provides insight into power platform services including metrics on usage, the number of flows created, how flows are shared, and also the number of times a flow has been run (see figure 2).  Check out details on how Power Automate is built on powerful security tools and also download our whitepaper on best practices for developing a security and governance strategy for your Power Automate/Power Apps deployment.

Figure 3.  Power Automate analytics in the newly launched Power Platform Admin

Enhance Your Digital Transformation with Power Automate

Look for part 2 of this blog where we will look back on how Power Automate has developed essential capabilities on helping boost your organization’s productivity.   Also be sure to join our growing Power Automate community and participate in discussions, provide insights, and even influence product roadmap. If you’re not already, begin following the Power Automate blog to get news on the latest updates.  To get started on your first flows, learn how to use Power Automate from our tutorials and our video channels hosted by Power Automate engineers who will demonstrate how to create sophisticated flows within a matter of minutes. Go to powerautomate.com, to get started with Power Automate today!

• Power Platform Mechanics Series
• A guide to building enterprise-ready flows
• Power Automate Community
• Power Automate Blog
• Learn Power Automate
• Power Automate Tutorials with Jon Levesque
• Power Automate Tutorials with Audrie Gordon
• Administering a PowerApps Enterprise Deployment Technical Whitepaper

The post Digitally Transform Your Enterprise with Power Automate: Our Journey to Enable Your Digital Transformation, Part 1 appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.