Microsoft Power Automate Desktop is an automation tool that helps you to carry out RPA (Robotic Process Automation) processes.
Power Automate Desktop allows streamline processes, avoid repetitive tasks and make our work more productive by reducing the burden of performing repetitive tasks.
This program is included in Windows 11 if you are a Microsoft user.
It is important to know the differences between two types of Microsoft Power Automate solutions:
Power Automate Desktop, is a Windows-based desktop app that allows you to automate tasks on your local machine or on remote machines. It provides a graphical interface for creating workflows and can interact with a wide range of applications and services, including browsers, file systems, and databases.
Power Automate Cloud, on the other hand, is a cloud-based platform that provides a variety of automation capabilities for cloud-based applications and services. It allows you to create and manage workflows using a web-based interface and can integrate with a variety of cloud-based services, such as Microsoft Office 365, Dynamics 365, SharePoint, and OneDrive.
Benefits of using Power Automate Desktop
- You will be able to make routine day-to-day tasks simpler. From exporting reports, data entry and task scheduling.
- Perform a set of steps involving multiple desktop and web applications.
- Start automating with pre-created examples; you don’t need extensive training to get started.
Install
From this official Microsoft site, you can find the steps to install Power Automate Desktop. There are two main options for installation: using the MSI installer or from Microsoft Store. You can follow the step-by-step instructions provided in the link above.
Example Categories
Once the program is installed, you can browse the examples. You can find them in the Examples tab. They are shown grouped by categories that (as of 2023 Q3) are as follows (they may appear in a different order):
- Excel automation: it can be used to automate tasks in Excel such as extracting or storing data and managing Excel spreadsheets.
- Web automation: Fill out forms, extract data from your pages, and create reports using your data.
- Desktop automation: Launch applications, interact with Windows, and extract data to process in Flows.
- DateTime processing: processing date and time data, performing calculations with it, and converting it to text.
- PDF automation: extract data from PDF pages, manipulate files, and generate PDFs by splitting existing ones.
- Text manipulation: Dealing with text values, searching, extracting text, and controlling files of this type.
- Scripting: Implement custom behaviors in desktop flows.
- Flow control: Work with flows in advanced mode.
In the Example categories you find Microsoft´s examples, so you can simply read the information from these examples and become familiar with the processes you can carry out with Power Automate Desktop.
By clicking on each Example category, you can access the specific cases and they will be executed without further action on your part.
Even more, you can discover which automation solution is right for you with this assistant tool.
Power Automate Desktop examples
Find below three examples you could use to start getting familiar with Power Automate Desktop and its RPA processes:
Find and delete empty files (within the Desktop Automation category)
This flow, after prompting you to select a folder on your computer, deletes any files that are empty from that drive.
Get Previous Business Date (within the Datetime Processing category)
It will return to us based on the date of our equipment, which has been the working date prior to the day you are on.
Merge two PDF files (within the PDF Automation category)
Action in a flow to automate the merge of two PDF files.
Excel and Power Automate Desktop processes
We will introduce the topic of Excel in Power Automate Desktop. The category that encompasses Excel actions is called Excel Automation, and the examples you find include:
- Find and Replace Excel Values: Quickly find and replace values in Excel spreadsheets.
- Start Excel: in this case, you will be able to carry out the basic task of starting an Excel sheet.
- Start Excel and extract a table: This flow is used to extract tables from Excel files.
- Consolidate Excel reports: with this flow, you will be able to collect data and create reports in an automated way.
- Manipulate Excel data with SQL: it helps us to create a SQL connection to the Excel file and use SQL queries to automate processes dealing with Excel spreadsheets´s data.
In future posts and videos, we will show each of these Excel examples and RPA processes using Power Automate Desktop.
You can find additional information on the official Microsoft Power Automate Desktop site:
- Get Started Creating Desktop Flows Using Examples
- Create Desktop Flows Through the Console
- Create desktop flows through cloud flows
We would like to know your opinion about this and for any questions or queries you can contact us.
And, if you need help with Power Automate or any other product in the Power Platform family, do not hesitate to contact us. We will be delighted to help you get the most out of this fantastic platform.
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