Microsoft Power Automate Reviews

I'm a strategy consultant and we are partners and resellers/integrators of Microsoft. 

I like the power automate side of the platform, which I'm using as well all the core applications to include a human loop in the process. I'm quite relieved now because they have the Power Automate desktop platform which is good.

One of the frustrating things is that you can't use a lot of connectors without having a premium license. I would like them to increase the AI capacity. Currently they are using AI Builder which is significantly reduced because it's based on models which are not similar and it's really narrow. Surface information, like going through Citrix, would also be good.

I've been using this solution for four months. 

This is a stable solution. 

The product is scalable, we have around 40 people using it in our company. 

We are integrators so we generally don't use the technical support. 

We still also work with UI Path and in the past we worked a lot with Blue Prism. We're losing business with Blue Prism because their entry ticket is quite high. With Blue Prism you can increase your capacity quite easily and then there are no entry costs. Most of our clients already have Dynamics or Office 365 licensing so it's quite easy for them to implement Microsoft Power Automate or alternatively the UI Path system. My conviction is that UI Path is the most complete platform, including the entire operating model and the COE, accelerators in opportunity identification, accelerators in maintenance and monitoring as well as the community services. So that why it's quite good. It's coming with extensions as well. It also comes with extensions. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

I'm quite sure that they will increase their licensing in the next few months because the platform is getting better and better. The big advantage for them now is that a lot of organizations already have Office 365 licensing, so it's quite easy to sell.

My advice on this product would be to focus on the human in the loop. That's because Power Automate is really great when you want to communicate with users in the middle of a crisis, or if you want some interaction with different people or want to orchestrate workflow between different departments. It has quite an impact when you implement user interactions.

For now, I would rate this solution a six out of 10, but I am sure it will improve in the next few months. 

We primarily use the solution for back-office activities and processing.

The ease of use is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's easy to configure and write code on it.

The solution is simple, it's not complicated.

The pricing of the solution is competitive, which is good for the Romanian market.

The solution could offer more specific training. There should be more examples of what the functions can do and more instructions and explanations to the process.

I've been using the solution for about one year.

The solution is relatively stable. I'd rate it seven out of ten.

The solution could be scalable, but it depends on the design process. Currently, I'm the only one using the solution in our company. I use it every day.

Technical support has been okay. They are quite prompt, but I was hoping they would provide more in-depth explanations concerning the process.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

The initial setup was straightforward. Deployment only takes a few minutes.

We handled the implementation ourselves.

We did a bit of market research before ultimately choosing this solution. Most of the information we found was in the public domain. We found that costs were transparent when looking at this solution.

The solution is web-based. We're partners with WinAutomation.

I'd advise others to be patient and learn how to program it properly. The results will come, but there will be a learning curve.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We implemented this solution for our clients and the primary aim was to create a chatbot that would provide service answers to customers. If the chatbot wasn't able to help, the query moved to a ticketing tool like ServiceNow, which creates the ticket and assigns it to the appropriate team. For logging purposes, the ticket is logged with ServiceNow and it provides the solution to the end-user through the chatbot. I'm a senior manager and we are Microsoft gold partners. 

This product improves the way an organization functions by creating monitoring solutions. One of the things we can do now is to enable the system to inform the service people before end-users log a ticket because the system can be monitored in advance. Those tickets will be created by the system itself so that the service provider can take action before being contacted by the end-users. It improves the quality of the service. 

The value is that the whole platform seamlessly integrates well and that there are enough connectors to the majority of the systems for the SAP connection, or ServiceNow connection, or an email connection, or SharePoint connection. There are a number of connectors already built-in. It doesn't require writing any extra code, it's a low code solution platform so it's easy and faster to create solutions.

Things need to be improved with respect to RPA kinds of solutions and it requires a level of stabilization that is currently lacking. 

I've been using this solution for two years. 

The solution is stable. I haven't found many issues because when we design and implement we have a lot of experience behind us so we plan ahead and know what we're doing. 

This solution is scalable. 

The technical support is there with Microsoft depending on what kind of a subscription and relationship you have with them. Support ranges from standard to premium. Things are not always solved in a single instance and they'll sometimes tell you that what's been implemented is not supported. 

It is a very easy and straightforward deployment process. If you are going to implement a very complex solution, something that's automated with a DevOps process, and many teams are involved, then it may require some extra people. It depends on the complexity of what you plan to build, the number of systems, etc. We have our own internal team that carries out the implementation. 

There are multiple layers of licensing; there is a subscription license and if you want to use any premium connectors, then you need to have a separate license. RPA solutions also require a separate license and if you want to use any AI features, there's a separate license for that too, it depends on your requirements. 

Before implementing this solution, be aware that there may be limitations within the system or within the platform that might not be suitable for your needs.

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

We are using Power Automate to send notifications when working with items in SharePoint. It is used to send notifications when a document is moved or needs to be approved. When a document needs to be approved in SharePoint, we send a notification to the user who needs to approve that document. I also use Power Automate to create a work item in another system, such as Azure DevOps.

I like Power Automate because it is very easy to use for users who don't have IT knowledge.

They can improve the description of errors and provide more details. Sometimes, when I receive an error, I can't understand what is wrong.

It would be useful to have a desktop version to modify or edit workflows. Its scalability can also be better.

I have been using this solution for five months.

It is stable.

It is scalable, but its scalability can be better. We have 10 to 20 users of this solution.

We have a contract with Microsoft for premium support. We have support all the time, and they are good.

Its initial setup is easy. The deployment duration depends on the complexity of the deployment. It can take a week or a month.

To know about the best practices for this solution and how to make it more secure, I would advise others to read the information on the web.

I would rate Microsoft Power Automate a seven out of ten.

I primarily use the solution for automation. I also use it for invoicing.

To automatically register some data has saved me a lot of time. In the past, I would look in an Excel sheet every day at 8:00 am and I would have to download a spreadsheet and match some values with another spreadsheet. That kind of task took me almost three hours. Now in almost three minutes or two minutes, it's done.

I also find that it's helped with invoicing in relation to taxes. I can download the invoice, and match it with my ERP system and they match the values with the invoice and the system. If it matches, it gets saved in a spreadsheet with many invoices. I could have 10, 20, or even 30 invoices a day or 100 invoices a week. With this solution, I don't need a person to review that. The robot handles that task.

One of the most valuable feature that Power Platform has is the integration with Power BI and the AI Builder, in the firts one, you ca create visualizations and show indicators of revenue, execution, progress, ranges, of whats going on in the solutions, in the second one, you can create an intelligent model to show projections in a matter of minutes, it's so ieasy o create a robot in these software

The issue lies more in how you learn the solution. The information is very generalized. It could be extremely useful to have more specific information about how to use various features within the platform. The solution has a lot of moving parts and aspects that need to be understood. Making the training process easier would help people onboard faster.

The desktop interface is a little rough to manage. You can't view the bottoms or the menu or the characteristics of what you need to use. It's very unclear in the desktop application. That said, the cloud application it's more useful. It's much neater and more organized.

Their AI builder has improved, however, it could be interesting to look into how to build a project that can make projections about a task or a process. If that feature could be more user-friendly, that would be ideal. Right now, it's not very clear how to use it. Maybe a person that has more knowledge wouldn't be as confused. I'm not like a developer. I'd need it simplified for me.

I've been using the solution for about a year to a year and a half so far. It hasn't been an extended period of time.

I haven't experienced any issues with the stability of the solution. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't seem to crash or freeze. It's been good so far.

The product can integrate with other solutions, and therefore it can work with high workloads or low workloads. It's very scalable. 

We have anywhere from 100 to 500 users.

The technical support of Microsoft has been good. It's not often that we call into Microsoft directly, however, at least, not so much for this particular solution.

The initial setup is not complex. It's quite straightforward. We found the process to be very easy.

The deployment is very fast. It only takes a minute or two.

It's a subscription. Therefore, you only need to log in and make a project, and if you already know how data deploys it's within minutes that you can start.

The solution is subscription-based.

I have evaluated Automation Anywhere, among other solutions. There are many, however, I'm more comfortable with Microsoft.

We're a Microsoft partner.

I have used Flows and it's very easy to use it, however, not in advanced terms.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. It's my understanding that it is the latest, however, I don't know the exact version number.

I'd warn new users that they have to know about the concept of RPA. It's very difficult to get on board with this kind of solution if you don't know about RPA. You have to make everything step-by-step. You have to know how to make a diagram flow. You need to understand what comes first and what's in the middle, and what's next. In order to successfully dive into using the solution, a user must be familiar with these kinds of concepts and labels.

If you don't know about the process or haven't read about BPM, it could make it very difficult to implement RPA. I suggest new users if they aren't familiar, read a little about RPA in the beginning and then learn about the processes.

It's a good product. I would rate it nine out of ten.

The solution seems to have a good drag and drop functionality. 

It's very well automated.

The solution is pretty customizable. Even big automation tasks are done rather simply. If you want to do more, we've found that anybody can do it. Even a business user that has no knowledge of IT can jump on and figure it out.

Two or three years ago, in all IT products, there were a lot of standards that were missing. Now, using the cloud and using some EA tools, there is a huge scope of possibilities. It's much better.

The biggest problem right now is the fact that, when you use only the trial version, you don't have the whole power or capacity of what you can do with the Power Automate. 

The price of the license isn't that cheap. We want to see what it can do, fully, before purchasing. 

If you get a license, you can only have one developer or one user on it.

If you want to be more precise and the jobs to be more complete, it's somewhat complicated and there are some complex tasks that can't be done so easily by a business user. You'll need to get someone that's more highly skilled.

You need to pay for the ability to customize the solution. That's not an option on the free trial. You also have to be able to read some code in order to customize it. You need to be slightly skilled. You can only customize it on your own, only for you, and not for the other users.

When it comes to using UiPath or Blue Prism, there are more tools you can use. For example, Java or tools. It's easy to interact with them with UiPath and not so much on Power Automate. While Microsoft has a way of integrating well with itself and its own internal tools, it could do more to include external options and add them to the mix.

I've been using the solution for one to two months. It's pretty new for us.

It's largely stable. When Microsoft updates, it tends to update everything at once. Your Excel, Work, Power Automate, etc., everything updates automatically. That makes everything align so that nothing is out-of-date and affecting the stability of everything else at any time. In general, stability seems to be absolutely fine.

If it's on the cloud, it's generally easy to scale. The volume of data is viable. However, we haven't really attempted to scale anything. I haven't put everything onto Power Automate at this time.

I haven't really reached out to technical support yet. I don't have experience with them, so I can't gauge if they are better than other options.

From my experience, for example, UiPath technical support was not that good. I've used Automation Everywhere and I didn't find them to be very good either. Each time we have a problem with Automation Anywhere, they wouldn't give any explanation. They would always blame the issue on a problem with Microsoft and never with their own problems. Therefore, historically, we haven't had a good run with support at other companies. I'm not sure if this will be the case with Microsoft.

We've looked at and worked with UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere. We're doing comparison POCs with UiPath and Power Automate now. We're not likely to just choose one solution; we may end up using two. We'd like to have options to choose a few depending on the needs.

The initial implementation is not that difficult. It's on the cloud, so there's nothing to install. It's not exactly user friendly, however. UiPath is much more user friendly if you compare it to Power Automate.

In any case, you just connect it with your Microsoft login. If you want to automate a task, it's easy as everything is connected due to the Mircosoft account. It's easy to set up and concentrate your automation tasks.

Since we are on the trial version, we haven't bought it yet, or paid for anything.

If you are a small company, you can have a Power Automate license for as low as $30/month if you want to run one bot per month. It's pretty inexpensive.

With solutions like Blue Prism or UiPath, you need to think in one or five-year terms and many small companies can't just throw down $10,000 upfront.

We're a Microsoft customer. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

We're using the trial version of the cloud deployment model. We haven't paid for it yet as they have to do a benchmark within or the solution for some POCs on UiPath and on Power Automate to see the differences. 

In a lot of companies, they use Microsoft products. It's easy to demonstrate how it's important to have a Power Automate type of solution on hand.

Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. Power Automate definitely offers the best automation scenarios due to the fact that it's a Microsoft product for Microsoft products. I tried automating something, for example, in SharePoint, using both UiPath and Power Automate, and Power Automate was the clear winner. It was just so easy and seamless.

It's also great from the perspective of a small company as there aren't high costs up front.

The solution has drag and drop features, and a development console that's in simple English, so even a non-tech can understand what the code means.

It has controls in boxes, just like Automation Anywhere, which helps alert the developer to take care of the smaller-level details which reduce errors. It's a very good feature.

The solution is comparatively quick to deploy for making smaller automation processes.

The solution's recommendation feature needs improvement. So many times it fails, which tells us that although the hardware configuration and software configuration and the environment stay the same, we should expect the automation tool to recognize images correctly, but it does not. There have been issues in which it has failed, and it remains a concern. At times, it crashes, for some unknown reason. We avoid automating any complex automation processes. 

We find the solution to be not that user-friendly, and might be using the older version, which really did not have a lot of features, so my review is mostly based on the older version.

WinAutomation could work on a simpler process of providing a development of something that proactively tells us what is wrong in the code, because what is happening right now is that we make the scripting code in some other place and some other control, and we identify errors over there. We simply copy it to this control, which is not even providing any color-coding, or any other assistance to the developers. Copying it from elsewhere is necessary to pick up any errors with ease.

We were really fortunate to use the version which has extended the EXEs, so once we make a development in the studio and we compile it, and make an EXE out of it, that EXE can be used on any number of systems. When it comes to identifying images and creating logic based on those images, or moving the mouse to an image, the image recognition randomly fails for unknown reasons, although we've had a lot of assistance around it, and the developers have put a lot of effort to make a way around it, but when the image recognitions fail, it just stays on the system. 

It definitely is a scalable solution. The components that we use enable us to deploy as many  EXEs on the system as we would like. 

We have about four people working on the solution. In terms of execution, so the development team develops robots and creates and compiles EXEs, and the execution team actually executes manually. It is an assisted automation, it's not fully automated, so the trigger has to be done manually.

In terms of technical support, response times were not that great, and the technical documentation provided was very limited. There is no forum where one could read other experiences or share advice.

There was a community when WinAutomation formed, but eventually, when the older versions ended support it went away. 

We're pretty much left on our own to find solutions to problems at this point. They should at least provide documentation.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

It was easy to wait for the deployment of the mission tasks. It's a quick implementation. When it comes to complex processes, there's a lot of handoffs required, and that's when it becomes a little bit difficult to manage. I'm sure with the new version they have improved this feature.

How long deployment takes depends on the complexity of the processes and the amount of testing planned. It takes a couple of days for a smaller process, and possibly up to two weeks for complex ones.

We've used versions 4.0, 5.1, and 6.0 as well. We use the on-premises deployment model.

In terms of advice I'd give to others, I'd say, first of all, they should make sure they are implementing the most recent version, not the old version that I have used.

However, I'd suggest having a limited scope and to plan to work meticulously because if there is a bigger project, instead of making something wherein you're not able to reuse the components which you have already done for one project, and reuse it for the other project, a lot of time is wasted in copy-pasting code.  

I'd rate the solution six out of ten.

This solution is used for the automation of simple processes that are repetitive and very low on decision branching and error handling.

It's easy to learn.

The barrier to entry is low. The downside is the lack of orchestration and supplemental tools such as capturing existing processes and using them to build out.

I worked on a demo side by side with UiPath Automation and Power Automate.

I didn't see any issues with the stability of Microsoft Power Automate.

I would say that scalability is probably a weakness.

It's an area that needs improvement.

If you have a good enough support plan, it's fantastic, but most businesses don't.

When I was working at a customer site that was a premier customer, we had onsite Microsoft service providers, and we were able to leverage their worldwide support. At that point, you can have round the clock, follow the sun support on a critical problem. 

But in 35 years of working with Microsoft, I've only seen one customer site that had that level of support. If you don't have that level of support then you are basically on your own.

The setup for me was almost non-existent because we already had Office 365. 

When it comes to the admin side of that, I don't know.

The price is right. If you have Office 365, it's included.

If you're looking for entry-level, inexpensive, and you're already an O365 customer, then this might be a consideration. But if you're looking for an enterprise tool, you should probably keep looking.

I would rate Microsoft Power Automate a three out of ten.