Microsoft Power Automate Reviews

I use Microsoft Power Automate as part of my job as an RPA developer. The solution is part of everyone's Office 365 account at our organization. 

The solution is used as a primary tool for providing RPA solutions. We've created an automated desktop flow for the whole process. It includes three platforms.

We use the solution as an extension of Power Apps. We create files and SharePoint using flow by converting HTML code into PDF.

The authentication provided by Microsoft is very robust.

We have automated a process for our HR team that handles a lot of immigration-related activities. Rather than this individual having to ask others for information, we created a solution running different flows that centralized the whole system.

Another impactful project was where we used power apps to create office visitation. This solution helped manage the allowable workforce limitation placed by the government during the pandemic. We created an application where users submitted a request which prompted the validation of vaccinations and determine parking availability and sitting capacity. The headcount is provided to the departments that are impacted, such as the canteen, or bus monitors.

By creating in-house solutions, we had a high impact on the organization. Using an out-of-the-box solution would have been very expensive.

Microsoft Power Automate is easy to use. There are lots of libraries and connectors to browse from.

The users are very happy with the processes that we have automated completely end to end.

The solution is difficult to customize. I would like to see more flexibility when it comes to using different kinds of activities, particularly the kind of interaction they can have with Excel. This is also limited to the number of activities, making extension not possible.

Other areas of improvement include Microsoft Power Automate's ability to work on power desktops. It would be helpful if we could access external activities. 

I have been using Microsoft Power Automate for one year.

The solution is scalable. You can create a flow, and it can be shared across different environments. 

Technical support could improve. I am not sure that they exist. I would like to be provided with more awareness regarding the tech support that is available from the platform.

There is ample documentation available for the solution and all the different components.

Positive

Prior to adding Microsoft Power Automate, we used UI robotic process automation. We now use both solutions in parallel. Power Automate is used for office-related apps and UI is used for all other platforms.

Microsoft Power Automate is part of our Office 365 package, there are no additional licensing costs.

I would recommend other large-scale enterprises to look into Microsoft Power Automate as a solution for their organization.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use Microsoft's Power Automate in two major fields. Our first use case is reducing the time it takes a user to repeat a task, like, for example, rewriting some physical information in our system. We used Power Automate to extract information from physical documents and to digitalize them. We also use it to put these documents in the correct system as soon as we receive them. We are using a robot agent to do that now for our finance department, for example. 

Our other use case with Power Automate is system reconfiguration. Before, users had to manually reconfigure the software to configure our project. When we had a major update, for example, we have to change it manually with the data for the software. Now we have a process for automatically changing that data.

We choose Power Automate because it allows us to monitor our process and know where we can gain some time. We have a cockpit that shows us all the workflow for all automated tasks in place. We have a good overview of our processes now thanks to Power Automate. This is cool because previously we organized our processes on either paper or in a Word document. This was not really an accurate reflection of the tasks taking place. Now, we can have an interactive mapping of our processes.

There is room for improvement in the collaboration between the digital team and the business partners because Power Automate is not an easy tool to use. Our business partner does not have a clue about how to use Power Automate so it would be great to have an easy user interface that business partners can understand.

There are a few limitations to the tool. For example, you can't have 100,000 interactions in an hour. I would like to see that worked out. 

It would also be good if Microsoft contacted customers directly about building their own connectors. 

We have been testing the solution since last summer, I think. We have just two solutions in production.

For now, it has been a good solution for us in terms of stability, but we don't know yet whether we will have mass production and who will use a lot of interactions per hour.

We have not had any direct interactions with their tech support. We use their forum mostly. Microsoft has a good community.

We ran into issues during the setup because our system is not entirely on the cloud or on major solutions. So we had a lot of information in a system we made. The integration of our system into Power Automate was a bit tricky. We had to put a data lake in place before automating anything because we were not very structured in terms of data. Our major issue was cleaning up the data.

We choose 10 premium licenses for our digital team. We do not have a license for everyone in the organization. That's why it would be good to have a free view-only interface for stakeholders. They don't need a premium license because they will never use it to build anything but they needed insight into what is going on to relay the information forward to other stakeholders or clients. 

I am not managing the pricing, but I think it is pretty standard for solutions of that type. However, there is always room for improvement. 

I would not recommend Power Automate to all organizations because whether or not it will work out for them will depend on a number of factors. If the organization is all in one Microsoft environment or well-connected with the cloud, it can be really good. But, the organization will have quite some costs if in a Google or Amazon environment. 

If an organization uses Power Automate, it is best if they use Power Automate's other tools like Power BI and Power Apps. That's why I think the pricing could be lower as you should be able to get several solutions in a bundle. This should be an option during relicensing, for example. 

Someone using Power Automate should also have a basic understanding of databases, Power Apps, Power BI, and Azure. You have to know the full environment to get the most out of this tool. In other words, training is mandatory.

We have been using Power Automate specifically for the COVID situation. The use case is mainly to automatically fire an e-mail every Monday morning requesting the employees of our firm to provide a response regarding their well-being. After the data is captured by using an MS form, the subsequent workflows get triggered through Power Automate. If somebody has mentioned that they have a fever or shortness of breath, we send this person's entry to our health and safety officer and our plan manager. All this is automated.

We also have another use case related to procurement where an automated flow was required for invoice processing for an external vendor.

We have been able to automate the form filling, form dispatch, and data collection activities, specifically for the COVID situation, across all offices within our firm. It is a global process covering all zones such as Europe, India, and Australia. We have also been able to define workflows for particular use cases, such as when there is a high volume of cases in a specific zone, such as India. We have created workflows so that our emergency team is directly able to connect with the R3 team that directly connects with the employee to provide the required support.

We have also gone a bit far with respect to the access part. The Power Automate flow also connects with the physical gates of our offices. Last year, we were able to control our physical gates with the data generated by the Power Automated workflow. We were prohibiting or allowing the entry of the people based on their responses that they had put in the Monday morning form. It was quite a complex use case, but we were able to roll it out globally, and it has helped a lot with the COVID situation.

The best part is the automated workflow, which is quite good and easy. It is just drag-and-drop. We are able to create workflows quite quickly. 

We are able to directly integrate the data that it generates with Power BI dashboards. Its integration is quite good with other Microsoft tools, such as Power BI. The visualization of the data has become helpful for us.

Microsoft shouldn't charge extra for the database license if you want to store the data in the database during the trial. We wanted to have a historical trend of the data, and we started with the trial version of the tool. The database license is not included with the trial version, and you have to purchase it separately. Because we had a budget constraint, we had to pull all the information manually from the system, massage it, and push it to the dashboard. About two months ago, we have upgraded to the full-fledged version in which the database is integrated. The database license should be there in the trial version, but they have totally decoupled it. They should have provided a bundle, at least for the trial version, so that once a person or a firm gets a sense of it, they can start building. It might be because they wanted to sell additional licenses or premium licenses, and that's why they have added it in the premium version.

It should have more cognitive features. Automation Anywhere and UiPath are different because they have cognitive functionality plus intelligent automation. The cognitive functionality is currently not there in Microsoft Power Automate. It is just for workflow automation and basic bot-level tasks. It should have more cognitive features, which probably will be launched in a couple of years.

I have been using this solution for the past one and a half years.

It is quite a stable product.

It is scalable. There is no doubt about Microsoft products in terms of scalability. Because of its scalability, we are able to have use cases that require a higher load.

From the build perspective, only our team builds it. We have around 10 to 12 developers who create and support Power Automate solutions. In terms of its usage, we are currently using it only for two use cases. We also have other tools, but we are using Power Automate for the use cases with less budget. Its license cost is comparatively less as compared to Automation Anywhere.

We have annual support, and there is also a community. My team connected with the community forums, and most of the things got resolved there. They connected with the support once for an issue, which got resolved. Their support is good.

We are also using Automation Anywhere, but we needed a tool that is cheaper than Automation Anywhere. Power Automate fits there well.

Its deployment was quite easy. We already have Microsoft suite across our company. Our complete ecosystem is Microsoft-based, so it was not a challenge. It took one or two days to get things in place. For complete documentation and implementation, it hardly took two weeks.

As per our current agreement, Microsoft is supposed to provide support. So, we had an external consultant who helped us out.

Its licensing cost is comparatively less as compared to Automation Anywhere. We have bought a two-year license agreement.

I would recommend this solution to others. It is one of the powerful tools. The best part is that it fits very well with the Microsoft ecosystem. It is not at the same level as Automation Anywhere and UiPath, but being a Microsoft product, I see a bright future for this. In one and a half years, it will be one of the key players in the RPA industry.

I would rate Microsoft Power Automate an eight out of ten.

I really like the Excel operations and the templates that the solution has available. If you're looking for 10 items, chances are there are templates already for six to eight of them. We just have to download or integrate that template and our work has been done for us, in a sense. 

It's really user friendly. One of the coolest features that I've found is when we are writing some functions or some custom line of code, there is specific virtualization that we are working with that we are utilizing for recording. 

In just in one click, we can see any documentation, etc., that we need. It makes it very easy to navigate. 

I'm still new to Microsoft. I don't know if there are features or aspects of the solution which are lacking. I need more time to work with it to really decide if there's anything I'd like to have on the solution that's not already there.

All the services on the Microsoft platform are great. If we want to try something like with SharePoint or Azure or the 365 CRM, then we can't with the everyday community edition of the Microsoft Power Automate. It would be a good thing if there was some sort of trial period. Let's say you have 14 days. That way, can log into the loading screen with Power Automate, and get to utilize services like SharePoint, OneDrive, 365 CRM or etc. to see if they like them. It would be a good way for Microsoft to cross-sell or up-sell.

Otherwise, it's expensive, to buy all these extra applications, without knowing if or how you could use them or integrate them into your work.

One thing that I would really like to recommend is that they should get an actual learning environment or LMS where we can go and find all the different tools, how to utilize the different tools of Power Automate, and documentation or tutorials in video form on how we can create our own custom templates. 

Right now, what we have to do is we have to navigate to a different platform, for example, YouTube, and search on YouTube to see whether there are different kinds of techie guys that have updated their information about the Microsoft Power Automate. Microsoft Power Automate needs its own in-house LMS, where we can get the entire knowledge of the product from beginning to end. 

I've only been using the solution for two or three weeks.

I have not tried any kind of real-world problems so I can't say too much about the solution's stability. 

I haven't used the solution long enough to really test the scalability. I'm not sure how scalable it is.

The initial setup is very straightforward. Even a person who has one or two years of coding skills can install the solution quite easily. It's pretty simple. You don't have to be a Microsoft expert. I, for example, would be able to handle it, and I am very new to Microsoft.

I'm using the latest version of the solution. I tried to follow some YouTube tutorials from different people who are actually doing some good work with Microsoft Power Automate, however, they're using different versions as compared to the latest version that I'm using. The layout and the modules and everything is different as compared to the previous versions.

I use the cloud deployment model because it has some free storage or free allocation with the subscription.

I would definitely recommend the solution. Even small businesses would benefit from the solution. Any company would be able to integrate it. There are a lot of tasks you could handle with the solution. It's great for handling customer inquiries, for example, if you had a business with inquiry forms on sales sites.

It also offers one of the cheapest rates as compared to other automation tools. Other automation tools charge a huge amount for license fees. Microsoft Power Automate offers decent fees for the automation tools they offer. 

The solution is also excellent for businesses due to the fact that it's totally based on the cloud. You can use it in anywhere and you can execute your flows from your mobile. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If they offered some better tutorials, I'd rate them higher. No one wants to go and read through dozens or hundreds of web pages. The tutorials need to be interactive or video so that it's easy and engaging. If Microsoft was able to offer that, they'd be close to perfect.

We use the solution for dashboard reporting, RPA, and account management.

The product has helped us with support generation. We supported a client who required 42 hours of manual work every month. The solution enabled us to automate the process and save time.

The solution is integrated with Microsoft. It can be integrated with different platforms. The product is very reliable and very easy to use. Anyone can learn to use it.

The product should improve its RPA capabilities.

The product should add AI capabilities.

I have been using this solution for four to five years.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is easy. I rate the ease of setup a nine out of ten.

The time taken for deployment depends on the project. A small project would take a week to deploy. RPA, on the other hand, takes two months.

I use the latest version of the solution. We use the solution daily. People using the solution should maximize their usability to get a good return on investment. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Microsoft Power Automate is used to automate tasks and schedule workflows.

Microsoft Power Automate has helped us automate tasks that have reduced human error and increased efficiency.

Microsoft Power Automate offers over 200 connectors that enhance the user experience.

Microsoft Power Automate is limited if we want to create a complex flow because we have to split the log into two flows.

The licensing cost is high and has room for improvement.

In a future release of Microsoft Power Automate, I would like to request the addition of a synchronous action, which would allow us to choose whether we want the solution to immediately synchronize any changes we make, for example, in an Excel document through SharePoint.

I have been using Microsoft Power Automate for five years.

I give the stability of Microsoft Power Automate an eight out of ten.

I give the scalability of Microsoft Power Automate an eight out of ten.

The technical support was able to resolve my issue but their response was delayed.

Neutral

I previously used UiPath before switching to Microsoft Power Automate.

The initial setup is straightforward and I give it a nine out of ten. We are working on a solution where each environment can have multiple solutions. Within each solution, we are creating a batch that includes Microsoft Power Automate, which can be easily deployed to higher environments. This allows for automated quality control of the pipeline, but data flow can also be manually imported and exported if necessary. There are several deployment possibilities, including importing it via pipeline or solution. One person is enough for the deployment.

The implementation was completed in-house.

The licensing cost is expensive. I give the cost a three out of ten.

I give Microsoft Power Automate an eight out of ten.

We have six developers that use the solution in our organization.

I recommend Microsoft Power Automate as an excellent automation tool. Our organization has successfully utilized this solution in various applications for automation, and it has proven to be highly effective.

We held a hiring event specifically for veterans. All the people who were registering were external to our organization, so we had them fill out a Microsoft form, which then triggered an email, took all their information, and stored it into a SharePoint list. This list fed a Power App, and we were able to:

• Check members in whenever they arrived.
• Capture extra details about them.
• Pass the information onto hiring managers whenever a hiring manager was interested in an individual applicant or somebody who showed up.

In another use case, we used it to track the vaccination status of all employees. There were about 90,000 employees. If they scheduled it, it would trigger reminders whenever an employee's vaccination was coming up.

We set up a process to monitor Twitter so that whenever specific hashtags that we cared about were used, the whole record of what was tweeted out was captured and stored into a SharePoint list because it was free and easy to analyze as well. That has helped. Event triggers, several different connections, and what you can do with the information once you have it have been very helpful.

We also used it as a one-time solution in a scenario where records were captured in a Power App, and oftentimes, those records, which were almost like medical records, would need to go to another team one at a time. We used Power Automate to capture all the information that was stored in Oracle. From the record, it would put the information into a Word document, convert the Word document to a PDF, and then email the PDF off to the team. All that was done behind the scenes with the user clicking one button. It was great.

Different trigger events were most valuable. You could schedule a process on a recurring basis, at a certain time of day or week, or when something happens, which is huge. 

Their connector to Oracle or premium data sets that aren't Microsoft would often fail for me. The information given back about why it failed wasn't always robust to understand how to fix it and why it happened.

Sometimes, Power Automate's flow would turn off when it got fired incorrectly or misfired, but we didn't always get a notification of when it was turned off, and that was a problem.

I have been working with this solution since October of 2019.

It can scale. We used it to track vaccinations for 90,000 employees.

I did deal with their tech support, and they were phenomenal. Their support person taught us the whole process of how to take a record, put it into a Word document template that you can customize, turn it into a PDF, and then send that email off. He was phenomenal.

It was straightforward for the most part. Once you do it a couple of times, it becomes more intuitive. There are so many different YouTube videos or resources on Google to be able to figure out how to do something, what are you doing wrong, or how you can work around an issue.

In terms of maintenance, everything that I did was more of a one-off solution. It was me and one other person who would maintain an individual Power Automate statement.

There are so many different capabilities with it. I would advise mapping out your capability, usage, or whatever it is that you want it to do. After that, start to create and go from there.

I would rate it an eight out of 10.

The primary use case of this solution is for process automation.

With regards to the process on the server-side, you are giving the client the opportunity to run from a very small deployment and to take it from one office location to another, and globally.

The most valuable features of this solution are the cost and ease of use, it's very simple.

They have many, easy-to-use features.

When this solution is sold to the clients there is no automated process in place as many other RPA products have. I have to fully understand the product so that I can go over the processes with the client and all staff they may have. 

It would be good to record all of the processes and automate them.

The Kryon product has that option, where when you are doing something automatically it can record it on an AI interface. If they could have that feature included, it would benefit the client.

They need to come up with a little more on AI and precision discovery path to be able to record the processes.

I have been working with this solution for nine months.

This solution is scalable. It allows you to expand not only from one geography, but across as well.

I have not contacted technical support. I am not a part of the technical support, but an advisor. I have been asked to go in for implementation analyzing.

The deployment depends on the requirements of the client. For most of our clients, I recommend it in two processes.

A smaller process with approximately 50 users using it would take one and a half months to develop, depending on availability and time.

There is flexibility in pricing.

I studied five to eight different tools and narrowed it down to the two or three tools that I felt would suit our client's needs.

Some of the other products that were included in my narrowed down studies were Kofax, Automation Anywhere, and UiPath.

There is a very different approach when it comes to Kofax, and I wouldn't recommend UiPath because there is a lot of coding in terms of implementation. UiPath was one of the first ones to have the market and has now lost market share because there are too many available that are smaller, such as Kryon and Kofax.

One other solution that I am studying is NICE. I am trying to get a better understanding of it as an option for my clients.

I am a consultant who advises his clients about the solutions that are best for them. I make recommendations based on their requirements.

Clients have two options, one is the desktop solution and the other is an enterprise version.

For smaller clients what I recommend is to start with the desktop version. I ask them to try it out and if they think that it works in their organization and it's helping, they will get better ROI after proving it to them in the trial POC that I conduct. I have them try it out for six months to a year and then suggest they move to the enterprise version.

My philosophy is value addition. I have seen that with most of the products that we have purchased, we may use only 40% to 50% of the features. I want to change that and cause a disruption in the consulting industry. What I want to do is recommend products to my clients where I see value addition and minimum utilization of features and functionality of the product to 80%.

It's a very different approach and very difficult for clients to understand at first. I am using the years of experience that I have and doing what is in the best interest of the client.

My advice would be not to go directly to process robot. Instead, try the desktop version with smaller processes, small implementation, and get comfortable with it first. 

Start off small then go big. Going big is a huge investment if you are not sure.

Do it one step at a time. Get a few processes, try it out, develop the methodology of implementation, and make it a small mini project or a work in progress then decide. If you are in a hurry and you take a big bang approach without doing it systematically, however good the product is, it could be disastrous.

At the end of the day, this is going to cost you, not only in terms of dollars but in terms of time invested. You will be running with your production environment and existing systems, and there is going to be a lot of effort required to do this, so you have to be convinced that this works for you. Do a POC from three different vendors.

In terms of cost, ease of use, and comfort, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.