2020

The Beginners Guide

to Power Automate
v2.0
Power Automate is a tool within Office 365, which allows
business users to build workflows to automate tasks and
business processes across various applications and services.
Put simply, Power Automate enables you to work less and do
more. Talk about a catchy tag line, who doesn’t want to work
less and do more?
Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 2

Power Automate Licensing ........................................................................................................................ 8

Connectors & Connections ..................................................................................................................... 11

Integrating PowerApps with Power Automate ................................................................................. 17

Data Gateways for On-Premises Data ................................................................................................. 26

Triggers ........................................................................................................................................................... 36

Actions ............................................................................................................................................................ 44

Controls .......................................................................................................................................................... 51

Variables ......................................................................................................................................................... 56

Power Automate Approvals .................................................................................................................... 57

Creating a New Flow .................................................................................................................................. 65

Team Flows .................................................................................................................................................... 71

Troubleshooting your flow ...................................................................................................................... 77

Power Automate Analytics ....................................................................................................................... 82

Power Automate Limitations and FAQ ................................................................................................ 92

Need help with Power Automate? ........................................................................................................ 95

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Introduction
“Focus on being productive, instead of busy.” – Tim Ferris

Productivity: The Holy Grail which all businesses and workers alike strive to attain. A

quick book search will give you over 30,000 results of resources aimed to help you
discover how to be more productive. The typical full-time worker in the U.S. works an

average of 47 hours a week, considerably over the standard 40-hour work week. How
does one ensure that their work is getting done while still having time for their personal
life? You have to figure out how to Work Less and Do More.

Enter Power Automate.

Power Automate is a tool within Office 365, which allows business users to build

workflows to automate tasks and business processes across various applications and
services. Put simply, Power Automate enables you to work less and do more. Talk about

a catchy tag line, who doesn’t want to work less and do more?

Power Automate is both a business process and a personal productivity/automation

tool. This tool can help you connect with disparate apps and services to automate your
life. These automation possibilities are not constrained to the apps and services within

the Office 365 platform.

With Power Automate, you can connect and automate processes across over 200

different applications ranging from social media services such as Twitter, FaceBook,
Youtube, etc. to line of business apps like Saleforce, GSuite, and more.

You can access Power Automate via most modern web browsers or the mobile
application available for iOS and Android. It is a cloud/mobile tool, so there is no

desktop version. The concept of how a workflow operates are fairly simple; you define

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what should trigger your workflow then list out what actions should occur after your

flow is triggered.

The true power in the Power Automate platform lies in the fact that a typical business

user can build out these powerful workflows and business processes without having to
know or write a single line of code. Power Automate is a true end-user tool. If you know

your desired business process or task, you can use the simple point and click interface in
Power Automate to work less and do more!

To make it even easier for you to get started with Power Automate, Microsoft provides
hundreds of pre-built templates for you to use. For an example of some of these

templates see the picture below:

Using one of these templates is as easy as clicking on the template and selecting the
Create Button.

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Are you inundated with emails and want to automatically move any email attachment to

your OneDrive, allowing them to be organised and not lost in the shuffle? There’s a
template for that! This picture shows how you create a Flow from a template:

As you can see in the next picture, through this template, Power Automate has already

provided you with all of the steps needed to move over your attachments to OneDrive.
In this case, the only thing you need to tell it is the folder in your OneDrive you want to

save the attachment files to.

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If you come from a SharePoint background, you might be familiar with another

workflow tool, SharePoint Designer. SharePoint Designer is a tool that allows you to
create workflows for data stored in SharePoint. With SharePoint Designer, there are only

three ways to execute or trigger your workflow: 1: Manually 2: When an Item is Created
or 3: When an Item is Modified. There are also a limited amount of pre-defined actions

that you can utilise in your SharePoint Designer workflows.

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Power Automate can handle almost all of the same workflow functionality that

SharePoint Designer offers plus more. One thing you might have noticed that is missing
from SharePoint Designer workflow is the ability to trigger your workflows on a set

schedule, such as daily or once a week. Power Automate can accomplish this by using
the Recurrence Flow trigger.

The Power Automate Mobile App

Power Automate provides a powerful mobile application that allows you to create and

execute your workflows on the go. The Power Automate app is available for iOS,
Android and Windows. From the app, you can see your workflow run activity, view and

respond to approval requests, browse Power Automate templates and interact with
Power Automate buttons.

Power Automate Buttons

Power Automate Buttons are probably the most powerful feature of the Power
Automate Mobile App. They provide you with a way to manually trigger a Flow and

perform a set of actions. If an input is necessary for the Flow, you can configure an input
screen to prompt the user to enter information. A good implementation of this would

be managing contacts.

Picture this: You are at a conference, meeting a lot of people and collecting lots of
business cards. What if instead of collecting multiple business cards, that you’ll

inevitably lose, you could click a button on your phone, enter the person's contact
information and have it automatically add that person to your Outlook Contacts, a

SharePoint contacts list and your MailChimp mailing list? That is a perfect use case for a
Power Automate Button!

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When you click on the "Save Contact" Power Automate button, you are prompted with

an input screen (both shown on the next page). Once you enter the contact information
and click "Done", the contact information will automatically be added as an Outlook

contact, added to your SharePoint list and your MailChimp mailing list.

You’ve seen just a few of the possibilities of Power Automate. Here are a few more
examples of things you can do with Power Automate:

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 • Synchronise events across multiple calendars (Exchange, SharePoint, Gmail, etc.)

• Block out time on your calendar with the push of a button

• Automate approvals

• Automatically post to social media (Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn) when you

publish a new blog post or video on YouTube

• After a set period move files to an archive location

• Recieve a notification if a file is added to SharePoint or another cloud-based

system

Power Automate Licensing

Now that you have a good idea of what you can do with Power Automate let’s find out
how to get it.

Per User Licensing

The Per User license is a consolidation of what was previously Plan 1 and Plan 2 and
gives you access to the full capabilities of Power Automate. This means that you can

access all of the Premium Connectors, the management tools, custom connectors,
basically everything you want to take your Flows to the next level.

The Per User license costs $15 per user, per month, and will allow that user to create an
unlimited number of flows utilising the full capability available to the platform. The same

rules apply as they did previously, though, that if you create a flow that requires
premium functionality, then the users of the flow will also need it.

While this isn’t as expensive as the same plans in Power Apps, you are still going to be
quickly pushing up your monthly spend if you’re having to license all of your users,
especially if you only have a few flows which make the most of the premium services.

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Just like Power Apps, we have a new type of license which is the Per Process license,

which is intended to provide a more cost-effective approach to licensing just a number

of processes.

Per user plan with attended RPA

UI flows, which are the new robotic process automation capability in Power Automate

will be generally available worldwide on 2nd April 2020. UI Flows enable you to connect
Power Automate to legacy applications and allows users to ‘record’ processes in older

applications such as clicking buttons or entering data into inout forms, similar to
recording macros.

This license allows users to create unlimited flows exactly like the Per user plan but also
includes the ability to design and use these new UI flows.

Per Flow license

The Per Process license is intended to give teams of users access to automated
processes without having to license each one individually. The cost for this is $100 per

flow, per month. However, at the time of writing, there is a minimum purchase of 5
flows, so you’re looking at $500 per month.

A summary of the current Power Automate licensing structure can be seen below. To
see more in-depth information on licensing go to https://us.flow.microsoft.com/en-

us/pricing/.

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Office 365 license
Access to Power Automate is also included in the Business Premium, Business Essentials,
F1 Plan, and the E1-E5 Enterprise Plans in Office 365. This means that if you have one of

these subscriptions you also get access to Power Automate and can design and run
flows. However, with these plans you only get the standard connectors so the per user
or per flow plans mentioned previously must be purchased separately if you will need to
access the premium connectors.

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Connectors & Connections
Connectors are the building blocks of Power Automate. They enable you to interact with
data across various services. A connector acts as a wrapper around an API so that you

can connect to the underlying service and communicate back and forth to it with Power
Automate.

All of the Office 365 programs such as SharePoint, Outlook, OneDrive, etc. have their
connector. There are also numerous connectors to non-Microsoft cloud tools such as

Twitter, Dropbox, Salesforce, and MSN Weather to name a few. There are currently 243
different connectors in Power Automate. The picture below outlines just a short example

of some of the most common connectors.

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Types of Connectors
There are two ways connectors are grouped: Standard and Premium. As discussed in the
previous chapter on licensing, there are several premium connectors which require an

additional Power Automate Per User license to use (previously Plan 1 or 2). Some
examples of premium Connectors include DocuSign, SalesForce, Eventbrite, MailChimp,

Infobip, Service Now and Stripe. To utilise these premium connectors, you will not only
need a subscription to their services but also a Power Automate Plan 1 license or higher

to consume them in Power Automate.

Components of a Connector
Connectors are comprised of two different elements: Triggers and Actions. A trigger is a

mechanism to perform an action. An example of a trigger could be “When a New Item is

Added to a SharePoint List”. Actions are changes performed by the users. For example,

when you send an email, add an Item, delete an Item, etc.

Managing Connections
You can see a list of the connections that you’ve set up in Power Automate by clicking

on the “Data” tab and “Connections”. The Connections screen will show you a list of the
connections that you have configured and their status.

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To add a new connection, you can select the “+ New Connection” button from the
Connections tab. You can browse through the list of Connectors and select the plus icon

next to the one you want to add.

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When you select add, a dialogue box will pop up giving you additional details about the

connection with the option to cancel or create the connection.

After you select the “Create” option, you will be taken to a screen to log in with your

credentials to the connectors site.

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Once logged on with your credentials, you select “Allow” on the dialogue box, and the

connection will be added and ready to use.

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Connecting to On-Premises Data
In addition to the over 200 connectors to cloud-based services, Power Automate also
gives you the ability to connect to on-premises data like SharePoint and SQL. You can

connect to these on-premises data sources by configuring the Data Gateway. This
configuration will require at least a Power Automate Per user or per flow license to set

up. For more information on setting up the on-premises data gateway access the link
below: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/flow/gateway-reference

To set up a gateway, click on the Data tab in Power Automate and select the Gateways
options. You will then redirected to a page where you can download and install the on-

premises data gateway.

Custom Connectors
Power Automate provides you with ways to create automated workflows connecting to

over 200 different data sources. But what if your workflow requires access to a system
for which there isn’t a built-in connector? To support this need, Power Automate gives

you the ability to build custom connectors with their own triggers and actions. Building
custom connectors does require a bit of knowledge about API’s and JSON. To learn

more about how to develop a custom connector you can reference these links from
Microsoft:

• Create a custom connector from an OpenAPI definition

• Create a custom connector from a Postman collection

• Create a custom connector from scratch

• Use a custom connector in Power Automate

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Integrating PowerApps with Power Automate
PowerApps is a tool within O365 that enables you to create desktop and mobile-ready
applications with no code required. If you’d like to learn more about PowerApps be sure

to check out the Beginners Guide to PowerApps. When creating automated business
solutions, there is typically a data entry or form needed — a perfect example of where

PowerApps and Power Automate work together beautifully. PowerApps can act as the
form/data input piece while Power Automate kicks in for the workflow needs.

Power Automate includes a PowerApps Trigger which allows you to execute a Flow from
your PowerApps app. There is also a Respond to PowerApps action in Power Automate

which enables you to send data back to PowerApps. The Event Scheduling app is one
example. When you click on a button to save a new event, you want to send out a

meeting invite and update an item in SharePoint. A perfect example of PowerApps and
Power Automate working together and one of many possibilities where these

complement each other so well.

Executing a Power Automate from PowerApps

To run a workflow from PowerApps, you’ll need to configure your Power Automate to
use the PowerApps trigger. The easiest way to set this up is by using the PowerApps
button template that is already provided for you as seen in the picture below.

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Let’s take a very simple example. You want to click a button in PowerApps and have it
call a flow to send an email. In this scenario, you would select the “Click a button in

PowerApps to send an email” option. The values for who to send the email to, subject
and body need to come from your PowerApps application.

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To make that happen, click into the properties in flow and select the “Ask in PowerApps”

option in the Dynamic Content window as seen in the screenshot below. This
functionality allows you to pass data to your flow from PowerApps.

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To connect your flow in your PowerApps application, select the item you want to click

on to trigger the flow then select the “Actions” menu and “Flows” as shown here.

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Once Flows is selected, all of the Flows you have built using the PowerApps trigger will

appear on the right-hand side as shown below.

Clicking on the Flow you want to execute will add it to your formula bar in PowerApps.

The formula bar uses intellisense to show you what variables the Flow is expecting to be
passed in.

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For example, in the screenshot below, it requires you to enter an email address, subject

and body.

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The screenshot below shows what it would look like with the variables populated

correctly.

We can take this example a step further and push back a message to PowerApps to

confirm the email has been sucessfully sent.

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Accomplish this by inserting a “Respond to PowerApps” action after our send email step

in the Flow as seen below:

The Respond to PowerApps action enables you to configure outputs to send data to
PowerApps.

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There are currently six types of outputs allowed as shown:

If you wanted to return a yes or no response, then you could add a Yes/No Output and

set the value to Yes as shown below.

This is just one example of how you can use Power Apps and Power Automate together.

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Data Gateways for On-Premises Data
Power Automate is an online service and is better suited for online data connections.
Some Flows do need access to data on your on-premises servers. To achieve this, you

will need a gateway installed to provide a secure method for Power Automate to access
your data.

The software will need to be downloaded and installed on a computer that will be
available whenever the Flow requires it. Currently, you will also need a Power Automate

per user or per flow license to access on-premises data using a data gateway.

Downloading the Gateway Software

The following few steps detail how to download the Gateway Software

1. In the Power Automate site, click on Data in the side menu.

2. Click on gateways and the screen will refresh into PowerApps.

3. Click on New gateway.

4. On the next screen click Download in the On-Premises Data Gateway.

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Installing the Gateway
When you execute the download, it instigates a wizard to set up the gateway with a

start-up very similar to most Microsoft installations.

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It will eventually ask you to sign in to register the gateway.

The next screen will ask you to name the Gateway. Select a name which gives the

Gateway some context.

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This screen also asks for a recovery key, take a note of it, you might need it in the future.

The gateway is now ready. The gateway software must be running and showing active
for the connected flows to work.

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Using the Gateway in Power Automate
In this section, we will look at three different connectors that can use the gateway, file
system, SQL Server and SharePoint. Each is slightly different.

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SQL Server
When you add a SQL Server action to your flow, it will need details to set up the

connection. Tick the Connect via on-premise data gateway and the gateway box will
appear at the bottom of the box.

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File System
To connect to files stored on-premises, you will need to use the File System actions. The
first time you add one of the File System actions, it will ask you to set up the connection.

Note Azure File Storage has the same logo but is not the same; you need File System.

If you already have a connection set up with the right credentials then in action you can

click on the ellipsis in the top right of the action and select a connection to use.

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SharePoint Server
You can use the same actions as you use for SharePoint online for SharePoint server.
Click the ellipsis in the top right corner of a SharePoint action and select Add new

connection. The action window will change with a tick box, tick Connect via an on-
premise gateway and more boxes will appear to create the connection. Future actions

will have the connection listed under My connections.

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View Gateway Information
In the Power Automate web page, you can navigate to Data and Gateways to see a list
of your gateways registered. A gateway can be shared by clicking on the ellipsis menu

and selecting Share.

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Clicking on the gateway name will provide further details. You also can see the

connections that have been set up using that gateway.

Note of Caution
Gateways are a very useful tool in the flow toolset, but they also can expose data within

the organisation by creating a secure but possibly unknown by IT gateway into your
data.

It is possible to restrict which users can create gateways although by default this is
unrestricted.

Currently, there is no way to get usage stats from gateways across a business, but this
feature is on the Power Automate roadmap.

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Triggers
When creating a new flow from blank, i.e. without using a template, the first thing you
need to do is select a trigger. As the name suggests, the trigger is what will start your

flow, and Microsoft currently provides a choice of hundreds. These range from events in
Office 365 apps and services such as when an email is received, or an item added to a

SharePoint list through to external triggers for instance when a tweet has been posted,
or a file uploaded to a Dropbox folder. There are also triggers that allow you to run

flows on a schedule, from PowerApps and using buttons in the Power Automate mobile
app.

When you create a new flow, a small subset of the most popular triggers is presented to
you, with the option to see all available triggers by clicking the Search hundreds of

connectors and triggers link:

You can then use the search bar to find triggers based on the service they connect to or

the actions you want the trigger to fire on:

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The triggers are also categorised to make it easier to find if you’re not sure what to
search for using the search facility. Aside from the All tab, which shows every trigger,

there are the following categories:

Built-in
These are triggers that are part of the Power Automate/PowerApps environment and
don’t necessarily need to wait for something to happen in another service to start the
flow. See examples of the most popular built-in triggers below:

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Power Automate button for mobile
Power Automate has a mobile app that is available on iOS and Android. This trigger
enables you to create a Power Automate button started by pressing a button in the

mobile app. Once created you can start it by pressing the corresponding button that will
appear in the Buttons section of the mobile app:

The example above creates an appointment in a specified Outlook calendar. This

appointment starts at the time the flow is run and lasts for an hour. Although a simple

example, you can use the Power Automate button as a mobile trigger to start a more
complex flow with multiple actions.

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PowerApps
This trigger allows your flow to be called using a button or link within a custom
PowerApps app. When you build your flow using this trigger you can use a dynamic

content option called Ask in PowerApps, which allows you to use data from your app
within your flow. For example, you could send an email and populate the recipient

details with a people picker field in your app:

Schedule
You may want some flows to run at specified dates and times and this trigger allows you

to do this. Once you’ve added this trigger to your flow you can set the interval and
frequency, which tells your flow when to run:

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The example above will start your flow every six hours. You can also add a different time

zone if required but if left blank the default time zone for your Office 365 tenant is used.
If you want the schedule to start at a particular time in the future, you specify this in the

Start time field.

If you choose daily or weekly frequencies, you can set the days and times that the flow

will run. The trigger below will start your flow each week on a Monday at 8:30 am:

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Standard
The triggers in this group are available as part of every Power Automate plan, including
the free plan included with Office 365. The standard triggers include Microsoft and

Office 365 services and apps as well as other common ones such as Twitter, Facebook,
Dropbox, Gmail and RSS.

As this is the biggest group of triggers, there are too many to list each one and their
purpose. As with everything else in Office 365, these triggers are constantly updated and

added to by Microsoft, but their basic premise remains the same:

When something happens:- Run my flow

For most of the triggers the ‘when something happens’ is self-explanatory. If, however,

you’re not completely sure what the trigger does you can click the information icon to
the right of the trigger name, which will give some more detail:

Premium
These triggers work in the same way as the standard triggers but are only available to
users that have the paid Power Automate per user or per flow Plan. The premium

triggers include services such as Adobe Creative Cloud, JIRA, MailChimp and the
Microsoft Common Data Service (CDS).

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Custom
By default, there are no custom triggers setup as these need to be manually created. To
create these requires knowledge of webhooks and APIs and is beyond the scope of this

book, but if you’re interested Microsoft provide documentation on how to create

custom connectors and triggers here.

Trigger Inputs
Using a manual trigger to run the flow, gives an option to provide inputs at the time of
running the flow. Examples of triggers that this applies to include Power Automate

button for mobile, PowerApps and a selected file. When you add a trigger of this kind
you will have an option called Add an input:

When the end user runs the flow, they are prompted to enter the inputs that you have
specified. This information can be potentialy utilised in subsequent steps in the flow. In

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the above example, we could add an action to send an email to the email address

entered in the Manager Email input.

Once you’ve configured a trigger, using a combination of actions, controls and variables

you can specify what you want the flow to do.

Actions
Once you’ve configured your chosen trigger you then get a button that allows you to
add a new step to your flow:

As with the triggers you’ll then be presented with a box displaying all the actions, with

the ability to search and browse the different categories:

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A flow can take actions which can be divided into two main categories:

Do something - Some examples of doing something, create a contact, send an email,

create a file, move a document or post a tweet. When you add an action that does
something you then configure it to set the relevant fields or metadata, which vary

depending on the action.

Get or list something - Examples of actions that get or list something are List files in a
folder, Get attachments and Get Manager.

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It’s quite common to use a combination of actions that both do something and get or

list something, especially in longer more complex flows. A simple example of how this is
shown below:

In this example, the flow uses the Office 365 Users connector to get the manager of the
user who manually triggered the flow. An email is then sent to this manager. You can

also see that fields from each step in a flow can be passed onto the next step. In the
example above the User name field from the trigger is passed to the Get Manager and

Send email steps. The output from the Get Manager step is also passed onto the Send
an email step.

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Dynamic Content and Expressions
Content passed between different steps in a flow is known as dynamic content. When
you click on a field in a step in Power Automate it presents you with all the available

dynamic content from other steps:

Using dynamic content means you can tailor what happens in subsequent steps based
on the values provided previously.

You can also build on this concept further by manipulating dynamic content using
expressions. Clicking on the Expressions tab brings up a list of expressions; these can be

grouped into various categories including string, logical and date/time functions.
Clicking See more next to a category name will show you the full list for that category.

Each expression also has a short description which tells you its purpose.

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48
An example of a useful expression is addDays() and is shown below:

In this example, the addDays() expression is used to add 14 days to the Event Date value

provided by the user who triggers the flow. The output from this expression is then used
to populate the start time of an event created by the flow.

Parallel Branches
In all the examples shown so far, each step of a flow has started after the preceding

step. Sometimes you may need actions in a flow to run at the same time as each other,
by using parallel branches this is possible. To create a parallel branch, you first need to

create the first action that you want to run in parallel with another and then click the +
icon above this action. You can then click Add a parallel branch:

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Performing this function allows you to add further actions that will run in parallel, as in

the example below where an email is sent at the same time as an event is created:

Renaming flow steps

By default, each step you add in a flow is named with the action it is carrying out.
However, as your flows get longer and more complex, you may find it easier to give

them more descriptive names. To do this, you can click the ellipsis to the right of the
step name and then Rename:

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Controls
Controls are special built-in actions in Power Automate that can be used to control how
other actions behave and interact with each other. There are currently six control types,

which can be accessed by going to the Built-in category of actions and clicking Control:

Condition
This control is the equivalent of an if statement and allows you to check the value of an
input and then perform one of two sets of actions based on this check. The input that is

checked can be passed from any preceding step in the flow and expressions can also be
used as part of this.

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This flow is checking the department of the manager obtained by the Get manager (v2)
step. If the department of this manager is marketing, then it sends an email, if not it

creates an item in a SharePoint list. You can also use the Add button in the condition
step to add multiple checks with a combination of and/or statements if required.

Apply to each
As the name suggests, this control allows you to perform a set of actions on a number

of different items. This control is normally used in conjunction with a Get or list
something type of action. The image below shows how a list of all files in a OneDrive
folder is passed to the Apply to each control. Each file would then be deleted as this is
the action in the Apply to each section, but you could perform any number of actions

here.

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Do until
This control will perform a subset of actions until a value meets a specified condition. In
the example below the Do until step is checking the Complete field of a SharePoint list
item. Using the Delay action, it periodically checks if the Complete field is set to Yes.
Once this condition is true, the Do until step will end and the flow can then move onto

the next step, which in this case is sending an email:

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It is important to note that one of the steps within the Do until section is Get updated
items. Do until has to perform a check each time so it gets the updated version of the

list item and can verify that the appropriate value has changed.

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Scope
When you start creating larger, more complex flows, scopes can make it easier to keep
track of the various steps. A scope allows you to group actions logically, so it makes it

easier for you and maybe other IT admins to see what each part of the flow is doing. If
you’ve ever used the older SharePoint Designer workflows, you can think of scopes as

the equivalent of stages.

Switch
Switch is the equivalent of a switch case used in various programming languages and is

similar to the Condition control. The Switch control allows you to check a single field for
multiple values and then run a subset of actions depending on the returned value:

In the example above the Switch, control is checking the Status field of a SharePoint list
item. If the status is not started, then an email is sent, but if the status is compete, then a

tweet is posted. You can use the default case to specify what actions should be started if
none of the other cases is matched.

Terminate
The Terminate control allows you to stop a flow before the end. You can also specify the

status and any messages reported if this action is carried out:

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If this control is used then any subsequent steps in the flow will not be completed. It's
normally used with a condition or switch as you may want to end the workflow early if

certain conditions are met.

Variables
Variables can be used to store values that can then be referenced and manipulated in
multiple places throughout the whole flow. The value in the variable won’t be retained

when the flow has finished but can be written to a field in a list item or similar.

The first step when using variables is to use the Initialize variable action:

Using this action allows you to declare the name of the variable along with the type of
data it will hold. You can also set an initial value that will be stored in the variable, but

this is optional.

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Once you have initialised a variable in a flow there are then many ways to update the

value of it:

Append to array variable – add a specified value to the end of an array variable

Append to string variable – add a specified text string to the end of a string variable

Decrement variable – subtract a specified value from a numeric variable

Increment variable – add a specified value to a numeric variable

Set variable – completely replace the value of a variable with the specified value

When initialising and setting the value of variables, you can either use static information

that you enter yourself or use dynamic content and expressions as mentioned earlier in
this section.

Power Automate Approvals

Many business processes require a step to be approved by another person in the

organisation, for example, a holiday request, expense request or a policy to be

published onto the company intranet. Power Automate includes a very clean method of

requesting approval via email and phone notification.

Adding Approval to a flow

1. Starting an approval is an action in a flow, so searching for “approv” in the

Choose an Action box will find the action Start an approval. Click on the action to
add it to your flow.

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2. The first step is to select the type of approval. Only making a difference if the

approval is going to multiple people. Do you need to wait for everyone to reply
or will the first reply be the final reply?

Select Everyone must approve or First to respond.

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3. Enter in a Title for the approval, who is the approval assigned to and who the

requestor is. Multiple values for the Assigned to should be separated by a semi-
colon (;).

4. Enter the details of the approval request. Markdown can be used for formatting

the details. Details of Markdown support can be found here. In my experience,

the most common mistake in Markdown is not leaving spaces between the

markdown and the text.

5. If the approver has access to the related item, then you can populate the Item
link and Item link description. Please note the approver doesn’t have to have

access to the item but does need to have an account that can access Power
Automate.

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Handling the Response
The above action sends an approval request to the specified person, and then the flow
waits for a response. What the flow does with the response will depend on the value of

the response, which could be Approve or Reject. We need to add a condition to the flow
to make this decision.

1. Straight after the Start an Approval, add a Condition action.

2. Enter in the condition details of Response, from the Start an Approval, is equal to

Approve.
Please note you need to type in Approve manually and it is case sensitive!

3. Add actions to the if yes and the If no boxes. Often this includes emailing the
requestor. When the approver sends their reply, this can include a comment; this

could be included in the email. Any actions, including secondary approvals, could
be added.

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Approving or Rejecting a Request
An approval request can be received in multiple ways

Email Request
An email is sent that includes all the details from the flow action and includes Approve

and Reject buttons.

Clicking either button will show a Reason box and a Submit button.

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Clicking Submit will change the email to show your response and the reason given.

On Website
On the Power Automate site, click on Approvals under Action Items in the left-hand side
menu to see any outstanding approvals.

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Clicking on approvals opens up a tab to give various options.

1. Click Link to open the related item

2. Click reassign to send the request to another person

3. Click approve or reject to send the response back to the flow.

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Limitations
Approvals are limited by the general limitations mentioned elsewhere in this book.

Meaning they are limited to 30 days and then they will time out. Clicking on Approve or
Reject on a timed out approval will give an error.

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You can restrict the approval timeout to a short time and have actions that react to the

timeout. That is beyond the scope of this introduction book.

Creating a New Flow

Using Templates
The best way to start creating new flows is to explore some of the many templates
already created. The range of templates is vast and constantly expanding and makes use

of many of the connectors you’ll see which are explained further on in this book.

On the home page for Power Automate, you can find the templates by a few methods.

Finding Template Options

1. Enter a search term such as “Email” to find related templates
2. Click a suitable Featured Collection to see a list of templates based around a
business concept

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 3. Click a Service to show templates that use that service

4. Scroll down the screen to see more templates

Template Icons
Each template has a square icon showing you all or some of the connections used within

that template. The example below shows that this template uses Outlook, O365, and

Notifications.

Once you have found a template you want to build, click on the icon.

A longer description of the flow template is detailed in the next screen. Below lists the
connections used and the account also used for each connection.

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The above example is using connections I have already logged into the browser. If the

connection is a new one or you are not logged in it will show a Sign in button for you to
add credentials.

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Once all the connections have signed in you can click Create Flow. You are then
prompted to one of 2 options.

If your flow requires no editing to start, you will be taken to the flow details page. You
can edit the flow by clicking on Edit in the top right corner, or you can start testing your

flow, e.g. asking your manager to email you.

If your flow requires more details, such as a SharePoint site address and library name,

you will be directed to the flow editing screen.

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Some steps will require more information and will show boxes to be filled in. Other

steps will not require editing. Before you can save your flow, you will need to fill in all
the required information.

Below you can see an example, which was created using Send a customised email when
a new file is added template. There is a trigger step that requires more information and

2 action steps that already have enough information. Different templates will have
different combinations.

If you want to edit the sections that have default information. Click on the options to
Edit or other similar links.

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Naming your Flow
Flows by default will have the name of the template, normally this will need to be
changed. While in the Edit screen click on the name in the top left and type in a new

name.

Beyond Templates
Once you have explored the templates, you probably will want to create flows starting

from a blank flow.

1. In the Power Automate window, click on My Flows

2. Click on New and select Create from blank.

3. On the next screen click on Create from Blank (yes they want to make sure)

4. Find your trigger to start designing your flow. The minimum a flow must have is
one trigger and one action.

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See further in the book for an introduction to triggers and actions. Remember to

rename and save your flow as you go.

Team Flows
When you create a flow, only you can edit the flow or see the run history. Not good
practice for a process that could be part of business critical solutions. The obvious

answer is to share flows and make them into team flows.

There are some security considerations to think about, and these should be part of the

Power Automate strategy within your company.

Sharing a Flow from My Flows

You can add a co-owner to your flow from the My Flows list.

1. Click the tick next to the flow.

2. Click Share on the toolbar.

3. Enter the name of the new co-owner and click on the name to add the user.
4. READ THE NEXT DIALOG CAREFULLY and see the notes below regarding security.

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5. Press OK once you are sure.

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Security Notes
What the above dialogue means is that the co-owner could edit the flow and add new

actions. These actions would use the existing connections; for example, they could add
an action that sends an email from you to anyone.

A co-owner can also add other new co-owners. A co-owner can also see the details of
any flow and any data passed as part of that flow.

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Be careful who you give access to your flows or start using some generic accounts or

explore other options on how to export flows. I don’t wish to scare people away from
sharing their flows, but it is essential to consider the security aspects.

Team Flows
Any flow you have shared or has been shared with you will be listed under Team Flows.

Clicking on a flow to view the flow details page will also show who has access.

Sharing with SharePoint List

If your Flow contains a connection to a SharePoint list or library, it can be co-owned by
the list or library. This means managers of the list would also be able to view and
manage the flow.

1. When adding Owners click on SharePoint.

2. Select the Site and List or Library from the drop-down.

3. Click Add.

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Run only Users
If a flow has a SharePoint connection, you can add users who will be able to run the flow
using their connection to SharePoint. To access this:-

1. From the Power Automate details page, under Manage Run-Only Users, click add

a new user.
2. In the pane that appears, enter the names of the users or groups.

3. Select if they will use their connection or yours.

4. Click save.

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Removing Access
The co-owner list requires maintenance and co-owners could potentially require to be

removed as job roles change.

1. Click on the Bin icon next to the user or list name.

2. Click Remove to remove their access.

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Note
Check all connectors still work as the user might have been providing access for a

connector. A co-owner cannot remove the main owner’s access from a flow.

Troubleshooting your flow

After reading all of the previous chapters, you’ve probably created some great flows! But
what happens if something doesn’t work? (It could happen) This chapter will give you

some tips on troubleshooting.

Flow Checker
Before you even try running your flow, the Flow Checker will alert you to any errors or

warnings in your flow, such as missing values within actions, or potential

performance/reliability issues. If there are issues, you’ll see a red dot on the Flow

Checker icon in the upper right area of the Flow Editor, and you won’t be able to save or
test your flow if there are any unresolved Errors.

Here’s an example of an error where the flow was to create an item in a SharePoint list,
but there was no value specified for the Title field, which is required:

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Initial Test Run
If the Flow Checker doesn’t indicate any errors, you’re ready to save and test your flow.
To test, you’ll need to perform whatever trigger action your flow requires so that it

begins running. The easiest trigger to test is ‘Manually trigger a flow’ since it can be
simply triggered. But if, for example, the trigger is ‘When a new email arrives’, you’ll

need to send an email which meets the criteria of the trigger. After you save your flow,
you can go to this flow’s dashboard (either by clicking the Back arrow from the Edit Flow

screen, or by clicking on the flow’s name on the My Flows page), and see whether the
flow run succeeded or failed:

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If it failed, you could click on the Failed row in the RUN HISTORY to see a diagram of

the flow. Each action will have either a green checkmark or a red X in the upper right

corner. Find the action with the red X and click on it to expand it and see what the
problem was.

Here’s an example of a failed action:

When you have clicked on the failed action, a pane will open on the right which gives

you more information about the error. In this example, here’s what the Details pane
reports:

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We see from this Details pane that there was a problem with the email addresses
required by the Send an email action, and we can see from the Inputs listed within the

action that the To field is blank, meaning that there was no address passed to this action
from the previous actions. So you can then look into why that is, and click the Edit icon

in the upper right to go back to your flow and try to fix the problem. You can also click

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on ”Resubmit” from this screen, which would be similar to the “Test using data from

previous runs” feature as discussed in the next section.

Use the Test feature

After you have edited your flow to try to fix a problem, you can use Power Automate’s
Test feature to try running the flow again, rather than needing to re-trigger it. Saving

you the necessity to continue to send test emails or to add new SharePoint list items.

When you click “Test”, you can select to trigger the flow again yourself or to use data

from a previous flow run (usually your best bet), whether it failed or succeeded.

Something to watch out for when using Test is that if you have added a new Connection
within the flow since the previous flow run, then you need to re-trigger the flow rather
than use data from previous runs. Otherwise, you’ll get an error similar to this:

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InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions in action
'NewActionYouAdded' inputs at line '#' and column '#': 'The template language

expression ‘SomeExpression' cannot be evaluated because property

'shared_YourNewConnection' doesn't exist, available properties are

'shared_YourExistingConnection'.

While the flow is running during a test (or at any time), you’ll be able to watch it step

through the actions on the screen, and (hopefully) a satisfying green checkmark will

appear on each one!

What Happens Next?

If you run into a problem while testing or using your flow, there is a general Support
page which will tell you if there’s currently a problem with the Power Automate service,

and which contains links to other support and documentation. In particular, the article
entitled Troubleshooting a Flow lists a few common errors and their possible causes.

But what if you run into a problem you don’t know how to solve? It might be an error
not discussed here, or just that you’re unsure how to approach an automation scenario.

Your best bet for help is the PowerAutomate Community forums, where Power
Automate experts and aficionados, as well as Microsoft staff, are always watching for

questions to help answer. You can also report bugs and make feature requests here.

Power Automate Analytics

Now that you have your flows running smoothly, you may wish to analyse when and

how they’re working. There are two ways to see visualisations regarding flow runs:
owners of a flow can view analytics on an individual flow, or administrators can view
analytics on all flows within a given environment. The graphics you’ll see are created

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using PowerBI, but you do not need to have a PowerBI license to view them. However,

you do need to have a Power Automate per user or per flow Plan license to view any
analytics.

Individual Flow analytics

Analytics are available on an individual flow to owners of the flow who have a Power

Automate per user or per flow license. You can get to the analytics on a flow in several
different ways: via the “More” menu beside a flow in either My Flows or Team Flows,

from the “More” menu at the top of the My Flows page while a flow is selected, or by
clicking on a flow’s name to go to its dashboard.

OR

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If you try to go to Analytics, but you do not have the correct license, you’ll be prompted

to start a free trial of premium Power Automate, but you should probably check with
your Office 365 administrator before doing that.

When you arrive at the Power Automate Analytics page, you’ll see several charts on the
Usage tab:

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Note that you can select a timeframe of the past week, the past two weeks, or the last

30 days. The available analytics are:

1. Total runs of this flow (a line chart by day)

2. Number of runs (a doughnut chart which shows the proportion of successful,

failed, or cancelled flows)

3. Flow runs trend (a stacked bar chart showing successful, failed, or cancelled flows
by day)

Each chart has small icons in the upper right corner (when you hover over them), which
allow you to expand the size of that chart, or access a menu of options for that chart:

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Using the 'More options' menu, you can export the underlying data to a CSV file,

display the underlying data in a table, spotlight that chart on the page, or change the

sort order and sort field (i.e. by date/status or by the number of flow runs).

Switching to the Errors tab at the top of the analytics page allows you to see charts

which display the types of errors which have occurred on this flow. Note that the
number of errors reported might not match the number of failures, because things like

failed checks (where Power Automate is unable to check for the trigger occurrence) do

not count as failures. See the Power Automate Analytics now includes Error
Details section of this article for details on using the Errors tab.

Power Platform Admin Analytics

To access analytics of all of your organisation’s flows (as well as PowerApps and

Common Data Service), browse to the Power Platform Admin Center -

(https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com )

To get to the Power Automate analytics, select Power Automate from the Analytics
dropdown menu:

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You can change both the timeframe and the environment by clicking on Change

Filters (or on the filter icon in the upper right), which opens a filter pane on the right:

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There are currently six types of analytics available for Power Automate, accessible via the

tabs across the top of the page. Giving you access to some really useful information
about your organisation’s flows! Note that just like the individual flow analytics, each

visualisation has an Expand icon and a More menu, which allows you to export/display
the underlying data, spotlight a chart, or sort in a different way. Also, generally speaking,

you can hover over bars or data points to view the values, and you can click on the
legend text to highlight that aspect of the chart. Also, you can right-click on elements of

the charts and choose to Include (show only that data point) or Exclude (show all but
that data point).

We’ll look at each tab individually.

Runs
This tab shows Daily, Weekly, and Monthly runs, as stacked bar charts (broken down by

successful, failed, or cancelled), with a line denoting total runs.

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Note that although the maximum timeframe filter you can select is 28 days to retrieve

individual flow run data, the Weekly and Monthly runs reports display aggregated data
much further back.

Usage
The term Usage here means something different than on the individual flows. Shown

here is a breakdown of the types of flows in use (for example scheduled, manual/button,
or system events).

A list of the names of the flows in use (I.e. those which ran) during the period (sorted by
the number of runs), and finally a line chart of flows in use by day during the period

(that is, the number of flows which ran, not the total runs).

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Created
These are the same charts as on the Usage tab, but showing the number and types of

flows created during the period.

Errors
This tab displays a breakdown of the types of errors which occurred during the period,
and which flows errored. Note that this includes all types of errors, not only those
causing failures. You can click on a heading in the table to sort by that column – the

table in this screenshot is sorted descending by Error Count, to see which specific flows
have errored the most.

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Shared
Here you can see the number and type of flows shared in your environment, and

specifically which flows those are.

Connectors
This analytic is quite interesting – it shows the specific connectors used during the
period, how many flows use each connector, and the individual connections (calls to the
connector). Note that you may see a lot of Office365 connections, as this is related to

Exchange and there are many calls to that connector.

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In summary, the various Power Automate Analytics dashboards give you plenty of

information about your own and your organisation’s flows.

Power Automate Limitations and FAQ

Limitations, you say? Yes, it’s true... As with most software, there are numeric limits on
certain things you can do with Power Automate, as well as limitations of the software

itself.

Limits
The best place to look for the current limits in Power Automate is the official Limits and

Configuration reference article, which lists limits broken down by topic. You can find
some additional limits regarding accounts in the Billing Questions article. Here are some

key limits which flow makers often run into and should be aware of:

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 Run duration 30 days

Run history retention 28 days

Message size 100 MB

SharePoint file create/copy size 500 MB

Actions per workflow 250

Action nesting depth 5

Flows per account 250

Connections per account 100

Limits such as the number of flow runs allowed per month, flow run frequency, and

availability of some connectors, depends upon the Power Automate license you have.
Licensing levels are covered in another chapter in this book.

Limitations
While Power Automate does a lot of things very well and goes beyond many other
workflow solutions in terms of connected services, it does have some limitations; there

93
are some things it cannot currently do which you should be aware of before beginning

to construct a flow.

One example is a “state machine”. That is, there is not currently a way to create a flow

which is directly based on transitions from one state to another (though you may be
able to use looping to emulate this).

Another fairly common ask, which Power Automate does not (yet) allow, is the ability to
copy a flow from one SharePoint list to another or include a flow in a SharePoint site
template.

It should be noted that the Power Automate team at Microsoft are continuously working

on new features, so things which Power Automate cannot do right now may be possible
in the future. So keep an eye on the Product Roadmap! And did you know you can help

influence future plans by contributing and voting on ideas in the Power Automate
Community? If you find there is something you’re missing in Power Automate, visit the

Ideas forum and search to see whether someone else has already suggested it so that
you can vote on it. And if it hasn’t yet been suggested, add it yourself and promote it on

social media to get votes.

FAQ
Hopefully, most of your questions have been answered within this book!

However, if not, Microsoft has included a list of some of the most frequently asked
questions within the Power Automate documentation. Here you can get answers to

general questions about the tool itself, functionality, and licensing.

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Probably one of the most frequently asked questions is about credentials for the

connections used within flows. That is: What happens when the person who has created
all of these flows leaves the organisation? The first answer is: Flow makers should be

trained and encouraged to add additional owners to flows which are used organisation-
wide so that they become Team Flows. That will allow the other owners to edit the flow

in the future if necessary. Also, an administrator can take ownership of a flow from the
Power Automate Admin Center. But it’s true that the connection credentials would need

to be changed if the creator’s credentials were no longer valid. Another possibility is to

create flows using a service account rather than an individual’s account, with the caveat

that you might not want everyone having access to shared credentials for many service
connections.

Another question which has arisen recently is regarding premium connectors, as some
additional connectors became only available with a premium Power Automate plan as of

February 1, 2019. You can read more about this here. You should be aware that creation
of flows using custom connectors, HTTP connectors (other than to SharePoint or

OneDrive), or a data gateway to on-premises data, will require a per user or per flow
Power Automate plan.

If you have other questions, make use of the Power Automate Community, or reach out
to any of the authors of this book!

Need help with Power Automate?

We really hope this Ebook has been a useful guide to help you get the most out of

Power Automate. However, as with everything, you may need some help from time to
time. Maybe a 30-60 minute call to discuss some of these Features would be useful?

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On Collab365 MicroJobs we have many Power Automate skilled freelancers that can

help you:

1. Take a look at the fixed priced Power Automate MicroJobs here.

2. Or, post a Project Request for our Freelancers to provide you with a proposal and
quote for your specfic need here.

Why use MicroJobs to hire Microsoft Freelancers?

At Collab365, we believe the way we work is changing drammatically. We documented
our thoughts in our Free to download Ebook - 'Future of Work and what will it mean for

your job?'

How does MicroJobs work and what about payment?

Paying for online services with people that you don’t know can be worrying for both

parties. The buyer often doesn’t want to pay until they’re happy that the Freelancer has
completed the work. Likewise the Freelancer wants to be sure they will be recompensed

for their time and commitment. Collab365 MicroJobs helps both the buyer and the
Freelancer in these ways:

1. The buyer pays up front and the money is securely held in the MicroJobs Stripe
Connect platform account.
2. The Freelancer can then begin the work in the knowledge that the payment has
been made.

3. Once the buyer is happy that the work is complete and to their satisfaction, the
funds become available to the Freelancer.

4. There’s even a dispute management function in case of a disagreement. But it

shouldn't happen. As long as the deliverables are agreed up front and both

parties keep talking the entire way through, you won’t be disappointed.

Find out more on how MicroJobs works on this page.

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Meet the Authors
April Dunnam
April has over 8 years consulting experience and can be
reached here: https://jobs.collab365.community/user-

profile/AprilD/

Laura Graham-Brown
Laura trains and consults in the Power Platform and can
be found here: https://jobs.collab365.community/user-

profile/LauraGB/

Sandy Ussia
Sandy is a lover of all things Power User, you can find her

MicroJobs freelancer profile here:

https://jobs.collab365.community/user-profile/SandyU/

Gareth Jayne
Gareth is an experienced UK-based freelancer, you can find

him here: https://jobs.collab365.community/user-

profile/gjayne84/

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