
Workflow Automation with Microsoft Power Automate: Use business process automation to achieve digital transformation with minimal code, 2nd Edition
Author
Publication
Packt Publishing
MS Power Automate is a workflow automation tool built into MS 365 to help businesses automate repetitive tasks or trigger business processes without user intervention. It is a low-code tool that is part of the Microsoft applications framework, the Power Platform.
If you are new to Power Automate, this book will give you a comprehensive introduction and a smooth transition from beginner to advanced topics to help you get up to speed with business process automation. Complete with hands-on tutorials and projects, this easy-to-follow guide will show you how to configure automation workflows for business processes between hundreds of applications, using examples within Microsoft and including third-party apps like Dropbox and Twitter. Once you understand how to use connectors, triggers, and actions to automate business processes, you'll learn how to manage user input, documents, and approvals, as well as interact with databases. This edition also introduces new Power Automate features such as using robotic process automation (RPA) to automate legacy applications, interacting with the Microsoft Graph API, and working with artificial intelligence models to do sentiment analysis.
By the end of this digital transformation book, you'll have mastered the basics of using Power Automate to replace repetitive tasks with automation technology.
Review
"Workflow Automation with Microsoft Power Automate by Aaron Guilmette is a great book for those who want to learn about Power Automate! All the chapters are full of very simple step-by-step instructions and help us understand how to use them and are full of the important/critical scenarios that we use in our daily activities.
For me, I enjoy this kind of book because it is something like hands-on labs where we learn by doing instead of just cover about the theory! Great job and love it so much, Aaron!"
--Temmy Wahyu Raharjo, Microsoft MVP, Dynamics CRM Technical Consultant
"If you are starting on the journey of learning Power Automate, this is a great book. The hands-on labs are clear and concise. I like visuals when I read technical books, and this book doesn't fail me.
Some of the questions that I have in mind while reading it has been answered in the book as if I am having a conversation with the author."
--Mary Angiela Cerbolles
Microsoft MVP (Business Applications, M365 Apps & Services)
"As someone who works in the Power Platform extensively, it was great to see how Aaron was able to break down many common scenarios that are easy to follow and implement by someone who is not an expert in the field."
-- Haniel Croitoru, Microsoft MVP, Associate Director & Power Platform Practice Lead at Protiviti
"This book will allow you to learn everything you need to know about the subject if you are a beginner, but also works as a support to keep at hand. For my part, I don't hesitate to look up what interests me directly and reread the appropriate chapter. Adding a part on AI Builder was a good idea!"
-- Allan De Castro, Microsoft MVP (Business Application)
"This book is the perfect resource for someone to get started with automating tasks in Power Automate. Aaron does a great job in laying out the foundations to build your first Flow and helps you to implement several useful examples. The chapters contain a lot of valuable hands-on content that will keep you excited and engaged while going through the book. Towards the end, the book also contains some slightly more advanced chapters, outlining additional possibilities of what can be achieved with Power Automate."
-- Rene Modery, Microsoft MVP (Office Apps & Services)
"It starts from what Power Automate is and continues with all the information necessary to master the tool: how to create your first flow using triggers, actions, and conditions, up to implementation through examples of use scenarios and how to work with mails, files, approvals, integration with Teams, AI, and iteration with the user. It then goes a step further into governance, such as importing, exporting, distributing, and monitoring flows."
--Fabio Franzini, Founder and CEO at Apvee Solutions, Microsoft MVP in Business Applications
About the Author
Aaron Guilmette, a Senior Program Manager for Customer Experience (CXP), provides guidance and assistance to customers adopting the Microsoft 365 platform. He primarily focuses on collaborative technologies, including Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft Teams. He also works with identity and automation solutions.
He has been involved with technology since 1998 and has provided consulting services for customers in the commercial, educational, and government sectors internationally. Aaron has also worked on technical certification exams and instructional design for Microsoft and other organizations.
- Learn the basic building blocks of Power Automate capabilities
- Explore connectors in Power Automate to automate email workflows
- Discover how to make a flow for copying files between cloud services
- Configure Power Automate Desktop flows for your business needs
- Build on examples to create complex database and approval flows
- Connect common business applications like Outlook, Forms, and Teams
- Learn the introductory concepts for robotic process automation
- Discover how to use AI sentiment analysis
This book is excellent for information workers and Power users who are looking to automate repetitive tasks for their organizations or for projects they are undertaking. To make the most of this book you should have some basic exposure to the MS 365 platform.
- Introducing Microsoft Power Automate
- Getting Started with Power Automate
- Working with Email
- Copying files
- Creating Button Flows
- Generating Push Notifications
- Working with Shared Flows
- Working with Conditions
- Getting Started with Approvals
- Working with Multiple Approvals
- Posting Approvals to Teams
- Using a Database
- Working with Microsoft Forms
- Accepting User Input
- Automating Azure AD
- Introducing Robotic Process Automation
- Introducing AI Models
- Exporting, Importing, and Distributing Flows
- Monitoring and Troubleshooting Flows