How do you use Microsoft Power Automate in your work?

[JonL]

Hey Power Automate Community!

We are wondering, Do you use Power Automate at work? In production? 

If so, tell us a bit about it! Tell us how you use the flows, what they help achieve, and if they help make life easier!

Thanks!

- Jon

[Sonapsen]

Hi,

I have used Flows with custom MS Forms. I setup forms to update an excel file on SharePoint, as well as using Outlook to notify a list of recipients with details from the form submission in the email. 

For general use, the simple flow where attachments in Outlook are saved to my OneDrive is pretty useful. I find myself exploring Power Automate, trying to find new ways to apply it at work and for personal use.

Thanks for asking!

Ly

[Paulie78]

I build flows for customers that do all kinds of things. But one that I am quite proud of and will be able to implement for a bunch of customers is perhaps a bizarre use case for Power Automate. 

It takes the printed output generated by legacy ERP systems (Think IBM Green Screen era/Terminal Emulation) and transforms it in to JSON and then creates new output in PDF format, and stores it in SharePoint along with the associated metadata.

I've just implemented it in production for a company that already have a solution based on much more expensive software, that does not have the feature set that I have been able to provide with Power Automate (and the opposite is also true, the original software does some things that I cannot replicate in PA).

Anyway, I blogged about it because I think it is a pretty neat solution and gives stacks of value to my customer base:

https://www.tachytelic.net/2020/11/power-automate-enhance-legacy-systems/

[crowdjs]

We are still a little in the learning phase, but so far the flows we are making are "Prototypes" or MVPs. Then at a later date the MVP low code may be turned into a feature in our pro code platform.

Eventually we are going to be building Power Automate UI flows to support data entry into non API integrated business partner web systems.

[Rik_Bha]

Using power automate to save Adobe Sign workflow triggered signed agreement on a specific location. Integration of Adobe sign with sharepoint sort of resolves this issues but this requires sending file for approval via sharepoint where as in power automate we can use this via adobe sign or microsoft teams too. 

Would certainly love to have original document replaced with signed document in the same location option. Hopefully, document cloud by Adobe and its integration will resolve this issue. 

Another solution in the works is to use Approvals for invoices using a library template of Adobe sign and trigger power automate approval email using sharepoints once file is created option. Still lots to work on this though!

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Hi community, we are using Power Automate (PA) to update the currency of a selected country predefined in SharePoint (SP) List within Power Apps when a user generates a quotation. Also, we use PA to send email notification with the attached PDF quotation generated by the user. One issue I have seen within the PA and I have not found a good working solution around it is that: the PA SP List seem to be iterating/looping endlessly when a user selects a country from which they would like to get a quotation and this cause errors that make PA Flow to be slow and eventually getting errors that it does not work anymore. Anyone who can assist to make certain that PA Flow does not run endlessly will be appreciated, thanks.

[MSDudes]

A cool example is we have used Power Automate to fully automate our onboarding and offboarding business processes. Our HR system triggers a hiring event which then sends an adaptive card to their manager in Teams to fill out for equipment/access requirements. Their answers then dictate what our automation does to the accounts (which are provisioned from our HR system to on-prem AD). We also created auto-provisioning of mailboxes, auto-assignment of Autopilot devices for deployment, and even tracking updates to the manager via EasyPost API until the new hire's equipment is delivered, so they have full visibility of the onboarding story of a new employee.

For offboarding, once the trigger is sent to us, the account is disabled EOD of the termination date, AD groups are removed and mailbox is converted to shared. We then use child flows to extend the flow run to 60 days, which at the end of that 60 days, the account in AD is deleted. 

We store all of the steps in each flow and we built Power BI dashboards so you can fully track the onboarding and offboarding of each employee, along with the corresponding tickets in our ticketing system, etc.

[PA_Lady2905]

I have used Power Automate with MS Forms and Excel in my organization.  I created a Form as a survey for employees to sign up for an in-house training.  Using the "Track Microsoft Forms responses in an Excel Online (Business) spreadsheet" flow made it easy to track the info entered, and send an email to the employee confirming the date and time they selected for training.  

[Zed_Yer]

I am actually trying to get support, but my posts are not showing up on the thread, even though they are showing up in my profile. Am wondering if something is wrong with the message board, and raising the issue here if there is. And, wondering if this reply will even work.. fingers crossed.

[soylaunica]

It works! So I had a similar issue once upon a time. Did you happen to have any links in your question as part of maybe a formula or error message? For some reason this happened to me and I ended up taking all screenshots. 

[Simon_Key]

I started using flows at work when I worked for my previous company, but have now found even more used for them in this latest job. I am currently using forms to collect test results for COVID Screening of staff and then collating the data in two spreadsheets one which provides us with at-risk staff and the other which gives us all the data on testing across all our team for later analysis.

We also use a similar flow to empower our staff to be responsible for their work when surveying buildings. The results of which are used to monitor performance through KPI's.

We have big plans for this in the future.

[RoosW]

We are fairly new to using this technology where I work we have two flows currently in production

The first flow is quite important to the business.

1. It checks storage attached to a container in Azure running an SFTP service for new files and when it finds one it copies that file to  a document library in SPO.

It first creates a folder in the doc library with the days date and stores all files that are received that day in that folder. 

The second is a flex sheet approval

2. User competed flex form (excel sheet) and submitts for approval

Approval goes to users manager

Manager approves or doesnt 

If approved the flow copies the flex sheet to OneDrive, creates a pdf, deletes the excel sheet in the users folder copies the pdf to the users folder in SPO and copies a new excel flex template in the users folder ready for the next month

[Ann_DAS]

Gosh, it's more like what DON'T we use it for:

- Approvals (purchases, time off, documents etc.)

- Email notifications based on SharePoint List and Library items 

- Periodic reviews and other due dates

- Team messages

- Adding due dates to calendars and other general reminders

Basically anything that will free us from having to continually monitor and/or follow-up. Most are pretty simple - there aren't that many of us in our organization who are really knowledgeable about Power Automate but we're learning.

[isaac1]

Hi, can you elaborate on what you mean by compile it into a report?  What type of Flow Operation do you use to create and send Reports?

[skmcken]

I use this technique a lot within Power Automate. https://www.365bi.ca/post/produce-business-documentation

[isaac1]

Thanks!

[Dheerajreddy05]

Hi Jon, after creating template in power automate does it require to launch for sending remainders to the concerned person or it will flow automatically to the person while we are not on login also

[Anonymous]

Hey,

Do you have any details on how you put this all together. My company is looking to do a similar process and I would l appreciate any guidance you can provide.

Thanks.

[Amar4u]

Using it for a approval process for record creation in CRM. Its like a when a record is approved based on different cases the Power Automate cloud flow creates different records in CRM. 

[f2]

New to Power Automate but so far I've managed to automate creating teams in bulk and the request a team process.

Looking into the following for my next projects:

https://github.com/OfficeDev/microsoft-teams-apps-requestateam

https://clavinfernandes.wordpress.com/2020/07/11/extending-microsoft-teams-capabilities-using-flow-b...

https://github.com/OfficeDev/microsoft-teams-apps-attendance

[ekarim2020]

I started by creating an automated departmental weekly newsletter - as a learning exercise. I took content from selected internal SharePoint sites and external RSS feeds. If there is no internal news the RSS feeds always contain something:

The bottom of the newsletter is signed like this to create some interest:

Its now been taken over by our Comms team who now produce a weekly organisation wide newsletter.

Ellis