Microsoft
Power Automate
Automate and optimise business processes

Why Power Automate?

Discover, automate and orchestrate – on one platform.

• Discover: Task and process mining to map work and spot bottlenecks.

• Automate: Cloud APIs for modern apps; desktop RPA for systems without APIs; approvals and escalations built-in.

• Orchestrate: Admin analytics and policies to manage scale and compliance.

AI Features

Build faster and extract more value.

• Natural-language flow authoring, document processing and data extraction accelerate automation design.
   

Use Cases

Reduce repetitive work across teams. Power Automate helps teams remove manual steps and hand-offs by orchestrating workflows across Microsoft 365, SAP and other business systems – using cloud flows, desktop RPA and AI where needed.

• Powerful governance made easier (Managed Environments)
  Govern at scale with central policies and insights – without slowing delivery.
  • Environment-level DLP, solution checker, sharing controls and capacity limits
  • Built-in analytics for usage, errors and performance; standardised connectors list
  • Guardrails for makers; admin actions to quarantine or block risky flows
• SAP procurement solution template
  Stand up purchase-to-pay workflows quickly and standardise best practice.
  • Automate PR→PO creation, goods receipt logging and 3-way invoice matching
  • Post status updates to Teams and email; create audit trails automatically
  • Bridge gaps in legacy steps with desktop RPA where APIs aren’t available
• Streamlined approval processes
  Create, manage and share approvals across departments with clear SLAs.
  • Multi-stage approvals with reminders, escalations and delegation
  • Approve from Outlook, Teams or mobile; capture comments and attachments
  • Reusable patterns for HR, finance, IT and operations
• Interoperation with Microsoft 365
  Automate right where people work – no context switching.
  • Trigger on Excel row updates, SharePoint file changes or Teams messages
  • Route notifications, archive documents, and sync lists and calendars
  • Embed flows in Teams tabs and Power Apps for a seamless experience
• Innovative document automation
  Use AI to read, classify and extract data from high-volume documents.
  • Invoices, receipts, IDs and contracts processed with human-in-the-loop checks
  • Create records in Dataverse / ERP, enrich data, and kick off downstream tasks
  • Apply RPA for on-screen data entry into systems without connectors
• Data-driven business automation
  Turn insights into action by connecting analytics with operations.
  • Trigger workflows when Power BI alerts fire (e.g. KPI thresholds breached)
  • Notify owners, log incidents, open tickets and update action registers
  • Schedule data refresh, distribute reports and track remediation to closure

What Is the Difference to SharePoint Designer?

In contrast to the SharePoint Designer workflows, you can work across platforms with MS Power Automate. What is special is that you do not only operate within the Microsoft 365 environment.

Using MS Power Automate, you can also integrate third-party services in the workflow (e.g. Salesforce, RSS and Google Drive). This allows for a much larger dissemination within the company across different divisions. Recurring routine work can thus be automated and lead to an increase in overall productivity.

Another advantage over SharePoint workflows is the graphical user interface in MS Power Automate. It allows you to create your workflows simply at the click of a mouse (see comparison of the user interfaces in the images below).