Book Image

Democratizing RPA with Power Automate Desktop

By : Peter Krause
Book Image

Democratizing RPA with Power Automate Desktop

By: Peter Krause

Overview of this book

Whether you want to organize simple files or perform more complex consolidations between different Office programs and remote-control applications that don't allow outside access, Power Automate Desktop helps meet these challenges. This book shows you how to leverage this workflow automation platform by explaining the underlying RPA concepts in a step-by-step way. You’ll start with simple flows that can be easily recorded and further processed using the built-in recorder. Later, you’ll learn how to use the more advanced actions to automate folder and file management and enable Office programs to interact with each other. You’ll also get to grips with integrating desktop flows into other cloud environments and further enhance their value using AI. As you progress, you’ll understand how flows can run unattended and how they are managed in the Power Platform, as well as key concepts such as creating, modifying, debugging, and error-handling UI flows. Finally, the book will guide you to use Process Automation Designer (PAD) in conjunction with your frequently used desktop systems to automate routine tasks. By the end of this book, you’ll have become a Power Automate Desktop expert, automating both professional and personal tasks.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Microsoft Power Platform at a glance

The actual origins of Power Platform go back very far to the time when there was still talk of Microsoft business solutions. At that time, Microsoft entered the market with a new CRM system, which laid the foundation of today’s Power Platform. This ecosystem consists of several subcomponents that can work very closely together but also separately:

Figure 1.3 – Microsoft Power Platform

Figure 1.3 – Microsoft Power Platform

These are the components:

  • Power BI: A tool for visualizing any kind of data in dashboards and reports. Power BI can also capture real-time data from the other components and makes use of the connector capabilities to access data virtually in any data source and combine this with other data to create cross-system dashboards.
  • Power Apps: This allows users to create different types of apps that can be used for specific business processes. There are different types of apps, which, in turn, can be divided into the...