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)

Using Power Automate Desktop and Creating Our First Flow

In the previous chapter, we saw how Power Automate Desktop (PAD) was born and how powerful the tool can be for automating repetitive tasks. In this chapter, we will take a detailed look into the following:

  • What is necessary for installing PAD on a local machine
  • How the application is built up
  • How to create our first flow by using the built-in recorder

To use PAD effectively, a basic understanding of the application is essential, as we will spend most of our time on the very areas presented here. Also, knowledge of the PAD recorder will be extremely helpful throughout this book because it can also save us a lot of time when creating flows. Now, let’s look at how we can get PAD running on our computers.