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)

Creating a PowerPoint system report by using mouse and keyboard actions

The following example uses some of the actions that we just learned about. We want to create a flow that collects some information about the current system, stores this in a PowerPoint slide deck, and saves that report on OneDrive. This would require a series of mouse clicks and key sends for this operation.

Please notice that we are not using UI elements for this example, which would also be a very good option. Instead, we want to simulate the user session with the previously defined actions. So, let’s take a look at what the flow looks like:

Figure 7.15 – A flow to create a PowerPoint system report

Figure 7.15 – A flow to create a PowerPoint system report

As we can see here, the flow is again structured into some subflows for easier readability and maintainability. The first subflow opens PowerPoint by using the Windows button, and the second one creates the first introduction slide with the current date. The third subflow...