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)

Integrating mainframe scenarios

The term mainframe refers to a family of computing machines that dates back to the 1950s. These are operated less by a graphical interface and more by a character-based user interface. They are characterized by very high reliability and very high throughput regarding input/output and arithmetic operations. Although the technology seems old-fashioned from today’s point of view, mainframes are still widely used. In this area of classic IT, a distinction is made between batch processing and dialog programs. APIs do not exist in such environments. Information exchange is mostly file-based or via database access. Mainframe applications are most commonly used in the area of enterprise resource planning (ERP), financial accounting, warehousing, ordering, and more. Thus, many scenarios are conceivable in which integrating a mainframe application can be useful:

  • A web store takes orders from customers, which have to be entered into the central warehousing...