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)

Technical requirements

This chapter shows how to integrate and use a Desktop Flow with Microsoft’s Power Platform. This scenario requires a Work or School account, which can be used to create a trial version of Dynamics 365. The example in this chapter uses the Dynamics 365 Sales module, which can be set up in just a few steps (a link for detailed information is contained in the Further reading section). Basic knowledge of calling and operating SaaS services is a prerequisite. Additionally, a license for Power Automate is required, which includes UI flows. This can also be a test license.

To showcase functionality with Microsoft Azure and AWS, a trial of both environments is required. The providers provide free offers for the limited use of resources, which are completely sufficient for our purposes.

In addition, basic knowledge of the providers and their offerings is required, as well as knowledge of how to create a simple standardized virtual machine.