Tangentia | December, 2022

Microsoft Power Automate is a service that helps you create automated workflows between your favorite apps and services to synchronize files, get notifications, collect data, and more. Power Automate is one of the pillars of the Microsoft Power Platform.

This technology is home to low-code tools that span across Office 365, Dynamics 365, Azure, and various standalone applications. Power Automate, specifically, is a workflow and process automation tool. It seeks to automate workflows with an API-based approach, exchange data with legacy on-premises software, and integrate AI models into your workflows with a low-code approach.

Microsoft has now acquired Softomotive, a 15-year-old robotics process automation company, to enhance Microsoft Power Automate product. According to the description on its website, Softomotive offers two products for attended use and unattended use.

Microsoft Power Automate is a low-code/no-code business process automation tool that is a component of the Microsoft Power Platform family. Microsoft wants to integrate Softomotive's products into this tool. For users of Microsoft's own “UI Flows” robotic process automation technology, WinAutomation is already incorporated and now offered without charge.

Given that Softomotive products 'WinAutomation' and 'ProcessRobot' will no longer receive support, updates, or upgrades, according to the Power Automate team, this is the perfect time to migrate to Microsoft’s suite of automation tools built into Office365. Support for WinAutomation solutions will cease on the 31st of December, 2022. Any current Softomotive customer after that date will still be able to use their software, regardless of the licensing level, but without support, upgrades, or updates. All clients who do not have a special arrangement with Softomotive are subject to this. Customers should contact their Microsoft sales representative if they have negotiated a personal contract and terms of service with Softomotive.

What advantages can Power Automate offer?

1. Streamline everyday tasks

Consider the number of emails you get every day. Consider receiving a notification when a high-priority email is received. A template can be enabled with Power Automate so that users receive only that, guaranteeing a critical email is never again missed.

2. Improve workforce productivity

Your company may save time, increase production, and operate much more successfully with the aid of Power Automate. Employees can work more effectively and boost corporate performance by automating repetitive operations that take up time during the day.

3. Automate tasks across business systems

Power Automate links and automates work across numerous programmes, both inside and outside the Microsoft eco-system. SharePoint, Power BI, Word, Outlook, Teams, Planner, Asana, MailChimp, Twitter, Adobe Sign, DocuSign, Google Drive, Eventbrite, FreshBooks, and Trello are a few examples of popular connectors.

4. Increase employee satisfaction and reduce human error

Employees are free to concentrate on the tasks that actually matter and need more attention when time-consuming, repetitive operations are automated. As a result, this may result in increased emotions of accomplishment and job satisfaction. Furthermore, automation lowers the possibility of human error, giving you peace of mind that activities are being finished at set standard.

5. Save time with decision making

You may speed up decision-making by automating procedures like approval workflows for handling time off requests, document approvals, sales prospects, etc.

6. Use predefined templates to create a flow

Although creating a flow from scratch is a possibility, Power Automate has a large library of established templates. These enable you to develop procedures around approvals, notifications, productivity, social media, and other topics that save time.

7. Accessible anywhere

Team members can build, execute, and monitor automated workflows even when they are not at the office thanks to the Microsoft Power Automate mobile app.

Common uses of Power Automate:

You can automate certain tasks, to achieve the following:

Receive quick notifications of significant notifications or emails.
Keep track of and catch up with new prospective clients
Email attachments can be saved automatically to OneDrive or SharePoint.
Participate in social media. For instance, you can receive a message if a tweet with a particular keyword was retweeted or if it was automatically tweeted or published on Facebook.
Automate approval procedures for things like time-off requests and documents. Once the approval is finished, employees can then be informed via Teams.
Receive push notifications on your phone, such as when your employer sends you an email.
Maintain awareness of fresh Dynamics 365 Opportunities.
When a Power BI alert is triggered, receive an email. Examples of this include alerting the sales managers when ten or more prospects haven't had updates in more than two weeks, or sending the support team a heads-up when the incident volume is beyond 100.

For Microsoft consumers, this acquisition brings up options like

Customers get more options for building workflows in Power Automate by delivering a full low-code desktop automation solution with WinAutomation. Anyone can now create RPA bots using our current browser-based writing tool or a brand-new desktop application using WinAutomation.

Increasing the available UI automation drivers for popular apps and services In an effort to deliver the most comprehensive set of RPA capabilities on a single platform, Microsoft is now enhancing the desktop automation experience by integrating a wide range of connectors and apps from Softomotive, including SAP, legacy terminal screens, Java, Citrix, and more.

Enabling multitasking and parallel execution – Customers can now run several processes and automations concurrently on the same computer to decrease latency and boost the effectiveness of their bots. This extends existing Power Automate API automation's tremendous scale to UI automation.

Offering hundreds of extra features – To enable low-code bot development, we are bringing our customers even more Softomotive innovation developed over the previous 15 years.

Why Tangentia for your Power Automate implementation?

Tangentia is a certified RPA consultant that can help your organization develop robust RPA solutions using Microsoft Power Automate technology. Our team of certified RPA developers can help you implement and integrate Microsoft Power Automate (formerly WinAutomation) automation technologies and get the most out of Microsoft Power Automate’s automation tools for your business.