Let’s keep talking about the Release Wave announcements and focus on the new features for Power Automate!
Microsoft Power Automate offers a low-code automation solution that enhances productivity, streamlines processes, and drives innovation. With its effective interface and powerful capabilities, Power Automate empowers users to automate repetitive tasks, leverage generative AI for intelligent automations, and seamlessly integrate with the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and the broader Power Platform.
In the 2024 Release Wave 1, Power Automate is doubling down on three key themes to deliver even greater value to organizations:
- Easier experiences to build, troubleshoot, and manage automations
- Power Automate introduces Copilot, leveraging generative AI to accelerate automation development and streamline management processes. Copilot assists users in building and managing automations across various applications, enhancing efficiency and productivity.
- Troubleshooting and managing automation estates becomes simpler and more intuitive, empowering organizations to optimize their automation workflows effortlessly.
- Ensuring scalability and privacy
- Power Automate continues to prioritize scalability and privacy, offering robust governance and privacy controls to ensure compliance and data security at scale. Organizations can confidently manage large-scale automations while adhering to stringent privacy standards.
- Democratization of process mining
- Process mining capabilities are democratizing process insights for all citizen makers, empowering organizations to unlock the full potential of their data. Through AI-driven insights, additional out-of-box capabilities, and deep integration with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Power Automate Process Mining accelerates the journey to operational excellence.
These are achieved in the following areas that are included under Power Automate:
- Cloud Flows
- Cloud flows leverage AI technology to allow customers to focus on what matters most and automate the rest with natural language and low code. This includes Copilot-assisted experiences, integration with other Power Platform services, and support for Intelligent Document Processing.
- Copilot for Power Automate
- Copilot revolutionizes automation creation and iteration with AI-driven conversations, providing invaluable assistance to users throughout the automation development process.
- Desktop Flows (RPA)
- Desktop flows offer automation for Windows desktop applications, services, and experiences, empowering users to orchestrate and deploy automation within the Power Platform seamlessly.
- Process mining
- Power Automate Process Mining unlocks valuable insights from data, enabling organizations to gain deep insights, create custom reports, and seamlessly integrate with Power Platform to turn insights into action.
Plus, we can’t forget about the administrators making sure that our Flows are running smoothly, safely, and securely. Power Automate offers user-impacting features enabled automatically, ensuring a seamless transition to new capabilities. Additionally, features that require configuration by administrators, makers, or business analysts offer greater flexibility and customization options.
Top Features
Here are a few of the key features that I picked out and think you should keep an eye on in this release:
- Be More Productive with Power Automate and Excel Desktop
- Simplifies task automation directly from Excel on Windows desktop and Mac devices
- Streamlines repetitive tasks, reduces errors, and enhances productivity
- New “Automate work” button in Excel Online
- Access to prebuilt templates for swift workflow creation
- Supersedes the previous “Automate a Task” capability
- View a Power Automate Visual in a Power BI Report
- Bridges insights to action by triggering automated flows directly from a Power BI report
- Allows dynamic data inputs based on applied filters for contextual execution
- Incorporates Power Automate visual in Power BI reports
- Enables automated flow initiation from within the report interface
- Customizable button formatting and permissions
- Get Quick Insights and Recommendations in Copilot for Process Mining
- Democratizes process mining by providing actionable insights and guiding users towards solutions using generative AI
- Empowers both business users and process mining experts to optimize processes and drive efficiency
- Explore event logs and uncover key process insights
- Receive recommendations for process optimizations
- Enhances decision-making and accelerates process improvements
- Power Fx Integration with Power Automate for Desktop
- Enables automation flow creation through scripting, catering to a wide range of users from no-code makers to professional developers
- Fosters efficiency and empowers diverse teams to streamline workflows effectively
- Power Fx serves as the low-code language for expressing logic across the Microsoft Power Platform
- User-friendly interface akin to Excel formulas or Visual Studio Code
- Facilitates collaboration between makers and developers, driving innovation and productivity
- Ingest Process Data from Customers’ Data Lakes
- Seamlessly connects to Azure data lakes, eliminating the need for data transformation or porting
- Enhances data ingestion efficiency and scalability, enabling organizations to leverage existing data pipelines for process insights
- Power Automate Process Mining directly ingests data from Azure data lakes
- Eliminates data transformation steps and enables scalable data processing
- Simplifies data ingestion and enhances scalability for deriving valuable process insights
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, Microsoft Power Automate continues to push forward innovations around automation, enabling organizations to achieve greater efficiency and productivity. With its intuitive interface, powerful capabilities, and seamless integration with the Microsoft ecosystem, Power Automate is driving digital transformation and redefining the way work gets done.
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