In a previous blog post of this series, we defined and provided an overview of Microsoft Power Platform, where we explained how automation capabilities allow organizations to do more with less across their business. In today’s post, I’ll walk you through Microsoft Power Automate, a low code application platform.

Healthcare and pharmaceuticals are expected to be the largest industry in the business workflow automation market. By the end of 2026, automation in the healthcare and pharmaceuticals industry is estimated to generate a revenue of more than US$ 900 million.

Automation for everyone

Microsoft Power Automate democratizes intelligent automation by empowering everyone to seamlessly build secure, automated solutions. It brings UI-based automation together with API-based automation and unlocks analog data with AI into one seamless platform allowing organizations to automate legacy, on-premises software alongside SaaS applications, serving the full spectrum of an organization’s automation needs.

Saving costs and time with Power Automate

Adopting Power Automate helps organizations save IT costs and money, also IT workers can save time in the three following ways:

1. Automated processes replace otherwise manual IT effort.
2. Corporate IT workflow development efforts take less time because of the features and templates built into Power Automate. If Power Automate workflows are used as a wrapper around an ERP system, this can save a lot of time and effort compared to making modifications to an ERP system.
3. Power Automate empowers business users to create their own automated workflows reducing the need to rely on the IT organization.

What are the different types of flows?

• Cloud Flow: Users can create a cloud flow that performs one or more tasks automatically after it’s triggered by an event. For example, create a cloud flow that notifies you by email when someone sends a tweet that contains a keyword you specify. In this example, sending a tweet is the event, and sending mail is the action.
• Power Automate Desktop: Power Automate Desktop broadens the existing robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities in Power Automate and enables you to automate all repetitive desktop as well as the Web processes.
• Business Process Flows: Business process flows provide a guide for people to get work done. They provide a streamlined user experience that leads people through the processes their organization has defined for interactions that need to be advanced to a conclusion of some kind.

Types of triggers:

• Automatic trigger: is pre-programmed into the workflow based on a certain rule (example: new document or item created, email sent, etc.) Automatic Trigger can also be passed from another application, like PowerApps.
• Manual Trigger: is a trigger initiated by a user. Unlike with automatic trigger above, the workflow will only start when initiated manually by the end user. Manual trigger is only supported for certain types of workflows.
  Additionally, Power Automate provides scheduled flows. Scheduled Cloud Flows are for reoccurring automations such as a daily, hourly, etc.

Power Automate licensing

Power Apps/Power Automate capabilities for Microsoft 365 enable users to extend and customize the Office experience with Power Apps and Power Automate. Users can create applications and flows based on Microsoft 365 data. More details around which Microsoft 365 plans include these capabilities can be found in this Microsoft Power Apps and Power Automate Licensing Guide here.

Enhance your workflows with AI builder

AI Builder is a Microsoft Power Platform capability that provides AI models to help you optimize business processes. This low-code toolset allows Power Platform users to simplify tasks using AI models such as prediction, form processing, object detection, category classification, and entity extraction via a simple, intuitive interface. For example, using AI Builder to analyze documents like invoices and store data in a database or SharePoint list.

Model types

AI Builder models are classified under the type of AI that they use (category), and the built type of the model.

In conclusion, this platform covers all the spectrum of an organization’s automation needs. VNEXT iQ have a staff of experts that can help organizations to improve business process while save money. Reach out us here to get more information and get started.