Microsoft Power Automate Reviews

I was using this product to create a basic workflow and trying to integrate it with Outlook.

We use it along with Microsoft Power Apps to help identify and automate tasks. We have many tasks in Outlook, SharePoint, Calendar, and Teams, and we use Apps to manage the tasks.

We are also using a feature in Microsoft Power Apps, which is the productivity backup

It has some basic components that are able to communicate with different platforms within Microsoft.

The interface is simple and it's easy to use.

It servers our purposes in bringing together all types of applications, being able to automate them with the right intelligent output from the data that we plugin.

While using this solution, we found it to be basic.

The integration with other applications can be made simpler. That said, it has almost everything in it.

I have only been using Microsoft Power Automate for a couple of weeks.

We were using an older version. A version from when it was first released, to help with the learning process.

This a stable solution

Microsoft Power Automate is scalable. We have a very large organization with at least 70 people who are using this solution.

Recently we have engaged with Microsoft to conduct a four or six-week training period. During the training session, there were approximately 180 participants.

I have not contacted technical support from Microsoft.

They do have support on their website and have documentation available for learning through the portals, which is very helpful.

I have experience with UiPath for RPA. I am leading and heading a small team that is building automations, and we have been primarily working on UiPath for this.

The initial setup was simple.

It only took a few minutes to deploy.

I completed the installation on my system myself.

I am not aware of the recent pricing model, but during the time that I was using this solution is was reasonable.

They have certain options that are available at a minimal cost and I am sure that if you buy more components of the Power platform then there are certain pricing models that are catered to the needs of all kinds of companies.

What happens in the Microsoft platform is that users cannot be self-sufficient with one product. You require Power Automate, PowerBI, Power Apps, and different components of the Power platform. If you have the entire set of applications then things become easy, and they can rate this tool highly. If, however, they don't have all of the tools, then the capability is reduced.

We have plans to continue using this solution in the future. We will continue by integrating all of the Microsoft components. This is very helpful, and we can also use different platforms for different clients.

This is definitely a product that I can recommend.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The solution seems to have a good drag and drop functionality. 

It's very well automated.

The solution is pretty customizable. Even big automation tasks are done rather simply. If you want to do more, we've found that anybody can do it. Even a business user that has no knowledge of IT can jump on and figure it out.

Two or three years ago, in all IT products, there were a lot of standards that were missing. Now, using the cloud and using some EA tools, there is a huge scope of possibilities. It's much better.

The biggest problem right now is the fact that, when you use only the trial version, you don't have the whole power or capacity of what you can do with the Power Automate. 

The price of the license isn't that cheap. We want to see what it can do, fully, before purchasing. 

If you get a license, you can only have one developer or one user on it.

If you want to be more precise and the jobs to be more complete, it's somewhat complicated and there are some complex tasks that can't be done so easily by a business user. You'll need to get someone that's more highly skilled.

You need to pay for the ability to customize the solution. That's not an option on the free trial. You also have to be able to read some code in order to customize it. You need to be slightly skilled. You can only customize it on your own, only for you, and not for the other users.

When it comes to using UiPath or Blue Prism, there are more tools you can use. For example, Java or tools. It's easy to interact with them with UiPath and not so much on Power Automate. While Microsoft has a way of integrating well with itself and its own internal tools, it could do more to include external options and add them to the mix.

I've been using the solution for one to two months. It's pretty new for us.

It's largely stable. When Microsoft updates, it tends to update everything at once. Your Excel, Work, Power Automate, etc., everything updates automatically. That makes everything align so that nothing is out-of-date and affecting the stability of everything else at any time. In general, stability seems to be absolutely fine.

If it's on the cloud, it's generally easy to scale. The volume of data is viable. However, we haven't really attempted to scale anything. I haven't put everything onto Power Automate at this time.

I haven't really reached out to technical support yet. I don't have experience with them, so I can't gauge if they are better than other options.

From my experience, for example, UiPath technical support was not that good. I've used Automation Everywhere and I didn't find them to be very good either. Each time we have a problem with Automation Anywhere, they wouldn't give any explanation. They would always blame the issue on a problem with Microsoft and never with their own problems. Therefore, historically, we haven't had a good run with support at other companies. I'm not sure if this will be the case with Microsoft.

We've looked at and worked with UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere. We're doing comparison POCs with UiPath and Power Automate now. We're not likely to just choose one solution; we may end up using two. We'd like to have options to choose a few depending on the needs.

The initial implementation is not that difficult. It's on the cloud, so there's nothing to install. It's not exactly user friendly, however. UiPath is much more user friendly if you compare it to Power Automate.

In any case, you just connect it with your Microsoft login. If you want to automate a task, it's easy as everything is connected due to the Mircosoft account. It's easy to set up and concentrate your automation tasks.

Since we are on the trial version, we haven't bought it yet, or paid for anything.

If you are a small company, you can have a Power Automate license for as low as $30/month if you want to run one bot per month. It's pretty inexpensive.

With solutions like Blue Prism or UiPath, you need to think in one or five-year terms and many small companies can't just throw down $10,000 upfront.

We're a Microsoft customer. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

We're using the trial version of the cloud deployment model. We haven't paid for it yet as they have to do a benchmark within or the solution for some POCs on UiPath and on Power Automate to see the differences. 

In a lot of companies, they use Microsoft products. It's easy to demonstrate how it's important to have a Power Automate type of solution on hand.

Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. Power Automate definitely offers the best automation scenarios due to the fact that it's a Microsoft product for Microsoft products. I tried automating something, for example, in SharePoint, using both UiPath and Power Automate, and Power Automate was the clear winner. It was just so easy and seamless.

It's also great from the perspective of a small company as there aren't high costs up front.

We have clients in a number of different industries. We were evaluating Power Automate for a hospital in Kansas City. We were looking at a couple of different use cases with regards to their vendor onboarding and some of the back-office processes. 

The initial setup is pretty easy.

The entire product is pretty easy to pick up and learn. We've got some developers and some software engineers that have picked it up. We have RPA specialists that are are deep specialists in UiPath, and they picked up Power Automate relatively quickly. We have guys that are trained in multiple platforms such as Automation Anywhere or Blue Prism and they got it right away.

The solution lacks maturity. That will come with time.

The complementary suite of capabilities with regards to task capture and being able to self-document a process needs improvement. The whole document handling aspect, OCR recognition and capabilities, need to incorporate some more of an AI type of approach with document extraction and document handling. 

Being able to handle various types of forms and complex documents is important. Obviously, we handle a lot of documents like invoices that could have multiple formats and multiple pages of content, and very complex material contracts. That area is where it shows that UiPath has come a long way and Microsoft has a ways to go. 

If I look at the suite of tools that UiPath has, it's very robust and extensive. There are complimentary tools that help determine the applicability of a process. Being able to have tools that help assess things like a business case, savings, applicability, etc., relatively quickly, which we see with UiPath, for example, is integral to a good product. 

I've been using the solution for less than a year.

A criticism of Microsoft is that they typically bundle everything together, like with the Office 365 or Dynamics 365 or whatever the package of all the different options are. You get it whether you want it or not. The problem with that is, the content that you're giving away in the bundle is either not fully baked, or fully thought out or all that valuable. Some might be buggy or not do exactly what they are supposed to.

Clients are frustrated that they're getting stuff that they don't want. They'll ask us "why am I getting all these other packages as part of my bundle, that don't make sense?". I would rather see a really innovative and leading tool, rather than a whole bunch of tools that do lots of things. 

We haven't really reached out to technical support. We haven't really gone into production. Most of the issues, anything that we've had to do technically, we've figured out.

The initial setup is very straightforward. Our team picked it up really quickly. The question is if it's really solving the trickier problems on not. The more complex problems, is where the value is going to be. Process automation is becoming a commodity. Therefore, the differentiation is in really being able to handle the more complex problems, especially at an enterprise level.

We're able to handle implementations ourselves. We're a reseller and gold partner with Microsoft.

I'm unsure as to what the licensing costs are. It's not something that I generally deal with.

We're a vendor, therefore, we tend to use various solutions according to our client's needs. We've evaluated UiPath against Power Automate, for example.

We have evaluated Power Automate and we're trying to get some competency there. I don't believe it's to the same level as where you have the maturity as UiPath.

We've also looked at Blue Prism and found their capabilities quite mature.

I'm using the latest version of the solution.

We would typically evaluate the solution as an on-Cloud deployment. However, we would use either cloud or on-premises deployment models, depending on the situation. It's not implemented in our organization. We're a vendor or a partner. We provide services to implement it.

I'd advise other organizations that if you are looking for industrial strength, I don't think this solution is quite it. However, if you're poking around and are going to use it lightly, it might be a way to venture into process automation. It would allow you to try it out without a big commitment. If there are companies that are serious about it, it's probably not the right option. It's not ready yet. Microsoft is maybe trying other ways to build out the capabilities, through acquisition avenues. Therefore, I'm not sure if that's the platform to get. There will be too many growing pains.

Overall, I'd rate the solution five out of ten.

We use SharePoint to collect information from tests, exams, and similar things that we do in our office. When people complete the tests, we use Microsoft Power Automate to collect the results and email them to appropriate people. We are currently using the latest version of Microsoft Power Automate. 

Its integration with SharePoint and Outlook is the most valuable. 

I found it very easy to use. I could do everything that I wanted very quickly, and I didn't have any complications at all. I never had a problem in using Microsoft Power Automate.

If someone was just about to start using it, it would be better if it was a bit more user-friendly in terms of understanding function references. I come from a bit of development background. To me, it all makes quite a lot of sense, but someone using it for the first time would probably battle understanding how the functions work. This might be something they could improve on.

It would be really useful if it could publish data to Power BI. We like to use Power BI for our reporting, but we can't directly integrate the data across. If there was a way to automate the collection of the data and push it straight into the Power BI platform, it would be quite useful.

I have been using Microsoft Power Automate for about three months.

It seems to be very stable. It has been running now for about three months, and it regularly gets used, probably about 30 times per day. I haven't had a single missed event. I have received all the emails, and everything works great. Today, funnily enough, I have started building a new solution for something similar. So, I went back and actually checked the records for the last three weeks, and everything was perfect. I haven't had any issues with it at all. 

I am sure that it is going to be perfectly fine for what we need. We are looking at about 30 people using it in one day over the last three months, which is not a very high volume. We are not going to do more than probably a maximum of 50 users a day. 

I did not have any need to contact them.

Previous to this, I used Microsoft Flow, and before that, I used the SharePoint workflow. We switched from Microsoft Flow because Microsoft actually changed their product and went from one to the next. It used to be Microsoft Flow, and then they revamped it and re-introduced it with a new name. I just carried on basically using the same platform. It is better than what they used to have. That's for sure, but I'm still effectively using the same product. They had advertised through emails and other mediums that they have switched to a new product, and it has been rebranded. I thought I'm going to try it, and I just found it very friendly and easy to use. So, I just stuck with it.

It is integrated completely with our Office 365, so I didn't have to set up anything. Everything just works automatically. The security works from the first time. When I logged in, it straight away identified me. I could immediately get a list of all the people to whom I needed to send the stuff. It connected straight away to the SharePoint. I didn't have any problems at all.

The original product was set up by the consultant firm that looks after our IT. We don't do it on our own. They set up everything and configure it. All I had to do was just log in and make sure everything works the way I wanted it to do.

I don't deal with the financial side. I know that we pay for a per-user license. It is probably less than $20 a user, but I am not sure about the exact figures.

To use this solution, you need to maybe brush up a little bit on how to use the function references that are available in Microsoft Power Automate. The code that you use for the functions is a little bit different from what you would use if you were using Excel or anything like that. So, you just need to brush up on how the functions work. Once you understand them, it is pretty simple.

I would rate Microsoft Power Automate a ten out of ten. Everything has been perfectly fine. I am a happy user.

This is one of the solutions we sell to our customers. I'm an automater and we are customers of Microsoft. 

The connectors are a very good feature in this solution because they allow you to connect to multiple applications within the Microsoft environment. The solution is readily integrated. 

I'd like to see an improvement in the execution of workflows, which is currently an area of concern. It takes a lot of time and when you integrate these workflows, you have to be very careful because even a tiny error can break the workflow. Microsoft needs to make it more resilient.

An additional feature should be interoperability. It's the idea that you should be able to leverage other Microsoft technologies, let's say .NET, C#, VB macros, so that they can be integrated. It will make the solution more powerful, and they could provide a facility where we could run scripts written in other languages through Power Automate seamlessly. That would make this a very powerful product. 

I've been using this solution for 18 months. 

It's not stable yet, because it's still in development. There are a lot of things happening right now. If they bring in a new feature, an old feature can change and that's why we're not able to deploy it fully on all our client premises.

It's scalable because almost everything which is available within the Microsoft environment can be connected. But when you go outside the Microsoft environment, with respect to legacy systems and with third-party applications, the scalability is a somewhat limited right now. You can't connect very easily to Oracle or SAP or even third-party standalone custom applications. We don't have plans to increase usage for the time being. 

We haven't contacted technical support, mainly because we've been in a Microsoft related environment for the last 30 years. Most things that we solve ourselves, rather than talking to Microsoft.

We have not yet fully switched to Microsoft Power Automate. We still consider it an option for clients who are purely in a Microsoft environment. It's definitely an option, but we also have seven other RPA tools we use including UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, Kryon, Kofax. We also have an option for customers who don't want to go for any RPA tools that enables them to get custom automation.

The initial setup is complex. You need to know what you are doing, because it connects to so many things on your system which could be different for different systems. It took us about half a day to understand what we needed to do, and then after that it took just an hour. We did it ourselves. 

The solution is affordable and supportable, but the licensing is complex because you're paying for multiple services. You pay a license for Automate and a license for Azure Cloud. There could be a situation where you're managing more licenses than the bots.

We have evaluated 22 options in this area. 

Choosing a solution really depends on what the customer needs. If they're looking for something that's easy to maintain, we might go for UiPath or Automation Anywhere. And if we don't have the budget we tell them to look at Microsoft Power Automate. If you don't have a budget for that, then you look at a custom automation which doesn't need any RPA tool. It all depends on the customer's requirements and constraints.

This solution has the potential to go further, but for now I would rate it a five out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution for testing. For example, we made a website solution and we're open to trying new things because it's not on production yet. We use your flows in order to make some data automation. We fill our flows with some data and test to see if it's all correct.

The RPA robotic process automation is a good feature. We can make a flow within a flow. We just made a UI flow. The flow is to run every day so far it's been quite helpful.

There's good Microsoft documentation that makes setup easy.

I am now a member of the digital transformation team, so we are making various products. We are just making the new projects, and developing them in the store. However, everything is new to us. We have are not working with this tool for more than six months. Therefore, it's hard to really know how well it works or what is lacking.

The solution needs more features so that it can better compete with competitors that have been on the market longer and are more mature.

Tech support could be more hands-on. Right now, they simply direct users to documentation instead of directly dealing with issues.

We've only just started using the solution. We have been using it for six months so far. It's been less than a year.

The stability of the solution is quite good. We're not in production, so we can't verify it 100% as we're just testing its capabilities. It's a rather new tool as well, so I don't know how much it's been tried and tested overall. However, overall, from what I've witnessed, it's been good.

The solution is quite new, both for us and on the market. I can't speak to the scalability as we haven't tried to scale it, and I don't know if many companies have really tried.

Although we have about 1,500 employees, we're still testing the solution, so not everyone has access to the product. Maybe five or six of us are actually on it and trying it out. We're all programmers.

As a developer, I can open a ticket with Microsoft, even though our DBA did teach us a lot about the solution. There's a lot of documentation and support online, so there's rarely a reason to have to actually open a ticket. So far, we've been satisfied with the arrangement, although, for the most part, their assistance is simply directing users to specific documentation.

Currently, we're just testing this solution, however, our organization is also using UiPath.

The initial setup isn't too complex. It's rather straightforward. You can just follow the documentation provided. Microsoft makes it very easy.

The solution is offered as part of a larger Microsoft license. It came as a solution in a bigger package. I'm not sure what the exact cost of it it, as it's not my area of expertise.

We have the Microsoft Dynamics Customer Enterprise license, and that covers for Automate and VI. Right now, we are doing some tests.

We're just working with four workflows. We're just really starting and haven't begun any big projects yet. We have 15 ongoing small projects.

I'm not sure of the exact version we are using.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. We're still testing it in production. We need more time with it to really get a sense of what it can do.

I really like the Excel operations and the templates that the solution has available. If you're looking for 10 items, chances are there are templates already for six to eight of them. We just have to download or integrate that template and our work has been done for us, in a sense. 

It's really user friendly. One of the coolest features that I've found is when we are writing some functions or some custom line of code, there is specific virtualization that we are working with that we are utilizing for recording. 

In just in one click, we can see any documentation, etc., that we need. It makes it very easy to navigate. 

I'm still new to Microsoft. I don't know if there are features or aspects of the solution which are lacking. I need more time to work with it to really decide if there's anything I'd like to have on the solution that's not already there.

All the services on the Microsoft platform are great. If we want to try something like with SharePoint or Azure or the 365 CRM, then we can't with the everyday community edition of the Microsoft Power Automate. It would be a good thing if there was some sort of trial period. Let's say you have 14 days. That way, can log into the loading screen with Power Automate, and get to utilize services like SharePoint, OneDrive, 365 CRM or etc. to see if they like them. It would be a good way for Microsoft to cross-sell or up-sell.

Otherwise, it's expensive, to buy all these extra applications, without knowing if or how you could use them or integrate them into your work.

One thing that I would really like to recommend is that they should get an actual learning environment or LMS where we can go and find all the different tools, how to utilize the different tools of Power Automate, and documentation or tutorials in video form on how we can create our own custom templates. 

Right now, what we have to do is we have to navigate to a different platform, for example, YouTube, and search on YouTube to see whether there are different kinds of techie guys that have updated their information about the Microsoft Power Automate. Microsoft Power Automate needs its own in-house LMS, where we can get the entire knowledge of the product from beginning to end. 

I've only been using the solution for two or three weeks.

I have not tried any kind of real-world problems so I can't say too much about the solution's stability. 

I haven't used the solution long enough to really test the scalability. I'm not sure how scalable it is.

The initial setup is very straightforward. Even a person who has one or two years of coding skills can install the solution quite easily. It's pretty simple. You don't have to be a Microsoft expert. I, for example, would be able to handle it, and I am very new to Microsoft.

I'm using the latest version of the solution. I tried to follow some YouTube tutorials from different people who are actually doing some good work with Microsoft Power Automate, however, they're using different versions as compared to the latest version that I'm using. The layout and the modules and everything is different as compared to the previous versions.

I use the cloud deployment model because it has some free storage or free allocation with the subscription.

I would definitely recommend the solution. Even small businesses would benefit from the solution. Any company would be able to integrate it. There are a lot of tasks you could handle with the solution. It's great for handling customer inquiries, for example, if you had a business with inquiry forms on sales sites.

It also offers one of the cheapest rates as compared to other automation tools. Other automation tools charge a huge amount for license fees. Microsoft Power Automate offers decent fees for the automation tools they offer. 

The solution is also excellent for businesses due to the fact that it's totally based on the cloud. You can use it in anywhere and you can execute your flows from your mobile. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If they offered some better tutorials, I'd rate them higher. No one wants to go and read through dozens or hundreds of web pages. The tutorials need to be interactive or video so that it's easy and engaging. If Microsoft was able to offer that, they'd be close to perfect.

The primary use we have for this product is a solution we created for a client to download daily data from a big company's website. It is a website tool for helping the company monitor the channel for managing their associate or partner responsibilities. They needed to visit the website every day — or as often as possible — so they could get information from the parent company, or collect orders or complaints from there.  

The most valuable thing about the product is that it is simple. When you go into the UI — and probably because Softomotive has about a 20-year long history in the IT industry — there are small details in the features that simplify how you work with it. It has all the big features like competing products but the detail is the kind of thing that makes users feel more comfortable using the product than if the details were not there. So those kinds of ease-of-use details are good things for Softomotive. The design is a GUI interface which is really for non-programmers. There is only the graphic user interface so it is simple to use.  

I think the primary thing that needs improvement in this product is the stability. It looks like it is easy-to-use and that is very nice, but it is more important to have a stable product and not just one that is easy-to-use. If I am working to create a simple process, odd errors occur quite often and in the middle of creating the process.  

The additional features I might like to see in the next release would be adding in some capabilities that other products already have. For example, some RPA process management framework. UiPath has something like that, RE Framework (Robotic Enterprise Framework), which is something in Softomotive we have to develop by ourselves. They have some premade processes in WinAutomation, but in running a process they should have some kind of error handling. For example, if there are tasks that should be run like 100 times and maybe it will freeze up at the 50th cycle, then the process should start again from 50, not from number one.  

If they can come up with some kind of framework and error handling, that will enhance the stability of the running processes made out of their solution. Right now I cannot resolve these main issues on my own and they should be added to the product.  

I started testing it out three months ago and have been using it for about two months.  

The stability of the product is not always good even when working on simple projects. This is not a bad product — I still use it — but the stability is something that they need to improve.  

Scalability is just buying more licenses. I worked for RPA consulting company and a development company and then I worked as an RPA developer. Then I was dispatched to a company to develop a process for that company. That company at the time purchased ProcessRobot, and then recently WinAutomation — I think five copies. They tested it and they are now trying to expand usage.  

I have been in touch with the technical support for WinAutomation by Softomotive a lot, really. The support is good and they provide the information or answers I need.  

I have used other products in the past. For example, by comparison, UiPath might be a little bit more stable but it is also a little bit more complicated in the UI/UX (User Interface/User Experience) than Softomotive. UiPath has not got some of the fancy features — just the basic ones. You just collect your UI elements or web elements and use the basic features. But say you maybe run a process 1000 times in both tools. UiPath seems to me in our testing to have fewer errors than Softomotive. But the complexity of the project or the stability would make me choose one product over the other.  

The setup in WinAutomation is kind of straightforward. I did not experience any trouble in the installation. ProcessRobot is a bit different and then UiPath is a little bit more complicated in the installation, but I think it is manageable as well.  

To actually get the product to work from the point of installation to where I could start running some processes took maybe a month the first time. But this included learning the product. Development with a little experience using the tool usually takes 15 days or about two weeks.  

We did the deployment of this by ourselves.  

Because I am in this industry, I am gathering information about different tools all the time. I use mainly WinAutomation and ProcessRobot and maybe UiPath for only a month. It is sometimes just to collect information and other times to consider other products.  

I think the advice I can give someone considering this solution has to do with making a smart choice. If someone wants to do some RPA project without already knowing a product, then he or she needs to take quite a long time to learn about RPA. You can look at the subject to learn about it and then learn a little bit about programming. There is not just one place to find this kind of tutorial and educational material. A single vendor will only provide what you need to use their product. Each vendor has different educational materials from different perspectives and different methods of teaching.  

If they want us to use Softomotive as a solution, they may have to do less work in learning about RPA because it is easy to use. But they should probably also visit the UiPath website or maybe AutomationAnywhere to compare the products and features. In many ways, the products are the same with the ultimate goal being that of creating a working RPA process.  

But I think there is a difference in the availability of information and user communities. UiPath has a little bit more structured education system and their community is larger. Because Softomotive is not as widely used it is more difficult to ask other users questions. You may have to direct your questions to the software team. But with UiPath, they can ask questions through a web portal like forum.uipath.com. It is less stressful to ask a question and get an answer from other users.  

ProcessRobot users also have a smaller community but they cannot ask questions from support unless they have the license for the product. WinAutomation is different. It is kind of a semi-commercial product but it is not totally free like open-source. There is also a little restriction on which questions you can ask of support before you invest in the product. They are very responsive and also helpful and their company helps people directly. You go through a sort of process. Maybe Softmotive might not always find an answer or give you a particular solution. Then you can also be a little creative and look for how something is solved using other RPA tools like consulting UiPath Academy. This might give you some hints about what you are trying to accomplish.  

Sometimes I have found that I kind of I reached a dead end. I had no answer as to where to go. I was just confused and then I could not find any answer from the Softmotive website and there was nowhere to ask the question that I had. Other vendors also have wonderful features and then I tested those to see what they could do. It is kind of a long process to develop a stable process and you have to continue to learn.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as a seven. Of course to rate this software higher, they would need to work on the stability issues, enhance the available resources for users, and fill in some of the features that are missing which other products already have. 

* Added on 2020-07-17 : Now that Softomotive is acquired and WinAutomation have become a part of PowerAutomate and the price has gone down almost to half of its original price, the future is quite promising for this product.