Microsoft Power Automate Reviews

We use Power Automate for applicant tracking. We automated around 80 percent of the process. 

Power Automate's out-of-the-box integration is nice. 

Microsoft could offer more AI education and training.

I have used Power Automate for a few years.

I rate Power Automate seven out of 10 for stability. 

I rate Power Automate seven out of 10 for scalability.

I rate Power Automate eight out of 10 for ease of setup. We did it in-house.

I rate Microsoft Power Automate four out of 10 for affordability. It's a little more expensive than average.

I rate Microsoft Power Automate six out of 10 overall. It has a lot of integration capabilities out of the box, but it isn't always accurate. 

We are using Microsoft Power Automate for automating approval.

The most valuable features of Microsoft Power Automate are user-friendliness and low coding functionality.

When you try to create a flow or work on the flow in Microsoft Power Automate you cannot undo changes. There are no options to edit or, undo an action. This feature would be useful. The editing option within the flow can be enhanced.

In a future release, they could extend the flow run limits. When the flow is running it will be terminated.

I have been using Microsoft Power Automate for approximately three years.

Microsoft Power Automate is reliable.

I rate the stability of Microsoft Power Automate a nine out of ten.

We have five developers and IT managers that are using the solution.

The solution is scalable.

I rate the scalability of Microsoft Power Automate a nine out of ten.

We opened a few tickets with support from Microsoft Power Automate. The support is responsive.

I have not used a solution similar to Microsoft Power Automate.

We did the implementation of the solution in-house.

The solution is managed by the global tenant. We have three people who manage it.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Microsoft Power Automate a nine out of ten.

The primary use case for this solution includes automating process work with optical character recognition. Companies can also automate document processing with Microsoft Power Automate.

From my personal experience of using Microsoft Power Automate, I think that the automatic document processing feature is helpful for many organizations in streamlining administrative processes. It is a very good feature. It has helped many enterprises to process documents without spending much time on them.

I would recommend removing the AI Builder feature from the automatic document processing functionality. The tool can serve even better with free automatic document processing features, it shouldn’t only be available in the trial version.

I have been using this solution for a couple of months now.

I have found Microsoft Power Automate to be a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution but I also think that the scalability of this solution depends on the type of organizations that are using it. For instance, public enterprises like government organizations can make very good use of this solution. I plan to propose the tool to my organization. It’s still in the loading phase and I have not got any feedback on it.

I have not felt the need to contact the customer service and support team since most of my doubts were resolved through the tutorials and tech instructions available on the website, which are very helpful.

I have previously used Power BI. I came across Power Automate while looking for other Power platforms. I saw the different features that Power Automate offers and so I chose it.

It was easy to set up. Once you have access to the portal, navigate to the automatic document processing feature where you can see many examples. There are a total of just two or three steps that you need to follow for completing the entire setup process.

The setup took a couple of months. It requires much concentration like when you are training your model to analyze the documents. For example, when you are setting up the automatic process document, the tool will ask you to try with five documents. Also, we will have to look into the different fields from which we are going to extract the information from the documents.

Once the document upload is done and the training is finished, you will need to locate the locations where other documents are located. It’s recommended to use either the OneDrive or Sharepoint locations. Power Automate will locate the schema of the document, connect with it and the document upload will be done. When the upload is done, the AI Builder will apply the OCR. After the completion of the OCR, the information will be extracted and put on other documents like Excel. 

I am not sure about the setup cost, pricing or licensing since I use the trial version.

I would rate this tool a nine out of ten. 

To me, what's most useful in WinAutomation by Softomotive is that it's quite intuitive, especially because most of the capabilities of the older WinAutomation remain. You also don't need to do or know hard coding, and this is another useful feature of the solution.

I also like that WinAutomation by Softomotive integrates very well with Microsoft products, especially Microsoft Office, and this is great news because most companies use Microsoft Office. Having a very good integration with the Microsoft Office suite covers a lot of bases, and is one of the advantages of WinAutomation by Softomotive.

What needs improvement in WinAutomation by Softomotive is its stability. Stability is quite important to me. Another area for improvement in the solution is robot scheduling because it's not 100% accurate, in particular, it's 90% accurate. The monitoring of the robot could also be improved because it's not very straightforward, and you have to look in a few places or at least two places which means that monitoring is not a one-glance process.

I've been using WinAutomation by Softomotive for one and a half years.

WinAutomation by Softomotive is not a very stable product. It used to be a desktop application and was installed locally. It's a desktop application, but it's a cloud application at the same time, so the main problem is the integration with cloud services, the updates, and the refresh rate, plus its compatibility with other Microsoft applications. This means that WinAutomation by Softomotive requires frequent updates, and this is not bad. It's okay, but the point is that it's not very stable in the short run. The WinAutomation by Softomotive team usually addresses this issue, so if my company has a problem today, for example, within a few days, that issue will be solved, but in the short run, the solution is not very stable.

WinAutomation by Softomotive is a scalable product.

I didn't use the technical support for WinAutomation by Softomotive much. At the very beginning, I used it because of the licensing requirement when I transferred my account from WinAutomation by Softomotive to Power Automate. Currently, the documentation is pretty good, so I didn't use the technical support even through chat, phone, or email correspondence, so I'm unable to evaluate support for the solution.

In terms of the installation of WinAutomation by Softomotive, it wasn't as straightforward, specifically for the license administration because you have to be enrolled on the portal. I'm referring to the new version of WinAutomation which is now Power Automate, but the original WinAutomation by Softomotive only took ten minutes to install. The Power Automate version, on the other hand, wasn't impossible to install, but it wasn't straightforward.

I could say that my organization has ROI from WinAutomation by Softomotive.

My company switched to a monthly payment for the WinAutomation by Softomotive license. I don't have the exact figure, but it roughly amounts to 500 Euros a year which isn't bad.

I use WinAutomation by Softomotive, but the solution was bought by Microsoft, so it's now a part of Power Automate.

In my company, about twenty people use WinAutomation by Softomotive daily. I belong to a small company.

My advice to people looking into implementing WinAutomation by Softomotive is that it's a good solution, and I would recommend it for small-scale operations, for example, to automate back office operations. I would not recommend it for large-scale or for critical operations because it returns quite a lot of errors, not only automation errors, but also errors when liaising with other applications, so in some cases, those applications may not run properly, resulting in errors. From my point of view, I will not recommend WinAutomation by Softomotive for critical operations, unless it's stabilized in the future, and at the moment, the "transformation" of WinAutomation into Power Automate is still ongoing.

My rating for WinAutomation by Softomotive is nine out of ten.

I use Microsoft Power Automate as part of my job as an RPA developer. The solution is part of everyone's Office 365 account at our organization. 

The solution is used as a primary tool for providing RPA solutions. We've created an automated desktop flow for the whole process. It includes three platforms.

We use the solution as an extension of Power Apps. We create files and SharePoint using flow by converting HTML code into PDF.

The authentication provided by Microsoft is very robust.

We have automated a process for our HR team that handles a lot of immigration-related activities. Rather than this individual having to ask others for information, we created a solution running different flows that centralized the whole system.

Another impactful project was where we used power apps to create office visitation. This solution helped manage the allowable workforce limitation placed by the government during the pandemic. We created an application where users submitted a request which prompted the validation of vaccinations and determine parking availability and sitting capacity. The headcount is provided to the departments that are impacted, such as the canteen, or bus monitors.

By creating in-house solutions, we had a high impact on the organization. Using an out-of-the-box solution would have been very expensive.

Microsoft Power Automate is easy to use. There are lots of libraries and connectors to browse from.

The users are very happy with the processes that we have automated completely end to end.

The solution is difficult to customize. I would like to see more flexibility when it comes to using different kinds of activities, particularly the kind of interaction they can have with Excel. This is also limited to the number of activities, making extension not possible.

Other areas of improvement include Microsoft Power Automate's ability to work on power desktops. It would be helpful if we could access external activities. 

I have been using Microsoft Power Automate for one year.

The solution is scalable. You can create a flow, and it can be shared across different environments. 

Technical support could improve. I am not sure that they exist. I would like to be provided with more awareness regarding the tech support that is available from the platform.

There is ample documentation available for the solution and all the different components.

Positive

Prior to adding Microsoft Power Automate, we used UI robotic process automation. We now use both solutions in parallel. Power Automate is used for office-related apps and UI is used for all other platforms.

Microsoft Power Automate is part of our Office 365 package, there are no additional licensing costs.

I would recommend other large-scale enterprises to look into Microsoft Power Automate as a solution for their organization.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I'm using Microsoft Power Automate to automate some of my processes. Before using this solution it took me sometimes one day to complete tasks and now I can perform them much faster.

The most valuable features of Microsoft Power Automate are the ease of use and the templates that are provided. I no longer need to make the document from scratch. I can search for what template I want and then it only requires me to modify it a bit for my needs. Additionally, it's helped improve my productivity and efficiency, and at the same time, it's quicker.

Microsoft Power Automate could improve by adding more features to the free version it would be good because there are many features that you have to pay for. There are some functions that IT personnel, like myself, have a difficult time using and could be made more user-friendly.

In a feature release, it would be a benefit if Microsoft Power Automate could integrate with Google. I'm dealing with a lot of external systems, and it would be great if the site was able to connect with Google, because some of the flow requirements use Google. It is very difficult to do it.

I have used Microsoft Power Automate within the last 12 months.

Microsoft Power Automate is stable.

There were several people using this solution in my previous company, and in my current company, I am the only one working with Microsoft Power Automate.

The support from Microsoft Power Automate is good.  If I do not know how to use it they have the Microsoft community. I can ask questions on that platforms and straight away they provide me the answer.

I have not used other solutions previously.

We use Office 365 and this solution is free for me to use with the package we have. We have plans to increase the usage of Microsoft Power Automate.

Microsoft should market Power Automate more to companies' operation personnel, it would be better because then the operations personnel would know there is a solution to make their life and tasks easier.

I rate Microsoft Power Automate a ten out of ten.

We are using it for automating legacy systems as well as email verifications. I haven't touched on the APIs yet, but the use case is for user accessibility to and from data sources.

The solution is still in the development phase. It is not in the production run at the moment. Therefore, at the moment, there is not a significant visible improvement.

In terms of deployment, it is a mix of hybrid cloud and on-premises. Microsoft is the cloud provider. It is a single environment deployed over multiple branches in each province of the country. Currently, the version that we are using is the latest Microsoft release.

Its ease of use is most valuable. A lot of the bulk functionality is done either through standalone or custom connectors and standard API processes. 

There are two versions of the automation suite. You've got your cloud functionality, and you have got your on-premises functionality for legacy systems. There are a lot of functionalities between the two systems that don't cross-correlate with each other. A lot of the functionality in the cloud system is not there on the production side in the on-prem system. If they could implement some of the similar functionalities and streamline them for integration, it would be a lot easier. There should be seamless integration between the two systems.

I have been using this solution for three months.

It is highly stable with good performance.

It is extremely scalable. It integrates with a lot of existing systems, both Microsoft-related and non-Microsoft-related, and it is extremely extensible. The additional support validation and software integrations that are available are limitless.

Our experience of the technical support on the solution has been minimal because there have not been a lot of technical issues with the implementation. The turnaround time for any type of technical query is usually a day to two days, but before that time period is up, they either have a solution or a guaranteed workaround.

We previously used Automation Anywhere. We switched because of the ease of use. The functionality of Automation Anywhere is for a very specialized use case scenario. They focus on a lot of areas, but Power Automate has a lot of simpler solutions and easier approaches. For example, we have a solution in place that has three or four RPA scripts for a single process. With the Power Automate solution, we have a single script running for maybe five sub-processes. It is a lot more streamlined and consistent.

At the moment, it is still in development and is a matter of integration. It does require a bit more technical know-how, but it is mainly done from the environment perspective and from an administrative point of view. 

From a development point of view, the crossover is pretty much the same for going, for instance, from Blue Prism to UiPath, or UiPath to Automation Anywhere. There's a transition period level of difficulty. So, from a development point of view, it's fairly the same, but from a technical point of view, Microsoft does require a bit more technical know-how to get the environment set up.

With some of the integration conversions we've done from one platform to the other, from a development standpoint, it has taken us close to a month in the development environments, and this is interrupted. If we had an uninterrupted conversion, I would estimate a maximum of a week. We just need to get it converted and implemented.

We've been doing everything in-house with direct help from a Microsoft representative. We have a single person to take care of it. It doesn't require a massive deployment team.

So far, based on the development calculators that we've been running, it's running far smoother and far more efficiently and faster. So, the estimated return on investment over the past three months that we've been calculating has been looking far higher than the Automation Anywhere solution.

At the moment, from our experience with the two, Power Automate is a lot more expensive solution than Automation Anywhere, but it is also a far more reliable solution. 

With the price increases and with the current pandemic situation going on worldwide, a lot of the prices have fluctuated, but the packages and the all-encompassing features you get with the Microsoft package far outweigh the benefits from the Automation Anywhere side. Each package on the Automation Anywhere side is cheaper, but we need to continuously purchase subsequent packages to continue with our automation to the extent that we require. So, the Power Automate solution is a bit more pricey, but it does offer us a far better range of capabilities.

There are different development plans that you can use. Additional licenses might be required for additional features, such as your Azure Logic or your Dataverse capacity. There is a limited capacity package that you can purchase, and then you have to have an additional license for added capacity.

I would advise paying critical attention to the environment that you're setting up. User access roles, either through Active Directory or through the database control method, should be the key focus. After that, you need to assign roles and licenses as necessary. From there on, you need to integrate the system. 

The Microsoft documentation portal for both cloud and on-premises is going to be the easiest to follow. All the solutions are there. For technical assistance from the Microsoft side, contact details are available on the documentation portal for any type of query.

I would rate it a solid eight out of ten. For me to give it a ten, there should be seamless integration between both the cloud and the on-premises solutions. There should be the exact same or similar functionality between the two to make the entire automation process a bit more streamlined.

I use both the on-premise version and web versions because they both have different tools. I use them both for different use cases and different scenarios.

I use Microsoft Power Automate to make reports and web scraping. I automate the reports with the desktop version because it works well. I use Microsoft Windows, to do some commands in the CMD, also known as the line assistant. When it comes to the web version, I mostly do reminders, scraping, extracting data from emails, and creating ticket systems. I take that data and put it in a list or create a table in Excel to extract information and automate that part. 

Microsoft Power Automate has helped our organization by making processes faster. I do some consulting on the side about Microsoft Power Automate. We realize we don't need as many people to work on something because you can automate it or at least semi-automate the tasks.

The most valuable feature of Microsoft Power Automate in the desktop version is web scraping because you can do a lot with it. I work in retail and you can study prices changes, which can give you a lot of information. The solution is no code which is a large advantage.

In the web version, the most valuable features are creating tickets, taking email information, and creating a ticket with it, similar to an IT ticket.

Microsoft Power Automate is a tool that is easy to learn. There is some basic logic that you will have to understand but overall it is not complicated.

I think the language Microsoft Power Automate uses when you do expressions could be better. What they use is not a popular programming language. It would be better for Microsoft to find a more popular programming language, such as Python. It would take away the whole no-code aspect of the solution but you don't need to write that many lines of code to improve something in a process. Instead of no-code, they could be a low-code environment.

I have been using Microsoft Power Automate for approximately seven months.

The stability of Microsoft Power Automate is good, I have not had a problem with the performance.

Microsoft Power Automate is scalable.

We have approximately 10 people using this solution in my organization. The solution is moderately being used. The more you use it, the more ideas come to you of what you can automate or what can you create. In the future, it's going to be used more.

I have not contacted the support from Microsoft.

The implementation of Microsoft Power Automate was straightforward. It took only hours to do the full implementation.

I did the implementation of Microsoft Power Automate in my company. Additionally, I do the maintenance and patching of the solution when needed.

The cost to use Microsoft Power Automate is approximately $15 per user per month, for the basic plan. However, the solution comes free with the Microsoft 365 Suite.

You have to pay extra for the scheduling of the automation tasks.

Microsoft Power Automate is a newer solution to the market. UiPath is a lot more popular and has more features than Microsoft Power Automate. There's a lot of potential in that Microsoft Power Automate because it connects well with other Microsoft programs inside the Suite which makes it even more powerful. UiPath connects with other applications, but the fact that if you use Microsoft in your organization, it's more seamless. It works better. 

I learned Microsoft Power Automate faster because I know how to use Microsoft Excel, and that teaches you how to think more logically when it comes to computers. If you have an Excel or programming background, it's going to be easier because the logic creates the flows. If you won't want your learning curve to be that steep, I would recommend learning Microsoft Excel and then going Microsoft Power Automate. You will have more ideas of what you can do with the tool.

I rate Microsoft Power Automate a nine out of ten because you have to pay to receive the schedule functionality of the automation, which is important.

It is currently being used by our customer service department. They're using it for tracking overtime, and they're also using it for reporting and automating their various service quality reports. So, automation of service quality reports and overtime management are basically two major use cases.

The ease of use and the integration with some of the existing products that we have would be its main takeouts.

From an improvement perspective, Microsoft just needs to make sure that they have a real enterprise RPA tool. PowerApps and Power Automate are still not at the level of UiPath and Automation Anywhere. It could be because Automation Anywhere and UiPath have been in the market for quite some time. It's just about Microsoft increasing their focus in terms of product reviews and development and making them competitive products that one can consider at an enterprise level. Right now, their use cases are limited as compared to what one would consider doing with UiPath and Automation Anywhere.

It is a stable solution.

It is scalable, but it is limited in terms of the processes that you can automate. If you have complex processes that you want to automate, it doesn't have that capability yet. So, it is scalable but to a certain extent.

Our organization is working with it actively. Its number of users could be between 100 and 200.

Technical support is given by Microsoft through the support model that they offer for customers. If you have an issue, you can log the issue in with Microsoft, and they would always attend to it. I would rate them a three out of five.

It was straightforward. There was nothing complex.

You don't need much staff for deployment and maintenance of it. You need a very limited number of people.

We used a partner.

Its license is a part of our enterprise agreement. It is a three-year contract, but we pay yearly. So, it is a yearly license. There are no additional costs.

I would rate it a six out of 10.

I am a solution provider and I implement RPA products and automate processes for my clients.

With this product, you create your workflows on the cloud. We've used this product for integrating with Microsoft solutions. For example, one of them is a document approval solution, where documents are sent to SharePoint and then pushed to different users within Active Directory for approval. This is done according to rules set by the client.

There is also a COVID application that was built around Power Automate and the Power Platform, where users within the organization can raise a request for a test and this would be pushed to managers for approval.

We are also looking at financial processes around bank reconciliations and interbank transfers.

The most valuable feature is that it easily integrates with other Microsoft products, so it has multiple connectors. You can create solutions that connect to Teams, Outlook, SharePoint, and OneDrive.

There are templates available for you to create your own flow, and it is easy to start creating a flow and automating a solution.

There are some bugs or intermittent behavior in the Excel activities that require using workarounds. For example, there is an Excel activity called Collect that fails once in a while. When you want to choose or select a particular cell, once in a while, it fails to do so. It doesn't happen all of the time and I don't know if it's a bug, but it's something that they can look into.

I have been working with Microsoft Power Automate for approximately one year.

This is a very stable product.

The scalability is amazing. This is a cloud-based resource, and there is no limitation in terms of scale or size. You can easily increase the scope of processes being handled.

The COVID use case is available for all of the employees, which is approximately 2,500. The documentation approval use case is used by managers and people making requests, which is approximately 2,000 people. The use case involving financial reconciliation is only for a small team that consists of about five people.

The technical support is good. They are available and you can just call them. We have Microsoft Office online support, as well. This means that you can call them, or instead go to the forum and search for activities and resources. They have a lot of resources available online.

There are good tooltips available within the product itself. You can look at something and the tooltip will explain how it works and what you should do.

Overall, the support resources are good and I would rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

I also work with UiPath and WorkFusion.

The initial setup is straightforward. Power Automate is a cloud-based tool, although I downloaded the Studio to my local machine.

The deployment takes one day. You just switch environments from UAT to production. You can easily export your solution and import it into the production environment.

We were working with another company to implement the solution but we completed the implementation and deployment ourselves.

The licensing model is flexible in that you can pay per automation or per user. My client receives a discount because of the large number of users and pays approximately $15 for each one.

There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees unless other resources are being used. For example, Office resources are available on Azure, but that is a different product. It is related to Azure, rather than Power Automate.

Our client chose this solution. They already had Microsoft enterprise licenses, and they felt it was better to use a Microsoft product for their automation solution.

Overall, this is a good solution and I like it. It's very scalable and easy to do so. Also, there are many connectors and they are quite useful. This is a product that I recommend.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Power Automate is to be cautious about how they distribute their flows, just to manage the licensing cost. Because it is cloud-based, it is an easy-to-use tool for both small and enterprise-wide solutions. There are no complications when integrating with Active Directory or the cloud platform, and this is good, in particular, because everybody is moving to the cloud. This product makes it easy to integrate things that people are already working with, such as Teams and Outlook.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.