Microsoft Power Automate Reviews

I am new to RPA systems and I have recently received access to Azure where I am testing out the ProcessRobot solution.

I have found the scheduling and email notifications features to very good compared to other RPA tools I have used.

In an upcoming release, the exception handling mechanism could improve. The issue that we are facing is whenever there is a failure in any of the middle execution and if you wanted to navigate it to the end of the last line of execution, we do not have this feature available. If we had this feature it would make it even more stable.

I have been using this solution for approximately one and a half years.

The solution is stable.

I have found the solution to be scalable. 

We have three people working with this solution in my organization.

The technical support has been good.

I have used previously Winautomation. When comparing the two solutions both are equally good.

The initial setup was in the middle range of difficulty. 

The price of the solution is reasonable.

My advice to others that want to implement this solution is that it has very good features and I have not had any issues.

I rate ProcessRobot by Softomotive an eight out of ten.

We are system integrators so we provide this solution and deal with the automation for our clients. Power Automate is mainly suitable for small and medium size companies. 

Power Automate is good for automation. For example, if a client requires a format for invoices, we set up the module - invoice number, container, quantity, product details. After that, whenever we load bulk invoices, it automatically identifies the invoice format and accepts the data. This is one of the best features of the product.

Power Automate is not suitable for connecting other applications like browsers and third party applications and there are a few features not available on this solution. They are working on improving that. Power Automate cannot handle high end projects and, from a developer's perspective, it's a little difficult for enterprise size companies. 

We are partners with Microsoft and I'm a technology lead.

It's a reasonably stable product but because it's a new tool they need to keep working on it. If you're a small setup, and you need it for Excel or Word or some desktop kind of access, it will be stable. But if you're looking for web automation it's not currently suitable.

This is a scalable solution. 

We have tried to contact technical support many times, but there is no way to contact or reach out to the Microsoft team. We recently had many questions on Power Automate so I tried the Winautomation but there are many activities that are missing and there are bugs in it. We also had an issue with the ongoing live projects. We developed the project in Winautomation and they were later converted into Power Automate. Winautomation isn't working so we need to migrate all the projects which is a complicated process and requires reworking. We can't get any help from them and that's a problem. 

It's very easy to set up because it only requires downloading one xFi file from Power Automate. It then automatically connects with an email account and the solution is automatically synced with that email account. From the customer's perspective, there is no maintenance. As the service provider, whenever new features are included, we update it for our clients.  

Compared to other automation tools, Power Automate is very cheap although the price has increased recently. 

We also integrate UiPath for our clients. This solution offers regular updates and is more mature than Power Automate. Each month they release a new module. Initially, they were only accessing desktop and web applications, Word and Outlook, those kind of things. Nowadays, UiPath has all the features connected to the cloud, whether it's Azure or Google. They are trying to automate everything and they're working on all this because of AI. When choosing a product for our clients, we take numerous variables into account. If you're offering all the features in your tool and the cost is reasonable, we're likely to choose it.

I'm not sure I would recommend this product now, perhaps in a year or two when the solution is more stable. We struggled with a project recently and that was difficult.  

I rate the solution a five out of 10. 

It's a pretty big learning curve with Microsoft Power Automate and I'm trying to do a couple of other things. But I really have made some progress. I've actually started creating some bots. I've run into some snags. I haven't found my way out of the snags as yet. That's kind of why I'm not quite ready to publish because I'm not an expert yet, but I am actively working on it.

Microsoft Power Automate is on-premises because I'm using the Power Automate Desktop. So it's a desktop piece that I'm actually using and that's definitely on-premise. What I'm actually doing is interacting with actual systems. I run a clubby cloud system for moving data back and forth.

There are some very long processes that are happening now, where we need to move data from one system to another and do some analysis, and all of that. We're trying to automate some of that process to link the systems together. So some of it is actually reading the webpage, taking information off of the webpage, and doing things with it.

Power Automate is very user-friendly, it is easy to use. I find it very easy to use, easy to follow what's going on, to navigate around and get things done. I really like it. 

One of the features I like is the elements. Let me describe it. With Power Automate Desktop you're interacting with other pieces of software. That's kind of the whole point. You're grabbing information from other software so that you can then pull it together and move it back and forth between systems and do other things with it. Power Automate Desktop allowed me to quickly visually identify parts of a screen and record it. So I can see that I know I'm going to have to click this button here, this field there, and this tab here, and I can literally go and quickly just record all of them and identify them and have them in a list that I can see and say - there's my list of things.

Now when I'm actually pulling the logic together, it's really, really simple to just grab it from my list of elements and just fix things together. So I'm able to move faster than I can with Help and with the other solution. I really, really like that about it. I like its integration with other apps

Well, not integration. Because the whole point of Power Automate desktop is to grab information from other apps. So it's not a side feature, that's what it's designed to do specifically. So, that makes it easier to visually capture information from other applications, and then reuse those fields from other applications. I think it's the reuse that's really useful. Because I can see that I've done it. Whereas with the other one, did they do it or not?  But I really like that it is easy to capture visual elements of other applications and reuse them. 

The other good thing was the trial period. There's a much more realistic trial period of 90 days. So it encourages you to dig in on your own, and try and figure it out, because if something doesn't go right, you don't have to figure it out in 30 days, like all the others. So it's a 90 day trial, which makes sense to me because if it works, trust me, you'll never give it up. You going to use it, going to be hooked anyway, so 90 days make sense.

The problem with Power Automate is what happened when I had it set up to read web pages and Excel workbooks. But that was my first test, and I was working on it for around three days and then took a break of about two days. When I went back to it, all of the Excel, and all the Excel functions, just disappeared. Completely vanished.

I had installed it on my laptop. I had the spreadsheet there and all the features, because you have to do things like tell it to open the spreadsheet, tell it to read the cells, that kind of thing. And then you tell it to go to this webpage, and when you get to the webpage, log in, put in a username and password and then click on a button. So you have to put all of these steps and sort of link them together. And then when I came back, the flow was there, but it said all the steps that had to do with Excel were invalid. Anything that has to do with the web, it just said invalid. The whole tree, all instructions are still there, but the components that talk to Excel and the web were just gone. Just totally vanished.

When I looked up the help, it said that sometimes that happens when you're not connected to the internet. So it was kind of straight forward but complex as well.

It was straight forward, and then it just crashed, essentially. It just went. And I couldn't figure out a way to get the modules back. What on earth? So I switched to HelpSystems Automate, which I had also installed on my machine about a year ago. But now that I'd started working with Power Automate, that gave me the confidence to launch into the other one. So I launched into that one and that's where my HelpSystems Automate review would start. But if I would just stop by Microsoft Power Automate Desktop, that's where I'm stuck. I literally have not gone back to it. I actually find its easier to use. I prefer to use it, but it's just not working. It just stopped working. I don't know how to get this part back.

That's why I told you  I don't want to give a full review as yet because I don't know if it's something I did. I don't think so. But it just stopped. I'm still trying to give it a little grace, trying to figure out, trying to make it work.

What was difficult though, the weirdest thing, was just simple things like manipulating strings.

In terms of what features should be included, what would really help would be more help navigating webpages. What would help would be the help itself - if there would be lots of official walk-throughs. If it would say, for these scenarios, this is how you should do it, with the screen screenshots and the step-by-step thing. With other products I've used, even as a programmer back in the day, nothing ramps up learning faster than walk-throughs. It's not really the product itself, but more walk-throughs to help people ramp up their learning much faster.

That would be really great. Especially around web automation and services automation. Hooking into the EPI's of other solutions would be great. Right now we're just relying on the community of YouTube videos. People just set them up and do YouTube videos, and that's how they're hoping it will get solved.

It's not the type of setup, but it's the training on using the product that I would like to see more of. Better training on using the product itself, walk-throughs in particular, as a training method.

So I tell people that with Power Automate, you you can record the interview, that we're doing here, and fill out the forms automatically. All you have to do is sit down and engage the client with the right questions, and the system would listen to the interview and fill out the screen for you. So you thought, that would be really cool. Now you've downloaded it, and you're trying to figure out how on earth you do it. A walk-through is where you would go and this thing would literally say, "Capture audio and video." They give you a scenario and then they would have a little video that you can watch that shows you how to actually set it up. And then, in addition to that, you'd have a detailed scenario. This is what you want to do. Then it would have all the steps that you would need to actually do it end-to-end. If you follow the steps at the end of the walkthrough, you would actually have a working solution by just following the steps. By doing that, you're learning the product. You're learning how to use it. You learn so many things by using walkthroughs. And it's just training. It's not the actual product itself, it's training that goes along with the product.

This is Microsoft technical support. I'll try them. I haven't called Microsoft technical support in years. It's usually not a very good experience, but I will try. I will reach out to them and see what happens. When you go to support they tend to lead you to communities where other users are having issues. It's sort of, "see what you can find in the community." I will get back to it because I have to desperately get this thing to work. No matter which tool I use, I have to get it to work.

The price is why I even considered it, because HelpSystems Automate was winning all of these awards and was supposedly the easier tool to use. That's what it says. But Power Automate's pricing model had a more gentle incline. That's why I went to the Microsoft Power Automate Desktop in the first place, because the pricing seemed to be more favorable. It the end, once you're using it for the whole organization, you end up paying the same thing for both products anyways. But to get started, Power Automate Desktop seemed better priced. But then it stopped working and I don't know how to get it back working yet.

I'm using the HelpSystems Automate now, and I'm stuck on another step. I mean, it's hard and that's good. If it's hard, it means you'll get paid. So the bit being hard is not the issue. I just have no idea how to get Power Automate to work again. So when I do, I guess I'll let you know.

The licensing was on a monthly basis. I liked it because it gave me a more reasonable per user cost. So I can set up one user like me, and then quickly set up all the workflows that I need, and it allows me to evaluate better and longer. I can onboard two or three other logins at a very reasonable price. Ultimately everybody wants to just dominate the entire organization anyway, and so the price is going to get ridiculous at some point. But by the time it gets there, the organization would be benefiting so much from it they don't mind. Whereas with the other solution, you have to bite the bullet a little sooner.

I think you have to have an office license. I'm not sure actually. Maybe you can just use it by itself, but I'm not sure.

Right now, on a scale of one to 10, I would give Microsoft Power Automate a six since I can't actually use it. I really can't go past six. Maybe once I actually start using it, I'll rank it much higher. I think it has great potential if I could just get it back working.

I like that Power Automate gives us a connector to be able to connect different data sources or different software. 

It is very easy to connect, authenticate, and automate our daily routine tasks.

There are many things that need to improve, but not with the cloud side, it's desktop automation.

When you are doing desktop automation, they do not have a clear structure to create the code. This means that we have a poor chance of creating the project.

When creating sub-flows, there are no separate parameters. Instead, they are all combined together on the main page.

I would like to see improvements made to the Power Automate Desktop.

I have been exploring this product for one month.

Previously, I worked with Blue Prism and UiPath.

In my opinion, Blue Prism is far better than Power Automate, and UiPath is better than the desktop version.

Power Automate has the power to connect with different cloud sources, which is something that Blue Prism and UiPath do not have.

You can also create reusable code with Blue Prism and UiPath.

We are using the cloud version. There is nothing to install on our machine.

If you need to automate more on the cloud side, I would recommend Power Automate. If it's a third-party application they are trying to automate, I would try Blue Prism or UiPath.

I would rate Microsoft Power Automate a six out of ten.

Repetitive interactions between legacy systems and Excel managed by human resource. By collecting small tasks, there would be tons of time/effort we can replace with RPA. However, my challenge was major RPA solutions are not so much cheap to be applied to these small tasks. I believe Power Automate would be sufficient and cheap enough as Microsoft announced it will be free for Win 10 users (with basic functionalities).

It is still a persona trial phase so not much change has been brought. However, I have convinced Power Automate Desktop can be enough for many use cases where much investments are difficult.

Interaction with Microsoft Excel is good and will be more better in the future.

More detailed explanatory manuals are desired. As new features are introduced every month, I would like to know what is new and what is changed recently.

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

I'm not sure whether the desktop version is stable. It is relatively new. It was launched in May. I haven't really tried it. But the trial version I'm using has been stable so far. 

I haven't tried to scale it, so I'm not quite sure. 

So far, the tech support has provided me with good enough support and knowledge. 

Power Automate has two versions. The initial setup of the trial version is really easy. All you have to do is just activate the environment and you can start working on it. However, for desktop version, you need to install the software. It should be as easy to download and install as the Office 365 environment. 

How long it takes to deploy will depend on how confident you are with your development. The development itself is not easy. 

I live in Japan and there are not very many consultants available for the latest Power Automate yet as Microsoft is investing quite a lot and new versions are released every month.

Should be high, as unattended RPA capabilities are available at almost free as I can utilize it under o365 license. No extra costs to start small and you can pay extra if you need premium services.

I would recommend Power Automate. Those will small use cases can use a free license. 

We evaluated Blue Prism and Pega. However, Pega was a bit difficult to use for citizen developers. It requires some support from consultants or engineers, so it's a bit of an investment. They're small and if we introduced consultants or engineers, then it wouldn't pay off. So for that use-cases, yeah, users lost interest. 

We are resellers and sometimes we implement solutions.

It's a component of Microsoft 365.

We use this solution to match some documents or spreadsheets, to match data from one spreadsheet with another, and to download and load invoices.

We also use it for an approval flow.

The most valuable features of this solution are the automation interface and the RPA automation.

The BPM component needs improvement.

Microsoft doesn't have certification training for Microsoft Power Automate, like other solutions such as UiPath, Kofax, and Automation Anywhere. All of these products have certification training available.

Power Automate is part of a suite called Power Platform.

Power Automate can integrate into a business intelligence component like Power BI, a flow component like Flow, and a bot component like Virtual Agents. 

Power Automate can make that cross to these components for better results of all the data that the client wants to see, and wants to automate.

I have been working with this solution for almost two years.

It's very stable, it doesn't have any crashes. 

The only issue is when we don't have an internet connection, it crashed because it's a cloud solution and not on-premises.

It has many connectors to other vendors or other components or other programs that make the solution scalable.

It is very easy to deploy with other vendors like Power Automate versus SAP. You can connect SAP with Power Automate very easily and extract information from the SAP environment.

It's a scalable solution.

Our clients are medium-sized companies. We have anywhere from 16 to 100 users.

Microsoft has the team to analyze every incident. In my experience, they have teams that can process incidents for my clients.

I am satisfied with technical support.

The initial setup was easy and it took a week or two weeks to deploy.

We have a team of two or three people to deploy and maintain this solution.

Our clients also evaluated UiPath and Automation Anywhere.

UiPath and Automation Anywhere are leaders in Gartner Magic Quadrant. Microsoft is the challenger. 

Our clients are aware of these evaluations.

I would recommend this solution to others, but first, they should evaluate it. Do a PoC of the tool and evaluate the business purpose. Review the results before making the purchase.

In the beginning, Power Automate was called Flow, and it was very basic to easy to manage. During the last year, there have been many improvements from Microsoft that have taken it to the next level and can compete with UiPath and Automation Anywhere.

I would rate Microsoft Power Automate an eight out of ten.

We are using Power Automate to send notifications when working with items in SharePoint. It is used to send notifications when a document is moved or needs to be approved. When a document needs to be approved in SharePoint, we send a notification to the user who needs to approve that document. I also use Power Automate to create a work item in another system, such as Azure DevOps.

I like Power Automate because it is very easy to use for users who don't have IT knowledge.

They can improve the description of errors and provide more details. Sometimes, when I receive an error, I can't understand what is wrong.

It would be useful to have a desktop version to modify or edit workflows. Its scalability can also be better.

I have been using this solution for five months.

It is stable.

It is scalable, but its scalability can be better. We have 10 to 20 users of this solution.

We have a contract with Microsoft for premium support. We have support all the time, and they are good.

Its initial setup is easy. The deployment duration depends on the complexity of the deployment. It can take a week or a month.

To know about the best practices for this solution and how to make it more secure, I would advise others to read the information on the web.

I would rate Microsoft Power Automate a seven out of ten.

We are using it for simple invoice management processing. We are using it for just storing documents with some workflows attached.

It is Microsoft. So, you get the integration capability.

The connectors and the integration capability can be improved. Microsoft RPA is a growing platform, and it is not yet particularly mature.

We just started to use Microsoft Power Automate. It has been a couple of weeks.

We haven't used it on a major scale at this stage. We're at the start of the journey. We have around 100 users.

Their technical support is okay.

Its initial setup was straightforward. It is a Microsoft product, so it is as simple as it can get as long as you've got the right licenses and permissions.

We use a third-party Microsoft partner. We have two developers for its deployment.

We are just using the free products at the moment. We are using the ones that come with the license that we have got.

We evaluated Automation Anywhere as RPA. We chose Microsoft Power Automate because Microsoft is part of our strategic solution. We've just implemented Dynamics, and that's why we started to investigate this solution.

I would recommend this solution. We are just at the start of our journey, and we are trying to understand its true capabilities. We plan to keep using this solution. We'll look for use cases.

I would rate Microsoft Power Automate an eight out of ten.