Microsoft Power Automate Room for Improvement

Gowtham J - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate - Analytics at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

AI-enabled voice recognition features could be included in the product. It could help us develop the entire listing with one click. It could involve importing YAML models to enhance the tool's ability to comprehend and respond to user instructions.

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Ray Ozone - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at BHFE solutions

They've already improved it, but I guess a testing suite would be nice to be able to test your automations in real time.

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Shaik Abdul Waseem - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager, Robotic Process Automation at Deloitte

There should be a comprehensive or enterprise level of application to provide the cognitive AI, and there should be orchestration so that I can control all the robots on one station. The other tools are currently providing these features. So, hyper-automation integration should be done, and it should have cognitive AI.

One drawback of WinAutomation is that it doesn't work properly on the Internet Explorer or Edge browser. On the older version of Internet Explorer or Edge, it sometimes doesn't give proper selectors while selecting the fields. I had a lot of difficulty in that area, and I want them to improve that in WinAutomation.

They should have a comprehensive platform to help the community. They should have blogs. They had a community before, but they discontinued that. Microsoft has developed a community for any support required for its product. WinAutomation should also have that.

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Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Power Automate
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Power Automate. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
MP
Business Analyst at Icdc

There is room for improvement in web scraping. Specifically, automatic selectors that allow me to select parts of a website could be more adaptable. Currently, if you select one element, it only takes some parameters that might change in the future. This can cause issues because the bot may stop running without fine manual tuning, especially if the website also has active tags loaded.

In the next release, it could be useful to integrate data tables directly into the spreadsheet without having to go through a loop. Integrated databases could be a good addition.

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Anupama Gopi - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation Architect at Brillio

Workloads could be optimized.

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Mohit Vohra - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at Arevpay

More OCR and AI capabilities are needed to improve the solution. Other solutions have better features, such as Blue Prism and UiPath.

In a future release, they should add the running of multiple clients on a single machine. This is a critical feature. If not it requires multiple machines to run operations.

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MD
management leader at International SOS

They can provide a deeper level of feedback about running processes. When I compare it to Blue Prism, the control room has slightly less information about the running processes and possible errors. I'm not a pro, so I am not entirely sure if this is a core feature of the product or if it is because of the way our partners have developed it or set it up. 

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KP
CEO at RnT.ai

There are frequent version updates and that impacts different algorithms so we have to adjust our code. 

The solution should include connectors and DevOps capabilities with its standard package. 

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Mapkar Mohtasim - PeerSpot reviewer
Design Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

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. 

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SM
Owner at maricau consulting

As for what could be improved in this solution: I tried to do some automation on Microsoft Dynamics AX and it was not successful. The integration with Dynamics AX was not really a success, but for the rest, I don't have problems with.

Some automation features on some programs did not work smoothly, so that's a negative feature. That might be solved now with the newer version because Microsoft took over Softomotive. I hope they have improved that feature and that it now works better with their own software.

I'm not really missing features I'd like to see on the next release because we only use it for a really small target area. We just use it for reporting. It's not like we're using it extensively on test automation and other similar processes, but I know we can do a lot more with this solution.

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RS
Head of IT/Department leader at Apoteksverk

We are looking for more data integration with various resources. Our plan is to have a deeper look at it in November when we are in Seattle for the two conferences. We would like to consolidate the data from various sources and extract it in order to analyze it. We used an RPA tool and looked at the ML part of it as well. 

I would like to see better data integration with different sources. 

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SC
Senior Consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

On the governance side, there isn't enough documentation on how to govern Power Automate. People just build bespoke automation, which then becomes a problem point for different companies. You might have heard lots of horror stories about Power Automate where people didn't develop according to the standards, and then it came back and gave them grief. There should be more documentation on governance and how to control it at the enterprise level. 

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Sai Kumar Reddy - PeerSpot reviewer
RPA Lead at Sparsh Communications Pvt. Ltd

They should provide the connectors in Power Automate Desktop like Power Automate Cloud. Microsoft is already working on it. They released a SharePoint connector in Power Automate Desktop as a preview. So like that, we have hundreds of connectors in Power Automate Cloud required to be incorporated into Power Automate Desktop. For example, we need an exchange server to connect to an email account in Power Automate Desktop. It isn't easy to create a connection. It is simple with Outlook, but it is challenging with IMAP or POP-related settings. While using Power Automate Cloud, we log in to create the connection. But, while using Power Automate Desktop, we have to provide the server details instead of just logging in.

They should include a custom plugin feature so that we can add our custom connections. 

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JR
Administrator de Costos Region SAC at a construction company with 10,001+ employees

I haven't come across any downsides to the solution.

We'd like to see even more free courses to help people learn to automate smarter. 

For countries in our region, it's not very well known. Microsoft has to do a better job of advertising it and how it can help businesses so that it becomes more well-known and widely used. 

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Syarifah Atiyah Syed Hisham - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Executive PMO at Perkeso

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.

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VE
End User Computing Manager at Actuant

Power Automate has a lot to do. What I've seen, for example, is that UiPath seems to be very efficient and you don't need to have any sort of training. With Power Automate, training is needed. You need to know how to work with pretty advanced queries. They need to add more training materials to their offering. 

It's not as user-friendly as a solution such as UiPath, which is really easy to use. 

Creating unattended bots is quite expensive. 

Having the connectors with multiple platforms would be great. They have connectors for SAP, yet they don't have a connector for the Oracle ERP, for example, or Oracle HCM. They should come up with multiple connectors where it would ease integrating with any other tool, rather than having to create a custom connector and trying to integrate with a third-party tool. UiPath offers multiple connectors and it is very useful. It makes our life very simple. On the fly, we should be able to integrate and talk to the other applications directly without struggling.

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DM
Chargé de mission Transformation & Lean at Otis Elevator Company

There is room for improvement in the collaboration between the digital team and the business partners because Power Automate is not an easy tool to use. Our business partner does not have a clue about how to use Power Automate so it would be great to have an easy user interface that business partners can understand.

There are a few limitations to the tool. For example, you can't have 100,000 interactions in an hour. I would like to see that worked out. 

It would also be good if Microsoft contacted customers directly about building their own connectors. 

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Deepak Thomas - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Standard Bank South Africa

I think the speed of the application could be improved. If you're looking at Power BI dashboards, for example, the back-end processing is fine, but when you look at it from a UI point of view, which is what the client sees, the speed of execution could be improved. 

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CA
General Manager at Consilio

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.

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CP
Senior Product Manager Data Science at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

Their connector to Oracle or premium data sets that aren't Microsoft would often fail for me. The information given back about why it failed wasn't always robust to understand how to fix it and why it happened.

Sometimes, Power Automate's flow would turn off when it got fired incorrectly or misfired, but we didn't always get a notification of when it was turned off, and that was a problem.

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EP
Head of business transformation and digitalization at Apple

The product should improve its RPA capabilities.

The product should add AI capabilities.

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Nilesh Gosavi - PeerSpot reviewer
Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM Developer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Microsoft Power Automate is limited if we want to create a complex flow because we have to split the log into two flows.

The licensing cost is high and has room for improvement.

In a future release of Microsoft Power Automate, I would like to request the addition of a synchronous action, which would allow us to choose whether we want the solution to immediately synchronize any changes we make, for example, in an Excel document through SharePoint.

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MK
Advisory Council Member at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We expect Microsoft Power Automate to work like any other RPA software, but at present, it is fairly lax, especially in the RPA space. We have a very limited set of use cases today for Microsoft Power Automate. Microsoft should make it a full-featured RPA product like other solutions that we use, such as Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and UiPath. This is predominantly the area that they need to improve on. 

Microsoft Power Automate is quite complex to use as well, especially if you want to do advanced workflows or advanced automation. The regular simple workflows are quite easy and straightforward, but the moment you want to do something complex, it is almost impossible for one of our employees to work on it.

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WilliamBowers - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at Vertical Symmetry

There is a lot that could be done to improve the product. With debugging, sometimes things don't work because of timing, and just learning how to do that.

We were able to use a lot of JavaScript in that product using the desktop version, which was a huge help in terms of speed. 

The debugging tools require improvement as well as the monitoring which goes along with it. 

When things don't work as they should, it's usually because you're dealing with third-party websites. The importance of timing cannot be overstated. These are the areas that need to be improved.

One of the issues was that there wasn't a lot of documentation when we first started because Microsoft had purchased the product and began integrating it.

We started when Microsoft's product still used Selenium, and then they bought this product and switched over to it, which is a much better product. However, it is a third-party product. It has not yet been fully integrated.

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Ayush S - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation Developer at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The tool must be more stable. It should also provide more integration with other applications.

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AhmedRamy - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at TMentors,

Microsoft could offer more AI education and training.

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TR
Head of Digital Transformation at Zaact

While working with non-structured data (like logs and user tracking information that usually fits the criteria of big data), all the data sources must pass by a data quality process via any ETL tool before linking and publishing any information to the automation workflows and forms. This process is important to standardize all the content and format types for the columns and fields in the tables that will be used to show data in the front end.

 The ability to read non-structured data and provide insights into how to sanitize and organize data automatically is something that I'd like to be covered in the next releases.

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AG
Digital Strategy Manager at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

Microsoft shouldn't charge extra for the database license if you want to store the data in the database during the trial. We wanted to have a historical trend of the data, and we started with the trial version of the tool. The database license is not included with the trial version, and you have to purchase it separately. Because we had a budget constraint, we had to pull all the information manually from the system, massage it, and push it to the dashboard. About two months ago, we have upgraded to the full-fledged version in which the database is integrated. The database license should be there in the trial version, but they have totally decoupled it. They should have provided a bundle, at least for the trial version, so that once a person or a firm gets a sense of it, they can start building. It might be because they wanted to sell additional licenses or premium licenses, and that's why they have added it in the premium version.

It should have more cognitive features. Automation Anywhere and UiPath are different because they have cognitive functionality plus intelligent automation. The cognitive functionality is currently not there in Microsoft Power Automate. It is just for workflow automation and basic bot-level tasks. It should have more cognitive features, which probably will be launched in a couple of years.

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Khshsh Khhdh - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Director at MIT ESP

We use the connector to the cloud, and we have noted that sometimes there are delays. We've seen some scenarios hang. Sometimes there are issues with security policies within the company. Some parts get blacked. There are some drawbacks when we use it connected to the cloud. We need to convince clients to open some parts. This is often an issue that originates from the company itself, not Power Automate

Sometimes when we work with Microsoft Excel, the process is not much faster. The automation doesn't speed up as much as we would hope as they go through cells one by one. If it is a time-sensitive activity, that might be an issue and should be improved. 

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PB
IT consultant at Secoptrial

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.

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CP
Architecte Entreprise Collaboration at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Its licensing model should be improved. The pricing should be more visible and transparent. When you consume services, there are too many criteria to figure out how much it is going to cost you to use the product to its full extent.

It should also support visual process editing, which is a standard feature for BPMN 2.0 compliance. They should improve the visual designer.

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Saman Guruge - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer at MIT ESP

When it comes to cloud computing, there are many limitations when dealing with large amounts of data. For example, if we are managing more than 10,000 or 1 million records, the API layer has some redundancies. These limitations take a lot of time to process. For example, if we have 10,000 records, our cloud workflow will take more than three hours to complete. Clearly, there is room for improvement in the workflow process.

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SM
Technical Analyst at Miral

There have been some challenges. We have struggled to take advantage of the power of the program due to the complexity of the reports we want to send to Microsoft. This includes client complaints, large discrepancies, and delays from data centers to solve the issues. As a result, we have faced both advantages and disadvantages. After some time, I believe Microsoft may have made changes to the backend that we are not aware of. This could cause issues, and the client has experienced instability in the current process. To address this, we need to make sure that any changes to the backend are documented and communicated clearly to avoid any potential issues.

The technical support has room for improvement.

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CV
Digital Manager (CDO/CIO) at AD Retail

I heard from my team that it's quite immature. If you compare it against Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, it seems there is less experience in the product. The desktop version of the on-premise solution seems as if it's not as mature as Automation Anywhere.

We need a more powerful desktop option.

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YW
Department Manager at SME Digital Transformation Department at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

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.

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HK
Process Specialist - Operational Excellence at a government with 51-200 employees

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.

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Meindert Van Der Galiën - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Software Developer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

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.

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German Campos - PeerSpot reviewer
Pre-Sales Manager (Peruvian Branch) at Global hitss

The tool should improve its price. 

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DK
CEO at BigxData

The UI of the solution is not so good. Power BI's reporting functionality should be improved. 

The next release should include more functionalities and better reporting.

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Abhimanyu Thite - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at Globant

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.

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VS
IT Team Lead at Kantar

There is definitely a lot of enhancement that Microsoft can incorporate into Power Automate. For example, we have quite a lot of .NET applications that we created. These are custom applications that we created using something like VB.NET or C#.NET. These are obviously applications that are not published by Microsoft. I would like it if Microsoft could enhance the capabilities of Power Automate to allow users to connect to other tools and applications in some way. That will help us create better processes without making them more complicated or having to use another automation tool. Right now, we have to use UiPath to help us make processes such as the one described. I have not seen any way that Power Automate can do that type of integration. So if we could get better integration with non-Microsoft solutions as a feature for Power Automate, that will be very useful.  

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AsfandyarKhan - PeerSpot reviewer
Process Automation Engineer at Automation Catalyst

They should improve the solution's features for data and process mining. It is easy to run small automated tasks but difficult to build large complex flows. Also, it is challenging to scale it horizontally across multiple branches.

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SP
Associate Director at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

There should be more transparency when it comes to which features accompany the pricing, as there appear to be hidden features of which I am not aware. 

There are factors we must consider when scaling up, such as whether we are using full or partial features. Were I to buy an additional premium, another license, I would lack clarity what I could expect to get in exchange or whether the features would help me to scale up. This is why better transparency is important. 

Scalability can be improved and this is why it is key to know how the features can be integrated into the scalable solution.

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SW
VP at Speridian Technologies

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. 

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AM
Sr. Software Engineer at Globant

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. 

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AM
Project Manager at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

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.

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VT
Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

In terms of issues, I haven't had any until now because automation requires you to complete a task in less time. These products have some limitations, such as the need to build some custom controls in PCF or use the JSON format. There are some limitations, but it's a mature Microsoft product, and we can do almost everything.

Third-party systems can also be added. We can create a beautiful dashboard if another software provides open APIs. Even when discussing complete Power platforms, four components must be mentioned: Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, and Power BI. When we use all four, we can create a complete solution, whether it's a visualization dashboard, automated chatbots, or the rest, which we can achieve using Power Apps. Power Apps is also divided into three types of apps: canvas apps, model-driven apps, and data-driven apps. Another option is to use open-source, which refers to open projects known as portals. So we can actually do the same thing. When someone is creating a website, we can do the same thing here in the portal. So the things we can do with Power Apps are the same as the things we can do with the Power platform.

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EE
IT Manager at Melones Oil Terminal

It would be good to have some kind of on-premises solution for BPMN users, but I don't think Microsoft will ever go back to the on-premises solution. They all train their clients to use their online services.

It is easy, but it doesn't follow the industry-wide standards. I can only use the processes that Microsoft gives us. I can't map a business process by using other standards or notations, such as Business Process Management (BPM). I have to use whatever Microsoft gives us. I would like to have support for some standards because if we decide to use another BPM tomorrow, we will have to remap everything in notation to transfer from this solution. This is the only block or obstacle that I see in using this solution. It is closed in its infrastructure.

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MD
Process and Performance Improvement Consultant at a consultancy with self employed

When this solution is sold to the clients there is no automated process in place as many other RPA products have. I have to fully understand the product so that I can go over the processes with the client and all staff they may have. 

It would be good to record all of the processes and automate them.

The Kryon product has that option, where when you are doing something automatically it can record it on an AI interface. If they could have that feature included, it would benefit the client.

They need to come up with a little more on AI and precision discovery path to be able to record the processes.

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AC
Director at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

The user access level and user account part of this product needs to be developed.  For example, if I'm a line manager and I have multiple approvals that are automated then I can't log into a dashboard and see all of my requests. I would like to have a user account so that the staff can see all of their requests, including the status and other details for each one, on the dashboard.

This solution does not work well with external people who are outside of the organization, like suppliers. It needs support for external email addresses. It would be difficult to do a supplier onboarding with Power Automate, whereas you could do it with Nintex, and this is a big drawback.

I would like to be able to set security and permissions on who can see request-specific details.

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BM
Senior Manager - RPA & Transition at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

WinAutomation's OCR integrator should be improved. 

View full review »
OO
Senior Programmer Analyst at Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada

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.

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PB
IT Service Manager - Productivity and Identity at a logistics company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The license cost could be better.

The PMU connectors we can use cost extra, and the RPA also costs extra. So hopefully they can let go of that way of working and allow us to use the entire tool in a better way. That's what we're looking for.

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EG
Principal Consultant at The Bluestone Corp

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.

View full review »
GS
System Engineer at Accenture AI

The solution is not actually satisfying the complex programs that we want to execute. We're looking for alternatives right now.

Currently, Power Automate has, if I'm not wrong, about 500 actions per workflow, and my team is not satisfied as they want something very complex that automates a process end to end. That would need a lot of iteration and loops being implemented. The 500 steps in a workflow don't seem to serve our end goals.

The solution doesn't integrate very well with non-Microsoft products.

View full review »
HM
CI and Automation Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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

View full review »
BM
Senior Manager - RPA & Transition at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

It should be more stable, and their technical support should be faster.

It should also have more integration with tools from other vendors, such as SAP and Oracle, and technology partners, such as Salesforce.

View full review »
RE
Director, Product Management at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

They can build more templates and more connectivity with other platforms. They can provide a more user-friendly way to connect with other platforms. They have their own in-built plugins for certain third-party vendors, but there are still a lot of third-party vendors that are not there.

View full review »
HH
Digital Innovation Manager at a consumer goods company with 10,001+ employees

For simple use cases, it is easy to use but as soon as it becomes complex then it doesn't fulfill the requirements.

It doesn't have any OCR capabilities. It doesn't really work with our ERP system, where we can log into the ERP system and have a robot updating it directly.

Microsoft is early on in this game and not really very far yet. They just need to mature their solutions.

In the next release, I would like to see a centrally-governed system, where you can access fully automated processes. This would include the ability to connect to other systems and log into them.

I would like to see it as a centrally managed solution.

View full review »
Manjula Mahesh - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Learning and Development at Acronotics

The initial setup is complex and has room for improvement.

View full review »
SK
Co-Founder at Beta Edge Technology Limited

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.

View full review »
LN
Solutions Architect at Alfapeople A/S

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.

View full review »
SR
Consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

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.

View full review »
SF
Digital and E-Business Analyst at a construction company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Sometimes it can be difficult to share flows for multiple users to edit. So, it is a potential area of improvement.

For additional features, it would be helpful to have a more collaborative building of flows.

View full review »
KD
Director Of Services at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The solution should offer similar features that users can easily access if they use Automation Anywhere or UiPath.

It would be great if it was able to integrate more with various other platforms. It would make development easier. 

View full review »
Bryan Senter - PeerSpot reviewer
Strategic Alliance Manager, Public Sector at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The barrier to entry is low. The downside is the lack of orchestration and supplemental tools such as capturing existing processes and using them to build out.

View full review »
SK
Technology Lead at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

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. 

View full review »
VS
Practice Principal - Cloud and Automation at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

This solution has many areas that have room for improvement.

There are many features that are lacking compared to other Automation tools.

There is an inability to group different variables. When you have to establish all of your variables, you can't group them all.

The notifications when there are failures need improvement, as well as being able to start a process midstream.

The licensing is convoluted in understanding what license is needed.

There's just not enough error handling natively, so you have to build in a lot of workarounds for error handling. 

When compared to other workflow automation tools out there, it's just not as mature.

View full review »
MA
Smart Automation & RPA Tech Lead at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

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.

View full review »
CA
General Manager at Consilio

The solution could offer more specific training. There should be more examples of what the functions can do and more instructions and explanations to the process.

View full review »
DK
Solutions Expert at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

The OCR part or scanning of documents is missing.

View full review »
RK
Chief Information Technology Officer at BMC Solutions

The solution could have more integration with different platforms. 

The licensing price is too high. 

View full review »
FA
Strategy Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

One of the frustrating things is that you can't use a lot of connectors without having a premium license. I would like them to increase the AI capacity. Currently they are using AI Builder which is significantly reduced because it's based on models which are not similar and it's really narrow. Surface information, like going through Citrix, would also be good.

View full review »
Ahmed Walid - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Digital transformation analyst at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Microsoft Power Automate's basic activities are not strong. 

View full review »
RA
Business consultant, Head of RPA Solutions at Bsynchro Sal

During their merger, some key functions were eliminated which no longer allows it to run independently from the cloud as a standalone for other companies. For example, options to schedule and trigger have been removed. It would be nice to have these capabilities back.

The flow and the connectivity between databases and so on is a bit complex as well.

View full review »
SC
Senior Associate at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

One area of improvement needed for the solution is regarding the cloud source versus desktop flows. The desktop flows are not as absent, and there are other limits in features when it comes to comparison between the two solutions that Power Automate provides. So perhaps the desktop could also start including features like Connectors and Builder because these are the more frequently used. But both of the tools have their own utility. 

It's evolving well. I have seen Power Automate eight months ago and have seen it now. So there is definitely a big step ahead. It's improved and it's rather helpful.

There is one feature I'd like to see added in the next release. Their OCR capabilities are not as evolved as the other tools. They do allow some AI Builder methods to achieve that. But in the desktop tool, the OCR functionality is not very useful. Everything has to be done on our text-based outcome. I'm sure they're already working on it.

View full review »
KB
Lead Consultant at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Things need to be improved with respect to RPA kinds of solutions and it requires a level of stabilization that is currently lacking. 

View full review »
BS
Module Lead at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

View full review »
MH
Training Manager at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

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.

View full review »
SC
Co-Founder & Director - Technology at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

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. 

View full review »
SF
Digital and E-Business Analyst at a construction company with 5,001-10,000 employees

To improve the product, I think it would be great to see even more connectors available out-of-the-box and more maturity in that direction. I would also like to see some readiness for creating test and production environments so that you can differentiate which environment is you are working in.  

As far as additional features I am not sure what could really improve the product. It could maybe do with some more insights like triggered alerts.  

View full review »
LO
Robotic Process Automation developer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

I would like more integration with other tools. It integrates well with Microsoft products, but there should be more integration with other platforms and tools, such as chatbots.

View full review »
GS
Technical Lead & Consultant at Tech Mahindra Limited

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.

View full review »
DK
Software Assets Manager at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

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.

View full review »
OA
Business Application Group Manager at OBASE

Sometimes, Microsoft changes the game rules, and the free tools are no longer free, which makes it too hard to explain to customers. It is a SaaS service, so the cost is calculated based on the execution hours. However, we don't know the background of this cost because we cannot touch the infrastructure. They can be more open to developers or customers about this. The infrastructure part must be open for the customers.

View full review »
JJ
Student at a educational organization with 5,001-10,000 employees

I've had some issues with the stability.

View full review »
NM
Software Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees

There are some limitations when it comes to automation with Excel.

Better support is needed for building custom components on top of ProcessRobot.

View full review »
RE
Director - Analytics and Data at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

I would like to see more integration with the desktop application, and on-premise server as well as the SQL database. That would be really nice.

It would be great if you could integrate outside of Microsoft environments.

The initial setup can be a bit tricky if it is a complex environment.

The product needs a clear integration between the UI recorder and the steps that you do and the codes and the qualification that you do on the RPA there.

View full review »
JP
Safety, occupational health and environment at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

There are some gaps and a few areas of the solution that are still a bit complicated and confusing.

I've had issues with reordering columns. When I tried to do it, it seemed to take a long time, and then, later, it gave me some kind of error. 

View full review »
SR
Operations Leader - Global Automation at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

We are looking to see more features implemented there are already available in UiPath or Automation Anywhere. This is one of the main drawbacks.

View full review »
GS
Technical Lead & Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The solution's recommendation feature needs improvement. So many times it fails, which tells us that although the hardware configuration and software configuration and the environment stay the same, we should expect the automation tool to recognize images correctly, but it does not. There have been issues in which it has failed, and it remains a concern. At times, it crashes, for some unknown reason. We avoid automating any complex automation processes. 

We find the solution to be not that user-friendly, and might be using the older version, which really did not have a lot of features, so my review is mostly based on the older version.

WinAutomation could work on a simpler process of providing a development of something that proactively tells us what is wrong in the code, because what is happening right now is that we make the scripting code in some other place and some other control, and we identify errors over there. We simply copy it to this control, which is not even providing any color-coding, or any other assistance to the developers. Copying it from elsewhere is necessary to pick up any errors with ease.

View full review »
TS
RPA/IA Solution Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It lacks a lot of functionality that other tools have. There should be queue management, and there should also be the capability to deal with a little bit more complex automation. If it had queue support and if it was capable of doing more complex automation, it would be a much better tool.

In terms of performance, it is a little bit slower with calculations than a typical Excel Macro, for example.

View full review »
BM
Senior Manager - RPA & Transition at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The solution lacks certain items.

I'm not really qualified for judging the solution. A developer could give better pros and cons. 

We would not miss Microsoft Power Automation that much. As still has a long way to cover tasks when it comes to the ease of use like UiPath, which is pretty user-centric.

The solution needs to improve its integration with SAP and Oracle models.

The solution's automation is still evolving and still has a way to go.

The solution could benefit from mirroring Oracle's use of videos and community forums to help users get acquainted with the product. It could use better online training and/or documentation.

View full review »
DL
RPA Developer at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees

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.  

View full review »
Girish Kumar. - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at Botmantra

WinAutomation is missing a lot of options that are available in UiPath. One limitation is that for logs, the only option is a CSV file. There is no option, for example, to work with an Excel file.

There is a limitation in setting up loops, where it does not support multiple conditions.

We would like to be able to write code, the way you can inside of UiPath.

View full review »
FL
Teamleader Robotic Process Automation at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

The licensing model is difficult to understand and is something that should be improved.

When you are implementing a project, it's quite difficult to comment on what it is that you are doing. For a simple project it is fast, but to have a better overview then it gets complicated.

I would like to see more integration with other products.

View full review »
MO
Information Technology and Services Individual Contributor at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

I need to have more integration capabilities from this solution. It's limiting us right now. Other solutions on the market are better in this regard. They need to step up and improve this aspect in future releases. 

View full review »
SN
Head of Data & Analytics at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

You do need to either get a bit of IT support or do a bit of coding in order to implement the solution successfully.

Something lacking is Microsoft Office plugin, however, it's my understanding that their Office plugin is out now or coming soon. We're just trying to understand the use case. 

If they can make it integrated into Microsoft's Office Suite, that would be great. It would be better than lining it up with the Office plugin application. I'm sure it exists in some form, however, maybe not for the mainstream things.

The solution is still maturing very quickly and it's going to take no time for this to be Enterprise RPA.

View full review »
HK
Process Specialist - Operational Excellence at a government with 51-200 employees

I would like to have chatbot assistance available, where you can open it and receive help on the spot. For example, if you are struggling in the middle of implementing a flow, you can easily communicate with the chatbot, perhaps providing the error message, and it will search for a resolution. In my case, I posted my error message on Google and saw that other people had similar problems. I was able to check the community platforms and I found the solution in one of the posts.

The documentation can be improved because although they do have a manual of about 500 pages, it does not cover all of the possible scenarios. It would be good to have one that covers different scenarios or different commands, provides basic knowledge about the commands, and even basics about JSON. Also, the user manual and learning guides that they have can be made more user-friendly.

View full review »
NW
Information Technology Consultant at Evolve

One of the challenges is dealing with OCR text recognition. They link out to Google, IBM, and Microsoft AI services for text recognition. This area needs to continue to improve because recognizing forms and what's on a form, and then when you try to translate that into information that you can use, is very difficult. I have not been able to make that work. I think that the technology is there, but it would require too much coding and it would be too much of an investment of time to make it work.

WinAutomation doesn't have the management abilities for remote management, but we are using Splashtop to access the device that is running the software.

In the next release, I would like to see form recognition added. AI form recognition for processing things like invoices and timesheets would be number one.

View full review »
GT
Chief Operating Officer at NGMROBOTICS LTD

At this time, I can't say the solution is lacking any features.

The solution could use some more advanced AI tools. It's one of the solution's only weaknesses.

View full review »
AY
Director, Km & Bpo Innovation at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

It should be faster and more user-friendly. 

View full review »
SA
Business Analyst at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

I think that the thing which needs the most improvement is really just their documentation. It should have better details of the processes. Right now it is on the lower end of the scale and does not have enough depth. So just adding more details and examples in the documentation would be helpful to users.  

It could really use some more capabilities with the OCR and UI functionality of the automation. Right now it is pretty good, but with that, it would be great and easier to use.  

View full review »
PK
Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

When comparing with Automation Anywhere, there are a couple of things that this product doesn't have. One of the major things is the key management system. It would be great if they improve this. Its documentation can also be improved.

View full review »
LN
Solutions Architect at Alfapeople A/S

The issue lies more in how you learn the solution. The information is very generalized. It could be extremely useful to have more specific information about how to use various features within the platform. The solution has a lot of moving parts and aspects that need to be understood. Making the training process easier would help people onboard faster.

The desktop interface is a little rough to manage. You can't view the bottoms or the menu or the characteristics of what you need to use. It's very unclear in the desktop application. That said, the cloud application it's more useful. It's much neater and more organized.

Their AI builder has improved, however, it could be interesting to look into how to build a project that can make projections about a task or a process. If that feature could be more user-friendly, that would be ideal. Right now, it's not very clear how to use it. Maybe a person that has more knowledge wouldn't be as confused. I'm not like a developer. I'd need it simplified for me.

View full review »
GT
Chief Operating Officer at NGMROBOTICS LTD

The availability could be a bit better.

Technical support needs to be able to respond quickly to queries. Right now, they are much too slow.

I'd like it if it were possible to have the solution as an on-premises installation, however, that is not possible. It only is available on the cloud.

View full review »
JT
President & CEO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Microsoft Power Automate could improve by offering recurring execution on the desktop.

View full review »
Girish Kumar. - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at Botmantra

Looping can be a bit tricky in Power Automate. In addition, the solution doesn't provide an option to view two to three conditions, you can only view one condition. It's not like that in UiPath. Deployment should be improved so that it integrates with WinAutomation. We can't write .NET code and we can't schedule the bot without using WinAutomation. If they could include that it would be helpful for our users. Right now we do the development in WinAutomation and later integrate with Power Automate.

View full review »
SG
Senior Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

It is mostly integrated with the Microsoft environment. Unlike UiPath, we cannot really use external tools with Microsoft Power Automate. There should be a possibility to integrate it with external tools or systems.

View full review »
DR
Technical Team Lead at emids

It would be helpful to have features that are fine-tuned for Microsoft products because most of our clients are using products like SharePoint and OneDrive.

The OCR functionality needs to be improved. We are not getting the same accuracy as other tools when reading things like PDFs.

View full review »
DH
CEO at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees

In the future, I would like to see more focus on AI and third-party integration.

Compared to other RPA solutions, there is a little bit of a feature gap.

View full review »
DH
CEO at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees

There is an RPA feature gap between this solution and other more mature products. UiPath is an example of another RPA solution that is more developed.

View full review »
SP
Chief Executive Officer at Rabbit and Tortoise Technology Solutions

It should work better for Angular websites, as it has a lot of problems. It is not able to read the data from them as expected. In general, it should work better with modern websites.

Scalability needs to be improved so that it can support multiple bots.

There used to be a Process Watch feature, but it is now gone and should be put back.

View full review »
OB
Application Support Specialist at a tech company with 1-10 employees

Power Automate is too complicated - it forces you to go through extra tasks instead of streamlining your workflow. In the next release, I would like InfoPath to be re-included.

View full review »
TD
Power Apps & Dynamics 365/CRM Team lead at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I had some experience in the past with the solution having some difficulties with large loads, it is already better but it could still be improved.

Another area that needs to be improved is when calculating the quotes of your API calls and flow steps, they are currently not available on the dashboards where you can follow. The API limits will be enforced at some point, at this point you should buy all the add-ons to extend them. This was promised by the end of last year, but it is still not added. Every community is waiting for when this is going to be inforced. It is important because it will contextually be a big step to understand the economics behind your flows and steps, etc., and how to do it more efficiently to save your API calls and steps. The question is, what is the real end cost of how much add-ons you will need to purchase.

In an upcoming release, it would be nice to see bigger integration of cloud and desktop flows.

View full review »
AT
SharePoint Online at Neskaa

It can have customizations like enterprise solutions. In the approval section, there should be an option to reassign approval to some other employee. It would be good if we are able to create custom tables by linking to an item, and there is an integration with the HTML table through HTTP calls or Swagger connectors.

View full review »
JT
President & CEO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

This solution should be more resilient, with robots more capable of recovering after an error.

I would like to see more native Microsoft integrations with cognitive solutions.

View full review »
AA
IT Manager at Funtocloud

More scripting capabilities could be included in Microsoft Power Automate.

View full review »
Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Power Automate
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Power Automate. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.