Power Automate
Power Automate
Power Automate
Power Automate is a tool inbuilt with Microsoft 365, which automates tasks between various
services to collect data. It was introduced by Microsoft in the year 2015. It is a software tool
that provides the ability to automate workflows between various apps and services to boost
productivity.
Power Automate
Power Apps
Power BI
3. How many main pillars are there in Power Automate, and which are they?
Automated at scale
Smart automation
Accelerated productivity
Power Automate is mainly used in the API automation cloud and internal API services. On the
other hand, a desktop Power Automate is used in UI automation of Windows, web, terminal
apps, etc.
Cloud Flows: These flows are used when automation needs to be triggered either instantly,
automatically, or via a predefined plan.
Business Process Flows: It helps and provides a guide to the users by breaking their scheduled
tasks into different parts. It helps to define steps to follow in order to reach the desired
outcome.
Action: Whenever the trigger is invoked, the action will start its task.
Conditions: Conditions are the predetermined logical set that instructs the cloud flow to
perform actions based on those logical sets.
RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation which is used to automate manual and redundant
tasks. Some benefits of using an RPA are:
No Coding: Working with an RPA doesn’t require any knowledge of coding. A user only needs to
understand the working flow of an RPA.
Easy to operate: It is easy to automate tasks using an RPA, as there is no need for a coding
background. Automating tasks can simply be done by dragging and dropping them into the
systems.
More Accurate and lesser time: Computer and Machines automates task with given rules and
regulations. Therefore, they minimize human error and complete the task properly in lesser
time.
Cost-effective: Using an RPA, the manual and repetitive tasks are done in a short time. Thus, we
can reduce the workforce and save the cost.
9. What is BPM?
BPM stands for Business Process management. It is a holistic tech that contains different
software to boost business efficiency. It removes bottlenecks for shorter cycles and streamlines
business processes. BPM aims to improve business goals by reengineering underlying tasks and
driving central tools. In short, BPM is a business process management technique.
1 RPA stands for Robotics Process Automation. BPM stands for Business Process Management.
2 It is a technology that automates repetitive and BPM is a holistic tech that encloses various
manual tasks and processes. software to increase business efficiency.
3 RPA configures bots/robots to do repetitive and BPM detects and streamlines the business process
manual tasks. Thus reducing the time and and destroys the bottlenecks for shorter cycles.
workload.
4 RPA is a software technology approach for BPM is a management approach for business
Sr. RPA BPM
No.
5 RPA incorporates automation completely. BPA may or may not incorporate automation
fully.
Yes, there are some prebuild AI models available in Power Automate. These models include
language detection, sentiment analysis, text recognition, text translation, business card reader,
and ID reader models.
12. What is the difference between Power Automate Flow Designer and Power Automated Console?
1 Flow Designer is a set of tools for Power Automate Console is a desktop interface.
desktops.
2 A Flow Designer contains all the tools to It is the central interface of Power Automate for desktops
design and debug a desktop flow. through which you can edit or create flows.
3 You can change the variables using Flow You can rename, delete and run existing flows through
Designer. Power Automated Console.
Action Pane
Workspace (includes Main and Subflows)
Variable pane
Errors pan
Images pane
UI Elements pane
14. Which are the standard variable data type present in Power Automate?
Numeric Value
Text Value
Boolean Value
List
Data Table
Data Row
Folder
File
15. What do you mean by subflows, and what are their benefits?
Subflows are groups of actions within a desktop flow. Every flow has the Main subflow, which is
executed when a desktop flow starts. Apart from the Main subflow, every other subflow may
be invoked using the Run subflow action. Partitioning subflows helps to increase the
modularity, readability, and flexibility of automation.
UI elements are used in most UI and browser automation tasks. They help to interact and
identify specific elements on Windows and websites. These elements are used in UI flows to
automate tasks.
Some Common UI elements are:
Buttons
Radio buttons
Checkboxes
Dropdown List
Table/Grid
UI Flow Services are Windows-based service that runs to make a browser automated. By
default, it starts automatically and runs the UI Flow services during installation. It supports
desktop connectivity to the Power Automate cloud environment directly or indirectly through
an on-premises data gateway.
These policies are implemented in Power Automate administration. By default, there is no Data
Loss Prevention policy. A user needs to establish a DLP policy to avoid data leakage through
connectors.DLP policies are used to secure the flow group as per the business actions. Thus, all
non-business activities are not associated with Power Automate policies.
As the name suggests, a process advisor guides the user to understand the business
environment properly. Thus, the user can optimize and operate the process better. Process
advisor helps to find automation opportunities using task and process mining capabilities.
20. State the difference between task mining and process mining.
1 It enables users to evaluate their business It enables users to take event data from their
Sr. Task mining Process mining
No.
performance by monitoring user action records. system records and observe the tasks of their
organization.
2 Task mining helps in gaining insights from data and Process mining helps in pinpointing automation
identifying tasks that can be automated. opportunities and addressing performance.
3 Task mining primarily focuses on data related to Process mining relies on event or system logs in
individual tasks, such as keystrokes and interaction order to analyze business processes.
with system apps.
An Open SQL connection action is used to connect a database with the Power Automate
desktop. In the Open SQL connection action, we can choose the database provider or use the
connecting string to provide all necessary system details like server name, database name,
username, and password.
Desktop flow errors usually occur whenever the whole system or application changes. We can
fix desktop flow errors by using Power Automate to fix data formatting or events properly.
23. Can you tell me the different methods to export a desktop flow?
We can directly share the flow with permission from the co-owner and the user by using the
Power Automate portal directly.
Any solution which controls the desktop flow can also be exported.
24. State some types of loops in Power Automate with their functionality.
In Power Automate, a loop is a control to automate actions. They help execute repetitive
activities or tasks within some iterations. Following are some examples of Power Automate
loops:
Do until loop: As the name suggests, this loop repeats a set of actions until the specified
condition is achieved. You can use this loop whenever you want a task iterating until you reach
a specific outcome.
Apply to each loop: Apply to each loop work just like the for each loop in arrays. It iterates over
a collection of items to perform specific actions.
Logs are helpful in order to track and troubleshoot the errors present in our system. Some ways
to check the logs in Power Automate are:
Run history: Power Automate has a run history tab through which we can look at the run
history of our flows. It will provide us with the data history of the past 28 days. Users can only
access and download the first 100 runs based on the type of filter chosen.
Session details: This method enables us to look for any error in our system. It is helpful to look
for authentication errors while you are working with connectors that require authentication.
You can view session details by clicking the session details in the connection tab. There is an
ellipsis symbol next to the connection name in the connection tab to view the session details
tab.
Audit logs: The audit logs give access to the user history if you are working with Microsoft 365
tenant.
26. Explain AI builders in short.
An AI builder is used to add AI capabilities and models to make automation optimized. It allows
us to use artificial intelligence to speed up and improve business performance. AI builders
provide prebuilt AI models. Thus we don’t need to gather and clean the data to build and train
the model. AI builder allows to train, build, and publish AI models without writing any code.
27. What is an exception in Power Automate? How can we handle this exception?
Exceptions are unexpected circumstances and issues that might occur during a run flow. They
are caused as a result of miss handling of events. Some reasons which may raise exceptions are
system failures, wrong input values, unpredictable output, and inconvenient resources.
Exceptional handling is a mechanism to handle and recovers this exception.
You can try a few methods to handle these exceptions, like retrying the same action, setting the
variables again, etc.
28. What is a connection reference in Power Automate? How can we create a connection reference in
Power Automate?
In Power Automate, connection reference is used to provide secure storage and management
of authentication credentials for connectors and APIs. You need to sign in with your account
credentials in order to create a connection for a connector or an API. It allows you to store your
credentials securely and reference them in your flow in a protected way.
Navigate to the Data. > Connection Reference tab. > Click the New Connection Reference
button. > Choose a connector or API of your choice. > Enter the authentication details. > Save.
29. Explain pagination in Power Automate. How can you implement pagination in Power Automate?
In Power Automate, pagination is a method to break large data sets into smaller parts. This
helps to prevent timeouts whenever we work with APIs that return a large number of items.
Pagination helps the workflows to handle large data in a scalable and efficient manner. Power
Automate contains “Top Count” and “Skip Count” arguments in the “Get Items” action to
achieve pagination.
You can implement pagination using a loop that iterates over each data page and processes the
result. A variable can be used to store the info, such as current page number, total items
retrieved, etc. You can use exception handling to handle errors that might occur during
pagination at runtime. A few examples of such errors are invalid data input, timeouts, etc.
Power Automate provides us with some inbuilt features for monitoring purposes. Some
methods through which we can monitor and analyze flow performance are:
Run history: It enables users to view the history of their previous flow. It shows details such as
start time, duration, input and output data, error messages, etc.
Analytics feature: It provides the performance chart of your flow over time. You can also view
metrics such as run duration, run count, and success rate.
Usage feature: It gives the usage metrics of your flow, which includes the number of runs and
average run duration. You can also use a flow or a connector to view usage data in Power
Automate.
Notification feature: This feature provides email notifications to the user about flow failure or
other activities.
Resource health: The “Resource Health” feature helps you to diagnose and monitor the health
of Power Automate services.