By Veronique LengelleThe name might be confusing for some. Is Power Automate Desktop the “desktop” version of Power Automate (cloud flows)? Well, not really. Their actions might have similarities, but they have a different purpose.
Power Automate (cloud flows)
The bread and butter of the Microsoft 365 eco-system when it comes to automation. Part of the Power Platform with Power Apps, Power Pages, and Power BI.
Power Automate is really good when used with SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Forms, and famously Outlook (as a few examples). As we define them “cloud flows“, it gives an indication of where Power Automate should used: for cloud-based applications.
Nowadays, a lot of applications or software offer an API (Application Programming Interface) to which Power Automate can connect to, either with built-in connectors or custom connectors you configure yourself. But what about legacy critical business applications with no API?
That’s where Power Automate Desktop comes in 😉
Power Automate Desktop (PAD)
If we compare other products like Excel or Word, we have the online & the desktop version of each. The online version is not equivalent in the sense that it doesn’t offer all the features compared to the desktop version. But in our case today, it goes even further; They have a different purpose!
PAD is used for automating tasks related to web, UI, or desktop (local) applications when APIs are not available.
How?
Power Automate Desktop is installed on Windows 11 computers, but you can download an advanced version depending on your needs: Install Power Automate.
If you’re familiar with Power Automate (cloud flows), opening PAD for the first time might seem daunting.
When creating your desktop flow, your “work” environment is divided in 3 parts:
- Actions panel
- Main canvas
- Variables panel
Learning
You drag & drop actions in the main canvas, configure each setting for that particular action, and build you flow. Keep in mind that you opened PAD in the first place because your workflows will, at some point, interact with local applications or maybe web scraping.
The learning curve when it comes to PAD is not necessary scary. A different interface doesn’t mean things are highly complex 😉
Like any automation process(es), you need to understand the logic, loops, conditions, and variables. If you’re already familiar with Power Automate (cloud flows) and/or PowerShell, you should be good to go.
Subflows
Subflows are a nice way to declutter your main flow. Use them for a piece of automation that you can reuse in your process (by calling the subflow). Going back to the PowerShell example, or other programming languages, we can see subflows like functions. It’ll also make your desktop flows easier to understand & troubleshoot.
Why PAD?
As mentioned before, Power Automate Desktop is for all sort of automation (desktop, web, UI), as well as form filling, data extraction, running scripts (yes!) and much more! 🚀
Another important feature is unattended automation. This means that you can run desktop flows on machines with no disruption. This is a game changer for large processes.
Real world scenario
Now, imagine that a particular process in your organisation takes a couple of hours for an employee to go though. This involves an external system, Excel files, PDFs, etc.
With PAD, this can be solved in a matter of minutes! ⌚ Using the built-in recorder, data extraction, tons of Excel actions available out-of-the-box, and EVEN uploading to SharePoint for good measure 😉
Can Power Automate and PAD work together?
Yes! There’s a deep integration between both. Trigger a cloud flow from a desktop flow, share variables (input & output), send data between each other, etc. If you couple the power of those two, you can create some crazy automation and largely improve your business processes 😉
If you’re interested in seeing what you can do with Power Automate Desktop, head over to my YouTube channel where I have plenty waiting for you!
Thanks for reading! 🙂