Scope of the possible with Power Automate

Previous attendees have said…

• 8 previous attendees have left feedback
• 100% would recommend this session to a colleague
• 88% said that this session was pitched correctly

Three random comments from previous attendees

• Excellent as ever
• Excellent demo and training materials to use yourself later to learn Power Automate
• Excellent session very informative.

Session materials

• all materials
• slides html / pdf
• sample data .xlsx

Introduction

• this session is 🌶 - for beginners
• it’s designed as a demonstration session to show what Power Automate might be used to achieve, and how it works

Session outline

• a warning
• an introduction
• scope of the possible
• three example tasks
• free play

A word of warning

Warning

Do not use Power Automate for anything unless you’re absolutely sure that your organisational policies permit it

• many boards and orgs have serious information governance and information security objections to Power Automate
  • automation tools are an excellent way to break your data
  • they’re also an excellent way to compromise its integrity/security
  • especially true if you’re thinking about automating processes with sensitive information
  • if in any doubt, speak to your IG/Caldicott/information security colleagues before setting to work

Quick introduction to Power Automate

• Power Automate is a set of low-code automation tools
• allows users to automate tasks
• lots of options
  • web and desktop versions
  • several different subscription levels
  • hundreds of add-ons

Scope of the possible

• Power Automate is an extremely useful tool for H&SC
• but you should be aware of some complicating factors for people like us:
  • massive and confusing range of different templates and use-cases, often with a business-focus
  • a thick layer of promotional AI talk over everything at present (late 2024)
  • unexpected cost/IG barriers to using parts of the platform
  • glitchy, and often requiring more coding skills than you might expect
  • generally shockingly poor documentation

This session = honest, application-focused, introduction

• we’ll build three example flows that will:
  1. take an Excel workbook, extract some parts of it, and save as a new Excel file
  2. turn a response to Microsoft Forms into a Teams post
  3. turn an Excel workbook into a simple mailing list

Subset an Excel file

• you’ll need a sample data file - I used this open data about council assets from Falkirk
• I converted the data to a table, then saved the workbook to OneDrive
• New flow > Instant cloud flow
  
• Manually trigger a flow
  
• Add a step
  
• Excel online > List rows present in a table and populate
  
• there are several ways we could subset the data
  
• we’ll demonstrate by taking the first 20 rows
  
• Create csv table
  
• Create file
  
  

Microsoft Forms to Teams

• here’s an overview
  
• create a simple form (ours is at https://forms.office.com/e/8Zds2aTS5c)
  
• grab the form id
  
• create an Build an automated cloud flow -
  
• Enter your form ID
  (veDvEDCgykuAnLXmdF5Jmn79kl25VpJIq3eErXXCYKBUMU9LWURaUUhUT0xYOUtNQVY1UFpURTQ1Vi4u)
• Get response details
  
• Populate with the form and step details
  
• Post message in a chat or channel
  

Excel workbook to mailing list

• here’s an overview
  
• start with a simple .xlsx. Again, that will need to be on Sharepoint or Onedrive
  
• List rows present in a table
  
• Apply to each
  
• Send an email notification (V3) nested inside the Apply to each
  
• add the expression items('For_each')?['email']
• enjoy the result