Microsoft Power Automate Reviews

It is currently being used by our customer service department. They're using it for tracking overtime, and they're also using it for reporting and automating their various service quality reports. So, automation of service quality reports and overtime management are basically two major use cases.

The ease of use and the integration with some of the existing products that we have would be its main takeouts.

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.

It is a stable solution.

It is scalable, but it is limited in terms of the processes that you can automate. If you have complex processes that you want to automate, it doesn't have that capability yet. So, it is scalable but to a certain extent.

Our organization is working with it actively. Its number of users could be between 100 and 200.

Technical support is given by Microsoft through the support model that they offer for customers. If you have an issue, you can log the issue in with Microsoft, and they would always attend to it. I would rate them a three out of five.

It was straightforward. There was nothing complex.

You don't need much staff for deployment and maintenance of it. You need a very limited number of people.

We used a partner.

Its license is a part of our enterprise agreement. It is a three-year contract, but we pay yearly. So, it is a yearly license. There are no additional costs.

I would rate it a six out of 10.

I am a solution provider and I implement RPA products and automate processes for my clients.

With this product, you create your workflows on the cloud. We've used this product for integrating with Microsoft solutions. For example, one of them is a document approval solution, where documents are sent to SharePoint and then pushed to different users within Active Directory for approval. This is done according to rules set by the client.

There is also a COVID application that was built around Power Automate and the Power Platform, where users within the organization can raise a request for a test and this would be pushed to managers for approval.

We are also looking at financial processes around bank reconciliations and interbank transfers.

The most valuable feature is that it easily integrates with other Microsoft products, so it has multiple connectors. You can create solutions that connect to Teams, Outlook, SharePoint, and OneDrive.

There are templates available for you to create your own flow, and it is easy to start creating a flow and automating a solution.

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.

I have been working with Microsoft Power Automate for approximately one year.

This is a very stable product.

The scalability is amazing. This is a cloud-based resource, and there is no limitation in terms of scale or size. You can easily increase the scope of processes being handled.

The COVID use case is available for all of the employees, which is approximately 2,500. The documentation approval use case is used by managers and people making requests, which is approximately 2,000 people. The use case involving financial reconciliation is only for a small team that consists of about five people.

The technical support is good. They are available and you can just call them. We have Microsoft Office online support, as well. This means that you can call them, or instead go to the forum and search for activities and resources. They have a lot of resources available online.

There are good tooltips available within the product itself. You can look at something and the tooltip will explain how it works and what you should do.

Overall, the support resources are good and I would rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

I also work with UiPath and WorkFusion.

The initial setup is straightforward. Power Automate is a cloud-based tool, although I downloaded the Studio to my local machine.

The deployment takes one day. You just switch environments from UAT to production. You can easily export your solution and import it into the production environment.

We were working with another company to implement the solution but we completed the implementation and deployment ourselves.

The licensing model is flexible in that you can pay per automation or per user. My client receives a discount because of the large number of users and pays approximately $15 for each one.

There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees unless other resources are being used. For example, Office resources are available on Azure, but that is a different product. It is related to Azure, rather than Power Automate.

Our client chose this solution. They already had Microsoft enterprise licenses, and they felt it was better to use a Microsoft product for their automation solution.

Overall, this is a good solution and I like it. It's very scalable and easy to do so. Also, there are many connectors and they are quite useful. This is a product that I recommend.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Power Automate is to be cautious about how they distribute their flows, just to manage the licensing cost. Because it is cloud-based, it is an easy-to-use tool for both small and enterprise-wide solutions. There are no complications when integrating with Active Directory or the cloud platform, and this is good, in particular, because everybody is moving to the cloud. This product makes it easy to integrate things that people are already working with, such as Teams and Outlook.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I am the head of RPA solutions at my company where we implement this product for our customers. These are insurance companies that have legacy systems and prefer to keep their RPA off the cloud.

The product allows us to alleviate customer pain points by automating their data entry processes and enhancing archiving capabilities. We are able to minimize the delays of various claims and policies while improving data entry accuracy. We also offer them the ability to archive various communications to a variety of archiving portals such as SharePoint.

The program requires no code, making it very easy to implement various functions.

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.

We were using Softomotive for approximately three years until they were purchased by Microsoft where it was then merged under the umbrella of Microsoft Power Automate and we have been using this since - it has been about a year and a half since the merger. 

Overall, I would say that it is quite stable, but with the merger, we are not ready to move to the latest version until we can completely replace all of the old functions. I would say the product is 90% stable.

We require five team members to maintain the product and assist our clients.

The product is quite scalable. When considering extending more processes, features, machines, etc. it is a much cheaper and easier option.

We are still communicating with the Softomotive support team that we have been using prior to the merge and they are perfect. Microsoft is supportive as well.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward and easy, especially in comparison with other RPA's such as UiPath or Automation Anywhere.

We are able to see high returns thanks to having few machines with minimal implementation costs. We are able to present our clients with their ROI upon completion of each project and they see ROI's as soon as their first month.

This is the cheapest option among competitors. 

You can choose to have the RPA with attendance at $40/month with add-on's totaling about $190. There are standalone options that require someone to run the process and there are fully automated options that are integrated within the cloud.

We were trying some open source solution, but it was not really reliable so we did not continue with it.

The actions and functions are much easier than other competitors.

I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

I use it for robotic process automation.

It is a low-code platform. It is easy to use and good for automating small tasks such as expense approvals, timesheet approvals, etc.

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.

I have been using this solution for two years.

It is stable.

It depends on the use case. For my use cases, it is scalable.

We have over 10,000 people in my organization. In my branch, we have 100 people, and almost all of us in this branch have Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, and other solutions. We have approximately 20 users who use Microsoft Power Automate.

Any increase in its usage would depend on our clients. I work for a consultancy firm, so it depends on what our clients want. For our office work, we will keep using it.

I have not had to ask for technical support because the tasks that I do are easy.

I also use UiPath.

My company has a Microsoft package, and it was a part of the package. I didn't have to do any installation.

They have the community edition that people can use for free, and they also have the enterprise edition. My company uses the enterprise edition, and I don't know how much they pay.

It has been good so far. I would rate it an eight out of 10.

In our organization, the solution is popular where there is a need for attended automation or user. That "human in the loop," as we call it. There it is more popular than the other tools.

The most valuable feature we have found with the solution is the AI Builder. And they have a big range of connectors that we are finding useful.

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.

Power Automate is relatively new. I've been working with the solution for eight to nine months.

The solutions that we have built are going well. They are used, and we've not heard of any breakages there. I would say they are stable.

The scalability of the solution is something we are still working on. Currently, we have a use case where we are trying to make it more scalable and there are means of doing it. Sharing up the flows and all of those things do add to the scalability. It's relatively new compared to UiPath, but I don't think they'll take very long to come up to speed.

When it comes to technical support, I'd like to draw a comparison between UiPath that's more popularly used. UiPath has a very good forum and we get most answers on the forum itself. However, the technical support itself is not that strong. 

Whereas in Power Automate, it is just the other way around. The forum is bad; we don't get anything there. But technical support, they're pretty responsive. And any queries you write to them, they usually do come back quite promptly. I'm happy with the technical support.

The initial setup of the solution is pretty straightforward.

Due to the pricing model, the solution is more convenient than any other tool. That is one plus that Power Automate has over the others.

It's very easy to use. Like we say, it's a "no-code solution." So even though all solutions do claim that, there is a little level of skill that is required when it comes to learning the other tools. But Power Automate is relatively the easiest to pick up.

UI Automation is something that they have made very easy, but editing both selectors is a challenge in Power Automate. There is not that much of a need to edit the selectors. But in case there is, then it is a challenge to edit them.

This solution is capable of doing pretty much everything that the other tools are capable of, and they have extremely competitive pricing. It is definitely an advantage. Their approval systems and interactions with the other tool. We have even tried some inter-vendor solutions, integrating UiPath along with Power Automate, for example. Those things work pretty well with Power Automate. It's convenient, not just for the end-user, for the business user, and it is also convenient for the developer. It's very simple and approachable to use as a solution.

I would rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.

The solution can be primarily used small process automation of day-to-day activities, such as routing of emails, Excel sheet manipulation, and more.

The solution is very scalable.

The solution is easy to use. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. 

Technical support has been great so far. 

If a company already uses a lof to Microsoft applications, this solution is great. 

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. 

I've been dealing with the solution for two years at this point. 

The product can scale well. If a company needs to expand its use, it can do so.

Technical support has been great. They are helpful and responsive and I have no complaints. 

I'm also aware of solutions such as Automation Anywhere and UiPath. They, at this point, are much more feature-rich.

As a cloud-based solution that is very easy to implement. It's not overly complex or difficult. It doesn't take too much time to deploy.

You only need two or three people to deploy and implement the product in an organization. You don't need a big team. 

The solution offers a yearly subscription package. 

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. Currently, we have ten customers that are using the solution. 

I would recommend the solution to other companies and users, however, only if they have a Microsoft suite of products that are in use and they already have a license based on that usage.

Our use cases are everything from replacing Excel macros to replacing WINAutomate to larger initiatives to use RPAbox to fill in different back-office systems and so on. We have a huge range of solutions.

In terms of the most valuable features, the RPA is really great.

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.

I've been using the solution for approximately three years.

The stability is great. I know we don't have a problem with stability in this case.

To implement the solution or share the solution with others, you can scale it up; but we don't scale in that perspective when it comes to add more functionality. We have other solutions when it comes to larger initiatives. Microsoft platform is used for something happens over here, do this. Or we are using Box, but when it comes to larger initiative, we're using Nintex. It's longer processes and longer workflows. It's easier to use. So when we scale up, we switch to another application actually.

We have talked to Microsoft. We're a large company and we're talking to Microsoft on a regular basis. We have a partner we talk to when it comes to Automate. We are absolutely satisfied with technical support.

The initial setup was quite simple, actually.

We implemented both with help from the vendor and within the company. Some using our own expectation in Office, but we have some vendors we had contact with.

We need to keep track that we are compliant regarding the license, but other than that, it's quite easy to maintain and govern. We have approximately 50 users in different countries in Europe.

Microsoft is connected very well with Microsoft products. Everything in the master suite is really easy to connect to, and the Blue Prism is for large initiatives. What I heard from the developers using Blue Prism is it's easier to overview quite complex scenarios actually. Power Automate is a little harder to have the overlook of what you have done in the script.

I'd rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Start using the solution at a small scale, and create some smaller script of your own. Then you can see what can be done and easily grow with a task and try features for the department you're working in to share with your colleagues. You'll have an understanding of how to automate, and you can see the business from the other's perspective. That's what we have done. Start small and go big.

We implemented this solution for our clients and the primary aim was to create a chatbot that would provide service answers to customers. If the chatbot wasn't able to help, the query moved to a ticketing tool like ServiceNow, which creates the ticket and assigns it to the appropriate team. For logging purposes, the ticket is logged with ServiceNow and it provides the solution to the end-user through the chatbot. I'm a senior manager and we are Microsoft gold partners. 

This product improves the way an organization functions by creating monitoring solutions. One of the things we can do now is to enable the system to inform the service people before end-users log a ticket because the system can be monitored in advance. Those tickets will be created by the system itself so that the service provider can take action before being contacted by the end-users. It improves the quality of the service. 

The value is that the whole platform seamlessly integrates well and that there are enough connectors to the majority of the systems for the SAP connection, or ServiceNow connection, or an email connection, or SharePoint connection. There are a number of connectors already built-in. It doesn't require writing any extra code, it's a low code solution platform so it's easy and faster to create solutions.

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

I've been using this solution for two years. 

The solution is stable. I haven't found many issues because when we design and implement we have a lot of experience behind us so we plan ahead and know what we're doing. 

This solution is scalable. 

The technical support is there with Microsoft depending on what kind of a subscription and relationship you have with them. Support ranges from standard to premium. Things are not always solved in a single instance and they'll sometimes tell you that what's been implemented is not supported. 

It is a very easy and straightforward deployment process. If you are going to implement a very complex solution, something that's automated with a DevOps process, and many teams are involved, then it may require some extra people. It depends on the complexity of what you plan to build, the number of systems, etc. We have our own internal team that carries out the implementation. 

There are multiple layers of licensing; there is a subscription license and if you want to use any premium connectors, then you need to have a separate license. RPA solutions also require a separate license and if you want to use any AI features, there's a separate license for that too, it depends on your requirements. 

Before implementing this solution, be aware that there may be limitations within the system or within the platform that might not be suitable for your needs.

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

This solution is used for the automation of simple processes that are repetitive and very low on decision branching and error handling.

It's easy to learn.

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.

I worked on a demo side by side with UiPath Automation and Power Automate.

I didn't see any issues with the stability of Microsoft Power Automate.

I would say that scalability is probably a weakness.

It's an area that needs improvement.

If you have a good enough support plan, it's fantastic, but most businesses don't.

When I was working at a customer site that was a premier customer, we had onsite Microsoft service providers, and we were able to leverage their worldwide support. At that point, you can have round the clock, follow the sun support on a critical problem. 

But in 35 years of working with Microsoft, I've only seen one customer site that had that level of support. If you don't have that level of support then you are basically on your own.

The setup for me was almost non-existent because we already had Office 365. 

When it comes to the admin side of that, I don't know.

The price is right. If you have Office 365, it's included.

If you're looking for entry-level, inexpensive, and you're already an O365 customer, then this might be a consideration. But if you're looking for an enterprise tool, you should probably keep looking.

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

We primarily use the product for credit card operation customer complaints.

The solution is great for some of our backend processes, for example, accounting and financial processes, and also for IT batch processes. 

The solution is very easy to set up.

The initial setup isn't too difficult. 

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.

We started using the product this year. We've used it for about four months at this point. We're using it for three processes. 

We haven't used the solution for too long. We are at the beginning of automation. We are not ready to escalate just yet. However, we do plan to increase usage in the future. 

We've contacted local support in the past. At the time, it was just a simple question, as we have developed a simple process. We've just had small questions and issues.

Currently, we are also using Automation Anywhere. 

The product is easy to set up. Actually, we're a very large Microsoft customer. All of our solutions are mostly Microsoft. All of the security fields are already solved by Power Automate, which makes it easy to implement and to set up. It's not a problem at all.

Each process took us about two months to set up. Since we define them, it's quite easy. The operational processes are very easy to maintain and to operate. There are no issues with that. It's a simple three-step process, it's not a complex task.

We are looking for automation and are looking at options such as UiPath and Blue Prism.

We are looking for some solution for logistics.

We are a customer and an end-user. 

We are using the solution on our desktops, however, I don't know which exact version we are using. 

I'd advise other users that it is very simple to implement Power Automate, however, new users have to be careful with how they expand it and develop complex processes. That said, we don't have experience with processes more complex than a one or three-step process.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.