The team at Strategy 365 has put together five of the best Power Automate examples to help give you an idea of what is possible.
For the full lowdown on Microsoft Power Automate (previously known as Microsoft Flow), head to our Power Automate page. Microsoft offers a variety of solutions to help you automate business processes.
You may have already read that with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform, you can cut down on often laborious tasks, saving your business time and money – so let’s give you some examples using Power Automate!
Power Automate example 1 – Automatically create merged Word documents from Dynamics 365 and Power Apps (Dataverse) data
This is one of the most useful Power Automate examples, which will save your team a lot of time by creating documents automatically. You can set up a flow in Power Automate to create Word documents populated with data from Dataverse (the data and intelligence service powering Dynamics 365 and Power Apps). For example, you can generate quotes, order forms, contracts, or any other document which your company uses frequently.
You need to design the Word document and for each field you want to populate, you simply add a placeholder reference via the Developer tab in Word. You can read our guide on how to do this here. This can include plain text, dropdowns, combo boxes, repeating rows and images.
Once set up, data from multiple records and tables held within Dataverse can be populated into the relevant sections of the Word document automatically! You won’t need to waste any more time searching for information and adding it to documents manually – for example, with one click, you could generate and send your customer a form listing order details, all in a professional and consistently-formatted document.
Once a Word document has been created, amendments to this file can easily be made and the original file overwritten, making it much easier to maintain than a traditional Dynamics 365 Word template. For more complex documents that require more intensive data shaping prior to document generation, Experlogix Document Automation or Power BI Paginated Reports would be the logical choice. Contact our team on +44 (0)1782 916920 to discover the most straightforward way of automating the creation of your documents.
Power Automate example 2 – Automatically create Excel spreadsheets from Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Apps (Dataverse) data
Another much-requested feature we hear from clients is the ability to automatically populate data into Excel documents. Although Power Automate has an out-of-the-box action to add a single row to a spreadsheet, care needs to be taken when working with larger datasets. Using Microsoft Graph, data can be collected from within Dataverse, automatically added to an Excel file, such as a scheduled export of an inventory report which can then be automatically sent by email. This is also one of the most useful Power Automate examples for sharing spreadsheets with external users, such as external stakeholders, who do not have access to the original data source.
As this article explains, Microsoft Graph is a good option for this task due to speed; flows using Microsoft Graph complete in a fraction of the time compared to other options, as all of the rows are processed in bulk, meaning no loop through each row is required.
If all of this sounds too technical and daunting to you, don’t worry, our experts will work with you to set everything up, so you can save time and resources by automating these processes.
Power Automate example 3 – Use flows to deduplicate data within Dynamics 365 and Power Apps (Dataverse)
Apps such as Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Marketing, and Power Apps, include duplicate detection rules that can be configured for most tables.
However, a customer’s requirements might need more complex data handling and rules. These more complex rules can be created using a Power Automate flow to allow the system to detect duplicates using more granular matching rules.
An example might be when using a web form to push a new enquiry into Dynamics 365 or Power Apps. The account and/or contact of the interested party might already exist within Dataverse, but the details are sufficiently different for the duplicate detection rules to pick it up, which is where a custom-built flow could come in.
Power Automate example 4 – Integrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Apps (Dataverse) data into third-party applications
One of the best Power Automate examples in terms of eliminating paper-based processes can be found in this case study, where we saved Drayton Beaumont Services approximately £100,000 per year!
We used Power Automate to integrate Power Apps with a time recording solution called Fareclock. The integration was used to push employee data from Dataverse into FareClock, ready for users to be able to clock in and out. It also pulls daily timesheets from FareClock into Dataverse, so the company can keep a track of what hours staff have been working on each project.
This was particularly useful for Drayton Beaumont Services as it enables the process by which sub-contractors and agency staff were paid, to be automated. This also allowed for automated checks to be performed to identify any missing time entries, and for purchase orders for services rendered, to be automatically created.
Another example of a third-party integration would be an integration developed using Power Automate into GoCardless, one of Europe’s largest Direct Debit collection agencies. This was used to push Direct Debit collection requests into GoCardless.
Meanwhile, a Sage Business Cloud Accounting integration was used to push orders/invoices from Dynamics 365 into Sage. As this integration is two-way, it also pulls a copy of the PDF invoice back from Sage to store a copy of the invoice in Dynamics 365 to allow non-Sage users to access copies of invoices.
Power Automate example 5 – Integrating orders from a WordPress website into Dynamics 365 or Power Apps (Dataverse)
Thanks to over 400 Power Automate Connectors to Microsoft services such as SharePoint, Dynamics 365 and Outlook, plus external connectors such as Adobe Sign, Asana, Dropbox and Stripe, users can integrate multiple services. There are a number of Power Automate examples out there for integrating with third-party apps, but to provide another example, we created a flow to take orders placed by customers via a WordPress website (using WooCommerce) and create them in Dynamics 365. This can then be used to efficiently manage customer queries, product inventory, Power BI reporting and more.
Further Power Automate examples
- You can set up a series of automations which are triggered when a Dynamics 365 or Power Apps record is created or updated. For example, when a new record is created, a form could be automatically sent to the new customer to gather information which can then be added to Dataverse for use in other automations, such as the creation of a contract using a Word template (our first example in this article).
- Can’t stay on top of remembering to do certain tasks? Use Power Automate to automatically schedule regular actions such as doing something each day at 09:00, or to send a certain email from a template every month on 10th of the month.
- Automating the creation of records, the sending of emails or Microsoft Teams notifications and sending approval requests are all additional examples of the flexibility of Power Automate. As we’ve already mentioned in this article, Power Automate can also be used to create new records from third-party integrations, such as in this case study, where we built a Rightmove integration to automatically create Rightmove enquiries as sales leads in Dynamics 365 Sales.
- You can capture data using Microsoft Forms or Dynamics 365 Customer Voice and carry out automated actions using that information. For example, if someone fills out a customer feedback form and the feedback is negative, an email could alert their account manager, so the situation could be resolved.
- Another example might be taking data from an on-premise SQL server (using the on-premise data gateway) and pushing it into Dynamics 365 or Power Apps (Dataverse).
Conclusion
We’ve given some of the best Power Automate examples, but the possibilities are near-limitless. Whatever process you need to take control of within your business – Power Automate can usually help, which is why we use it in all our projects! We don’t expect our customers to be tech wizards – that’s our job; so, to discover how we can help your business, give our team a call today on +44 (0)1782 916920 or use our Contact Us form.
