Power Automate | Vlad Talks Tech

Knowledge Agent Licensing and Work IQ Explained with Microsoft’s Adam Harmetz

Vlad Catrinescu — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 13:34:00 GMT

Microsoft announced a lot at Ignite! From the Knowledge Agent being included with Microsoft 365 Copilot to Work IQ, updates to workflows in SharePoint, and more. But what do these changes actually mean for enterprises?

In this video, I sit down with Adam Harmetz, Vice President of Product Management, Data Science, and Tech Community at Microsoft, to break everything down in plain English so you know exactly how these updates impact your organization.

Here is what we cover:

✅ Knowledge Agent licensing: Who needs a license and how organizations should think about rollout
✅ Work IQ explained: How it relates to Microsoft Graph, how Copilot uses it, and why it is becoming the brain of Microsoft 365
✅ Metadata and AI: How SharePoint metadata improves Copilot and agent responses
✅ SharePoint workflows: The new simplified UX for Power Automate inside SharePoint
📅 What to learn for 2026: Adam’s advice for IT pros, admins, and builders

If you want the clearest explanation of these Ignite announcements and how they affect governance, licensing, and day to day usage, this conversation will save you hours of digging through documentation.

Turn on Knowledge Agent today.

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Video Summary

Metadata finally pays off — Copilot and agents fully understand it now. After years of us telling customers “metadata matters,” AI is proving it. Pre‑cooked metadata means faster, more accurate answers, especially for structured content like invoices or product libraries.
Knowledge Agent + Autofill are now part of the M365 Copilot license. No more confusing SKUs, no more Syntex vs. Premium naming headaches. If you have M365 Copilot, you get the Knowledge Agent and Autofill built in. Non‑licensed uploads may still fall under pay‑as‑you‑go, but the experience is dramatically simpler.
Work IQ isn’t “just Microsoft Graph renamed.” Graph stays the API layer for developers. Work IQ is the intelligence layer — the “brain” of Copilot — adding memory, preferences, inference, and deep understanding of your work. Copilot talks to Work IQ, which pulls what it needs from the Graph.
SharePoint’s new workflow experience = simpler UI + Power Automate engine. No new workflow service! It’s the same Power Automate backend with a friendlier, SharePoint‑first UX and templates for everyday users. And when you need more? There’s always “Edit in Power Automate.”
2026 will be a massive year for builders and agents. Adam’s advice: lean into Knowledge Agent, agent development, Copilot‑powered app building, and solution creation. Microsoft is going all‑in on making 2026 the year makers level up.

For more information, read the transcript below, or watch the video above!

Transcript

Microsoft’s biggest conference of the year, Microsoft Ignite, finished just over a week ago, and now we are at ESPC, where we finally have time to deep dive into some of those amazing announcements and really understand what they mean for enterprises. Because there are so many great announcements for SharePoint, today I have the honor of being joined by Adam Harmetz, VP of Product at Microsoft. Thank you so much for joining me.

Good to be here.

You presented at Ignite. You’re presenting four sessions here with the lightning talks and everything, right? You’re a busy man.

Yeah. No, it’s fun. This is a good season to engage with the community, update people, and also recap the year. It’s been a really intense 2025, and so it comes at a good time when we’re figuring out everything we did this year and packaging it all together. It’s been a busy year for sure.

And I think this week you talked about SharePoint’s 25th birthday, so I guess it’s going to be an even busier year ahead.

Yeah. I think 2026 will be a big year for SharePoint. We want to look ahead, not back, but it’s good to celebrate 25 years of community and progress, and a resilient product, and understand why that is, and let it inform where we’re going. We hope the birthday is both a way of celebrating the community and talking about where the product is going, kicking off a big year for us.

I think my favorite memory was the picture you posted on LinkedIn with your friend, the SharePoint Monkey.

Yep.

That was my favorite SharePoint swag ever. I still have the 2010 and 2013 versions.

Yeah. So hopefully we’re going to get a 25-years-of-SharePoint SharePoint Monkey.

I would love that. We need to give ideas to the marketing team.

I know, right? We have this great video. We did this boot camp once when the monkeys were in full swing, and we had like 150 of them we gave out to new hires, and we launched them all at once.

Oh wow—150 monkeys screaming.

That’s something.

After Ignite, you announced a bunch of things, and of course, the community comes to us, MVPs with questions. So hopefully I can ask some of them to you, and you can go a bit deeper into the details. One of the really cool announcements you made this year—and I think you made it official at Ignite—is that agents now fully understand SharePoint metadata. We’ve always known SharePoint metadata is important. You’ve been doing SharePoint for 25 years, so I’m sure you’ve told many customers, but nobody ever wants to do it. What can you tell us about agents and metadata? Does Copilot care about metadata at all?

Yeah. And it’s a great question. The larger story is that it’s becoming clear that pre‑cooking data helps Copilot and agents have better citations. AI can figure out in real time what’s going on and how to respond, but if you can pre‑cook the data, that’s even better. If you have a list of invoices—say 100,000—and you want to figure out the expenses across all of them, AI can go into every invoice and extract the expenses, but that will take a long time. What you want is to pre‑cook the data. You want to pull that information out and have it indexed so AI can respond quickly.

I’ve never heard the term “pre‑cook” before.

Well, it’s an old concept recast in the era of AI. I’m trying to make sure people understand the story arc from before to after. Extracting metadata helps humans, filters, and views—but it also allows AI to respond faster and more accurately. We’re looking at our internal emails to evaluate the value of metadata, and early results suggest it helps AI respond better on the first try. Without metadata, AI can still find the answer, but sometimes it takes multiple turns before it reaches the correct response. If you have a structured repository with good metadata, you get the answer better the first time.

Metadata isn’t necessary for every document across the enterprise, but for structured, high‑value repositories—product libraries, invoices—it’s extremely useful.

There are two sides to this. One: The Knowledge Agent can extract that metadata automatically. And two: now agents—and soon Copilot—understand that metadata. So when you ask a question where the answer is in that metadata, they can respond. For example, “What’s the highest invoice in this library?” is something you can ask an agent right now, and very soon you’ll be able to ask Copilot.

Okay, so right now it’s in SharePoint agents as we’re recording this, but as we go into the new calendar year, it will be in Copilot Chat and all Copilot experiences.

Yeah, exactly. That is the vision, and we’re already done coding it. We’re just rolling it out.

That’s amazing. I had a SharePoint Premium workshop on Monday where we added metadata to invoices, and then we could compare invoices directly in the Knowledge Agent. That was pretty cool.

Yeah. It’s exciting. And even beyond that, we have new capabilities, like Copilot being able to create a list. That’s another great example of using metadata. There’s a whole ecosystem around lists, libraries, metadata, agents, and Copilot that is coming together. We’re very far along, and we’ll get the rough edges smoothed out in the first few months of 2026.

Entering metadata has always been painful. Was it two years ago that Autofill columns were released? We had the SharePoint Syntex models before, but Autofill is way easier and way cooler. AI fills the metadata for us 95% of the way, and we only fix the rest. At Ignite, you also had a cool announcement about how everyone can now use the Knowledge Agent. No more excuses, right?

Yes. Basically, we’ve had Syntex and SharePoint Premium. I take responsibility for the naming changes—Microsoft Syntex, etc. Part of that evolution is tied to how AI and Copilot became the center of gravity. Customers asked us to simplify. So we merged Autofill with the Knowledge Agent, and then merged the Knowledge Agent into the Copilot license. It’s all one thing now. The Copilot license includes a bunch of out-of-the-box agents, one of them being the Knowledge Agent. And Autofill is included. Everyone with Copilot benefits.

Awesome. So just to confirm: as soon as you have Microsoft 365 Copilot, once Knowledge Agent goes GA—hopefully in January—everyone with Copilot gets it?

We haven’t announced a date. We’re targeting early next year. Public preview is off by default, so please turn it on and give feedback. We’re watching the data closely. We’re being quality‑driven, but we think we can track to that timeframe.

By the way, for admins: since November 5, we can turn it on with opt‑in at the site level. No more enabling it tenant‑wide and then opting out thousands of sites. Now we can just opt in on a few sites to test.

Yeah. We planned to have that at public preview, but something missed the train and caught up later. We prefer people turn it on everywhere—it is the AI mode for SharePoint sites—and it only impacts users with Copilot licenses. But we know some departments want to test it first.

Eventually, when it reaches GA, it will be on by default, but you can turn it off if needed.

Exactly. That’s the plan, though it will be finalized closer to GA. Like many AI features, we think it should be on by default.

I want to deep dive into licensing because not everyone has a Copilot license yet. Some people use pay‑as‑you‑go or Copilot Chat, included in Microsoft 365. Who needs the Copilot license? The person creating the columns? Uploading the document?

Great question. During preview, the Autofill column part of the Knowledge Agent is included for everyone with a Copilot license. So you can create columns, and if you upload a document, it will be processed by Autofill for free. If a non‑licensed user uploads a document, Autofill will only process it if pay‑as‑you‑go is set up, and it will be billed accordingly. Things are still in preview and will be documented more clearly at GA. The big picture is that the Knowledge Agent is included with the Copilot license.

Makes sense. I know you don’t want the same issues we had with the Syntex per‑user license.

Yeah. Syntex is awesome—the scenarios live on—but both we and customers wanted fewer things done better, all under the Copilot license.

Now let’s switch to something even more basic. At Ignite, you announced Work IQ. From the description, people said, “Wait—that’s Microsoft Graph. Did they rename Microsoft Graph?” What’s the relationship between Graph and Work IQ?

You’re right. Since the Delve days—and even before—we used “Graph” to refer to the intelligence layer of Microsoft 365, and also to the API/data layer. The developer‑focused API access remains Microsoft Graph; that isn’t changing.

We needed a new term for the intelligence layer—the brain of Microsoft 365—especially in the AI era. Work IQ clarifies how important this layer is.

Work IQ is more expansive than how we used “Graph” before. It includes memory and inference. For example, it remembers your preferences: if you prefer concise responses from Copilot, or if you use a specific tone when emailing certain people. That was never part of the original Graph vision. Over time, Work IQ will expand into group memory and concepts.

So for developers, Graph is still Graph. For business users, Work IQ is the brain of Copilot.

So if I’m explaining Copilot to a business user, I’d say: Copilot talks to Work IQ, which calls the Graph to get your work data.

Yeah, that’s right.

We also recently took some new Copilot exams, so it’ll be interesting to see how those get updated after Ignite.

We don’t just want Work IQ to be another Microsoft term to memorize. It’s critical to Copilot’s differentiated value. Customers will choose tight integration between productivity, the content system, the intelligence layer, and the AI experiences built on top. Work IQ really is the brain of Copilot.

And you showed that at Ignite in Jeff Teper’s session—the difference between ChatGPT connected to SharePoint and M365 Copilot. Copilot understands the content more deeply than external services using only connectors.

Yeah. Connectors are important for external repositories, but for core productivity data—documents, email, chats—connectors are a thin straw. They don’t have a deep understanding.

For example, we’ve generated thumbnails for every PowerPoint slide for years. We send those slide thumbnails to the LLM so it has visual references. That allows Copilot to answer questions like, “Who is the CEO in this org chart?” because it can actually see the slide. That depth of integration beats connector strategies hands‑down.

One final question. At Ignite, you announced SharePoint Designer—just kidding. But you did announce a new, simpler way to do workflows directly in SharePoint. Can you clarify whether it’s a different service than Power Automate, or just a simpler way to interact with Power Automate?

It’s the latter. It’s completely coordinated with Teams, built on the same codebase. It’s a new, simpler UX designed for productivity scenarios, built on top of Power Automate.

Over the past years, we’ve had different ways of integrating with Power Automate. Sometimes, simple things we built ourselves, sometimes templates, sometimes automation kicked off automatically. This new experience says: the right strategy is one workflow system—Power Automate. We love Power Automate, but the UX was too complex for the average SharePoint or Teams user.

So we created a front‑end UX with a healthy number of templates that match the simplicity we want for those users. Everything has an “Edit in Power Automate” button, so you can round‑trip it. Think of it as expanding templates and simplifying the UX so workflows are easy to set up.

Eventually, it will replace the custom rule engine we have today?

That’s the intention. Whether there are still two systems under the hood for technical reasons is TBD, but conceptually, for end users, yes.

That’s awesome. You have a “get started” experience and then advanced editing in Power Automate for those who need it.

Yeah. It took longer than expected—it was a big joint project across Microsoft—but it feels right, especially in the AI era, since there’s already a natural‑language box for creating or assigning a template.

One final question for you. As we head into 2026, what should people learn? If there were one or two features you wish every company would try, what would they be?

The Knowledge Agent is transformative for end users and site owners. Try it, especially during public preview. Second, it’s a great time to be a maker and builder. Agent development is here now. App Builder was announced around Ignite. More is coming in SharePoint next year. Skill up on agent development and building solutions. Expect 2026 to be a year of agent development, solution development, and vibe coding integrated deeper into productivity experiences.

Thank you so much for your time. For everybody watching, please connect with Adam—he’s very active on LinkedIn with an amazing blog around product management and managing teams: Mind the Beat. The link will be in the description below. If you enjoyed this video and want to see more conference interviews, like the video and subscribe to the channel. See you at the next one.

Power Apps + Power Automate: Better Together | Create PDFs Without Premium Connectors

Vlad Catrinescu — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 13:00:00 GMT

Want to generate PDFs from Power Apps using Power Automate without paying for premium connectors? In this real-world demo, Microsoft MVP Laura Rogers shows how to build a Statement of Work generator using Power Apps, Power Automate, OneDrive, and SharePoint — with no code and no extra license requirements!

Check out Laura’s training courses.

Video Summary

Power Apps + Power Automate = Better Together. Each Power Platform product is powerful on its own, but combining them unlocks real business solutions. Laura showed us how easy it is to integrate them without overcomplicating things.
You Don’t Always Need a Flow. Common tasks like sending emails or updating multiple lists can often be done directly in Power Apps using connectors or patching—no flow required! Keep it simple when you can.
When You Do Use a Flow, Keep It Lean. Laura’s demo used a Power Apps trigger and passed just one parameter—the project ID. From there, the flow grabbed all the data it needed, generated an HTML file, converted it to PDF via OneDrive (free!), and saved it in SharePoint.
Smart UI Design Matters. The Power App showed progress while the flow ran, then revealed the “View PDF” button only when the file was ready. Wrapping the flow call in a variable and using conditional visibility made the experience smooth and intuitive.
Training and learning resources are key. Laura offers over 45 hours of training on Power Apps, Power Automate, SharePoint, and more at iwmentor.com. If you want to build solutions like this, her courses are a fantastic resource!

For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!

Want to learn from more pros? Learn from some of the top talent around the world at Microsoft Community Conference, and get $150 off with discount code VLAD150! Have questions? Check out my Microsoft Community Conference FAQ!

OR if you live in Europe, I highly recommend the European Power Platform Conference (EPPC)! Good news! I also have a discount code for this event too! Save 15% on any EPPC pass with code VladSpecial!

Watch my 100+ courses on Pluralsight

Transcript

Each product inside the Power Platform is amazing on its own, but most enterprises get even more value when they use them together. What if we try to use two of my favorite products in the Power Platform—Power Automate, number one in my heart, and Power Apps, a close second—together to build a real business solution?

Today, I’m super happy to be joined by Microsoft MVP and good friend Laura Rogers. Laura, thank you so much for being here.
“Thanks for having me.”

Today we’re at the Power Platform Community Conference recording this, and this week you had a session called Power Automate and Power Apps Better Together. I think that was the title, right?
“Yes.”

And you told me right before recording that you showed something really cool and that there are different ways to actually integrate them. So what I want you to show me is everything about this because usually I only do the Power Automate stuff. I want to learn how people call it from Power Apps.
“Okay. Well, you may notice that when you’re in Power Apps, you actually have a Power Automate section that lets you integrate Power Apps and Power Automate. But my whole session was really about the concept of all the other ways that you can use this integration without having to use that specific way.”

A couple of things that I went over were: you can send emails directly from a Power App using the Office 365 Outlook connector, and write some functions so that it instantly goes straight from the Power App without needing a flow. That’s one common thing that people think they need a flow to do.

Another thing is you can just use patching. So if you had a situation where somebody fills out a form and you need to not just submit that one form, but maybe create a couple of other things in other lists automatically, you can just use patching from your Power App. Those are common things that people might need to automate, and again, you can avoid using a flow altogether.

But even if you do need a flow, you could still do it a different way. You could have a flow that triggers when the item gets created in SharePoint, Dataverse, or wherever your item is. Your trigger can just be based on the item getting created or modified. So yet again, you don’t need to use this integration for any of those scenarios.

That’s a big question I had in my workshop on Sunday. People asked me this exact scenario: Is it better to do it from the Power App or from the data source? And I’m the team data source. This way it’s a bit more separate. If something needs to be debugged, I have two different systems—one that saves into SharePoint and one that triggers in SharePoint. I’m more team “keep them separate.” But I guess it depends on the scenario.
“It definitely does. I like to try and keep it as simple as possible—have fewer moving pieces. So in situations where I can just have a command that sends an email straight from the app and that’s all that’s needed, something simple, if you only have one action, absolutely.”

So yeah, it’s definitely a per-situation decision that you’re going to make.
“Yeah.”

Well, you told me you built something cool in your session—a full process.
“Yes. So I’ll go ahead and run it and then show you what it does, and then we’ll dig in and I’ll show you how I built it. So again, I was talking about all these reasons not to use this integration, but here’s a good example. I have customers and a list of customers in here, and then each customer has a list of projects. So here are all the Adventure Works projects. For each project, I can go to the form with all the information about that project. And then here’s where the magic happens: I’m working with a new customer, I’ve got a new project, and I need to generate a new statement of work. So I just click ‘Create Statement of Work.’”

You can see the little dots going across. What it’s doing is kicking off a flow that’s creating a file, putting the data about that project in the file, and then converting it to PDF. It just finished running, so now this little “View PDF” button appears.
“Okay, wow, it already opened.”
“Yeah. So there is the statement of work that it just generated based on the data in that form, and now it’s a PDF file.”

That is really awesome because in the UI, you can see that it’s working, and then the other button appears at the end.
“That is really cool. Can you add a loading screen?”
“Yeah, you could.”
“Can you get the ‘Working on it’ GIF? You know, remember the SharePoint ‘Working on it’ GIF?”
“Oh yes.”
“Can you add that in there?”
“There is actually a control in Power Apps that does that functionality.”

So it took me to where the file was created in SharePoint. That’s the library where it got created. So that’s how it works. Now let’s go look at what the flow is actually doing.

This flow is based on the trigger called “When Power Apps calls a flow.” You decide what information you want to send over from the Power App to the flow. The simplest way is you don’t need to send all these separate fields—if you have the ID of the item, that’s all you need. So all I’m sending over is the project ID from the Power App.

The flow uses the “Get Item” action to retrieve all the data about that project. Since this is a parent-child relationship (a customer might have multiple projects), I have a lookup field in the project to the customer. So then I do another “Get Item” to get that one customer using the customer lookup ID. Now I have all the information about the project and the customer, and I can use all that in my statement of work.

What I did was create an HTML file—a simple, no-frills, no-premium-connector way of generating a file. I used Copilot to create the HTML for me because I didn’t feel like writing all this code. I told Copilot to create a statement of work in HTML and gave it a list of all the fields I wanted to insert. It wrote the HTML and put placeholders where the parameters would go. I pasted that code into a Compose action, inserted the fields like customer name, project start, project end, and project description, and then used the free “Convert to PDF” option in OneDrive.

So I create the HTML file temporarily in OneDrive, then use the Convert File action to convert it to PDF. After conversion, I create the PDF file in my Statement of Work library in SharePoint using the file name and content. I also created a sharing link for that file because it’s more reliable across devices. One thing I forgot to add is deleting the temporary OneDrive file so they don’t pile up.

Finally, I respond back to the Power App with the sharing link. In Power Apps, the button uses flow.run() syntax to call the flow. To wait for the flow and get information back, you wrap it in a variable using the Set function. Then, when the variable is populated with the URL, the “View PDF” button appears. I also set the display mode so the button grays out after use.

For the back button, I clear the variable so the next time you open another project, it doesn’t show the previous link.

That’s the whole solution: kicking off the flow, waiting for it to come back, and making the UI interactive so users only see what works.

I love how cool you built it—it looks so simple now. At first, I thought it would be complicated with a lot of steps, but this was super easy.
“Oh, great. I’m glad you liked it.”

One final question: Do you do Power Automate training like me?
“Yes.”
“What do you think about Microsoft moving the actions back under, like in classic?”
“Oh, they’re changing the interface. You missed the keynote—they’re bringing it back like in classic instead of being on the left. Being able to see all that information, especially in training screenshots, is huge. I love that.”
“I like it, but I feel like I have to update a lot of things now.”
“Oh my gosh, that’s so true. We both do. By the end of the year, the actions will be under a classic-like designer but with a modern look.”

Thank you so much. You mentioned you do a lot of training—can you tell everybody where they can find it?
“Sure. My company is IWmentor, which stands for Information Worker Mentor. It’s iwmentor.com. I have about 45+ hours of training on SharePoint, Power Apps, Power Automate, OneDrive, Planner, Copilot, Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Lists, and more. I have advanced classes and an Ultimate plan that includes everything. You can subscribe monthly or yearly. I have a huge Cyber Monday sale coming up with a 40% discount.”

Awesome. I’ll make sure to have a link in the description below so you can access it easily. If you want to build cool things like this in a simple way, check it out. If you’re a business professional or information worker, there’s no better training out there. Thank you so much for your time.

For everybody here, if you enjoyed this video, please like it, subscribe to the channel, and on the screen right now, you’ll see another video we recorded at the Power Platform Community Conference. See you there.

Want to Learn Power Automate Fast? Master It in Under 3 Hours

Vlad Catrinescu — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 12:00:00 GMT

If your organization runs on Microsoft 365, learning Power Automate is one of the best ways to save time and improve efficiency.

In this Pluralsight course, Getting Started with Microsoft Power Automate, I’ll walk you through how to build real automations—no code required. In under 3 hours, you’ll learn how to create cloud flows that eliminate repetitive tasks and connect across Teams, SharePoint, Planner, Excel, and more.

Here’s what you’ll learn:
✅ Core Power Automate concepts: connectors, triggers, and actions
✅ Common flows: purchase approvals, reminders, scheduled notifications
✅ Advanced logic: variables, expressions, error handling, and loops
✅ Integrations with Microsoft 365 apps
✅ How to prepare for the free Microsoft Applied Skill: Create and manage automated processes by using Power Automate

💡 Whether you’re brand new to automation or ready to skill up fast, this course will get you ready to build smarter workflows—and earn a credential to prove it.

Watch my 100+ courses on Pluralsight

Video Summary

Manual processes? Time to automate.
Most organizations still rely on manual tasks that could easily be automated. Power Automate helps you streamline those repetitive processes.
Learn fast, build faster.
In under 3 hours, you’ll go from zero to building real cloud flows—no coding required.
Go beyond the basics.
You’ll not only learn the fundamentals like triggers and actions, but also how to use loops, conditions, error handling, and variables to make smarter workflows.
Connect with the tools you already use.
Power Automate integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Teams, Planner, SharePoint, Excel, and more—so your automations fit right into your daily work.
Validate your skills for free.
The course aligns with Microsoft’s free applied skill credential: Create and manage automated processes using Power Automate. It’s a great way to prove what you’ve learned.

For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!

Transcript

If your organization runs on Microsoft 365, learning Power Automate is one of the smartest investments you can make. Let’s be honest—every organization has processes that should be automated but are still done manually. That’s exactly where my latest Pluralsight course comes in. In the Getting Started with Microsoft Power Automate course, I walk you through everything you need to know to start automating real work in under three hours.

You’ll learn how to build your own cloud flows using Power Automate’s no-code interface. We’ll cover key concepts like connectors, triggers, and actions, and I’ll show you how to create common automations such as purchase approvals, task reminders, Teams notifications, and scheduled flows that pull data and send alerts.

We’ll also go beyond the basics. You’ll learn how to add logic, implement loops and conditions, handle errors gracefully, and use variables and expressions to make your automations smarter and more flexible. Plus, you’ll see how to integrate Power Automate with Microsoft Teams, Planner, SharePoint, Excel, and many other tools—so you’re not just learning theory, but building practical flows that apply across Microsoft 365.

And if you’re looking to validate your skills, this course maps directly to Microsoft’s applied skill credential called Create and manage automated processes using Power Automate, which is completely free. By the time you finish, you’ll not only be ready to automate your own workflows, but you’ll also be able to earn a Microsoft credential to prove it.

If you’re ready to stop doing the same tasks over and over again and start building smarter workflows, jump into the course today—and let’s get started!

Power Automate Error Handling: What to Do When Flows Fail

Vlad Catrinescu — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 12:22:42 GMT

Flows don’t always go as planned—whether it’s a missing manager profile, a broken API, or an unexpected error, Power Automate flows can and will fail. The good news? You don’t have to leave it up to chance.

This video is part of my Pluralsight course Getting Started with Microsoft Power Automate, where we go deeper into building reliable, production‑ready flows. You can find the full course over here.

In this video, I’ll walk you through how to add error handling to your Power Automate flows so you stay in control when the unexpected happens. You’ll learn:

✅How to use Run After settings to trigger actions when a step fails
✅How to build a catch‑all error handler that notifies you immediately
✅How to use the Terminate action to properly mark a flow as failed.

This way, you can set up custom error notifications, keep processes running even when a step breaks, and make debugging much easier.

Watch my 100+ courses on Pluralsight

Video Summary

Flows fail—plan for it! Even the best-designed Power Automate flows can break due to missing inputs, unset managers, or API outages. Error handling gives you control over what happens when things go wrong.
Default notifications aren’t enough. By default, you’ll get an email hours (or even a day) later, and it might list multiple failed flows. That’s not helpful for quick fixes.
Use “Configure Run After” for smart branching. You can tell actions to run only if the previous step failed, timed out, or was skipped. This lets you send targeted notifications or even start alternative processes when something breaks.
Two error-handling strategies:
1. Action-level handling: If a specific step often fails (like “Get Manager”), add a parallel branch to send an error email or assign a fallback value.
2. Catch-all handling: Add a final step that runs if anything above fails or is skipped, sends a notification with a direct link to the failed run, and optionally uses the Terminate action to mark the flow as failed.
Pro tip: Use the Terminate action to make sure your flow status reflects reality. Without it, a flow might show as “Succeeded” even if something broke earlier.

For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!

Transcript

While all of our demos ran smoothly, real-world flows can fail. Whether it’s a missing input, a manager not set in a profile, or simply an API being down, we need to make sure those errors are handled properly. Let’s learn how to handle errors in Power Automate flows.

As much as I like to think that all of the flows we create are error-proof, we can never plan for every single scenario, and sometimes our flows will hit something we simply didn’t expect. Error handling allows us to have more control over what happens when the unexpected occurs. It can be as simple as sending an email to somebody or as complicated as starting another process.

Before we learn what can be done, let’s take a look at the default setup. By default, when a flow fails, you will get an email—but that is not instant. It can take a couple of hours or even more than a day sometimes, and that email can include multiple flows. You also have access to the Power Automate Cloud Flows activity page, but it’s something you need to manually check, so it’s not as effective.

So what can we do? The answer is configuring the Run After functionality in Power Automate. There is a setting for each action where you can tell it to only run if the previous action is successful (which is the default), has timed out, is skipped, or has failed. This allows you to control what happens depending on whether a previous action succeeds or fails. For example, you can configure an email notification if a certain task fails or even if the entire flow fails.

As a nice tip, you can insert a link in that email that goes directly to the flow run. This is done using an expression that builds the URL. You have access to many variables and environment properties to make this work. Don’t worry—you don’t need to memorize it; you can copy it from the exercise files on Pluralsight.

Depending on how you implement your error-handling logic, if the last action in your flow succeeds, your flow will be marked as successful—even if something failed earlier. That means you handled the error correctly, but it can make finding failed runs harder. To address this, you can use the Terminate action in Power Automate, which allows you to select how the flow finishes and mark it as failed if needed.

Now, let’s look at two ways to manage potential errors inside flows. First, I prepared a simple flow: it’s manually triggered, gets an item from a project tasks list, retrieves the manager of the person who created the item, and sends an email.

The first method is for actions that often fail. For example, “Get Manager” is a common failure point because not every organization has managers set in Azure AD. If it fails, we can add a parallel branch that sends an email notification. Then, in the settings of that email action, we configure it to run only if “Get Manager” fails. This way, if the action succeeds, we send a success email; if it fails, we send an error email.

The second method is for when you don’t know where the flow might fail. For this, you can add a “catch-all” email at the end of the flow. Configure it to run only if the previous success email is skipped or failed. In that email, include the dynamic link to the failed run so you can quickly troubleshoot.

However, there’s one more step: if the last action (the catch-all email) succeeds, the flow will still show as successful. To fix this, add a Terminate action after the catch-all email and set it to “Failed.” This ensures the flow status reflects reality.

Finally, if everything works properly, the catch-all and terminate actions won’t run, and you’ll only get the success email. These two approaches—action-level handling and catch-all handling—give you flexibility in managing errors in Power Automate Cloud Flows.

PPCC24 Keynote Highlights for Power Apps & Power Automate

Vlad Catrinescu — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 12:00:00 GMT

The 2024 Power Platform Community Conference is happening this week, and in this video, you will learn the most important announcements about Power Automate and Power Apps that Microsoft shared during the keynote!

Video Summary

Power Platform Growth: The platform now has over 48 million monthly active users, an increase of 8 million. Microsoft humorously compared this to six Taylor Swift-era tours!
Power Automate Enhancements:
- Pinning Details: You can now pin up to two details for actions or triggers, making it easier to copy-paste information without constantly opening and closing windows.
- Multimodal Recording: Power Automate Desktop now supports multimodal recording in public preview, allowing you to demonstrate tasks while explaining them to Copilot, which then builds the flow for you.
- Generative Actions: These new actions simplify complex flows by allowing Copilot to generate logic and actions based on your instructions.
Power Apps Updates:
- Co-Authoring: General availability of co-authoring in Power Apps Canvas apps lets multiple users work on the same app simultaneously, enhancing collaboration.
- Model-Driven Apps: New Copilot features help find and enter information more efficiently, even extracting data from free text like emails.
Power Apps Plan Designer: This new tool helps you plan your entire solution by uploading documents and letting the designer create the necessary components, making the planning process more streamlined and efficient.
Next Year’s Conference: The next Power Platform Community Conference is scheduled for October 28-30, 2025, in Las Vegas. Use code VLAD100 to save 100$ on your registration!

For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!

Video Transcript

Hello everyone! We are live from Las Vegas, and day one of the Power Platform Conference 2024 just finished. Since I get to attend in person, I know how important it is to keep up to date even if you are at home and can’t make it. I wanted to do this quick video for you where I share the top announcements for Power Automate and Power Apps, and I’ll try to cover both in under 10 minutes. So, let’s get started!

First of all, let’s start with some numbers. The Power Platform now has over 48 million monthly active users, which is 8 million more than the last time we shared numbers. This is quite amazing! To tell you a funny thing from the keynote, Microsoft somehow invented a new unit of measurement: a Taylor Swift Eras Tour, which is equivalent to 8 million people. So, the Power Platform is now used by six Taylor Swift-era tours. Microsoft Teams has 320 million monthly active users, so I’ll let you do the calculation on how many concerts that is. And yes, I am a Swifty; I did go to a concert this year.

There were three keynotes, but since this is the Power Platform Conference, let me focus on that one. The keynote was delivered by Charles Lamanna, Business Applications and Platform CVP at Microsoft. As usual, Charles opened the keynote by thanking the community. Did you know there are currently over 5.8 million people in the Power Platform community, and a question gets answered every 6 minutes? It’s amazing to see the power of the community in the Power Platform. If you’re not a member of that community, make sure you join it.

Now, let’s talk about features, starting with my favorite one: Power Automate. The top announcements are: first, you can now pin up to two different details for an action or a trigger. Has it ever happened to you that you had to copy-paste between actions or copy-paste information from the trigger, and it’s just annoying because you have to open and close it? Now, you can just pin two of them side by side and become more productive quickly. You might be wondering why I’m not talking about Copilot. Of course, most of the other announcements were about Copilot, so I just had to throw that one in there.

Talking about Copilot for the Power Platform, the first big announcement is Power Automate Desktop. The multimodal recording for Power Automate Desktop is now in public preview. This means that when you open Power Automate Desktop, you’ll be able to not only tell Copilot what you want but also demonstrate it. You click on record, perform the action, and explain it to Copilot. Then, Copilot will build that desktop flow for you. I cannot wait to try that in action; I’m sure it will be amazing.

Another AI feature for Power Automate is generative actions. If you watched my European Power Platform Conference keynote highlights from June of this year, you might remember AI flows. Microsoft is taking a different direction with them based on feedback from the private preview. These will now be rolled into generative actions. Imagine you’re building a flow with many conditions and switching statements, making it quite messy. With generative actions, you add the logic, tell Copilot what it should do, and at runtime, it will build the logic and actions for you. This should make flows a lot easier, but we won’t know how good it is until we try it.

Now, let’s talk about Power Apps. The first announcement I’m super excited about is the general availability of co-authoring in Power Apps Canvas apps. If you want to work with a colleague or consultant simultaneously, you can now do it. You can see where different people are in the app and the exact component they’re working on, making collaboration much easier.

For model-driven apps, the keynote showcased some amazing new Copilot functionality that helps you find information in your app. If you need to enter data from a long email, you can copy the text from Outlook, and paste it into your app as free text, and Copilot will understand the text, extract entities, and fill in the data for you.

The final announcement, which I’m most excited about, is the Power Apps Plan Designer. Often, we plan a solution before we start working on it, including database models, personas, and the number of apps needed. Now, you can upload all those documents as part of a prompt, and the Power Apps Plan Designer will understand them and help you create all the different parts of your solution. This includes multiple apps as part of your solution, not just one.

This is it for this quick video on the top announcements for Power Apps and Power Automate at the Power Platform Community Conference 2024. If you’re not here, make sure you join us next year. It has been announced for October 28-30, 2025, still in Las Vegas. Use code VLAD100 to save when you register. I hope to see you there. Thank you, everyone!

Understanding the Power Automate User Interface

Vlad Catrinescu — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 11:34:00 GMT

Before you start automating business processes, you need to master the basics! In this clip part of my Power Platform Foundations: Introduction to Power Automate course on Pluralsight, you will learn about the Power Automate User Interface!

Full Power Automate Foundations link

Video Summary

Here are the key points from the transcript:

ower Automate has three main interfaces: the web-based Maker Portal, Power Automate Desktop for desktop flows, and a mobile app for iOS and Android.
In the Maker Portal, you can find your flows under “My Flows” with tabs for Cloud flows, Desktop flows, and flows shared with you.
Clicking on a flow shows details like its name, description, owner, run history, and connectors used. Shared flows move to the “Shared with me” tab.
You can edit flow properties and the flow itself using the edit buttons. The interface also includes tools like zoom controls and a fit view option.
The next steps involve creating your own flows, starting with Cloud flows, and exploring features like triggers, actions, and logic controls.

For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!

Video Transcript

Now that we know the basic terms, let’s get familiar with the Power Automate user interface. Most Power Automate flows are crafted from the Power Automate web interface, which is called the Power Automate Maker Portal, and you can find it at make.powerautomate.com. There is also a desktop tool for desktop flows called Power Automate Desktop, which we will showcase later in this course when we cover desktop flows. Finally, Power Automate also offers a mobile app for both iOS and Android, which allows you to see your flow runs, respond to approvals, and even create or start flows from the mobile app.

Let’s first focus on the Power Automate Maker Portal. Once you go to make.powerautomate.com, if you want to see your flows, you need to go to “My Flows” on the left side navigation. You then have three tabs at the top. The first one is called Cloud Flows, and here is where you will find all of the different cloud flows that you have created and have not shared with anyone. The second tab is for Desktop Flows, which are for robotic process automation. Finally, under the Shared with Me tab, you’ll see all the different flows that you have shared with other people or they have shared with you. It’s important to remember that once you create a cloud flow, work on it for a few days, and then share it with a colleague, it will not show up under Cloud Flows anymore but will be under the Shared with Me tab. This has got me sometimes, as I couldn’t find a flow that I was working on last week but forgot that I shared it with somebody, and now I need to go to the Shared with Me tab to access it.

When clicking on the cloud flow, you will see a ton of details about the flow. First, you will see the basic details about the flow, such as the name, description, owner, type, created and modified dates, and so on. In the middle bottom, you will see the 28-day run history for that flow. You can see how long each flow took to run, and if it succeeded or failed, and you can even click on each one of them to see more details. After that, on the top right, you will see the connections or connectors used, and this can give you a good overview of what services this cloud flow connects to. Right underneath, you will see all the owners of that flow, and under that, you have access to process mining insights, which is a tool that we will cover a bit later in this course. It allows you to optimize business processes. Finally, you have the associated apps, which is a way to manually specify which Power Apps use this flow, providing greater visibility to everyone involved.

Now that we have seen the Power Automate Maker Portal in action, let’s head over to the lab environment and explore the Power Automate user interface. We are now in the lab environment, and let me open up the browser here where I navigated to make.powerautomate.com. You can either navigate using the URL or go to your Office 365 menu and then go to Power Automate, which will bring you to this location. On the Power Automate home screen, a big part of the screen at the top is taken up by Microsoft Copilot for Power Automate. We will talk about it later in this module, but it’s the Microsoft AI assistant to help you create and manage your Power Automate flows. On the homepage, at the bottom, we have some Microsoft Learn material for Power Automate.

One of the most important pages you will go to is “My Flows.” Let me navigate to the tab, and here at the top, I have the three tabs we talked about. First, I have all of my cloud flows, then my desktop flows, and then the shared with me flows. These are all the flows that either I created and shared with somebody or somebody else created and shared with me. Let’s go inside Cloud Flows. You’ll notice that some of them have a little diamond next to them. That is because those flows use a premium connector. As soon as a flow uses a premium connector, you will see that little diamond next to the flow name. The same thing applies to the desktop flows here because they require a license; they have the little diamond next to them. Flows can either be turned on, like the three here at the top, or you can see the three at the bottom here are turned off. They are greyed out a bit and have the little disabled icon at the bottom right.

Let’s focus on some of the flows we have here. As you can see in the icon of the flow, we see what the trigger is. We know that for this one and this one, the trigger is when something happens in SharePoint, whereas this one is on the push of a button, so it’s an instant flow. In the type of flow here, which is my third column, I can see if it’s an automated flow, an instant flow, or a scheduled flow. I don’t have any scheduled flows here, but if I had any, I would see them in the type column. Now let’s go into the first one. We will give it a few seconds to load, but at the top, I will have all my flow details. I can see what the flow name is, the description, who the primary owner is, the status when it was created and modified, the type, and what license plan this flow runs under. Without going too deep into licensing, we can have either per-user licenses or per-flow licenses in Power Automate. This is important to have here, especially for flows that use premium connectors, so you can know whose license or what type of license this flow runs under.

In the middle bottom, I have the 28-day run history. You can see that I have one that started on April 21st, two weeks ago, that took two minutes to complete and completed successfully. Then I have another one that was also started two weeks ago, but it’s been running for 14 days. You can always click on them to see what stage they are on. For example, you can see this one when an item got created is the trigger, and now it’s waiting for approval. So we know where it’s waiting. At the top right, I have all the different connections that this flow is connecting to. These are our connectors. As you can see here, we use the approvals connector, the Office 365 Outlook connector, and the SharePoint connector. Right now, I am the only owner of this flow, which is why it appeared in the Cloud Flows tab.

Then I have my process mining preview. We will talk about process mining towards the end of this course, but it allows me to deep dive into my process and find out if there are any bottlenecks, unnecessary logic, and things like that. At the bottom, I have my associated apps, and right now, I don’t have any associated Power Apps with this flow. If you want to edit the properties of the flow, such as the name and description, you have the edit button over here. If you want to edit the flow itself, the edit button is up here at the top left. Let me click on it, and now I can go edit my flow. In this video, we will only talk about the user interface, and in the next module, we will get our hands dirty and create our own flows. But I wanted to show you that at the top of every flow, we will have our trigger. I can see right now my trigger is when a new item is created in SharePoint. When I click on the trigger, I have the properties that appear on the left, where I can see, for example, in what site and what list this trigger is looking for information. Then I have settings, the code view, and information about this trigger and connector. So you can see all of the properties of the trigger.

On the right side of the screen, you have Copilot, which is the AI assistant always there to help you. But we will close it for now because let’s learn how to do things ourselves before we learn how to use AI to make them better. If you want to zoom in or zoom out, you have controls at the bottom left. You can zoom in, zoom out, and use the fit view option to make the whole flow fit into whatever screen size you have. Remember, my trigger is always at the top, and then I have my actions, such as start and wait for an approval, send an email that the purchase was approved, or send an email that the purchase was denied. I can also have logic controls, such as a condition.

Now let’s go back to “My Flows.” I have the back button, and always remember, if you change anything, make sure you save it before you leave. Let’s go back to the menu. I also have a tab for approvals. If there are any approvals waiting for us, we can go there and see what approvals are waiting. We have process mining, which we will cover later in this course. We have all our different connections here on the left as well. If I go under connections, I will see the different services that I’m currently connected to. This is it for a high-level view of the Power Automate user interface. Remember, this is the Power Automate Maker Portal, where we mostly go to deal with cloud flows and business process flows. Now that we know the interface, it’s time for us to create our own flows. We will learn to create all types of flows in this course, starting with cloud flows in the next module.

What is RPA (Robotic Process Automation)?

Vlad Catrinescu — Tue, 14 May 2024 05:21:00 GMT

Wondering what Robotic Process Automation is? Check out this clip from my Robotic Process Automation: Executive Briefing course on Pluralsight!

Full Course

Video Summary

Here are the key points from the video:

Processes, aim to save time, and effort, and bring consistency and efficiency to recurring tasks.
Understanding Workflows: A workflow is a repeatable sequence of operations that produces a result. Automating workflows ensures tasks are done consistently and efficiently across the organization.
Traditional Automation Tools: These tools use APIs to interact with different applications, making them highly reliable. They are ideal for modern applications designed with APIs in mind.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA): RPA uses software robots to emulate user actions in a graphical user interface, making it useful for applications without APIs.
Combining Traditional Automation and RPA: Both tools can be integrated to handle complex processes, using traditional automation for API-based tasks and RPA for tasks requiring user interface interactions.

For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!

Video Transcript

Hello and welcome to this executive briefing on business process automation using workflows and robotic process automation. My name is Vlad Catrinescu, and I will be your instructor for this course. In this executive briefing, we will talk about business process automation, workflows, and robotic process automation, a term that has gained a lot of popularity in recent years.

Before we delve into the more technical details, let’s first discuss the fundamentals of business process automation. Every organization in the world has a set of processes that they perform on a recurring basis. Some of these processes can be very manual, like opening and closing a store every day, while others can be digital, such as requesting a holiday, approving purchase orders, or paying invoices. As enterprises grow, so do the number of processes and the people executing them. With the increasing number of processes, there is a growing desire to automate some of them. This is where the term business process automation, or simply BPA, comes in. BPA allows you to use technology to automate complex business processes. The goal of BPA is to save time and effort and to bring consistency and efficiency to tasks performed regularly.

As we dig deeper into how to automate business processes, let’s start by talking about workflows. When we hear the word “workflow,” we think of a repeatable sequence of operations that produces a result. It might be anything from content approval on a document, submitting expense reports, or producing a product. At the end of the day, you have a repeatable process that you follow to ensure the result is a success. If there is no common workflow in your organization to achieve a certain result, you might notice a drop in productivity or even a lack of consistency in your final products. In the technology world, we want to use technology to ensure each business process is done the same way and to make it as simple as possible for the end user.

Let’s start with a simple example: requesting a holiday. It might seem like a simple task; after all, the only thing an employee needs to do is ask their boss for time off. However, even a simple process like this has multiple implications. For example, how many days of vacation does the employee have left? What communication medium does the employee use to ask for the holiday? How does the approver see who has already requested a holiday at that time and if there will be enough people working? By using automation technology, you can automate certain workflows to ensure they are always done the same way across the company, making employees more productive and ensuring consistency across the organization. The holiday request example is just a small one, but imagine being able to automate expense approvals, purchase orders, and invoice processing.

Now that we know what a workflow is, let’s talk a bit deeper about how this automation can be achieved. The first type of tool I want to discuss is traditional automation tools. This might sound strange, as “traditional” might be associated with old technology, but that’s not the case here. When we talk about traditional automation tools, we’re referring to tools that use application programming interfaces, or APIs, to interact with different applications. An API is a computing interface that defines interactions between multiple software tools. It specifies the kinds of calls or requests that can be made, how to make them, the data formats to use, and the conventions to follow. Traditional automation tools work best with modern applications, as most modern applications are designed with APIs in mind. These tools often wrap those APIs in connectors made for their specific application, making it easier for business users with no programming experience to create advanced workflows that interact with multiple applications. Given they interact with APIs directly, traditional automation tools are highly reliable. Most automation tools also allow you to build custom connectors, meaning that even if they do not have a built-in connector for an application, you can task your internal developers to build it. This can be very useful for your internal custom-made applications you might want to interact with.

The big limitation of traditional automation tools, however, is what happens if a certain software you want to automate doesn’t have an API for an action you want to perform or doesn’t have an API at all. This is where robotic process automation, or RPA, comes in. RPA is a form of business process automation technology that isn’t based on APIs but instead on metaphorical software robots. Instead of using programming interfaces, RPA systems develop an action list by watching the user perform tasks in the application’s graphical user interface. After you build your action list, the bots will simply perform those actions in the interface each time the workflow is launched. When you think about it, RPA tools have strong similarities to graphical user interface testing tools or screen scraping tools, but they are used with a different goal in mind. With RPA tools, you can open applications, click on different menus, type information, copy and paste, and gather information from the screen. It’s all done via bots that emulate your actions, clicking different places in an application and sending keyboard shortcuts to the application.

So, when would you use an RPA tool over a traditional automation tool? The answer is straightforward: if the application you want to automate has APIs, you should use traditional workflow tools. If the application does not have APIs or you do not have access to them, RPA still allows you to automate tasks. Another important aspect to understand is that business process automation vendors don’t only sell a traditional workflow automation tool or an RPA tool; they often have both, and they can be integrated with each other. This means that in your workflow, you can start by using a form that uses traditional automation, open something locally, and then use RPA to type in or perform an action. You can then use RPA to gather information from that legacy application, send it back to your workflow, and use traditional APIs to send a confirmation email at the end. As the processes you want to automate grow in complexity, you can make traditional workflows and RPA work together to help you automate.

Robotic process automation technology has existed for a while but has really grown in popularity over the last five years. It’s expected to be a $25 billion industry by 2027, according to a report published by Grand View Research in July 2020. Talking about terms that have gained popularity in recent years, let’s also discuss artificial intelligence in the context of business process automation.

How to Create Power Automate Flows with Copilot DEMO

Vlad Catrinescu — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 18:14:00 GMT

Are you wondering how to create Power Automate Flows in Copilot faster and more easily? In this 10-minute clip from my Copilot for Power Platform Big Picture Course on Pluralsight, you will learn how Copilot can help you in Power Automate Cloud Flows!

Full Copilot for Power Platform Course

Video Summary

Here are the key points from the video:

Creating Cloud Flows: Copilot in Microsoft Power Automate can help you create Cloud flows by simply describing what you want in natural language. It suggests a flow, including triggers and actions, which you can accept or ask for a different suggestion.
Modifying Flows: Once the flow is created, you can continue to interact with Copilot to make any changes or additions. It can modify the flow based on your instructions, such as adding conditions or sending emails.
Understanding Flows: You can ask Copilot to describe your flow step-by-step, which is helpful for understanding complex flows created by others. It can document the flow and explain each action.
Interactive Assistance: Copilot remains available throughout the process, allowing you to ask questions about the flow, such as the titles of emails sent or who approvals are assigned to. It provides detailed answers based on the flow’s configuration.
Practical Example: The transcript includes a practical example where a flow is created to start an approval when a new item is added to a SharePoint list. Copilot helps refine the flow, add conditions, and send emails based on approval outcomes.

For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!

Video Transcript

Welcome to the third module of this course, where we will learn how to use Copilot in Microsoft Power Automate. Let’s start by exploring how Copilot can assist us with Cloud flows. There are three main ways Copilot can help: creating Cloud flows, modifying Cloud flows, and answering questions about them. For example, you can ask Copilot to describe your flow and more.

As soon as you go to Power Automate under the maker portal, Copilot will be there for you. All you need to do is tell Copilot what you want to build by describing it in natural language, just as you would to a consultant or someone building it for you. After you submit your description, Copilot will suggest a flow for you, including the trigger, action, and logic controls. You can review the suggested flow and either accept it or ask Copilot to give you a different suggestion. Once the flow is created, you can continue discussing with Copilot and request any changes or additions you might want to make to your flow, and Copilot will implement them for you. You can also ask Copilot questions about your flow, such as asking it to document your Cloud flow and explain what it does. This can be very helpful when you need to work with a large flow created by someone else and want to quickly understand its functionality.

Now that we have discussed the theory of creating a Cloud flow with Copilot, let’s head over to the lab and see Copilot in action. In the lab environment, I will open the browser and navigate to the Power Automate maker portal. On the homepage, Copilot is available, prompting me to automate something. I can enter my request in natural language, such as “start an approval when a new item gets added to a SharePoint list,” and then click on generate. After a few seconds, Copilot suggests a flow with the trigger set to SharePoint when a new item is created and the action to start and wait for approval. If the suggestion is not what I wanted, I can click on “show a different suggestion” to get another option. Once I am satisfied, I click on next, ensure all connections are in place, and create the flow.

In the new Power Automate designer, I noticed a few things that need fixing. For example, I can set the approval to require everyone’s approval, give it a title, and assign it to the appropriate user. Copilot remains available on the right side of the screen, allowing me to ask for further modifications, such as adding an email notification to the person who created the SharePoint item with the outcome of the approval. Copilot adds the necessary conditions and actions to the flow, ensuring it meets my requirements. If any changes are not as expected, I can use the undo button to revert them.

Additionally, I can ask Copilot to describe the flow step-by-step, which it does using bullet points. This documentation helps me understand the flow’s functionality. I can also ask specific questions, such as the titles of the emails sent in the flow or who the approvals are assigned to, and Copilot provides accurate answers based on the flow’s configuration.

In conclusion, Copilot in Cloud flows can help us create, customize, and understand our flows. It remains available throughout the process to answer any questions and assist with modifications. This concludes our discussion on Cloud flows. Let’s return to the slides and learn about desktop flows.

Introduction to Loops in Power Automate

Vlad Catrinescu — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 17:57:00 GMT

Do you want to create Power Automate flows that loop through multiple items? In this short clip from my Automating Business Processes Using Power Automate course on Pluralsight you will see how to use the Apply to each loop in a real life example!

FULL Course on how to automate business processes with Microsoft Power Automate

Video Summary

Here are the key points from the video:

Introduction to Loops: Loops in Cloud flows repeat actions until a condition is met. There are two types: “apply to each” and “do until.”
Apply to Each Loop: This loop processes multiple items at once, often used in scheduled flows. For example, it can check items in a SharePoint list nightly and send reminders if due dates are past.
Do Until Loop: This loop repeats actions until a condition is true. For instance, it can send daily reminders for pending approvals until the process is complete.
Demo of Apply to Each Loop: The demo shows creating a flow that gets items from a SharePoint list and sends emails for high-priority items. Power Automate can automatically insert loops when needed.
Flow Execution: The flow is manually triggered, retrieves items, checks conditions, and sends emails accordingly. The demo confirms the flow works as expected by showing the sent email and loop details.

For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!

Video Transcript

Our next logic control that we will talk about is loops. So, what are loops? Loops are a block of actions that will repeat over and over again until a condition is met. There are two types of loops that we can use inside Cloud flows. The first one is an “apply to each” and the second one is a “do until.” Let’s take a look at them in detail.

Let’s start with the “apply to each” loop. The “apply to each” loop is useful when you want to process multiple items at once, and it’s very often used for instant or scheduled Cloud flows. To give you an example of how we can use it, we could have a flow that runs every night and checks all of the items in a SharePoint list. So, we would do a “get items” and then an “apply to each” loop on each one of those items to see if the due date is higher than today, and if yes, send a reminder.

Next up, we have the “do until” loop, which allows you to repeat a set of actions until a certain condition is true. So, do this until the condition is met. If we look at an example, think of an approval flow, and while the approval is pending, send a daily reminder to the approver until the approval process is complete.

Now that we have seen the “apply to each” loop theory, let’s head over to the lab environment and see how we can loop through multiple items with the “apply to each” loop. We are now in the lab environment. Let me open up the browser. Here, we are going to use the same work progress tracker list and let’s go to Power Automate. Let’s do a new flow and we will do an instant Cloud flow. We will give it a name and we will call it “Loop Demo,” and our trigger will simply be to manually trigger this flow. So, what I will do is manually trigger a flow, and then I will add a new step, which will be “get items” with an “s.” So, we will get all of the different items from this SharePoint list. Now, let me get the site address. Here, it will be the “Getting Started with Power Automate” site, and then the list name will be the “Work Progress Tracker.” So far, no loops involved, but now we want to send an email for each of the items that, let’s say, have a high priority. So, let me go back into Power Automate. There are two ways to add a loop. First of all, you can always go into control and then add an “apply to each” loop, and then it will ask me to select an output from the previous steps, and here we’ll select the value. Now, the value is not clear really from the name on what it actually returns. However, the description “list of items” really tells us that this is the good one.

After that, the other way to do it, and I’ll just delete this for now, you will see that Power Automate is pretty smart. If I actually just do a “send an email” here, and then it will ask me, let’s say I use in the body, I use something such as the “TP title,” for example, Power Automate will automatically say, “Hey Vlad, you want to send an email with the title, but the dynamic content you just retrieved is multiple items.” So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to automatically insert an “apply to each” loop for you because you have multiple items in there. So, that is the second way of doing it. It’s a really nice feature that makes sure users have fewer errors when they deal with Power Automate and multiple items. So, I just wanted to show it to you.

So, what we’ll do now, I’ll just delete this actual “send email” for now. It will keep our “apply to each” loop on the value, so same dynamic content, but then what I have to do is I actually need to get the item detail, the one that I’m looping on. So, what I will do here, let me give it the site address again. I’ll get the “Getting Started with Power Automate” site. The list will be the “Work Progress Tracker,” and then under “get items,” I will select the ID. Great. Then let’s add a quick condition here. I will say if the priority equals high, like so. Let me select my priority value equals high. Then I will send an email. So, let me add an action here. Let’s search for “send email” here. Office 365 Outlook, send an email to Vlad at Global Mantics dot org, and then we’ll say “high priority,” and then let’s take the title from the “get item,” and then in the body, we’ll just add the description. Awesome. Let me save this flow, and while it’s saving, I will just go in the presentation slides here and then change the priority to high, so we actually have one that will trigger the email. There we go. Let’s see if the flow saved. It’s saved. Let’s go back to the flow and run it. Now, because it’s an instant flow, I can run it right away. Let’s click on continue and then run the flow. It will take a few seconds. Let’s go inside and see what happens. It already finished. If everything goes well, we have one email, “high priority presentation slides,” and if I go to SharePoint, that was the title, and the description was “PowerPoint slides of the presentation,” which is in my body. So, that worked well, but let’s take a look at how that looks like from the Power Automate side. So, I got my “get items” here, and then I’m doing an “apply to each” right away. You can see that the “apply to each” will show me how many times it looped. So, right now, it’s showing me the first item out of three, and then I can say, “Okay, the condition for this one was valid.” If I go to the next one here, so I go on next, it will show me the second item it looped on. I’ll scroll down. I see all of the details, and then this one probably, let me actually minimize this because it’s showing us quite a few details here, makes me scroll down or up forever. Let’s go to the “get item.” Okay, the condition for this one was false, and the same thing for the last one since we only had one single email. But as you can see, this is how you can do an “apply to each” loop in Power Automate.

So, this is it for this quick demo in which we have gotten all of the items from a SharePoint list, looked through each one of them, and depending on a condition, we sent an email or did nothing if it didn’t meet our condition. This is it for this demo. Now, let’s head back to the slides and learn about branches in Power Automate Cloud flows.

Automatically Send Late Task Reminders with Power Automate

Vlad Catrinescu — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 18:06:00 GMT

Are you tired of manually sending reminders to people when tasks are late? Learn how to automate it with this flow, taken from my Power Automate fundamentals course on Pluralsight!

FULL Course on Pluralsight on the fundamentals of Power Automate

Video Summary

Here are the key points from the video:

Introduction to the Demo: The demo focuses on a SharePoint list called “Work Progress Tracker” with items that have progress statuses and due dates.
Creating the Flow: Using Power Automate, a flow is created to loop through the list items and send reminder emails for overdue tasks that are not marked as completed.
Setting Up Conditions: The flow includes conditions to check if the task’s progress is not completed and if the due date has passed, using expressions like UTC Now for the current date.
Sending Reminder Emails: If both conditions are met, an email is sent to the assigned person reminding them to update or complete the task.
Testing and Conclusion: The flow is tested successfully, sending an email for an overdue task, and the demo concludes by highlighting the use of advanced logic operators in Power Automate.

For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!

Video Transcript

In this demo, we will play with a list that I have in this SharePoint site called the Work Progress Tracker. I have three different items, each with a progress column that can either be completed, in progress, or blocked. Since we’re tracking work progress, they also have a start date and an end date. What we will do in this demo is use some of the different things we just learned in the slides. We will create a flow that will loop through all of the items in this SharePoint list. If the due date has passed and the progress is not completed, we will send a reminder email to the person this task is assigned to, reminding them to either update the date or actually finish their task.

Let’s get started. I will go into Power Automate and create a new flow. In production, you would probably schedule this to run every Wednesday and Friday, for example. But in our demo, we will make it an instant cloud flow so we can trigger it right away. I will select to manually trigger a flow. Let’s wait for it to load. Let’s add a new step and search for “Get items” because I want to get all of the items from a SharePoint list. I will select the site, which is the “Getting Started with Microsoft Power Automate” site, and then select the “Work Progress Tracker” list. Now we have all of the items in that list.

Next, we need to loop through each one of them. I will add a new step and search for “Loop” or go under the control connector to find the “Apply to each” loop. We will loop on the list of items we got previously. Now, I need to add an action to get the information on the specific item I’m looping on. I will search for “Get item” (without the “s” at the end) and select the correct one. It will ask me for the site, which is still the “Getting Started with Power Automate” site, and the list name, which is the “Work Progress Tracker.” Then, I will use the ID from the dynamic content to specify the item to act on.

Next, I need to add a condition. I will go under control and select the condition. I will set the condition to check if the progress value is not equal to “Completed” and if the due date is less than the current date (using the UTC Now function). If both conditions are true, it means someone has a task that is not completed and is past due. I will then add an action to send an email to the assigned person, reminding them that their task is late. I will use the dynamic content to get the assigned person’s email and include the task title in the email body.

I will save the flow and rename it to “Reminder for Overdue Tasks.” After saving, I will check the flow using the flow checker, which will give warnings or errors if there are any issues. In this case, it suggests using an OData filter for better performance, but since we only have three items, it is not necessary.

Finally, I will run the flow. I have one task, “Demo Plan,” that is in progress and overdue by five days. I should receive an email for this task. After running the flow, I check my email and see that the reminder email has arrived, indicating that the flow worked successfully. The demo concludes by highlighting the use of advanced logic operators in Power Automate, such as loops and expressions, to follow the logic of a business process.