Power Automate, the ultimate user guide!
Power Automate is great, but do you need some help developing flows? On these pages you will find many flow examples and tutorials.
Background
On this page you will find many links to useful posts related to Power Automate.
Power Automate used to be called Microsoft Flow, hence you might find some article still using the old name.
In 2024, the Power Automate Designer UI was changed. Some of the posts on SharePains will still contain older screenshots. If you need any help getting used to the new UI then just let me know .
As I have been writing many posts about flows, a lot of these links will help you find the older posts.
I am happy to include any links to other posts from other authors. If you find anything that can really not be missing from this page then please contact me and I will add any good articles.
Any articles that can help others I’m happy to include. It’s now up to you to suggest more articles.
Hot posts
Power Automate keeps changing all the time. Recently may changes were introduced. If you want to catch up with these then have a look through the following posts:
New Features in the new Power Automate Designer
Undocumented functions in Power Automate
Get started
The getting started section of this Power Automate user guide is full of posts and links to help you get started with development of flows.
If you are a beginner in the world of automated workflow development or if you are more advanced then this will be the place to start.
But Power Automate can be difficult in the beginning. Don’t get put off, just open the chat and I will try to help you where I can.
All Q&A is free so don’t hesitate. I will answer when I’m online.
Creating flows
Once you have got started you might want to have a look at different types of flows. It is important to understand how your flow is started and what that means for your flows.
Start flows
On these pages there is a lot of information about starting flows using trigger steps.
Triggers start every flow. So if you want to get started with flows better take the first step first. When you configure a triggers you will find that there isn’t much difference between triggers and action, but when you look a bit further into triggers you will find many differences.
It is important to understand who runs your flow. Is it the owner? Or is it the person who created that document inn SharePoint or is it maybe the person who clicked that button in a Power App? Being aware of these kind of things is very important. Have a look in this section of the Power Automate user guide to learn more.
How will users start that flow. Are flows started from an app? Or is your flow something that users can run from their mobile device as a standalone process?
Connectors
Do you want to know more about connectors or do you want to create your own custom connectors then this section is for you.
One of the connectors in Power Automate is the SharePoint connector. Many posts in this section help you with all sorts of problems that you might face.
Other connectors that I’ve looked at are:
- Project online
- Excel
- Approvals
- Parseur
- Power Apps
- SQL Azure
- Flic
- Common Data Services
- Outlook
- And so many more
With over 1000 connectors in the Power Platform it is almost impossible to keep up with all the changes. Do you want to know about any new connection arriving? then please follow me on twitter. I send out tweets as soon as the new connectors arrive.
Microsoft Graph API
The Microsoft Graph API gives you access to a lot of the data that you can access within your Microsoft 365 tenant. Users, Email, SharePoint and so much more.
Custom Connectors
Are you ready to develop your own custom connectors? Or do you just want to understand how custom connectors work? Then this part of the user guide is for you.
Connections
Are you having problems with broken connections? then this post might be helpful for you.
Broken connections in Microsoft Flow.
Power Automate Patterns
This section is about some of the patterns tht I developed over time. The patterns include:
- Error handling using the try-catch pattern
- Pieter’s method (the must have performance improvement for flows)
- State Machine in flows
Graph API within the Power Platform
This section covers a series of posts about the Graph API within the Power Platform. If you are completely new to the Graph API then you might want to start with he introduction post:
Introduction to Graph API and the Power Platform
Manage Users using the Graph API
Manage Calendars and Events using the Graph API
Filtering and selecting data using the Graph API
Manage Excel files using the Graph API
Subscribe to data changes using the Graph API
Migration to Power Automate flows
When you want to migrate from SharePoint Designer to Power Automate then this post will help you. Recently Microsoft has retired SharePoint Designer 2010 workflows in SharePoint Online, so if you find that you workflows aren’t running anymore then these posts might help you migrate to Power Automate.
Migrate from SharePoint designer to Power Automate
Power Automate vs SharePoint Designer Workflows
Functions and Expressions
Functions and expressions are very important in Power Automate. This section will help you master them. Many of the functions available may give you that “ah, I needed that for a long time”-feeling. Have a look trough the available functions every now and then is a good idea.
Power Automate Studio
The Power automate designer or studio is changing all the time. New features are added and there is more and more to learn. In this section I’m trying to keep you up to date with all of it.
Business Process Flows
Have you started to use Business Process Flows? In this post I’ve created a first overview of the BPF system.
Business Process Flows from a traditional flow perspective
Administration
How do you keep track of all your flows? In this section of the user guide you will find many posts about how to administer your flows.
This can be from deployment of your flows from one environment to another but also bulk operations on flows. Not all the options available are always easy to find.
Licensing
Licensing and the Power Platform is a difficult subject. The posts below might be slightly out of date as the licensing has changed quite a bit.
Microsoft Flow – Free, P1 or P2 licences?
Microsoft Flow – Do you have a plan?
Often licensing becomes a problem after the Office 365 licences have been purchased and just before a major problem requiring premium features. the unexpected costs can run up quite quickly. Any advice needed? Feel free to contact me and we can have a look how Power Automate can be good for you while keeping the costs down.
Tools
In this section of this user guide I’m describing some of the 3rd party tools that you might want to use when you develop flows. do you have other tools that should be included then please contact me and I will add your suggestions too.
Go Pro with Microsoft Flow and Flow Studio – Part 2
Flow-tastic bookmarker using Chrome extension and Microsoft Flow
Opinions
This is the section of the user guide that contains my opinion on many of the features in Power Automate.
I quite like to share my opinion. Feel free to discuss and agree or disagree. I’m always interested to hear what other people think.
Power Automate Tutorials
Quite a lot of my followers have been asking for tutorials.
Step by step guide to create your own flows. In this section a number of examples of flows built in Power Automate that will help you with common business problems.
If you can’t find your problem in the tutorials section then please feel free to get in touch and it might be the start of my next tutorial article.
Need some help with Power Automate?
Feel free to contact me on the chat. In general i will try to respond straight away and when I’m busy with something else and I happen to not respond I will contact you back by email.
Something missing in the user guide?
Are you missing something related in this user guide? Please feel free to contact me.
Is Power Apps more your thing then don’t forget to go through the the ultimate Power Apps user guide as well.