Getting Started With Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Using The Power Automate Desktop

There are a lot of hot phrases you’ve likely heard thrown around during various keynote sessions at conferences over the last 5 years. “Digital Transformation”, “Citizen Developer”, and “Robotic Process Automation” are just a few of the terms that have become popular when describing Microsoft’s Power Platform. While some tend to roll their eyes when they hear these phrases I’ve actually grown quite fond of them over time. I believe they accurately describe not only the Power Platform as a whole but more specifically do a great job describing the purpose of today’s post.

Today I explore how Power Automate with its recent addition (Sept 2020) opens the door for Robotic Process Automation using the Power Automate Desktop. I found the Power Automate Desktop easy to use and loved the ability to combine Desktop Flows with Cloud Flows to automate your on-premises tasks with your cloud services. Using the Desktop recorder feature made it incredibly easy to get started when building automated actions.

In this video Devin covers the basics of what Robotic Process Automation is and how using Microsoft’s Power Automate you can build Desktop Flows to automate tasks you previously thought could only be done by a human.