Power Automate

If your company runs on Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard or Premium, Power Automate is already included in your plan: you can set up your first automations for email, forms and approvals without buying a new system. You pay extra only when a flow needs premium connectors. Trouble starts when a flow hits the daily action limit or when the person who built it leaves the company.

How does it work?

1. A trigger starts the flow: a new email, a new file in SharePoint, a click of a button or a set time.
2. The next steps (actions) run in your applications through connectors. Standard connectors, including SharePoint, Outlook, Teams, Excel Online, Forms and Planner, are included in a Microsoft 365 plan.
3. The flow runs on its owner’s account and uses the owner’s connections. The owner’s licence decides which connectors the flow can use and how many actions it can run in a day.
4. Every run is kept in the run history for 30 days, so you can trace an error step by step.

What if the data has to go into older software?

Connectors work through the APIs of services and applications. When software installed on a computer has no API, a desktop flow (RPA) can type the data in: the automation clicks through the software’s windows just as a person would. Desktop flows come with some plans, including Microsoft 365 Business Premium. If the automation has to run on its own, with nobody at the computer, it needs a Process licence.

Example from practice

At a service firm we work with, an automated document workflow built on Power Automate has meant around 6 h/week less retyping of data between tools. Document workflow makes a good first automation, because the same data passes through several places in it. It works best when each piece of data is entered once and the flow passes it on, which is the idea behind a single source of truth.

When does it make sense, and when not?

Power Automate makes sense when your company works in Microsoft 365 and the process runs through Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, Forms or Excel. Examples include approving documents, sending notifications, saving attachments to the right folder and collecting form responses. Flows like these usually get by with standard connectors, so they need no extra licence. A flow will save invoices from a mailbox and send them for approval; reading the data out of the PDFs is a separate step. We design and maintain such flows as part of our Microsoft 365 automation service.

It works less well when:

• the process needs premium connectors and many people start it by hand: each of them then needs a Premium licence, unless the flow itself gets a Process licence;
• the flow grows to hundreds of steps: Microsoft allows 500 actions in one flow, yet a flow that size is hard to maintain;
• the process needs its own database and screens: a bespoke system serves it better;
• the connection to an external system needs its own authentication and careful handling of API limits, as with a government e-invoicing API: we build that part as a separate integration, and the flow processes its output.

Not sure whether Power Automate is enough for your process? Describe it in the form and we will tell you whether the Microsoft 365 plan you already have can handle it and what, if anything, you would need to add.

Describe your process

What to watch out for

Premium connectors need a separate licence

A Microsoft 365 plan gives you standard connectors only. Premium and custom connectors need a Power Automate Premium licence (per user) or a Process licence (per flow). For automated and scheduled flows, only the owner needs Premium; for flows started by hand, everyone who starts the flow does.

Prices are from Microsoft’s US price list for annual billing; they vary by country and currency.

A flow that receives a webhook starts with the HTTP trigger. Before you plan your licences, check in the designer whether that trigger is marked Premium.

How quickly does the daily limit run out?

Every trigger and every action counts towards the daily limit, including failed and retried ones. A flow that uses 12 actions per run and runs 200 times a day takes 2,400 of the 6,000 actions a Microsoft 365 plan gives you. A loop that performs 2 actions for each of 3,000 rows uses up the whole limit in a single run.

Microsoft turns off a flow that keeps exceeding its limits or failing for 14 days. A flow that has not run once in 90 days may also be turned off, unless its owner has a Premium licence or the flow has a Process licence.

What happens when a flow’s author leaves the company?

A flow runs on its owner’s account, and the owner is usually the author. When the author leaves, the flow is left without an owner and the connections based on the author’s account stop working. An administrator can then add a new co-owner in the Power Platform admin center. A flow with premium connectors needs an owner with a Premium licence or a Process licence of its own to keep running. If it has neither after the author leaves, the administrator gets a notification and has 90 days to act. After another 90 days, Microsoft may suspend the flow.

To keep the work going when one person leaves:

• add at least 2 co-owners to every flow the work depends on; a co-owner has almost the same rights as the author, so they can fix the flow and take it over;
• for business-critical flows, make a service account (service principal) the owner: the flow then no longer depends on any one employee, although with premium connectors it needs a Process licence or a designated user with a licence;
• keep a list of flows (owner, purpose, connection accounts) and review it whenever someone leaves.

How do you protect the data that passes through a flow?

An administrator can set data policies (formerly DLP policies) that split connectors into groups. One flow then cannot combine connectors from different groups, and a flow that breaks the policy is suspended. The run history keeps the details of each run for 30 days, and a co-owner can see it just as the author can. If client data passes through the flow, choose co-owners from among people who already have access to that data.

Questions and answers

Is Power Automate included in Microsoft 365?

Yes. According to Microsoft’s licensing guide, cloud flows come with plans including Business Basic, Standard and Premium, as well as E3 and E5, though only with standard connectors and a limit of 6,000 actions per day. Premium connectors cost extra.

Do you need to know how to code to use Power Automate?

Not for simple flows: you build them in the designer by picking a trigger and the next steps from a list. A flow that your document workflow depends on still needs error handling, retries and documentation, like any other system.

See also

• Webhook
• Single source of truth