The benefits and limitations of Power Automate

Introduction

Microsoft Power Automate (previously, Microsoft Flow) is a great tool for business process automation. Organizations that are looking forward to boost productivity by automating routine-based and menial tasks can use Power Automate and see surprising results. However, as it is still in its infancy, many people are drawing back to try it at production level because of certain reasons.

Now, let us quickly examine the advantages and disadvantages of Power Automate –

Advantages of Power Automate

• Power Automate is extremely easy to use. Even non-technical users can create workflows using simple features.
• Power Automate easily integrates with other applications. It provides plenty of built-in connectors with the help of which you can integrate workflows into multiple apps such as SharePoint, Outlook, Slack, etc.
• Power Automate allows users to create custom connectors too. To do so, one must define triggers and actions for a system to initiate a workflow and respond to changes and then describe API so that Power Automate can communicate with that API. To learn more about custom connectors, please click here.
• Power Automate helps users to prioritize their tasks. To not miss high-priority emails, you can automate a workflow and create an alert notifying you of each time you receive a message that demands your immediate attention.
• It allows users to easily share and access data by connecting your favorite services together and creating a flow between them. For example, you can copy files or cloud-based data from Google Drive to OneDrive.

Disadvantages of Power Automate

• Complex workflows affect the performance of the program considerably.
• Maximum flow frequency for a free plan is 15 minutes as compared to app-based plan which is 1 minute. Flow frequency is the time it takes for the flow to trigger.
• You cannot change permissions on a SharePoint item without using third-party connector.
• Power Automate allows only 250 actions in a single workflow.
• Power Automate supports only sequential workflows.
• You can only save workflow instances for 30 days which might not be adequate for business-critical processes.

Should you use Power Automate?

Power Automate is a lightweight and user-friendly tool that might benefit businesses where straightforward notifications are required in simple settings. When deciding whether Power Automate is an ideal solution for you, it is advisable to check the complexity of your workflows first. Processes with higher degree of complexity might require more powerful tools such as TeamsHub.io.

If you are a Microsoft Teams user and want to automate processes such as site provisioning, teams lifecycle management, external collaboration, file tracking, analytics and more, TeamsHub.io is right solution for you.

To know how TeamsHub.io automates end-to-end governance in Microsoft Teams to elevate team collaboration, please visit https://teamshub.io or contact sales@cyclotrongroup.com to request a demo