Optimize how you work with RPA and process mining in Power Automate

Today, at Microsoft Ignite, we are announcing the latest step in helping organizations harness the power of low-code automation with several updates in Microsoft Power Automate.

We recognize that hybrid work is here to stay and that it requires new ways to work that foster collaboration and drive more innovation on an enterprise scale. We are excited to announce several new capabilities in Power Automate that support your organization’s digital transformation.

Continue reading to learn about the latest updates with cloud-based robotic process automation (RPA) in Power Automate and see how you can automate activities, more securely, right from the desktop of your Windows PC. And gain deeper insights into your business processes and take the guesswork out of inefficiencies in your workflows with the preview of process mining in process advisor.

Discover inefficiencies in your workflows with process mining—in preview

We are announcing the next evolution of process advisor with the preview of process mining. Process mining is part of process advisor and provides direct data insights across the business processes many organizations use daily to identify inefficiencies across workflows. Process advisor is comprised of two powerful capabilities, the existing task mining capability for capturing user interactions on a desktop, and now with process mining it uses business data to provide a holistic view into bottlenecks across the business.

With process mining, organizations can do the following:

• Easy to get started: Quickly create a new process with the intuitive interface in process advisor and upload your data from the appropriate system of record to select your key data sources for analysis.
• Customize your data with deeper analytics: Customize your insights by selecting from an array of attributes that you define—such as regions, invoice types, and more—and filter down to identify bottlenecks in your processes. You can review the process maps and analytics to glean insights across your business processes.
• Discover inefficiencies and improve productivity: From these insights, you can quickly identify which activities are most time-consuming, discover commonalities in their business practices and improve efficiencies by identifying bottlenecks—ultimately streamlining workflows and boosting productivity.

Customers are already seeing the value of identifying business processes that are candidates for process mining. PwC is one such customer. PwC is looking for new ways to innovate its tech ecosystem and process advisor is one solution they are looking at for future opportunities.

“Our team is committed to putting the most innovative technology into the hands of our people and empowering them to help our clients solve their most complex problems. We are always looking for opportunities to drive better business outcomes for our firm and for our clients, and we see enormous potential in the Power Platform. Automation and Process Mining in Process Advisor hold particular promise for us—with the opportunity to streamline our service delivery, while at the same time unlocking new insights about our clients’ processes—enabling our people, powered by innovative tech, to deliver the value our clients expect from PwC.”—Joe Atkinson, Chief Products and Technology Officer, PWC

Try the preview of process mining now.

Harness the power of RPA on an enterprise scale

Power Automate enables everyone—coders and non-coders alike—to automate the most mundane tasks from their desktop with a low-code automation platform. Not only can you leverage pre-built templates with cloud flows to automate approvals in Microsoft Teams, but you can also turn outdated processes into automated workflows with desktop flows, the RPA capability in Power Automate. We recently released RPA in Windows 11—Power Automate for desktop is now included at no additional cost—and we have made it easier to get started and added additional controls to manage and scale automations across an enterprise.

Scale RPA further, faster with Azure Virtual Desktop—in preview

We are announcing that there is an easier way to manage installing and provisioning RPA across your organization with the Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) starter kit, now in preview. Organizations can manage everything from the installation of RPA to the provisioning of machines to quickly scale up or scale down and support unpredictable spikes in demand. With the starter kit, you can integrate existing AVD deployments and automatically turn on virtual machines (VMs) to scale RPA workloads faster. This helps optimize infrastructure costs and reduce overall wait times for flow runs in Power Automate. You can download the starter kit today.

Manage automations with ease using data loss prevention for RPA—in preview

As organizations begin to grow and scale RPA it is critical to do so in a responsible way. To support the management and controls over automations, we are announcing that data loss prevention (DLP) for desktop flows is now in preview. With this, administrators can define policies for automations and warn makers when they are creating flows that may go against their organizational governance rules.

Boost organizational productivity with new capabilities via maker collaboration

Microsoft Power Platform can scale innovation unlike any other platform by allowing pro developers to build apps with makers in the business and IT directly. Collaboration in Power Automate takes on the look and feel of Office in Microsoft 365 where makers and developers can come together to collaborate, comment, troubleshoot, and solve challenges while building flows. For example, you can remind your team about changes to a specific step in a Power Automate flow and with presence indicators, prevent disruptions to the overall editing workflow. Now in preview, learn more.

Start automating today

Power Automate is delivering more and more capabilities to help optimize how organizations work in today’s modern world by streamlining the automation experience in Windows 11, providing more scalability with the AVD starter kit, and Microsoft Teams users will soon have access to prebuilt Power Automate templates from the Microsoft Store—keep an eye out for this feature that is coming soon.

All these capabilities work together to help your organization harness the power of automation and process mining.

Be sure to try the preview of process mining today and watch the Microsoft Ignite OD162 session to learn more about these announcements in Power Automate.