Power Automate Desktop July 2021 update
We are happy to announce that the July 2021 update of Power Automate Desktop has been released! You can download the latest release here. New features and updates have been added, as described below.
Silent registration for machines
Power Automate Desktop users can now register silently their machine(s) with the machine registration app.
This feature will allow users to do mass deployment of Power Automate Desktop from installation to registration of machines.
With this new app, users can also silently add their registered machines to existing machine groups.
Supported actions:
- Register machine
- Add the machine to a group
- Change machine run environment
- Get machine information and status
Automatic detection of Windows proxy settings
Power Automate Desktop now automatically detects the Windows proxy settings configuration to connect to the cloud services it needs. In addition, admins are able to set specific registry keys, to configure how Power Automate Desktop interacts with a corporate proxy server.
Ability to remove unused UI elements and images from a flow
This feature introduces two new options in the flow designer. With these options, you can remove all UI elements and images that are not used within the desktop flow with a single click.
In this way, you won’t have to delete unused UI elements or images one by one, manually checking which are associated with actions and which are not. Instead, you will be able to remove them by using a single option that will be available in the respective contextual menus.
Introduction of new action ‘Take screenshot of UI element’
A new action is introduced in Power Automate Desktop, which allows you to specify a UI element in a window and take a screenshot of it. The screenshot can either be stored in the clipboard or a file in your machine.
This feature is useful for cases where the user desires to capture a screenshot of a UI element and use it in a subsequent action.
Improvement of the action ‘Convert datetime to text’
The ‘Convert datetime to text’ action now displays a sample of the currently selected datetime format, so that you can preview how the end result displays in your desktop flow.
So you will be able to tell right away what will the expected format be, regarding the date and time information, during the configuration of the action – there will be no need to wait for the execution to see the result.
The ‘Set variable’ action now supports multi-line text input
You are now able to provide multi-line text in a direct way, when using the ‘Set variable’ action in Power Automate Desktop. With this improvement, users will be able to directly provide input that consists of multiple lines, without needing to resort to workarounds. Pressing ‘Enter’ will now add a new line in the variable’s value.
Hoping that you will find the above updates useful, please feel free to provide your questions and feedback in the Power Automate Community. If you want to learn more about Power Automate Desktop, get started with the below resources: