Power Automate Process Mining

Power Automate Process Mining (the merged successor of Minit and the older Process Advisor) is the Power Platform's tool for discovering business processes from event log data. Where Power Automate is for building automation, Process Mining is for figuring out what to automate by looking at how work actually happens, not how anyone thinks it happens.

How process mining works

The tool takes an event log — a table of events with at least:

• A case ID (an order number, a ticket ID, a customer interaction).
• An activity name (the step that happened).
• A timestamp.

…plus any other contextual fields (who performed the activity, region, value, status). From this, the engine reconstructs the actual process flow — every variation, every loop, every bottleneck.

The result is a process map that shows:

• The happy path — the most common variation.
• All the other paths — the long tail of deviations, exceptions, rework loops.
• Bottlenecks — steps that take disproportionate time.
• Conformance — how often the actual process matches the documented process.
• Cost and time drivers — which paths and variations consume the most resources.

This is usually a revelation. The documented process always looks linear and tidy; the actual process has dozens of variations the documented version doesn't mention.

Two flavours

• Task Mining — a Power Automate Desktop client records what users actually do on their screens (with their consent), turning UI activity into an event log. Discovers desktop tasks ripe for RPA automation.
• Process Mining — uses pre-existing event logs from business systems (ERP, CRM, ticketing systems, custom apps). Discovers end-to-end processes for redesign or automation.

Often used together: process mining identifies the slow process; task mining identifies the manual UI work inside it.

What it's used for

• Identifying automation targets — what's the highest-ROI process to automate?
• Process improvement projects — re-engineering existing processes based on real data.
• Audit and compliance — proving that a process actually follows its documented controls.
• M&A integration — comparing process variations between merged organisations.
• Customer journey analysis — turning customer event logs into journey maps.

Where Process Mining fits in the Power Platform

The product line:

• Process Mining discovers the process.
• Power Automate cloud flows automate the digital parts.
• Power Automate desktop flows automate the UI parts (RPA).
• Power Apps replaces manual UIs with purpose-built apps.
• Copilot Studio agents add AI-driven assistance to the process.

A typical project: mine the process, identify the slowest manual steps, automate them with cloud flows + RPA, replace the worst manual UI with a Power App, and add a Copilot for the human-judgement steps. Then re-mine to measure improvement.

Licensing

Process Mining requires a Power Automate Premium licence or a standalone Process Mining add-on. Task Mining is typically bundled with Power Automate Premium plans. Cloud capacity for processing event logs has separate consumption pricing.

For organisations with significant operational processes — finance close, order-to-cash, hire-to-retire, complaint handling — process mining often reveals more automation opportunities than years of internal improvement work surfaced.