What is Power Automate?
Power Automate is Microsoft's workflow automation tool — what it does, the flow types, and where it fits in Microsoft 365.
Power Automate is Microsoft's low-code workflow automation tool, part of the Power Platform that ships alongside Microsoft 365. It lets you connect apps, automate repetitive tasks, and orchestrate work across services without writing much code.
What it actually does
A flow is a sequence of steps: a trigger (something that starts the flow) and one or more actions (what to do next). Triggers might be "an email arrives in a shared mailbox," "a row is added to a SharePoint list," or "a file is uploaded to OneDrive." Actions might be "post a Teams message," "create a task in Planner," "approve a request," or "call an HTTP API."
Power Automate ships with hundreds of connectors — Office, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, SQL, Salesforce, ServiceNow, GitHub, and many more — so you can compose flows that span Microsoft 365 and third-party systems.
The flow types
- Cloud flows run in Microsoft's cloud. They can be automated (triggered by an event), instant (triggered by a button), or scheduled (running on a timer).
- Desktop flows run on a Windows machine and automate UI interactions — keyboard, mouse, browser, legacy thick-client apps. This is Microsoft's robotic process automation (RPA) capability.
- Business process flows guide users through a multi-stage process inside Dynamics 365 and model-driven Power Apps.
Licensing
Some Power Automate functionality is included with Microsoft 365 (limited to standard, in-suite connectors and modest run volumes). For premium connectors — SQL, custom HTTP, on-premises gateways, Dataverse — and for desktop flows with unattended runs, you need standalone Power Automate licences or a Power Apps plan. The licensing model has changed several times; check current Microsoft docs before scaling out.
Where it fits
Power Automate is the glue that makes Microsoft 365 feel automated: approvals in Teams, scheduled reports from SharePoint lists, alerts on document changes, mailbox-driven ticket creation. For anything beyond a one-off scripted task, it's usually the first tool to reach for.