PL-100 Microsoft Power Platform App Maker – Create Power Automate flows

1. Power Automate Licensing

Hello. And in this section we are taking a step away from PowerApps and going into Power Automate. So Power Automate allows us to have certain processes and you can see some of the things that you can do on the screen either when I click a button or when a certain event happens or at a certain time it could be repeated. Now let’s, let’s start by talking about licenses.

So firstly, do you have the license to use Power Automate which addresses Floor Microsoft. com? I know my URL also has United Kingdom but that’s just where it has redirected me. It’s just floor Microsoft. com. Well, it depends. If you are in the Power Apps developer plan then yes, you are fully licensed. You can see create apps and flaws without writing codes using PowerAutomate.

And then further down PowerAutomate Automate workflows between applications and services. You also get support for premium and custom connectors and the database. But this is just for testing purposes only. In other words, for us our purposes is for learning. Now if you want to buy Power Automate then the basic idea is you can buy it for $15 per month.

So this is the license by user plan. So previously when we’re looking at PowerApps, there was a per app plan and there is a per user plan and the per user plan was four times the per app plan. Well here the per by user plan is $15 per month but the by floor plan is $100 per floor. So $500 for five floors and then another $100 thereafter. Now the advantage of this by floor is that you have unlimited users with reserved capacity.

In other words, it’s on your own capacity. You’re not sharing it with somebody, whereas the per user you are doing the floor on a server that Microsoft chooses, you’re probably sharing the server with lots of people. There will be limited processing power so you just have to share it. Now there is also this which is currently $40 per month per user and that is a per user plan with attended robotic process automation.

Now. It also includes AI and AI builder service credits. Now for this particular course we don’t have to worry about robotic process automation. We will be using AI Builder later on. Now you’ll notice that there is a limited time offer. This may or may not be there when you come to this website but also it’s a minimum of 5000 licenses. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to click on the Tri Three so I can have both the AI Builder and Power Automate. Now I would be doing the try free but that link is not working for me.

So I will click on that by now instead and then I can fill in my work email address and all the rest of it. Now you may be saying but hang on, you signed up to the per user plan, run unlimited apps per user for PowerApps. I thought there was something about Power automated in there. Well, there is. However, you only have the right to use Power Automate, including the previous connectors in the context of an app. So what does that mean? Well, if we go back to one of our canvas acts and go to action, then we’ve got Power Automate there.

And so we can trigger flaws in our Power app. Now actually doing this is not part of the PL 100 requirements. It’s part of the PL 200 requirements. So we won’t actually be connecting the two in this particular course. But yes, I have Power Automate use rights, but they are limited only in connection with an app. If I want to do standalone apps, then I better get fully licensed. Alternatively, I can go to the Office Portal. So this is Portal Office and there we can see the active users. So there is my plan and I can go down to billing and purchase services.

So if I type in Power Automate here, here is the Power Automate per user and here is the RPA and the non RPA. So if I click on this one, you can start a free trial of that. And if I click on this one, we can start a free trial of this. So I’m going to try and buy it in here so that other link doesn’t work. So here I get 25 users. Only need the one try now. And there we go. I have now purchased it or the one month trial. So I will continue and go to my user so Power platform plan, go to licenses and apps. And there is my Microsoft power Automate relicense applied.

So there we go. So now I’ve got that. So there’s lots of ways of getting it. So you can click on the buy now, but there isn’t the trifree here. So if you want the trifree, you have to go to Portaloffice. com. Alternatively, you can buy this with the AI builder. But also if you’ve got the Power Ups developer plan, then you don’t need any of this. You’ve already got PowerAutomate. So once you are fully licensed, then you can go into PowerAutomate, which is floor Microsoft. com. And we’ll start making our first floor in the next video.

2. 48-52. Creating and testing a instant (button) flow

Now in this video we’re going to create a very simple floor. So if I go to create you can see different types of floor. We’ve got, we’ve got automated cloud flaws. They’re also known as just automated flaws or cloud flaws. So they’re triggered by a specific event. They’re probably the ones that you would use the Moss. We then have scheduled cloud flow flaws. So when and how often it runs. And then we’ve got desktop floors we’re not going to use in this particular course. Process flaws, business process floors. We’re going to use that in a later section.

And the one we’re going to use now is an Instant floor. So I can start with a tap of a button. Now of course we don’t actually have any physical buttons so it can be run when a virtual button is pressed on a mobile app. It can be done when a button is clicked with something else, for example, maybe a power app. And it can be pressed when buttons are clicked with third party options. It basically allows you to run on demand. Now these instant flaws are also known as button flaws. So I’m going to create a bottom floor and I’m going to say this is Send email and I just want to manually trigger this floor. So let’s click Create and there we have the manually trigger floor.

So in other words I just press button. So that is our trigger. Now that starts the floor. Every floor must start with a trigger. Otherwise how good does it know when to run? So what I’m going to next do is have an email event. So I’m just going to type the word email and you can see send an email notification. So I’m going to click that. So it’s going to ask me to accept terms and privacy notice. So you should read those beforehand. So I’ll click accept. So who’s it going to be sent to? Well, I want it to be sent to me. So I’m going to type in an email address and the subject hello and the body. This is an email.

Now we’ve got things called dynamic content on the right hand side. So these are things that I can add in and if you can’t see it then it’s this little plus button that’s here. Now the dynamic content is based on previous steps. So in this case it is manually trigger a flaw and I can have the date and I’m just going to enter these, the date, the timestamp, the full address, if the computer knows the full address, country, region code, city, state, street, postal code.

So those are things that it may or may not know and I’m going to add them into my email. We’ve also got expressions which give an awful lot of functions. We’ll be looking at functions later on in this course. Now there’s also show advanced options. So here we can see two names, CC and CC. Names, BCC and BCC names and attachments. And again, attachments could be based on a previous floor.

So maybe you have just downloaded a picture in a previous floor or uploaded it and you want to send it as an attachment. So these show advanced options. Always useful to have a look. So there you are. I’m just going to now save this floor. You can see it says Saving top left. Okay, floor is ready to go.

We suggest you test it. So we’ve also got a save button up here. We’ve got a floor checker. So just like we had a app checker when we were looking at our canvas apps. So there is the app checker. We have a floor checker here. So this floor checker can give us errors, can give us warnings. And just like the app checker, there will be a dot next to this scatterscope, a red dot when there are errors, potential errors and warnings. And when we see them, and we will see them as part of this section, we’ll be able to click on them and find more information. Some problems that it may find are things like authentication failure and if I haven’t configured an action correctly.

So now I’m going to test the floor. And very simple, we just click on test. So I can test the floor manually or automatically. Automatically only works when I don’t have a manual floor. So let’s say I’ve got a floor. When I add something to a particular table or something like that, I can run it automatically with a recently used trigger here. Going back over previous action just doesn’t actually work. All I can do is manually. So I’m going to test this. So you can see I need to sign in. I can see a checkmark here, so a valid connection. I could click on the dot if I didn’t and be able to edit. But I’m going to now continue. So run the floor. And my floor has successfully started.

So to monitor it, I go to the floor runs page. So I get to this page by going to my floors. Click on the next to the floor and see the run history. So you can see the test is successful. And now if I go to my email, here is the email that I’ve received and you can see my text and all of the things that I’ve added. It does have my location underneath this notepad. So you can see it is running successfully. So if I want to run it again, I can go to my flaws and just press play. So run now, get the same pane as before and I receive another email. Or I can go to my mobile device and I will receive another email. Or I can go to my mobile device. So here I’m on my tablet. It really is a phone device. Now let’s try it again.

So here I’m on my tablet, in power, automate and if I go to Buttons and Flaws, you can see no buttons, no flaws. It’s because I’m in the wrong environment. So I need to go to account and change the environment. And then we can see we have got a button. We’ve also got flaws as well. So if I click on the button, like to use Bluetooth. So if I go back onto my computer done. We can see if I go into the run history that there is my test, there is my running on the desktop and there are my runnings on the tablet. So in this video, what we’ve done is we’ve created our first floor. We have created a manually triggered floor, also known as an instant floor, also known as a button floor. So this floor, if I want to edit it, I can just click on this edit icon. I’ve also got a few additional options down here. And so this is our first floor. And this is our first floor.