WOW! April thanks so much for sharing a real world example. 5 years ago I was wishing a "Macro Recorder" existed for my desktop to save me countless tedious hours of work. Now it's here!! I hope you make a full series on this (given this topic keeps trending LOL.
So happy to hear this! I am definitely going to do more videos on this and more introductory Power Automate videos in general. In fact, just did another video today that explains the type of flows you can create: ruclips.net/video/VulRVuC_Cgc/видео.html&lc=UgyBqLoOO61aC-sXaQh4AaABAg
Excellent video, great job introducing the program, showing us how to install it and how to start using it. I’ll go ahead and install it today and will try to creat a similar flow. Thank you very much. Keep up the good work you are doing!
Thanks for your video! Can i combine desktop flows with cloud flows? Like for example when i have like a trigger conditions "new form responses" and then based on that start a desktop flow where the i can put the information in a system? What would be the requirements .. like a pc that is always running?
April thanks for explaining this. I am also trying to find documentation for creating excel content addins not had much luck. We have a lot of examples for task pane addins but none for content addins
I work in healthcare field and there are so many things, we can automate - you mentioned that it is for individual or personal use but what if we have to use in Corporate, can we use it or upgrade to per user premium license $40/month - which should also help cloud work flow. i did some reading and in order for the cloud work flows, we need to instal on premise gateway. In the next session can you show us an e.g using cloud work flows to connecting to power automate desktop through premise gateway and running un attended robotic power automate task
Are you able to have this run in the background so you can complete other tasks? For example, (1) a spreadsheet opening on my computer (2) copying pasting rows, (3) close and save, etc kind of defeats the purpose of full automation.
Hey Andy - for the Windows 10 version for personal use you do not need and O365 account. Just a personal Windows account which you would use to login to the computer with
Great video! Thanks again for everything you do. I get so much use out of your tutorials. For this one, I guess a big part of the work will be analysing where there are repetitive tasks to automate. At least there are lots of things for regular flow. Do you have recommendations for Power BI vids? I’m having a Dickens of a time understanding what it is.
Thanks Nicole! For Power BI I definitely recommend you check out Guy in a Cube and Curbal. They both have amazing RUclips channels with great Power BI content.
These things are some pretty significant inhibitors in the current version Windows Recorder v1 desktop flows does not support Multiple monitors. Double click, mouse hover, touch/pen input. Interactions on Windows (File explorer, startup menu, task bar, etc.)
Great how-to video! Just curious if there's a way of emulating the Refresh feature when exporting List data from SharePoint to Excel. I could use something like this on a regular basis. We use Jira for tracking Issues, but we don't have a Refresh feature when exporting to Excel or CSV. Thanks again for your insightful lesson!
Hi April, Thank you for this helpful video. My question is whenever a user account password is reset , the power automate flow running on that account starts failing and we have to reauthenticate. Is there any way to handle that? not sure if its a token issue. I read somewhere that we can turn off the expire token setting but couldn't find it.
Thanks April, very educational video. One question, how were you getting the copied data from the CSV file to go the next empty row at the bottom of the existing data to paste?
Looks like it has great potential but it not an intuitive as the UI is nice. Also, the web-recorder feel really buggy, requiring tons of workflow editing for really simple point and click.
And here is that other video I promised ruclips.net/video/uEgJLLHBlZU/видео.html This one automatically organizes music album files into their respective and automatically created folder. And it does this for all the alubms. So amazing to see it execute and do it all automatically. Hopefully I have this walk through video for other users and anyone who is interested in Windows Automation. Let me know if you get any questinos I can help with.
This is great but I seem to keep having failures on mine for very simple things in excel like setting filters and setting a worksheet to a table then pivot the data. it captures some of the actions and I can see it working... I went really slow to make sure each element was highlighted... any tips you have would be greatly appreciated...
Hi April. I am new to Power Automate Desktop. My Team member has a repetitive task. Say they need to pick a number from Excel and go in to a software and click few buttons to close the work order. and i am talking 1000's of job every week. Do you know if this can be achieved with Power Automate ? Thank you
Thanks! Would you happen to know if the recording steps get confused or get blocked by Google when it senses that a robotic process is trying to log in to an account? I want to create a scenario where 'when a Dataverse contact is created then create a Google contact'. I know you can get Flow to do this, but, the existing connectors for Google contacts don't allow you to edit the contact. So, I want to record steps to look up the contact in google contacts, delete it and then recreate it. Oh how I would love a connector that has the ability to delete or edit Google contacts. Thanks for your great video and for any advice you can share around my initial authentification question and any other simpler way you might suggest for me to make progress with Google contacts.
Hey Gerald - I would have to try it and see to verify but I don't see why it wouldn't work. The only thing that could cause issues is if you have MFA enabled on the account you are trying to login too. I'm fairly sure that isn't supported. Another approach would be to create a new custom connector to the Google Contacts API to handle the editing. Their API actually lets you update a contact it just isn't exposed in the Power Automate connector so by leveraging your own connector that should work too. Here's the API info: developers.google.com/contacts/v3 Hope that helps!
Not natively. You can have hotkeys to terminate a PAD flow though. There was a work-around with PowerShell that someone posted in the power users community which may be an option? powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Automate-Desktop/Launch-PAD-Flow-Via-Hotkey/td-p/850973
I know this is probably/may not the correct 'forum' for my comment, but I have to post it anyway. Is there NO way to actually run a flow from outside the PAD 'gui' for simple home use? Without having to pay for a license for some other way to do this, which would completely negate the 'free' claim. PAD seems useless to me if it can simply be run like a .bat file, vbs script etc., called by some simple mechanism, again from a desktop shortcut, within a bat file or script. I was excited about PAD until I found it seems useless as you have to start the PAD environment and then run a flow from there. To me this 'free' is false advertising or bait and switch. If a car dealer gives me a car for 'free' but I have to buy a an engine to run it, that AINT free. Not to mention this seems and entirely web access dependent process, which again SEVERELY limits it's usefulness. And further, the 'flows' seem to be kept in OneDrive and as multiple files with very Cryptic names; which of itself is not the problem, but the lack of transparency of that IS. This feels like Charlie Brown and Lucy, and microsoft ( Lucy ) just pulled the football away yet again.
This is the best Power Automate Desktop demonstration on RUclips. Should get at least a million views for this tutorial. Superb job !!!
Wow, thanks!
WOW! April thanks so much for sharing a real world example. 5 years ago I was wishing a "Macro Recorder" existed for my desktop to save me countless tedious hours of work. Now it's here!! I hope you make a full series on this (given this topic keeps trending LOL.
It's very exciting for sure! I do plan to make more videos on it as I discover more cool use cases :)
Thank you - this is the clearest and most helpful video I have found about this subject. Please do more!
So happy to hear this! I am definitely going to do more videos on this and more introductory Power Automate videos in general. In fact, just did another video today that explains the type of flows you can create: ruclips.net/video/VulRVuC_Cgc/видео.html&lc=UgyBqLoOO61aC-sXaQh4AaABAg
Excellent video, great job introducing the program, showing us how to install it and how to start using it. I’ll go ahead and install it today and will try to creat a similar flow. Thank you very much. Keep up the good work you are doing!
Thank you!!
Thanks for a great demo of Power Automate Desktop.
Thank you!
Thanks for sharing this, April!. Greetings from Argentina!.
Hey there - thanks for watching!
Transparency, well explained.
Thanks for watching!
Great explanation April! Clear n concise! Got yourself a subscriber!
Awesome, thank you! Welcome!
Thanks for your video! Can i combine desktop flows with cloud flows? Like for example when i have like a trigger conditions "new form responses" and then based on that start a desktop flow where the i can put the information in a system? What would be the requirements .. like a pc that is always running?
Thank you for sharing; another great, insightful presentation, April!
You're welcome - glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for sharing .As usual another lesson from you :) !!!
Thanks for watching!
Wow 😮 Where have you been all my life - lol.
😀
April thanks for explaining this. I am also trying to find documentation for creating excel content addins not had much luck. We have a lot of examples for task pane addins but none for content addins
You're welcome! I'm not aware of any content around that but if I find some I'll let you know.
Very informative video. Thank you for sharing.
My pleasure!
Wow! I’ve learned a lot.
Thanks!!!
That's great to hear - you're welcome!
I work in healthcare field and there are so many things, we can automate - you mentioned that it is for individual or personal use but what if we have to use in Corporate, can we use it or upgrade to per user premium license $40/month - which should also help cloud work flow. i did some reading and in order for the cloud work flows, we need to instal on premise gateway. In the next session can you show us an e.g using cloud work flows to connecting to power automate desktop through premise gateway and running un attended robotic power automate task
This is very useful video to get started
Thank you for doing this video for us.
My pleasure!
Thanks for breaking this down. 😁
You bet!
Thanks for sharing!! Very helpful this,
You are welcome!
Are you able to have this run in the background so you can complete other tasks? For example, (1) a spreadsheet opening on my computer (2) copying pasting rows, (3) close and save, etc kind of defeats the purpose of full automation.
This is brilliant! Thanks for sharing.
My pleasure!
Very useful video, and thank for sharing with tutorial. I wish if you can show some advanced features.
I plan to do future videos of more advanced scenarios. This one was intended to be an intro-level video
Excellent intro, succinct and easy to understand. Thank you very much April.
Just to confirm, do you need O365 to have this PA Desktop?
Hey Andy - for the Windows 10 version for personal use you do not need and O365 account. Just a personal Windows account which you would use to login to the computer with
Great video! Thanks again for everything you do. I get so much use out of your tutorials. For this one, I guess a big part of the work will be analysing where there are repetitive tasks to automate. At least there are lots of things for regular flow. Do you have recommendations for Power BI vids? I’m having a Dickens of a time understanding what it is.
Hi, try Kevin Stratvert's PowerBI video he did a couple months ago. In 30 minutes he gives a very good intro to PowerBI.
Thanks Nicole! For Power BI I definitely recommend you check out Guy in a Cube and Curbal. They both have amazing RUclips channels with great Power BI content.
Thanks! I had already watched Kevin’s but needed something a bit more in depth. Guy in a cube was great! Will check out Curbal next!
Awesame April. Thanks a lot !!! Greetings from Madrid.
You're very welcome - thanks for watching Orlando!
Great content April!
I was a quick question, what's the main difference between Power Automate Desktop and Power Automate Attended RPA $40?
These things are some pretty significant inhibitors in the current version
Windows Recorder v1 desktop flows does not support
Multiple monitors.
Double click, mouse hover, touch/pen input.
Interactions on Windows (File explorer, startup menu, task bar, etc.)
This is great feedback. I will pass it along!
Great Insight
Thanks Issie!
Thanks April
Thanks for watching!
Its amazing Educational Video April just question i cant find the Power Automate Trends.xlsx file
Can you trigger a Flow with a custom shortcut, or do you have to open the app and press the button? 😀
That is awesome, thanks for breaking it down
Any time!
Great how-to video! Just curious if there's a way of emulating the Refresh feature when exporting List data from SharePoint to Excel. I could use something like this on a regular basis. We use Jira for tracking Issues, but we don't have a Refresh feature when exporting to Excel or CSV. Thanks again for your insightful lesson!
Grt, informative video
Glad you liked it
Hi April, Thank you for this helpful video. My question is whenever a user account password is reset , the power automate flow running on that account starts failing and we have to reauthenticate. Is there any way to handle that? not sure if its a token issue. I read somewhere that we can turn off the expire token setting but couldn't find it.
Thanks April, very educational video. One question, how were you getting the copied data from the CSV file to go the next empty row at the bottom of the existing data to paste?
Looks like it has great potential but it not an intuitive as the UI is nice. Also, the web-recorder feel really buggy, requiring tons of workflow editing for really simple point and click.
I will pass on the feedback. I'm sure it will continue to improve :)
And here is that other video I promised ruclips.net/video/uEgJLLHBlZU/видео.html
This one automatically organizes music album files into their respective and automatically created folder. And it does this for all the alubms. So amazing to see it execute and do it all automatically. Hopefully I have this walk through video for other users and anyone who is interested in Windows Automation. Let me know if you get any questinos I can help with.
This is great but I seem to keep having failures on mine for very simple things in excel like setting filters and setting a worksheet to a table then pivot the data. it captures some of the actions and I can see it working... I went really slow to make sure each element was highlighted... any tips you have would be greatly appreciated...
Thanks April, always wondered how this differed from Power automate. Does the copy action go to the last row in the excel file automatically?
You're welcome! I believe it does
Hi April. I am new to Power Automate Desktop. My Team member has a repetitive task. Say they need to pick a number from Excel and go in to a software and click few buttons to close the work order. and i am talking 1000's of job every week. Do you know if this can be achieved with Power Automate ? Thank you
Great video....think that will it paste next week at row# 154 or will go to end of the file...curious to know
I am curious about that as well
It will go to the end of the file
Thanks! Would you happen to know if the recording steps get confused or get blocked by Google when it senses that a robotic process is trying to log in to an account? I want to create a scenario where 'when a Dataverse contact is created then create a Google contact'. I know you can get Flow to do this, but, the existing connectors for Google contacts don't allow you to edit the contact. So, I want to record steps to look up the contact in google contacts, delete it and then recreate it. Oh how I would love a connector that has the ability to delete or edit Google contacts. Thanks for your great video and for any advice you can share around my initial authentification question and any other simpler way you might suggest for me to make progress with Google contacts.
Hey Gerald -
I would have to try it and see to verify but I don't see why it wouldn't work. The only thing that could cause issues is if you have MFA enabled on the account you are trying to login too. I'm fairly sure that isn't supported. Another approach would be to create a new custom connector to the Google Contacts API to handle the editing. Their API actually lets you update a contact it just isn't exposed in the Power Automate connector so by leveraging your own connector that should work too. Here's the API info: developers.google.com/contacts/v3
Hope that helps!
@@AprilDunnam Thanks for the link to the google api site. I think I'll try Power Automate Desktop to see if it works. Lots to try. Stay well!
When I try running the recorder it gets stuck with an error...
What's the error?
How can a flow be scheduled to run at certain time ?
Hey Ivan - I explain that in my latest video: ruclips.net/video/VulRVuC_Cgc/видео.html&lc=Ugyo1ss0YM8hLA78TXR4AaABAg
can u set a hotkey to run a flow
Not natively. You can have hotkeys to terminate a PAD flow though. There was a work-around with PowerShell that someone posted in the power users community which may be an option? powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Automate-Desktop/Launch-PAD-Flow-Via-Hotkey/td-p/850973
you are awesome!
Thank you!
Can you automatically start flows with windows boot?
Hmmm I'm not sure honestly. I would have to try it and see.
Do you think its still too soon for Power automate desktop to challenge UiPath?
I think it's getting there :)
@@AprilDunnam how can you demonstrate something like that to an executive :-) , maybe via use cases or costs comparisons anything else comes to mind
Is it still for “windows business”? For some reason my work got me a home edition....
Hey Vinnie - It's my understanding that this is for All Windows 10 versions.
Business account needed.
it is permanent for windows 10 user?
Yes I believe so. It's available in Windows 10 and Windows 11
I know this is probably/may not the correct 'forum' for my comment, but I have to post it anyway. Is there NO way to actually run a flow from outside the PAD 'gui' for simple home use? Without having to pay for a license for some other way to do this, which would completely negate the 'free' claim. PAD seems useless to me if it can simply be run like a .bat file, vbs script etc., called by some simple mechanism, again from a desktop shortcut, within a bat file or script. I was excited about PAD until I found it seems useless as you have to start the PAD environment and then run a flow from there. To me this 'free' is false advertising or bait and switch. If a car dealer gives me a car for 'free' but I have to buy a an engine to run it, that AINT free. Not to mention this seems and entirely web access dependent process, which again SEVERELY limits it's usefulness. And further, the 'flows' seem to be kept in OneDrive and as multiple files with very Cryptic names; which of itself is not the problem, but the lack of transparency of that IS. This feels like Charlie Brown and Lucy, and microsoft ( Lucy ) just pulled the football away yet again.
Why not save everything on prem in SQL server ? So we can create Power BI reports without paying ? Microsoft is on it's way out.
Microsoft is on its way out??