Sleep more at night while Power Platform does your work
During 2019 I was busy, I was a fresh entrepreneur and did not know about all the administrative work involved with running a business. Every quarter, the accountant would request all the receipts. While it is a simple task, there were always receipts missing and it would take several days to search through emails, log in to sites download PDF bills, request copies by email, and organize all the documents.
During that summer, I went to New Jersey on a holiday to visit Luís, with whom I grew up with. One morning I had to wake up around 5 AM to organize my receipts before we traveled to Philadelphia,. There we ran up the Rocky Steps and ate a Philly Cheesesteak with a million calories. What a great day.
For sure there is a better way to organize receipts other than waking up at 5 AM. I did a search and found a no-code platform called “Zapier” (Zapier.com). I subscribed a trial account and started automating organizing documents from emails. While Zapier is good and powerful, the pricing plan is suitable for running a few automations hundreds of times, while I needed many automations a few times, I also found several limitations of Zapier in more complex use cases. Then I tried “Integromat”/Make (make.com), this platform is cheaper and more powerful than “Zapier” and I could automate a great deal of boring work.
I did not know that I already had a better solution just waiting for me to click and automate away. My existing Microsoft 365 plan already included the “Power Platform”! With “Power Platform” I was able to start building applications and automate processes for free! I was not only able to connect to “SharePoint”, “Teams”, and “Excel”, with the provided connectors I coud connect also to systems like “Google Workspace” and “Dropbox”. With “Power Automate”, I automated all the repetitive tasks that caused sleepless nights. Now I can sleep at night while my automation platform does my
work.
What can I do with Power Platform ?
A lot, for example:
How do I get started with Power Platform?
As Laozi said, a journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step, so why not automate something simple right now? In a few minutes, you can create a 4 steps Flow that runs every day and sends a Teams message and Email reminder of open tasks from either SharePoint
Now your colleagues will get these reminders without you need to act. It is online, it is working, and it will run forever without you needing to upgrade it. Congratulations, you have automated your work!
Want to automate more? Learn more about “Power Platform” with these free resources:
PL-900: Microsoft Power Platform Fundamentals – Learn | Microsoft Docs
Introduction to Power Apps – Learn | Microsoft Docs
Get started with Power Automate (contains video) – Power Automate | Microsoft Learn
In the next editions, we will explore more how you can build apps and automate your work, let Power Platform work for you while you can focus on the things that matter. Tell us about how you want to use Power Platform, show off your automation in our blog and stay tuned.
