Microsoft Power Automate for Beginners: Start Automating Today!

hi I'm Jamie and welcome to teachers Tech today  I want to show you how to use Microsoft power   automate so whether you're completely new  to this or need a refresher you're in the   right place I'm going to start at the  beginning and work through it step by step Microsoft power automate is a powerful tool  that will help you streamline your daily task so

have you ever had those tasks that are repetitive  and you just would wish you could just create   something that would take care of them well power  automate can do that for you it's kind of like   having your own personal assistant 24/7 it can  create things that will send simple notifications   but can also do things that will create more  complex business workflows so here's a very simple   example of how Microsoft power automate could help  you could get a daily reminder in email you   could create a flow that has a recurrence in  it to send a reminder email every day you can   customize the email address and the content in the  email to match what you need and you don't need to   have Microsoft 365 or Outlook to do this you can  connect this to other email services like Gmail   as well and this is one of the examples I'll go  through later how to create this here's another   simple example you could automatically download  all Gmail attachments sent to your inbox to a   folder you choose in Google Drive and this would  all just happen automatically behind the scenes   here's a more powerful example of something that  you could do in Microsoft power automate you could   send tweets about a particular keyword and their  sent to a powerbi streaming data set step one how

do we access Microsoft power automate well I'm  on office. com here and I'm going to sign into my   Microsoft 365 account I'm using a business account  today to show you in this tutorial you can access   Microsoft power automate for free but just to let  you know you are going to be limited with some of   the things you can do so I'm going to go ahead and  get signed in here once you're signed in to your   Microsoft 365 account or your personal account you  can access Microsoft power automate in a couple   different ways on the left you can go up to the  app launcher and then as soon as I click on it at   the very bottom I have Microsoft power automate  here another way you can do this is if you go   to the apps and this is going to show all your  different apps and if I just scroll down a little   bit we have Microsoft power automate here I'm just  going to select Microsoft power automate and then   it's going to just be on the front page and we can  get ready to create our first flow right from the

homepage in Microsoft power automate you can jump  in and create your first flow now when I refer to   a flow I'm talking about creating that autom  automated process that will help you get rid   of these repetitive tasks now we can hit create  here or we can hit create over here in the side   panel so you can navigate through the side panel  to get to many other things you can have multiple   flows and as you uh go over here and click my  flows you'll see all the different flows that   you create now the other thing I want to point out  is that this learning for every level if you want   to jump in and kind of go deeper into different  parts they have some great little tutorials that   you can go through uh shows the time limits and  they have exercises attached to them they break   them down depending on what level you are you can  see that there's beginner and intermediate so take   a look at those as well I'm going to go ahead  right now and hit create and we'll get ready to

create our first flow now with these flows here  that we're going to show today in this beginner   tutorial on power automate I'm just going to focus  on these three that we'll talk about from scratch   now these ones over here I'll have in a different  tutorial you can install power automate on your   desktop as well if you take a look up top here  if you wanted to practice and try this out you   can download this and install it on your desktop  so then you'll have different processes that you   can do but to start with what I would suggest is  look at the templates because if you're thinking   about speeding up a process uh that you want to  automate probably somebody has already already   thought of this and this is great when we use the  templates you can see how they break it down into   different categories or we could do a search here  I'm going to go ahead and type reminder here now   you're going to see all the different flows that  have been created by other people that have some   type of reminder in it if you take a look at the  visuals you can get an idea of what apps are being   used so if I look at this one I can see there's  a Google Calendar and Gmail that you'll need to   connect to for this example I'm going to start  with the very basic one and it's this one get   daily reminders from your outlook. com email and  you can see there's only two things that will   be in this flow there's going to be a reoccurrence  and it's going to be Office 365 down below here so   the flow will connect to I'm already connected to  my Microsoft 365 Outlook if you're not connected   you'd have to go through and just hit the sign  in with that so whe whether you're connecting to   X or YouTube or different ones your Gmail you'll  have to make sure you sign in to connect once you   do that you can go ahead and hit continue this  screen shows what's going to happen in my flow I   can modify this I can add more actions to this  let's start with just the basics of what they   have here we are going to create a schedule with  this right here to send an email to the person   that we want with what we want in here in other  flows we would have a tri and I'll show that in   another example so let's go ahead and do some  modifications I'm going to click on every day   when I click on it you'll notice this is where I  can set my parameters I can go through and say you   know what I want this twice a day it's going to  be a reminder about walking the dog and I can go   through and make sure I have these set up the way  I want so I went through and put the parameters   that I want I mentioned at what hours I wanted I  did a start time now I have this set up let's move   over to send the email on this you can see  where I can place who's it to so if I go ahead   and put my email here I can work through change  my subject so maybe I want it to be uh walk the   dog and at this point I can have a reminder about  this I could type whatever I want now take a look   at the advanced parameters down below if I just  go show all you can go and see you could have a   cc or BCC so maybe you wanted it also to send  it to somebody else in the family to make sure   if I forgot to walk the dog that they would  walk the dog so you can have a little bit more for   parameters than that now we have some information  in this I'm going to go up to the save up here   when I click save I'll be able to see if there's  any problems with it this as the flow is ready to   go we recommend you test this now I can go over  to test right here and this way I'm just going to   pick manually and at the very bottom we have test  so I'll click that and I'm going to go ahead and   click run flow so what happens when I run this  flow so let me grab my Outlook now here's my   Microsoft Outlook and right here I have a reminder  to walk the dog I'm just going to go back a screen   just by clicking this up here in the left and  at this point I'm going to click on my flows   when you take a look at this now you have a flow  that's created so this is the Outlook one I just   created if I go ahead and click on this it opens  it up and it gives you an idea of the different   things so it shows me what the Run histories were  here and whether it succeeded uh at this point so   you can always check the flows to see if they're  working for you now if I go back to my flows again   notice that we can do a few different things I can  run it from here so if I go ahead and click run I   get to the screen uh kind of how before when I was  testing it and I can run that flow I can go ahead   and edit it I can share it with others and you  notice you have a few different options uh here   to do some of the same things and if you wanted to  delete it or turn it off analy and the analytics   you can all look here I'm going to go back and  just click edit because I just want to point out   with any of these flows you can still customize  it by adding other uh actions so if I go here and   hit the plus here or here I can add an action so  if you go and click on this here add your action   you'll get all these different options that you  can add and you can work through the parameters   like I showed you before with the flow that we  just created take a look at type right here notice

this is type scheduled we're going to create a  couple more Flows In This tutorial I'm going to   go up to create but I just want to point out if I  was to recreate the flow that we just created from   the template I would start from here scheduled  Cloud flow we're going to run through these two   right here and I'm going to choose this one right  here to start with automated Cloud flow triggered   by a designated event so we're going to have  to place a trigger and when that happens it's   going to start an action for us so I'm going to  pick this and I'm going to give the flow a name   so in this case what I want to have happen I'm  going to want it to search YouTube for a search   term that I give it and it's going to look for  that and when it finds it it's going to send   me an email and I can do other things to it as  well but we'll get to that later now I'm going   to go and put a title down so this is YouTube  search term for Bitcoin mining and now below I   can start to search for trigger what is going to  be my flows trigger so if I start typing YouTube   in here notice that I have three different options  when a video is uploaded when I upload when a new   video matches a search I'm going to go and pick  this I could have skipped all of this before and   it would just went to the screen and I could  have added my steps from that point but I kind   of like giving it a title and picking up the first  trigger from here so I'm going to go ahead and hit create now if you get this message right here  this means that my YouTube uh YouTube login   isn't connected so if I click on this take a look  at the change connection if you have your uh log   in there you can go ahead and do that here or  you could add another one so once you get that   connected you can go and add your search query so  my search query is going to be how does Bitcoin   mining work and then I can go through and look  at the reoccurrences of this do I want what do   I want for the interval well maybe I just want it  once a day so you can go through and adjust this   the way you want now I want something to happen  so this is going to be the trigger when it finds   this but what is going to be the event so I want  an email sent so I'm going to go ahead and click   this add an action just like before I can add my  email and I can go through you notice how there's   Gmail or notifications you could even have it  sent uh through a text if you'd want I'm going   to go through and do Outlook again send email with  options get emails send an email I'm just going   to choose this right here so this is all the the  same as before I just have to go through and set   my parameters and just like before make sure with  the advanced parameters do you want to CC this to   anybody or BCC if they're interested in this topic  as well so I'm going to go and hit save just like   I did in the previous example and you'll see if  there's any errors in here looks like our flow   is ready to go let's run a test we're going to  choose manually again and click test and notice   the message that I get here this flow will run  when a video of matching your search is uploaded   that's going to be the trigger when it doesn't  find that then nothing's going to happen or I'm   not going to get any message about this so now in  our flows we have a scheduled one and we have an

automated one triggered by a certain search term  now we're going to go ahead and create a manual   triggered one I'm going to go to create and let  me explain what one we're going to create now so I   have an Excel spreadsheet here with just a simple  table we're going to set it up so that we can from   Power automate insert rows of data in here so I'm  going to go back over to power automate and I'm   going to go and choose instant Cloud flow what's  the name I want to give this one I'm just going to   say add row to excel table it's a manual trigger  a flow here I'm going to manually trigger it and   hit create so but I have to add some information  to this here so if I click on this one I have to   add an input now it's going to be just text look  at the different options you have it could be a   yes no it could be a file an email but this is  going to be a text here and the input is just   going to be ID here so I'm going to add this is  going to be the first header that I have I'm going   to add another one it's going to be text again and  it's going to be name so I'm just going to change   this to name and I'm going to add one more here  text again and it's just going to be sales just   like that so now I have this set up I'm going to  go ahead and add my new step and that's going to   be something in Excel so I'm just going to choose  this Excel here online business one and I'm going   to choose add a row and right down here add a row  into a table so this is what I'm going to choose   and now I have to go through my parameters so  what's the location well this is going to be one   drive for business what's the document Library  I just need to have this load it's going to be   one drive what's the file going to be here so I  have a certain file It's called Power automate I   can see right here I have a folder and inside it I  have it right here and what's the table this table   over here is called sales so if I go back to here  and drop down I should see the sales table right   here now down below I'm going to go ahead and hit  show all at this point I have to match this up   here with what I put in for the manual trigger  so I'm going to click in here and I'm going to   hit this lightning bolt and I'm going to hit ID  notice since I created it already ID is there so   if I go to this one right here I'm going to type  name and here it is and I have one more I'm going   to click this again and I'm going to type sales so  those ones will match what I created so I'm going   to go ahead right now and save this up and let's  go run a test on this I'm going to do it manually   since there's no other option for this one and  test this is what should happen with the Excel   online so I'm going to go and hit run flow this  is where I created the text entry for it so I'm   just going to put the number one I'm going to put  my name here and I'll just make some numbers up   and I'll hit run flow and I'll do this a couple  few different times here you can see I got the   green check marks here if I scroll down I can see  the output here the status on everything that it   succeeded let's go back to add row to excel table  and take a look at this it says test succeeded now   if I want to run it again I could run it again  here I'm going to get the entry I'll put another   entry in here and I'll give it another name and  enter in some number here and run flow hit done   let's check out the Excel spreadsheet so here we  are back over on the Excel spreadsheet and I have   two different entries here so that's an example  how you can have a manual trigger to enter data   into rows of an Excel spreadsheet so now we've  created three different type of flows in Microsoft   power automate from scratch we created an instant  one and an automated one and from a template a   scheduled one make sure you remember under the  Home tab to try some of these learning activities   here if you want to deepen your understanding in  Microsoft power automate I will have future videos   coming out about tips and tricks and also on  how to use the power automate for desktop thanks   for watching this time on teacher Tech I'll see  you next time with more Tech tips and tutorials