{"id":2371,"date":"2020-02-19T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-19T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-06-11T08:00:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T15:00:15","slug":"digitally-transform-your-enterprise-with-power-automate-our-journey-to-enable-your-digital-transformation-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/power-platform\/blog\/power-automate\/digitally-transform-your-enterprise-with-power-automate-our-journey-to-enable-your-digital-transformation-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Digitally Transform Your Enterprise with Power Automate: Our Journey to Enable Your Digital Transformation, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Ignite 2019, we announced<\/a> the re-name of Flow to Power Automate and the introduction of robotic process automation (rpa) with the public preview of the UI flows connector<\/a>. \u00a0We\u2019re excited about several exciting features that will become generally available this year and wanted to take a moment to recap the journey that brought us here so that you get a brief look at some of the most important features which are now part of Power Automate, ensuring it is the most comprehensive and advanced automation service for your organization.\u00a0 Since our launch in 2016, Power Automate has grown to become one of the most important automation services available to enterprises.\u00a0 In this two part blog, we\u2019ll recap how Power Automate features have evolved with the goal of enhancing and enabling digital transformation for our customers.\u00a0 \u00a0Today, Power Automate is a powerful service enabling easier automation of disparate applications across your IT landscape.\u00a0 In part 1 of this blog, we\u2019ll look back on the foundational elements of Power Automate, and in part 2, we\u2019ll look back at seminal Power Automate features which unlock your organization\u2019s productivity.<\/p>\n

Power Automate Begins with You<\/h2>\n

Before looking at our history, we wanted to highlight the powerful relationship Power Automate has developed with its users.\u00a0 Our users are important influencers for the features and roadmap we have developed.\u00a0 This user community<\/a> has grown to thousands of members and this core group of people have helped Power Automate grow into a service which enables many<\/em> billions of process automations each month<\/em>. If you are not yet a member, we hope you register community and help influence the future product journey of Power Automate.<\/p>\n

A Growing Ecosystem of Connectors<\/h2>\n

Power Automate was first announced on April of 2016<\/a>.\u00a0 At the time, there were roughly 35 connectors to some of the most widely used enterprise applications.\u00a0 Today, Power Automate has over 300+ connectors (figure 1).\u00a0 Our goal has been to provide customers with a robust automation service which can provide automation across your entire IT landscape.\u00a0 These connectors you to leverage Power Automate to automate processes for many of the apps you use each day.\u00a0 Our ecosystem of connectors grows each month, averaging about 5 new connectors every month.\u00a0 This ecosystem will continue to expand, ensuring you can automate more applications with Power Automate.\u00a0 One of the important new connectors we have in public preview is the SAP ERP connector<\/a>.\u00a0 SAP\u2019s ERP software handles enterprise business applications like accounting, sales, payroll, finance, production, human resources, etc.\u00a0 With the SAP ERP connector you can connect your flows to an SAP ERP system \u2013 either SAP ECC or SAP S\/4HANA.\u00a0 With this connector, you can automate business processes over data in SAP.<\/p>\n

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Figure 1.\u00a0 Some of the top connectors available with Power Automate.\u00a0 Today there are more than 300 connectors available.<\/p>\n

The SAP connector is one example of the hundreds of connectors available with Power Automate, which help organizations enhance and expedite fundamental business processes.\u00a0 Users are also not limited to the connectors that are available.\u00a0 Since 2017, Power Automate has enabled you to develop your own connector<\/a>.\u00a0 Also, customer connectors can be created using the OpenAPI definition<\/a>, the Postman Collection<\/a>, or from scratch (figure 2).<\/p>\n

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Figure 2.\u00a0 Creating a customer connector from scratch with Power Automate<\/p>\n

Mobilizing Microsoft Power Automate<\/h2>\n

Soon after the initial announcement of Power Automate for the web, we offered the Power Automate mobile app<\/a>.\u00a0 The mobile app is one of the most important aspects of Power Automate as it enables real-time notifications for critical process updates on your smartphone and is available for iOS<\/a> and Android<\/a> systems.\u00a0 Power Automate comes with hundreds of flow templates and you\u2019ll see many of the most widely used flow templates are tied to notifications (figure 2).\u00a0 One of the foundational elements of Power Automate is ease of use in building flows.\u00a0 We executed on this theme after the initial launch of the mobile app by enabling users to create flows from their mobile phones<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Nothing can be easier and more efficient than creating an automated process directly from your smartphone, anywhere, anytime.\u00a0 To further enhance the mobile experience, we also introduced \u2018Button Flows\u2019<\/a> which are flows that can be triggered with the push of a button.\u00a0 Power Automate has supported powerful mobile capabilities for several years.\u00a0 If you want to learn more details on how to get the most from the Power Automate mobile app, check out our\u00a0video<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Governance and Security<\/h2>\n

We announced general availability<\/a> of Power Automate in October 2016, \u00a0in conjunction with several sophisticated security and governance tools for the service.\u00a0 Power Automate is designed for end users and pro developers, offering accessibility and functionality for technical and non-technical users.\u00a0 Power Automate also supports the needs of IT admins who must manage the growing number of developers in their organization and scale with limited resources.\u00a0 With this in mind, Power Automate has offered several important features from inception such as the ability to customize and create discrete flow environments<\/a>, identity and access management through native integration with Azure Active Directory<\/a>, and powerful data loss prevention (DLP) policies<\/a> through Microsoft DLP.\u00a0 We also launched the Power Automate admin center<\/a> which provides admins visibility, control, and analysis of all the flows in the organization.\u00a0 More recently, we launched the Power Platform admin center<\/a> which provides insight into power platform services including metrics on usage, the number of flows created, how flows are shared, and also the number of times a flow has been run (see figure 2).\u00a0 Check out details on how Power Automate is built on powerful security tools<\/a> and also download our whitepaper<\/a> on best practices for developing a security and governance strategy for your Power Automate\/Power Apps deployment.<\/p>\n

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Figure 3.\u00a0 Power Automate analytics in the newly launched Power Platform Admin<\/p>\n

Enhance Your Digital Transformation with Power Automate<\/h2>\n

Look for part 2 of this blog where we will look back on how Power Automate has developed essential capabilities on helping boost your organization\u2019s productivity.\u00a0\u00a0 Also be sure to join our growing Power Automate community<\/a> and participate in discussions, provide insights, and even influence product roadmap. If you\u2019re not already, begin following the Power Automate blog<\/a> to get news on the latest updates. \u00a0To get started on your first flows, learn how to use Power Automate from our tutorials<\/a> and our video channels hosted by Power Automate engineers who will demonstrate how to create sophisticated flows within a matter of minutes. Go to powerautomate.com<\/a>, to get started with Power Automate today!<\/p>\n