Power Automate

Purpose: Power Automate can be used to create automated workflows between services for multiple purposes, such as creating automatic uploads of files into an organizational system, creating notifications based on triggers, and creating automatic approval workflows. 

Integrations: Power Automate easily integrates with all Microsoft products, and SharePoint and OneDrive are useful services to integrate for the purpose of document storage. It can also integrate with other services outside of the Microsoft suite by using connectors, such as connecting to JotForm to be able to access form submissions. Some of these connectors require a Premium subscription, which non-profit and small organizations often do not have. There is a free trial for some Premium connectors, and this can be useful if you would like to make sure that connector is what you are looking for before upgrading. 

Pricing: Figuring out the licensing for Power Automate can be tricky and will also depend on if your client has an existing Microsoft license and if that license includes Power Automate. At the non-profit pricing, it is $3.50/month for one standalone Premium license. You can create a dummy user to have this license and then add that account to your existing Microsoft organization so it can create flows for your entire organization. You can still use Power Automate as a standalone to connect other services that are outside of Microsoft if your client does not have/want the Microsoft suite for their organization. Refer to this documentation for up-to-date information about the different licensing options: Power Apps and Power Automate licensing FAQs - Power Platform | Microsoft Docs 

Technical Knowledge Required: This is a no-code solution that is very intuitive to use and has plenty of documentation. You must be very careful when creating workflows to ensure you are using proper links and routing, but otherwise it is very easy to use. After creating a few flows, you become very familiar with how they work and can create them quickly and easily, which is great if you need to create lots of flows for your client. 

Using Power Automate: There are a lot of pre-existing templates you can use to perform common flows:

You can also create custom flows. This is where you can choose your trigger (an action that causes the flow to run automatically, which is useful for improving efficiency and saving time), where you would like to get information from, where you want to move information to, and many other actions. You can also create copies of your custom flows to use again as templates. Below is an example of a flow that is used to take form submissions from JotForm, upload them into a specific folder in SharePoint, and create a document from the form (.pdf, .doc, etc) that is named dynamically using form submission data. 

In this instance, we have used the JotForm connector to access form submissions from the client’s JotForms account. We then use the HTTP connector to retrieve the submitted form data and then create a .pdf of that form in a specific folder within our client’s SharePoint site. Please note that the HTTP connector and JotForm connectors are Premium connectors and thus require the use of a Premium Power Automate account. 

Testing: You can also test your flows in Power Automate, and it will let you know if the flow fails, has warnings, or succeeds. This is very useful as it will tell you where the flow is failing so you can identify specific parts of the flow to fix. Testing is available upon completing trigger actions or using past data. You then know exactly what part of the flow is causing the failure, and can fix the flow accordingly. 

Resources: If you have questions about how to automate a specific process, there are many forums and documentation you can find by searching on Google. You can also talk to a representative in Power Automate sales if you have questions on licensing or what you can do with Power Automate.