Flows in Power Automate

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Flows in Power Automate

In this article, we'll learn about flows, types of flows, and how to create a flow. Visual representation of any task is flow. Every flow has a trigger to start and an action related to flow starts.

For example, you can have a flow that sends an email whenever someone retweets your tweet. Here, the retweet is the trigger, and sending an email is an action.

Flows can be simple or complex depending on the task you are trying to automate.
Flows can have multiple actions. For example, if the above flow sends you the email it can also have another action to send a slack message.
Flows can have complex logic or condition. Take the above example again, if the tweet which is retweeted is positive then it can have some action if it's negative it can have another action.
Flows can have loops as well. You can have a flow that loops through again and again until a certain event occurs. For example, if you want to send someone a message on slack until they sent you a file, you can integrate that into your flow.
Flows can have approvals. Approval system where after an action a file sent to someone else. Based on their response different things occurs.

Types Of Flows

Instant Flow : It's triggered by a click of a button. For example, every time you click a button it sends a message on Slack.
Automated Flow : It's triggered by an event. It occurs on an event that is outside of your control. For example, a flow sends you an email when new files uploaded to your OneDrive.
Scheduled Flow : It's triggered on a time basis. It's based on reoccurring time. For example, every morning at 9.00 am you have to send an email to your mentor.
UI Flow/Desktop Flow: It can be triggered with a button, by the occurrence of any event, or on a time basis. The main purpose of this flow is to automate any task on your website or on your desktop. For example, if you want to open a folder or file to copy some documents from it to other.
Business Process Flow : It guides users through a business process. For example, if you have an invoicing system in your business process guiding the users in every step can be done by this flow.

Creating an Instant cloud flow

Microsoft Power Automate provides us an option of templates. These are template flows that are made by other people. We can use them to save our time.

We'll create one flow from scratch. Go to Power Automate. Click on Create from the left side panel and click on Instant cloud flow.
create-instant-flow

Give a name to your flow. Select Manually trigger a flow and click on Create.
We have different types of user input options like Text, Yes/No, File, Email, Number, and Date. Choose the Text type of user input.
Name the input as Body. Input will be entered by the user. Click on the New step.
We want to send an email, here we have different email options available. Click on Send an email notification (V3).
Add receiver's email, subject, and the body of the email. In the body, we are adding Body from Add dynamic content. Click on Save.
Save and Test. Add some text in Body. Click on Run flow.
Now, our flow is successfully running. The flow has sent an email to the receiver's mailbox.

Flows in Power Automate