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How to create a Dynamic Selector in Microsoft Power Automate Desktop

parent 1 / admin / December 28, 2021 / Tutorial

If you have ever struggled to create Dynamic Selectors in Microsoft Power Automate for desktop, fret not! This article will walk you through the process.

Why use dynamic selectors in Microsoft Power Automate for desktop

One of the challenges of automation is making sure that the bots are robust, and can still work, even if conditions are not exactly the same. Making your RPA script dynamic helps to prevent your bot from breaking when there are changes in the UI.

Example Situation
Read data from Excel
Launch Chrome, navigate to the website, and add UI elements
Creating a dynamic selector
Create your own custom selectors
Complete your Microsoft Power Automate for desktop flow

If you prefer to follow video instructions, you can have a look at the video below. If you prefer to read, just scroll down further for the article.

Example situation requiring dynamic selectors when automating with Microsoft Power Automate for desktop

This article will be focused on the RPA challenge (https://www.rpachallenge.com/). The goal of the challenge is to create a workflow that will input data from a spreadsheet into form fields, which change position after every submission.

For this article, we’ll use the RPA challenge to illustrate the steps of creating dynamic selectors.

The task at hand will be to write a loop to fill in the values in every row from the excel given, regardless of the position of the fields on the screen.

Before you start creating your flow, first download the Excel file given on the website.

Here’s what the data looks like:

Read data from Excel

Now, on your Microsoft Power Automate for desktop, use the “Launch Excel” action, select “and open the following document” from the dropdown menu, and set the Document Path.

This will be followed by the “Get first free column/row from Excel worksheet” action.

Next, we will add the “Read from Excel worksheet” action into our flow. Remember that the End column and End row should be set as %FirstFreeColumn-1% and %FirstFreeRow-1%, respectively.

Launch Chrome, navigate to the website, and add UI elements

The next action we will be adding to our workflow is the “Launch new Chrome” action. Under “Initial URL”, copy paste the link for the RPA challenge, and set the “Window state” to “maximised”.

We will now begin creating our loop. Add the “For each” action to your workspace and set the “Value to iterate” as %ExcelData% (you can choose it by clicking on the {x} button).

Add the “Populate text field on web page” action within the “For each” loop. Click “Add UI element” under “UI element”.

Navigate to the browser and select the UI elements by holding down the Control key and left-clicking the element you want to select, then click Done, and click Save.

Doing this is not enough. It will not work because every time we click submit, the field will have a different ID. So, we need to make this dynamic.

If you’re curious, this is what happens when you try to recapture a new selector for the same UI element after clicking submit. Note the different IDs.

Creating a dynamic selector in Microsoft Power Automate for desktop

At the browser (on the RPA Challenge page), right-click on the field you’re working on – in this case the “First Name” – then click “inspect”. Under the elements tab, look for a common name that does not change after you click submit repeatedly. In this case, the “labelFirstName” remains the same.

Copy the text, including the part before “labelFirstName”. See our example below, enclosed in the red box.

Toggle back to Microsoft Power Automate for desktop. In the UI Element pane, click the 3 dots next to the UI Element you’ve selected earlier, and click “Edit Selectors”.

A dialogue box showing “selectors of the UI element ” will appear. Click the 3 dots beside one of the selector for the UI element:

The Selector builder dialogue box will appear. Unselect the “Custom” button at the bottom.

Then, remove the id and paste the copied text block you copied earlier. This will allow your selector to work even after clicking the “Submit” button—you have a dynamic selector!

In the UI elements pane, rename the UI element to “FirstName”, so that you can refer to it easily later on.

Next, we will need to add another element for the “submit” button on the webpage. Follow the same steps as above and rename it as “Submit”.

Add the “Press button on web page” action and set the UI element as “Submit”.

However, if we stop here, the flow will not work the next time it’s run. Click on the 3 dots icon icon next to the “Submit” element. Click on “Edit selectors”.

Once the Selectors of UI element “Submit” dialogue box opens up, click “Edit selector”.

Uncheck all the different attributes, enabling only the Class attribute.

Double-click on the “Populate text field on webpage” action we added earlier, and enter %CurrentItem[‘First Name’]% in the “Text:” field, and click Save. This takes the current value from the column “First Name” in the Excel file and populates it into the First Name field on the RPA challenge web page.

After running the flow, you will see that the flow is working and successfully filling in the “First Name” field from the data in the given Excel file!

Create your own custom selectors

Protip: You can also create your own custom selectors using the Type attribute.

We will illustrate this with the example of the Submit button.

Start by inspecting the elements of the Submit button as we did earlier, then copy the type=”submit” (see picture below) from the elements tab.

Next, you’ll need to and paste what you copied into the “Selector builder”.

To do this, go to the UI Elements pane, click on the 3 dots beside the Submit UI element, and select “edit selectors”. In the Selectors of UI element “Submit” dialogue box, click “New”.

Then, replace the class with type=”submit”, which you copied earlier.

Now you have two selectors. So if the first selector does not work, the loop will try again using the second selector.

Now, repeat all earlier steps with the remaining fields – Role in Company, Company name, Last Name, Phone Number, Email.

Complete your Microsoft Power Automate for desktop flow

Now that your UI elements have been set up correctly with dynamic selectors, it’s time to complete the flow that will allow you to fill up all the fields in the RPA challenge correctly.

First, to prevent multiple instances of Excel to be open after running the flow multiple times, you can insert the close Excel action after the loop.

You can also add the “Terminate process” action at the beginning, and select “EXCEL” as the process name.

Next, work on getting your flow to fill up all the fields in the RPA challenge website.

Duplicate the “populate text field on web page” action you’ve set up earlier, and change the details (such as the “Text” field and the UI element for each action) to correspond to each of the fields.

To duplicate an action, you can select it and press Ctrl + C to copy, then Ctrl + V to paste.

Running the flow will show that you have managed to fill in all fields accurately from the Excel data given, regardless of the position of the fields! You have successfully created your own dynamic and customised selectors!

Start using dynamic selectors in Microsoft Power Automate for desktop

The example we show here is just the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty of ways to use dynamic selectors in Microsoft Power Automate for desktop to make your solution more robust. What are some of the ways you are thinking of using dynamic selectors in Microsoft Power Automate for desktop? Share it with us in the comments!

How to create a Dynamic Selector in Microsoft Power Automate Desktop Read More »

Latest Updates on Microsoft Power Automate for Desktop: Dec 2021

parent 1 / admin / December 27, 2021 / Updates

The latest Dec 2021 update of Microsoft Power Automate for desktop has been released! Yes, in case you’ve missed the news, Power Automate Desktop has been rebranded as Power Automate for desktop. In addition, Power Automate is now built-in with Windows 11 which is generally available. Today, we are going to highlight some of these new features.

To check the software version that you have, go to the Console and click on Help, then About.

The version installed will be displayed as shown below. The latest available version (as of this writing) is 2.15.282.21349.

If you have an older version and would like to upgrade to the latest version to enjoy the new features, go to this link to download the software installer. For Windows 10 users, you can now also download the desktop app from the Microsoft Store.

Here are the changes in this Power Automate for desktop December 2021 update:

Unified web and desktop recorder
Switch organization from the Power Automate for desktop console
Create a copy of desktop flow through the Power Automate for desktop console
New action Recognize entities in text that performs entity extraction
Syntax highlighting in script editors
New functionality to capture logical errors for the action On block error
Save Excel workbook in the binary format
New functionality to select Window or UI element for the action Send keys
New Windows OCR engine type

Unified web and desktop recorder

The web recorder and desktop recorder are unified into a single recorder. With this unified recorder, you can now enjoy the convenience of recording both web- and desktop-related actions at one go.

Switch organization from the Power Automate for desktop console

You are now able to easily switch between different tenants within the same organization or across different ones using the tenant picker feature in console.

Create a copy of desktop flow through the Power Automate for desktop console

The Power Automate for desktop console has been enhanced to allow you to create a copy of an existing desktop flow directly. To do so, click on the More actions icon besides the desktop flow which you would like to replicate, then selecting the option Create a copy.

Rename the new desktop flow as desired and click on the Save button.

New action Recognize entities in text that performs entity extraction

The new action Recognize entities in text can be used to recognize entities from an input text that is expressed in natural language. Currently, 14 different languages are supported, namely English, Chinese (Simplified), Spanish, Spanish (Mexico), Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Korean, Swedish, Turkish and Hindi.

The support entity types include date time, dimension, temperature, currency, number range, number, ordinal, percentage, phone number, email, IP address, mention, hashtag, URL, GUID and quoted text. The extracted entities are saved in a datatable variable containing 2 columns – value and original text.

Syntax highlighting in script editors

All the script editors have been enhanced to support syntax highlighting, thus making it easier to read and maintain scripts. This enhancement applies to the following actions:

Run VBScript
Run PowerShell script
Execute SQL statement
Run JavaScript
Run Python script
Run JavaScript function on web page

New functionality to clear last error for action Get last error

There is a new parameter Clear error in the action Get last error. When enabled, the error value stored in memory will be cleared once it has been assigned to the variable. When this action is called again, it will now return a No error message instead of the previous error (assuming no new error).

New functionality to capture logical errors for the action On block error

Unexpected logical errors like division by zero or index out of bounds can now be handled by the action On block error. This comes in handy during exception handling, especially for business exceptions which often give rise to such logical errors in the first place.

Save Excel workbook in the binary format

The actions Save Excel and Close Excel have been enhanced to support saving of an Excel workbook in the binary format (.xlsb). For the uninitiated, the Excel Binary Workbook file (XLSB file) stores information in the binary format. Besides having a considerably smaller file size, the XLSB files can be read from and written to much faster than the other common Excel file formats.

New functionality to select Window or UI element for the action Send keys

The action Send keys now provides you the option to select which Window or UI element you wish to send the keystrokes to, even if that Window or UI element is not in the foreground. Previously, this action can only send the keystrokes to the application that is currently active.

New Windows OCR engine type

You can now specify the Windows OCR engine for all the OCR-related actions, in addition to the existing Tesseract engine. The affected actions include:

If text on screen (OCR)
Wait for text on screen (OCR)
Move mouse to text on screen (OCR)
Extract text with OCR

You may want to use the Windows OCR engine as it is a more efficient and faster engine, in addition to supporting 25 different languages.

Conclusion

By the way, the enhancements are not stopping here. Based on the 2021 Release Wave 2 Plan for the Microsoft Power Platform (last updated on November 24, 2021), there are a number of exciting new capabilities in the roadmap, including:

Automatically scale virtual machine deployments by leveraging Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) integration to run desktop flows
Availability of Power Automate for desktop to users of the new Windows 11 by default
Save an Excel workbook as XML (.xml) file
Mark variables as sensitive in Power Automate for desktop to mask data
Users with accounts belonging to multiple tenants can switch between tenants within the Power Automate for desktop application itself
Highlighting syntax within the script editor in Power Automate for desktop designer
Unified web and desktop recorder for recording both their web- and desktop-related activities during a single recording session
Support UI automation in Citrix environments for better reliability and resilience
Create custom dialog action in Power Automate for desktop
Create data loss prevention policies to govern desktop flows

Now that you have learnt some of the new features and enhancements made in Dec 2021, why not download this latest version of Microsoft Power Automate for desktop and starting automating?

Learning Resources

https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-automate-for-desktop-december-2021-update/

Previous Updates

Latest Updates on Microsoft Power Automate for Desktop: Dec 2021 Read More »

30 Tips & Tricks for Microsoft Power Automate (Part 2)

parent 1 / admin / December 23, 2021 / Tips & Tricks

As promised in our previous blog post, this is part 2 of Tips and Tricks to make using Microsoft Power Automate more convenient! In our previous post, we covered tips #1 – #10. Today, we will be covering tips #11 – #20.

Tip #11 Wait for window

Tip #12 Focus window

Tip #13 Select tab in a window

Tip #14 Select menu option in window

Tip #15 Focus text field and send keys

Tip #16 Run python script to validate email address format

Tip #17 Run desktop flow

Tip #18 Run javascript function on webpage

Tip #19 Extract data from webpage

Tip #20 Manage errors

For those of you who prefer to watch the video, you can have a look at the video below. If you prefer to read, just scroll down further for the article.

Power Automate Tip #11: Wait for window

If opening an application takes some time, we can use “wait for window” and focus it.

Firstly, search for the “wait for window” action.

In the “Wait for window” dialogue box, select the “find window” parameter as “By window UI element”, and turn on the “Focus window after it opens” option.

Running the flow will successfully open the desired window!

Power Automate Tip #12: Focus window

Assuming you have multiple windows to process, you can use “Focus window” to ensure you are working on the correct application.

In the “Focus window” dialogue box, in the “Window” dropdown menu, choose the window you want to focus on. In our example, it’s the “Window ‘Expenselt Standalone”.

This will ensure that the flow focuses on the application you are working on!

Power Automate Tip #13: Select tab in a window

Set your required tab in the “Select tab in a window” dialogue box. In our example in this case, the tab is “Window ‘My CRM (Sample App)’ > Tab item ‘Others’”

Running the flow will select the tab you need! In this case, it is the tab “Others”

Power Automate Tip #14: Select menu option in window

You can use the “Select menu option in window” action instead of configuring the flow to click the UI elements of the menu option you want to choose.

For example, I want to choose File > Clear fields. I can select the “Select menu option in window” action from the action pane, then select “Add UI element” in the “Select menu option in window” dialogue box. A new dialogue box “Tracking session” will open, asking you to add your UI elements. Select “clear fields” from the “file” drop down menu of the application and click “done”. Back at the “Select menu option in window” dialogue box, click Save.

Running the flow will allow you to automatically clear the fields!

Power Automate Tip #15: Focus text field and send keys

Let’s say you want to do a loop to type a value into an application (for example, like the picture below) followed by a tab to move to the next field. The “populate text field” action does not allow you to add shortcut keys. Instead, you can do so by using “send keys” action.

In the “Send keys” dialogue box, choose “misc”, then “tab” from the “insert special keys” drop down menu. Set the delay between keystrokes as 50.

In the flow, add an additional step – the “Focus on text field in window” action.

In the “Focus on text field in window” dialogue box, click the “text field” tab. Under the UI elements drop down menu, choose “Edit: ‘Other’”

The flow will then open the “Other” tab, focus on the “Generic 1” test field, and type “Test”, followed by the Tab key into the active window.

To make it loop, add a “Loop” action between the “Focus on text field in window” and “Send keys” actions in the flow. In the “Loop” dialogue box, set the “Start from” as 1, the “End to” as 10, and increment as 1. The flow should look like the second image below.

Running the flow, will focus the text field to “Other” and fill all the fields with “Test”.

Power Automate Tip #16: Run python script to validate email address format

First, set a variable as “EmailAddress”.

Then, write a python script to create regex and method to check email and validate if it’s valid or invalid.

Clicking on the flow variable pane, will show the python script output and if the email is valid or invalid.

Power Automate Tip #17: Run desktop flow

Assuming the validate email script we discussed in Tip #16 is on a separate desktop flow, we can call the desktop flow by searching for the “Run desktop flow” action. Choose “Validate Email Address” from the Desktop flow dropdown menu. Declare the input variable as the email address whose validity you want to check.

Running the flow, will allow you to run the python script and show if the email address is valid or invalid in the flow variables pane.

Power Automate Tip #18: Run JavaScript function on webpage

Microsoft Power Automate does not have a scroll down action to allow scrolling on a webpage. Fortunately, you can use the “Run JavaScript function on webpage” to do so!

In the “Run JavaScript function on webpage” dialogue box, under “JavaScript function”, indicate the function – “ExecuteScript” and declare the class name.

In order to get the class name, open your web browser, focus on the portion of the webpage beyond which you want to scroll, and right-click on it. From the dropdown menu, choose “Inspect”. In this case, we wish to scroll past the “Get started” button, hence we right-click on it and select “Inspect”. Doing this will reveal the class name.

You can then copy the class name and paste it in the “Run JavaScript function on webpage” dialogue box. Then we get the value of x with an index of zero – “x[0].scrollintoView();”

Running the flow will open the webpage and scroll to the desired portion of it!

Power Automate Tip #19: Extract data from webpage

Let’s assume we wanted to extract the Amount and Change for Euro from the webpage.

Start by selecting the “Extract data from webpage” action, and then select the browser instance you want to extract the data from. An Extraction preview popup will appear.

In order to extract the data, right-click and select “Extract element value” from the dropdown menu, and then click on text(‘Euro’). Repeat these steps for “Amount” and “Change(24h)”. You will notice the Extraction preview popup will begin to fill up with values.

Upon selecting the next row – British Pound, you will automatically populate the rest of the rows.

You can then rename your columns. In this case, the column names will be “Currency”, “Amount”, “Change(24h)”.

After running the flow, open the “DataFromWebPage” variable value from the flow variables column. You have successfully extracted data from a webpage!

Power Automate Tip #20: Manage errors

Let’s say we’re using on block error to manage what happens when the flow encounters an error, and we would like to capture the reason for the error(s). To capture the error message of any error within a block of actions, use the “Get last error” action.

First, select the “on-block error” action from the action pane. In the on block error dialogue box, give it a name. Then click on “Continue flow run”, and select “go to end of block”, and click Save.

Select the actions that you would like to manage with the on block error action and put them within the on block error action (pink section).

Select the “get last error” action and drag it below the on block error action.

In our example, to simulate an error, we wrote a flow to extract data from webpage, but closed the browser before extraction could begin (prompted by a display message box). With the “get last error” action, we will be able to see the error message “click link on webpage failed” in the LastError variable (in the variable pane).

More Power Automate tips & tricks coming your way!

We hope you found these tips useful! Did you miss part 1? Check out 30 Power Automate Tips & Tricks (Part 1)!

Meanwhile, keep a lookout for Part 3 for even more tips and tricks!

30 Tips & Tricks for Microsoft Power Automate (Part 2) Read More »

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Power Automate interview questions regarding product offerings

1. Which are the 4 key products under the Power Platform?

Power BI
Power Apps
Power Automate
Power Virtual Agents

2. What are the 4 value pillars of Power Automate?

The 4 value pillars are:

automate at scale
seamless and secure integration
accelerated productivity
intelligent automation

3. What is the key difference between Power Automate and Power Automate for desktop?

Power Automate is used mainly for the API-automation of cloud services and internal API services, otherwise known as Digital Process Automation (DPA). Power Automate for desktop, on the other hand, is used for UI-automation of legacy web, Windows and terminal applications, also commonly referred to as Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

4. What is an environment?

An environment is a space to store, manage, and share your organization’s business data, apps, chatbots, and flows. It also serves as a container to separate apps that might have different roles, security requirements, or target audiences. For example, you can have separate environments for development, UAT and production.

5. What is a solution?

Solutions are the mechanism for implementing Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) in Power Apps and Power Automate. The solution represents the package for all the different components that a business problem needs to be solved with. When you host your flows in a solution, they become portable, making it effortless to move them and all their components from one environment to another.

A solution is either managed or unmanaged.

Unmanaged solutions are used in development environments while you make changes to your application.
Managed solutions, on the other hand, are used to deploy to any environment that isn’t a development environment for that solution. This includes test, UAT, SIT, and production environments.

6. What are the different types of flow in Power Automate?

You can create 3 types of flow in Power Automate – cloud flows, desktop flows and business process flows.

Cloud flows: Cloud flows are used when you want your automation to be triggered either automatically, instantly, or via a schedule.
Desktop flows: With Power Automate for desktop, you can create desktop flows to automate tasks on the Web or the desktop.
Business process flows: Business process flows provide a guide for people to get work done by defining set of steps for people to follow to take them to a desired outcome.

7. What are the 3 building blocks of a cloud flow?

The 3 building blocks of a cloud flow are trigger, action and conditions.

A trigger is the event that starts a cloud flow.
An action is the task that’s started when a trigger is invoked.
Lastly, conditions inform the cloud flow to perform actions based on predetermined logic set in the flow.

8. Is Power Automate compatible with Windows 10 Home?

Yes, you can use Power Automate to create your desktop flows and monitor them on the Power Automate web portal. However, you cannot trigger desktop flows to run from the cloud on Windows 10 Home devices. In addition, other types of desktop flows (e.g. Windows recorder V1 and Selenium IDE) are not supported.

Interview questions about Microsoft Power Automate for desktop

9. What is the difference between Power Automate console and Power Automate flow designer?

The flow console is the central interface of Power Automate for desktop from which you can launch the flow designer to create or edit flows. You can also delete, rename, and run existing flows.

The flow designer contains all the tools required to design and debug a desktop flow. Additionally, any images, UI elements, or variables of a desktop flow can be accessed and managed here.

Find out more about the Power Automate for desktop interface! Check out our comprehensive Microsoft Power Automate for desktop interface tour.

10. Name all the panes contained inside Power Automate console.

Workspace (including Main and Subflows)
Actions pane
Variables pane
UI Elements pane
Images pane
Errors pane.

11. What are subflows and why do you need them?

Subflows are groups of actions, which may be referenced as a group within a desktop flow. Every flow contains the Main subflow – this is the subflow that is run when a desktop flow starts. Any other subflows may be invoked through the Run subflow action.

Breaking the deskflow into smaller subflows is paramount to good project design and allows you to create quality automation that is modular, maintainable, readable, flexible, reliable and extensible.

Impress your interviewers! Learn more about flow control in Microsoft Power Automate for desktop

12. What is the difference between Run subflow action and Run desktop flow action?

The Run subflow action triggers a subflow that is defined within the main desktop flow. On the other hand, the Run desktop flow action triggers another desktop flow—this so-called child desktop flow can receive input variables and may produce output variables. The parent desktop flow run will be paused until the called child desktop flow completes.

13. What are some of the common supported variable datatypes in Power Automate for desktop?

Text value, numeric value, Boolean value, list, datatable, datarow, custom object, mail message, file, folder and more.

Find out everything you need to know about variables in Microsoft Power Automate for desktop.

14. What is the difference between input/output variables and flow variables?

Input and output variables allow you to pass data to and from Power Automate for desktop, including between Power Automate cloud flows and desktop flows. In addition, you can use input variables to set values manually when the flows are triggered through the console. Flow variables, on the other hand, refers to all the variables that are used within the desktop flow itself to store data.

15. What are sensitive variables?

Within the Variables pane, users can mark both input/output and flow variables as sensitive. The values of sensitive variables will not be visible in the flow designer during debugging. Nor will the values be logged for desktop flows triggered by the Power Automate web portal or the console.

16. What are actions?

Actions are the basic building blocks of a desktop flow. Actions are categorized based on the following action groups – Variables, Conditionals, Loops, Flow control, Run flow, System, Workstation, Scripting, File, Folder, Compression, UI automation, HTTP, Browser automation, Excel, Database, Email, Exchange ,Outlook, Message boxes, Mouse and keyboard, Clipboard, Text, Date time, PDF, CMD session, Terminal emulation, OCR, Cryptography, Windows services, XML, FTP, CyberArk, Active Directory, AWS, Azure, Google Cognitive, IBM Cognitive and Microsoft Cognitive.

Want to know more about some lesser-known actions? Check out these Microsoft Power Automate tips & tricks that will surely impress your interviewers!

17. What are UI elements?

UI elements are used to identify and interact directly with windows and their contents without resorting to image recognition or absolute coordinates, as the latter methods are oftentimes less reliable.

Learn how to interact with windows and applications using UI elements in Microsoft Power Automate for desktop. It’s useful for things like automating data entry into your CRM or any other application.

18. Can a user perform work on the machine while a desktop flow is running?

It is not recommended for a user to perform work on the machine while the desktop flow is simultaneously running as this might interfere with the flow itself. To prevent any undesired human interferences, you can use the Block Input action to ignore mouse or keyboard input from the user while the flow is running. To re-enable user input, add another Block Input action to the flow, and set it to Unblock Input. Do note that for this action to function properly, you need to run Power Automate for desktop with Administrator rights.

19. Which are the browsers supported by Power Automate for desktop?

To automate web-related tasks, Power Automate for desktop provides the Automation browser that is preconfigured and works out of the box. Besides the Automation browser, the platform supports the four most popular browsers: Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. These browsers need additional configuration or/and browser extensions to work.

20. What is Automation browser and what are its pros and cons?

To automate web-related tasks, Microsoft Power Automate provides the Automation browser that is preconfigured and works out of the box. Although the Automation browser is based on Internet Explorer, it provides some features and limitations that increase automation effectiveness.

Pros:

Automation browser works out of the box, while Internet Explorer requires additional configuration. Security configurations may be unwanted in organizations with strict security policies that prohibit manual changes.
The Click download link on web page action works with the Automation browser whatever the Internet Explorer version. For the actual Internet Explorer, the action requires version 8 or below.
Automation browser suppresses all message dialog boxes that may pop up unhindered in the actual Internet Explorer. However, if this feature is undesirable, apply the (ShowDialogs) suffix at the end of the URL in the Launch new Internet Explorer action.
Automation browser has a small performance advantage because it doesn’t load unnecessary elements and add-ons like the actual Internet Explorer does.

Cons:

Automation browser doesn’t support tabs or opening links in windows. When the user clicks on a link, the browser opens it in the same window/instance.

21. What is UIFlowService?

UIFlowService is a Windows service that is installed with Power Automate on the desktop machine. By default, it’s set to start automatically and runs as the user NT SERVICE\UIFlowService which is created during installation. UIFlowService supports attended/unattended desktop connectivity to the Power Automate cloud service, either directly or through the on-premises data gateway.

22. What are exceptions and how do you handle exceptions in Power Automate for desktop?

Exceptions are events that occur while a flow is running. These events disrupt the expected flow of actions, and cause it to fail if they are not handled properly. Exceptions occur when an action cannot run as intended, and may be caused by various factors: incorrect inputs, unexpected values, software/hardware failures, unavailable resources, etc.

Exception handling is the mechanism that allows Power Automate for desktop to handle and recover from unexpected circumstances and issues that might occur while a flow is running. Exceptions can be handled at the action-level – most actions’ properties contain an On error button which allows access to the action’s exception handling settings. In addition, it is possible to apply exception handling to an entire block of actions through the On block error action.

The options available for handling errors include retry action, set variable, run subflow, continue flow run (i.e. go to next action, repeat action and go to label) and throw error.

23. How do you debug a desktop flow?

It is common to have to debug desktop flows due to changes in the system/applications, data formats and/or process requirements, or if a desktop flow cannot run because it contains errors.

The following tools can be used to debug a desktop flow:

Reviewing the errors in the Errors pane
Adding breakpoints in the flow
Running a desktop flow action-by-action, or run from a specific action

24. What are some of the best practices when creating desktop flows?

Some of the good design principles include:

Modularity – Separation of concerns with dedicated subflows allows fine granular development and testing
Maintainability – Good structure and development standards
Readability – Meaningful names for variables, UI elements, etc
Flexibility – Keep environment settings in external configuration files
Reliability – Exception handling and error reporting
Extensibility – Ready for new use cases to be incorporated

25. How to share or export a desktop flow?

There are 3 ways to share or export a desktop flow:

To replicate a desktop flow, edit it through the flow designer and copy the actions within a subflow. The copied text can then be sent directly to other users or saved to a text file for easier sharing. The receiver can simply paste the text to a flow designer and run it.
Share the desktop flow directly through the Power Automate portal. There are the two permission levels you can use when you share desktop flows: co-owner and user.
Export a solution that contains the desktop flow. The receiver can then import the solution into any environment that meets the prerequisites.

Check out our article on how to share your desktop flow in Microsoft Power Automate for desktop to learn how to share your desktop flows, step by step.

26. What are data loss prevention (DLP) policies?

Power Automate offers to administrators the option to create and enforce DLP policies that classify desktop flows action groups as business or non-business and mark actions or action groups as blocked. That way a non-business action can’t be combined with an action that has been marked as business so as to avoid data exposure outside the organization.

Power Automate Interview Questions on Process Mining and Task Mining Features

27. What is Process Advisor?

Process Advisor allows you to gain a better understanding of your business processes so you can optimize them. It can also help you improve how you work by finding opportunities for automation. Process advisor offers task mining and process mining capabilities to do this.

28. What is the difference between task mining and process mining?

Task mining enables you to understand how your company performs its process tasks through monitoring recorded user actions. You’ll gain insights from this data that will let you know how processes are performed and identify tasks that can be automated.

Process mining allows you to take the event data from your system of records and visualize the processes happening in your organization. Process mining provides novel insights that can help you identify automation opportunities, and address performance and compliance opportunities.

Power Automate Interview Questions on AI-Enabled Features

29. What is AI Builder?

AI Builder is a Microsoft Power Platform capability that provides AI models that are designed to optimize your business processes. AI Builder enables your business to use intelligence to automate processes and glean insights from your data in Power Apps and Power Automate. With AI Builder, you don’t need coding or data science skills to access the power of AI. You can build custom models tailored to your needs, or choose a prebuilt model that is ready to use for many common business scenarios.

Check out our video on using the AI Builder for invoice processing

30. What are some of the prebuilt AI models that is available in Power Automate?

Some of the prebuilt AI models include business card reader model, category classification model, entity extraction model, ID reader model, key phrase extraction model, language detection model, receipt processing model, sentiment analysis model, text recognition model and text translation model.

More resources for your Power Automate interview preparation

Besides preparing to answer Power Automate interview questions, you should also sharpen your technical hands-on skills. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel and check out our various blog posts, where we post tutorials on Microsoft Power Automate, including basics like Variables and Text Manipulation Actions in Microsoft Power Automate for desktop, as well as more advanced topics like Dynamic Selectors, Web Scraping, and Extracting PDF invoices and much more.

All the best for your Microsoft Power Automate interview!

So, there we are! We’ve covered the top 30 frequently asked Power Automate interview questions and answers for Microsoft Power Automate developers.

Are there any questions you think might be asked during your Power Automate interview that you don’t know the answer to? Post it in the comments below and we might be able to help.

Otherwise, you might want to brush up on your technical hands-on Power Automate skills by revising with the help of the tutorial videos on our YouTube Channel and tutorial articles on our blog.

We hope these top Power Automate developer interview questions (and answers!) have helped you, and all the best for your interview! 💪

Top 30 Microsoft Power Automate Interview Questions for Developers Read More »

30 Tips & Tricks for Microsoft Power Automate (Part 1)

parent 1 / admin / December 13, 2021 / Tips & Tricks

We know that navigating Microsoft Power Automate can get quite confusing, hence we have compiled a list of tips to make it easier and more convenient!

Tip #1: Declare a data table data type
Tip #2: Add data row
Tip #3: Retrieve specific item from data table
Tip #4: Reassign a value of existing table row within for each loop
Tip #5: Declare dictionary data type
Tip #6: Downloading files from the web
Tip #7: Getting the file part path
Tip #8: Clear temp with DOS command
Tip #9: Export your flows as stacks
Tip #10: View desktop flow runs

By the way, Part 2 is already out! Do check out 30 Tips & Tricks for Microsoft Power Automate (Part 2).

For those of you who prefer to watch the video, you can have a look at the video below. If you prefer to read, just scroll down further for the article.

Power Automate Tip #1: Declare a Data Table Data Type

Unfortunately, we are unable to create data table data types by searching the “Actions” tab in Microsoft Power Automate. Thus, we will be using the “set variable” action to do so instead.

Firstly, in the “set variable” dialogue box, declare the table name. After that, set your column names using %{^[‘ColumnName’, ‘ColumnName’, ‘ColumnName’]}% .

After running the flow and clicking on “flow variables” in the variable pane, you will be able to view the data table. We have now successfully created a data table data type!

Power Automate Tip #2: Adding Data Rows

We can add data rows using the set variable action. To do so, add the table name and set the data row as %Table + [“insert value of column names”]. In this case it will be %Table + [‘Earphone’, ‘NA’, ‘20 USD’]% .

After running the flow, we have created a row with the Product Name as “Earphones” at a Product Price of “20 USD”.

Power Automate Tip #3: Retrieve specific item from data table

To retrieve specific items from data tables, set a new variable and declare %Table[0][‘Product Price’]%, where the [0] is the row index. The row index of a table always starts with 0. Here, we want the first item, so we indicate the index as 0. “Product Price” is the name of the column where the item is located.

After running the flow, we can check the variable. Clicking on the variable name on the variable pane, we can see that we have retrieved the value that we wanted.

Power Automate Tip #4: Reassign a value of existing table row within for each loop

To replace the value of a microphone from $10 USD to $5 USD, we will first name a set variable as RowIndex. We will start with 0.

Next, we add a “for each loop” action into the workspace. We will select %Table% from the variable drop down menu (click the {x} button) in the for each dialogue box. We will be setting an if condition for each item in the table.

Insert an “if” action to the workspace. Set the first operand to the current item of the column name. In this case, we are looking for “microphone” in the column “Product Name”.

For cases where the above if condition is fulfilled, we will then manipulate the product price column of that table row to contain the new reassigned value of 5 USD.

We then need to use the “increase variable action” to increase the row index.

Running the flow will show us that we have successfully updated the microphone price!

Power Automate Tip #5: Declare dictionary data type

In Power Automate, it is not called Dictionary, instead it is called Custom Object Data Type.

First, we will need to declare a Custom Object using the Set Variable action. To do this, give your variable a name (in this case we’re calling it NewCustomObject) and type %{{}}% into the “To:” field.

Next, we will use Set Variable to indicate the property name/key. In this case we will set the key as “Name” and the value as “Jack”.

We have now created a dictionary type with a Name and Value!

Power Automate Tip #6: Downloading files from the web

To download files from the internet, we will be using the action “Download from web”. This is a convenient alternative way to the usual way of downloading using a mouse click of the UI element.

To indicate the URL, go to your web browser with the web page open. Right click the download button/link and select “copy link address” from the dropdown menu of the file you wish to download.

To download the file from Microsoft Power Automate Desktop, paste the URL of the file you want to download into the URL field, setting the “Method” as “GET’, choose “Save to disk” for the save response, and adding the full path to the destination folder.

Run the flow, and when you check your folder, you’ll see that you have now downloaded the file from the internet!

Want to know more about downloading files from web browsers? Check out this video that’s all about downloading files from the web!

Power Automate Tip #7: Getting file path part

Assuming we have the following file path:

In order to get the root directory or subfolder, use the “Get file part path” action. Click the {x} button and select FilePath. After running the flow, you can see in the variable pane that this allows you to obtain the FileName, File Extension, as well as the RootPath.

Power Automate Tip #8: Clear temp with DOS command

In order to run DOS command for clearing local temp files through Microsoft Power Automate Desktop, you need to add ’%’% to both sides of %TEMP% in your original command.

This is because the format of 2 % signs before and after (e.g. %Example%) represents a variable in Microsoft Power Automate Desktop, and it will recognise it as a variable data type. Without the additional ’%’% there will be an error that says “Variable ‘TEMP’ doesn’t exist”.

The resulting DOS command or application should read:

del /q/f/s %’%’%TEMP%’%’%\*

Running the flow will show that all local temp files have been deleted!

Power Automate Tip #9: Export your flows as stacks

Instead of you exporting the flow from the web portal, you can copy the chunk of texts and actions on the flow, and paste them on a notepad.

You can then save them as stacks! You can retrieve them later, or send it to someone else, who can then copy them from the notepad and paste them into Microsoft Power Automate Desktop to use the flow.

If you’d like to learn more about sharing your desktop flows, have a look at this article, which shares 3 ways you can share your desktop flows.

Power Automate Tip #10: View desktop flow logs

To view the desktop flow logs, we will need to navigate to the web portal and look under the “monitor” tab on the left hand-side sidebar.

Under “desktop flow runs”, there will be a list of desktop flows that have been run successfully. Take note that only flows run from the “my flows” page will be recorded.

Clicking on any of the desktop flows in the list will indicate the list of runs. Under “Run History”, you can also click on a run date/time, and it will show you at which stage a failed status was obtained.

More Power Automate Tips & Tricks are coming your way!

We hope these 10 Power Automate Tips & Tricks are useful to you. We have many more tips to share—30 to be exact— and we’re working on bringing them to you really soon.

As of now, Part 2 is already out. Do check out 30 Tips & Tricks for Microsoft Power Automate (Part 2)

Keep a look out for Top 30 Power Automate Tips & Tricks Part 3!

30 Tips & Tricks for Microsoft Power Automate (Part 1) Read More »

How to Extract Data from Web Pages in Microsoft Power Automate Desktop

parent 1 / admin / November 3, 2021 / Tutorial

Do you keep track of data from a certain web page constantly? Do you need to extract data from the web? In this article, we walk you through how to configure web automation and perform web data extraction with Microsoft Power Automate Desktop.

Once you master automating web scraping with Microsoft Power Automate Desktop, you won’t have to manually navigate to the website you always keep track of and do all that manual, error-prone — and most of all unsatisfying, tiring — work: entering the search terms, navigate to the right site, copying and pasting data, and more.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Enabling your browser extension
Web Automation Actions in Microsoft Power Automate Desktop
How to Search and Extract Data from the Web

If you’re someone who prefers video instructions, the content of this article is covered in the first 7 minutes of this video on our YouTube channel.

Before we start extracting data from the web pages with Microsoft Power Automate Desktop, you’ll first need enable the extension that will allow you to do that.

Enable the Power Automate Desktop Extension for Web Automation

Before your perform web automation, you’ll need to enable the Power Automate Desktop Extension.

You can refer to this URL – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/using-browsers or go to Power Automate Desktop and navigate to Tools, select Browser Extension and click Google Chrome

Install the extension and click close.

That’s it! With this, you’re ready to start using the web automation actions in Microsoft Power Automate Desktop and be on your way to scraping data form the web with Microsoft Power Automate Desktop.

Web Automation Actions in Microsoft Power Automate Desktop

You can search for keywords in the action pane to find these actions that help you with web automation:

To open a browser, use “Launch new Chrome”
To close a browser, use “Close web browser”
For other actions related to web automation, you can simply search “web”, and you’ll find a long list of actions you can use, such as “Press button on a web page”, “Extract data from web page”, “Get details from web pages”, and more.

How to Search and Extract Data from the Web

To illustrate how you can extract data from the web with Power Automate for desktop, we will go through a simple use case that will involve the main actions you will need to use when scraping data from a website.

Let’s create a robot that does the following:

Asks the user to input a city name
Opens a chrome browser and navigate to google.com
Types in the search bar ‘weather in (city) ’, and executes a search.
Extracts the temperature data
Displays the temperature in a message box

Step 1: Ask the user to input a city name

Find the “Display Input Dialog” action and drag it onto the workspace.

Type “Please enter a city” on the input dialogue message and enable the option “Keep input dialog always open” to set this on top. Click Save.

Step 2: Open a Chrome Browser and Navigate to google.com

Drag the “Launch New Chrome” action to the workspace. Type www.google.com as the initial URL, Select “Maximized” as window state, and click Save.

Step 3: Type in the search bar ‘weather in (city)’, and executes a search

Before you proceed, you’ll need to navigate to www.google.com on your Chrome browser. Open a chrome browser and navigate to google.com.

Then, open Microsoft Power Automate Desktop and Click “Add UI Element”

Hover and look for , then hold down the Ctrl button and left-click to select it.

Then, search for “weather in London”.

Hover your mouse over the “Google Search” button, then hold down the Ctrl button and left-click the button to select the UI element.

After selecting the UI Element, perform a normal left-click to perform the Google search.

When the result loads, hold Ctrl button and left-click to select the UI element of the data that we want to extract, then click Done.

As a best practice, rename the UI elements selected in the previous steps with recognizable names, so you can refer back to them easily in later steps, for example we’ve used “Search Bar”, “Search Button”, and “Temperature”.

Step 4: Extract the temperature data

Before we can scrape the temperature data, the robot needs to key in the search terms — as requested by the user — into the Google search bar. Search for the “Populate text field in web page” action and drag it into the workspace.

Click UI Element and select “Search Bar”

Type “Weather in” on text field, then click {x} and choose “UserInput”, then click Save. The variable %UserInput% was the city name we asked the user for in the first step with the “Display Input Dialog” action.

Search for the “Press button on web page” action and drag it into the workspace.

Click UI element, choose “Search Button” and click Select and then Save.

When you search for web automation actions, you’ll notice that you’ll get a few actions for web extraction that sound similar.

What’s the difference among these three actions?

Extract data from web page: to extract a single value, or it can be a table as well
Get details of web page: to extract information such as we page description, web page title, web page meta keywords, web page descriptions, web page source, and web browser’s current URL address
Get details of element on web page: to only extract the detail of a particular element – such as in this case, where we want to just extract the temperature number of an element.

Choose “Get details of element on web page” and drag it into the workspace. Click UI element, choose “Temperature” and click Select.

Rename the variable produced (Attribute) to “Temperature” for easy reference and click Save.

Step 5: Display the temperature in a message box

Drag the action “Display Message” into the workspace.

We want to display the sentence “Temperature in ____ (city) is ____ (temperature).”

So, type “Temperature in”, or any other message you’d like to display to the user. Click {x} to find available variables to get values from. In this case, we choose “UserInput”, which is the city name input by the user in the earlier step.

Click {x} to find the other variable – Temperature. Click Select, then if you’d like to, you can enable “close message automatically” before clicking Save.

Save the Flow, close your Chrome browser, and you’re ready to run your Flow!

What happens when you encounter an error with your UI element?

When we first ran this flow, we discovered that the Google search button was not working. To fix it, click the UI Element tab button on the extreme right side (shown below with a red box).

Click the three dots beside Search Button

Click Edit Selectors

Click on New and Select “Selector with recapture”

Hover over the Google Search button, hold Ctrl button and left click on Google Search button to re-select it.

To delete the first element that didn’t work, click the three dots beside the first element, then choose Delete.

Close the window and we’re all set! Run the Flow again, and you should be good to go!

Start automating web scraping with Microsoft Power Automate Desktop

This simple use case of scraping the temperature data from a Google search is just the tip of the iceberg — it’s just a warm-up. Keep a lookout for more videos and articles from us with more advanced web extraction tutorials using Microsoft Power Automate Desktop.

For now, get start automating web-scraping for websites that you often keep track of and save yourself all the time and effort taken to manually navigate to a website, key in search terms, copy and paste data. You’ll avoid careless mistakes too!

How to Extract Data from Web Pages in Microsoft Power Automate Desktop Read More »

A screenshot of a computer Description automatically generated with low confidence

Latest Updates on Microsoft Power Automate for Desktop – October 2021

parent 1 / admin / October 28, 2021 / Updates

The latest Oct 2021 update of Microsoft Power Automate for desktop has been released! Yes, in case you’ve missed the news, Power Automate Desktop has been rebranded as Power Automate for desktop. In addition, Power Automate is now built-in with Windows 11 which is generally available. Today, we are going to highlight some of these new features.

To check the software version that you have, go to the Console and click on Help, then About.

The version installed will be displayed as shown below. The latest available version (as of this writing) is 2.14.173.21294.

If you have an older version and would like to upgrade to the latest version to enjoy the new features, go to this link to download the software installer.

Mark variables as sensitive

Within the Variables pane, users are now able to mark both input/output and flow variables as sensitive. To do so, simply hover over the variable and click on the ‘Mark as sensitive’ icon.

The values of sensitive variables will not be visible in the flow designer during debugging. Nor will the values be logged for desktop flows triggered by the Power Automate web portal or the console.

One usage of this new feature is when your desktop flow processes Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data, which you do not want to log for obviously reasons.

Apply Data loss prevention (DLP) policies to desktop flows

Power Automate administrators now have the ability to create and enforce DLP policies that:

Classify action groups as business or non-business such that non-business actions cannot be combined with business actions within the same desktop flow, thus preventing data exposure outside the organization
Mark individual actions or entire action groups as blocked so as to prevent their usage in desktop flows

Consequently, you will receive a notification about the DLP policy violations (if any) when you save a desktop flow, or if you attempt to run the desktop flow from the console or the designer.

Also, any desktop flow that violates the DLP policies will be marked as suspended with the run option disabled.

Details are sketchy at this point in time, but you find read more here.

Support for older versions of Internet Explorer

Browser automation actions are now able to support web automation with Internet Explorer v5 to v8 (in addition to v9 and above). This is great news for those working with legacy web applications that are only supported on these older versions of Internet Explorer.

However, do note that Internet Explorer v11 desktop application will end support for certain operating systems starting June 15, 2022. Microsoft recommends using Microsoft Edge as your default browser which is supported by Power Automate for desktop as well.

New feature to save Excel workbook as XML

The actions ‘Save Excel’ and ‘Close Excel’ now allows you to save your Excel workbook as XML file. To do so, select ‘XML Data (.xml)’ under the parameter ‘Document format’ and specify the name of the XML map to use for export under ‘XML map’.

Compatibility with older versions of Power Automate for desktop

Last but not least, do note that you will not be able to open or run the desktop flows (including past flows) created or saved in this new release using the earlier versions. In other words, forward compatibility of the older Power Automate for desktop versions is no longer supported.

Conclusion

By the way, the enhancements are not stopping here. Based on the 2021 Release Wave 2 Plan for the Microsoft Power Platform, there are a number of exciting new capabilities in the roadmap, including:

Availability of Log message action in desktop flows, enabling users to log custom messages
New integration module allowing users to work directly with the data stored in Microsoft Dataverse
Create data loss prevention policies that govern desktop flows, as well as actions and modules in Power Automate Desktop
Additional analytics capability in the form of admin reports for desktop flows across environments
Improved and further integration of desktop flows into Dynamics 365 applications
Availability of the 475+ API connectors as actions within desktop flows (currently only available in cloud flows)

Now that you have learnt some of the new features and enhancements made in Oct 2021, why not download this latest version of Microsoft Power Automate Desktop and starting automating?

Learning Resources

https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-automate-for-desktop-october-2021-update/

Previous Updates

Latest Updates on Microsoft Power Automate for Desktop – October 2021 Read More »

Microsoft Power Automate Desktop September 2021 Update

Latest Updates on Microsoft Power Automate Desktop – September 2021

parent 1 / admin / September 23, 2021 / Updates

The latest Sep 2021 update of Microsoft Power Automate Desktop has been released! Today, we are going to highlight some of these new features.

To check the software version that you have, go to the Console and click on Help, then About.

The version installed will be displayed as shown below. The latest available version (as of this writing) is 2.13.138.21255.

If you have an older version and would like to upgrade to the latest version to enjoy the new features, go to this link to download the software installer.

New getting started experience

There is now a new in-product guided walkthrough experience which you can access by selecting the Help menu, followed by Getting started. This quick product tour helps new users to get familiar with Power Automate Desktop and its core features.

Here’s what it looks like:

New Invoke SOAP web service action

This new action invokes a method from a SOAP web service.

It also includes a built-in helper window (which you can access by clicking on the Build request button) that lets you build the SOAP request envelope in a convenient manner.

Conclusion

By the way, the enhancements are not stopping here. Based on the 2021 Release Wave 2 Plan for the Microsoft Power Platform, there are a number of exciting new capabilities in the roadmap, including:

Availability of Log message action in desktop flows, enabling users to log custom messages
New integration module allowing users to work directly with the data stored in Microsoft Dataverse
Create data loss prevention policies that govern desktop flows, as well as actions and modules in Power Automate Desktop
Additional analytics capability in the form of admin reports for desktop flows across environments
Improved and further integration of desktop flows into Dynamics 365 applications
Availability of the 475+ API connectors as actions within desktop flows (currently only available in cloud flows)

Now that you have learnt some of the new features and enhancements made in Sep 2021, why not download this latest version of Microsoft Power Automate Desktop and starting automating?

If you’re interested, you can also check out previous Microsoft Power Automate Desktop updates:

Learning Resources

https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-automate-desktop-september-2021-update/

Latest Updates on Microsoft Power Automate Desktop – September 2021 Read More »

Latest updates on Microsoft Power Automate Desktop – August 2021

parent 1 / admin / August 23, 2021 / Updates

The latest Aug 2021 update of Microsoft Power Automate Desktop has been released! Today, we are going to highlight some of these new features.

To check the software version that you have, go to the Console and click on Help, then About.

The version installed will be displayed as shown below. The latest available version (as of this writing) is 2.12.171.21216.

If you have an older version and would like to upgrade to the latest version to enjoy the new features, go to this link to download the software installer.

In this article, we will go through 7 changes that comes with this latest version of Microsoft Power Automate Desktop.

Enhanced connectivity error messages in Console and Designer
New Excel action – ‘Get active cell in Excel worksheet’
New Excel action – ‘Get column name in Excel worksheet’
New Excel action – ‘Delete from Excel worksheet’
New Excel action – ‘Find and replace cells in Excel worksheet’
Enhancement of ‘Read from Excel worksheet’ action
Enhancement of ‘Set screen resolution’ action

Enhanced connectivity error messages in Console and Designer

Frustrated when you encounter a connectivity error and you are not quite sure how to troubleshoot? We’ve got good news for you.

The connectivity error messages in both the Console and Designer has been enhanced to provide more descriptive text to allow you to understand what went wrong, as well as the potential remediation steps which you can take to rectify the errors.

Examples of such connectivity errors include licensing, environments, software updates, sign-in issues and problems fetching or saving a flow.

New Excel action – ‘Get active cell in Excel worksheet’

This action retrieves the active cell in the active worksheet of the Excel document. It accepts an Excel instance as input variable (which is created when you use the Launch Excel action), and produces 2 output variables – the numerical value of the active cell’s row and column.

New Excel action – ‘Get column name in Excel worksheet’

This action accepts the column number as an input and returns the corresponding column name. For example, specifying column numbers 1 and 2 will return the column names “A” and “B” respectively.

(Not quite sure what is the utility of this action. If you have any insights, do let us know in the comments below.)

New Excel action – ‘Delete from Excel worksheet’

This action allows you to delete either a cell or a range of cells from the active worksheet of the Excel document. It accepts an Excel instance as input variable (which is created when you use the Launch Excel action).

If you are deleting from a single cell, you will need to specify the cell row and column, as well as the shift direction of the neighbouring cells, i.e. left or up.

If you are deleting from a range of cells, you will need to specify the starting row and column, the ending row and column, as well as the shift direction of the neighbouring cells, i.e. left or up.

Do note that you can specify the column using either a number or a letter (unlike row, which must be a number).

New Excel action – ‘Find and replace cells in Excel worksheet’

This action finds the specified text and (optionally) replaces it with another text in the active worksheet of the Excel document. This is similar to the Find and Replace function (or Control-F using hotkeys) in Excel.

For this action, there are a few options for you to specify, including the search mode (i.e. find or replace), whether to find/replace all matches, whether the match should be case-sensitive, whether to match the entire cell contents and whether to search by rows or columns.

Also, if you are finding/replacing the first matching cell only, the action returns the row and column index of the matching cell as output variables. On the other hand, if you are finding/replacing all matches, the output variable will be a list of all cells that matches the criteria.

Enhancement of ‘Read from Excel worksheet’ action

The Read from Excel worksheet action has been improved to allow you to retrieve data from the entire worksheet. Previously, you can only retrieve data from a single cell, a range of cells or the selected cells.

Enhancement of ‘Set screen resolution’ action

The Set screen resolution action now provides you with the option to select one of the available resolutions of your machine’s monitors. Doing so will automatically populate all the required resolution settings below.

Conclusion

The enhancements are not stopping here. Based on the 2021 Release Wave 2 Plan for the Microsoft Power Platform, there are a number of exciting new capabilities in the roadmap, including:

Availability of Log message action in desktop flows, enabling users to log custom messages
New integration module allowing users to work directly with the data stored in Microsoft Dataverse
Create data loss prevention policies that govern desktop flows, as well as actions and modules in Power Automate Desktop
Additional analytics capability in the form of admin reports for desktop flows across environments
Improved and further integration of desktop flows into Dynamics 365 applications
Availability of the 475+ API connectors as actions within desktop flows (currently only available in cloud flows)

Now that you have learnt some of the new features and enhancements made in Aug 2021, why not download this latest version of Microsoft Power Automate Desktop and starting automating?

If you’re interested, you can also check out previous Microsoft Power Automate Desktop updates: Jul 2021, June 2021, May 2021, April 2021

Latest updates on Microsoft Power Automate Desktop – August 2021 Read More »

Latest Update on Microsoft Power Automate Desktop - Jul 2021

Latest updates on Microsoft Power Automate Desktop – Jul 2021

parent 1 / admin / July 28, 2021 / Updates

The latest Jul 2021 update of Microsoft Power Automate Desktop has been released! Today, we are going to highlight some of these new features.

To check the software version that you have, go to the Console and click on Help, then About.

The version installed will be displayed as shown below. The latest available version (as of this writing) is 2.11.51.21196.

If you have an older version and would like to upgrade to the latest version to enjoy the new features, go to this link to download the software installer.

In this article, we will go through 6 changes that comes with this latest version of Microsoft Power Automate Desktop.

Launch of the Machine Registration App
Automatic detection of Windows proxy settings
Ability to remove unused UI elements and images from a flow
New action ‘Take screenshot of UI element’
Enhancement of ‘Convert datetime to text’ action to display sample of output format
Enhancement of ‘Set Variable’ action to support multi-line text inputs

Launch of the Machine Registration App

The Machine Registration App allows users to perform mass deployment of Power Automate Desktop – from installation to registration of machines. Some of the actions that can be executed silently with this app include:

Register machine
Add machine to a group
Change machine run environment
Get machine information and status

To access the app, please follow the steps below:

Open Start menu
Search for Command Prompt (or PowerShell) and then run it as the administrator
Change the directory to the Power Automate Desktop install folder, which by default is located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Power Automate Desktop
Access the help menu by running the following command: .\PAD.MachineRegistration.Silent.exe -help

Automatic detection of Windows proxy settings

For those who are using a corporate proxy server and have encountered difficulties logging in, good news. Power Automate Desktop is now able to automatically detect the Windows proxy settings configurations, thus allowing connections to the cloud services that it requires.

Furthermore, administrators are now able to set specify registry keys to configure how Power Automate Desktop interacts with a corporate proxy server, to specify whether to bypass a corporate proxy server and to authenticate to a corporate proxy server using the current user’s credentials.

Ability to remove unused UI elements and images from a flow

Previously, if you have any unused UI elements or images, you will need to manually check that they are not being used in the current desktop flow, before deleting them one by one. Now, the contextual menus have been enhanced such that you can easily remove all UI elements and images that are not used within the desktop flow with a single click.

For the uninitiated, as a best practice, it is generally recommended that we should remove all unused UI elements and images to keep the desktop flow clean, and to improve maintainability and readability. So, this new feature will come in handy during “housekeeping” by eliminating the manual and tedious process of checking and deleting each UI element or image one by one.

New action ‘Take screenshot of UI element’

This new action Take screenshot of UI element allows you to take a screenshot of a specific UI element in a window. Previously, there is only the option of Take screenshot which allows you to take a screenshot of either the foreground window or a specified screen. Furthermore, you can save the screenshot either in the clipboard or to a file on your machine.

This feature can be very useful in certain scenarios. For example, when the UI element contains important information which we want to record or log for audit purposes.

Enhancement of ‘Convert datetime to text’ action to display sample of output format

The action Convert datetime to text has been enhanced to display a sample preview of the chosen datetime format, thus helping flow designers to visualize how the end result actually looks like. This is particularly helpful for users who might not be familiar with date formatting.

Enhancement of ‘Set Variable’ action to support multi-line text inputs

The Set variable action now allows users to provide multi-line text inputs easily. For example, to enter a new line, users simply need to press the Enter key. Previously, pressing the Enter key is equivalent to clicking on the Save button.

Conclusion

The enhancements are not stopping here. Based on the 2021 Release Wave 2 Plan for the Microsoft Power Platform, there are a number of exciting new capabilities in the roadmap, including:

Availability of Log message action in desktop flows, enabling users to log custom messages
New integration module allowing users to work directly with the data stored in Microsoft Dataverse
Create data loss prevention policies that govern desktop flows, as well as actions and modules in Power Automate Desktop
Additional analytics capability in the form of admin reports for desktop flows across environments
Improved and further integration of desktop flows into Dynamics 365 applications
Availability of the 475+ API connectors as actions within desktop flows (currently only available in cloud flows)

Now that you have learnt some of the new features and enhancements made in Jul 2021, why not download this latest version of Microsoft Power Automate Desktop and starting automating?

If you’re interested, you can also check out previous Microsoft Power Automate Desktop updates: June 2021, May 2021, April 2021

Latest updates on Microsoft Power Automate Desktop – Jul 2021 Read More »

Why use dynamic selectors in Microsoft Power Automate for desktop

Example situation requiring dynamic selectors when automating with Microsoft Power Automate for desktop

Read data from Excel

Launch Chrome, navigate to the website, and add UI elements

Creating a dynamic selector in Microsoft Power Automate for desktop

Create your own custom selectors

Complete your Microsoft Power Automate for desktop flow

Start using dynamic selectors in Microsoft Power Automate for desktop

Unified web and desktop recorder

Switch organization from the Power Automate for desktop console

Create a copy of desktop flow through the Power Automate for desktop console

New action Recognize entities in text that performs entity extraction

Syntax highlighting in script editors

New functionality to clear last error for action Get last error

New functionality to capture logical errors for the action On block error

Save Excel workbook in the binary format

New functionality to select Window or UI element for the action Send keys

New Windows OCR engine type

Conclusion

Power Automate Tip #11: Wait for window

Power Automate Tip #12: Focus window

Power Automate Tip #13: Select tab in a window

Power Automate Tip #14: Select menu option in window

Power Automate Tip #15: Focus text field and send keys

Power Automate Tip #16: Run python script to validate email address format

Power Automate Tip #17: Run desktop flow

Power Automate Tip #18: Run JavaScript function on webpage

Power Automate Tip #19: Extract data from webpage

Power Automate Tip #20: Manage errors

More Power Automate tips & tricks coming your way!

Power Automate interview questions regarding product offerings

Interview questions about Microsoft Power Automate for desktop

Power Automate Interview Questions on Process Mining and Task Mining Features

Power Automate Interview Questions on AI-Enabled Features

More resources for your Power Automate interview preparation

All the best for your Microsoft Power Automate interview!

Power Automate Tip #1: Declare a Data Table Data Type

Power Automate Tip #2: Adding Data Rows

Power Automate Tip #3: Retrieve specific item from data table

Power Automate Tip #4: Reassign a value of existing table row within for each loop

Power Automate Tip #5: Declare dictionary data type

Power Automate Tip #6: Downloading files from the web

Power Automate Tip #7: Getting file path part

Power Automate Tip #8: Clear temp with DOS command

Power Automate Tip #9: Export your flows as stacks

Power Automate Tip #10: View desktop flow logs

Enable the Power Automate Desktop Extension for Web Automation

Web Automation Actions in Microsoft Power Automate Desktop

How to Search and Extract Data from the Web

Step 1: Ask the user to input a city name

Step 2: Open a Chrome Browser and Navigate to google.com

Step 3: Type in the search bar ‘weather in (city)’, and executes a search

Step 4: Extract the temperature data

Step 5: Display the temperature in a message box

What happens when you encounter an error with your UI element?

Start automating web scraping with Microsoft Power Automate Desktop

Mark variables as sensitive

Apply Data loss prevention (DLP) policies to desktop flows

Support for older versions of Internet Explorer

New feature to save Excel workbook as XML

Compatibility with older versions of Power Automate for desktop

Conclusion

New getting started experience

New Invoke SOAP web service action

Conclusion

Table of contents

Enhanced connectivity error messages in Console and Designer

New Excel action – ‘Get active cell in Excel worksheet’

New Excel action – ‘Get column name in Excel worksheet’

New Excel action – ‘Delete from Excel worksheet’

New Excel action – ‘Find and replace cells in Excel worksheet’

Enhancement of ‘Read from Excel worksheet’ action

Enhancement of ‘Set screen resolution’ action

Conclusion

Table of contents

Launch of the Machine Registration App

Automatic detection of Windows proxy settings

Ability to remove unused UI elements and images from a flow

New action ‘Take screenshot of UI element’