The latest Jun 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 2.10.36.21161.
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 4 changes that comes with this latest version of Microsoft Power Automate Desktop.
Run desktop flows from another desktop flow
Previously, users can create subflows within a desktop flow (by default, each desktop flow will always have a Main flow), and trigger the required subflow using the Run subflow action. All the flow variables defined in the desktop flow is also accessible within the subflows.
Now, with the introduction of the new action Run desktop flow, users are able to run other desktop flows (or child desktop flows) from the current desktop flow (or parent desktop flow). Unlike the Run subflow action, you will need to make use of input and output variables in order to pass data from one desktop flow to another. Do note that while the child desktop flow is being triggered, the parent desktop flow will be paused.
You may be wondering why we even want to split the automation process into several desktop flows in the first place. Well, it is a best practice to design your flows in a modular manner. That means breaking down your complex process and segregating it into smaller, independent flows, each of which typically performs only one specific function or task. Doing this achieves multiple benefits including making your flow more readable and manageable, as well as promoting flow reusability.
Auto-switching to image-based recorder for RDP and Citrix environments
In the April 2021 update, we highlighted that the desktop recorder now supports image-based recording and optical character recognition (OCR). Guess what? The desktop recorder has been enhanced such that it will now intelligently detect a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) or Citrix environment, and automatically switch to image recording mode. Nice!
Note: For the uninitiated, automating processes within RDP or Citrix environments using UI elements is not possible. Instead, you will need to rely on methods such as image recognition, text extraction with OCR or hotkeys.
Enhancements in Windows-related actions
The actions Set Windows environment variable and Delete Windows environment variable have been enhanced such that it will automatically retrieve the Windows environment variables and display them in a drop-down for ease of selection.
Similarly, the actions Start service, Stop service, Pause service and Resume service have been enhanced such that it will automatically retrieve the Windows services and display them in a drop-down for ease of selection.
Finally, the actions If process, Wait for process and Terminate process have been enhanced such that it will automatically retrieve the Windows processes and display them in a drop down for ease of selection.
Deprecation of action Create MODI OCR engine
The ability to initialize and utilize the MODI OCR engine will be removed starting from the July release. Moving forward, the default OCR engine type will be Tesseract. Accordingly, it will also no longer be necessary for you to use the Create Tesseract OCR engine action (i.e. this action will also be deprecated) as you would directly initialize the Tesseract engine in the OCR related actions (i.e. Extract text with OCR), If text on screen (OCR), Wait for text on screen (OCR) and Move mouse to text on screen (OCR)) where the engine instance is used.
Important: If your existing desktop flows use the MODI OCR engine, do replace it with the Tesseract OCR engine and perform the necessary testing (as the change in OCR engine might affect the behaviour of the actions) before deploying the desktop flow to a production environment. For more information, please refer to this blog post.
Conclusion
By the way, the enhancements are not stopping here. Based on the 2021 Release Wave 1 Plan for the Microsoft Power Platform, there are a number of exciting new capabilities in the roadmap, including:
- Connect to desktop flows without the on-premises data gateway
- Support UI automation with Citrix
- Web automation to access cross-domain iFrames
- Power Automate Desktop inclusion with Windows
Now that you have learnt some of the new features and enhancements made in Jun 2021, why not download this latest version of Microsoft Power Automate Desktop and start automating?
Learning Resources
https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-automate-desktop-june-2021-update/
Previous Updates
April 2021
May 2021