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Power Automate has been around for quite some years now and it’s being widely used for all types of automations, but it has become more than a workflow tool.
With the capability of adding AI features to workflows (through AI Builder, Microsoft Foundry, and other third-party integrations) Power Automate is now an intelligent automation engine capable of handling processes that span from traditional automation to agentic automation.
What is Power Automate and How does it use AI?
Power Automate is the Power Platform tool specialized in process automation. It helps organizations get rid of repetitive and time-consuming tasks through different automation approaches:
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
- Digital Process Automation (DPA)
- Intelligent Automation (combination of RPA, DPA and AI)
With the recent hype of using artificial intelligence into business processes, what can be developed on the platform has also evolved. Microsoft is pushing for AI-first automation where dynamic and robust automations become the new normal. There are three primary ways AI enters a Power Automate workflow: through AI Builder, through Microsoft Foundry, and through third-party integrations. If you want to learn practical use cases you could be implementing all these tools right away, head to our blog where we show 5 use cases to leverate automation with AI.
AI Builder
AI Builder is the Microsoft Power Platform capability for implementing AI into workflows. It is the most accessible entry point for AI in Power Automate, it’s mainly designed for users and makers who want to add AI to their flows without writing code.
AI Builder works through three types of features:
· Use Prebuilt models for common business scenarios like invoice or receipts processing, business card reading, sentiment analysis, and language detection.
· With Custom models we can go further and create our own models that allow users to read and transform data from unique documents or forms and specialized terminology.
· Use the prompt Builder to incorporate natural language instructions and generative AI to draft emails, summarize text, or generate content directly within flows.
Microsoft Foundry
Microsoft Foundry is where Power Automate workflows meet enterprise-level and custom AI features.
What makes Foundry particularly valuable for advanced automation is its model flexibility and customization. Custom agents and multiple AI models from inside Azure and outside the Azure platform can be deployed and used.
Power Automate has some out-of-the-box actions and connectors to work with Microsoft Foundry directly but it can also connect through HTTP custom requests or custom connectors.
Third party apps
Power Automate’s AI capabilities can go beyond the Microsoft platform. With over 1,400 connectors available, and the ability to build custom connectors for any system with an API, pretty much any third-party AI tool can be integrated into a Power Automate workflow. Some examples of these third-party apps are:
- Google’s Gemini
- Anthropic’s Sonet models
- Model Context Protocols
Getting started with AI automation in Power Automate
First things first. Let’s find a process that can be automated and run a diagnosis on top of it to identify bottlenecks and potential improvements.
After deciding the process to automate, the following needs to be defined:
- Trigger: what will start the automation? Is it a new order or a new email? Will it run on schedule?
- Actions to perform: what do we want to happen when the automation starts? Should it send an email? Should it request an approval before creating our lead in Hubspot?
- Which steps of the process will incorporate AI: define where pre-defined logic will be needed and where AI will be used.
- Which AI feature will be incorporated: document understanding, text processing, predicting capabilities or prompts?
You can learn more about getting started with Power Automate in our blog about Power Automate.
Conclusion + CTA
Through our Power Automate consulting services we have helped clients from over 15 countries discover the joy of automation. Contact us to learn how we can help you go from idea to implementation for your artificial intelligence projects.
