Get started with Power Automate

0:00Thank you for joining me in this skill as we focus on Power Automate. In this set of videos, we look at what Power Automate is. Navigate the various Power Automate Desktop environment features and tools that allow us to create different types of automated tasks with an environment. And then proceed to use little to no code to create an automated task. And in addition to that, we also look at how we can make use of the Power Automate Record feature that allows us to create a sequence of events or features or areas that we simply want to select and create an automated task just by using the recorded steps that we may have actually selected.

0:33And if you've been looking for a way in which you could increase your productivity by automated tasks, then this is definitely a skill for you. And with that, let's get started.

0:00It is time for us to power automate. All right. Now, we've spent quite some time in this entire course focusing on Power BI and the various datasets that we can have within our environment. In order for us to change that data into visuals that we can easily interpret, these could be pie charts, there could be various stack bars and different types of charts that we may have in our environment. But the contrast is that as we continue focusing on all these data and it actually becomes quite a lot to handle, we need some form of help in terms of how we can automate the tasks that we have and be able to work with them seamlessly.

0:37This simply means we want to be more efficient, we want to be more productive, and we want to eliminate the chance of making errors. And that is truly possible regardless of what industry you work in. You could have lots and lots of datasets that you have, maybe got different pie charts, maybe got different visuals that you have within your environment, and you simply want to be able to automate these tasks. You can think of schedules, for example, you want to be able to work with various types of schedules. Think of somebody who is in charge of different geographical locations. Maybe they are a global administrator of some sort and they have to be focused on maybe tasks that are happening in one region of the world.

1:14Maybe this could be Southern Africa. Maybe they also have to look at different tasks happening in New Zealand. And maybe at one point they'll also be focusing on European activities, etc. And while they're trying to understand what is happening in a particular location because it is still 10 a.m. in the local location, the team over here could actually be asleep. And by the time they wake up, it could be 2 a.m. for them in the morning. And they are now just frustrated in terms of how they're able to deliver that and what they're going to do in order to make sure that they're able to support those teams over there.

1:45And if they're able to find means and ways of automating those tasks, such that at a time when it is working hours over here in this part of the world, then those tasks would trigger, it would save them a lot of stress. And this is where the power of being able to use power automate comes in. And this applies to various industries, regardless of where exactly it could find yourself in. And if you're going to learn how to power automate, this could be email automation. We want to be able to work with various emails and be able to automate.

2:18It could be bookings that you're dealing with. Think of bookings for various events or bookings for Airbnb or bookings for flights or various tourism activities. You simply could use power automate to schedule various activities, to be able to trigger certain communications to happen, etc. But without an understanding of how power automate is and where we could actually find it and what features within power automate could help us build various flows, it just becomes a very daunting task for us to jump in with.

2:50And in this particular video, I want us to look at the various features. I want us to explore and be able to identify the key areas in power ultimate that could help us begin our journey to automating tasks within our environment . Okay, let's turn to Microsoft 365 and within our tenant, we're just going to select the menu. And from the menu, we have power automate. Now, if your menu does not come with power automate, you may have to look into the various licenses assigned to you. And if you are using maybe a work tenant and you're not having access to that, you can easily speak to your admin and will be able to grant you these features based on the privileges or the role that you play within your organization.

3:29Now, once we have power automate open, notice that we have this area with quite a lot of features. There is a segmentation over here and we'll bring that down as we proceed. But to our middle section, we have this search area and this is a universal search area. We can search basically anything within power automate from this particular area over here. Now, like we saw in Power BI, we also deal with environments, meaning each and every task can be confined to a particular environment. And right now, we're working within the default environment that we have, which is the Contoso environment.

3:59It is possible for us to create multiple environments within our environment. We also have this cog over here that allows us to look into the admin center and a power automate and work with the various themes and other features that pertain to this interface within power automate. Now, I want us to go straight and look into this area. Now, this area is AI powered. It makes use of core pilots to generate solutions, the various tasks that you may want to automate. Let's just pick up a random one. Let's say we would like to do an automated schedule.

4:33So we just type schedule automation over there. And once we have that in place, we have these options over here. Every hour assign users to plan a task, run a desktop automation and send an email every day. Depending on what exactly we want to achieve, we can select any of these tasks over here. Now, let's say we want to run a desktop automation. Just go ahead and select that. And this would give us a procedure that we can follow to achieve that. And this is a very powerful tool, by the way. And if you feel you are not very comfortable working with power ultimate or you 're still trying to explore and try out things, this is the best place to start.

5:06Now, I'm going to go ahead and cancel that. But before I do, let's look at these keywords. We have trigger and we have action. Now, remember the purpose of us automating tasks is simply because we want to have a particular floor of events taking place. And we want to do this accurately. But for these events to actually take place, something must happen. And that is what is known as a trigger. Now, a trigger can be an email that has been shared. It could be a message sent to a particular channel within teams or even a OneDrive file that has been added to a particular folder.

5:37We should actually kick start the flow of these events. And then they would in a sequential order follow the various actions that must be performed in order for that particular floor or automation to complete. So every time you're looking at creating something that is going to automate particular tasks, there must be a trigger that should initiate those events and there must be an action or a series of actions that must outline and define the tasks that must be performed. And here we have the trigger and the actions.

6:07We can see over here it says the floor starts when this happens, implying that this is the event that triggers the series of actions. And this is what the floor will do over here. Now, I'm going to go ahead and cancel this. We'll come back to it and look at how we can actually configure that later on. But I want us to understand the various areas of navigating this robust interface. Now, you can see over here we have the various templates and templates are great. I'm pretty sure you've seen in the previous video that we did where we actually automated the emailing part of power automate, But there is actually more to that. You can see you can do scheduling of various messaging.

6:39You can actually begin integrating your Power BI information and feeding it from this particular area and be able to automate those tasks. We have remote work templates. We have email templates notifications saved to cloud which allows us to have the various tasks that we may have in the environment move to cloud resources that we have such as Power BI service. We have different tasks that we can also perform over here looking at SharePoint, looking at OneDrive and other resources that we may simply want to integrate with. Now, apart from the templates that we have over here, once we have worked with those, we can easily add them to the set of templates that we have in the environment.

7:14And here we have templates that could have been shared with us. We could also have templates that align with the particular products, such as Visio, for example, we could have something that focuses into data collection, email, calendars, etc. There is just a lot. We do have resources that help us to learn what exactly we can achieve within Power Automate and we can even go ahead and look into this to be able to gain insight into the various tasks we can perform. Now, other than that, we also have my flows which should also list all the flows that we have created in the past. And this is where we are also going to see any other flow we are going to create in the future.

7:47And we can look into desktop flows. We can also look into shared with me flows. Now, just like we saw with Power BI Desktop, which is a great feature allowing us to integrate what we have on our desktop with Power BI Service, meaning the cloud best version of Power BI, Power Automate does come with a very similar feature. We have Power Automate Desktop, which allows us to integrate what we have with Power Automate within this particular tenant. However, this is only available to users with a Power Automate Premium license. I'm not too sure whether mine is still holding up there, but I'm going to go ahead and try it.

8:19And there is a link under this video that allows you to download Power Automate Desktop and try it out in case you do have that version within the environment. Now, I've already started the process of installing. I haven't really gone too far, as you can see over here. So it's just simply launching. You can see there you've got the various included features, the version of Power Automate Desktop, just with a head and click next. So from here, if you are curious about where this is going to be stored, you can always make adjustments in terms of the location where this is being stored within your device.

8:49And then you can go ahead and select this option over here to allow Power Automate Desktop to have the various flows and maybe create a shortcut if you need to. Now, if you go ahead and select that, if you already have Power Automate app installed, it will prompt you to do so. But if you'd like to overwrite it, you can just go ahead and overwrite it. Or if you'd like to stop and just install these options over here, you can still go ahead and do the same thing. So just go ahead and click yes over there that will allow me to create a desktop shortcut and it will also allow me to have these options over here. Now, I also have to go ahead and agree to the Microsoft terms before I can begin installing.

9:22So let's go ahead and install this. Okay, so the installation is complete. There's just a few extensions that we go to enable and what's that is done, we'll go ahead and restart our device and check out the Microsoft Power Automate Desktop version. So join me in the next video after restarting the device.

0:00All right, so I went through the restart and the installation successfully completed. So let's go ahead and launch Power Automate Desktop. And this is what we get on that first page when we launch it. So with this in your environment, it is very easy for you to begin automating different types of tasks, especially when you have files that could be on your desktop or you simply want to be able to manage some of the environments that you have and automates certain features or applications or files that you simply want to manage. It is advisable how would it say that you can also go premium if you realize that some of those features that you really want to see are not available.

0:37There is just a lot in the premium version. However, that is going to cost you a little bit more money in terms of your licenses. All right. So with that said, let's look at what we have over here. We have the ability to create a new floor as we can see over here. And we also have that environment where we're working. Now in my case, I had to sign in with my Power Automate credentials into this environment. That is one thing that you have to remember so that you can have access to this . This also allows you to share resources where you simply want to be able to see certain flows within Power Automate Desktop appear within your Power Automate in the tenant.

1:10You also have the settings area where you can manage various features and make adjustments as you may. You can also seek for help or assistance or get tips on how to perform certain tasks as well as make use of core pilot. Now core pilot is a great tool. Like I've said earlier, this is AI powered and allows us to perform different types of tasks even helps us to get suggestions in terms of how we can complete certain tasks within this environment. We can also set for flows over here that features also there. But my interest is to look at my flows. As you can see right now, there isn't anything and there is also none in this particular category.

1:43Nothing has been shared with us. But if you go to examples, we can actually look at the various tasks we can perform in this particular area. We've got the name of the floor, the description as well as the status and the level. Now we're going to focus on these beginner level flows that we have in this particular area. Now look at the very first one here. It says add time to a file. And this button over here allows us to run this. We can also stop it or even edit this flow within this particular area. Now if we're taking a particular environment to add dates to maybe a set of files that we have within a particular folder, we can do that once.

2:16Imagine what hundreds of files and you simply want to debt them on that particular day. It becomes quite easier for us to use this particular too. So let's go ahead and select this option over here. We just go ahead and play it. Once we begin to play it, it will start running. And as it runs, it will open our file explorer helping us to navigate to the file that we want to date. So let's just give it a moment. It should pop up soon. And there we go. It's going to pop up in a different screen. So in this area, I just go ahead and select my videos. We just go ahead and select videos over here. And with that in place, I press the enter key and it should go into my folder, locate all the files that I have in here and add a date to them.

2:56So if we just pull in my videos over here, I should be able to see what we've got in this area. And there we go. Got virus files, financial template, new Microsoft Visa drawings. And you can see each one of these has a date added to them. Now we're going to simply do this to any other files we've got within our environment and be able to add them in this particular location with all the information that will be required. So since this one over here won't have any date next to it. And if we actually wanted to get rid of some of the files in here, maybe based on the fact that they're empty, we're just to go back into Power Automate and perform that.

3:32So over here, we have options, such as copying files, find and delete empty files. So let's go ahead and launch that one over there. And this would allow us to locate that same location that we want to work with and be able to delete any file that is empty in that particular location. Now again, there we go. Over here, we have to go ahead and select video. And once we have done so, press the enter key and that should navigate to that location and get rid of any file that is empty in that location. So just go ahead and open the video folder again.

4:05And here we are. You'd notice that all the files that we had that were empty in this location have been gotten rid of. Now, there are many other options that are provided in here. Opening folder, printing documents, sending text to notepad, which can really be great when you want to simply transpose information and be able to have it on notepad. These are some of the features that we can make use of. Now other than that, we can also edit some of these options. For example, from here, you have that edit option. If we click over there, we can actually wet out ways in which we can further empower these flows to perform very advanced tasks within our environment.

4:41However, that would require making use of some advanced tools. But nonetheless, this is what you would get if you were to further edit a particular flow. You have variables, you have conditionals such as if else. And this would simply allow you to navigate to the next action when an event has been triggered, maybe best when a particular condition, and then a particular action should actually be performed. Now, a very good example of working with conditionals is when we actually have maybe different sets of information that would simply trigger what is happening within your environment, etc.

5:15Now, let's say, for example, that we are setting up conditionals within our environment that pertain to our emails. So we simply want to make sure that in the event that an email is received, something must happen. So we're going to set a conditional to say if the condition in this case is that email is an external email, we should have a different response. If that email is an internal email, meaning the sender is part of our organization, they are part of the user that we have, then the response must be different.

5:46And we can set different options over here to say, okay, if somebody is an external user, what should happen is that we should respond with an email that simply contains a link with information to our website, and they could have more information from our frequently asked question page. If a user is internal part of our organization, then we can give them a response and in that response be the various steps or stages on how to perform a particular task. And this is how we use different types of conditionals to make sure that we have these kind of flows that have the right for actions whenever there is an event that has been triggered within our environment.

6:24Okay, so let's go ahead and create our first flow. So over here, we'll go back to this area. And in here, we have new flow. So we just go ahead and select that. And we just go ahead and call it a test flow. So with that in place, we go ahead and click on create. And with that, we now have this flow in here. But what does it do? What does the flow do? Well, this is where we now have to come to the various triggers and actions. This is where we now have to configure what the flow does. We only have so far assigned it a name, but we haven't really come into this area where we can perform different types of actions.

6:57Now you would notice again, we have variables, we have conditionals, we have loops, you have different types of options in here. And sometimes there is email, like I said earlier, sometimes it can be very daunting as to what does what in here. You have some of them that are really advanced like the FTP kind of configuration. You can actually reach out to your file transfer protocol server and be able to bring in the virus folders that are in there, et cetera. You have options that point to your AWS. This could be the virus resources that you have that you'd like to automate in there. Azure, Google Cloud, et cetera.

7:28So there are quite a lot of options that are contained in here. But let's look at the easy ones. I'll go ahead and select Excel, for example. Let's say we simply want to be able to launch Excel, but without us having to navigate and locate its location, et cetera. So if we expand it like so, we have options here, let's just try to expand this and tell you. We have options here such as, you know, launching Excel, attached to running Excel, read from Excel, save Excel, et cetera, et cetera. And all these would allow us to perform different types of tasks. So if you wanted to launch Excel, for instance, without having to navigate to its location, et cetera, we could simply go ahead and select the launch option.

8:04So with the launch option in place, we just go ahead and drag it like so. If you wanted to, or you could simply double click on it, that's your works. With this in place, you can go ahead and look at what we're simply going to achieve. When Excel launches, what we want? We want a blank Excel sheet, all right? If that is what we want, then we can stick with that. But if you want to open a specific Excel sheet, then we can say, open the following document. So we can actually go and define the actual document that we want to open, which is really helpful if we have that specific document with your environment. And we can decide if we'd like to make the Excel window visible or we simply want it to open invisibly, that is also possible.

8:41We have other advanced options over here. So these are some of these options we can make use of when launching it. Now let's just go ahead and save this for now. And after saving it, we just go ahead and play it, all right? And in the building process, by the way, you build and you test, you build and you test, especially if you're going to build multiple actions in the process, it's very important that you test every stage of that. So go ahead and just launch that and see if it's going to run. And there we have it. I've got it open on one of my screens. There is Excel, so this does work.

9:12And if we wanted to actually launch multiple programs or we simply wanted to be involved even in the closure of a particular program, we could also add that into this environment. So we've got the opening and closure of that particular Excel and we can also decide whether we'd like to save that particular document when we actually close it. But then we don't really just want to open and close a particular file. That won't really be great automation. Maybe we want to be able to add a lot of data in that particular file. That's also as possible. We can actually write to Excel and you would actually be able to see that if we drag these, we can squeeze some of these actions in between actions.

9:49For instance, I cannot write before I close, right? So I'd like these to be in there and I can just drop it over there. And that would allow us now to begin adding various values in case we're dealing with a very confidential file. So I'd like to specify that it is confidential and would like to write this on the first column, maybe in the second row and we can have that saved. So it simply means it launches and then writes confidential to that specified cell and then we can have it closed. But maybe before we can actually see it closing, we'd like to see how that looks.

10:20So what we can do in this case would disable the action that it doesn't actually happen. So if we had to launch these, click on launch over there, it should be able to open Excel and this time around, it should open it with that text in it. Okay, so I can see Excel pop up on my screen. I'll just go ahead and click on it and there we are. So this allows us to automate quite a lot of tasks. Sort of just maybe adding a particular phrase, which is this one, we can add formulas to different types of columns or roles that we have with the environment. And if now we want to see this closing, we can easily close that within our environment.

10:54We can now just go ahead and enable this action. Let's see what happens. And once we launch these from the very beginning, it should be able to run at that particular phrase and close. And this is where you'd also be able to monitor this particular process over here. So if it successfully runs, it should actually show that it has completed successfully and if it has an error, and notification will be triggered informing you that an error has been encountered. And this is just one of the many things that we can achieve using Microsoft Power Automate. But before we just leave this area, I want you to actually look at one important feature that you can use without having to look into all these features that we've actually encountered so far.

11:34And that is the record button. Now, we can actually capture everything we have done so far using the actual code button. And once it pops up in here, just quickly take a look, you'll actually be able to see that in this area, we can record the process of creating different types of tasks and later on be able to bring that process into this area. So that's something we'll touch on in our next video.

0:00So one of the greatest and easiest way of creating and automating tasks within Power Automate is by recording them. Instead of you finding your way through writing code, you can easily record the process and create an automated task within Power Automate. So if you can open Power Desktop and access this area, then you go to New Flow. This simply allows us to give a name to these flaws. Let's call it Exchange Ritz. And once we have that in place, we can go ahead and click on Create. And this is going to go ahead and allow us to begin creating the various tasks or flaws that we simply want to see within our environment. And also, allow us to record a flow.

0:36So in this area, we've got our canvas where we can actually work like we saw previously. And there we have our record button. Now let's assume that we've been tasked with collecting information that pertains to how the US dollar is faring against the Canadian dollar. And on each and every day, we've got to see what the Exchange Ritz is and record that maybe to some text document that we have with our environment. And on the second day, just like that, we have to continually record this information. Now that can really be very repetitive. What we simply want to do is to automate this task whereby we can have access to whatever site we are using to collect the action rates and look at where that information is coming from. Okay, there could be maybe a square or an entry area where you can actually be able to see what the figure is, given day, etc.

1:23And get that particular figure and export it to this particular document on a daily basis. Or whenever we actually run that particular flow. So in order for us to achieve that, in an easy way, we can simply record the entire process from Power Ultimate Desktop. So we have our Exchange Ritz flow over there. Let's go ahead and click on Record. So once we click on Record, the Record menu will pop up. And over here, we can easily drag it into this area and try to resize it so that you can feed or window. And once we have it in here, we then can begin the process of recording that particular flow. So let's go ahead and click on Record. And when we click on Record, we actually have to pay attention to what is going to happen in this area. And the first thing we want to do is to access the site, right? And in order for us to access the site , we must select which browser we're going to use. So by clicking on the Lipsis over there, we can go and click on Launch Newer Browser. And we can select the browser of choice. Now, before we can just go ahead and do that, notice that as I hover on the screen that these red sections that are being selected, that is just highlighting the UI elements that we can actually record in this process. Now, let's go ahead and select Microsoft Age as our browser. And once we have age over here, just go ahead and minimize our recorder. So within age, I'd like us to go to Google. So press

2:40Enter over there. And once we're in here, let's say for USD to Canadian dollar exchange rate, there we have it, we just select it. And once we have that in place, notice that it gives us different figures that are provided in these areas. Now, every time we select N of these, we've got an input number . So it simply means it is able to detect that. And what we want to do in this case is to be able to pick up what the red is for the Canadian dollar for a given day. And with that, we'll go ahead and right click that area. And once we right click, we have options that are provided in this area.

3:13We have whiten to webpage, text screenshot of this UI element, extract element value, which is exactly what I want us to do because we want to be able to get the value for every day of the month. So in this case, we go ahead and select text. And with that in place, our element value will be recorded. And we can turn back to our Power Automate Desktop to complete the process. As for our recording, at this particular point, we can actually bring it to an end because that should suffice in terms of what we need to run this flow. Now this flow actually has a lot of fluff. There is just a lot of clicking that was going on. And some of the information captured over here is really not necessary.

3:54Now you'd notice that we've got the numbering that was happening for the various activities. And there is some form of sectioning that is also going on just like we saw with our previous automated tasks. But these comments will actually allow us to understand what was happening at every level of this particular flow. So there was a launch of Microsoft H. Yes, we need to keep that. And we can see that that was pointing to Google.com. That's correct. And we can see that there is some populated fields and there is a search that was going on, which was USD to CAD, yes, that is accurate. And we can see here that we've got some currencies that are being listed.

4:29We still need that. And that goes on and on. Now, everything that we're seeing here so far is very relevant. We want to keep that, including the inner text, because it's from here that we're able to find what the currency was. There was a currency amount field. We were able to pick that up. Now this is not very important. So just go ahead and click on the ellipses and delete. It should still be able to run without these even when we completed. But should it happen that we delete any key element in this particular area? We're actually getting an error at the bottom of this canvas. So that is one way of also knowing whether what we're doing has a greater impact to how these flows going to function. Now, once we've cleaned up this particular flow and everything is perfect, we're not going to go ahead and try to run it and see whether we're going to be getting any errors that we might need to correct. So if you click over there, it should be able to launch.

5:19And there it starts. Google must open and eventually should be able to pick up that information. You can see in the background, it is actually running picking up that data. And once it is completed, we just close these or simply minimize it. And we should be able to get information regarding what has happened. And we can see here, good flow variables. And we can see inner text says $1.35. And this is the same value that we saw previously. Now, if we're not so sure, we can just to rerun that and we'll be able to see these change because this won't be a fixed figure over time. So as it continues to change and we continue running that, we 'll also be able to pick up that information. But then how do we begin to move this and export it to our text document?

5:58Well, to go about that, let's go ahead and search for text, because this allows us to go ahead and create a flow for that. So come here and would say, write to text as the option that we want. So write to text, we just be dragged in this area. Just make sure that you'd not do this before the end option. There is the end of auto generated actions. Now, that should be the very last thing that happens in this particular area. So where do we intend to write to? We have to specify the file path over there. So what I just do is to click on this to select the file. And in here, I'll go and select, let's say my videos, because that's one area where I'm likely not to have anything.

6:36And in the video, we've got the financial template. Okay, if you want a new text document, just go ahead and select that. And we can say text document, just say this is going to be a test file, press enter over there. And we should be good to go, select it and click on open. Now this simply means every time you're going to be running that flow, it should be saving that information or those values, the actions read for different days to that particular file. But how does it do that? Well, we've got this text to write area. And over here , we simply have to go and select the inner text, because it is from here that that value is a pen. So just go ahead and select that option over here. And here we have inner text. So just go ahead and select it and click on select and inner text removed in this area. This is referencing the values that are contained in the inner text field. With that in place, we can go ahead and click save. Now, this would allow us to run that search, be able to identify the actions read of the USD to the Canadian dollar and pick whatever value is appended to our inner text and then write it to our text file. So let's go ahead and run this. Okay, the process begins. And we can see that it is actually progressing over there. But this time around, it should write it to that particular field.

7:48All right, so let's go and access that file text within our environment and see whether that has actually taken place. So here we got that test dot txt file. And if you open it, we should be able to find that value $1.35. And this is how we can make use of the recording option within par ultimate to record various tasks that we simply want to be able to carry out within our environment. And we can actually take this further. If there are other activities that are to be performed, such as sharing this with somebody, maybe via email or other means, we simply go ahead and look for outlook over here or simply type email. And with that in place, we can go and say, all right, once we've gotten this value, we'd like to send it to somebody. So we can say, send email message, just drag it in there. And once it comes in this area, we then can begin making the right for adjustments over here, specifying the person we are sending to maybe there are people that we have to copy the subject and then the body over here.

8:41And we can actually save these as part of these in test sequence. Oops, there's an error. That's simply because some very important fields here empty. All right, but that is one way in which we can actually finalize these by making sure that all the users of the environment can receive a such kind of information. And by just clicking the button, you'd be able to automate that process and share it with all the relevant stakeholders within your environment.

0:00Okay, let's get started with the review. We're right here within our Power Automate Desktop Environment. But before we can just go ahead and start performing the tasks, let's look at the questions again. So over here, the first part was saying we should create a text file on our desktop or any desired location, and we should name it NASDAQ Stocks. All right, the second part, which is the Power Automate section, says we should use the record to within Power Automate and create a flow that captures this top prices from Google. Okay, and once we have that in place, we should save the record, the NASDAQ stock file, which you created earlier over there.

0:35And with that in place, we should add a date to this particular stock file. And then we should also email this information to a colleague within our environment. That is the part that we have to complete. Okay, I'm pretty sure you had no challenges creating the file on your desktop or every desired to have that file created. Let's go ahead and begin the process by creating the flow. So we're going to click on New Flow. And in here, we just go ahead and say Stocks. Okay, that's the name. You could give it NASDAQ stocks or whatever name you want to give it. And then we can click on Create.

1:05Okay. Now, once this has been created, we then can go and begin the process of recording a flow that allows the stock says Google, and then we can capture whatever the stock is for that particular day and save it to this stock file. Right. So here we are. We simply have to go and click on Record. And this will bring the record menu, which we gladly click on. And once we have that in place, we can select the ellipsis so that we can be able to launch the web browser of our choice. So in this case, I'll select Microsoft H in order for us to be able to access the browser.

1:39And then I just go ahead and minimize this. And then we'll go to Google. So go ahead and type Google.com over there. And with that in place, we then can search for NASDAQ in that area. So go and type NASDAQ and press Enter. And once we have that, we'll go for the index where we can actually see what the figures for NASDAQ stocks are for this particular day. Right click over there so that we can be able to extract that information. So we have an option, Extract Element Value, and we can see that is the value that we're after.

2:12We'll go ahead and copy it or simply click on it. And with that, we then can stop the recording. So we're done with the recording now and we can see over here that this is what we actually performed. There are quite a number of areas here that may not be necessary such as Wait 2 seconds. Now these are simply informing us of what was being performed and they can easily be removed without really breaking this particular piece of code. Alright, so let's go ahead and try to test to see if this is going to be running successfully before we can actually begin making any changes or even setting parts of this particular section.

2:45So I'll go and select the Run option, click on it, and then we'll be able to see if anything is going to give an error or if this is going to run successfully which we hope will be the cast and we'll be able to get up from there. Okay, so this ran without any issues, it was actually very successful and we can see we now have an inner text of that figure over there. Okay, now that we know that our code is working perfectly, we can then go ahead and save this information to our text file. So simply go into the search area in my case and go and type text and once we have that in place, I would like to write this particular information or this inner text to that NASDAQ Stokes file.

3:25So I'm going to select Write Text to File and I'll drag this and bring it over here and then I have to go and specify the path of that particular file. I will search for it and over here I'll simply go and look into the location where I created that particular file in my case was the video and then we have NASDAQ Stokes. So go ahead and click Open. With that in place, we have the text to write. Now the text to write does not have to be our own text. This has to be the inner text that was actually captured when we ran this particular code.

3:55So going select that X option over there and then we can select the Inner Text option and with that in place, we'll go and click on Insert. So every time we actually run this code, it's going to save whatever has been captured within this Inner Text section and with that in place, we'll click on Save. All right. So we'll go ahead and test off this. We'll go ahead and run this particular flow again. So let's see if it's going to successfully write that information to the NASDAQ stock file. Okay. So a quick verification of our file. There's our NASDAQ Stokes and if you open that, we should be able to find that figure over there.

4:30So that has worked perfectly. Now once that has been achieved, we have to add a date and be able to email that information to any of the users that we have in the environment. So let's go ahead and add a date to that information, just type date over there , press Enter. You'll notice that to the left hand side, we have the Gate Current Date option. We'll just drag and drop it into this area. And once it's in here, we can then make the right for customizations or adjustments that allow us to have this date useful. So we do not really want the time. We simply want to have the date. So we can just say Current Date Only and then we have adjustments in terms of Time Zone, which can also change over here.

5:06We can maybe align this with our Windows, Time Zone or Custom Input, whatever the case is that we simply want to see as an output on that particular text file once we have completed the process. So over here, you can simply go and select Time Zone or your choice and with that in place, we then can go ahead and select Save. Just ensure that you have the Current Date option enabled over there. Right, with that in place, we should be able to now have this written to our text file. However, there is one thing that we simply have to change when it comes to the Right to Text File option because if you look in the Variables section, we have the Current Date and Time, we have the Inner Text, etc.

5:45So we simply want to bring in the Current Date and Time to the Right options. So let's go and click on Edit over there and that allows us to edit this option . And where we have Text to Right, where we previously added the Inner Text File, this time around, we are going to add the Date option. So there we have Current Date, just click on it and then we click on Select and then we click on Save. So we should be good to go now. When we run this particular flow, we should be able to get both the stock figures as well as the date for that particular day.

6:16So a quick verification of our file again. So I'll just go ahead and click on it over here so we can be able to see whether these changes have been infected. And once we open it over here, we should be able to get results. There we go. So there we have the Stock Index as well as the date and notice that the time wasn't included in that particular variable. So let's do the final thing which is to send this particular file to one of the colleagues that we have within our environment. Alright, so there are so many ways in which you could achieve that.

6:48But before we go ahead, let's just set this because this is really becoming big and in the event that we actually lose this without saving it, it could actually take us more time to restore it. Alright, so to send out an email, all we have to do is to go to this section and type send. Now you'd realize there are quite a lot of options that are provided in here. You have a send exchange email, send email messages. Some of them even allow you to make use of the likes of Gmail if you're using Power Ultimate Premium and you have different types of options that are provided in there.

7:19Now it could actually be very difficult if we don't really have all those features in here such as maybe the exchange server details or SMTP configurations etc. So the easiest way of going around this would just be for us to record the process. So like we did previously, we can still just go ahead and run a record. So when we do that, you'd actually be able to see that all the details that require over here would be populated in this area and we can let our own Twigit and make changes as desired.

7:49So go ahead and click on record and the process begins. We have the record menu pop up and once the record menu pops up in this area, we can simply go ahead and click on record over there and then I'll go and launch my browser software. I'll take that back where I'm able to see it and then we can begin the process of sending an email. Now the only thing that is key here is how you intend to send the emails. You should plan to do so using Outlook which is installed on your desktop or any device that you have.

8:20That is also something that you can simply achieve by clicking on that software . If you're looking for Office 365 online, we can easily do so by using this link that I've just copied over here. So this is Outlook.Office365.com and by pressing enter over here, I'm able to access my emails. Once I'm in this area, I can just go and click on new email and then once I have new email clicked on, I'll then begin the process of structuring my email. So I'd like to send this to myself. I'm just going to go ahead and select my username over there and with that in place, I will then go and add a subject.

8:54I'm just going to say this is going to be test. So username selected, subject is going to be test and the body is going to be stocks. And with that in place, I'll then go ahead and add the attachment that we intend to add in this particular case, so I'm going to go and browse my computer and then I 'll look at that file and attach it. And once that is done, we'll click on send. The bigger chunk of the work would now remain in our editing area. That is where we have to get rid of all the fluff and make sure that none of the options that we selected that I relevant, I included in this particular flow and that everything is just perfect.

9:31Now one thing you'll also notice is that this is now not following the sequence that we had previously because now it is running the second edit and after that it has put the first edit at the bottom. So we have to go ahead and look at how we can rearrange that and make sure that everything is as desired. So everything has been recorded for us in this particular flow and the easiest way to rearrange this would be to hit the control button on your keyboard and begin selecting all these options. Now you simply have to pay attention to these areas over here.

10:01There is one here that says and of auto-generated actions and we have a start of auto-generated action. Actually there are two of them here so we can actually get rid of this one over here. I just want to make sure that we are able to have this information here at the very bottom. So just go ahead and select it and after selecting it, I'll drag it to the very bottom of my page and that would allow me to run the first flow before I can run the second flow. Alright this looks much cleaner than before and we can see over here that when we launch our browser software we'll be able to access Google and from Google we can go and search for NASDAQ and once we've searched for NASDAQ we'll also be able to collect information depending on what exactly would have been given to us or produced by that particular search and we can have the index or the stock figures for the particular day and you can see over here about the span and a few figures over there which will then be appended to inner text and then we'll be able to write inner text to this NASDAQ stocks.txt file as shown over there that will also include the kind, date and time and after that is done the flow proceeds to launch another Microsoft age browser and with that in place go and search for Outlook.office.365

11:16and then a new tab item will be opened and that will be sent to our admin and we have more information here to do with the message that will be sent, the attachment etc. So basically this is the entire flow that actually governs how the email is going to be sent and I want us to go ahead and run it. So let's go ahead and click on run over there and there we go our flow has delivered and we have been able to automate this particular task from the process of getting information into this attachment to sending an email to users within our environment and this my friend is how we can make use of the virus automation features within Power Automate to automate tasks within our environment.

11:55For now I hope this has been informative for you and I'd like to thank you for viewing.