Estimated Reading Time: 14 - 16 minutes
How many repetitive tasks does your business carry out every day?
Forwarding customer enquiries to the right person, chasing approval for documents, sending reminders, updating spreadsheets and preparing new employees for their first day might seem like small jobs individually.
But when those tasks are repeated across a working week, they can take up a considerable amount of time.
Many small businesses already use Microsoft 365 for email, documents and collaboration. What they may not realise is that Microsoft also provides tools to automate some of the work happening between those applications.
Microsoft Power Automate helps businesses create automated workflows that connect applications, move information and trigger actions without requiring someone to complete every step manually.
For example, a new customer enquiry could automatically create an item in a tracking list, notify the appropriate employee and generate a follow-up task.
Instead of relying on someone to remember each step, the workflow carries out the agreed process.
In this guide, we'll explain how Microsoft Power Automate works, explore five practical tasks small businesses can automate, discuss licensing and show you how to get started.
What Is Microsoft Power Automate?
Microsoft Power Automate is a workflow automation service within Microsoft's Power Platform.
Previously known as Microsoft Flow, it allows users to create automated processes between applications and services.
These processes are called flows.
A flow can respond to an event, perform a sequence of actions and update information across different systems.
For example, when someone completes a Microsoft Forms questionnaire, Power Automate could add the responses to a SharePoint list and notify a member of staff through Microsoft Teams.
That removes the need for someone to check for responses, copy information manually and send a separate notification.
Power Automate works with familiar Microsoft applications, including:
- Microsoft Outlook.
- Microsoft Teams.
- SharePoint.
- OneDrive for Business.
- Microsoft Forms.
- Microsoft Lists.
- Excel Online.
- Microsoft Planner.
- Microsoft Approvals.
It can also connect to many third-party applications, although the connectors and licences required vary.
The aim isn't necessarily to replace employees or automate every activity. It's to reduce repetitive administration so employees can spend more time on work that requires their knowledge and judgement.
How Does Microsoft Power Automate Work?
Most Power Automate workflows are built around three elements: a trigger, one or more actions and, where necessary, conditions.
Triggers: What Starts the Workflow?
A trigger is the event that starts a flow.
Examples include:
- A new email arriving in a particular mailbox.
- A Microsoft Forms response being submitted.
- A file being added to a SharePoint folder.
- A new item being created in a Microsoft List.
- A scheduled time being reached.
- An employee manually selecting a button.
Actions: What Happens Next?
Actions are the tasks Power Automate performs after the trigger.
For example, a workflow might:
- Create a task in Microsoft Planner.
- Send an email acknowledgement.
- Post a notification in Microsoft Teams.
- Update a SharePoint list.
- Copy or move a document.
- Request approval from a manager.
Conditions: What Should Happen in Different Situations?
Conditions allow a workflow to make decisions based on information.
For example, a purchasing workflow might send requests under a certain value to a department manager, while higher-value requests are sent to a director.
The process can follow different routes depending on the information provided.
Three Common Types of Cloud Flow
Power Automate supports several approaches to running workflows:
- Automated flows: Start when a particular event occurs, such as receiving a form submission.
- Instant flows: Start when someone manually selects a button or initiates an action.
- Scheduled flows: Run at defined times, such as every weekday morning or once a week.
These options make it possible to automate processes that happen immediately, on demand or at regular intervals.
1. Automatically Capture and Route Customer Enquiries
For many small businesses, responding quickly to customer enquiries is important.
However, enquiries may arrive through shared mailboxes, website forms or individual employees, making it easy for requests to be overlooked or passed between people.
Power Automate can help create a more consistent process.
Example: A New Customer Enquiry
Imagine a business receiving enquiries through a Microsoft Forms form or a shared Outlook mailbox.
A Power Automate workflow could:
- Detect a new form submission or relevant incoming email.
- Capture the enquiry details in a SharePoint list.
- Notify the appropriate team through Microsoft Teams.
- Create a follow-up task in Microsoft Planner.
- Send an acknowledgement to the customer where appropriate.
The team now has a central record of the enquiry and a task showing what needs to happen next.
This is particularly useful where several employees share responsibility for new business enquiries or customer requests.
Why This Helps
The main benefit is consistency.
Instead of relying on an employee to remember to forward an email or update a spreadsheet, the workflow performs those steps automatically.
It can also help managers see which enquiries are awaiting a response.
Important: Automatically acknowledging a request is not the same as resolving it. The workflow should still assign responsibility to someone who can review and respond appropriately.
If enquiries need to be added to an external CRM, check the connector and licensing requirements before designing the process.
2. Automate Document and Purchase Approvals
Many businesses rely on approval processes for purchases, expenses, documents and internal requests.
Without a consistent system, approvals can become scattered across emails and messages.
An employee sends a request, waits for a reply, follows up several days later and then manually records the decision.
Power Automate can help structure this process.
Example: A Purchase Request
An employee needs approval to purchase equipment for the office.
Instead of emailing several people, they submit a request through Microsoft Forms or a SharePoint list.
A workflow could then:
- Record the purchase details.
- Send an approval request to the appropriate manager.
- Wait for the manager's response.
- Update the request status when a decision is made.
- Notify the employee whether the request was approved or rejected.
Additional conditions could route requests to different approvers depending on their value or category.
Why This Helps
Employees can see that a request has been submitted, managers receive a structured approval request and the outcome can be recorded in one place.
That reduces the risk of approvals being lost in an email conversation.
The same principle could apply to:
- Annual leave requests.
- Expense approvals.
- Document reviews.
- Marketing content sign-off.
- Supplier onboarding.
- Internal equipment requests.
Approval workflows should be designed around the business's actual authorisation policies. Automating a poorly defined approval process won't resolve uncertainty about who is responsible for making decisions.
3. Simplify Employee Onboarding and HR Administration
When a new employee joins a business, several tasks often need to happen before their first day.
HR may need to collect information, managers may need to arrange induction meetings and the IT provider may need to prepare equipment and access to business systems.
When these tasks are coordinated through emails and spreadsheets, something can easily be missed.
Power Automate can help organise the administrative process.
Example: A New Starter Checklist
Imagine an HR manager adds a new employee to a Microsoft List.
A workflow could:
- Notify the employee's department manager.
- Create an onboarding checklist in Microsoft Planner.
- Send an IT equipment preparation request.
- Notify the relevant people of the employee's start date.
- Schedule a reminder to confirm that preparations are complete.
This provides a repeatable process for new starters, rather than requiring the HR manager to recreate the same set of tasks each time.
Why This Helps
A structured onboarding workflow makes it easier to coordinate responsibilities across departments.
It can also reduce delays caused by requests reaching the IT team too late.
For example, preparing a laptop, configuring Microsoft 365 access and applying security policies may require several steps before the employee starts work.
We've previously explained the importance of this preparation in our guide to setting up new staff laptops.
Security consideration: Creating onboarding tasks is different from automatically granting access to business systems. Account creation, permissions and security-sensitive changes should follow an approved process with appropriate controls.
4. Improve Sales Follow-Ups and Internal Notifications
Small businesses often lose time switching between emails, customer records, spreadsheets and task lists.
A sales enquiry may be received, discussed internally and added to a spreadsheet, but the next action is not always recorded.
Power Automate can help connect these steps.
Example: Following Up After an Enquiry
A prospective customer completes an enquiry form requesting information about a service.
A workflow could:
- Record the enquiry in a SharePoint list.
- Notify the relevant salesperson or account manager.
- Create a follow-up task with a target date.
- Send a reminder if the task remains incomplete.
- Update the enquiry record when the responsible employee changes its status.
For businesses without a dedicated CRM, this could provide a basic method of tracking enquiries and responsibilities.
For businesses already using a CRM, Power Automate may be able to connect the enquiry process to that system, depending on the available integration and licensing.
Why This Helps
Sales processes work best when someone clearly owns the next action.
Automating task creation and reminders can help reduce forgotten follow-ups and improve visibility across the team.
However, the quality of the customer conversation still depends on the employee responsible for it.
Automation should support a thoughtful sales process, not replace it with repetitive or irrelevant messages.
5. Automate Recurring Administration, Reminders and Reports
Not every useful automation needs to be triggered by a customer enquiry or form submission.
Many businesses have recurring tasks that happen daily, weekly or monthly.
Examples include:
- Reminding staff to submit timesheets.
- Checking whether scheduled tasks are overdue.
- Notifying managers about outstanding approvals.
- Sending reminders before document review dates.
- Preparing a regular summary of information held in Microsoft Lists.
- Notifying a team when files are added to a shared folder.
Example: A Weekly Outstanding Tasks Summary
Imagine a business using Microsoft Planner to manage internal work.
A scheduled workflow could run each Monday morning, retrieve relevant task information and send a summary or notification to the responsible team.
The exact implementation would depend on the Planner connector actions available and how the organisation wants to report on tasks.
Another example might be a SharePoint list containing annual review dates for business policies.
Power Automate could check those dates on a schedule and notify the document owner when a review is approaching.
Why This Helps
Scheduled automation reduces the need for employees to remember routine checks.
It can also make recurring processes more consistent, particularly when responsibilities are shared between employees.
The most effective workflows usually start with one clearly defined task rather than attempting to automate an entire department at once.
What Are the Benefits of Power Automate for Small Businesses?
Although the examples above involve different departments, the underlying benefits are similar.
Less Repetitive Administration
Employees spend less time copying information, forwarding messages and updating records manually.
More Consistent Processes
Workflows follow the rules you've configured, reducing variation between employees completing the same administrative task.
Better Visibility of Outstanding Work
Creating tasks, updating lists and sending notifications can help employees see what needs attention.
Fewer Manual Handoffs
Information can move between supported applications without someone having to re-enter it at every stage.
More Time for Customer-Facing Work
Reducing repetitive administration can free employees to focus on customers, projects and decisions that require human input.
However, automation doesn't automatically guarantee time savings. A workflow that generates excessive notifications, duplicates information or regularly fails can create more work than it removes.
It's important to identify the right processes and measure whether automation genuinely improves them.
How Does Power Automate Integrate with Microsoft 365?
One reason Power Automate is worth exploring is its ability to connect applications many small businesses already use.
Power Automate and Outlook
Outlook triggers can start workflows when emails arrive or other supported events occur.
This can be useful for routing requests, creating tasks or sending notifications.
Power Automate and SharePoint
SharePoint can act as a central location for documents and structured information.
Power Automate can respond to changes in SharePoint lists and document libraries, making it useful for approval processes and record updates.
Power Automate and Microsoft Teams
Teams can receive notifications from workflows, helping employees stay informed about requests, approvals and other business activity.
Rather than repeatedly checking several systems, employees can receive relevant updates within their existing collaboration environment.
Power Automate and Microsoft Forms
Forms provides a straightforward way to collect structured information.
When someone submits a form, Power Automate can use the responses to start a workflow.
This is useful for internal requests, customer enquiries and other processes that begin with a standard set of questions.
Power Automate and Microsoft Planner
Planner can help teams organise work and assign responsibilities.
Power Automate can create or update supported tasks as part of a workflow, depending on the available connector capabilities.
These integrations make Power Automate particularly relevant to businesses already using Microsoft 365 for their daily operations.
Is Microsoft Power Automate Included with Microsoft 365?
Selected Microsoft 365 and Office 365 subscriptions include limited Power Automate capabilities.
These can allow users to create automated, instant and scheduled cloud flows using standard connectors, subject to the applicable licence terms and usage limits.
For example, a business using a qualifying Microsoft 365 subscription may be able to build a workflow that connects Microsoft Forms, SharePoint and Outlook without purchasing a separate Power Automate Premium licence.
However, not every Power Automate feature is included with Microsoft 365.
Standard Connectors
Standard connectors are available within qualifying Microsoft 365 use rights.
Common Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, SharePoint and Teams, have standard connector capabilities.
This makes them a sensible starting point for simple internal workflows.
Premium Connectors
Some business systems require premium connectors.
These may include particular CRM platforms, databases, specialist applications or other services outside the standard connector entitlement.
If a workflow uses premium connectors, additional licensing is normally required.
Power Automate Premium
Power Automate Premium is a standalone user licence that provides broader automation capabilities, including premium and custom connectors and certain desktop automation features.
Microsoft also offers capacity-based licensing options for particular automation scenarios.
The appropriate licence depends on how the workflow operates, who owns and uses it, the connectors involved and whether premium functionality is required.
AI and Desktop Automation
Power Automate also offers more advanced capabilities, including AI-assisted processing and robotic process automation.
These can help with tasks such as extracting information from documents or automating interactions with certain desktop applications.
They may require additional licensing, capacity or usage credits and should not be assumed to be included with a standard Microsoft 365 business subscription.
Our recommendation: Start by identifying useful workflows that can be built using your existing Microsoft 365 applications and standard connectors. Review premium licensing when there's a clear business requirement for more advanced integration.
How to Get Started with Microsoft Power Automate
You don't need to begin with a complicated automation project.
In fact, the best introduction is usually a small workflow that solves a familiar problem.
Step 1: Identify a Repetitive Task
Look for an activity that employees perform regularly.
Good candidates often involve:
- Repeating the same steps.
- Moving information between applications.
- Sending routine notifications.
- Recording standard requests.
- Reminding someone to complete a task.
Choose a process with a clear starting point and a predictable outcome.
Step 2: Map the Existing Process
Before building anything, write down what currently happens.
For example:
- A customer submits a form.
- An employee reads the response.
- The details are added to a list.
- A manager is notified.
- A follow-up task is created.
Once the steps are visible, you can identify which parts could be automated.
Step 3: Open Power Automate
Visit make.powerautomate.com and sign in with your work account.
Check that Power Automate is available through your organisation's Microsoft 365 configuration.
Step 4: Create a Flow
Choose an automated, instant or scheduled cloud flow depending on how the process should start.
You can use a suitable template or build a flow by selecting the required trigger and actions.
For a first project, consider something simple, such as sending a Teams notification when a new item is added to a SharePoint list.
Step 5: Test the Workflow
Run the process using test information.
Check that the correct trigger starts the flow, the right actions occur and unexpected information is handled appropriately.
Test situations where information is missing, a request is duplicated or an employee doesn't respond.
Step 6: Monitor and Improve
Once the flow is in use, review its run history and any failures.
Make sure someone is responsible for maintaining the automation and responding when something goes wrong.
As your business becomes more comfortable with Power Automate, you can expand into more sophisticated workflows.
What Should Businesses Consider Before Automating a Process?
Automation can improve efficiency, but poorly designed workflows can introduce new problems.
Before automating a business process, consider the following.
Who Owns the Automation?
Every important workflow should have a clearly identified owner.
If an employee creates a flow using their own account and later leaves the business, the organisation needs to understand how the flow and its connections will be maintained.
For business-critical processes, appropriate ownership, co-ownership and connection arrangements should be established.
What Happens If the Flow Fails?
Cloud services, connectors and permissions can change.
A workflow may stop working because a connection expires, an account loses access or an external service becomes unavailable.
Important flows should be monitored, with a clear process for handling failures.
Is the Information Secure?
Automation often involves moving information between applications.
Businesses should consider whether employees and connected services have appropriate access to that information.
Sensitive personal or commercial information should only be processed through approved systems and workflows.
Could the Automation Create Duplicate Work?
Some triggers can run more than once or process repeated events.
Without suitable checks, a workflow could create duplicate tasks, records or notifications.
Testing and appropriate conditions can help reduce these risks.
Does the Process Still Need Human Approval?
Not every decision should be automated.
Financial approvals, security changes, sensitive customer communications and other higher-risk activities may require human review.
Power Automate is often most effective when it handles routine administration while leaving important decisions with the appropriate employees.
What Is the Difference Between Power Automate and Power Apps?
Power Automate and Power Apps are both part of Microsoft's Power Platform, but they serve different purposes.
Power Automate is primarily used to automate processes and move information between systems.
Power Apps is used to create applications with customised interfaces for employees or other authorised users.
For example, a business could build a Power App for employees to submit equipment requests.
Power Automate could then handle the approval process, notify the purchasing team and update the request status.
The two tools can work together, but they have different functions and licensing arrangements.
Businesses don't need to build a Power App to use Power Automate for ordinary workflows.
How Telanova Can Help with Microsoft 365 Automation
Microsoft Power Automate is another example of how businesses can get more value from their Microsoft 365 environment.
However, deciding what to automate is often more important than simply learning how to build a flow.
At Telanova, we support small and medium-sized businesses with Microsoft 365, including the configuration, administration, security and ongoing support of the tools employees rely on.
We can help businesses review their existing Microsoft 365 environment, understand the available capabilities and consider where workflow automation could support their day-to-day operations.
That includes reviewing how Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and other Microsoft 365 applications are being used and identifying areas where better configuration or integration may improve efficiency.
We can also help businesses understand the IT security and licensing considerations involved before introducing new systems or automated processes.
Our team is based in Bracknell and supports organisations across Berkshire, including Reading, Wokingham and Ascot.
Find out more about our managed IT support services and how we help businesses make better use of their technology.
Microsoft Power Automate FAQs
What is Microsoft Power Automate used for?
Microsoft Power Automate is used to create automated workflows between applications and services. Businesses can use it to send notifications, create tasks, manage approvals, update records and reduce repetitive administration.
Is Power Automate included with Microsoft 365?
Selected Microsoft 365 and Office 365 subscriptions include limited Power Automate capabilities, including cloud flows that use standard connectors. Premium connectors and more advanced features may require additional licensing.
Do you need coding skills to use Power Automate?
No. Many Power Automate workflows can be created using a visual designer, templates and prebuilt connectors. More complex processes may require technical knowledge, expressions or specialist development.
What is a flow in Power Automate?
A flow is an automated process made up of a trigger and one or more actions. For example, a flow could start when someone submits a Microsoft Form and then create a SharePoint record and send a notification.
Can Power Automate work with Outlook and Teams?
Yes. Power Automate integrates with Outlook, Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 applications. It can use supported events to start workflows and perform actions such as sending notifications or creating tasks.
Can Power Automate automate customer enquiries?
Yes. Power Automate can help capture enquiries, update tracking lists, notify employees and create follow-up tasks. The exact workflow depends on how enquiries are received and which business systems are involved.
Can Power Automate connect to third-party software?
Yes. Power Automate supports connectors for many third-party services. However, some connectors are classified as premium and may require additional licensing. Availability and functionality vary by application.
What is the difference between Power Automate and Power Apps?
Power Automate is primarily used to automate workflows and processes. Power Apps is used to build customised applications. The two services can work together, but they have different purposes and licensing arrangements.
Can Power Automate run automatically every day?
Yes. Scheduled cloud flows can run at defined intervals, such as daily, weekly or monthly. They can be used for recurring reminders, checks and other routine administrative tasks.
Is Microsoft Power Automate suitable for small businesses?
Yes. Power Automate can be useful for small businesses that regularly repeat administrative tasks, manage approvals or transfer information between applications. Starting with a simple workflow using existing Microsoft 365 tools is often a practical approach.
Start Small and Build Better Business Processes
Automation doesn't have to begin with a major IT project.
For many small businesses, the best starting point is a task that employees already complete every day.
Whether it's recording enquiries, requesting approvals, preparing for new starters or sending routine reminders, Microsoft Power Automate can help make these processes more consistent.
By connecting applications that employees already use, businesses may be able to reduce unnecessary administration without introducing an entirely new system.
The key is to choose the right processes, configure them carefully and make sure someone remains responsible for the results.
Could Your Business Be Getting More from Microsoft 365?
Your business may already have access to Microsoft 365 tools that could simplify everyday work.
Telanova helps small and medium-sized businesses across Berkshire manage, secure and make better use of Microsoft 365 and their wider IT systems.
If you're spending too much time on repetitive administration or want to understand how your existing technology could work better together, speak to our team.
Explore Our Business IT Support Services or call 01344 989 530 to discuss your requirements.
