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While nevertheless trying to get traction in many parts of the business organisation globe, there is piffling doubtfulness that the concepts of bogus intelligence, automation and low code programming are becoming essential to business enterprises looking for a competitive edge. Employees who can automate the mundane daily tasks of their jobs would be free to perform work that is much more productive and impactful—a win-win state of affairs.

Microsoft has recognized this tendency and is offering a costless version of its Power Automate system to any Windows 10 user. Power Automate taps into the benefits of low-code programming to allow individuals to automate just nearly everything in a Windows 10, Microsoft 365 and Azure environs. This tutorial shows you how to use Power Automate tools to create a simple awarding.

SEE: Windows 10: Lists of vocal commands for speech communication recognition and dictation (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

How to create your first app with Windows 10 Power Automate

Every bit explained in a previous TechRepublic article, the free version of Windows 10 Ability Automate tin can exist downloaded and installed on whatever PC running a current version of the operating organization. We are assuming you have followed process and now have Power Automate installed.

To brainstorm creating your first Power Automate app, double-click the icon on your desktop. You should meet a screen like Effigy A, where there is non much going on still.

Figure A

Click on the + New Menstruation push on the screen to start the building process, as shown in Effigy B. The first pace is easy plenty: Requite your new app a name and click the Create button.

Effigy B

Now, we become to low-code app construction screen (Figure C) where we provide your app with its instructions either by dragging and dropping deportment from the long list in the left-hand window or by recording actions using either the web or desktop recorder.

Figure C

If you lot accept the time to peruse through the various deportment, yous will notice there are hundreds of potential actions bachelor. Perhaps you need to access information from your company's information warehouse every day, a Power Automate app could potentially reduce that job to a single mouse click.

We will keep it simple for our instance and pretend we take to check weather conditions for a particular Cipher code every day. Scroll down the left-hand window's listing of actions to find Spider web automation. First, let's start a Microsoft Border session.

Drag and drop the Launch new Microsoft Edge activity to the center window and drop it. This will offset a new form screen (Figure D) asking for details about our proposed activeness.

Effigy D

We add a URL for our app to open up. Nosotros could further specify which window size we wanted to employ, whether to start a new session and even what should be washed if an mistake is returned. Once you are happy with your parameters, click the Save push.

Now, let u.s. say we want to excerpt just sure elements virtually the weather from the web page nosotros used in our beginning action. We will choose Spider web data extraction from the activeness list and select Extract information from web folio. Drag that action to the center window to bring up an input screen.

Click on our discipline spider web page (NOAA) to bring it to the forefront. Power Automate will reveal an extraction tool to brand the data selection process easier, every bit shown in Figure E. Nosotros merely highlight the data we want to extract, right-click information technology and choose Extract as text, and and then click the Finish push and then Save.

Figure E

Depending on our needs, we tin can extract this data in a simple table, or we tin can extract in a format prepare for an Excel spreadsheet. Every bit you can run into in Figure F, I am extracting some basic atmospheric condition information (temperature, humidity, dew point and date). Perhaps part of my job is to keep track of that data daily.

Effigy F

One time we have collected the data, we don't need that spider web folio to be open up anymore, then we can add together an action that closes it over again. Figure Thou shows our elementary three-stride Ability Automate app in its completed form. We have performed a test run, and it has performed without any errors.

Figure K

To save our app, click the File tab in the navigation ribbon and select Save. Shut out the Power Automate app creation screen to reveal our new app on the Windows 10 Power Automate desktop screen, as shown in Effigy H.

Figure H

From this dashboard we can run, edit or even delete our app as needed. Of course, we could create other conditions and add actions to our app equally well. Mayhap we desire to run this new app on startup each 24-hour interval, maybe we demand a reading at nine a.k. and at 3 p.m. All those provisional situations are possible with a little tweaking in the Windows 10 Power Automate app cosmos tool.