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Cheat sheet

Power Automate cheat sheet

A one-page reference for Microsoft Power Automate: the tool that runs repetitive tasks for you. UK English. Test every flow on safe data before you trust it.

Key capabilities by level

Foundations

  • Start from a template instead of a blank flow.
  • Build a simple cloud flow: a trigger ("when an email arrives") and an action ("save the attachment").
  • Turn a flow on and off, and check its run history.

Practitioner

  • Add conditions and steps so a flow branches on what it finds.
  • Connect the everyday apps: Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, Forms, OneDrive.
  • Schedule a flow to run daily, weekly or on a set date.

Power User

  • Use premium connectors and approvals for cross-system, sign-off workflows.
  • Automate legacy or desktop apps with robotic process automation (RPA).
  • Add error handling and AI Builder steps, and describe flows to Copilot to build them.

Tier map in three lines

  • Included: eligible Microsoft 365 plans include cloud flows with standard connectors at no extra cost.
  • Per user: Power Automate Premium adds premium connectors, RPA and AI Builder credits.
  • Per process: the Process licence reserves capacity for one high-volume flow, whoever runs it; pay-as-you-go is also available.

See the current Power Automate pricing for what each plan includes today.

Five best prompts

These describe a flow to Copilot in Power Automate, which drafts it for you to review.

  1. When a new email with an attachment arrives in a shared inbox, save the attachment to a SharePoint folder and post a note in Teams.
  2. Every Monday at 9am, send me a summary of tasks due this week from my planner.
  3. When a Fernway supplier form is submitted, start an approval to my manager and email the sender the outcome.
  4. When a file is added to this SharePoint folder, copy its details into a tracking spreadsheet.
  5. When a Teams message flags "urgent", create a task and notify the on-call person.

Top three mistakes

  • Automating a broken process. Fix and document the manual steps first; a flow just makes a bad process faster.
  • Over-trusting a flow you never tested. Run it on safe sample data and read the results before it touches anything real.
  • No error handling or owner. Flows fail silently when an app changes. Add failure alerts and name who maintains it.