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Phase 5 · Power Automate · Level 1 · Foundations

A tour of the Power Automate maker portal

Walkthrough · 10 minLast checked against the live product: 13 July 2026

30-second recall from earlier lessons
You open Gmail to try the 'Help me write' feature a colleague showed you, but there's no sign of it anywhere. What's the most likely explanation?
You want to try Gemini but you're wary of paying for anything yet. What's the sensible first move?

By the end, you'll be able to…

  • Sign in to the maker portal and recognise the main areas of the screen
  • Tell a blank cloud flow apart from a template and choose sensibly between them
  • Find where connectors live and understand how you meet them while building

Why it matters

Power Automate can look busy the first time you open it. This tour walks you round the screen calmly, names the handful of areas that matter, and shows where connectors and templates sit, so when you build your first flow in the next lesson, nothing on the screen is a surprise.

Where the main parts sit in Power Automate: the trigger at the top, actions below it, and the test and save controls.MenuTrigger (what starts it)Action (what it does)Another actionSave / Test
Where the main parts sit in Power Automate: the trigger at the top, actions below it, and the test and save controls.

Getting to the maker portal

Power Automate lives on a website called the maker portal. The "maker" is the person making the flow, which is you. Open your web browser, go to make.powerautomate.com and sign in. There's no app to install; it all runs in the browser.

One thing to know before you sign in, because it catches people out. Power Automate is designed mainly for a work or school Microsoft account (the kind an employer or college gives you) and that's what this phase assumes throughout. A personal Microsoft account (the one you might use for Xbox or a family Outlook.com address) can reach a stripped-back version, but many connectors and features simply aren't there. If you sign in and things look missing or greyed out, the usual cause is either the account type or your organisation's licence (the paid plan attached to your account), not something you've done wrong. When in doubt, ask whoever manages Microsoft 365 where you work.

We'll describe the screen in durable terms (what each area is for) because Microsoft refreshes the exact wording and layout regularly. The shape stays the same even when a label moves.

The main areas of the screen

Once you're in, you land on a home page with a menu down the left-hand side. Four items cover almost everything a beginner needs:

  • Home: your landing page, with recent flows and suggestions.
  • Create: where you start building a new flow, from a blank canvas or a template.
  • My flows: the list of flows you've already built. This is where you switch a flow on or off, open it to edit, and see its run history (the record of every time it ran, with a tick or a cross).
  • Templates: a gallery of ready-made flows you can adopt and adjust.

The large middle area is your workspace. It changes with what you're doing: it shows your list of flows on the My flows page, and turns into a step-by-step builder (the trigger at the top, actions stacked beneath) when you open a flow to edit. You don't need to explore every corner today. Those four menu items are plenty to begin with.

Cloud flows versus templates

When you click Create, you're offered a choice that trips beginners up, so here's the plain version.

A cloud flow is a flow that runs on Microsoft's servers in the background; "cloud" because it doesn't need your computer switched on to work. You'll see a few kinds offered (one that runs automatically when an event happens, one you start with a button, one that runs on a schedule). Building one from scratch means starting with an empty canvas and choosing the trigger and actions yourself. That's what we'll do next lesson, so you understand each part.

A template is a cloud flow someone has already built for a common job, with the trigger and actions chosen for you. You pick one close to what you want, connect it to your own apps, and tweak the details. Templates are a lovely way to start: instead of a blank page you get a working example to learn from and reshape. The trade-off is that you have to read a template carefully to check it does what you think; an unread template is as risky as an unread AI draft.

For your very first flow we'll build from scratch, because seeing each piece go in is how the idea sticks. After that, templates become a genuine time-saver.

Where connectors live

You don't visit connectors as a separate room so much as meet them while you build. When you add a trigger or an action, Power Automate asks which app? The list you choose from is the connectors: Outlook, Excel, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Forms and hundreds more. There's also a searchable Connectors page in the portal if you want to browse what's available, but in day-to-day building you simply search for the app you need at the moment you need it.

The first time a flow uses a connector, you'll be asked to sign in to that app so the flow has permission to act for you. That signed-in link is called a connection (connector = the app; connection = your signed-in link to it). We cover connections properly later; for now, just recognise the sign-in prompt when it appears.

Because Copilot now sits inside the portal too, you'll often see a box inviting you to describe your flow in a sentence. That's the plain-English route from the last lesson, and it still chooses connectors, a trigger and actions behind the scenes. Knowing the layout means you can read and fix whatever it drafts.

Describing a flow to the Copilot box on the Create pagePower Automate
When a new response comes in from my Microsoft Form, add the answers as a new row in an Excel file in SharePoint and notify me in Teams.

Why this works: On the maker portal's Create/Home page, a plain sentence naming the trigger app, the action app and the specific job gives Copilot enough to assemble a starting flow you can then inspect against the layout you've just learned.

Searching the template galleryPower Automate
Save Outlook email attachments to OneDrive automatically

Why this works: Templates are searched by plain description, not product codes. Describing the outcome, not a specific connector name, surfaces the closest ready-made flows to adapt, which is faster than building from a blank canvas.

Finding a connector while buildingPower Automate
Search connectors for: Outlook

Why this works: When you add a step, you search connectors by the app's everyday name. Typing the app you already use (rather than guessing a technical label) is how you locate the right connector's triggers and actions.

Try it now

Common mistakes

  • Signing in with a personal account and hitting a wall. Most of Power Automate assumes a work or school account. If features are missing, check which account you're using before deciding it's broken.
  • Blaming yourself for greyed-out options. That's often a licence limit set by your organisation, not a mistake on your part. Ask whoever manages your Microsoft 365.
  • Feeling you must learn every menu on day one. Home, Create, My flows and Templates are enough to start. The rest reveals itself as you need it.
  • Adopting a template without reading it. A template is convenient, but it's someone else's flow. Trusting one you haven't read is how a flow ends up emailing the wrong list or filing to the wrong place; read every step before you switch it on.

Keeping current

Microsoft refreshes the maker portal's look and labels often, so treat exact button names as a snapshot, not gospel; the areas themselves are durable. For the current walkthrough of the portal, see Microsoft Learn's Get started with Power Automate. Accurate as of 13 July 2026.