Power Automate offers a variety of process automation through workflows. Once you understand the different types of flow, creating them wouldn’t be too challenging. A good way to get started is to use a template. In this tutorial, we’ll discuss how to create flow using a Power Automate template.
Each template is designed for a specific purpose. You can choose from a collection of templates to find the one that best matches your scenario.
Creating An Instant Flow From A Power Automate Template
First, go to the Create page.
There are three ways to create a flow. We can start from a Blank flow and select which type of flow we want to make. We can also start from a Template, or from a Connector. Connector is where we can start from an application which could be a trigger, a condition, or an action.
For this example, we’ll start from a Template and choose Email.
Let’s choose “Click a button to email a note” which was made by Microsoft.
If you don’t find that option in that section, you can go to the Templates page.
In this page, you can just search for it or go to the Email section as well. Let’s now click this template.
After that, you’ll be able to see this page.
Power Automate Template Page
This is a flow template introduction page. It gives useful information about the Power Automate template that we want to set up.
These are the title of the flow and the description.
This part indicates what the trigger of the flow is and what applications or connectors our flow will use.
This part displays the applications that we need to connect before we can use the flow.
Let’s have another example. Go back to the Templates page and choose a more complicated flow. Let’s choose this template.
In this template page, we can see that it has some similarities with the previous template. The only difference is that at the bottom, it shows us more applications that we need to connect to use the flow.
If we want to connect to Microsoft Forms, we just need to click the plus sign.
It will ask us to login before we can connect it to our flow.
Let’s go back to our actual flow template. Again, we need to click the plus sign to connect to the Mail application.
It will try to connect to that connector using the login credentials that we used. Once we see the green checkmark and made sure we’re on the right flow, click the Create Flow button.
Now our flow has been successfully created.
Overview Of The Flow Information Page
This is the flow information page which shows the details of the flow that we’ve created.
It also displays history. Hence, if our flow has been run before, we can see it over here.
Additionally, it shows the connections that we’re using.
If we share our flow, we can see other people that’s using it within this section.
This part displays some options that we can use later on.
Running A Power Automate Instant Flow
Let’s now run the flow that we’ve created.
The flow that we’ve created is very simple. The trigger is “click a button”. Therefore, it literally just means clicking a button to make it work.
The action is to send a note by email. Let’s now click Run and see what happens.
At the right side, it will indicate that we need to make sure we have this application (Mail) signed in. As you can see, it has a check mark on it. This means it’s already connected.
After checking that, click the Continue button.
It will then ask us to input the message that we want to send. So, let’s type “Power Automate Tutorial” for the Email Subject. For the Email Body, let’s type “Hello World!”.
Then, click the Run flow button.
In this part, we can see that it succeeded. If you signed in with your workplace or business email, you’ll be able to see it here.
I made a temporary email, so I can see it here.
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Conclusion
Finally, we’ve created and ran our first flow. The flow will then operate based on the settings that we created. It will send the message via email that we’ve connected using the Mail application.
That’s all for this tutorial. Hopefully, you were able to enjoy the first step of automating a process by creating a flow using a Power Automate Template.
All the best,
Henry