Tag Archives: Workflows

Software Development, Technology

“Must Have” Power Automate Enhancements for Solution Maturity

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My aspirations at commercializing “externally” facing, manually executed workflows using the MS Flow SDK are at an impasse. There are several key changes required to move forward, listed below.

In addition to removing my “Blockers” for leveraging the MS Flow SDK, I have a “wish list” below that contains features that would enhance the overall Power Automate solution.

“My Flows” Folder and Tag Hierarchy

I asked for this feature from Day #1 when MS Flow was released. Organizing your Flows within a flat, hierarchical structure is difficult. Users cannot create folders and organize their content.

Organizing Flows
  • The user should be able to create folders and put Flows in them.
  • Attach “Tags” to each of the Flows created. implement another view of “My Flows,” and group Flows based on Tags with the ability to show a single Flow within multiple Tag views.

Version Control

The user should have the ability to iterate saving workflows, compare versions of workflows, and revert to a previous workflow version.

Security Model Enhancements – Sharing Workflows

Implement execution permissions without the ability to manage or read any other workflow information. Introduce the concept of a two-tiered security model:

  • Admin user, the current view for all Power Automate users
  • Introduce a user profile/security group, execute only specific workflows where explicitly granted permissions to a Flow.
  • Eliminate the need for another Power Automate account only being used for shared workflows to execute.
  • You should only need one account with a Premium Connector $ license if only using the secondary account for execution.

Business, Economy, Entertainment, Finance, Healthcare, Legal, Media, Mobility, Technology

AI Email Workflows Eliminate Need for Manual Email Responses

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When i read the article “How to use Gmail templates to answer emails faster.”  I thought wow, what an 1990s throwback!

Microsoft Outlook has had an AI Email Rules Engine for years and years. From using a simple Wizard to an advanced construction rules user interface. Oh the things you can do. Based on a wide away of ‘out of the box’ identifiers to highly customizable conditions, MS Outlook may take action on the client side of the email transaction or on the server side. What types of actions? All kinds of transactions ranging from ‘out of the box’ to a high degree of customization. And yes, Outlook (in conjunction with MS Exchange) may be identified as a digital asset management (DAM) tool.

Email comes into an inbox, based on “from”, “subject”, contents of email, and a long list of attributes, MS Outlook [optionally with MS Exchange], for example, may push the Email and any attached content, to a server folder, perhaps to Amazon AWS S3, or as simple as an MS Exchange folder.

Then, optionally a ‘backend’ workflow may be triggered, for example, with the use of Microsoft Flow. Where you go from there has almost infinite potential.

Analogously, Google Gmail’s new Inbox UI uses categorization based on ‘some set’ of rules is not something new to the industry, but now Google has the ability. For example, “Group By” through Google’s new Inbox, could be a huge timesaver. Enabling the user to perform actions across predefined email categories, such as delete all “promotional” emails, could be extremely successful. However, I’ve not yet seen the AI rules that identify particular emails as “promotional” verses “financial”. Google is implying these ‘out of the box’ email categories, and the way users interact, take action, are extremely similar per category.

Google may continue to follow in the footsteps of Microsoft, possibly adding the initiation of workflows based on predetermined criteria. Maybe Google will expose its AI (Email) Rules Engine for users to customize their workflows, just as Microsoft did so many years ago.

Although Microsoft’s Outlook (and Exchange) may have been seen as a Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool in the past, the user’s email Inbox folder size could have been identified as one of the few sole inhibitors.  Workaround, of course, using service accounts with vastly higher folder quota / size.

My opinions do not reflect that of my employer.