29 upcoming features included in release plans
The new Automate work button in Excel Online makes it easier than ever to automate tasks and run processes from Excel running on Windows desktop and Mac devices. This allows users to automate repetitive tasks, reduce errors, and boost productivity with just a few clicks, all without leaving Excel, which makes it easy to respond to customers' needs and improves satisfaction.
Instead of building out complex rules-based processes from beginning to end, you work with AI to inject intelligent activity orchestration from your cloud flow. You create intent-based generative actions where the large language model (LLM) considers all the resources available to it and dynamically selects the most appropriate actions and sequence of these actions to achieve the desired outcome. This allows for more dynamic automation and saves you time.
Change history | |
---|---|
Public preview date moved to Dec 2024 |
Sep 25, 2024 |
Makers can quickly create useful flows from the Automate tab in Excel. Excel is one of the most popular data tools in the world, with hundreds of millions of people using it for work and personal purposes across various industries. It has advanced features for teamwork, simplicity, flexibility, and automation. Power Automate simplifies the automation of tasks and processes from Excel.
This feature simplifies the license assignment process for admins and enables a governed self-serve mechanism for premium feature access. Admins don't always know who needs a license and why. They need to understand which users are using Power Automate and require a premium license. They can rely on Power Automate intelligent license recommendations to provide them with a list of users who will benefit from having a premium license.
Change history | |
---|---|
Public preview date moved to Sep 2024 |
Mar 15, 2024 |
You can boost productivity with calendar-related templates to get ideas for scenarios you might be interested in.
You can use a central consolidated view to monitor and understand the executions across cloud and desktop flows.
Change history | |
---|---|
Public preview date moved to Jun 2024 Removed general availability date |
Jul 17, 2024 |
Today, admins have difficulty finding and reassigning orphaned flows, and changing flows is done individually. This feature gives admins more visibility and lower risk through active management of their automation estate.
Change history | |
---|---|
Public preview date moved to Mar 2024 |
Aug 25, 2023 |
Makers can create, edit, and fix their Power Automate expressions by expressing their requirements in natural language. They can save a lot of time building expressions manually by invoking Copilot through this feature.
Change history | |
---|---|
Public preview date moved to Aug 2024 General availability date moved to Sep 2024 |
May 17, 2024 |
Copilot can provide better and more accurate answers to questions.
You can now create a flow description by the press of a button without having to open the flow and read the actions inside it.
You can ask Copilot questions related to Power Automate documentation, and your flows, or ask Copilot to edit your flow. Copilot can now understand your intent more accurately. This improves your productivity and finding answers quickly while building your flows.
Copilot provides you with the ability to ask product related questions using natural language and receive prompt, precise answers, eliminating the need for time-consuming searches and waiting for support responses. This feature increases your productivity and allows you to have uninterrupted focus while developing your flows.
You can enhance efficiency and save valuable time and resources by using natural language and AI to generate the code in the scripting actions in Power Automate for desktop. This added capability allows you to describe your desired scripts and have AI automatically generate the necessary code for you. By doing so, you can streamline your flows automation and reduce the time and the effort required to write code for simple tasks, such as running PowerShell, VB, CMD scripts or executing SQL statements.
Improve your monitoring story by simply asking the copilot in natural language about past flow runs, machines and other related data. This feature will provide advanced operational visibility, without the need to build and deploy custom reports with a predefined set of queries and reports. The copilot may derive insights you wouldn't have uncovered otherwise.
A new AI-powered suggestion feature in Power Automate for desktop provides you with the next best action for your workflow creation, by constantly analyzing your workflow and suggesting the most appropriate action. By leveraging this feature, you can automate repetitive tasks quicker and more efficiently, thus freeing up time to focus on higher valued work.
Change history | |
---|---|
General availability date moved to Jan 2025 |
Oct 30, 2024 |
The AI Recorder in Power Automate for desktop revolutionizes task automation by allowing users to simply record and explain their tasks using their voice and showing a task. This intuitive feature not only saves time but also leads to improved productivity and streamlined operations for businesses.
You can now build desktop flows in your preferred color mode. Choose between the default mode and dark mode to reduce eye strain and improve focus.
The automation center provides comprehensive automation monitoring experiences across Power Automate flows, infused with the power of AI and Copilot. It provides in-depth monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities for both experienced makers and citizen developers, as well as members of the Center of Excellence.
This feature is for Power Automate for desktop users that automate UI and web interaction scenarios. It improves success rates and handles cases where UI elements can't be found.
Change history | |
---|---|
Public preview date moved to Jul 2024 |
Jul 01, 2024 |
Copilot in automation center provides a multi-skill experience enabling users to ask questions about cloud flow and desktop flow activity, work queues, and even features of Power Automate. With Copilot, unlock a deeper understanding of cloud flow trends, statuses, and performance by simply asking questions in natural language.
The automation center is available in the Power Automate portal and offers a comprehensive automation monitoring experience infused with the power of AI. Maximize efficiency and focus on high-impact desktop flow automation with Copilot's insightful analysis of desktop flow run history.
The automation center is available in the Power Automate portal and offers a comprehensive automation monitoring experience infused with the power of AI. With Copilot's ability to answer questions about work queue statuses and handling times, you can enhance processing throughput and resiliency as well as understand and prevent SLA breaches.
Use Copilot's comprehensive understanding of Power Automate to explore new possibilities and potentially optimize your workflows. Boost your productivity by getting answers to your questions regarding features like conditions, approvals, and flow recovery.
This feature enhances troubleshooting efficiency when desktop automation is stuck or slow. Near real-time logging allows for tracking the progress of desktop automation at a granular level, without having to wait for the process to complete.
Change history | |
---|---|
Public preview date moved to Dec 2024 |
Nov 08, 2024 |
Users can run desktop flows using a hosted machine group connected to their own virtual network (VNet) in order to execute RPA jobs that require access to on-premises networks.
Change history | |
---|---|
Public preview date moved to Feb 2024 General availability date moved to Mar 2024 |
Oct 16, 2023 |
In many organizations, each machine must have a unique user session. This implies that they can't use machine groups. A list of credentials will allow them to use unique credentials for each of their machines. For organizations that want to use automations executed on agent machines, there's no option to define mapping between machine(s) and agent(s). The list of credentials will allow an attended automation to the machine of the right agent.
Change history | |
---|---|
Public preview date moved to Jan 2025 |
Oct 21, 2024 |
This feature enhances security by allowing the use of certificates stored in Azure Key Vault for connecting to Windows sessions on desktop flow machines. Certificate-based authentication credentials can meet Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) requirements.
Process simulations enable you to simulate the impact of proposed changes in your business processes. Modeled changes include resource management and updates in a process flow. A process simulation compares performance and financial key performance indicators (KPIs) between original and simulated processes.
The current Power Automate Process Mining app requires you to download the process model to the client computer. This download puts specific requirements on the hardware resources on the client computer. To unblock your resources, you can use the Azure Process Intelligence Analytic Service instead. With this service, you can use a lightweight desktop app with a process intelligence engine without the need to download the process model. The functionality of the thin desktop application offers features that are identical to the previous full desktop app. This allows you to scale faster, it supports larger process models, and doesn't put specific requirements on your computers.
Change history | |
---|---|
Public preview date moved to Dec 2024 General availability date moved to Mar 2025 |
Nov 05, 2024 |