A Beginner’s Guide to Power Automate for Dynamics 365 Users
There’s a good chance you’ve heard the name Power Automate floating around your Microsoft ecosystem. Maybe a coworker mentioned it in a meeting. Maybe your implementation partner has suggested using flows in Power Automate.
If you’re unclear what Power Automate really is and how you can use it, this article is for you! Let’s dive into Power Automate and how you can optimize using this tool.
Power Automate in Plain English
Power Automate helps users eliminate repetitive, manual tasks by letting technology do them for you. That’s it. There’s no coding (disclaimer: complex Power Automate flows may require coding help!) and no complex setup — just click, connect, and save yourself and your Dynamics 365 users some time.
Think of it like setting up a bunch of little digital assistants (note, I did not say “agents”). Whether you’re working in Dynamics 365, Outlook, SharePoint, or even outside the Microsoft universe, you tell these assistants what to do — and they take care of the rest.
Using Power Automate
Okay, but what can it actually do? I’m glad you asked! Here are a few everyday examples of how you can use Power Automate to streamline your processes:
- When a customer submits a form on your website, it can be used to send the details to Dynamics 365, then automatically create a Lead or Contact and assign it to the right sales rep for follow-up.
- When a case is assigned to you in D365, you can receive a Microsoft Teams chat notification.
- When a file is added to a SharePoint folder, it will notify the right people and kick off an approval process.
- When a new Contact is added to Dynamics 365, it can send it to your marketing automation software to add it to select email distribution lists.
These are just a few of the many applications of this tool. Today, Power Automate connects to more than 1,400 different services; that number continues to grow each month.
Getting Started Without Getting Overwhelmed
You’ve already automated before, but you just didn’t refer to it as automation. Have you ever set an out-of-office reply? That’s automation. Have you used rules in Outlook to move emails into folders? That’s also automation. Have you set a calendar event to remind you every Friday to submit timesheets? Automation again. Power Automate just gives you more power to build rules like those — but across all your apps and for way more use cases.
The best way to learn Power Automate is to start small:
- Automate something you or your users do weekly, such as a reminder, a notification, or an approval.
- Use a template. Microsoft has hundreds of pre-built flows you can tweak for your needs.
- Don’t be afraid to break it. You can always turn a flow off and start fresh.
If you’re not sure where to begin, I’ve got you covered: check my Power Automate 101 blog series, where I walk through all the foundational topics around Power Automate.
Final Thoughts
If your users’ jobs include checking the same inbox over and over, reminding someone to do the same thing every week, setting follow-up dates with Accounts or Opportunities every month, manually copying data from one place to another, generating a manual sales report for your manager…you’re a great candidate for Power Automate.
Even better, if your team uses Dynamics 365, Power Automate can become your best friend. It connects directly to D365 (through the Dataverse connector) and lets you create workflows that reflect your real-world processes without needing a developer.
This is about working smarter. Power Automate doesn’t replace people; it replaces the busywork that keeps people from doing their best work. That’s why you should care.
And once you build your first flow? Trust me, you’ll be hooked.
