RPA with Desktop Flow

Explore robotic process automation (RPA) as software automation that records tasks via a drag and drop interface and replays them to reduce human effort, especially where APIs are available.

Use RPA when APIs are unavailable or legacy systems lack APIs. Choose RPA for tasks with defined steps on apps, services, or websites when API development is costly or impractical.

Explore the benefits of RPA with desktop flow, including lower automation costs by replacing repetitive work, 24/7 availability, process improvement, leveraging existing infrastructure without immediate upgrades, and better customer services.

Explore the two types of RPA bots: attended bots that require human supervision and unattended bots that log in, perform tasks, and log out autonomously.

Explore current RPA market dynamics with Gartner insights, including growth from 1.5b in 2020 to 2b in 2021 and a 50-plus tool landscape across open source and commercial vendors.

Install power automate desktop on windows 10 by downloading the latest installer and following prompts. Sign in with your microsoft account to start using the desktop.

Explore Power Automate Desktop to build a desktop flow that downloads files from an FTB server, using actions from categories like system, file, and Excel, with variables and drag-and-drop configuration.

Create a desktop flow to connect to an ftp server, list available files, download them to a designated local folder, and display a completion message after execution.

Install the desktop add-on as a browser extension from the gallery or add-on store to enable web automation with desktop flow, and prepare to explore it in the next video.

Explore web automation actions in desktop flow, including launching browsers, extracting data, reading elements, and running scripts; build a flow that searches AUD to USD on Bing and displays results.

Automate web search tasks with a desktop flow by launching Edge, entering a query, triggering a search, reading results, and displaying the exchange rate.

Record browser interactions with web recorder to automatically generate desktop flow actions. Customize launches, extract element values, and display the exchange rate in a message box.

Explore the variables pane and UI elements pane, learn to rename variables, use find usage, open and delete UI elements, preview elements, and modify or manage selectors.

Explore automating desktop and Windows apps with automation actions, using VEB Recorder to generate actions or manual configuration, and visualize and analyze processes with Process Advisor and desktop recorder.

Learn how to debug desktop flow processes using breakpoints on actions, inspect variables, and configure action-specific error handling, including retry options and continue or stop.

Recap what RPA is and how to start automating with Microsoft desktop flow, and outline next steps for continued learning.