Power Automate Desktop for RPA

[spcasserly]

Hi everyone! 

Is anyone on here using Power Automate Desktop (PAD) as their sole RPA application? Currently using Blue Prism and thinking of switching over to PAD, so any pros/cons to doing this would be super helpful!

Something I consider a con currently is I've been using PAD for a few months now and think the error handling is a bit clunky compared to Blue Prism and is difficult to follow, so that's something I'm trying to get a better handle/understanding on.

[evilnw · Accepted solution]

I use PAD to automate processes within the company. We created more than 15 large (40+ subflows) automation flows. Previously we tried using UiPath and Automation Anywhere. We switched to PAD because of price, scalability and the MS ecosystem.

The biggest problem is that subflows don't have local variables. This makes it difficult to develop and fix large automation flows (30+ subflows).
I really don’t understand how someone came up with the idea to make all variables global.

[alanfrans]

I loved using Power Automate Desktop.  I had several scripts that I would run daily in the (non-premium) version of Power Automate Desktop.  You could do many things as long as it didn't use the premium connectors.  Today though with an update, that was all taken away.  My flows even disappeared, come to find out my organization only has a license for the Online version of Power Automate.  The only option is for me to request Premium access.  I converted my flows over to Power Shell Scripts and will be using that going forward. 
https://sl.bing.net/cr2hfS7MLpk - power automate woes. 😢

[MichaelAnnis]

I was originally using RoboCorp in mid 2019 (way in their startup phase), but I quickly switched to PAD and never looked back.  I tried to learn Blue Prism, but after 40 hours of training, I couldn't get a simple command line to work, which is only 2 actions in PAD, so I stuck with PAD.  While it's not the best at debugging, I think it makes up for it in several other, simple-to-use, places, and you can pile on your own error handling efforts however you want.

Most people just have:

On Error
Go to Subflow
In Subflow:  Get %LastError%; Write %LastError% to Textfile

There are a lot of other best practices out there in regards to logs and other solutions to make up this gap.

Good luck!

[MichaelAnnis]

Did your company get rid of MS 365?  Cuz if not, then they should have power automate desktop licenses to hand out for free.

[alanfrans]

We do have MS 365. 

This just happened today when I upgraded to 2.40.157.24023.  

I use it on my personal computer as well, but am slightly afraid to upgrade that one at this point.  It could just be that it checks the license out and prohibits the free version from working.  I am not sure, of course I usually just click through all the legal stuff when it updates.  There was probably some warning in there about this in there.

[spcasserly]

Disregard my reply. Sorry, still new

[Agnius]

I specialize in building solutions to clients using PA (cloud + desktop). Have built 100+ different projects with 0 to 10 desktop flows in each. I agree that there are some issues, and some things could be done better. The general consensus is that you may need to put in a bit more developer work initially, when compared to other tools that have some frameworks for error handling and logging out of the box. 

But I've built my own framework, that I can copy and paste, and can now build a relatively complex desktop flow within a few hours. 

Other than that, it can pretty much do anything that any other tool can, and more.