Power Automate Desktop App for Windows 10 is Now Available

As part of its opening day Ignite 2021 festivities, Microsoft announced today that the Power Automate Desktop app for Windows 10 is now available, and at no extra cost. And it looks like it will be included in Windows 10 in a future release, too.

“Power Automate Desktop is now available at no additional cost, allowing Windows 10 users to harness the power of low-code robotic process automation (RPA),” Microsoft’s Steve Clarke writes. “The technology is available as a download and will be included in Windows Insider Preview builds in the coming weeks.”

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Power Automate Desktop is a user-friendly, low-code application aimed at both coders and non-coders alike, and it’s used to optimize personal and work-based workflows by automating repetitive and time-consuming manual tasks. One might also see it as a graphical front-end to the RPA in Power Automate functionality that Microsoft first announced at Ignite 2019.

You can find Power Automate Desktop on the Microsoft website. And you can learn more here.

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Conversation 10 comments

  • gregsedwards

    Premium Member
    02 March, 2021 - 11:16 am

    <p>I just used Power Automate Desktop last week to test and report on almost 500 website redirects for work in about 10 minutes, instead of manually inputting and verifying them, which would have taken hours. It really is an awesome app.</p>

    • hrlngrv

      Premium Member
      02 March, 2021 - 5:35 pm

      <p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/247728/power-automate-desktop-app-for-windows-10-is-now-available#616030&quot; target="_blank"><em>In reply to gregsedwards:</em></a></p><p>Maybe useful for Windows, but if the initial 500 website urls were known up front, under Linux or macOS, one could use a script to iterate through the list, using a <strong>curl -L</strong> command with each. There have been ways to automate this sort of thing for <strong>decades</strong> if one had access to POSIX tools.</p>

      • lezmaka

        Premium Member
        02 March, 2021 - 7:09 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#616093">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote><p>There's PowerShell so no need for linux or mac. And he could have used Python, AutoHotKey, VBScript, a million monkeys typing at keyboards, or any number of things, but <strong>that's not the point</strong>. The point is to make it so someone who <strong>doesn't</strong> know scripting or command line (and isn't required to know them as part of their job) can easily automate things like checking 500 URLs…</p>

  • smccarty

    02 March, 2021 - 3:43 pm

    <p>Any word on if the dataverse license requirements will be relaxed with this news? It looks like you're still required to have a PowerApps per user plan to in order to establish a Dataverse DB, which for now, appears to be a requirement for use of this tool.</p>

  • nbplopes

    02 March, 2021 - 3:44 pm

    <p>So Shortcuts come to Windows 10.</p>

    • whistlerpro

      03 March, 2021 - 1:21 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#616067">In reply to nbplopes:</a></em></blockquote><p>… and it’s not even on MacOS yet.</p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    02 March, 2021 - 7:14 pm

    <p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/247728/power-automate-desktop-app-for-windows-10-is-now-available#616104&quot; target="_blank"><em>In reply to lvthunder:</em></a></p><p>Who checks for website redirection who doesn't know how to write scripts?</p><p>Yes, this tool should allow some PC users to play system administrators on home video.</p>

  • smccarty

    03 March, 2021 - 12:55 pm

    <blockquote><a href="#616105"><em>In reply to lvthunder:</em></a><em> I was more referring to the fact that if you've got a tenant all to yourself that you need Dataverse available, which requires a premium license (even outside of any other connectors). Fortunately, I'd missed the notes that said you could use Dataverse for Teams to fulfill this requirement. Simply installing the approvals app in Teams and submitting one forces the creation of the instance, thereby fulfilling the requirement. All works pretty smoothly after that.</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • rfog

    08 March, 2021 - 9:17 am

    <p>Ha ha ha. Oh, man, this people (Microsoft) is incredible stupid. Have you seen the video? All devices there are Mac, and the product is not available for Mac!!!!!</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

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