What Power Automate does, and where it stops
The honest boundary, because it decides what the work costs.
Power Automate is Microsoft's automation service, included in some form with almost every Microsoft 365 subscription. It watches for something happening (a form submitted, a file added, a date approaching) and then does the steps a person would otherwise do by hand.
Cloud flows reach systems through published connectors: Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, Forms, Excel, Planner, Dataverse and several hundred more. They run in Microsoft's cloud, need no machine left switched on, and keep working when somebody changes a screen layout. This is the right answer whenever it is possible, and it usually is.
It stops where the API stops. Old line-of-business software, an ERP screen, a supplier portal that was never meant to be integrated with anything. None of those can be reached by a connector. That work is real, and it is built differently: see Python RPA.
The services
One engagement, three stages. You can stop after any of them.
Deciding what to automate
Whether the process should be automated at all: some should be changed first, and a few should simply be stopped. Which kind of automation it needs, which licence it lands on, and what it will cost to run before you commit to it.
Building the flow
The agreed design becomes a flow, built from components already proven in deployed automations rather than from a blank canvas. Every build is reviewed independently before deploy, by a pass that did not write it.
Keeping it running
Flows that stopped, connections that lapsed, and the failures that report success with the wrong data. Including flows built by somebody who has since left. Optional, and cancellable without losing anything you own.
The licence answer, before the build
The number that otherwise arrives on an invoice.
Standard connectors are included with Microsoft 365. Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, Forms, Excel, Planner, Approvals and the joins between them. Most business automation can be built entirely inside that line and add nothing to your monthly bill.
Premium is $15 per user per month, billed yearly. It is required for Dataverse, SQL Server, custom connectors and the HTTP action. Whether a design needs it is settled at the design stage, not discovered at the end.
There are three costs, not one. The build is one-off. The licence recurs monthly for as long as the automation runs. The maintenance is whatever it takes to keep working when the systems around it change. A quote that prices only the first is incomplete.
What gets built most often
The same handful of jobs, across almost every organisation.
Chasing that runs itself
Approvals routed to the right approver, the decision recorded against the record, and the requester told either way. Reminders grouped into one message people still read, rather than thirty alerts they learn to ignore.
Data entered once
Form responses captured once as tracked records with an acknowledgement sent. Attachments filed into the right library and named to a convention, so finding one later is a search rather than an archaeology.
Assembled without a person
A response scored and leaving as a finished PDF, charted and emailed on submission. Month-end reports rebuilt from the same sources in the same order, without the person who knows the trick.
How a project runs
From the sentence you write to something running in your own tenant. Five steps, and you are in three of them. All five run on a framework built here over years of delivery, the part of this you will not find anywhere else.
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You describe the work
Write it down in plain language, the way you would explain it to a new starter: what sets it off, what should happen, and what the result has to look like when it is right. Or book a free thirty-minute call and show it on screen instead, usually the faster route when the work is awkward to describe but obvious to watch.
There is no spec, no process map and no list of connectors: describing it is the whole of your first job. And the call is a working session, not a sales call: if half an hour is enough to establish that the process should be fixed rather than automated, that is what you get told in it. Send the description or ask for the call.
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It is assessed against the framework
Your requirement is assessed against every Power Automate trigger and action the framework holds (each already proven in a deployed flow, not looked up while you wait), and against a written record of what has failed before, and why.
That assessment is AI-augmented, which is not a chatbot guessing at Power Automate: it has the whole library and the whole failure record in front of it at once, so what comes back already knows which trigger, which actions, what it costs to licence and where it will strain. A person works from what they happen to know, or from trial and error on your tenant until something sticks.
It also produces the awkward part, deliberately. If a process should be fixed rather than automated, that gets said. If what you asked for cannot work as described, would break later, or would be better done a different way, you hear it now, before anyone has built anything. Finding the flaw in the request is the most valuable thing this step does.
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You approve the design
You see exactly what it will do before it exists, in plain language, and nothing is built until you have agreed to it. Any recommendation from the assessment comes with it, so you are deciding with the objections already on the table rather than discovering them later.
Changes at this point cost a conversation. Changes after the build cost the build.
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It gets built, fast
Development is AI-augmented too, working from the same framework that produced the design, so nothing is re-interpreted on the way in. The toolkit is already there and already proven: yours starts from something that runs rather than from a blank flow. Work normally quoted in weeks is usually delivered in days.
Speed is not the interesting bit. Every build is reviewed independently before it is deployed, by a pass that did not write it, against rules enforced automatically rather than remembered. In this work the expensive failure is a confident wrong answer, not a missing one, and reviewing your own work is exactly how a confident wrong answer survives.
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It is deployed, tested, and yours
It goes into your own Microsoft 365 tenant and runs against real conditions until it behaves. Then you test it on your data, on the cases you know are awkward, because the person who knows what right looks like is you.
After that there is no dependency on us. It stays in your tenant permanently, under your ownership, editable by your own people, with no licence to renew and nobody to keep paying.
Power Automate solutions catalogue
A selection of the Power Automate automations already built, deployed and proven here, grouped by the job they do. Open any group to see what it covers. If your job matches one of them, it is configured to your environment rather than built from scratch, and the ones not shown here are the same story.
Email notifications when a SharePoint list changes
SharePoint · OutlookBuilt-in SharePoint alerts fire on every edit, so people stop reading them within a week. These watch only the columns you name.
- A field you choose is edited: not every edit on the item
- Work is passed to someone else: the new owner hears first
Reminder emails before a due date
SharePoint · Outlook · Office 365 UsersThirty open items should not produce thirty emails. One grouped message on a schedule you choose gets read.
- Anything due in the next few days: a look-ahead window you set
- Anything due this month or already late: overdue work called out separately from what is still in hand
- A weekly summary of what is still open: one table, and silence when there is nothing
- A nudge to the manager when work goes quiet: after a silence you define, and only once
Mail merge: bulk email from Excel or SharePoint
SharePoint · Excel · OutlookMail-merge that runs in your own tenant and sends from your own mailbox, rather than through a marketing platform.
- Details taken from a SharePoint list: one message per row, carrying that row's values
- Details taken from an Excel sheet: no list needed; the workbook is the source
- Replies matched back to the right person: an answer lands against the row it came from, not in a shared inbox
Save email attachments to SharePoint automatically
Outlook · SharePoint · OneDrive · Microsoft FormsAttachments and form responses become records you can search, instead of sitting in one person's inbox. They are filed into the right library and named the same way every time, so finding one later takes a search box rather than an hour.
- Attachments saved the moment they arrive: into the library, automatically
- A whole history collected from one sender: back-fills everything they have ever sent, in one pass
- Filed into the right folder by its code: the reference in the subject decides where it lands
- Microsoft Forms answers kept as a record: with an acknowledgement to the sender
Send SharePoint files as email attachments
SharePoint · OutlookThe set of files is worked out from a reference code rather than assembled by hand, which is where wrong-document errors come from.
- Every file for a job, sent together: every file in the matching folder, attached
Automatic replies that send the documents asked for
Outlook · SharePointA request arrives and is answered with nobody at a desk, including out of hours.
- The documents asked for, sent straight back: matched from the email subject
- A reminder for paperwork still missing: only what is absent, and silent when nothing is
Convert Microsoft Forms responses to a PDF report
Microsoft Forms · OneDrive · OutlookA response keyed into a spreadsheet, then into a list, then into an email is the same data entered three times, and three chances to enter it wrong. Here it is captured once, scored, and leaves as a finished PDF.
- A scored Microsoft Forms report, emailed out: charted and emailed on submission
- A longer report with a chart per section: for questionnaires scored across several areas
Power Automate questions
Licensing, cost, timescales, and taking on flows somebody else built.
What does a Power Automate consultancy actually do?
Three things, in order. It works out whether a process is worth automating at all: some are not, and some need fixing first. It builds the automation. And it hands the thing over so your own people can change it later. The building is the short part.
Do we need Power Automate Premium licences?
Usually not. Standard connectors (Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, Forms, Excel, Planner, Approvals) are included with Microsoft 365. Premium is required for Dataverse, SQL Server, custom connectors and the HTTP action, at $15 per user per month billed yearly.
How much does a Power Automate project cost?
It depends on how many processes and how tangled they are, but the first conversation is free and produces a number. What you should not accept is a quote given before anyone has looked at the process.
How long does a Power Automate project take?
A single automation with a clear owner and a clear trigger is usually days rather than weeks. Most of the elapsed time in any automation project is waiting for a decision about the awkward cases.
Can you support flows somebody else built?
Yes, and that is a large part of the work: flows built by a departed colleague, someone in the business who built it themselves or a former supplier. Nothing is changed until the flow has been made readable.
Describe the process that is eating the week
What comes back is an honest read: whether it is worth automating at all, which licence it would land on, and what it would take. No obligation attached to asking.