Introduction
Welcome back to another episode of TJ's Technology Tuesday. Today's question is: does everything always have to be AI? Those of you who have known me for a while will be familiar with my saying: before we start with artificial intelligence, let's first apply a bit of common sense.
Time and again I receive requests that go something like this: "I'd like an AI tool for that." And I always ask: do you want an AI tool, or do you want a solution to your problem? When it comes to automating repetitive tasks in particular, people tend to think of AI first. But here's the thing — AI is not fundamentally designed to produce consistently identical results. You may have experienced this yourself: you enter a prompt in ChatGPT, enter the exact same prompt again, and you get two different answers. The question is: what are these systems actually built for? It is important to understand this. The large language models, such as ChatGPT, excel at two specific tasks. First, summarising a large body of text — condensing information.
What is Power Automate and what is it used for?
And the second thing these systems are excellent at is turning three lines of text into an entire book — a slight exaggeration, but the point is that they can both condense content and expand it. Those are the areas where these models perform well. That is what they are trained for, that is what they are built for. So if you have a process that should run automatically and consistently every time, it might be worth looking at different tools. In other words: whenever a certain event occurs, a certain action should follow — then you should definitely take a closer look at something you most likely already have: Power Automate. Power Automate is included in the Microsoft 365 suite. Up to a certain point, you can use it for free or within your existing licence. If you need more functionality, you will need to pay for additional licences. What is particularly valuable here is exploring the templates, because the initial entry point is not entirely intuitive. Before we dive into the templates, I want to show you what kinds of automations you can set up. There are the following options: Automated Cloud Flow.
What does that mean? The moment I have a trigger — something that sets off the process — an action follows. For example, an email arrives from a specific customer, and that should automatically create a task in Planner. Or someone submits a form, and as soon as a submission comes in, that data should be processed further. That is the idea behind an Automated Cloud Flow. An Instant Cloud Flow means I have a button, and I press it — a bit like an Excel macro, where you click it and it runs. For instance, if I have an email that should be sent to ten people at once, that is something you might already know. In Outlook, there are Quick Steps, where you can define rules so that under certain conditions, something happens. That is like an Automated Cloud Flow. And a Quick Step in Outlook is essentially like an Instant Cloud Flow — in the moment I trigger it, it executes. A Scheduled Cloud Flow is something that runs automatically at a set time on a regular basis. You may know this from ChatGPT, where you can now set it up to send you ten new AI studies every morning.
You can organise that kind of thing through Power Automate as well. Then there are two more special options: Desktop Flow on one hand — this is the concept of RPA, Robotic Process Automation. This allows you to connect systems that have no interfaces and automate mouse clicks in legacy systems, so to speak. That is the idea. And then there is Process Mining, where you can go even further and optimise processes at a higher level. A very good starting point is to explore the templates section. Here you can see the most commonly used options and simply follow the logic to understand how things work. For example, if I notice: there is a flow here where I can forward an email to a channel. The idea is: an email comes in and should be forwarded to a Teams channel. This could be useful, for example, for cooperative banks (Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken) that say: there is an email address for a Teams channel, but for security reasons it is not accessible to external customers — in that case, you can close this gap with a Power Automate flow.
And that is the idea. This means you have connectors here that you need to link up the first time. Then you can take a look at everything and switch to advanced mode to see how it all works. And anyone who has ever come across the concept of a flowchart does not need to know how to code. No need to worry — people often think: do I need to be able to programme? No. The idea is simply to have a rough understanding of how processes work. And the concept here is: when a new email arrives, tell me who it came from. Then I retrieve the message, I get the Teams team, I get the channel, I pass the information through and export it there. Then I can even say: give me an attachment as well and post it back into a channel — in this case as an adaptive card. The first time you encounter this, you may feel a little overwhelmed if you have never worked with it before, but the great thing — and I genuinely recommend this — is simply to look through these templates, and even before you actually use one and adapt it, you will already pick up ideas about what is possible.
For example, tracking a message. Here I have: when a channel post starts with "To-Do", I can then say: create a channel post, for instance. That is one idea you could implement. Or: schedule a recurring message in chat. Or: automatically find a meeting slot with the sender of an email. All of that can be automated. So there is a lot here. And one particularly exciting area is Approvals. This means I can start an approval process — something many organisations need. For example, when a file is added to SharePoint, an approval should be triggered. When a form is submitted — such as a leave request — Power Automate looks up who the relevant manager is in Active Directory. That person receives an approval request, and then there is a condition: approved or rejected. And that is how you can automate things, and there is quite a lot you can do. That is why I am also a great advocate of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem — I have Outlook, I have Teams, I have my personal OneDrive files, I have Teams files in SharePoint, I have Teams, I have Forms that I can connect.
Automation: From Form to Flow
All these components can be beautifully connected with one another, and you can then define what should happen. Let me share a few ideas of what you can do with this. For example, we built a flow for a cooperative bank where the goal was to handle IT tickets. Let me show you what the form behind it looks like. I'll duplicate the tab quickly. So we pull up the form — that is, we go to Forms. The idea is: someone submits an IT ticket. Now I can say: in a form, I want to specify what kind of problem it is — hardware or software issue. You can select: what exactly is it? My phone has exploded. And then you can add further details. Once everything has been submitted, the flow checks: is there a new form submission? If yes, it pulls all the information from the form, extracts who submitted it, because that person raised the ticket — meaning they do not have to enter their email address, their name, and so on again.
It always frustrates me in hotels when I think: you already have all my data, why do I have to enter it again? And that is exactly the principle here — you can pull the data automatically. So then I can define conditions. And I say: okay, what does this look like? Here I have a condition where I check: what is in there? And then I say: if there is an attachment, it creates an item and adds all the attachments, because we also include screenshots. Then it creates a task in Planner. You can update the task details, and you can then send a chat message saying: right, the request is in. Then the next idea is: okay, here for example an approval is requested — actually, wait, I need to go back one step, I clicked on the wrong flow. So now I can say: the IT team has received the ticket, and now I update a status and say: okay.
And this status sits in a SharePoint list. I can view that list in different ways, for example as a status board. And now I can say: I have something to process, and it goes to approval. And the moment something is moved to approval, I can use a flow to check: has something changed here? The condition is: has something been moved to approval? If so, retrieve the screenshots, trigger an approval, wait for the approval response, and then ask: was it approved? If approved, the status is updated; if rejected, you can for instance send a message: please send another screenshot. So that is a real-world example — an IT ticket system for a cooperative bank, fully automated through Power Automate. Someone submits a form, the IT team either marks it as done immediately or moves it on the status board to the approval stage, the user receives an approval request, and if they reject it, it comes back — and if they approve it, the matter is closed.
These are the kinds of typical ticket and task workflows that you can automate beautifully. That is why the message here is: AI is not dead, but many things simply work more easily and consistently with Power Automate. So this is always something I recommend taking a closer look at. And perhaps one more technical tip for those who are already a bit further along: when you create a new flow — let me show you quickly, I'll call it "Test" — you will notice that when adding a trigger, you can choose from various triggers. And with Planner, which I love, there are unfortunately very few triggers available. There is only: when a task is assigned to me, when a task is created, when a task is completed. And that is limited. Meaning there is no automatic trigger for when a task has been moved to a different bucket — which is actually what I would need. What does exist, however, is SharePoint — and there you can do much more. In SharePoint, for example, you can trigger: when an item is modified. So there you can do significantly more.
And here you can query very precisely what happened, when, and where. The great thing is that you can also display a SharePoint list as a board — meaning you can move items around just like in Planner, and the flows are always designed so that end users never interact directly with the SharePoint list. They always interact only through forms or through Teams chat messages, for example. Also worth highlighting — something many people are not aware of: there is an Automate button in the SharePoint list view, and there you will find Quick Steps, which are a relatively recent addition. Just as you can create Quick Steps in Outlook, you can do the same here — for an item you have selected, or five, six, seven items you have selected, and then say: send me an email, start a Teams chat, change something, or run a flow. Another great feature that continues to evolve. Power Automate is really something I would urge you to explore. And if you feel all of this is still very confusing for you, please feel free to comment in the chat. I am also happy to support you in-house when building these flows.
Conclusion
I am currently working with several cooperative banks where the situation is: we rolled out Microsoft 365, but we haven't really become that much more productive. How can we take things to the next level? Of course, there is the major provider Atruvia with its solutions, but you can already achieve quite a lot within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem itself. So feel free to reach out to me about that. Outside the banking sector, I am currently in a project with another client where we are looking at how to consolidate processes that are carried out on a regular basis. In a future episode, I will also show how you can use Power BI for this purpose — because Power BI, as Microsoft's BI system, works very well with a wide range of data sources to consolidate information. So coming back to where we started: yes, before you ask which AI solution is available, ask yourself whether there might be an intelligent automation solution for your needs — especially when you want to automate things. Because IT pays off when it helps you automate tasks and frees up more time for value-adding activities.
With that in mind: continued success to you — your Personal IT Coach for Executives, Thorsten Jekel.
Key Takeaways
- Before reaching for AI, always check whether a classic automation solution like Power Automate solves the problem more simply and consistently.
- Large language models such as ChatGPT excel at two tasks: summarising text and expanding a few lines into detailed content — not at consistent process automation.
- Power Automate is part of Microsoft 365 and is already included to a significant extent in existing licences.
- There are four main flow types: Automated Cloud Flow (trigger → action), Instant Cloud Flow (triggered manually), Scheduled Cloud Flow (time-controlled), and Desktop Flow (RPA for systems without interfaces).
- Templates in Power Automate are the recommended starting point for understanding the logic and possibilities without needing to write any code.
- Approval processes — such as leave requests or IT tickets — can be fully automated, including notifications, status updates, and feedback loops.
- SharePoint lists offer more trigger options than Microsoft Planner and can be displayed as a Kanban board that users interact with via forms or Teams.
- Quick Steps in SharePoint lists allow fast, manual actions on selected items — similar to Quick Steps in Outlook.
- Real-world example: A complete IT ticket flow was built for a cooperative bank — from form submission through Planner task creation and approval to final status update.
- The overarching message: IT makes sense when it automates routine tasks and frees up time for value-adding work.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Power Automate and who is it suitable for?
Power Automate is a Microsoft automation service included in the Microsoft 365 suite. It is suitable for anyone who wants to automate recurring processes — from individual users to entire organisations — without any programming knowledge.
Why is AI not always the best choice for process automation?
Large language models like ChatGPT are designed to summarise or expand text — and they produce different outputs for the same input. For processes that require consistently identical results every time, an automation tool like Power Automate is far better suited.
What are the four flow types in Power Automate?
Power Automate offers four flow types: the Automated Cloud Flow (triggered by an event), the Instant Cloud Flow (started manually at the press of a button), the Scheduled Cloud Flow (runs at a set time), and the Desktop Flow for automating applications without an API interface (RPA).
How can beginners get started with Power Automate?
Beginners are best advised to start with the ready-made templates in Power Automate. These provide concrete examples of how flows are structured and can be adapted without any programming skills.
How can an approval process be mapped with Power Automate?
An approval process in Power Automate works as follows: when a trigger fires — for example, a form is submitted — the responsible manager is automatically identified, an approval request is sent, and depending on the decision (approved or rejected), subsequent actions are carried out or the request is returned for revision.
What advantages does SharePoint offer over Planner as a flow trigger?
Microsoft Planner provides only a small number of triggers in Power Automate — for example, when a task is created or completed. SharePoint lists offer significantly more trigger options, such as when an item is modified, and can additionally be displayed as a Kanban board.
How was Power Automate used in the cooperative bank example?
An IT ticket system was built for a cooperative bank: employees fill in a form, Power Automate automatically reads the user data from the directory, creates a task in Planner, adds attachments, and manages an approval process with status updates in a SharePoint list.
Do you need to know how to programme to use Power Automate?
No, programming skills are not required for Power Automate. A basic understanding of processes is sufficient — that is, understanding that one or more actions follow a trigger.
What are Quick Steps in SharePoint lists?
Quick Steps in SharePoint lists are a relatively recent feature that allows you to execute predefined actions on selected list items with a single click — similar to Quick Steps in Outlook. These include actions such as sending an email, starting a Teams chat, or running a flow.
When does using Power Automate make the most sense?
Power Automate makes the most sense when routine tasks occur regularly and follow the same pattern — for example, forwarding emails, processing form submissions, or managing approvals. By automating these tasks, employees gain time for value-adding work.
Tools & Resources Mentioned
- Microsoft 365 — the platform that includes Power Automate
- Power Automate — Microsoft service for automating cloud and desktop processes
- Microsoft Planner — task management tool that can serve as a target for flows
- Microsoft SharePoint — list-based data storage with extended flow triggers and board view
- Microsoft Forms — form service as a trigger for automated workflows
- Microsoft Teams — communication platform into which flow results (e.g. messages, adaptive cards) can be sent
- Power BI — Microsoft BI solution to be covered in an upcoming episode
