There's a tool sitting inside your Microsoft 365 licence that could save your team hours every month, but there's a good chance that you've never even opened it. Perhaps you don't even even know it's there.
Every organisation has those small administrative tasks that seem too minor to worry about. Saving invoices from emails into the right folder, letting a team know when a form has been submitted, then copying information from one system into another because that's "the way we've always done it".
Individually, these tasks only take a few minutes, but together they become part of the daily workload that nobody questions, even though they're often predictable enough to be automated.
That's where Power Automate comes in.
Included with most Microsoft 365 business licences, Power Automate helps you automate routine processes across the tools your team already uses, freeing people up to focus on work that actually needs their attention.
At its core, Power Automate is Microsoft's workflow automation tool.
It allows you to create processes that run automatically whenever a specific event occurs - no coding required.
If you've ever created an Outlook rule to move emails into a folder, you've already used the same basic principle. Power Automate simply takes that idea much further.
Instead of working inside a single application, it connects services across Microsoft 365, including Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Forms, Lists and Planner. When something happens in one application, Power Automate can trigger activity in another.
The result is less manual handling, fewer opportunities for things to be missed, and more consistency in how routine tasks are completed.
One common example we see is invoice processing. Say you have a business receiving 20-30 supplier invoices each week. Every invoice arrives by email and someone needs to download it, save it, name it correctly then reupload it to SharePoint so the wider team can access it.
It's not tricky work, but it is a task that is remarkably easy to forget when things get busy.
With Power Automate, a flow can monitor a dedicated inbox, identify incoming invoices and save them directly into the correct SharePoint library without manual involvement. The process becomes fast, more consistent and less dependant on someone remembering to do it.
This is where the real value of automation sits, in removing dozens of interruptions from someone's week.
Every flow is built using two components.
Triggers
A trigger is the event that starts the automation.
Examples include:
Actions
Actions are the steps that happen after the trigger. For example: filter an email into a folder, or save an attachment to a specific SharePoint.
That's really all there is to it.
When an event happens, Power Automate follows the actions you've defined. Once that concept clicks, the platform becomes much easier to understand.
The easiest way to get started is with a template rather than building from scratch.
A practical first project is automatically saving email attachments into SharePoint or OneDrive. It's quick to set up and immediately removes a common piece of manual admin.
Sign In
Go to make.powerautomate.com and sign in with your Microsoft 365 work account.
Browse templates
Select Templates from the left-hand menu.
Find the attachment template:
Search for Save email attachments and choose a template that saves Outlook attachments into either SharePoint or OneDrive.
Connect the services:
Power Automate will request access to Outlook and your chosen storage platform. Sign in if prompted.
Configure the flow:
Select the mailbox folder you want to monitor and choose where attachments should be stored.
Refine the criteria:
You can now narrow the flow down to:
- Emails containing attachments
- Messages from a specific supplier or customer
- A dedicated mailbox folder
- Particular keywords in the subject line
Test it:
Save the flow, run a test, and send yourself an email with an attachment.
If everything is configured correctly, the attachment should appear automatically in your chosen folder.
The key is to keep your first automation focused. It's much easier to build confidence in a flow that's handling invoices from one supplier than one that's processing every email in the business.
Form to Teams
When somebody submits a Microsoft Form, automatically post the response into a Teams channel so the relevant people see it immediately.
This works particularly well for enquiries, service requests and internal approvals.
Send information to Microsoft Lists
Rather than storing important data in spreadsheets hidden away in OneDrive, automatically push information into a Microsoft List.
For many business processes, Lists provide a much better way to track, manage and report on information.
Weekly team reminders
Create a scheduled flow that posts a checklist or update into Teams every Monday morning.
Simple, but surprisingly effective for recurring processes and team routines.
Forgetting who owns the flow
A flow runs under the account that created it.
If that individual leaves the business or their account is removed, the automation may stop working without anyone realising.
For workflows that support important business processes, it's worth thinking about ownership and support from day one rather than treating it as an afterthought. Add a co-owner to all automations to minimise this risk.
Assuming every connector is included
Most Microsoft 365 licences include access to standard connectors such as:
For many organisations, that's more than enough.
However, connecting to external databases, CRM platforms or other third-party systems may require additional Power Automate licensing. It's always worth checking before designing a solution around a particular integration.
Automation means time savings, cost saving, and consistency.
The best automation projects are often the ones that quietly cut costs without disrupting the way your business works. They're usually the routine processes that happen so often nobody stops to question how much time, admin and avoidable expense they create.
For many organisations, the technology to do this is already sitting inside Microsoft 365. The real opportunity is identifying which small, repeatable tasks are quietly costing your business more than they should.
A sensible way to start is to pick one person to own the first automation and one process that is repetitive, predictable and easy to measure. That might be saving invoice attachments, routing form submissions or moving information between Microsoft 365 tools. Start with something small enough to test properly, prove that it works and show the time or admin it removes. Once that first flow is reliable and your team can see the value, it becomes much easier to build confidence, refine the approach and roll automation out to other processes that follow the same pattern.
If there's a task in your business that somebody performs the same way every day, every week, or every month, it's worth asking whether it could be automated.
Often, the biggest wins come from the simplest workflows.
If you're not sure where to start, we'd be happy to help identify the opportunities, design practical automations, and make sure any business-critical processes are built in a way that's secure, scalable and not dependent on a single individual.