At last year"s Ignite, Microsoft announced the public preview of robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities in Power Automate (previously known as Microsoft Flow), under the name UI flows. Now, Microsoft has announced the general availability of UI flows in Power Automate, which will happen on April 2.
The feature expands on the automation capabilities of Power Automate, which already automates API-based processes with over 300 connected apps. With UI flows, it becomes possible for UI-based tasks to be done automatically by bots, based on a pre-recorded set of UI interactions. This allows businesses to save time on menial, low-value tasks that have to be done repeatedly.
There are two kinds of RPA capabilities in Power Automate - attended and unattended. The first means that a bot can record a set of UI actions and then play them back in real time when necessary, which means it requires human interaction to initiate. Unattended RPA, as you"d expect, means no human interaction is required, and it"s meant for back-end processes.
Attended RPA capabilities in Power Automate will cost businesses $40 per user/month, and unattended RPA will be an add-on costing $150 per bot/month. That"s on top of the $40 per/month for the Power Automate plan with Attended RPA, which is required. You can explore full pricing options here. If you"re interested, you can learn more about RPA here.