Work that depends on someone remembering
Follow-ups, reminders, status updates and recurring reports only happen when a person makes them happen. A scheduled flow does them whether anyone remembers or not.
FlexiSolutions designs, builds and supports Microsoft Power Automate solutions that move work between your systems and your people without someone having to remember to do it — approvals, notifications, data synchronisation, document handling, scheduled reporting and the handovers in between.
From a single approval flow to a connected automation layer across Finance, Operations and IT, we handle the process analysis, the trigger logic, the connectors, the error handling, the governance and the support after go-live — and we will tell you when a process should be simplified rather than automated.
Microsoft's workflow automation service — the part of Power Platform that does work without a person driving it.
See the full Power PlatformMicrosoft Power Automate is Microsoft's workflow automation service. It is used to automate processes, move information between systems, route work to the right person, and trigger actions when something happens — a record is created, an email arrives, a form is submitted, a file is uploaded, or a schedule fires. It sits inside the wider Microsoft Power Platform.
A Power Automate solution is built from flows, and a flow is built from a trigger (the event that starts it) and actions (the steps it performs). That simple structure is capable of a great deal more than it appears: conditional branching, loops, parallel branches, human approval steps, expressions and data transformations, calls to external APIs through connectors, and error handling when something goes wrong.
The event that starts a flow: a record is created, an email arrives, a file lands in a library, a form is submitted, a button is pressed or a schedule fires. Trigger choice is an architectural decision rather than a detail — an event-driven trigger reacts instantly and cheaply, while a polling schedule is simpler but can miss nothing and still costs far more at volume.
What the flow does once it starts: read a record, create a list item, send a message, generate a document, call an API. Conditions, loops, parallel branches, scopes and expressions are what turn a linear sequence into real process logic.
Most business processes need a person to decide something. Approval actions, Teams adaptive cards and request-assignment steps pause the flow, record the decision, and route the process onward — including escalations, delegations and rejection reasons. "Human-in-the-loop" is a design pattern, not a limitation.
The pre-built routes into other systems. Microsoft publishes hundreds of them, they are classified as standard or premium (which drives licensing), and where one doesn't exist we build a custom connector against the system's API. Connector choice is where most cost and governance questions surface.
Workflow automation
Moving work between people and systems according to rules — approvals, routing, notifications, escalation. The logic lives in the process itself.
Robotic process automation (RPA)
Software driving an application through its user interface, the way a person would. Necessary when a system offers no API, but inherently more fragile because it depends on screens that someone else can change. In Power Automate this is a desktop flow.
Integration
Making two systems agree about the same data, usually through APIs and event-driven messages. Durable, invisible to users, and frequently the right foundation for automation rather than an alternative to it.
Business process improvement
Changing the process for the better before technology is applied. Remove the unnecessary step, merge the duplicate approval, agree one definition — then automate what remains. This is the step most often skipped and most often decisive.
A good automation project usually involves all four, in that increasingly sensible order. Read more in our guide to AI agents versus RPA.
Builds the application people interact with.
Automates the process behind it.
Turns the resulting data into insight.
Extends the process to external users.
Copilot and AI Builder add intelligence to the decisions in the flow. Most valuable solutions combine several of these.
See how the full platform fits togetherNobody sets out to "adopt workflow automation". They set out to stop one specific thing from taking so long, being done wrong, or depending on a single person. These are the problems we are asked about most often — and the ones Power Automate is genuinely well suited to.
Follow-ups, reminders, status updates and recurring reports only happen when a person makes them happen. A scheduled flow does them whether anyone remembers or not.
An approval request buried in someone's email has no visible owner, no deadline and no audit trail. A structured approval flow records who was asked, when, what they decided, and what happened next.
Information typed into one system and copied into another is where errors and hours disappear. A flow that picks up data from one system and writes it to another removes both.
When a process runs by email, nobody can answer "where is this right now?" without chasing. Automation makes state visible.
If the same process is done three different ways by three teams, automating it enforces one agreed way of working.
A customer enquiry, a service ticket or a supplier request that waits for a human to notice it loses time it didn't need to lose.
Invoices, forms, applications and reports that need extracting, filing, routing and confirming are expensive to do manually and easy to get wrong.
Useful where systems offer no API, but unmaintained screen-scraping automations break with every interface change. We build desktop flows deliberately, and only where they're the right answer.
Approvals, reminders, handovers and follow-ups consume hours that could go to actual work — and are exactly what automation does well.
When a process depends on one experienced employee knowing the exceptions, holiday cover becomes a risk and departure becomes a crisis. An automated process encoded in a flow is documented by definition — and survives the person who built it.
Contract renewals, review cycles, compliance checks, monthly reports and customer follow-ups all depend on calendar discipline. A scheduled flow does not have a busy week.
A failed sync, an expired certificate, a stock level that crossed a threshold last Tuesday. Monitoring and alerting flows turn silent failures into an early warning someone actually sees.
In each of these cases the value is not "automation" as an outcome — it is the specific hours, errors, delays or dependencies that stop existing. That is why we scope an automation by the process it changes rather than by the technology it uses.
Power Automate does not fix a process that shouldn't exist. Where the right answer is to change the process rather than automate it, we will say so.
The solutions below are the ones we build most often, grouped by the business problem they solve rather than by a technical category — because that's how clients arrive at the conversation.
Problem: approvals scattered across inboxes with no trail.
How it works: a request form or app submission triggers a sequential or parallel approval, with escalation, delegation, rejection reasons, comments, audit history and automatic notifications at each step.
Faster decisions, a complete record, nothing lost.
Problem: documents that need extracting, renaming, filing, distributing or checking.
How it works: a file arriving in a library or mailbox triggers extraction, validation, routing and storage — with AI Builder or intelligent document processing where the format is unstructured.
Less manual handling, fewer misfiled documents.
Problem: the same records maintained separately in two systems.
How it works: a change in the system of record triggers creation or update in the dependent system, with mapping, validation and conflict handling.
One source of truth, less re-entry.
Problem: problems discovered late — stock below threshold, SLA breached, integration error, anomaly in reporting.
How it works: scheduled or event-driven checks post to Teams, email or a channel when a threshold is crossed.
Problems found by the system, not by the customer.
Problem: reports assembled by hand and emailed on a schedule.
How it works: a scheduled flow queries the data, generates the document and distributes it to a defined list.
Consistent reporting without the recurring labour.
Problem: joining, moving and leaving processes handled by checklists and reminders.
How it works: a trigger from HR creates accounts, assigns licences, requests equipment, notifies the right teams, and later handles offboarding steps in order.
Consistent, complete onboarding.
Problem: requests arriving through multiple channels and handled inconsistently.
How it works: intake from a form, mailbox, Teams channel or portal; automatic categorisation, assignment and routing; SLA tracking and escalation.
Every request logged, owned and timed.
Problem: order-to-invoice flows requiring manual checks and handovers.
How it works: order capture triggers validation, credit or stock checks, approval, ERP posting where integration allows, and customer notification.
Faster cycle times, fewer dropped handoffs.
Problem: processes that span several systems, some with APIs and some without.
How it works: Power Automate orchestrates the sequence, calling REST APIs, custom connectors, Azure Functions or Logic Apps where those are the better tool for a step.
One coherent process across a varied landscape.
Problem: older or restricted applications that expose no practical interface other than the screen itself.
How it works: attended or unattended desktop flows perform the interaction, with careful handling of exceptions and UI change.
Automation where integration isn't possible — with the maintenance reality stated up front.
Problem: a critical system has a perfectly good REST API but no Power Automate connector.
How it works: we describe the API in OpenAPI (or define it manually), build and deploy a custom connector, handle authentication properly, and — where the API is thin — add an Azure Functions wrapper that gives the flow a clean, stable operation instead of a raw HTTP call.
A durable integration route rather than a screen-scraping shortcut.
Problem: one business process touches SharePoint, Dataverse, an ERP, a finance package and a legacy application — and no single system owns it.
How it works: a parent flow owns the process state and calls child flows per system, so each step can be developed, tested and retried independently. Long-running or high-volume segments are delegated to Logic Apps or Service Bus queues rather than forced through one giant flow.
A process that is owned, observable and supportable end to end.
Problem: steps that need judgement about unstructured content — reading an invoice, classifying an email, recognising a document type, extracting a field from a PDF.
How it works: AI Builder models for document processing, classification and prediction, plus Copilot Studio agents as a step inside the flow — always with a confidence threshold and a human review path for the cases the model gets wrong.
Unstructured work handled automatically, with the exceptions routed to people.
AI & Copilot EnablementProblem: invoice matching, purchase approvals, supplier onboarding and order release that are still reconciled by hand in a spreadsheet.
How it works: intake and validation with tolerance and exception rules, tiered approval by amount and cost centre, ERP posting where an API allows, and a monthly exception report that only contains what a human actually needs to look at.
Control and auditability without adding headcount.
These are capability descriptions and illustrative patterns, not claims about specific delivered projects or results.
Power Automate's reach comes from its connectors — and the connector choice is also where most licensing and governance decisions land. Below is how we group the platforms we work across, and what each one contributes to a working solution.
SharePoint lists and libraries, Outlook mail and calendar, Microsoft Teams channels and chats, Excel, OneDrive, Planner, Forms, Approvals, Word and Office Scripts — the day-to-day surface where most automation starts.
Dataverse tables with strong typing, relationships and audit history; Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, Finance and Supply Chain actions — the foundation for process-heavy automation.
SQL Server, Azure SQL, and other relational and non-relational sources through standard connectors, alongside Azure data services where a step needs processing rather than transfer. API & Data Engineering.
Standard connectors where they exist, custom connectors built against an API where they don't, and HTTP actions as the fallback — connecting ERP, CRM, finance, HR, service and industry-specific platforms. System Integration.
Azure Logic Apps where a long-running, high-throughput or integration-heavy process is better served by the enterprise integration platform; Azure Functions for custom logic a standard action can't express; Service Bus and Event Grid for messaging patterns; Key Vault for secrets; Application Insights for monitoring.
AI Builder models for document extraction, classification and prediction; Copilot Studio agents as a step in a process; Microsoft 365 Copilot adjacent to it. AI & Copilot Enablement.
The other three places automation surfaces to people. Power Apps captures the request, Power Pages extends the process to customers and suppliers outside the tenant, and Power BI picks up the operational data the flow produces. We usually design them together rather than as separate projects. Power Apps, Power Pages, Power BI.
SAP, Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain, and finance platforms such as AFAS or Exact. In practice we automate around the ERP — approvals, notifications, document capture and exception handling — and post into it only where the integration route is sound. Modifying core ERP logic to suit a workflow is rarely the right trade. ERP & Business Applications.
Power Automate is usually right when
Consider something else when
The target system's interface (API, connector, database or only a screen), the connectors available for it, your licensing, your environment and DLP policies, and your data governance rules.
We assess these before quoting, not after.
The examples below are the ones we are asked about most often. They are starting points for a conversation, not a catalogue — the specific process in your organisation is always more interesting than the generic version.
Deviations, incidents and improvement actions logged in Teams, tracked in a list, chased by email. Automation captures the deviation where it happens, assigns an owner, escalates when the deadline passes, and feeds a register that shows which problems recur.
Problems get closed, and the pattern behind them becomes visible.
Invoice matching, expense claims, credit notes, accruals and month-end checklists. Automation extracts invoice data, compares against the purchase order within tolerance, routes exceptions to the cost-centre owner, and posts or flags the rest.
Fewer reconciliation hours, and an exception list that actually reflects what needs attention.
Purchase requisitions, supplier onboarding, delivery-date changes, stock-threshold alerts and supplier scorecard distribution. Automation handles tiered approval by value, collects supplier documents, and escalates late deliveries before they reach the customer.
Supply problems surface days earlier than a weekly report would reveal them.
Onboarding, offboarding, internal moves, leave requests, recruitment screening and performance-review cycles. Automation coordinates sequential tasks across IT, facilities and the line manager, so day one is complete rather than partially prepared.
A consistent first day, and offboarding access that is actually removed.
Quote approval, discount governance, contract renewals, lead routing and pipeline hygiene. Automation enforces approval thresholds that currently depend on goodwill, and notifies account owners before a renewal date rather than after.
Margin control that is consistent, and renewals that are not forgotten.
Case triage, SLA tracking, escalation, complaint handling and customer communication. Automation classifies incoming cases, routes them to the right queue, and escalates automatically as the SLA clock runs down.
Nothing sits unassigned, and breaches are prevented rather than reported.
Access requests, licence assignment, joiner-mover-leaver tasks, change approvals and certificate or credential expiry alerts. Automation replaces the ticket that exists only to ask a colleague to click a checkbox.
Lower ticket volume, and access that is granted on time and revoked on time.
Maintenance requests, work-order dispatch, inspection checklists, contractor permits and site access. Automation dispatches the job to the right engineer, collects photos and sign-off from the field, and closes the loop in the asset record.
Paper checklists become structured records that can be reported on.
Contract intake and review routing, policy attestation cycles, GDPR data-subject requests, audit evidence collection and vendor due diligence. Automation enforces the deadline and produces the audit trail as a by-product of doing the work.
Evidence that exists before the auditor asks for it.
Capture the request in one place, apply the rules that already exist in someone's head, route it to whoever has to decide, record the decision, and tell the next person automatically. What changes between Finance and Facilities is the data and the rules — not the structure.
A flow is rarely the whole solution. Most of what we deliver uses automation as the connective layer, with the other platform products handling the interface, the data and the reporting around it.
The app captures the interaction; the flow handles what happens next. A facilities engineer submits a maintenance request in a canvas app, the flow checks the asset record in Dataverse, routes the job to the right queue, requests spare-part approval if the cost exceeds a threshold, and writes the completion back where the app displays it.
This is the pattern we build most often, which is why we scope Power Apps and Power Automate work together rather than as two separate projects with a handover in between.
Power Apps developmentReporting tells you what happened; automation lets you act on it. A flow can refresh and distribute a report on a schedule, post an alert into Teams when a KPI moves outside tolerance, or pull the exception list from a model and turn each row into an assigned action.
The reverse is just as useful: every flow run produces operational data — volume, cycle time, rejection rate, exceptions — which becomes the best evidence for whether the automation is working.
Power BI InsightsPower Pages takes the process outside the tenant. A supplier submits their own onboarding documents, a customer raises a service request, a candidate applies for a role — and the flow behind the portal handles validation, approvals and internal notifications. External users get a responsive experience without internal staff acting as the manual relay between the form and the process.
Power Pages portalsDataverse gives the flow structured data, defined relationships, security roles and an audit trail; the flow gives Dataverse processes that actually execute. A case record, a project, an approval history — these are the backbone of the process-heavy solutions where a spreadsheet list would stop being adequate.
Where a solution lives entirely in SharePoint or a database, we generally leave it there. Dataverse is a design choice, not a default.
Automating around the ERP rather than inside it is often the pragmatic route: handling the notifications, document preparation and reconciliation steps the ERP doesn't cover, without a core-system modification that will complicate every future upgrade. Where the integration route is sound, the flow posts directly into the ERP instead.
ERP & Business ApplicationsLogic Apps, Functions, Service Bus and Event Grid handle the steps that need throughput, long-running execution or integration patterns beyond what a flow should carry. Copilot Studio and AI Builder add judgement where the input is unstructured — classifying an email, reading an invoice, extracting terms from a contract — with a human review path for low-confidence cases.
AI & Copilot EnablementFrom an initial conversation about a process that frustrates people, to a monitored flow that runs quietly for years. Eight stages, each with a clear purpose and something you can review.
We start with the process as it actually runs, not the version in the procedure document. Who starts it, what they need, what they do when something looks wrong, where it stalls, and which exceptions consume the most time. The output is a written description of the current state that the process owner confirms is accurate.
Automating a broken process makes the breakage faster and harder to see. Before we design anything, we remove unnecessary steps, duplicate approvals, unclear hand-offs and work that only exists because two systems don't talk. Some of the best results we deliver involve automating less than was originally requested, because the process map showed that half the steps weren't needed.
We check what the systems involved actually expose — an API, a database view, a document format, or only a user interface that can be driven by a desktop flow. Connector tiering and per-user or per-flow licensing are assessed here, so the commercial picture is clear before build starts rather than discovered at the end.
Which steps belong in one flow, which in a child flow, which in a Power App or Logic App. Where state is stored. What happens when a vendor API is unavailable at 2am. We document the design in a form your IT team can review — naming conventions, environment strategy, error handling, ownership and the connections that will be referenced.
Build happens in a development environment with sample data, in short iterations you can see. You review a working flow against real examples before the next layer is added — approvals first, then integrations, then exception handling — rather than one large delivery at the end.
Happy paths are the easy part. We test the cases that create real trouble: missing fields, duplicate submissions, partial failures mid-flow, timeouts, approval rejections, and a user acting on a stale item. Business users run acceptance scenarios with their own examples in a test environment before anything reaches production.
We promote the solution into your production environment, configure security and DLP where relevant, and carry out a structured handover: a short walkthrough for users, technical documentation for administrators, and clarity on who owns which connection and which notification queue.
Flows fail quietly, and quietly is the problem. We set up failure notifications and run-history monitoring, agree a support arrangement, and review performance after the first quarter — because real usage almost always reveals a step the original design didn't anticipate.
A note on timelines. A single approval flow over SharePoint can be live in one to two weeks. Something spanning several systems, with document extraction, a portal and governance, is measured in months. We give an indicative timeline after discovery, when we know the integrations involved — not before.
Automation touches business data and moves it between systems, which makes governance a design input rather than an afterthought. This is also where a wider Power Platform operating model matters more than any single flow.
Development, test and production separated, so a change is proven before it reaches a live process. Environment groups and rules where the estate is large.
Flows run in the context of a connection owned by a real or service identity. We design those connections deliberately, scope the identity's permissions to what the flow actually needs, and avoid the "it works because one admin owns everything" pattern that fails when that person leaves.
Connector classification at the tenant and environment level, so business data can't be moved to unapproved destinations.
— and so existing automations aren't broken by a policy applied without understanding what depends on it.
The connector and identity get the minimum scope required. Broad delegated permissions are the fastest route to an incident.
Held in the platform's secure connection model or Azure Key Vault, never embedded in flow logic or shared informally.
Data handled only where there's a lawful purpose, retained as policy requires, and kept within the boundaries your organisation has set. GDPR-relevant processing is reflected in the design, not asserted as automatic.
Flow run history reviewed deliberately, failed runs alerting to a monitored channel, and success criteria defined so "it ran" and "it worked" aren't confused.
Solutions, environment variables, connection references and pipelines, so deployment is repeatable and a change is traced to a release.
Unattended machines treated as production infrastructure: access restricted, credentials managed, sessions monitored.
Power Automate does not make a process automatically secure, compliant or reliable. Those outcomes depend on flow design, connection and identity configuration, environment and DLP governance, data sources and organisational controls. We design for them deliberately rather than assuming the platform provides them.
Explore Governance & SecurityThese are the outcomes automation is designed to produce. They are potential outcomes, not guarantees, and the size of each depends on the process, its volume and how much of it can sensibly be automated.
The most direct effect: recurring manual steps stop consuming working hours. Measure it against logged effort before and after, not against a headline percentage.
Validated, repeatable execution removes a category of mistake that manual processing creates — re-keying, missed fields, wrong recipients, duplicated entries.
Approvals, handoffs and responses happen in minutes rather than days, because the process no longer waits for someone to notice an email.
One agreed process, run the same way every time, regardless of who is on shift or which office the request lands in.
Status, ownership and history are recorded and reportable, so questions get answered from data rather than from chasing.
Doubling throughput no longer requires doubling headcount, which changes what growth costs.
Investments in ERP, CRM and Microsoft 365 deliver more once information moves between them without a person in the middle.
The routine portion of a role moves to software, leaving people with the exceptions, decisions and relationships that actually need them.
An honest note on numbers: Results vary enormously by process. We report what we measure in your environment rather than giving generic figures, and we don't publish results from other people's projects as if they were yours. Where a benefit depends on volume, data quality or user adoption, we'll say so in the business case rather than after the fact.
There is no universally correct automation platform. There is a correct platform for a given process, estate and team — which is why we'd rather explain the trade-offs than argue for one answer.
Manual work is "free" until you count the hours, the errors and the dependency on specific people. Automation wins where a process is repetitive, high-volume or error-sensitive; manual stays right where judgement, relationships or low volume make automation more effort than it saves.
Different tools for different halves of the problem. Power Apps is the interface for a person; Power Automate is the logic that runs without one. Most business solutions need both, and treating them as alternatives is the mistake.
Both automate processes and both are Microsoft.
The decision is about ownership, complexity and operating model — not about which is "better."
RPA is necessary when a system has no API and remains necessary. But RPA is more fragile than API-based integration, because it depends on a screen that someone else can change. Where an integration exists, automations built on it are more durable.
AI Agents vs RPA guideNon-Microsoft tools are often quick for personal and cross-SaaS automation. Power Automate's advantage in a Microsoft-centric organisation is identity, governance, DLP, environment management and the native connection to Dataverse, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 — the things that matter once automation becomes business-critical.
A custom service gives total control and fits unusual requirements precisely. It also carries build, deployment, hosting and maintenance cost, and takes longer. Power Automate gives a faster, governed, lower-maintenance route with a licensing model instead of a codebase. When the requirement isn't expressible in flows and connectors, custom development is the honest answer.
Custom Software & PlatformsThese solve different problems. A Power Automate flow follows a defined path: when this happens, do that, in this order. That determinism is a feature — it is auditable, predictable and easy to explain to a process owner or an auditor. An AI agent is given a goal and decides which steps to take, which makes it stronger where the input is ambiguous and the correct path varies case by case.
In practice the useful pattern is a flow with judgement inside it: the automation owns the process, the sequence, the approvals and the audit trail, while an AI Builder model or Copilot Studio agent handles the step that genuinely needs interpretation — reading a document, classifying a request, drafting a response for review. The flow stays accountable; the model handles the ambiguity.
Replacing a deterministic process with an agent is rarely the improvement it sounds like. It trades predictability and traceability for flexibility you may not need — and it usually makes support harder, not easier.
Read the AI Agents vs RPA guideCost comes up in every conversation, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a suspicious one.
Power Automate licensing is a real and significant part of the total cost, and it is a Microsoft decision rather than ours. The practical distinctions that matter are between flows run under a user's licence and flows run under a per-flow or process plan, and between standard connectors and premium connectors — which frequently decides the architecture, not just the invoice.
We advise on the implications of a design before you commit, and we defer to current official Microsoft licensing guidance for the actual numbers, because that guidance changes and we would rather point you at the source than state a figure that goes out of date.
A scope conversation precedes any number. It covers what the process does, which systems are involved, connector and licensing implications, environment and governance constraints, and the outcome we're both measuring.
Automations need looking after: failed runs diagnosed, connectors updated, flows amended as the process changes, and licences and connections kept current. We offer support arrangements so an automation is maintained rather than left to quietly stop working.
Any figure we give you is based on a specific scope, and we'll tell you what is and isn't included.
The questions that come up before a project starts — answered directly. If yours isn't here, ask us directly.
If a process depends on someone remembering, keeps stalling in an inbox, or is holding together several systems that don't talk to each other, it's worth a conversation about whether automation is the right answer — and if it isn't, we'll say so.
Tell us how the process works today, and we'll come back with a view on what's automatable, what should be simplified instead, and what a realistic scope looks like.