microsoft business process flow

as businesses continue to evolve, so do their process automation needs. power automate is at the forefront of this evolution, enabling organizations to adapt and thrive in an increasingly digital landscape. by embracing the power of automation, businesses can achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency, agility, and innovation.

if you're ready to unlock the true potential of your business processes, power automate is your gateway to a future of streamlined operations and elevated performance.

if you've already created flows in power automate, you've seen how they can help you with repetitive tasks. and you can set them up to trigger and run manually or automatically based on specific events or schedules. although business process flows can be automated. they really read the class by themselves. rather than being a single flow, they are a collection of connected data, flows, actions, apps, and other artifacts that make up an end-to-end process. bpfs actually got their start as a way to automate work flows within microsoft dynamics. it was so successful there that Microsoft began expanding the functionality to better mesh with their entire dynamic power platform. power b, power apps, power automate, etc. bpfs are a great tool to enable teams with repeatable processes that the team must follow to meet their business goals. by using bpf to guide people through the process, you can reduce errors and greatly improve quality through standardization. it is possible to add input forms and links to documentation and other information in the flow. so that it is easily available whenever needed in the process. you can create conditional branches to handle variables in the process. you may have some extra work if you have too many variables though. business process flow also reduces the need to rely on developers. the tools visual interface and the ability to drag and drop components mean that it is possible for people to create powerful processes and routines without the need to write code. although obviously having some experience with power automate would help a lot.

let's say we may have a business process where we ship and recruit. there is a process that the hr team usually follows. after they are hired, we make sure they have a laptop, know the necessary company information, and we get their name, phone number, address, and the like. hr probably has a short checklist and forms they need to fill out for that person.

with business process flow, we can create a digitalized process for all those things. so, instead of hr worrying about the exact sequence of the usual manual process, or if they really have all the information they need, we can create a process that the hr team can follow sequentially.

the purpose of business process flow is to put structure around an existing business process and put a checklist around it.

a business process is entirely in the hands of the person using it. they are just working one by one and like a step by step process. with this, it simplifies a business process without automating it in any sense.

an action step is used when we want to perform an action like emailing data to the user. for example, we instruct the user to email a set of basic personal employee information to the accounts payable team to confirm payment. so, instead of entering a piece of data in the data step, we ask the user to perform an action.

there are also two more business process flow components namely workflow and flow step but we will not focus much on that in this tutorial.

you can help ensure that people enter data consistently and follow the same steps every time they work with a customer to create a business process flow. for example, you may want to create a business process flow so that everyone can handle customer service requests in the same way, or require people to approve an invoice before submitting an order. business process flows use the same underlying technologies as other processes, but the capabilities they provide are very different from the other features that processes use. to learn how to create or edit a business process flow, go to create a business process flow.

business process flow provides a guide for people to work. they provide a streamlined user experience that leads people through processes defined by their organization that need to progress to some sort of conclusion. this user experience can be tailored so that people in different security roles can have an experience that best suits their job.

use business process flow to define a set of steps for people to follow to lead to a desired outcome. these steps provide a visual indicator that tells people where they are in the business process. business process flow reduces the need for training because new users don't have to focus on which table to use. they can let the process guide them. you can configure business process flows to support common sales procedures that can help your sales teams achieve better results. for service groups, business process flow can help new employees get up to speed more quickly and avoid mistakes that could lead to dissatisfied customers.

each stage consists of a group of steps. each step represents a column where data can be entered. you can advance to the next stage using the next stage button. in the unified interface, you can work on a business process flow stage inside the stage flyout or you can pin it to a side pane. business process flow does not support extending stage flyouts to side panes on mobile devices.

you can create a required step that requires people to enter data for a corresponding column before they can proceed to the next stage. this is commonly called "stage-gating". if you add a business-required or system-required column to a business process flow step, we recommend that you also add this column to your form.

business process flows look relatively simple compared to other types of processes because they don't provide any conditional business logic or automation beyond providing a streamlined experience for data entry and step entry controls. however, when you combine them with other processes and customizations, they can play an important role in saving people time, reducing training costs, and increasing user adoption.