There is an incredibly useful tool that was added to Windows relatively recently, but not many
people know about. It’s called “Power Automate Desktop” and it’s basically a way to automate
almost anything you can think of, and it’s GUI based so you don’t have to know how to code.
These automations you create are called Flows, and you can see how you have an enormous list
of possible actions you can have it do step by step. Anything from copying or deleting a folder,
to taking a screenshot or printing a document, to setting some variable to use in another action, or
even checking if a window contains a certain text. And of course, you can set conditions to only do
steps in certain cases, and loop a set of steps as long as you need. So if you aren’t someone who
knows how to code, this is actually a good way to learn some of the basic high level concepts.
If you’re on Windows 11 it should already be installed, but if you’re on Windows 10 you can
just install it through the Microsoft Store. At this point you might think this is cool,
but you aren’t really sure of the practical use of it. So I’ll give
you a real example of an actual automation I created, and I think it’s pretty cool.
Before we do that though, speaking of cool programs and services,
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On the 'my footprint' page I can see a selection of these companies,
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And I'll also put that link in the description. And with that all being said, let's continue.
Alright so for this automation, what I wanted to do was actually pretty complicated. Basically,
I wanted to know when Microsoft publishes a new app in the Microsoft Store,
because they’ve been known in the past to quietly release some cool apps without
really telling anyone. It’s easy enough to see a list of all the apps they publish,
but there are around 700 of them, and they are not sorted by date. Gee it sure would be
nice if I could have a program automatically go through the entire list and show me if anything
new was added since last time. So that’s exactly what I created, let’s take a look.
First let me finish explaining the interface so you know what's going on. On the right side you
can see a list of all these variables, most of which are automatically created for the action,
and it’s not as complicated as it looks. For example, you can use the action to
get the current date and time, and then it creates a variable called “CurrentDateTime”,
but you can also rename it. At the top you have controls,
including one that just lets you record what you’re doing, so if the task is simple enough,
you might not even need to set anything manually. You can also copy and paste actions,
move them around, disable them, and run the flow starting at a certain point. You can even
set breakpoints which will pause the flow at a certain point, like to debug or check a variable.
Alright so now let’s go through how my flow works, because it has a good mix of various
functions to show you what this is capable of. The first thing it does is launches a
new Google chrome window to that web page that shows all the Microsoft apps. This next
part was tricky though, because you see on this page, it doesn’t show the whole
list. It makes you keep clicking “show more results” until all 700 are shown.
Fortunately you can create loops, so I found a javascript code snippet online that lets you
click any button on a webpage, and I set it to just click that “Show More Results” button. Then
it does that a number of times, which I set it to 20. Then it checks if that “Show More
Results” button is still there, and if it is, it goes back and does 20 more again. I could
have it check every time it clicks the button, but that goes way slower than just spam clicking it.
Next I used the “extract data from web page” action, where it basically asks you to select
a couple examples of what data you want, in this case I want the names of the apps,
and then it's smart enough to auto detect all the rest of them, and turns it into some text.
These next actions are just little things to clean up and prepare the text, like removes
any blank spaces at the end, converts it into a list, and sorts it alphabetically. It also puts
this list into a variable called LatestAppList for later. Next, it opens a new Excel file,
pastes the list in there, then saves the spreadsheet with a filename that has the
current date. That way by saving the file, I can use it to compare the lists in the future.
But next is where it starts comparing a previous list file I’ve made before. So it pops up a
dialogue that lets me select an existing list. This function even lets you choose which folder
to select from, and filter to only show certain files if you want. After I choose an old list,
it copies the data from the spreadsheet and puts it into a variable called OldAppList,
and uses this function called “Subtract Lists”, which compares that variable to the LatestAppList,
and creates a new list with only the entries that are in the latest list,
and not the old. So now I have the list of only newly added Apps, and it puts them in
the clipboard. Just as a finishing touch, I even have it open Notepad and paste them
for me to see. There’s basically no way I could have done this manually.
But like I showed, this just scratches the surface. For example, if I wanted to get fancy,
instead of having to select the Excel file myself, I could have it get a list of the files in that
folder sorted by date and pick that automatically and continue on, so it would be fully automatic,
and then pop up a notification only if there is a new thing found. Wait,
I did actually do all that! As you can see here. In this more advanced version,
I also made a variable for the path to the list folder so I can just change it by just changing
that one variable, and then a bunch of the actions below reference that. And I made it write to a
text file as a log in the case it does find new apps, so it really does everything for me now.
Now as cool as this Power Automate program is, it’s not perfect, there are some really
dumb things about it. For example, you can’t just have it run it offline, you HAVE to log
into it with a Microsoft account. But at least it keeps the flows backed up in the cloud I guess.
Speaking of backing up though, another stupid thing is if you want to export and save a flow,
like to share with a friend, there’s no official way to do that. What you can do is select all
of the actions in a flow, then hit copy, which will put them in text format. Then you can put
them in a text file, and if you want to restore them, just copy all the text, and hit paste
in a flow and they should all show up. So it does work, it's just a little bit convoluted.
Oh and finally the dumbest thing, is even though it’s literally an automation program,
there is no way to automatically schedule a flow to run, you HAVE to run it manually. So
if you want to automatically run something on startup, tough luck. Apparently they reserve
that ability for business users, even though it’s included in Windows 11 Home. VERY Dumb.
Also quick random note I’ll just throw in here,
if you want the browser and web actions to work correctly,
you have to make sure you install the browser extension for whatever browser you’re using.
Now when you go and open the app there are a few examples, but if you want to
mess around with the one I made, I’ll put a link to that text file in the description,
so you can just copy and paste it into your own flow. You’ll just have to change that first
variable to a folder you want to use, and then it should be set, though the first time it runs it
will display a message that no previous lists were found. Yep, I added a check for that too.
So hopefully this video gave you an idea of what this could be used for, and maybe you already know
something it would be good for, so definitely let us know about that down in the comments if you do.
Thanks again to Mine for sponsoring the video, be sure to visit SayMine.com so
you can start reclaiming your data too. The link is also in the description.
And of course do all the usual stuff, click that big fat thumbs up button,
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If you want to keep watching, the next video I’d recommend is about another cool
website that lets you scan files with basically every antivirus all at once,
I’ll put that link right here. So thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.