10 Business Processes You Can Automate With Microsoft Power Automate

Ten processes worth automating

1. 01

   Employee onboarding

   A new hire is added to your HR system or a form is submitted. Power Automate creates the Microsoft 365 account, assigns licences, creates the mailbox, adds the user to the right Teams channels and SharePoint groups, triggers a welcome email with setup instructions, notifies the manager, and creates an onboarding task list. What previously took a day of manual IT work happens in minutes from a single trigger.

2. 02

   Approval workflows

   Purchase requests, leave applications, contract approvals, expense sign-offs: any process that requires someone to review and approve something. The flow sends the request to the right approver, waits for their decision, routes to the next approver if required, sends notifications at each step, and records the outcome. All of this happens in Teams or email — no separate approval tool required.

3. 03

   Client intake and routing

   A contact form, email enquiry, or web submission arrives. Power Automate categorises it, creates a record in your CRM, assigns it to the right person based on type or territory, sends an acknowledgement to the client, and notifies the assignee. Enquiries that currently fall through the cracks or sit in a shared inbox for days are handled immediately and consistently.

4. 04

   Document generation

   A staff member fills in a form with client details and project scope. Power Automate generates a Word document using a template, populates it with the submitted data, saves it to the right SharePoint folder with the correct naming convention, and sends it to the relevant party for review. Proposals, statements of work, and contracts that took 20 minutes to produce manually are created in seconds.

5. 05

   Reporting automation

   Weekly or monthly reports pulled from multiple source systems, compiled manually, formatted and emailed. Power Automate connects to your data sources on a schedule, pulls the relevant data, formats it, and distributes it to the right people. The report that took two hours of someone's Friday afternoon to produce runs automatically overnight.

6. 06

   Employee offboarding

   When a departure is confirmed, the flow triggers a checklist: disable account on the exit date, revoke active sessions, remove from distribution groups, archive the mailbox, reassign OneDrive data, remove from Teams channels, notify IT and the manager. The security risk of accounts lingering active after departure is eliminated.

7. 07

   Invoice and purchase order processing

   An invoice arrives by email. Power Automate extracts the key data using AI Builder's document processing, creates a record in your finance system, routes it for approval based on amount thresholds, and marks it as approved in the system once the approval is received. Manual data entry and email chains are replaced by a traceable, auditable process.

8. 08

   Compliance and reminder workflows

   Licence renewals, certificate expirations, contract review dates, compliance deadlines: any recurring obligation that someone currently tracks in a spreadsheet or relies on memory for. Power Automate monitors a SharePoint list or calendar, sends reminders at the right intervals, escalates if no action is taken, and records when the action is completed.

9. 09

   Meeting follow-up and action tracking

   After a meeting, a Microsoft Form or Teams tab captures action items with owners and due dates. Power Automate creates tasks in Microsoft Planner or To Do, sends each owner a notification, and sends a summary to the meeting organiser. A week before each due date, a reminder goes to the owner. The actions that evaporate after most meetings are tracked from the moment they are agreed.

10. 10

    IT request handling

    Staff submit IT requests via a SharePoint form or Teams channel. Power Automate logs the request, assigns it based on category, notifies the assignee, follows up if there is no response within a set time, and records resolution. A basic service desk function without a service desk tool.

Which of these applies to your business