Introduction
UI flows brings Robotic Process Automation (RPA) capabilities to Power Automate. You can use UI flows to automate repetitive tasks in Windows and Web applications. UI flows records and plays back user interface actions (clicks, keyboard input, etc.)
In this article, I’ll show you how to create and test UI flow for the desktop to perform some basic functions.
First, you need to login to https://flow.microsoft.com/ with your Microsoft account to access the landing page of Power Automate. On the landing page, click on the create from the left side panel and select “UI flow”.
It will open the dialog box with two options which are the Desktop App and Web App. In this article, we are going to create a Desktop app. The desktop app will only compatible with Windows 10 machines running a 64-bit operating system.
Select the Desktop app and click on the Next button to create UI flow.
In the next step, you need to provide your UI flow name. I’ve given “Calculator” for this article demo and click on the Next button.
Now, we need to set up inputs for our UI flow. We need to add inputs for the actions that you’re about to record.
In the next step, we need to configure Power Automate, click on the “Next Step” button, and add “Recorder” action under the UI flow section. In the Recorder action, you need to add another action called “Record app”.
Now, we need to download and install the record app package. Once you click on the “Download package”, it will be downloaded Setup.Microsoft.PowerAutomate.UIFlow.exe file and install it. Once you click on the Launch Recorder, it will start recording your steps.
Now, we are going to capture the calculator input process, click on the record button, and open the calculator app and provide input1 and input2 (4 and 6) and capture the output in one variable (4+9=10).
This is how our recording steps captured by UI flow and recorded each step that we perform using a calculator.
Save UI flow and click on the next step to test our UI flow.
Provide both the input by providing numbers 1 (4) and number 2 (6) and click on the “Test now” button. It will automatically open the calculator app and capture input 1 and 2 and produce an output of the sum of both numbers, 10.
I hope you learn and get an idea of how to create a UI flow in this article. Happy Learning!