The world of Power Automate has transformed with the introduction of the new Flow Designer, enhancing how Power Platform consultants and developers create and manage their automated workflows. This innovative tool revolutionizes the user experience, offering streamlined capabilities that significantly boost builder productivity. In this blog post, we will explore the advanced features of the new Power Automate Designer, including its intuitive flow canvas, dynamic content management, and the powerful Copilot Help Pane. Whether you are a seasoned developer or just starting, understanding these improvements will be essential in optimizing your workflow automation and achieving efficient task management in your organization.
So the old designer has not gone anywhere. It is still in PowerApps and Power Automate. But now you can now stumble upon a new designer. You now have the ability as a Power Platform consultant or developer to use either. If you navigate to a flow, you can see that you now have a edit with new designer or the traditional edit button.
The New Power Automate Designer
What is the Designer? The Power Automate Designer is a tool that allows users to create and debug Power Automate flows. It provides a user-friendly interface that enables users to design and manage their flows with ease. The designer consists of multiple elements, including images, user interface (UI) elements, and variables, that can be accessed and managed within the tool.
If you are familiar with the existing Power Automate Designer, at first glance there are some pretty drastic differences. The biggest being the “flow canvas”, the action details window, the dynamics content window, and the Copilot Help Pane.
Power Automate Canvas
Previously, in Power Automate, the actions within a flow would begin to form a tree from one action to another. This is still the case (as you can see above) but now, you can actually move the entire flow around using drag and drop. You’ll see that the background has grey dots, signaling the flow is on top of the canvas. In the bottom left hand corner you can see new Navigation buttons. These allow you to zoom in, zoom out, etc.
This allows you to zoom in and out as you please depending on how large or small your flow may be. Speaking from personal experience, I have seen flows that have a lot of nested conditional statements, or a “switch” action with several options. This would cause the flow to become very wide and eventually wider than the browser window would allow. Consequently, the navigation can annoying because then you have to scroll up and down and left and right to find your action.
Lastly, there is a Go To button (indicated by the “search icon”). Developers can use this to find a specific action by it’s name. This would then automatically navigate them to the action needed, no matter the size or logic of the flow.
Power Automate Action Details Window
Power Automate Actions would show their details on the specific action. This was helpful because you were able to see multiple action’s details at once. This allowed you to mentally understand the parameters for that action. Now, the UI is slightly different. When you select an action, the action’s parameters (or details) display on the left hand side.
All of the actions parameters, settings, & details are still viewable in the new designer. They are just in the form of different tabs in the details window.
Power Automate Dynamic Content Window
On large flows, the designer would begin to slow down when trying to load the Dynamic Content pop-up. It previously would show next to whichever action you had selected. Now, you will no longer see this window popping up in the UI. Instead, you will have to select the action’s parameter and then a lighting bolt displays in the row.
When you select this, the pop up will then display. On top of this, there is one nice upgrade within this pop-up window itself. On the Functions section of the window, you will see that the text box is now a box. Previously, if you had a function in the text window, you would be limited to a single column height. Subsequently, you would have to scroll to the right and left to see the entire function. Now, you can see it all in a standard text bow. I LOVE THIS!
Power Automate Copilot Help Pane
Copilot is a revolutionary tool that can help you create All your Cloud Flows in the Power Platform with ease and efficiency. Copilot can generate code, components, and logic for your flow based on natural language prompts. You can also customize and refine your flow with Copilot’s suggestions and tips. Copilot is still in preview mode, but it has shown great promise and potential for Power Platform developers.
The Copilot Help Pane should be displayed by default when working on a flow in the new designer. If you do not see it, you can select the Copilot button in the ribbon of the flow designer near the top right of your screen.
You can have Copilot create, update, or remove actions in your flow. It can create conditional logic, or update any parameter in an existing action. You can ask Copilot to change a Dataverse action to an Excel action or change the table in your “Get a row by ID” to use Account’s instead of Opportunities.
Pros of the New Power Automate Designer
- The Flow Canvas is more friendly to be able to view large flows and shuffle actions
- The Action Details window can allow for boosted performance of the Flow designer
- Improvements to the text box within the Function pop-up window
- Increase in performance from no longer automatically loading Dynamic Content pop-up
- The ability to utilize Microsoft Copilot to update virtually anything related to your flow
The new Flow designer is an overall improvement. There are many things that will now provide the experience with boosts in performance and efficiency. I felt that there were several annoying UI components that would be annoying to deal with, like all the side to side scrolling or waiting for action details to load. But it is obvious that the Power Platform understood those issues with the UI and all of these issues are now resolved.
That being said, I think there is a small handful of things the previous designer may have done better than the new designer.
Cons of the New Power Automate Designer
- The Flow canvas navigation can feel fairly “click-y”
- Cannot see multiple action’s detail information at one time
The new canvas may just take some getting used to but I have found it’s ability to auto resize for me has been below average. The actions often feel too small or too large. This is especially true when I am using the details window on the left and the copilot help pane on the right. Also, and this may just be me, but I think with the new UI that the scroll wheel should be used to zoom in and out, not scroll up and down. I find myself accidently scrolling up constantly.
The ability to see multiple action’s parameters is no longer available since they only display on the left hand details window. There are situations where you would want to make sure two actions have the same parameters and you would be able to quickly see them in the old UI. Now you would have to click into each one and ensure they match.
In Conclusion
It is important to keep in mind that this new designer is practically brand new and the Power Platform is certainly updating any changes or issues the users have with the experience. Overall, I enjoy the new designer much more than the original. It offers a variety of features and elements that can help you design and manage your flows with ease. Whether you are a beginner or an expert, the Power Automate Designer can help you automate your tasks and workflows with Microsoft products.
The New Power Automate Designer is a powerful and user-friendly tool that can help you create and debug your Power Automate flows. If you want to learn more about the Power Automate Designer, you can check out the Microsoft Learn guide or the official Microsoft Power Automate website. Happy Developing!