Power Automate is one of the four main services of the Power Platform, the other three being Power Apps, Power Virtual Agents and Power BI.

Power Automate can be divided into cloud flows (what was called Microsoft Flow before November 2019), desktop flows and business process flows. There is also approval flows and an approval engine included among the services within Power Automate.

History

In April 2016 Microsoft Flow went into Public Preview and on the 31st of October 2016 Microsoft Flow became General Available Announcing Microsoft Flow General Availability

On the 4th of November 2019 during Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft announced the launch of the preview of UI Flows Robotic process automation now in preview in Microsoft Power Automate

At Microsoft Ignite 2019 Microsoft Flow was also rebranded to Power Automate.

On the 2nd of April 2020 UI Flows became General Available, enabling RPA (Robotic Process Automation)

On the 19th of May 2020 Microsoft announced the acquisition of Softomotive Microsoft acquires Softomotive to expand low-code robotic process automation capabilities in Microsoft Power Automate and the RPA capabilities within the Power Platform got even stronger now with a desktop alternative in WinAutomation.