A relatively new phenomenon is Robotic Process Automation (RPA), where solutions such as UiPath have been market leaders. Many things can be scripted and thus automated.

Eventually, I started with PowerShell and continued working on Linux shell scripts on the side.

BAT files moved to Unix shell scripts and evolved via Perl to a collection of “hey, let’s use awk/sed/grep/find” VBScript. I’ve spent a considerable time during my career automating and scripting things. Until now, a per-user license for Power Automate Desktop would set you back at least $15 per month.Thanks for reading my blog! If you have any questions or need a second opinion with anything Microsoft Azure, security or Power Platform related, don't hesitate to contact me. Users who want to give Power Automate Desktop a try can now download it from Microsoft, but in the coming weeks, it’ll become part of Microsoft’s Insider Builds for Windows 10 and then eventually become a built-in part of Windows 10, all the way down to the standard Windows Home version. It’s based on Microsoft’s acquisition of Softomotive in early 2020, but Microsoft has since extended Softomotive’s technology and integrated it deeper into its own stack. Power Automate Desktop originally launched last September. It comes with 370 prebuilt actions that help you build flows across different applications, but its real power is in letting you build your own scripts to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Power Automate Desktop is what Microsoft calls its “attended Robotic Process Automation” solution, but you can think of it as a macro recorder on steroids. Microsoft today announced that it is making Power Automate Desktop, its enterprise-level tool for creating automated desktop-centric workflows, available to all Windows 10 users for free.

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