How to Open an Application in Power Automate Desktop

automating applications or UI elements in power automate desktop is one of the two key elements it's very easy today we will open up an application do some operations in it and close it down so we want to automate notepad it's the same principle that goes whether you automate notepad or more advanced applications so notepad is a good sample application the first one is that we'll need to find the path of the notepad so I'll go down to start and this is a good way to find path of the applications that we want to automate I'll need to use notepad so I right click then I say open file location and let me just drag it in here here we can see this is a shortcut so again I right click open file location here it is so I'll need this path because I now I want to open up notepad so here I can shift with your keyboard right click with your mouse and then find a copious path move back to Power automate desktop so the first thing we will do is that we will open up this um notepad in here so we'll find a run application and that one so here we'll paste in the path remember to move the quotation marks this will actually have worked if we just had this this done this but for stability and because we'll use that with a lot of the applications difficult path we will just type in the full path because you might not know that with some of the apps we can only use the endings so always just use the full app this will produce a variable call app process ID I click save now when I run this application this will open up a notepad so far so good so here we want to fill something in that's just some text that could be every application that we are filling something in this is an input field just like you know input fields and sap service now or whatever you use so go up here and then find a populate text field in window take the one under from filling so I'll drag it in here here we need to have a UI element that is a text box so click that drop down say add UI element here you can see that in the app I can now choose different parts of the app that is all elements that we can fill text into I know it doesn't make a lot of sense to fill text in here but it is possible we want the input field down here so I press Ctrl on your keyboard I repeat control on your keyboard left click with your mouse we have now created a UI element now we just need to fill the text in and I want to say if this video helps you please help me and give it a thumbs up thank you so now we have created a working flow why don't we try to run it so it will take a few seconds and then we'll type in the text there you go you have now created your first Automation in applications well done we also want to make it bold text and here I want to click format and then click fund and so fourth so go up in actions and this is just like clicking buttons in any applications we'll find a quick UI element in window and drag it in here we have a UI element so again we click this little drop down take the add UI element let me just move it over here so I find the format that is the first button that I want to click press Ctrl on my keyboard click the format so now we're doing two things one thing I want to show you is click the stack of paper over here to the right that is UI elements here you can actually see that we have created some elements and we have different windows so windows or actually the computer is the top level then we have a window and here you can see we have a little asterisk and that is because when we write in a notepad this little asterisk comes up it means that it's unsaved so that's why we have two different Windows here we have the document text editor and best practice is to rename your UI elements so either right click or F2 click rename so here I want to say notepad input field and down here I can say rename I can see a format button make something that do something meaningful so it's easy to maintain both for you and for future developers so not in Practical difference but for um for future use you will be happy just to make it a habit so now I can click the format button let me try to run it again here we fill in the text in a few seconds there you go and we click the button so that's it and you can see here it actually it because we have we had two notepads open it got a little bit confused and took the other one and clicked the format in the last one that's why it's always good practice to close down all open applications when you begin an Automation in that way automation will not get confused so everything works but we just need to close down notepad here at the beginning and for that I can find a terminate process and drag it in in the in in the start sorry so we'll find it up here and here I'll have a process name so what I can do is just click this little drop down and either type it in I'm lazy so I'll do that or we could write it since we don't have any notepad open let me just click save here and open up a notepad you need to have the application open so I created this little trap and I didn't I just forgot that I should have opened the last one so I like these videos because you'll see how I work and now we can find the notepad it's probably also the same mistake as you can make and I think you can learn a lot for them so from them so then I can click notepad I click save so now we terminate the notepad process first and let me just open one more so we can see that it works so now I run the automation I terminate the process that will that close to two of them and now we only have this one open so now we are clicking the format that one worked now we just need to click the fund and get into the font options so we go up here and then we'll have a click another click UI element in window again we will create the button so click the drop down add UI element and now you need to don't click control now so click the format then when you're here click Ctrl press font go back here click save again I want you to go over to the UI elements it says menu item format blah blah blah here I really just want to say font button you can see it makes it a little bit more easy to read so now we need another click view element because when we are clicked format find this power Below open I need to click bold and then click ok so another click view element you know the drill and this is the exact way you automate applications it's straight forward no magic here take this drop down add UI element find the boat here press Ctrl and we have created another one then I can click save here it says list item build that might be fine it's actually a list and it's called bold then we warned the last one in here and we want to add another U element and click ok so here I place press Ctrl and we created that one click save I think I just want to use the syntax that I used before so okay but now um we can just actually have this one open because we're terminating it up here so let us try to run it so we're terminated opening up a new instance and again the benefit of doing this is that we can always make sure that we start up a fresh instance where we have our rules in and there you go we have automated Notepad so since this one will stay let's just make it back to regular when we want to close it we could of course have this file exit and then choose if we wanted to save and so forth you can do that that is just more click view elements that is a good approach if we want to save it here we don't have anything that we want to use so let's just copy this one here go down to the button and paste it in we'll term in it again that we would like to see that it actually works so I find a weight bracket in and let's just wait for four seconds click save I only do this so you can see what's going on and not not for any practical use so I just started now um we are filling in the text again we are formatting into text so now you actually learned how to automate applications and we wait four seconds to terminate it the next lesson is right up here go click it to learn even more power automate desktop

Channel: Anders Jensen

Views: 13,895

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Id: ul5Fc6ka5o4

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 20 2022