The Recorder in Power Automate for Desktop (Full Tutorial)

using the recorder in power automate for desktop is a very powerful way to learn a lot of new things when you're starting out with power automate let me show you how i want you to open up power automate for desktop and do the exercises with me in that way you'll learn the most so click new flow and then call it recorder demo like this click create the case i prepared for you is here the link is in the description below but we want to automate browsers and applications first browsers i want to use the recorder to open up microsoft edge navigate to google.com search for microsoft stock price extract a number stop the recorder and write the results back to a text file let me show you so i go back here this is my blank canvas of the queue and workflow i hit the record button up here to start the recorder that will open up the recorder in my other screen here it is to open up a browser i click the three dots here launch new browser and choose my browser remember to have the browser extension you want to use installed if you forgot how to install it click the video up here in the right corner that will take you through the installation process but i'll choose microsoft edge here you can see that we have actually opened up a browser let me just do it a little bit smaller here it is this is the browser that we want to automate you can see here we have an action that is launch new web browser and we are navigating to about blank which is right we can delete this step by clicking this trashcan we won't this is fine now we want to navigate to google.com to start recording our actions you need to click record then when you move your mouse here you can see that thing starts turning red these are ui elements that is buttons fields you can even see here i can automate my windows buttons here in the taskbar but i want to navigate to google.com how do i do that i just replicate what i do as a human go up here then i navigate to google.com and press enter that's it here you can see that google have automatically made some steps for us you can even see that i dragged something in and we'll try to delete it in the end now i want to search for something and again i'll need to make sure that i'm here i am now because the cursor is blinking if you're not you can just click here then i'll start typing i want to search for microsoft stock price and then i click enter here you can see that we recorded some new steps that is microsoft stock price and we go to a web page this is the number that we want to extract to extract this number which can change for now it's 292.39 you can see it even changed it here i can right click extract element value and then i extract the text by the way what is the q and microsoft stock price when you watch this video let me know in the comments if i have gotten rich if i bought it today so i will extract element value and choose this one here now we're done you can see that the extracted element that is green dotted lines around it that's fine we have done it we might have created a few more extra steps but that is fine we can click finish and check if our automation works here are the steps you can see that these ones here those ones are common that starts our auto generator actions using the recorder and here is the end so we can easily separate what we have done with the recorder and what we have not you can of course delete it if you want let me try to close the browser and let's just see that this works so if i click run here that will open up microsoft edge then i navigate to google i will get the price let me go back here we have not decided what we want to do with the price but as you can see here we have this flow variables we'll get back to variables but we will have it over here 292.35 that is exactly the number i wanted and it will even grab when the number changes we can try running it running it again and let's just try to delete this action this was the drag and drop ui element in window to delete it i can click here then i can click delete or simply just press the delete button let's see if it works now so when i click play i will navigate to google search for microsoft stock price get the details and it works again i'm not sure if we extracted the same number but this will work whatever number the current stock price is at and again here might be some double source which you can easily get rid of but here i search for microsoft stock price and then i navigated to this dynamic url you can see microsoft stock price so this might have been enough you can easily just tuning it and now the power comes out and the power was that you can see that we got the extracted element down here that was an attribute called inner text and we used an action called get details of elements on web page if you're new to this program you would never have figured it out but the recorder help you doing so and we want to save this to a text file that is this number so to do so i'll find a right to text file so i'll search for actions and then i'll say write text to file over here there you go then i need a file path i want to have it on my desktop so the easiest thing is that i can either start writing but i like to do this so if i go out to my desktop which is here i right click then i'll say new then i'll say text document now this is new text document 2. i can then shift right click copy as path and go back ctrl v paste it in i can delete the quotation marks or i should delete them i can also find it if i click this file selector here but now i will just use this so what is the text that i want to write well i want to write whatever is in this variable called inner text so to find this variable i click this x here then i choose the inner text like this i can choose to overwrite that is fine and then i click save now let me try to run my automation once more we open up edge we navigate to microsoft stock price we extract the number you can see here it's a new number and if i go back to my text document we have now written it to it that was easy we use the recorder to navigate around web pages click buttons and extract things now let me close this one here and look at the second part of today's exercise we can also delete all this or create a new flow if you want to save it i just mark this up here i press shift then i go down here that marks everything i can press delete there you go we have got rid of anything so let's inspect the case again now we want to automate the calculator this is a very simple application but the same principle goes when we want to automate more advanced applications in fact we can do this technique with all applications so i go back to power automate for desktop here again we will find manual actions with the recorder so i go over here to actions then i'll find a run application that is here and drag it in this one needs some parameters the application path you can again click this one here and select the executable or in the calculators we can just write in calc exit this is a windows application this will open up the calculator this one is it for now i will click save so when i run the automation i click play here you can see that i open up the calculator that is fine i drag it over here and then i hit the recorder and let me drag it in from my other screen because now i want to automate two plus two equals and then i want to extract the result this could be your crm system your payroll system your erp system whatever system you use this is the technique you can use there as well so here i click record now i'll just hover over to left click with my mouse here you can see that i click the button too then i'll say plus i record the steps i can pass if i want to navigate to another place and do something else but i won't i'll just click record again so two plus two here two plus two and i'll say equals this is 4 and now to extract it what do i think i need to do take 2 seconds before i reveal it yes you need again to right click over here add the result so i can get here i right click then i can say get name display is four that is the closest one i get for now so i will choose that one then i click finish so here is the flow again same procedure as last year i press some buttons and then i get details of the ui element in window again you would not have come to this conclusion if you were a newbie but look what's happened the recorded things got up here and then the application that is the one that we opened got down here what i want to do is drag this one up here in the beginning since i want to open it and then i want to do these things let me close it and let's see if it works so i hit play it opens up the calculator that is fine two plus two equals four and here you can see that in the attribute value and the reason that we have it stored the displays4 in this name is that if i open up this one here you can see that the variables produced is attribute value if i just go in here and i'll say result instead like this then i click save it will be stored in the result now it disappeared but it will get here when we run the automation again since we want to display the result i find a display message and drag it underneath here here i will just say the result is and i'll go in here and click the x choose the result that one is this one then i click save so now i'm presenting the result let me close down the calculator and run the automation once more so two plus two equals four and here you go we have now extracted the result and presented it in another system this is just a simple message box but you will get it but now couldn't it be nicer if we just had before let me just show you a nice trick it's not really part of the lesson but it will be a great hack when you precede your power automate for desktop learning so if i go over here to actions then i'll search for sub text and we'll use the get subtext i'll move it down here because now i want to manipulate this result variable you can see that we have displays for but i want to only have the four so the original text this is the result variable so i just click here choose the result here i can choose to start from the character position that one is fine i want to start from the four this is zero index so d is zero one two three four five six seven eight nine ten 11 i want to start at the 11th position that's fine the length that will just be to the end of my string so i'll just say end of text that is fine the result is getting stored in subtext i'll just store it again in the result so if i go down here click the x i can choose the result and then i can click save so i'm just taking out the four of this display is four and then i'm presenting it here so if i again close down i start the automation open up the calculator two plus two in a little while equals four and now we have the results so this lesson was all about the recorder but we also saw how we can combine manual actions with the recorder actions the next lesson in the course is right here for you just click the video on the screen

Channel: Anders Jensen

Views: 15,690

Keywords: power automate desktop, power automate desktop tutorial, power automate desktop recorder, power automate desktop web recorder, power automate for desktop, power automate for desktop examples, anders jensen, recorder in power automate desktop, web recorder in power automate desktop, power automate desktop desktop recorder, power automate for desktop record

Id: hpwuc8h3Q3E

Length: 13min 7sec (787 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 22 2022