Compare Power Automate
Standard Procedure and Power Automate
Power Automate builds cloud and desktop flows. Office 365 licenses include standard connectors, approvals can be answered in Outlook or Teams, and Copilot creates cloud flows from descriptions.
Standard Procedure drafts procedures from the team’s instructions, with assigned steps for agents and teammates. Approval requests arrive in Now. Built-in connections include Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 tools.
When you edit or correct an agent’s work, the procedure learns automatically and uses the lesson on future jobs. Your data, procedures and the knowledge built from those corrections remain yours.
Facts about Power Automate come from its own pages, checked . Sources
At a glance
| Standard Procedure | Power Automate | |
|---|---|---|
| How a process gets built | Describe the job or upload a checklist. An agent drafts the procedure for review. You assign steps to people and agents and choose where work needs approval. | A flow designer. Copilot creates a cloud flow from a description and edits it on request. |
| Improving future runs | Edits and corrections automatically become lessons for future jobs. Agents apply what your team has taught the procedure, with no separate training task. | Ask Copilot to change actions in the flow, or edit them in the designer and save the changes. |
| Where work waits for a person | At the review steps you choose. Connection calls also require approval by default; only a person can change that setting. | Approvals answered from Outlook, Teams or the action center, by users in your tenant, including accepted guests. |
| Connecting other systems | An agent builds connections to the systems your team uses from API docs. Each call starts switched off for you to review. Email, files, calendars, chat and payment tools are also built in. | Microsoft’s connector catalog: standard connectors, premium connectors on paid plans, and custom connectors you build. |
| Pricing | Not published yet. We’re setting up the first businesses one at a time. | Premium is $15 per user a month, paid yearly; Process is $150 per bot a month. Office 365 licenses include standard connectors. |
What Standard Procedure offers
- Learning from everyday corrections
- Every edit or correction to an agent’s work becomes a lesson automatically. Agents use relevant lessons on future jobs, so the procedure improves as your team reviews work. You don’t have to save the lesson or update the instructions yourself.
- Assigned work for teammates
- Standard Procedure puts a teammate’s assigned steps in their work list, with approval requests in Now. Power Automate routes approvals to users in the environment or Microsoft tenant, including guests who have accepted an invitation.
- Google and Microsoft together
- Gmail, Google Calendar, Drive, Docs and Sheets are built in next to Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint and Excel, so one procedure can use both.
- Calls to other systems ask first
- Calls an agent makes through a connection start out waiting for a person. You let a call run on its own once you trust it. Only a person can make that change.
- You keep your data and procedures
- Your business keeps its data, procedures and learned knowledge. The details of how your team handles a job stay in your workspace, including the lessons built from corrections.
- Agents never see your keys
- An agent knows a connection by its name. The key is encrypted and added on the server as each call goes out.
What to consider with Power Automate
- Microsoft license entitlements
- Office 365 and some Dynamics 365 licenses include Power Automate with standard connectors, approvals among them.
- Approvals in Outlook and Teams
- Approvers answer in Outlook, a Teams card or the action center, and approvals can be sequential or require everyone’s response.
- Desktop and legacy applications
- Desktop flows work an application through its screens, terminal emulators included: attended on Premium, unattended on the Process plan.
- Self-service signup
- Microsoft offers a trial from the Power Automate pricing page. Standard Procedure is in early access; we set up businesses individually.
How to choose
Pick Power Automate if
- Everyone who approves or acts is in your Microsoft tenant.
- You need to automate a desktop or legacy application through its screens.
- Your licenses already include it and the job fits a flow.
Pick Standard Procedure if
- You want procedures to learn automatically from the edits and corrections made during normal work.
- Teammates take steps beside the agents.
- Your work is split across Google and Microsoft tools.
- You want connection calls to require approval by default.
Sources
Power Automate’s pricing and documentation, checked . Send a correction if a detail has changed.