Navigating the Power Automate portal
1. Navigating the Power Automate portal
Now that you know what Power Automate is, knowing where everything lives in the portal will save you a lot of time. Let's take a quick tour.2. The portal at a glance
When you open Power Automate, you land on the Home page. On the left is the navigation menu, which is how you move between sections.3. Key sections
The five areas you'll use most are Home, Create, My flows, Templates, and Connectors. Home gives you Copilot, learning resources, and quick links, Create is where you build new flows, and My flows is where you manage existing ones. Templates offers pre-built starting points, and Connectors lets you browse the available services. We'll walk through each one in turn.4. Create: where flows begin
The Create page is where every new flow starts. You have three ways to build a flow. You can start from blank, pick from a template, or let a connector lead the way. You'll also find Desktop flow and Business Process Flow on the same page, but for now we'll focus on cloud flows.5. My flows: your flow library
My flows is where all your existing flows live. You'll see each flow's name, when it was last modified, and its type. Three tabs separate Cloud flows, Desktop flows, and flows Shared with me. Click any flow to open its detail page.6. Editing an existing flow
The detail page is the home for an existing flow. The Edit pencil on the far left of the top toolbar opens the flow in the designer, which is where you make changes. The rest of the toolbar covers running, sharing, saving as a copy, deleting, exporting, and turning the flow off. Below that, the Details panel shows when the flow was created and last modified, its type, and a run history.7. Templates: pre-built starting points
Templates are ready-made flows built by Microsoft and the community. Search for what you need, such as email notification or SharePoint approval, and you'll find dozens of options to use as a starting point. Click one to see its trigger, actions, and required connections before you commit. The important part to remember is that templates are starting points, not finished products. They might have hardcoded values, outdated actions, or missing error handling, so always review them before using them in production.8. Connectors: your flow's toolbox
Connectors is where you'll find over one thousand services Power Automate can connect to. We'll cover them in detail in Chapter two.9. Environments
There's one more thing to know about, and that's environments. In the top-right corner, you'll see an environment switcher. Environments are containers that separate your flows, connections, and data. Your organization might have a default environment for everyday work and separate ones for development or testing. For this course, the default environment is all you need, but it's good to know the switcher is there.10. Let's practice!
Now it's time to explore the portal yourself and find your way around.Create Your Free Account
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