Automate approval processes with Power Automate, AI, and Teams!

Automate approval processes with Power Automate, AI, and Teams!

Webinar transcript

In this video, Ane and Frode show you how to easily automate a typical approval process. We start with a basic example and expand it to give the approver a much better basis for making decisions using data from various sources (Dynamics 365, Excel) and insights generated by AI Builder (GPT).

In this video, you will learn:

Watch the full video recording:

Whether you have some experience, are a complete beginner, or are simply curious about automation, you will gain valuable insights into how Power Automate can simplify your workday.

Do you have specific questions or would you like to discuss them with our experts? Get in touch, and we can help your organization with automation and increased efficiency.

Transcript of the webinar on 13 March 2025:

Automate approval processes with Power Automate, AI, and Teams!

Ane: How much time do you spend each week waiting for approvals, searching for information, or performing repetitive tasks? That’s time you could have spent on more important work. With Microsoft Power Automate, you can create efficient workflows that reduce manual tasks and give you greater control. We’ll walk you through some specific examples and show you how to get started, no matter what you do.

Imagine starting your day with an inbox full of emails, decisions awaiting approval, and lots of other information scattered across different systems. What if you could automate much of this, enabling faster approvals, better insights, and everything delivered directly in Teams? Tune in to today’s broadcast to see how you can use Power Automate.

Frode: And that was a fantastic introduction to today's topic, Ane. You're back in the studio this time to show us HOW.

Ane: It feels good to be back.

Frode: Yes, it’s going to be great fun. And we’re going to—well, for those who didn’t see you in the previous episode, you really should watch it. I’d almost say you have to. Because that’s when we talked about what Power Automate is.

Ane: An introduction.

Frode: Yes. But who are you, really?

Ane: Yes, I’m Ane. I’ve been working at ProsessPilotene for almost seven years now.

Frode: Seven years?

Ane: Yes, it’s been a while. I like running, and I like skincare. I’m an old chemist, after all, so I suppose I have to keep that up too.

Frode: I didn't learn that much about skincare when I studied chemistry, you know.

Ane: There are a lot of active ingredients, you know, Frode.

So there’s a lot of chemistry involved.

Frode: Yes, there’s a lot of chemistry involved. My name is Frode, and today I’ll try to ask Ane some good, specific, technical questions. We’ll record today’s broadcast, edit it, add subtitles, and publish it for you, so if you have any questions, please post them in the comments below. You can also find Ane on LinkedIn, so feel free to contact her if there’s anything you’re wondering about.

Ane: Yes, just send me a message.

Frode: Because she solves many of the issues you may have at home. That, and Dynamics, really. And Ane, could you tell us a little about what we're actually going to talk about?

Ane: Yes, so we're going to look at an example—a very specific example of an approval process. And then we'll build on it from there, adding more and more "juice" so that approvers have better information on which to base their decisions.

And then we'll look at adaptive cards, or as Microsoft calls them, Adaptive Cards.

Frode: What is that?

Ane: They’re cards in Teams. Or, you can also use Adaptive Cards in agents. But it’s really just a small card that can display information, receive information, or show images, and you have a great deal of flexibility.

Frode: I'm really excited about it, because I know this is a very useful feature offered by the Office suite and Microsoft. But we see that very few customers use it. Yet it simplifies everyday communication tremendously. So I'm very excited to see whether you can build it. And with that, just for those who didn't see our last webinar video when you talked about it,

But briefly, Ane, what is Power Automate?

Ane: Yes, Power Automate is a tool—and a very powerful one—and now has over a thousand connectors, or, well, can connect to countless systems.

Frode: Yes, many of these are data sources.

Ane: Straight out of the box, then. That opens up enormous possibilities.

Frode: And the same integrations we're talking about here could be used if you have, say, ServiceNow, a ServiceDesk tool, or SAP as your financial system, or something like that.

And those are the same connectors that I know you can use in Power BI to create reports, so there are a lot of exciting possibilities there. And we’ve chosen a small use case, Ane, that we’re going to show, and I thought I’d let you demonstrate how it works first. It’s about the famous “approval of something.”

Ane: Yes, this is something we see with customers all the time—there's a need for it. So we thought it would be a cool example to use today.

Frode: Yes, and then I guess all we really need to do is switch over to your PC.

Ane: Yes, then we can start with... Here we see... A Dynamics 365 environment and a model-driven app that we have called Miljøpilotene. This is the same world we explored in the previous webinar as well.

Frode: Yes, it was the same environment.

Ane: So here I am a salesperson named Erik Solberg. He has prepared a quote for one of Miljøpiloten's customers, or potential customers.

Frode: Potential customers, yes.

Ane: Um. So here we can see a quote, and we have some products that have been added to the quote. These include a few hours of environmental consulting, at an hourly rate.

And then we can see that the detailed amount—that is, the total in the quote—is 915,000.

Frode: kroner in that offer. Yes, a perfectly ordinary offer.

Ane: Yes, a perfectly ordinary quote, and Erik here wants to give a discount of 66

Frode: Oh, that was steep.

Ane: Yes, and in this example, we've set it up so that MiljøPilotene wants an approval request to be sent to one of the sales managers if a salesperson gives a discount of more than 50.

Frode: Yes. And I think this is a very realistic scenario. Very often, you are given the authority to do something. It could be an expense claim or a purchase request. In this case, it is an approval process for sales.

Ane: And often, in a way, you have authorization up to a certain point.

Frode: Yes, a threshold value.

Ane: A threshold, and after that, it requires an additional approval process.

Frode: Exactly. Yes. But how does this process work? What is the process like for Erik and for the person who has to approve it?

Ane: Yes, so in this case, we’ve focused on the Power Automate part, so now we’re pretending that Erik has entered 66%.

Yes, he has.

And that has happened too.

Frode: What happens then?

Ane: Then the sales manager, who in this case is me, gets

Frode: Oh! Yes, yes, yes. Congratulations.

Ane: Thank you, thank you. It happened recently. Then I’m notified that someone here is requesting approval for a quote discount. Erik Solberg wants to give a 66% discount on this specific quote.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: For the customer Bærekraftmaling AS, who is the customer in the quote. Then I get a summary, if I would rather read it in a more segmented and divided format.

And then I can click straight through to the quote if I want to.

Frode: Yes, that's what you just showed.

Ane: Yes. This takes you directly to the quote in Dynamics. From here, I can approve or reject the discount percentage.

Frode: Yes.

Yes.

Do you just click those buttons in the email, or what?

Ane: That takes you to the approval center. And then I can also write a comment. And I get the same summary. I can switch between approve and reject.

And then I can write, go ahead with 66%. This is a good customer.

Frode: Yes, yes, but you'll get a comment, then.

Ane: Yes.

Frode: And then it goes back to Erik?

Ane: Yes, he gets it back by email in this setup. Ideally, though, I would set it up so that he received it directly in Dynamics.

Frode: Correct.

Ane: While he was viewing the quote. So you can add some columns to the quote, allowing you to see it directly in the quote.

Alternatively, you can also use notifications in the quote.

Frode: But this was a very simple process. Short and concise, I think. How did you build this, Ane?

Ane: Yes, I'd like to show you. So, we'll go to Make Power Automate, which is where you create and build all the flows. And those who are trained will notice that I'm working from within a solution, which is common practice.

And then we'll start by taking a look at this very, very simple Power Automate flow. I can open it in... Edit mode, so you can see both which actions are included here and which trigger I've used.

Frode: Great. So, what we have here is excellent. We've moved on from looking at the flow itself, and what we're seeing now are the steps in the flow.

Ane: Yes, so it starts with a trigger. Yes. I've chosen to have this flow run when a quote is updated with a discount, and it's specified here that it's only that column I want to trigger on. I can also filter, in a way. The best practice here is to avoid having the flows trigger unnecessarily often.

So I've added a filter here so that the quote discount I've entered must be over 50 percent. You could also add a step like this to check and compare after the trigger. But then you would use more space in the flow and trigger it unnecessarily often, so I just wanted to show that we don't need to do that.

Frode: No, so you put the condition for starting the flow in the trigger, that is, the start element?

Ane: Yes, put as much as possible into the trigger so that you limit how often the flow runs.

Frode: Yes, that's a good tip.

Ane: So capacity issues are no longer a concern, right?

Frode: No, but it’s about being smart, you know. Yes, because it’s easy to just keep going, since you think it doesn’t matter, but it does.

Ane: It does matter, especially when you're a company looking to scale and grow, because then the volume increases.

Frode: It adds up to a lot of volume, yes.

Ane: Then I have an action here, which is also a Dataverse action, that basically just retrieved a little more information from the quote that triggered the flow.

Frode: Right.

Ane: Because I need to know a little more about it, I want to know the seller's name.

So then I retrieved the current user's full name by expanding that column.

Frode: Correct.

Ane: In the proposal.

Frode: Yes. But if you didn't know anything else, because now I know that you know a little about the data model, and here you select columns, and you sort of choose to create a query.

Ane: Yes.

Frode: How did you actually manage to do that?

Ane: It’s really about knowing the data you’re working with.

Frode: The data you’re working with.

Ane: And if you're wondering what the columns are called, Microsoft has very good documentation. Yes. But I also often find it easiest just to go into the tables in the solution and look there.

Frode: Could you use Copilot to ask it to create that, in a way?

Ane: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Because, as I said, Microsoft's documentation is just very cumbersome. So use Copilot, yes. Just ask: What is the logical name of this column?

Frode: And then it will be able to create that too, right? So you can get help creating the query.

Ane: You can definitely get help writing that data query too.

Frode: And this trigger refers to data in the Dynamics database, but could it use other sources?

Ane: Absolutely. As we said, there are thousands of different sources you can connect to without having any knowledge whatsoever of how to communicate with those APIs. But yes, we wouldn't have needed to store the data in Dataverse; we could have stored it in other systems.

Frode: Because that means the tool we're showing now is also useful to everyone else—not necessarily just Dynamics customers and users, but many others as well.

Ane: And then I basically set two variables there, just to keep them easily accessible. The link to this specific quote.

And I also set the customer name, because I used a function there to retrieve the customer name formatted from the trigger.

Frode: Yes, that's right. So you retrieve what was in the result from the first one and use it later.

Ane: Yes, and how you know that, in a way, may not be so easy to just know, but when you look at previous runs—you can, and you should, test your flow often.

Yes. Run and test it often as you build it. That way, you can also see what outputs you get at every single step.

Frode: Right, right. Yes, but it’s fun. So step 1 is to extract it from the source data, and then you retrieve—you’ve given it a name—so you retrieve the quote for it, meaning the name of the quote and the customer.

And then you set the variables, right?

Ane: Yes. And then we come to the key point, in a way. Yes. I need to send that approval to the head of the department.

Frode: Right, yes.

Ane: And here it could be a list or something else. A person. But it could also have been a list, and it could also have retrieved that list dynamically from another system.

Right. Used an action to communicate with the HR system. Retrieved everyone with the role of sales manager. And then listed those email addresses.

Frode: And there I can see it in detail—that the text we saw at the beginning is actually something you wrote as a template.

Ane: Yes, and you can use Markdown here. So you can create tables and,

Frode: Exciting.

Ane: Yes.

Frode: And those were all the flows?

Ane: Yes. I added one small extra thing right at the end, which is that if I, as the sales manager, choose to approve or reject your request to give a large discount, then you, as the salesperson, should be notified. So I added an email notification so that the salesperson receives it by email.

Yes, your discount was approved.

Frode: Lovely.

Ane: And if it wasn't approved, I'll send an email about that too, including, of course, the comments provided by the approvers. And I'll update it as well.

Frode: And you update the quote as well?

Ane: Yes. Removing the discount.

Frode: Down with the discount. Absolutely wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Yes, it's magical. Yes.

Yes, but I think that's useful. Once you've created this flow, what do you do next? You said you were going to test it.

Ane: Yes.

Frode: And what do you do here to, in a way, test and publish this flow?

Ane: Right? The buttons up here are the ones you use a lot. Yes. When you work in Power Automate through a solution, you have the option to save draft versions.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: And you can also go back to view previous versions, so I can see that yesterday I had these versions, and today I have this version, and this is the one that has been published, but I could just as easily have chosen to publish an earlier version.

Frode: An earlier version, yes, so you have version control. That's great, yes.

Ane: Yes, that's really useful. And then I have the option to test it. You can either, well, do it manually, but here I can trigger it as well. Re-trigger it, really, since I've run it before, by simply selecting one of my previous runs and running it again. That way, the input that the trigger runs on is exactly the same.

Frode: The same every time, yes. But that's useful, because then you can test with the same test data every time.

Ane: Exactly. And it often takes time to get things started. And performing the trigger action often takes time too. So it’s really useful to be able to simply use the latest one—the one you last triggered with. Use it again.

Frode: Right, interesting. So then you get full development and support for it, yes. But what about when you're going to launch it? I mean, now you've finished testing, it works—what do you do then?

Ane: All you have to do is make sure the latest version is published.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: And you can also check that the flow is enabled, so I can publish it as well when I see it.

Then you can see that it’s publishing here, and it takes a little while to publish. It will let you know when everything is ready. Remember to test it. And yes, you can also see from here that it’s on. So the only option we get here is to turn it off, if necessary.

Frode: Yes, that's right.

And you can see analytics, how much it has been used, and that sort of thing.

Ane: Yes, so you get an overview of failed runs and how often it runs, and perhaps most importantly, these connection references, which are really just references to the connections you use.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: Yes.

Frode: The data sources you have, yes.

Ane: Yes, that's right.

Frode: And this, but that was a really great flow, Ane. Are there any other things that are important to mention while we're on this topic? Because I have a question for you, you know. Yes, yes, yes.

Because my next question would be: How could you have improved this flow?

Ane: Yes, I'm glad you asked.

Because I have a lot of suggestions.

Frode: It was almost expected; I'm a little excited again now.

Ane: Yes, because that’s the direction we want to take. Given the way the world is going, we want to have a lot of information gathered in Teams, because we now use Teams as our collaboration tool, and that’s where we spend our time and communicate during the workday. So instead of this being sent by email, it could be sent directly to a channel in a team.

Frode: Exactly, right.

Ane: And I would say—at least in my opinion—that it is an improvement.

Frode: Is it an improvement because you don't have to deal with so many emails?

Ane: Yes, and in addition, you can publish it to an entire channel, and everyone in that channel will then be able to choose to approve it. So it’s important to choose the right channel, of course, with only the sales managers who have,

Frode: Or, yes, the management team, or whatever it might be. The HR department, or whatever the topic is.

Ane: Exactly. So we can take a look at how they,

Frode: I'm excited.

Ane: Yes. So, I'll open that flow in Edit mode here, so we can take a look.

Um, and here we have—you'll recognize the first ones—the trigger is the same.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: And the steps up to this point are the same.

Frode: Correct.

Ane: By retrieving the salesperson and the customer and so on. And then I used Create an approval. Um. And then post this adaptive card, and then we wait for approval.

Because we said at the outset that we were going to talk a little about adaptive cards, but then you clicked the + there to add a new one where it says create approval. So you clicked the plus sign and then added that step.

Yes, so when using adaptive cards for approvals, you have two options in Teams. You can either create an approval as a separate step, post that approval, and then wait. This gives you a little more flexibility if you want to carry out some steps in the meantime.

Frode: Correct.

Ane: Maybe fetch someone, or some approvers, or do something else before you wait for the approval. You have a little more flexibility because you've split up the actions. But you don't—there are pros and cons, in a way—because when you... create this approval in a separate step, the output you get is a predefined Teams adaptive card.

Frode: Okay.

Ane: If I had chosen to, in a way, both create and wait for approval in Teams, you can do that too. Then you have to build the entire adaptive card yourself.

Frode: Correct.

Ane: Which gives you more flexibility if you want to be specific about the design, yes. And perhaps, yes, the layout, images—yes, if you want more control over that. But you also really need to keep your wits about you, because you have to add the waiting conditions.

Because if you create it yourself, you can click Approve, and then the people in Teams should be notified that it has already been approved. And you need to keep track of all that yourself.

Frode: Right, right.

Ane: Yes, I can show you exactly what is being made in this case.

Frode: Yes, could you do that?

Ane: Yes. So here we can see the same flow as last time. And you remember what that email looked like. So we can take a look—here I am in the Miljøpilotene team.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: And then I pretend that I'm a salesperson who has access to the General Sales team.

And then I can see here that I have an approval pending. Requesting approval for a quote discount.

Frode: Correct.

Ane: So, yes, I have quite a few. Look, here's a good one, another new one. So we can see that I've done a bit of testing here.

Frode: Yes, you've tested a few more, yes.

Ane: Yes, so we can take another look at what it would look like if we applied a different discount.

Then we can go here, and, for example, it will trigger again when I apply a different discount. So, let's say I increase it to 67%; then my flows will run again.

Frode: So in theory, you should get a notification in Teams?

Ane: I will.

Frode: I see there's a number one here, so maybe that's the one that's arrived?

Ane: Well, yes, it takes a little while. We can actually see it from here, because you can see all the runs. So if we look at it here in the list, you can see that it's running. And if I go in here and look below, yes, there's a new activity. New. Erik Solberg wants to give a 67% discount on the quote. And from here, I can very easily approve or reject it.

So I might reject this.

Frode: And then you do it directly in Teams, and it jumps

I don't go into the website that they see.

Ane: No, that was for me. Then we submit it. And now no one else in this channel will be able to do it again either. Because now, for me, it has been updated to show that the response has been sent.

Frode: Exactly. And what you're seeing now is an example of an adaptive card, and Ane has customized these cards with the information they need to contain. Essentially, it's very specific and clear, but as you mentioned, it's also possible to create a custom card designed with images, colors, and fonts...

Ane: Yes, yes, yes.

Frode: And actually retrieves data from quite a few sources.

Ane: Absolutely.

Frode: And that's what I find useful. Because then you get a notification, tap OK, and that's it. So you don't have to think about your inbox...

Ane: We want to keep it as tidy as possible. At least when it comes to internal matters,

are

often a good practice.

Frode: Yes. And it’s also a good idea to send it to the Teams channel, because if you’re away on vacation, there may be others who can take over the approval process while you, as the manager, are away.

Ane: Absolutely.

Frode: And at least the others will be able to see that it’s been approved too.

Ane: Yes, so they can sort of keep track and be involved.

Frode: Exactly.

Ane: They're in on it too.

Frode: Okay, but how did you build the flow here to create this, Ane?

Ane: Yes, we can take a look at that. We can go back in and look at this flow again.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: And that was what I mentioned—that first I create an approval. And it’s very similar to how we did it before, where we create a title and write here.

Frode: The contents of that card, yes.

Ane: The content, what kind of information the approvers should receive. And it can be written in Markdown, yes. And here is the link to the offer. And then there is the actual posting.

Frode: It's a message to Teams. But if we look at the first card first, Ane, there are quite a few fields there, so yes, there are a lot of settings.

What exactly are we looking at at the top, if we just look at the first one there—what type of approval is it?

Ane: Yes, there are a few options here. You can choose to say that everyone who has been granted this approval must

approve it.

Frode: Approve it, yes.

Ane: Yes, everyone has to agree on things like this. Everyone has to approve it for it to be approved.

If one person doesn't approve, then it isn't approved.

Frode: Exactly

Ane: In my experience, the most common term is first respond.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: If one of the bosses has said that it is approved, then it is approved.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: And you can also wait for everyone to respond before making a decision, so that you have, in a way, all the responses from everyone who has received that approval.

Um, or you can wait for a response.

Frode: Right, so that's the approval type. Yes. And then the title is the one you entered as the title, and then you say it's allocated to—what does that mean?

Ane: Those are essentially the people who will be allowed to approve. Yes. And here, you would retrieve the people who were on the team at the time. Right. So you can do that in advance.

Frode: Right. And the details were the same as before. And the link points to that one?

Ane: The link is to this specific offer.

Frode: Yes, that's right. Okay.

Yes, but it actually looked easy. Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Ane: And if you use this approach and don't have too many requirements for the appearance of the adoptive card, then this is the shorter route to the goal.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: And then there’s also the possibility that you might want a better basis for making a decision as an approver, and we’ve looked into that a bit as well. I can show you. I can also show you the email that our good friend Erik is actually supposed to receive, which says that the discount in our quote has not been approved.

Frode: But that was too much, yes.

Ane: That was too much. Then you might want to say something more detailed.

Frode: No, because it has, but it really just shows that you've used an approval step. Which is the name of a step in Power Automate for carrying out an approval.

Ane: Yes.

Yes.

And here, ideally, I wouldn't really have used it and then emailed it to Erik, but rather, as we discussed, given him that information directly in Dynamics, where he works.

Frode: Because if that approval was now complete, could you have added another step that said, send this approval to a Teams channel for the sales department?

Ane: Absolutely, you just use post to a Teams channel there.

Frode: Yes, and then you click the plus sign as well, and just click “Post to Teams” one more time.

Ane: Yes, so then you can—here I've specified that if he doesn't—if it's approved, he'll get the approval post. If his quote discount hasn't been approved, he'll get the rejection post, as we saw. And I remove the discount from the quote. And then you could easily add something here, like search for Teams, and then you'll see that you have a lot of different options here.

Frode: You can create meetings and stuff.

Ane: So you can,

Frode: Yes, right?

Ane: There’s a lot you can do here. So I would just use “post message in a chat or channel.”

Frode: Beautiful.

Ane: And then I decided to write Erik an apologetic message.

Frode: Get a grip, Salesperson, do better.

Ane: Be better.

Frode: Be better.

Ane: Yes.

Frode: Lower discount.

Well, no, but that was nice. But how would you improve this flow?

then?

Ane: Yes, that would probably help give, um... the approver a better basis for making a decision, because all we were told was, very briefly, this quote ID with this name, this customer, and this discount. To make it easier for an approver to make the decision, we should give them a little more information to go on.

Frode: Yes, because very often when you receive an approval request, you need some background explaining why it is relevant.

It’s not just a 66% discount; there has to be a reason why the seller wants it.

Ane: Yes, and that is also something we could have included, which I haven't accounted for here, but I think that, based on the offer, we could actually have added another column that also included the seller's explanation.

Frode: Right.

Ane: And it bubbled up and into the approval process.

We haven't done that here, but we have at least added a little more information for the approver, both about the customer and the quote. Okay. So we can take a look at that.

Frode: Yes, please.

Ane: So we've learned how,

Frode: It's the same flow as before.

Ane: Yes, the same flow as before. So we recognize the trigger and that we retrieve the name and customer.

And now I've added a step here where I've used Excel.

Frode: Correct.

Ane: As a connection. Ideally, I might have used Power BI here. But then you need to have a lot of data in Power BI for it to be meaningful and provide value. So here, as an example, I’ve used Excel and retrieved historical revenue data for the customers.

Frode: But for all of you who have, well, revenue figures in Excel, or—yes, there are many ways to retrieve data, using those connections we mentioned.

Ane: So what I used here was an Excel spreadsheet stored in SharePoint, and then I retrieved the exact file I needed, average customer revenue over the past twelve years, from a specific site and a specific document library, and then I specify where to retrieve this information.

And then

Frode: I see that you choose the table the data is placed in?

Ane: Yes. Yes, and which column you're looking in.

And everything is up to date, so you don't need to... remember what you once named the table. When you select a file, you get a folder explorer like this. And then you get some options here. So if I had had multiple tables, I can see that I only have this one.

You only have that one table. So you get a lot of help too.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: So here I pulled some historical revenue data.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: And I've also used a

Frode: A step?

Ane: Yes, I’ve also used a step to provide some more information about the customer. And then I got help from an AI model that I created, really just with a prompt where I specify in detail, “This is what I want you to retrieve.

Focus on key figures.” And so on. And it should be in Norwegian. So then I basically get AI

Frode: Is that the one we're pointing to now, or what?

Ane: Yes, this is the one. So then I get AI to generate it, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on. That summary text for the company, where I specifically said that the most important thing for me is to look at key figures.

Frode: Right.

Ane: For that company.

Frode: But that step there now, what is that step you have called? If you were just going to add it again.

Ane: Yes, I can show you. It's the AI builder.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: And then you select create text with GPT.

Frode: Yes. Using a prompt.

Ane: And here you’ll find all your models. So, these are the ones I’ve created.

Frode: Company, yes. How did you make those? Is it just based on the prompting, or what?

Ane: Yes, so I can show you. It's actually easy to access the prompt from here. You can tune it as you go, so it's very user-friendly. So I just open the prompt itself from here, directly within Power Automate. And then it will show me: this is what you entered in the prompt, and here I can also click to test it with sample data, because that has also been provided.

Then there's...

Frode: yes, Company... Yes.

Ane: And then I say, “make it objective.” I want it in one paragraph. I want it short. I want key figures. And I want it in Norwegian. So it’s not a very long prompt.

Frode: No.

Ane: But precise. And then I can test it now. That way, it won't test with any data from previous runs.

It then tests using the test data contained in the AI model itself.

Frode: Right. But it’s a bit like how we use ChatGPT and similar tools—you’ll find out.

Ane: Yes, so here you can see that MiljøPilotene is a leading provider of environmentally friendly solutions. It has 200 employees and annual revenue of NOK 150 million.

Frode: And what's kind of interesting about it is that, behind the scenes, as far as I know, it uses OpenAI's models and solutions, and they're trained on a lot of public data, so you get a great deal of information about the company.

Ane: It’s surprisingly good. And I have to say, I’ve been impressed by how well it works in Norwegian too.

I've heard before, historically, getting things in Norwegian, uh.

Frode: Yes, a year ago we were promised and promised and promised, and now, a year later, it has become very good.

Ane: Yes, I'm impressed.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: So that's fun. And it's the same here. Here, I provided the input—as I defined the prompt, I was supposed to enter the company name as input.

I provide that here. In the action, and then here I provide the details, the offer details.

Frode: Yes, I see it.

Ane: And then I don't just provide the offer details. This here, that is, the body I enter here, isn't text. It's something like this, with a code snippet containing some meaningful information.

Frode: If I click on it, it gets bigger. What is it—what do you mean makes sense?

Ane: I can actually show you what the body looks like, but then I have to go to an earlier run. But, anyway. It’s basically the same setup here: I say that, based on these details in the quote, I want a summary. And I don’t need to, well, specify that it’s about a quote, and I need it in Norwegian.

Frode: This is fantastic, because now my mind is starting to race with all the possibilities we have. You can use the language models, connect them to the company data, and then produce this kind of feedback. It's absolutely wonderful; it provides a completely different basis for decision-making.

Ane: It does.

Um, so those are kind of the three steps I've used to broaden the basis for the approval decision.

Frode: So now you have the two steps you've added, which were combined in the flow earlier, but how do you tie it all together for the final approval?

Ane: I can show you that. So here you can see that I've reached, yes, this part is the same as we've seen before, and that part is the same.

Here I added some text that incorporates the information we got from this step. So I say that the customer has had this average revenue over the past twelve years. It was retrieved from Excel. I also point out that this is from GPT. Yes. Because it’s always good to disclose when you’ve used artificial intelligence.

Frode: That's what you're supposed to do, of course. But even so, I can see that it provides a completely different basis for decision-making.

Frode: And you mentioned that, since we have many data sources, you could in principle retrieve historical revenue data from a data warehouse, an ERP system, or whatever it might be. Yes. I think that's exciting.

Ane: Yes?

Frode: And highly relevant, really. Because what often happens today is that these conversations do take place, but they remain verbal discussions and talk.

Ane: Yes.

Frode: And I’d be happy to meet.

Ane: So in that case, you might not need that meeting.

Frode: No, it can save a little time.

Ane: So I can show you what it looks like using an earlier run here.

If it's this one.

Frode: There you have it.

Ane: Yes. So we can see that Erik Solberg wants a quote percentage of 67. Um, the summary is this: yes, the customer has had average revenue of 1.34 billion over the past twelve years. That was quite a lot. And then we have this customer summary from GPT. Sustainable paint, a leading player in environmentally friendly paint solutions, 10 years of experience, 50 employees, and annual revenue of NOK 100 million.

It doesn't quite add up with the last 12 years, but it has been declining.

Frode: It's gone downhill. Steeply downhill!

Ane: And then we also get the quote summary from GPT, stating that there is a significant discount, what the payment terms are, what is included, and the status of the quote.

Um, yes, the project, the project exceeds the customer's budget, but is considered profitable.

Frode: Yes, that's impressive. And we know that these models have also become much better at mathematics recently, just in the past few months. So, yes. This was very, very good.

Ane: Yes. I think so, yes.

Frode: And AI Builder is relatively new in Power Automate, isn't it?

Ane: Yes, it’s quite new. It’s been available for a little while, but I feel that it’s only recently started to really shine, and I’ve been using it a lot and have seen that it isn’t actually buggy. It’s good.

Frode: But have our customers reacted to it, or have you spoken to people, and how are they responding?

Or do they not realize that they can't do it, and that an AI engine could conceivably become part of their workflow, in their day-to-day work?

Ane: I don't think people realize what kind of step it is. Yeah. But the response has been good.

Frode: Yes.

Ane: I have to believe that it is, yes, because it ranges from the completely traditional things to communication that is clear.

Frode: Yes. This was exciting.

Ane: Yes.

Frode: Do you have anything better? Now I’m curious—can you make it even better, or are we done now?

Ane: Yes, as I said, if I were to improve this, it would be by integrating it more closely with Dynamics, which is where the salespeople work.

Frode: Right.

Ane: So then I wouldn't have just let them enter a discount here, but perhaps created a new column for the desired discount.

Frode: Correct.

Ane: Where they also had to write some text, and then they would have had to submit it, and the status, the status might then have been awaiting approval, if it needed approval. And if it didn't, it would simply have been approved, or something like that.

Because then you could add a small traffic light there indicating whether it is awaiting approval or has been approved, so the salesperson has the information they need.

Yes, I think the salesperson actually has all that information directly in the CRM, so they don't have to—they don't even have to go into Teams.

Frode: Yes, and then you could, in principle, take it a step further so that if the quote is approved, it is sent directly to the customer using document generation, right?

Ane: Yes, that could also have been the final step. If there had been a process here, the final step could have been to determine the discount.

It could also have been automated so that if the discount percentage was approved, a PDF would be generated based on the quotation details and sent to the prospective customer.

Frode: That's absolutely wonderful. But then we're done, aren't we?

Ane: At the end of the road.

Frode: Aren’t we?

Ane: Yes, we'll be talking again.

Frode: Yes, yes, I think so. But we have talked about the approval process, Ane.

We have talked about the basis for decision-making and Adaptive Cards in Teams. And we even touched a little on AI.

Ane: Yes.

Frode: This time too.

Ane: This time too. Yes. But it must always be included.

Frode: Yes.

And for those of you watching at home who are wondering how to make your everyday lives more automated, try doing what we show you in today’s video.

Frode: And then call her.

Ane: If you get stuck, let me know.

Frode: And with those words, I would like to thank Ane for her video. Do you have any questions? Ask them in the comments section below. Was this helpful? Like and share the video with anyone you think might benefit from it. Would you like more professional content? Feel free to subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on LinkedIn.

This broadcast is available on YouTube, as well as on the ProsessPilotene .no website. ProsessPilotene will increase the value of your customers through the use of Microsoft technology. Our analytics team can help you with artificial intelligence, insights, and analytics. And our collaboration team can create the world's best websites, customer portals, customer clubs, and other mobile applications.

This episode was produced by me, Frode. The project manager is Oddbjørg Berge. Here's to better work processes for everyone. See you next time.