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10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer

10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer

10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer

By:

Pieter Veenstra

Date:

Currently the new Power Automate Designer is only available in the US base Preview environments. But some point soon this new UI will become the new standard.

Things to get used to in the new Power Automate Designer

There are quite a few new things that you really will have to get used to in the new Power Automate Designer.

Updated Feature 1 – Copilot assistance

The first obvious change is that CoPilot is permanently there to help you on the side of your flows. You can make it disappear by clicking on the Copilot option next to the save icon.

new Power Automate Designer

Updated Feature 2 – Switching back to the classic designer

It is also quite important to be aware of the Switch to classic designer option. If you can’t find something while you get used to the new designer, then you can switch back to the old UI like this.,

10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer

Anyway, there are quite a few other things to get used to.

Updated Feature 3 – Edit properties

I’m going to start with a simple Compose action. When you click on the action you will get the configuration settings sliding in on the left hand side.

10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer

This is where you can add dynamic content

10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer

Or you could add expressions. Notice the bigger box for your expression.

10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer

Updated Feature 4 – Advanced parameters

When we look at more complicated actions, the changes in the way the advanced options are presented is very visible.

10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer

By clicking on the dropdown we can select which advanced options can be configured.

10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer

I actually quite like this as it means that there is more space available for the options that I want to configure as the options that I don’t need are hidden.

Updated Feature 5 – rename actions

Renaming actions will feel a bit different as well. You can rename actions by going to the property pane of the action and then click on the name. So you can rename it directly from the Flow diagram itself.

10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer

In the beginning this will take a bit of getting used to but it is actually quite a good design as this separate the process from the step configurations.

Updated Feature 6 – Adding steps

When you add steps, the search., filtering and connector grouping by connector has changed.

10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer

Updated Feature 7 – The flow diagram UI

The flow diagrams now look an awful lot better. The only small negative ( hey, this site is called “SharePains“) is the grid dots in the background. I really wish that I could switch those off.

10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer

Updated feature 8 – The copy paste has gone

This is probably the only really negative comment I can make on the new Power Automate Designer. It looks like copy/paste has disappeared. Hopefully one of my followers will tell me that it still exists.

Although the limitations of Copy/Paste have always been quite annoying. The quick way of replicating similar steps was always useful.

Updated Feature 9 – run after settings

The New run after setting are just, Wow! In the flow diagram it is now very clear which options have been selected.

10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer

Updated Feature 10 – Flow runs

Something has also changed in the flow runs. As an action may fail, details are given about the failure in a similar way as before. However you can now click over to the settings tab or code view directly from the flow run.

10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer

Found any more features?

Have you found any more new features that you like, then please put a comment at the end of this post.

Is your business still running on paper trails, sprawling Excel files, or ageing Access databases? There’s a better way — and I can show you exactly what it looks like. I’m the Technical Director of Vantage 365, a Microsoft solutions consultancy working with clients across the UK, the Netherlands, and worldwide. For over 30 years I’ve been turning messy, manual business processes into clean, automated systems that save time, reduce errors, and give teams the visibility they need to make better decisions. SharePains is not just any blog run by a Microsoft MVP. Have you ever used Try-Catch in Power Automate? The original post about Try-Catch in Power Automate can still be found on this site, https://staging.sharepains.com/2018/02/07/try-catch-finally-in-power-automate-flow/ Or have you ever used the Pieter’s method to avoid variables and speed up your flows? https://staging.sharepains.com/2020/03/11/pieters-method-for-advanced-in-flows/ You can contact me using contact@staging.sharepains.com

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28 responses to “10 new features in the new Power Automate Designer”

  1. Ingrid Avatar
    Ingrid

    That are really great news. I am excited to try this myself but still have to wait until it is available for germany.

  2. Patrick Avatar
    Patrick

    Funny, I asked co-pilot to copy a step for me, and it did it. It was the Create HTML table step, and I still had to click on it and click on the last item in the table so it would recognize it as a table, but it worked. I asked if I could manually copy a step and this is the reply it gave:
    “Yes, you can manually copy and paste a step in Microsoft Power Automate. Simply select the step you want to copy, right-click, and select “Copy.” Then, right-click where you want to paste the step and select “Paste.””
    But if you do that, the only option is delete, So I asked co-pilot if there were supposed to be other options and got this reply:
    “No, there are no other options available when you right-click a step in a Power Automate flow other than “Delete.””

    So maybe it just hasn’t been implemented yet.

  3. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    While the new environment looks nice, I am having issues naming actions with a colon ( : ) in them. For example, I want to do “Initialize Variable: Set User Name”, as soon as I enter the colon I get a red error message stating “The name already exists or is invalid. Update the name before you continue”. Now if I switch back to the ‘Classic’ designer then it works just fine, also anything that was named in the fashion before is fine when I switch to the new designer.

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      Interesting. I hadn’t noticed that yet. I will report that to the Microsoft product team.

    2. IAmIntractable Avatar
      IAmIntractable

      I would avoid characters used by JSON. Honestly shocked a colon was ever permitted.

    3. IAmIntractable Avatar
      IAmIntractable

      Honestly, I would avoid using JSON characters. Shocked the classic view even allowed them in a name.

  4. IAmIntractable Avatar
    IAmIntractable

    If copy/paste is missing that would be a big bonehead move on the part of Microsoft as it is essential. They just needed to fix the few issues with copy/pasting….its been 5 years and we should expect these things to be fixed. I like the larger expression box, and I hope that the visualization is less clunky. I name everything, so you will never see an action called “Condition” in any of my flows. Hope they allow reuse of the action names as having to use unique names when things occur more that once, is a pain.

    Are there new functions or has there been any attempt to unify the PowerApps and Flows command sets?

  5. TEL U Avatar
    TEL U

    What has been your overall experience using the new Power Automate Designer, and have you encountered any specific scenarios where these new features proved particularly beneficial or challenging?

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      The new UI is simply a lot better. The minor issues found so far are less much of a problem than the old UI.

  6. michaelplockwood Avatar
    michaelplockwood

    I also noticed for the send email.command I did not see a way of doing code. It just a box, no formatting options or anything.

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      I’ve noticed this change as well. Hopefully that issue will get resolved soon.

  7. MIke Avatar
    MIke

    I have also noticed that for the Send Email V2 option there is just a box for the email body, no way to switch to code to enter HTML direct.

  8. Ben Avatar
    Ben

    Finally, my dozens of variables can be moved inside a “scope” to keep it clean and easy to read ? Massive win!!

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      Hi Ben, In general variables are still a bad idea. They stop any parallelism within apply to each steps.

  9. likitha Avatar
    likitha

    whenever I add an action like post a message in chat or channel , In that when I selected first name and last name etc in sharepoint list it was taking (for each) loop why is this happening
    can you please explain

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      Power Automate understands that you are taking data from an array and will then add those loops.

  10. Marquis Avatar
    Marquis

    The option to set static result (testing tab on an action) for testing purposes is another great addition. Basically it allows you to set an action result as success or fail regardless of the actual output.
    One major negative is the parallel branches are permanent. In the legacy designer I would often use a parallel branch to have two or more processes running in parallel, then once all branches finish would resume on a single path. This feature isn’t perfect in the legacy designer especially if you want to add a parallel branch after much of your Flow was already built, but otherwise it was a great feature.
    The new interface looks and works fine for most things, but I know what pitfalls to watch out for in the legacy designer. Copy and pasting multiple actions contained within a Scope is too much of a time saver to give up. I’ll stick with the legacy designer until most of the shortcomings are resolved.

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      The static results was already available in the old UI. Very useful for temporarily disabling an action.

  11. Justin Avatar
    Justin

    The only really new feature with the updated designer is Copilot. The other 9 “features” are just a toggle back and forth between designers and explaining where everything is in the new designer.

    It’s unfortunate that Microsoft would release something half-baked (and make it the default designer) that removes functionality that’s often used (copy/paste, editing code in emails, etc.). This feels like change just for the sake of change. I hope they leave the old designer toggle there permanently.

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      At the end of the day the new UI is just the same as Logic Apps. This should hopefully make it easier to maintain the two products. I never understood why Power Automate had its own UI while it is based on a Microsoft product that does the same thing.

    2. mmoore1dfcc7f0f2 Avatar
      mmoore1dfcc7f0f2

      I don’t think it is change for the sake of change, but change for the sake of Copilot. Unfortunately the Power Automate designer changes are half baked right along with Copilot as a whole. As long as they leave the legacy designer in place until they have feature parity with the new designer we’ll be fine.

  12. Marcus Avatar
    Marcus

    The new designer does not allow to mark a parameter as optional. Or I did not find it :). Tested with the PowerApps V2 trigger.

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      That indeed doesn’t exist anymore (but should hopefully return soon). The same for Dropdown option in the input parameters that has also gone.

  13. DavidB Avatar
    DavidB

    It looks like they have recently (late December?) added very basic copy/paste in, but there’s no clipboard manager of multiple copy paste items, and you can’t copy complex actions like an apply-to-each, let alone a scope. Great info; thank you!

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      The new copy paste is indeed not great. I noticed that every now and then you get randomly generated titles for then pasted actions.

  14. Steve Hanzelman Avatar
    Steve Hanzelman

    How do you edit an existing expression?

    I created one to do some concatenation in a Send email task and when I try to edit it, it seems that I can only add a new expression and not get to the old expression.

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      Hi Steve, You should be able to click on the colourful expression boxes. However I have noticed a few times ( especially with simple expressions that are available in the dynamic content as well) that they aren’t editable. Then select the colourful box ( use ctrl-a to select all) then copy (ctrl-c) and paste it into the expression editor. Yes, this seems to be a real pain sometimes.

      1. Steve Hanzelman Avatar
        Steve Hanzelman

        Thanks for the response.

        It seems like it is only occurring when I try to edit an expression that is “embedded” in something. In my case, I was trying to edit a Form value that is being used in a Send Email task.

        When I edit a compose task (or others), I’m able to edit the expression just fine.

        Thanks,
        Steve

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