Microsoft Power Automate for Administrative Workflow Training Course

Course overview

Administrative teams often manage high-volume, repeatable work through email chains, shared spreadsheets, paper forms and manual reminders. Leave requests, meeting approvals, visitor notifications, document routing, onboarding checklists and service requests can stall when ownership is unclear or information is incomplete. This course equips office administration professionals to identify workflow bottlenecks and build governed Microsoft Power Automate solutions that reduce rekeying, improve response visibility and create a reliable audit trail.

Participants learn to design, build, test and maintain cloud flows using Microsoft Power Automate. They work with triggers, actions, conditions, approvals, expressions, error handling, permissions, connection references and flow ownership. Practical exercises use SharePoint Online lists and document libraries, Microsoft Teams notifications and Microsoft Dataverse data to create administrative workflows that route requests, manage approvals, issue reminders, capture decisions and report exceptions.

Instructor-led demonstrations are followed by guided builds, troubleshooting labs and peer reviews of real administration scenarios. Each participant develops an automation blueprint and a working Power Automate solution for a selected office process, supported by a process map, data structure, approval logic, exception plan and governance checklist. The deliverable can be adapted after the course for discussion with a line manager, IT team or Microsoft 365 administrator.

The course is designed for experienced administrators, executive support staff, office managers and operations coordinators who already understand their organisation's processes and need to automate them safely within Microsoft 365. It also supports managers responsible for standardising administrative services without creating unmanaged, fragile automations.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Map an administrative process using swimlanes, decision points and measurable service-level targets
• Build Power Automate cloud flows with manual, scheduled, SharePoint and email triggers
• Configure multi-stage approval workflows with assigned approvers, outcome branches and escalation reminders
• Create SharePoint lists and document library metadata that support structured request intake and routing
• Apply conditions, expressions, variables and dynamic content to control workflow decisions and data transformations
• Implement error handling, retry settings, exception notifications and run-history diagnostics for resilient flows
• Manage flow ownership, connections, permissions and environment practices using a practical governance checklist
• Produce a deployable automation blueprint and tested workflow for an office administration use case

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Office Managers — who need to standardise recurring requests, approvals and service coordination across the workplace
• Executive Assistants — who manage senior stakeholder approvals, meeting actions and confidential administrative workflows
• Administrative Managers — who are accountable for team capacity, service consistency and process controls
• Operations Coordinators — who coordinate cross-functional requests and need visible hand-offs and status updates
• Facilities and Workplace Coordinators — who handle visitor, access, maintenance and workspace request processes
• HR Administrators — who support structured onboarding, document collection and internal approval routines

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should be confident using Microsoft 365, including Outlook, Teams, SharePoint Online lists or document libraries, and Excel tables. They should understand the administrative processes they want to improve and be able to describe current steps, owners, approvals and exceptions. Prior experience of Power Automate is helpful but not essential; the course begins with the cloud-flow interface before moving quickly into expressions, approvals and troubleshooting. Coding, API development and formal database administration are not required. Participants need access to a Microsoft 365 tenant with permission to create flows and use the course connectors.

Training methodology

The course combines short instructor-led demonstrations with build-along labs in a Microsoft 365 training environment. Participants analyse administrative scenarios such as purchase requests, visitor approvals and onboarding tasks, then configure their own triggers, data sources, approvals, notifications and exception paths. Small-group reviews test whether each flow has clear ownership, usable request data and appropriate controls. Daily troubleshooting clinics use run history and failed-flow examples. On the final day, participants refine a selected workflow and create an implementation plan for their workplace.

Course outline

Day 1: Process analysis and Power Automate foundations

• Identifying high-volume administrative processes suitable for automation
• Swimlane mapping of request, approval and notification hand-offs
• Microsoft Power Automate environments, licensing concepts and cloud flow types
• Navigating the flow designer, trigger cards, action cards and run history
• Manual, instant, automated and scheduled flow triggers
• Dynamic content, action outputs and data dependencies
• Naming conventions and documentation standards for administrative flows

Workshop: Participants map a current administrative request process and build an initial manual-trigger cloud flow that records and acknowledges the request.

Day 2: Structured request intake and data handling

• Designing SharePoint Online lists for administrative request tracking
• Using choice fields, person fields, dates and required metadata
• Configuring SharePoint triggers for item creation and item modification
• Creating Microsoft Forms-to-SharePoint request capture patterns
• Filtering data with OData query options and trigger conditions
• Applying variables, compose actions and data type conversions
• Using expressions for dates, text formatting and null-value handling

Workshop: Participants create a structured office-services request register and automate intake validation, acknowledgement and assignment notifications.

Day 3: Approvals, routing and communications

• Configuring start-and-wait approval actions and approval response options
• Building sequential and parallel multi-stage approval routes
• Routing requests by department, cost threshold, location or request type
• Using condition blocks, switch controls and nested decision logic
• Sending actionable approval updates through Microsoft Teams and Outlook
• Creating reminder and escalation flows with delay and recurrence actions
• Capturing approval outcomes and comments in SharePoint records

Workshop: Participants build a multi-stage equipment or facilities approval workflow with conditional routing, Teams notifications and overdue reminders.

Day 4: Reliability, exceptions and governance

• Diagnosing flow failures through run history and action-level error details
• Configuring scopes, run-after settings and exception notification paths
• Applying retry policies, time-out settings and duplicate-submission controls
• Managing connections, connection references and service account considerations
• Setting flow owners, co-owners and continuity arrangements
• Understanding permissions, sensitive data and least-privilege access
• Using Microsoft Dataverse tables for controlled administrative data scenarios

Workshop: Participants troubleshoot a deliberately failing approval flow, add exception handling and complete a flow governance checklist.

Day 5: Deployment planning and workplace automation project

• Selecting a priority workflow using volume, risk, effort and benefit criteria
• Defining acceptance criteria and test cases for administrative automation
• Testing approval branches, incomplete data and exception scenarios
• Preparing user guidance, support ownership and change communications
• Monitoring flow performance, failures and approval turnaround times
• Planning controlled deployment between development and production environments
• Presenting automation benefits, risks and resource requirements to managers

Workshop: Participants finalise and present a tested automation blueprint and working flow for a chosen office administration process, with an implementation plan.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Power Automate, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Dataverse

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions