Power Automate Desktop Basic
Basic — Desktop Automation (RPA) Fundamentals Training
01Training Overview
- Duration
- 2 Days
- Training Hours
- 09:30 – 16:30
- Maximum Participants
- 10 Participants
- Hands-on Ratio
- 80% Hands-on / 20% Theory
- Certificate
- Participants receive an IBA Consultancy Certificate of Participation at the end of the training.
- Format
- Online, On-site or Hybrid — set according to the organisation's preference.
- Prerequisites
- No software development knowledge is required. Basic Excel and Windows skills are sufficient. A Windows operating system is mandatory (PAD runs only on Windows).
Training Objective
This two-day training teaches participants the fundamentals of automating repetitive desktop and web-based tasks with Power Automate Desktop (PAD). The programme covers PAD architecture and the flow designer, UI element recognition, file/folder and Excel automation, and the basics of extracting data from the web through hands-on work.
This training is shorter and more introductory than IBA's PL-500 training (Power Automate Desktop RPA Automation Training, 4 days, 4 scenarios): it covers the first two of PL-500's four scenarios (file automation and web automation) and does not include more specialised automation patterns such as the ERP and banking scenarios. The organisation can later deepen its RPA coverage with PL-500.
By the end of the training, participants own a working PAD flow that automates a repetitive desktop task from their own department end to end.
Technical Content
PAD Fundamentals and File Automation
- Power Automate Desktop architecture and the flow designer interface
- Building automations with the Recorder
- UI element recognition and using selectors
- File, folder and Excel automation
Control Flow and Web Automation
- Variables, loops and conditional logic
- Web browser automation fundamentals
- Extracting data from the web (web scraping) and creating reports
- Debugging fundamentals
02Exercises and Project Scenarios
Scenario 1
Reading and Printing Files
Covers automatically reading the files in a given folder and processing/printing them according to the relevant template. This is the first scenario, in which PAD fundamentals are learned.
Scenario 2
Retrieving Exchange Rates from the Web and Creating a Report
Covers retrieving current exchange rates from a web source and creating a report automatically.
Together, the two scenarios show PAD's core range of automation, from desktop file tasks to web automation. The two scenarios below are the standard exercise set for the training and are worked through in order — they are not alternatives, and both are covered; they come from the same family as the scenarios used in IBA's PL-500 training and cover the first two of PL-500's four scenarios (file automation and web automation). If the organisation would like a scenario taken from its own processes (of similar complexity to file processing or web-based data retrieval), it can replace one of the existing scenarios; this does not affect the duration or price of the training. The organisation can later move on to more specialised scenarios such as ERP and banking with PL-500.
03Training Agenda (2 Days)
The agenda works through the two scenarios day by day; the first day focuses on file automation, the second on web automation.
Day 1 — PAD Fundamentals and File Automation
- Power Automate Desktop architecture and the flow designer interface
- Building automations with the Recorder
- Exercise 1: UI element recognition and selector usage
- Variables, loops and conditional logic
- Exercise 2: File and folder operations (reading, writing, moving) and Excel automation
- End-of-Day Deliverable: Completing the "Reading and Printing Files" flow
Day 2 — Web Automation and Reporting
- Web browser automation fundamentals
- Exercise 3: Extracting data from a web page (web scraping)
- Processing the extracted data and writing it to a report
- Final Deliverable: Completing the "Exchange Rate Retrieval and Reporting" flow
- Debugging and step-by-step execution
- Overall review, Q&A and certificate presentation
04Technical Requirements
- Computer
1 per participant, running Windows 10/11 (PAD runs only on Windows)
- Software Installation
Power Automate Desktop (free) — must be installed before the training
- Account
Microsoft work/school account
- Sample Environment
Sample files (Excel, PDF) for testing the automation must be ready on each participant's computer
Licensing
No licence purchase is required for this training.
Power Automate Desktop is free for attended use on Windows 10/11; all scenarios in the training run within this free scope.
If the flow needs to run unattended or be scheduled with a cloud flow, an additional Power Automate licence is required — this is outside the scope of the training.
05Learning Outcomes
- Build a first flow
Develop a desktop automation flow in PAD from scratch.
- Automate file tasks
Automate reading and writing files/folders and Excel operations.
- Build control flow
Manage a flow with variables, loops and conditional logic.
- Extract data from the web
Extract data from a web page and create a report automatically.
- Debug
Run a flow step by step and identify errors.