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Cập Nhật: 2022-03-17 08:02:15,You Cần biết về Power Automate Desktop Launch application. Bạn trọn vẹn có thể lại phản hồi ở cuối bài để Ad được tương hỗ.
For this article I am going to walk through how I leveraged Power Automate Desktop to pull specific data from web pages to an Excel Online spreadsheet. This data is then used as part of a Power BI weekly report. Before walking through the build process, I want to caveat by saying this is my first Power Automate Desktop flow and, though this flow works, I am sure there are more efficient ways to build this. I expect comments from you all which I will leverage for future articles.
Additionally, please note that I will be building this flow manually. Power Automate Desktop does provide the user the ability to record your actions through Web Recorder and Desktop recorder. My feeling is these tools are better shown through video than the written word.
As announced in March 2021, Power Automate Desktop is now available for không lấy phí to all Windows 10 users. To get started go to flow.microsoft/en-us/desktop/.
Since we will be pulling data from defined web pages we will also need to install the Power Automate extension for our though web browser. For reference the Microsoft Power Automate extension is the add on for enabling web automates -automate things like web scripting, data extraction, web testing. The Power Automate extension supports the four most popular browsers: Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. These browsers need additional configuration or/and browser extensions to work.
I use Microsoft Edge as my browser. Please follow the steps below to install:
1) Open an instance of Microsoft Edge
2) In the upper right-hand corner click on the ellipse (…)
3) Click on Extensions
4) Click on Get extensions for Microsoft Edge
5) Search for Microsoft Power Automate and install
When the Power Automate icon is highlighted (in blue) it means that Power Automate can “talk” with the specific web site. If the icon is gray then Power Automate Desktop is not able to “talk” to the web site.
Now let’s launch Power Automate Desktop (PAD) through your Windows Search bar and click Open.
With the Power Automate Desktop (PAD) launch page open click on +NewFlow (upper left hand corner) to start a new flow. The screen below reflects a current flow I’ve built – please disregard as it is not relevant to this article.
It is time to name the Power Automate Desktop (PAD) flow. In this article we will be pulling data on current Power Platform job posts within LinkedIn. The new flow will be named Power Platform Job Postings (No PBI). We will be pulling data based on the keywords Power Platform, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents. Power BI information will not be included in this example. Click Create.
When Create is clicked two things happen. The new flow (PowerPlatform Job Postings) is added to your My Flows list. Also the Power Automate Desktop flow designer Flow canvas is created. There is an Actions column, workspace (center of page) and a Variables column.
The following will be the steps of this flow:
1) Launch defined Excel spreadsheet – we will need to know the path to the Excel spreadsheet
2) Launch MS Edge to the specific web site that holds the data we want.
3) Pull data from the selected web site URL
4) Write the data to defined Excel worksheet
5) Close web browser
6) Repeat steps 1 through 5 for next data set.
So let’s get started. Within the Actions panel of the flow designer type Excel in the Search bar. A list of all the Excel Actions will render. We will want to grab Launch Excel and drag and drop into the workspace.
When you drop Launch Excel in the workspace you will be prompted to select parameters for this kích hoạt. You will be given the choice to either Launch Excel with a blank document OR open the following document. In this example choose “open the following document”.
Next you will be asked to provide the Document Path. You can either Copy/Paste the path from the specific Excel spreadsheet (File>Info>CopyPath) or you have the ability to search for the file within the Launch Excel window. The action of Launching Excel creates a Variable – in this step titled ExcelInstance. Once we click Save, ExcelInstance is pushed to the Variables panel of the flow designer.
Note – the Excel file needs to be closed when adding the file path to the flow.
With the Excel variable established our next steps are to extract specific data from defined web site. In the Actions panel of the Power Automate Desktop Flow Designer look for Web automation. Expand Web automation and then expand Web form filling. Since I use Microsoft Edge I will be dragging/dropping the Launch new Microsoft Edge instance in the workspace.
When you drop the Launch new Microsoft Edge text into the flow designer workspace you will be presented with a Window asking your direction on Launch mode – whether you want to Launch a new Edge instance or do you want to attach to a running instance. In this scenario we will launch a new instance.
We want to copy the URL of the website that holds the data we to extract and place within our Excel spreadsheet. We will be pulling Power Platform job openings data from LinkedIn by country. Specifically, we are looking for all job postings where the keyword(s)Power Platform OR Power Apps OR Power Automate OR Power Virtual Agents is (are) in the job description. Let’s start with the United States. This is the link:
linkedin/jobs/search/?currentJobId=2560726352&geoId=103644278&keywords=%22power%20platform%22%20OR%20%22power%20apps%22%20OR%20%22power%20automate%22%20OR%20%22power%20vitual%20agents%22&location=United%20States
Copy and paste this URL into the Initial URL field and click Save. As you notice in the slide below Power Automate Desktop has notified us that the URL is an Invalid value.
The reason for this is Power Automate Desktop notates Variables as %Variblename% . As you see the URL has a number of text and numbers that are bookended by the % symbol and therefore confusing Power Automate Desktop to thinking these are Variables. To correct this we need to manually add % symbols to URL to correct the syntax error. This is what the URL text will look like before you save (I have bold the % that I added):
linkedin/jobs/search/?currentJobId=2560726352&geoId=103644278&keywords=%%22power%%20platform%%22%%20OR%%20%%22power%%20apps%%22%%20OR%%20%%22power%%20automate%%22%%20OR%%20%%22power%%20vitual%%20agents%%22&location=United%%20States
This is what the PAD workspace looks like when you click Save. The URL has changed a bit since we cleaned up the URL syntax and there are now two Flow Variables listed – the ExcelInstance variable and a Browser variable.
Next we will direct Power Automate Desktop to extract data from a web page. Within the Actions column click on Web automation>Web data extraction>Extract data from web page. Drag and drop Extract data from web page into the workspace of the flow designer.
Follow these steps to extract the data:
1. The Extract data form web page window directs you to open and bring forward an actualbrowser window – in my opinion already have the targeted web page open and bring that forward by clicking on your web browser window.
The above action opens the Live Web Helper. With this open go the web page and highlight (use your mouse to highlight) the data you wait to extract. In this case I have highlighted 3,825 results.
2. And right click on the highlighted text. This will render a dialogue box with three prompts – select Extract element value then select Text.
3. Once selected the text will be reflected in the Live Web helper screen. Click Finish.
4. Click Save on the Extract data from web page
5. The instructions to pull specific field data from the targeted web site are now included in the PAD flow. With this action we have created a new variable – DataFromWebPage
Now we want to instruct the PAD flow to write that extracted data to the Excel spreadsheet we defined earlier. To do this go to the kích hoạt panel of the PAD flow designer select Excel and then select Write to Excel worksheet – drag and drop into the workspace.
The Write to Excel worksheet window asks for the following parameters:
· Excel instance – %ExcelInstance% – this is autopopulated and is the Excel spreadsheet we defined earlier in this article.
· Value to write – this is the %DataFromWebPage% variable we defined in the previous steps.
· Write Mode – we want this information to be written to a specific cell in the Excel spreadsheet
· Column- define column in the spreadsheet (in this case column B)
· Row – define row in the spreadsheet. (in this case row 2)
Now that those instructions are set we need to close the browser: kích hoạt panel>Web automation>Web form filing>Close Web browser. Drag and drop into the workspace. When dropped we will get the following window confirming the parameter variable – %Browser%. Click Save.
At this point I advise that you test what you have built and run.
Since I am pulling data on numerous countries, I will need to go through process above for each country. I will not walk through that but will share this repeating process:
1) No need to Launch Excel as it will already be open.
2) Launch new Microsoft Edge targeting the next country in my list – don’t forget to correct the syntax. Be aware you are creating a new %Browser% variable.
3) Extract data from web page – extracting data from the new web site. You are creating a new %DataFromWebPage% variable.
4) Write to Excel worksheet – you will need to reference the newly created %DataFromWebPage% variable.
5) Close web browser – you will need to reference the newly created %Browser% variable.
6) Repeat above for next country.
Though this takes a bit of time to set up it absolutely reduces my data aggregation time from 25 – 30 minutes to around 3 minutes. With the numerous Actions in the Power Automate Desktop designer there are many opportunities to automate repetitive and manual processes.
As always, thank you for reading. Please share your thoughts on this article in the comments section and as you “play” with Power Automate Desktop share your experiences.
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