Software such as SharePoint, Teams, and Office 365 have harnessed automation and AI to revolutionize their efficiency and capabilities. Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways Microsoft products use automation and AI to accelerate knowledge work. 

Business Automation Features 

In the first place, Microsoft products contain powerful business automation features, saving employees hours of work and frustration. Many of Microsoft’s best automation features stem from their Power Automate and Power Apps software solutions.

Power Automate is an end-to-end cloud automation platform powered by AI. Power Automate can optimize processes across systems, apps, and websites. It has built-in security, governance, and monitoring capabilities to maintain the safety of your organization. Here are some key features:

• Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Power Automate allows you to automate repetitive tasks by mimicking human actions on legacy systems that don’t have APIs. This is particularly useful for automating tasks on desktop applications.
• Digital Process Automation (DPA): It also enables the automation of workflows across cloud-based applications and services. This includes automating tasks like data entry, approvals, and notifications.
• Task and Process Mining: This feature helps you discover and optimize business processes by identifying automation opportunities. It provides insights into how tasks are performed and where improvements can be made.

 Power Apps offers robust business automation capabilities that can help streamline and optimize various processes within your organization. Here are some key features:

• Business Logic and Workflow Automation: Power Apps provides rich business logic and workflow capabilities, enabling you to transform manual operations into automated processes. This includes automating approvals, notifications, data collection, and more.
• Customizable Templates: Power Apps offers a variety of templates that can be customized to fit specific business needs. These templates can help you quickly set up automated processes without starting from scratch.

Both Power Automate and Power Apps are low-code solutions, allowing users with varying technical skills to easily create custom workflows. They also seamlessly integrate with other Microsoft 365 services like SharePoint, Teams, and Outlook, as well as external services like Salesforce, Dropbox, and Google Drive. This enables you to automate workflows across different platforms.

Microsoft’s Approach to AI

Business automation is reaching new heights through the power of AI. But before we jump into the AI features of Microsoft products, let’s take a moment to examine Microsoft’s big-picture approach to AI.

Although they are on the forefront of AI exploration, Microsoft emphasizes responsible development and deployment, guided by core principles such as fairness, reliability, safety, privacy, security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability.

In addition to their own research and internal policies, according to their website, Microsoft “believes democratic, law-making processes are a vital part of a global dialogue with industry, academia and civil society to create principled and actionable norms that ensure organizations develop and deploy AI responsibly.” It also actively works against the bias inherent in AI systems by having humans regularly check the data and processes it analyzes and creates.

Microsoft’s commitment to responsible AI involves addressing ethical considerations from the earliest stages of system design and throughout the entire lifecycle. This approach ensures that AI technologies are developed with appropriate controls and mitigations to maximize benefits and minimize risks. The company also focuses on using AI for social good, leveraging its capabilities to address pressing societal challenges. Above all, Microsoft emphasizes the human side of AI, ensuring that their solutions work for us, not the other way around.

AI Features

Microsoft’s AI platform, Azure AI, offers infrastructure that is optimized and purposely built for running large AI models. Thanks to Azure, Microsoft delivers a wide range of AI-powered products that deliver best-in-class performance. Here are some ways that Azure is improving the user experience and capabilities of Microsoft 365:

• Microsoft Editor in Word and Outlook uses Azure AI to provide advanced grammar and style suggestions.
• PowerPoint Designer leverages Azure Machine Learning to recommend design layouts based on slide content.
• Azure is integrated with Microsoft 365 to manage user identities and access. This includes single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and conditional access policies to enhance security.
• Azure Synapse Analytics and Power BI are integrated with Microsoft 365 to provide advanced data analytics and visualization capabilities. This helps organizations gain insights from their data and make informed decisions.
• Azure provides a range of developer tools and APIs that can be used to extend and customize Microsoft 365 applications. This includes building custom apps, automating workflows, and integrating third-party services.

These features make Microsoft Azure a valuable addition to Microsoft 365, enhancing its capabilities and providing a robust platform for business productivity.

Office Automation vs. Knowledge Work Automation

With all those features, do you need anything else? Well, the answer might be yes! While an office automation software system handles everyday documents and tasks, if your company handles large volumes of documents, you’ll need a specialized knowledge work system like M-Files. Don’t worry—M-Files integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365. You can get the best of both worlds!

Ready to Get on Board? Contact Us! 

Here at Laminin, we’re ready to help you implement, integrate, and customize your business automation software. Contact us today to get started!