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I can get a Power Automate Desktop flow to work on my local computer by simply downloading PAD, developing the flow on my computer, and running it there. I'm wondering how this works when I want to move it to production.

At work, we have been successfully transferring Power Automate/Apps solutions from our dev environment to our prod environment. But how does this work for Power Automate Desktop? I understand you need to install PAD on the computer that will be running the flows. So would we have to install PAD in some remote, corporate computer (which I can log into via Remote Desktop Connection) and somehow trigger them there? Or do the production PAD flows run on some Microsoft computer?

Thanks

Jaime Salazar
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1 Answers1

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The answer to this is potentially quite long.

I'll give you the basics.

You can run attended or unattended bots on a remote machine. Typically, your attended will run on your desktop but at a minimum, it needs to run on a workstation (Windows) that is UNLOCKED! That's the key!

Obviously, unattended run on machines that are typically locked.

You'll need to install PAD along with the gateway to get it to work. The gateway serves the purpose of linking the machine to the cloud. The machine is registered to the cloud so they can talk and the cloud can spawn flows on the gateway enabled desktop.

In order to call/schedule a PAD flow on a remote workstation, you need to use the PowerAutomate action item.

PAD

From here, you connect your action item to the relevant gateway enabled machine and then off it goes once called.

More information can be found here ...

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/run-pad-flow

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/link-pad-flow-portal

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/manage-machines

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/manage-machine-groups

Skin
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  • Thanks for the links. I'm hoping to avoid using an unattended bot (due to the extra cost) so I'll have to play around with the VM to see if it can run attended flows. Afaik that machine is never locked, but I do need to sign into Windows on it and then sign out whenever I RDC into it. I wonder if, in attended mode, PAD automatically does the signing in/out or if a user has to manually do that before each flow run. – Jaime Salazar Jan 07 '22 at 08:34
  • @JaimeSalazar, it's a tricky one. I went to use a VM but then didn't want to pay for the VM cost AND, I couldn't keep the VM unlocked, it simply wouldn't work after I killed the remote desktop session. There may be a way, not sure. You're clearly in corporate environment but I had a machine at home and an unattended licence so I made sure the machine didn't lock, it was always ready to run attended flows. To that point, no, it will not sign in and unlock the machine, that's the whole point, otherwise, no one would pay for an unattended licence. The machine needs to remain unlocked. – Skin Jan 07 '22 at 08:46
  • You'll get an error from PowerAutomate if the machine is locked on an attended licence. – Skin Jan 07 '22 at 08:47
  • Yep, I have tested this a bit today and I've had the same experience. I thought that maybe playing around with the power and screen saver settings could keep the prod machine in unlocked mode, but it doesn't seem possible. And at the end of the day, I'm not trying to outright cheat Microsoft so I suppose we'll have to go with the unattended license. Seems like their per bot limit simply means per concurrent bot, so the cost might not be too large. If I can have as many actions and flows running PAD flows and the only limit is concurrency, we'll probably be ok for a while. – Jaime Salazar Jan 07 '22 at 15:56