Automation Foundations: Power Automate, RPA, and Power Platform Essentials — Lesson 1: Automation Strategy and Process Discovery

Lesson Overview

This lesson develops practical understanding of Automation Strategy and Process Discovery within the Automation Foundations: Power Automate, RPA, and Power Platform Essentials learning path.

Learners connect the key concepts to a realistic business process automation with Power Automate, RPA, and Power Platform scenario and document the decisions, evidence, risks, and improvement opportunities identified during the activity.

Learning Objectives

• Explain the purpose and role of automation strategy and process discovery.
• Apply the lesson concepts to a practical business process automation with Power Automate, RPA, and Power Platform requirement.
• Recognize security, governance, operational, and quality considerations.
• Validate the result and recommend appropriate next steps.

Topics Covered

• automation concepts
• process mapping
• opportunity assessment
• business value and risk

Hands-On Activity

1. Review the scenario, stakeholders, current process, requirements, and expected outcome.
2. Prepare the required Microsoft environment, design, query, report, script, or configuration.
3. Complete the guided implementation and record important decisions and dependencies.
4. Test the outcome using functional, security, data-quality, and operational checks.
5. Document issues, corrective actions, evidence, and an improvement recommendation.

Validation Checklist

• The solution or analysis matches the documented requirement.
• Configuration, calculations, queries, scripts, or workflows produce the expected result.
• Security, access, governance, data quality, and operational impacts are reviewed.
• Errors and limitations are documented with clear corrective actions.
• The final output includes reusable notes and practical next steps.

Lesson Outcome

After completing this lesson, learners can explain, apply, and validate automation strategy and process discovery in a realistic workplace scenario.