Export workflows designed in Visio to Power Automate to quickly automate business processes
Published Apr 12 2019 10:40 AM 40.8K Views
Microsoft

Microsoft Visio helps companies like yours visualize business processes using rich workflow modelling capabilities. It gives you the tools to organize your most complex processes into highly visual, easily digestible workflows that optimize the way people work—a lot like Power Automate does with process automation. We’ve spent months bringing these two solutions together and are excited to announce that Visio and Power Automate integrate to help you automate your processes in next to no time. Visio-Power Automate integration is currently only available for Office Insiders.

 

With this integration, you can create business process flows in Visio and quickly export them to Power Automate for automation—all in just a few clicks. Visio-Power Automate integration is only available for Visio Plan 2 subscribers. For more details about this release, please visit our support page.

 

Create flows from scratch

Using Visio and Power Automate together is easy: create your Visio workflow using built-in Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) stencils, click the “Prepare to Export” button in the ribbon, add all your Power Automate actions and triggers, resolve any validation errors, and tap “Export.“ That’s it! Your workflow is now available in Power Automate.

 

Build flows from existing Visio diagrams

You can also export existing business process diagrams created in Visio to Power Automate. Start by converting your diagram elements to BPMN shapes and marking each with the right flow action or trigger. Then follow the above export steps and Visio takes care of the rest.

 

Power Automate: the spiritual successor to SharePoint Designer

If you’re a long-time user of SharePoint Designer, you’ll love the new Visio-Power Automate integration. Power Automate is the spiritual successor to SharePoint Designer, and this integration allows you to design the logic of your site around business processes in Visio and execute them in Power Automate without writing a single line of code—just like you’d do in SharePoint Designer.

 

Why Visio and Power Automate together

Traditionally, IT has been responsible for building automated business process workflows. But using Visio and Power Automate, you can do this on your own, expediting the creation process and giving your IT team more time to focus on strategic initiatives. Plus, Visio’s built-in collaboration capabilities, like chat and comments, allow you to review your flows with colleagues to ensure everyone’s feedback is properly captured before the flow is executed. BPMN stencils for Power Automate also makes it easier for people to get started with this integration, reducing the time spent on training.

 

What should we develop next?

Releases like Power Automate integration happen because of you and the suggestions you submit to us on UserVoice—so keep it up! We often determine what to develop next based on these ideas. You can also engage with us here on Tech Community by leaving a comment below. And don’t forget to follow Visio on Twitter for all the latest news.

9 Comments
Copper Contributor

We will be presenting Visio BPMN interchangeability with many leading BPM vendors at OMG meeting in Amsterdam on June 17th https://www.omg.org/events/amsterdam-19/special-events/BPMN-Meet-Greet.htm It would be really nice to complement our presentation with live demonstration of execution of BPMN process in Microsoft Flow. 

Brass Contributor

Amazing!

Copper Contributor

This is great! Looking forward to using this. 

Brass Contributor

Great direction. 

 

Can Flow use Exchange (Outlook) item extended properties (User Fields) so the data in them can be used for making decisions?  

 

Brass Contributor

Great! Let us know when this reaches general release so we can use it!

Copper Contributor

love it, when can we try?

Iron Contributor

Visio-Flow integration is an excellent idea, and likely to be an important feature going forward.  It (the feature) is rather late though but better than never.

 

Looking forward to taking it for a test-drive!

Copper Contributor

Interesting new feature !!!! love to play with it get to expert user level.  

Copper Contributor

I really look forward to this feature and I'm confused if I'm supposed to see it yet.  One article says its available as of the Monthly Targeted Release build Build 11231 which was back in in January, I'm on the Semi-Annual Targeted and the latest release was in May and build 11328.  I see the templates with the Flow icon but I don't see the Flow tools in the Process tab.  Just call me too excited.

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‎Nov 08 2021 02:03 PM
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