Yesterday Process Advisor was announced by Microsoft adding some functionality to the existing one that will bring joy and problems to all of us.
If you want to check the official documentation check here: Microsoft announces preview of new process mining capabilities within Power Automate | Power Automate Blog
First of all, know that for this functionality you will need transactional data. So it's worth exporting or gathering all the transactions related to the process you want to try out. The platform will show analyze all the records and create reports, this will help people understand a lot and improvement opportunities is a side effect of using this solution.
For this article, I created a spreadsheet with information about hiring processes. All companies already have this transactional data stored somewhere, you just need to help them find it. The file I used has about 1k records, but for real-life scenarios, HR customers will have MUCH more. Bear that in mind. Below you will find the example I used:
Once you located the transactional data, we go to make.powerautomate to make the magic happen. Select Start here
A new tab will open and you need to complete it as shown below. Know that we will use the Data (preview) option to create the process. After you add the Process name and Description (I'm lazy so I always use pretty much the same), select Create.
You will need to connect your data, there is no excuse because this feature provides A LOT of connections to different data sources. For this article, we will use CSV. Select the data source and move on.
A new tab will open and you can either connect to your SharePoint and specify where you want to catch the data from or upload a file. I uploaded the file.
Connect your data, this tab will charge by default.
Transform your data, this is an optional step I didn't use but I'm showing it as the official documentation is not showing the complete process, yet :)
After you press Next a new tab will appear and you will need to map your data with at least three attribute types: Case ID, Activity, and Event Start. As you can see below I mapped a couple more. Select Save and Analyze and wait.
This is the image you'll see while the data is analyzed in the system.
I warn you, don´t be scared. What you are about to see is a little bit messy and it may require some cleaning, so it's probable that I'll create another blog with a 2.0 version of this.
When the analysis is done you will get two tabs: Process and Time Analysis
Process
What you can see below is the analysis based on the information I created. It is basically gathering my transactional data, arranging a flowchart, connecting the activities, and adding the start and end date to measure the time of execution.
The flowchart is messy, but that is because all the cases we have in the CSV file have different activities in different orders. Welcome to HR that's how is done.
But because technology is magic, using Process advisor we can do something really cool, which is filtering a specific case or amount of cases to visualize how the process goes for that segmentation.
Time Analysis
This functionality is also cool because it gives us insights into how much time we are spending on different activities. Here we have the hiring process, but we could use this for almost anything. Time Analysis tab will also help us to segment information and look closely into specific cases, resources, or even people performing the task.
This is all I wanted to share with you, trying out the feature and understanding how it can bring some light into Human Resources challenges. I will keep you posted with a new version of this article, trying to solve what didn't work out :)