Work queues in Power Automate

Leveraging work queues in Power Automate facilitates the storage of pertinent data for processes while establishing a mechanism for seamless asynchronous communication, ultimately enhancing automation efficiency, scalability, and resilience. These queues enable the prioritization of tasks, ensuring that high-priority items take precedence, irrespective of whether they undergo processing by digital workers, human workers, or integration points.

Work queue utilization in Power Automate necessitates the following prerequisites:

• Possession of a Premium Power Automate license.
• Holding the role of an environment maker or possessing other roles that grant access to work queue tables.

Benefits of Work Queues:

• Increased efficiency and scalability: Work queues contribute to enhanced efficiency and throughput in automation processes, ensuring the timely and resilient completion of tasks. Additionally, they support the modularization of automation, enabling independent scaling of different components.
• Better resource utilization: Leveraging work queues allows for improved utilization of robots, optimizing the overall number required to execute tasks successfully.
• Consistent prioritization: Work queues are pivotal in prioritizing work items, ensuring that high-priority tasks are addressed first. This prioritization remains consistent whether tasks are processed by digital workers, human workers, or through integrations.
• Centralized monitoring: Work queues offer a centralized monitoring system incorporating human-in-the-loop experiences. This collaborative approach between business users and IT professionals enables effective collaboration to address and resolve exceptions in work queue processing.

Key features:

1. By furnishing enterprise-scale orchestration and management capabilities, work queues facilitate the fragmentation of intricate processes and automations into smaller, independently processed parts. This approach not only optimizes overall performance but also mitigates the risk of Service Level Agreement (SLA) breaches.
2. The inclusion of built-in human-in-the-loop and monitoring experiences cultivates a cohesive cross-team collaboration among business, operations, and IT. This ensures alignment and concerted efforts toward shared data processing objectives, in adherence to established prioritization and defined Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Supported processing types:

Processing work queues is seamlessly achievable through options such as digital process automation (DPA) with cloud flows, robotic process automation (RPA) employing desktop flows, or integrations via direct Dataverse API access, ensuring comprehensive coverage for diverse workflow requirements.

• Dataverse connector in Power Automate cloud flows streamlines work queue processing for diverse workflows.

• Power Automate desktop flows process work queues with dedicated actions.

• In Postman, process work queues through direct Dataverse API calls for testing advanced integration scenarios.

Manage work queues:

Power Automate offers robust user experiences and features, enabling efficient and centralized management of work queues within environments.

1. View Work Queues:Access your work queues by signing in to Power Automate, selecting the Monitor section on the left menu, and choosing Work queues to view the list.
2. Create a Work Queues:Create a work queue in Power Automate by signing in, accessing the Monitor section, selecting Work queue, and then clicking + New work queue to provide a name, optional description, and default lifespan for items.
3. Edit Work Queue:Modify a work queue in Power Automate by signing in, navigating to the Monitor section, selecting Work queue, choosing the specific queue from the list, clicking Edit work queue on the toolbar, updating values in the pane, and then saving the changes.
4. Share a Work Queues:Effortlessly share a work queue in Power Automate by signing in, navigating to the Monitor section, selecting Work queue, choosing the specific queue from the list, clicking Manage access on the toolbar, entering the email or name of the recipient in the Share pane, adding the user to the list, and confirming the access level under the New section.
5. View advanced fields of a work queue:For a detailed look at the advanced fields of a work queue in Power Automate, sign in, navigate to the Monitor section, select Work queue, pick the specific queue from the list, click on Advanced details on the details card, and utilize the ‘Copy’ icons in the Advanced details pane to copy individual values, especially useful when interacting programmatically via the Dataverse connector or APIs.
6. Delete a Work Queue:Delete a work queue in Power Automate by selecting the desired queue from the list, clicking Delete work queue on the toolbar, and confirming the deletion in the dialog.
7. Create Work Queue Items:Initiate the creation of a work queue item in Power Automate by signing in, accessing the Monitor section, selecting the specific work queue, clicking See details, and then choosing + New work queue item on the toolbar. In the ensuing side panel, provide a Name, Value, and optionally set or overwrite the Expiration date for the new work queue item.
8. Edit a Work Queue Item:Modify a work queue item by selecting it and then choosing Edit work queue item. In the side panel, you can update all values unless the item is in the Processing state.

Allowed Status Transactions:

Established status transition rules to optimize the lifecycle management of work queue items. Consequently, specific statuses of work queue items may be inaccessible for selection, whether interactively or during runtime processing, if they do not adhere to the allowed transition path.

The default state for work queue items is “Queued,” allowing dequeuing for processing. Items in the “Processing” state are actively being processed, and once completed, they transition to “Processed” or “Exception.” The “Exception” state signifies an issue during processing, with options for Generic, IT, or Business exceptions. The “On hold” state is when a user reviews and assesses an item, with possible transitions back to “Queued” or “Exception.”

Reference link: https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-power-automate-work-queues-are-generally-available/ and https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/work-queues