Power Automate previews tool to track time and money saved by flows
Power Automate has introduced Savings preview, a new tool in testing phase. Users define rules to log time saved in minutes or hours, and costs based on hourly rates, but only for successful flow runs. The feature stores data in Dataverse tables. Admins view trends in individual flow details or the Power Platform admin center. They enable it there, choosing how long to keep the data. It requires the Environment Maker role and works in select regions. Costs round to whole dollars, focusing purely on runs that complete without errors.
Before, you built flows to cut manual work like copying emails to SharePoint lists, but managers saw no proof. Savings stayed invisible, leaving you to guess at hours freed up or argue from anecdotes. Buy-in for more automations depended on faith, not facts. Now specific numbers emerge: exact minutes per run, totalled over weeks, tied to your rates. This data lives in Dataverse, easy to pull for reports. It turns vague 'it saves time' into charts bosses trust, while spotlighting flows that consistently succeed over months.
Analysis
This is your reliability wake-up call – low savings mean your flows break silently, wasting the whole point. Pick your most hated daily task flow, enable Savings preview today, and track for two weeks; if numbers disappoint, ditch it for a Space blueprint with error scopes to make it run forever.
Citation
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