Power Automate for enterprise developers, ISVs, and partners

As a developer, you can extend Power Automate, enabling even more powerful solutions for organizations and customers.

Power Automate for enterprise developers

As an enterprise developer, empower your organization to build robust tailored solutions on Power Automate:

  • Build custom connectors: Develop custom connectors to connect to your organization's data and web services through Power Automate. Learn more

  • Build Azure Functions: Craft Azure Functions to extend apps with custom server-side logic. Learn more

  • Embed Power Automate: Embed Power Automate directly into your website experiences to create integrated solutions, surfacing workflows or processes where people in your organization already do their work. Learn more

  • Run desktop flows: Integrate desktop flows directly into your product to enable robotic process automation in your solutions. Learn more

Power Automate for ISVs and Microsoft partners

As a Microsoft partner or Independent Software Vendor (ISV), accelerate customer adoption by extending your products to integrate with your customers' data and business processes, and add and customize workflows to automate business processes as part of your application. After you've completed the below eight steps, your application will have the ability to use a robust cloud-scale workflow engine that can connect to 200+ different services.

Phase Step When needed?
Development 1. Build a custom connector to your data If you want to expose your own ISV data to Power Apps or Power Automate
Development 2. Add support for your application to authenticate users with Microsoft Entra ID If you want to embed the Power Automate UI, integrate with desktop flows or list in Microsoft AppSource
Development 3. Embed the Power Automate UI into your application using our web-based IFrame If you want to include flow creation or management in your application
Development 4. Integrate with desktop flow APIs If you want to include desktop flow (RPA) capabilities programmatically within your applications
Development 5. Create and publish flow templates If you want to pre-build flows for your customers
Development 6. Add application logic to programmatically deploy flows If you want to automatically deploy your pre-built flows for your customers
Distribution 7. Grant your customers licenses to Microsoft Flow through the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider program If your customers don’t have Office 365 or Dynamics 365 licenses
Distribution 8. List your solution on Microsoft AppSource It's recommended to increase the visibility of your ISV solution

1. Connecting to your APIs OR Enabling customers to connect to your APIs

As an ISV, you often have proprietary data that you would like customers to access through your flows. You can expose access to any of your data through a custom connector. Learn more

Once created, there are two ways to make the connector available to your customers:

  • The connector can be deployed into the customer’s tenant via REST APIs or PowerShell.
  • To make the custom connector publicly available for all users, you can submit your connector for certification. Learn more

2. Authentication

To call REST APIs and embed authenticated UI, your application needs to use Microsoft Entra federated single sign-on to authenticate end users and customers. Go to Microsoft identity platform for information on how to enable Microsoft Entra federated SSO. We don't have support for unauthenticated access, or access with identity providers other tha Microsoft Entra.

3. Embedding UI components

Embed Power Automate within your app to enable deep, in-context integration between your app and all the other services that Power Automate supports. Learn more

4. Running desktop flows

Integrate desktop flow capabilities to enable robotic process automation through your applications, listing, running and canceling desktop flows created by you or your customers. Learn more

5. Create and publish flow templates

Once you have a connector, you should publish templates that demonstrate how to use your service. These templates will serve as examples that users can use to learn and then extend to their own unique workflows. Learn more

6. Deployment

To give end users access to flows that they can use automatically, deploy them into the Microsoft Entra tenant of the user. Use a deployment package that you deploy using our REST APIs or PowerShell. Learn more

7. Licensing

If your customers already have either Office 365 or Dynamics 365, and these licenses are associated with the identities that users sign in with Microsoft Entra ID, there are no other licensing requirements for them to use standard connectors. Your users will need one of the Power Automate licenses to use premium and custom connectors. If your customers don't use Office 365 or Dynamics 365, then you must acquire use rights on their behalf for Power Automate, so that they're licensed to use those embedded components in your application.

We offer the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider program to acquire licenses on behalf of your customers. There are different pricing plans available for Power Automate, which you should check for plan and feature details.

See also: Overview of Power Automate licensing

8. List on AppSource

Once you have integrated Power Automate into your application, you can list it on AppSource. With AppSource, you can generate new leads for your business by building an app and publishing it to AppSource for new customers to test-drive. Learn more