Introduction

The ability to handle and recover from unexpected circumstances is a critical factor in automating business processes. The risk of errors is present in any automated task. This risk might come from multiple factors, such as changes in the applications used, changes in business processes, or unavailability of hardware, software, files, and services. A robustly automated task should be able to handle, and potentially overcome, such issues during runtime.

Consider the task of updating a client database based on a report downloaded through a web portal. The report is downloaded as an .xlsx file, while the database is hosted on a remote server. This relatively simple task contains quite a few risk factors: the web portal might be down, the report might be empty, or the database might be inaccessible, to name a few. These circumstances could cause the flow to fail. To ensure business continuity, the flow should contain steps that allow it to recover. You achieve this recovery through the use of exception handling.

In this module, you learn about exception handling and how to use it. You also apply exception handling actions on an already automated flow to prevent crashes.

By the end of this module, you can understand and apply the available exception handling tools to minimize the risk of failure.

Learning objectives

In this module, you learn how to:

• Configure the exception handling properties of individual actions.
• Set up exception blocks that handle possible exceptions from groups of actions.

Prerequisites

• Basic familiarity with the Power Automate desktop app console and flow Designer.