I just ran into Power Automate for the first time yesterday. The UI looks glitzy. I think many users are going to be vastly underwhelmed and frustrated when the

I just ran into Power Automate for the first time yesterday. The UI looks glitzy. I think many users are going to be vastly underwhelmed and frustrated when they start interacting with third-party software by way of hand-puppeting the Windows UI, though. The quantity of brittleness and sensitive dependence on runtime conditions that this tool is going to generate will be supreme. A Customer (who frequently creates macro-laden Excel contraptions and byzantine nests of "linked" workbooks) was trying to automate some workflow between a third-party application and Excel. The third-party application is a bit of a "platform" (a "let's re-invent Microsoft Access" data roach motel type application) and uses lots of owner-drawn controls masquerading as common controls (with no keyboard shortcuts). He was struggling to get the UI automation functionality to do what he wanted. Having spent a "former life" writing VBScript automation code using "SendKeys", etc (and using various other macro automation tools) I explained that he was descending into the hell that is other people's Windows UI behavior, and that it often ends in frustration. I expect that this platform will end up, like so many before it, being used to create inscrutable edifice in many companies. That edifice will be abandoned when the knowledgeable party leaves a company and nobody new wants (or knows how) to figure out how the junk works, or will become wildly mission-critical and have massive amounts of money poured into it to keep it working, lest civilization collapse (e.g. "The Machine Stops").