How to create a Power Automate flow with Copilot

João Barros 06 de July de 2026 4 min read

Building automations no longer means spending hours dragging actions around. With Microsoft Copilot inside Power Automate, you describe in plain language what you want to automate and the AI builds the flow for you. It is the fastest way to remove repetitive tasks — such as saving email attachments or notifying your team — even if you have never created a flow before.

Prerequisites

A Microsoft 365 account (school or work) with access to Power Automate.
A license that includes Copilot in Power Automate (the assistant appears automatically when it is available).
The apps used in the example: Outlook, OneDrive and Microsoft Teams.
An up-to-date web browser.

Step 1: Open Power Automate and find Copilot

Open the Power Automate portal in your browser and sign in with your Microsoft 365 account. On the home page you will find a Copilot text box inviting you to describe the flow you want to create. If you prefer, open the Create menu first and choose the option to build a flow with Copilot's help. Either way, it is the same assistant that will generate the automation from your description.

Step 2: Describe the flow in natural language

Here is the secret: the clearer you are, the better the result. State the trigger (what starts the flow), the action (what should happen) and the important details, such as folders or channels. Type your request in the Copilot box, for example:

When I receive an email with an attachment in Outlook, save the attachment to a OneDrive folder and send me a message in Teams to let me know.

Notice how the sentence names all three apps and the order of the actions. Copilot uses this information to choose the right trigger (a new email arriving) and the actions that follow. Avoid vague requests such as "organize my emails": without details, the AI does not know what to do.

Step 3: Review the generated flow and connect your accounts

Within seconds, Copilot presents a proposed flow with the trigger and actions already chained together. Before moving on, confirm that each step matches what you asked for: the new-email trigger, the save to OneDrive and the Teams message. Power Automate will ask you to connect (authenticate) each service through its connectors — click each one and sign in if needed. A green check means the connection is ready. If a step does not look right, do not worry: you can fix it in the next step.

Step 4: Adjust and refine with Copilot

The generated flow is a starting point, not a final version. You can keep chatting with Copilot to improve it — for example, ask it to "save only PDF attachments" or "add the date to the file name". The assistant adjusts the actions for you. To ensure unique file names (so one attachment does not overwrite another), open the OneDrive save action and, in the file name field, combine the original name with a date-and-time expression, such as:

utcNow('yyyyMMdd-HHmmss')

This function returns the current date and time (for example, 20260706-080230). Adding it to the file name ensures every saved attachment is unique and never overwrites the previous ones.

Step 5: Save and test the flow

When you are happy with it, give the flow a descriptive name (for example, "Save email attachments to OneDrive") and save it. Then use the test option and choose a manual run. Send yourself an email with an attachment and watch the flow run in real time.

Check the result

To confirm everything worked, do three quick checks: open the OneDrive folder and see whether the attachment was saved; confirm that you received the Teams message; and, in Power Automate, look at the flow's run history. A green success mark means every step ran without errors. If a step shows red, click it to read the error message — it is usually a connector sign-in or a permissions issue.

Conclusion

You have just built a working automation without writing almost any code, simply by describing your intent to Copilot. From here, you can explore more advanced flows: approvals, scheduled notifications or integrations with Power BI. The best next step is to take one repetitive task from your daily routine and try to describe it in a single sentence. Which tedious task will you stop doing by hand starting today?