In the age of digital workplaces and hybrid teams, internal communication professionals are constantly seeking ways to improve efficiency and impact. Automation has become a powerful tool to streamline repetitive tasks and enhance collaboration across departments. If you’ve ever asked yourself, what is Microsoft Flow, this article will walk you through the concept, its application in SharePoint Flows, and how you can use Microsoft Forms Flow SharePoint integrations to transform the way you work.
What Is Microsoft Flow?
Microsoft Flow—now known as Power Automate—is a cloud-based service by Microsoft that allows you to automate workflows between apps and services. These workflows, or “flows,” enable users to carry out tasks such as automatically sending notifications, collecting data, syncing files, and more.
For internal communications professionals who rely heavily on tools like SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Flow provides an intuitive way to remove friction from everyday processes.
Why Internal Comms Teams Should Care About Microsoft Flow
Automation isn’t just for IT. In fact, communication teams using Microsoft 365 tools like SharePoint often juggle time-consuming manual tasks such as:
- Publishing news articles across multiple channels
- Approving announcements or intranet content
- Distributing surveys and collecting feedback
- Notifying managers or departments of updates
This is where SharePoint Flows come in.
SharePoint Flows: Automate Your Intranet with Ease
SharePoint Flows refer to the automated workflows you can create directly from SharePoint lists or libraries. Whether you’re working with a document library, a communication site, or a SharePoint list, you can build custom flows that trigger based on user actions—no coding needed.
Popular Use Cases for SharePoint Flows:
- Content Approval Processes
Automatically route a news article or policy document for review and approval before publication. - Employee Onboarding
When HR adds a new hire to a SharePoint list, a flow can send welcome emails, assign onboarding tasks, and notify relevant departments. - Internal Feedback Collection
Link a Microsoft Forms Flow SharePoint setup where form submissions are instantly recorded in a SharePoint list, triggering alerts to relevant stakeholders. - Intranet Activity Monitoring
Notify site owners when a page hasn’t been updated for a certain period—keeping your intranet fresh and relevant.
By integrating Microsoft Flow into your SharePoint environment, your intranet becomes much more dynamic and responsive to user activity.
Microsoft Forms Flow SharePoint: Collect & Act on Employee Feedback
Forms are a key tool for internal communicators—be it for pulse surveys, engagement polls, or event registrations. But forms alone aren’t enough if the data isn’t used effectively.
With Microsoft Forms Flow SharePoint, you can:
- Automatically send a thank-you email after someone fills out a form
- Populate a SharePoint list or Excel table with responses
- Trigger specific actions based on answers (e.g., escalate negative feedback to a manager)
- Generate monthly reports summarizing submissions using Power Automate and PowerPoint
This seamless connection between Forms, SharePoint, and Microsoft Flow ensures that communication efforts are not only launched but also measured and optimized.
Real-World Example: Streamlining Employee Communications
Let’s say you manage an internal newsletter using SharePoint and want to measure how employees interact with your content. Instead of manually tracking engagement:
- Use SharePoint Flows to log article views
- Connect to Microsoft Forms to collect feedback
- Use Communication Insights from Tryane Analytics to view aggregated KPIs across SharePoint, email, and Viva Engage
This combination allows you to understand which topics resonate best, the best time to post, and which departments are most engaged.
Tryane’s Communication Insights + Microsoft Flow = Powerful Analytics
While Microsoft Flow is great for automating processes, analyzing their impact across platforms requires a more specialized tool.
Communication Insights, developed by Tryane Analytics, is a cross-channel analytics platform designed for internal communications. It connects to SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Viva Engage, newsletters, and more—allowing you to view all your KPIs in one place.
With Communication Insights, you can:
- Track the performance of your automated communication campaigns
- Measure the impact of SharePoint Flows on content visibility and engagement
- Identify the best time to post on your intranet
- Highlight inactive pages or underused documents in SharePoint
- Automatically generate presentation-ready reports
Instead of collecting metrics manually from each platform, Communication Insights gives you a complete view of your internal communication strategy—making it the perfect complement to Microsoft Flow.
Best Practices for Using Microsoft Flow with SharePoint
To get the most out of your automation efforts, follow these best practices:
- Start simple: Begin with a basic approval or notification flow and scale from there.
- Use templates: Microsoft offers pre-built templates for common SharePoint scenarios.
- Test before deploying: Always run tests to ensure your flows work correctly across departments.
- Monitor performance: Combine Microsoft Flow data with insights from tools like Communication Insights to refine your strategy.
- Train your team: Make sure contributors know how to trigger and manage flows.
Conclusion
If you’ve been asking, “What is Microsoft Flow and how can it help me?”, the answer is clear: it’s a game-changer for internal communications teams using Microsoft 365. By integrating Microsoft Flow, SharePoint Flows, and Microsoft Forms Flow SharePoint into your digital workplace, you can reduce manual work, improve responsiveness, and ensure your communication reaches the right people at the right time.
Pair these tools with Communication Insights by Tryane to go beyond automation and into real-time analytics—helping you continuously optimize and prove the value of your internal comms strategy.
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