My Excel Agents

Project Overview

This project involves several Power Automate - Power Apps and SharePoint workflows, including those for purchasing requests, travel requests, and payroll processing. Each week, I receive between 10 to 20 instructional supply requests. My organization is known for its rigorous and transparent record-keeping practices. Every transaction made using a credit card must be accurately allocated to the correct budget line within the appropriate department. For instance, the Biology Department alone may operate under at least three different organizational accounts. Think of it like a large box with multiple compartments—each compartment represents a distinct account. Lab supplies must be charged to one account, while copier expenses must go to another. Although this process can be tedious, it ensures full transparency and accountability in fund usage. To manage financial controls efficiently, only two individuals in a department of 60 are authorized cardholders. This helps prevent excessive or untracked transactions. To streamline operations and reduce interruptions, I developed a workflow where instructors submit requests via an online form rather than walking into my office. These submissions are logged automatically, and a task is created to remind me to take action. Once the task is completed, the system sends a confirmation email to the instructor. While the current budget management system isn’t the most modern, it is functional, reliable, and cost-effective—key considerations in school decision-making.

WorkFlow 1: Purchase Request

This is my tiny practice with Power Automate. Firstly, I create a form and add it to our organization Sharepoint for the instructor to submit requests. When the form comes, I should receive an email notification its details. Also this form is linked to a new list in Microsoft List, which would be easily pulled into an Excel sheet everytime a new form arrives. At any time, anyone in our department can pull this Excel report with purchasing transactions, which makes purchasings' records transparent.

In the initial planning step, I always follow this diagram:

4-Step Procedure

1

Plan

Outline your goals and gather resources.

2

Design

Create the layout and prepare visuals.

3

Develop

Write code and build your solution.

4

Launch

Test, deploy, and go live!

WorkFlow 2: Travel Request

Behind the scenes, there’s a significant amount of financial and logistical work involved in scientific conferences. As mentioned earlier, every dollar must be precisely allocated to the correct budget line. That said, we don't have to carry the burden of administrative details forever—technology can help us streamline and simplify these processes. Given the complexity of travel requests, which often involve numerous details, using a structured form helps eliminate the inefficiencies of back-and-forth emails or team messages. This workflow not only captures all necessary information upfront, but also logs requests into an Excel sheet, sets reminders for submission deadlines, tracks completion, and notifies me when it’s time to begin reimbursement processes. Overall, this system significantly reduces the administrative load and improves time management. I also utilized Process Mining in Power Automate to check if any bottleneck in my workflow and move on from this.

WorkFlow 3: Payroll Processing

How this workflow brings value to the table

This workflow helps me better understand how modules function in programming languages. A single workflow can include multiple steps, and once triggered, the entire process becomes automated. It mirrors the concept of object-oriented programming. For example, “Add a To-do” can be seen as allocating memory space for a task, with its initial status in "Not started". “Get a To-do” represents naming a variable and assigning it a value. A subtle but important detail here is that the action is to add a single To-do—not a To-do List. Finally, “Update a To-do” completes the cycle by setting its status to complete. One tangible contribution I made in this process was creating a workaround using Excel to autofill a FormStack form. Since our organization doesn't have a FormStack subscription, I proposed an alternative to the HR department: using Excel to generate a form that closely replicates the original. While the initial setup was time-consuming, I believe it will save our department chair time in the long run, as she’ll no longer need to dig through emails for confirmation.

Key Business Takeaways

Any industries could utilize automation, repeated workflow then enhanced to become artificial intelligence workflow. However, it still depends on the software vendor that the organization used. My org used Microsoft, so I have access to PowerBI and Office Suites.

Data and procedures with bottleneck are everywhere, taking advantages of our domain knowledge would make us a better data analyst
No task is too boring or too tedious to do. Every task has its own value in the full cycle of products delivery.
Even though my role is not a data analyst or fancier, I can see that my technology and AI literacy helped out a lot. I finished tasks always ahead of deadlines, matter of fact, I used my time for dig deep in learning how to finish them, which is a part of deep learning and practicing
Project based learning is a much better way to learn, though limited in resources and guidelines. With chatgpt, doing something I have never done like n8n and make.com or even building an AI agent applying to 100 job boards monthly is not any thing impossible anymore. Technology is not gatekept anymore with AI.