Automation First Approach

Begin with the outcome people need

Take a training-session booking process. The outcome is a confirmed participant, a suitable session and the right joining information. If staff currently copy a request into three lists, ask why those lists exist. One may be a useful attendance record; another may only duplicate information because a previous tool could not be shared.

Write down what must happen and what merely happens today. Keep required checks, such as capacity or suitability, but question repeated entry and status chasing. Automating a redundant copy can preserve the very work you wanted to remove.

Redesign a booking example before building

In an illustrative pilot, requests arrive through a form with the participant’s contact details, preferred session and accessibility requirements. The coordinator checks any needs requiring personal discussion. The system checks capacity and prepares a confirmation only after the booking is accepted.

One booking record becomes the reference for attendance and joining information. Staff no longer have to maintain a separate “emails sent” spreadsheet if delivery status can be recorded against that booking. A cancellation changes the booking state and releases capacity after the agreed check.

The team first tests this simpler process manually. If colleagues cannot agree when a place is confirmed, a software rule will not resolve the disagreement. The business owner must decide the rule before implementation.

Choose rules, assistance or human work

Use fixed rules for clear decisions such as whether a required field is present. Use AI assistance when varied text needs a draft summary or suggested category, with an appropriate check. Keep personal judgement with a person when the decision depends on context, commitments or consequences the system cannot reliably assess.

These choices can coexist. A workflow may collect a request automatically, ask a person to confirm suitability and then prepare standard joining information. The human step is a planned part of the process, with an owner and an expected response time.

Make the process easy to change

Write the policy separately from the tool configuration. If the session capacity changes from 12 to 10, the rule should be easy to find and test. Keep a small set of examples showing accepted, rejected, cancelled and duplicate bookings. Re-run those examples when a rule changes.

Define a pause and manual fallback. A coordinator should know where new requests will wait if a connection is unavailable. Do not make the only copy of essential booking information depend on a successful notification.

Apply the approach without a large programme

Automations For Business can help simplify one repeated process and build the custom workflow around it. Bring a recent ordinary case and a troublesome one. We can use both to identify what should be removed, standardised, automated or reviewed by a person.

Review the pilot with the people doing the work. Look for fewer repeated entries, clearer ownership and less waiting. Keep the useful parts, correct the rules that caused confusion and expand only when the team can operate the process confidently.

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Sources and notes

Sources checked on October 22, 2026.

• Microsoft: test cloud flows

  Official guidance for testing automation before relying on its output.

• Microsoft: approval flows

  Official documentation for combining an automated flow with a person’s approval.