By Austen Brown, Prenger Solutions
“Be honest: How long did it take you to learn Power Automate?”
I get this question a lot. As more database administrators discover Power Automate, many wonder what’s involved, what they can build, and how long it takes to learn.
For me, it started with five hours a week for two months through an online course. After that, I continued spending a couple of hours each week learning, building, testing, and engaging with the community. Over time, those small investments added up, and today building automations is a core part of my job. Since then, I’ve built hundreds of automations, presented on Power Automate at Blackbaud conferences, and now help nonprofits automate business processes every day.
Getting Started
I recommend starting with the Daily Gift Digest Notification flow template.
Daily Gift Digest Notification Flow from the Template Showcase
Use it as-is, study how it works, then adapt it to fit a specific use case at your organization. Once you’re comfortable, rebuild it from scratch for a different use case. That’s how I created the Upcoming Opportunity Notification, still available in the Template Showcase today.
My first flow from scratch solved a small pain point, but it taught me how to think through an end-to-end problem, validate incoming data, and make sure the information submitted through an online form ended up in the correct place in the database. It took months to build and ended up saving about an hour of manual data entry a week—it's still one of the automations I’m most proud of.
Think of learning Power Automate like building a house. Start with a solid foundation of core concepts, then add customization and complexity over time. Once you move past the template phase, you’ll start building from scratch. Fair warning: You’ll encounter a lot of errors. Don’t let them discourage you. Each one teaches you something new.
Beginner Checklist
✓ Take a BBU course or workshop
✓ Download the Gift Notification template
✓ Modify it for your organization
✓ Rebuild it from scratch
✓ Share it with the community and ask for feedback
✓ Repeat
What I Wish I’d Known Earlier
Start Small
Don’t start day one building a flow from scratch or tackling an intermediate-to-advanced flow (acknowledgments for example aren’t a good first project). Focus on a single repetitive task that consumes time but adds little value when done manually, ideally something adaptable from a showcase template.
Draw a Diagram First
Before building a new automation, think through the process first, even when adapting a template. Whether you use Visio (Microsoft O365 app) or paper and pencil, map out where your data lives, what connections you need, and what the outcome should be. Take it one step further: Look for patterns within your plan, repeated steps, and engineer a more streamlined approach.
Diagram for my first flow built from scratch
Follow the 70/30 Rule
A common mistake— one I’m guilty of—is overengineering. Instead, solve 70% of the problem and leave room for humans to handle edge cases. Automating every scenario creates flows that are hard to maintain and troubleshoot; solving for 100% often means a full rebuild when something changes.
Diagram of a scenario best handled by a human
Plan for Errors
Build error handling in from the start. Decide what should happen if a key action fails, and whether you want to know immediately or after the flow completes. The worst failures are the ones you discover days later through Microsoft’s automated failure notification email.
Use a Service Account
Store published automations in a service account, not a personal one. People change roles or leave organizations; automations should stay with the organization regardless of who built them.
Build for Longevity
Avoid hard-coding values into your flows. If your organization creates new campaigns each fiscal year, don’t build around specific campaign names— use a “List Campaigns” action with a “Filter Array” to dynamically retrieve active campaigns. Your automation should adapt as your organization changes.
A Realistic Learning Timeline
Everyone learns at a different pace, and Power Automate is not for everyone. That’s okay. Going in with realistic expectations will help you gauge if it’s the right fit. Start with a Blackbaud University course or an in-person training session to learn the fundamentals.
- One month in: Learn triggers, actions, connectors, and expressions. Download templates from the Showcase library and study how they solve specific use cases.
- Six months in: Start building your own flows from scratch. Find repeatable tasks that consume time and create value within your role, department, or organization. This is where most of the real learning happens: hands-on building, trial and error, problem solving.
- One year in: This is when something usually clicks. You start recognizing how problems can be solved with Power Automate, and shift from automating the manual process to designing a better one.
Learn From Your Peers
The SKY Developer forum within Blackbaud Community is one of the most valuable resources available—years of discussions, examples, troubleshooting tips, plus an active community of users willing to help. The Monthly Power Automate User Group is the live version of that same community: ask questions, learn from other builders, discover ideas for your own builds.
The key is consistency. Take a class, then build on it one to two hours a week. Download a template, reverse-engineer it, and ask why each action is used. That’s how five hours a week led to a career in automation.
Austen Brown is a Senior Automation Architect with Prenger Solutions Group. With more than a decade of experience in nonprofit database management, Austen specializes in standardizing data and creating automated business workflows using Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® and the Microsoft Power Platform.
