I have been using WinAutomation since version 4.x (over 7 years) and feel this is one of the very best tools of its kind ever. While optimistic and impressed with what Microsoft has does so far with PowerAutomate it is not the same.
I am responding to comment on what I am observing in my evaluation of Power Automate. I am evaluating PowerAutomate Desktop and Cloud Version with existing scripts that I have brought over using the PowerAutomate Migration Tool.
Overall the migration tool does a great job and coverts WA Scripts 100% to WinAutomation. I am doing testing with a script that uses an excel worksheet as input (thousands of rows, makes API calls (2-3 per row), parses JSON results and updates an On-Prem SQL database.
PowerAutomate desktop performs signifcantly slower than the same script running on WinAutomation on the same machine.
PowerAutomate version is throwing exceptions that I will eventually resolve, but more difficult to debug in Power environment.
Last, and of greatest concern is the cost of running scripts. According to everything we have read, the standard Pro level license only permits 5,000 calls (API, SQL, HTTP requests) per day. I understand the logic of this (but do not feel the current pricing model is reasonable) for the Cloud Edition, but do not understand why these limits are being imposed on the PowerAutomate DeskTop edition. Reason being, all of the I/O is happening on-premise (SQL, API Calls, HTTP requests, Data Storage) so why are these limits being counted against the daily quota?
For this reason, and being non-profit, we have no choice other than begin evaluating other solutions, VisualCron included as noted previously in this thread by another user.
C'mon Microsoft, you acquired a great tool and platform that is allowing organization to perform a vast array of automation tasks. The technology is robust, secure and based entirely on the Microsoft platform.
Even if you do not ever enhance or upgrade WinAutomation beyond it's current version and capabilities, it will continue to add value to so many of us. Please consider making WinAutomation available through the PowerAutomate license agreement and allow us to use this wonderful tool as an alternative to PowerAutomate or re-consider the limits (5,000 calls per day) for PowerAutomate Desktop.
We have developed several scripts that our organization has come to depend on and some of these scripts will make 20,000 calls per execution. Given the PowerAutomate pricing model based, we will have to discontinue the use of automation in favor of manual process operation. Isn't the point of using robots to reduce the administrative costs associated with manual work? Based on this pricing model for PowerAutomate, it will be very difficult to justify the cost of automating tasks as we have done in the past.
