Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining

Process Insights is an organization team. We currently have shipped Power Automate Process Mining Process. Our goal is for users to understand and improve their process. Customers can simplify how they work by discovering workflow bottlenecks and automation opportunities through our products by utilizing process and task mining and leveraging the Power Platform.

 

My Role

Design Lead pushed our process mining capabilities into GA, increasing adoption for current features, and delivering a vision and integration of our acquisition, Minit.

 

product design Lead and manager

Led the shipped ux features for our adoption funnel 2021, and created multiple visions as well as product scope scenarios for our Public Preview 2022 and GA our product in 2023 .

⭐️ Product Vision

🎨 Concepting

🧭 Customer Journey Map

πŸ‘€ Personas

πŸ–Œ Wireframing

🧩 Prototyping

βœ… Usability Test

πŸ™Œ Customer Validation

πŸ–Ό Visual Design

πŸ’¬ Content Designer

 
  • 1 General Manager, Product Owner

  • 1 General Product Manager

  • 1 Principal Group Engineer Manager

  • 6 Engineer managers (50+ eng)

  • 7 Product managers

  • 1 UX researcher (Led)

  • 1 Product Designer (Managed)

  • 1 Content Designer (Led)

 
 
 

 

Impact

 

4x

Creative team growth

53x

VA MAU

4x

MAU

3

Product integrations

 

Team

  • Hired and onboarded: 1 designer, 1 researcher, 1 content designer

  • Created collaborative environment for cross disciplines

  • Influenced product strategy

Product

  • Increased product VA MAU from 14k to 80k

  • Delivered vision for spoke app influencing product strategy, planning, and release

  • Ensure merging of acquisition follows Microsoft pattern and style guidelines

  • Led branding of our new logo and desktop app

  • Led product design for Private Preview, Public Preview and General Availability

 

When I came to this team in August 2021, they needed to prove quickly the business need and user need of the feature product in order to get the headcount we needed to succeed in this new market. We had prove that what was shipped worked, that users β€œneed” process mining, and there is a market fit.

In between all of this, the product/eng team grew from 17 people to 100 people, and I hired a designer, research, and content designer. As well, we acquired a company, named Minit. New challenges arose with the acquisition and growing so fast in less that 6 months.

 

 

Opportunities

 
  1. Discover the why in our funnel pain point and our differentiator

    Ship over 12 features, competitor analysis, user journeys

  2. Build a creative team

    Increased creative presence into product process influencing product and enhancing a collaborative environment. Providing clarity to the creative team.

  3. Influence product strategy for the Microsoft ecosystem

    Customer journey, drove persona definition, defined multiple visions. The Generative AI vision influenced Satya to ship our product for General Availability.

 
 

 

Read more here about specific problems

 

Problem #1

Increasing Adoption Funnel

 

Before September 2021

VA MAU 10k | Created process 6

 

After April 2022

VA MAU 80K

 

< 1% created a process

  • Users only have entry point on navigation only

  • Users have 2 sections on navigation for Process advisor. They would go to processes which was empty

  • Users don’t know what process mining is

  • Users don’t know the value of process mining and task mining

  • Users get confused of Process Advisor inside PowerAutomate. They think Process Advisor is part of a made up β€œflow”

 
  1. Identify the why

 

Why Process Insights?

  • What are the business needs?

  • Who are the users

  • What are the user needs

  • What is value for the users

 

How does our product work?

I looked at our product. There was no product flow map, so I decided to create it for clarity, and understand how to onboard people in our product.

 

Identifying who our users are by looking at competitors, talking to users, and talking to customers such as CAB ( customer advisory board at Microsoft ).

 

We (myself, product manager, and assistance of UR) created usability testing of the current concepts from a previous designer.

 

2. Identify the what

Know that we know what is not working, I created a flow of how we can get visitors to adopt our product and retain. This brought visibility of the different features we can add such as demos and templates to the onboarding experience.

 

Bring stakeholders together. I created a brainstorm with the engineering and product team to align on our true differentiator. This would be brought up for creating our product value on the onboarding experience.

 

3. Identify the how

 

Ideations and experimentations

Discoverability and value

Exploration on contextual information and usability testing

Usability feedback:

  • Activity that takes the most time, and going downwards

  • If there was a summary on the details page. Where the painpoints are, and click from there and take me straight to the process insights. Keep it different from runs. Process Insights, should be highlighted more, not just in corner, the connection and details is not daily basis, I would prefer to see process insights more often and highlighted. How frequently I would like to see it.

  • β€œI would like to see a summary, how much time the flow is taking. Average time of flow. And then what is the task that is taking most task on my flow. Avergage time and this task taking the most time.”

  • Go through the processes, the flow, look at times, would be interested in seeing actions. Heat map , the longer time durations . Discover bottle necks. Variants different sensitivities

  • β€œI like the way the average case duration is how much time is taking. I like the bottom , showing me the different variants. And which ones are recursive. How much time that variant . I assume here I can check how much time is of variants”

 
 

4. Final solutions

Contextual entry point

5 seconds to wow

Telemetry with our shipped designs


 

Problem #2

Integrate and scale Minit and Process Advisor

 

focusing on an industry

There was too much ambiguity, no clarity. We wanted to tackle large scale and quickly, but that gave no clarity nor understanding who to focus on, nor which sector, industry, nor scenarios scenarios. We decided to go into the finance sector first.

We needed clarity and alignment on which part of the whole sector to tackle. To start creating alignment, I gathered research from t he finance team, talked to the finance products, and asked where does our product provide most value. At the same time, the pms were creating customer validation on the narrowing. With customer validation and research, I created a customer journey for engineers and product managers to align which personas we are catering too, and how to divide some of the scope of work.

 

Outcome

βœ… Clarity and stakeholder alignment

βœ… Influencing engineering semester planning and cost

βœ… Feature prioritization

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Design manager values:

Coach and care

β€œYou have reached out to other leads and groups to collect and compile best practices and successfully created a smooth onboarding experience for her. You are investing time and effort to help her gain and build up her technical skills as well as helping her to network to learn more from other designers and disciplines, job well done and thank you for your care to form a diverse and inclusive team. Looking forward to having more designers/researcher/content designer joining your team to benefit and learn from your inclusive methodology and grow alongside you.” Design Studio Manager

"My manager is very transparent about business goals, growth developments, and areas where I can grow and improve my skills over time. Ana Sofia has helped me successfully onboard and given me the tools/resources I need to do my work efficiently. She is very friendly and easy to talk to, making it clear that I can ask for help and encourages my ideas." Designer Report

Inclusive

β€œI always appreciate how you promote Inclusive practice and behaviors, whether it is internal by Including tetrads or external working with customers and partners. Keep up the great work, by modeling and coaching others. This will benefit every individual in your immediate team as well as partners and groups that you interact with.” Design Studio Manager

 

Product impact

Customer centric leader

β€œAna Sofia is an amazing leader who champions the customer and has helped provide a delightful and useful experience to the customers across multiple process mining features. I greatly value her collaborative mindset, design expertise and deep commitment to the product and customer.

It was a delight working with her for various features and especially power automate integration to make sure that the right user experience was provided to the customer to meet their needs. As an example, for power automate integration we far surpassed our engagement goals demonstrating that the customer resonated with the user experience.

I also value her ability to balance the product technical constraints with the right customer experience and her diligence in building the right design team to scale the process insights team impact.” Principal Product Manager Lead