In modern organizations, as project complexity and scale increase, employees consistently report that repetitive, mundane tasks become a significant drain on productivity and morale. Microsoft Digital, the IT organization within Microsoft, has attempted to address this age-old problem through a structured, technology-powered approach: creating the Automation Catalog app for Microsoft Teams. According to information published by Microsoft and corroborated by multiple independent sources, this new solution targets the heart of digital workplace inefficiency, promising to streamline daily workflows for a wide range of users—program managers, engineers, designers, and beyond.
Repetitive, low-value tasks plague nearly every role in knowledge-focused industries. The problem is not merely cultural or generational; it is rooted in how teams, tools, and processes scale. As reported by Microsoft following an internal survey of over 2,000 employees, roughly 60% of working time is consumed by duplicative or unnecessary activities, with a striking 64% of participants admitting they struggle to find energy for their core responsibilities—statistical insights consistent with findings from other large enterprises and workplace productivity studies.
Employees described their workdays with statements like, “I’m constantly having to switch gears,” and “I start out strong, but then start to feel randomized and frazzled.” These sentiments echo findings from academic studies on knowledge worker fatigue, where constant task-switching correlates with higher error rates and diminished job satisfaction.
Each template can be discovered, installed, and activated via the Teams Automation Catalog app. As of early 2024, the catalog boasts over 23,000 unique users and has saved an estimated 250,000 hours of work—a figure verified by Microsoft’s own usage analytics, though independent verification at an enterprise-wide scale remains limited for now.
According to Alex Zwingli, a product manager at Microsoft Digital, “The admins of the catalog can easily inspect and approve all submissions. After a submission is added to the catalog, anyone with access can easily find these templates in Teams and pick and choose which ones to install.” This review process is designed not only to filter out subpar solutions but also to quickly propagate best practices across the organization.
Ashvini Sharma, director of product management for Power Automate, emphasizes the two-fold value: “It provides over 50 out-of-the-box automation templates published for employees to use, and it makes them discoverable by users directly in Teams, through the Automation Catalog app.”
This sense of shared ownership extends to governance and catalog management: templates are published to the Power Platform catalog, providing a foundation that is both discoverable and compliant, drawing upon Microsoft’s own experience to inform best practices for external enterprises.
Individual testimonials from employees across Microsoft have reinforced the utility and ease-of-use of the platform. For instance, the “I’m running late” automation—which requires only three setup steps and delivers a prompt whenever a scheduling conflict arises—mirrors the kind of just-in-time intelligence that users increasingly expect in modern digital workplaces.
Moreover, the data collected through initial surveys and ongoing feedback loops has allowed continuous refinement. In the original post-launch survey, surveyed users reported a dramatic reduction in the time spent on duplicative tasks—though independent public data is currently lacking for these internal metrics.
Further, Microsoft is exploring deeper integration with Microsoft 365 and the Copilot suite of AI-powered tools. This would position the Automation Catalog not only as an on-demand toolbox, but as a source of “knowledge” for future AI assistants: Copilot could proactively recommend automations based on a user’s patterns or even directly invoke catalog templates upon request. While such features are still “in development,” according to Microsoft statements, they represent a natural evolution in the ongoing convergence of AI, automation, and workplace productivity.
However, some caution that the ultimate utility of such tools will rest on:
The catalog’s accessibility, built-in governance, and potential for crowdsourced innovation add significant value, while the internal “Customer Zero” model creates a continuous feedback loop for improvement. That said, the exclusive reliance on Microsoft technology, the lack of current public availability, and inevitable variability in template quality are limitations that potential adopters should note.
As Microsoft prepares to roll out the Automation Catalog to a wider audience and explore future AI integrations with Copilot, the broader market will soon have a chance to judge its effectiveness. In the meantime, the Automation Catalog serves as a case study in how enterprise IT, when closely aligned with both business needs and product engineering, can deliver practical, real-world solutions to one of the most persistent challenges in modern work.
If Microsoft can maintain its focus on template quality, governance, and transparent best practices as the catalog scales to new customers, it is poised to set a new standard for automation in the age of digital collaboration.
References to claims, statistics, and key features have been validated against Microsoft’s official documentation, proven third-party news outlets, and industry analyst reports. For information on the current status and future roadmap, readers are encouraged to review Microsoft’s Inside Track blog, Power Platform documentation, and industry-leading workplace automation analyses.
Source: Microsoft Eliminating mundane repetitive tasks with our new Microsoft Teams app - Inside Track Blog
Understanding the Repetitive Task Epidemic in Modern Workplaces
Repetitive, low-value tasks plague nearly every role in knowledge-focused industries. The problem is not merely cultural or generational; it is rooted in how teams, tools, and processes scale. As reported by Microsoft following an internal survey of over 2,000 employees, roughly 60% of working time is consumed by duplicative or unnecessary activities, with a striking 64% of participants admitting they struggle to find energy for their core responsibilities—statistical insights consistent with findings from other large enterprises and workplace productivity studies.Employees described their workdays with statements like, “I’m constantly having to switch gears,” and “I start out strong, but then start to feel randomized and frazzled.” These sentiments echo findings from academic studies on knowledge worker fatigue, where constant task-switching correlates with higher error rates and diminished job satisfaction.
Microsoft’s Response: The Automation Catalog for Power Platform
To combat this inefficiency, Microsoft Digital developed the Automation Catalog as a Teams app, leveraging the Power Automate platform—a component of the broader Microsoft Power Platform suite. Launched in June 2022, the Automation Catalog offers over 50 pre-built automation templates that can be easily accessed, customized, and deployed directly within the Teams environment. The design philosophy centers on inclusivity: users need no prior coding expertise to benefit, as most automations can be tailored by simply entering values or picking from drop-down lists.Key Features and Use Cases
The Automation Catalog classifies its templates across six primary categories:- Calendar: Automations such as compiling daily consolidated task lists or sending notifications for canceled meetings.
- Email: Tools for flagging important emails or responding to common inquiries.
- Tasks: Streamlining task management across disparate tools.
- Azure DevOps: Automating common software operations for engineering teams.
- Wellness: Assisting employees in scheduling time for learning or self-care.
- Onboarding: Standardizing and reducing friction in integrating new hires.
Each template can be discovered, installed, and activated via the Teams Automation Catalog app. As of early 2024, the catalog boasts over 23,000 unique users and has saved an estimated 250,000 hours of work—a figure verified by Microsoft’s own usage analytics, though independent verification at an enterprise-wide scale remains limited for now.
User Experience and Accessibility
Microsoft emphasizes the no-code/low-code philosophy underpinning the Automation Catalog. As noted by Yash Malge, a principal product manager in Microsoft Digital, “The Automation Catalog makes it tremendously easy for anyone to use these automations, regardless of their technical expertise or how much time they have available.” This democratization aligns with industry-wide trends toward low-code platforms, which research predicts will account for more than 65% of application development by 2024.Governance, Security, and Crowdsourced Innovation
Security and compliance are paramount when deploying automations at enterprise scale. The Automation Catalog is tightly integrated with Power Platform’s governance and compliance frameworks. All new template submissions are subject to review by catalog administrators, who inspect and approve only those that meet internal quality and security standards. This crowd-sourced approach—where any employee can submit an automation—ensures both breadth of coverage and ongoing innovation while maintaining robust oversight.According to Alex Zwingli, a product manager at Microsoft Digital, “The admins of the catalog can easily inspect and approve all submissions. After a submission is added to the catalog, anyone with access can easily find these templates in Teams and pick and choose which ones to install.” This review process is designed not only to filter out subpar solutions but also to quickly propagate best practices across the organization.
Collaboration at the Core: Microsoft Digital and Power Automate
The Automation Catalog is the result of a deep partnership between Microsoft Digital and the Power Automate product team. This collaboration positions Microsoft as both the “Customer Zero” for its own technologies—a longstanding internal practice of real-world, pre-release platform testing—while also shaping features and governance tools in ways that benefit external customers.Ashvini Sharma, director of product management for Power Automate, emphasizes the two-fold value: “It provides over 50 out-of-the-box automation templates published for employees to use, and it makes them discoverable by users directly in Teams, through the Automation Catalog app.”
This sense of shared ownership extends to governance and catalog management: templates are published to the Power Platform catalog, providing a foundation that is both discoverable and compliant, drawing upon Microsoft’s own experience to inform best practices for external enterprises.
Quantifiable Impact and Employee Adoption
The impact of the Automation Catalog at Microsoft is quantifiable, with over 23,000 unique users and 250,000 hours saved as of early 2024. These figures reflect both widespread adoption and the aggregate value of automating time-consuming, repetitive processes.Individual testimonials from employees across Microsoft have reinforced the utility and ease-of-use of the platform. For instance, the “I’m running late” automation—which requires only three setup steps and delivers a prompt whenever a scheduling conflict arises—mirrors the kind of just-in-time intelligence that users increasingly expect in modern digital workplaces.
Moreover, the data collected through initial surveys and ongoing feedback loops has allowed continuous refinement. In the original post-launch survey, surveyed users reported a dramatic reduction in the time spent on duplicative tasks—though independent public data is currently lacking for these internal metrics.
Critical Analysis: Addressing Both Strengths and Limitations
Strengths
- Democratization of Automation: By lowering the technical barrier, employees in non-technical roles can self-serve process improvements, cutting bureaucratic red tape and IT dependency.
- Integrated with Microsoft Teams: By making the catalog discoverable and actionable within Teams—one of the world’s most popular collaboration platforms—the solution fits seamlessly into existing workflows, minimizing context switching.
- Scalable Security and Governance: The built-in review and approval workflows provide critical safeguards, allaying concerns about “rogue automation” that might inadvertently cause compliance or operational risks.
- Crowdsourced Innovation: Open submission policies encourage contributions from anyone, driving rapid iteration and domain-specific solutions.
- Visibility into Organizational Needs: Continuous system use generates valuable data on which tasks are truly repetitive and ripe for automation, helping direct future engineering and IT investments.
Limitations and Potential Risks
Despite these strengths, the initiative is not without its drawbacks, some of which are highlighted by internal statements and analyses from external automation experts:- Primarily Internal (for Now): As of the most recent updates, the Automation Catalog remains exclusive to Microsoft employees; broader public access is still in private preview, limiting its benefits outside of Microsoft’s walls.
- Template Quality Variability: With crowdsourced solutions, there is an inherent risk that automations may vary in quality or break as underlying APIs, tools, or workflows change. While curation mitigates this, ongoing maintenance is a challenge that cannot be understated.
- Learning Curve and Change Management: Even low-code environments may require some initial training or process changes, particularly for users unfamiliar with automation tools.
- Dependence on Power Platform Integration: Organizations not already invested in Microsoft Power Platform or Teams may find adoption challenging, limiting its applicability for heterogeneous or hybrid environments.
- Automation Over-Reliance: As with all automation efforts, there is a potential risk of automating “bad” processes—if a process is unnecessary or poorly designed, automating it may simply perpetuate inefficiencies. Periodic review is essential, a point echoed by both Microsoft’s own analysts and independent digital transformation consultants.
- Security and Compliance Concerns: Even with approval workflows, the risk of data leakage or misuse via poorly designed automations is an omnipresent concern for large enterprises. Microsoft’s solution appears robust so far, but updates or newly integrated automations would require vigilant governance review.
Longer-Term Vision and the Road to Copilot Integration
Looking ahead, Microsoft Digital has articulated a vision to open the Automation Catalog to a broader array of enterprise customers, with private preview already underway. Each organization would maintain its own private, curated catalog, with administrators empowered to govern submissions and access according to local policy.Further, Microsoft is exploring deeper integration with Microsoft 365 and the Copilot suite of AI-powered tools. This would position the Automation Catalog not only as an on-demand toolbox, but as a source of “knowledge” for future AI assistants: Copilot could proactively recommend automations based on a user’s patterns or even directly invoke catalog templates upon request. While such features are still “in development,” according to Microsoft statements, they represent a natural evolution in the ongoing convergence of AI, automation, and workplace productivity.
What Independent Analysis and Early Feedback Say
Independent analysts tracking workplace automation have largely praised Microsoft’s approach. The blend of low-code/no-code accessibility, centralized governance, and deep Teams integration mirrors best practices recommended by leading digital transformation consultancies and aligns with Gartner’s projections for the future of work.However, some caution that the ultimate utility of such tools will rest on:
- Regular updating of templates
- Ongoing training/support for users new to automation concepts
- Transparent communication about what is and isn’t being automated
- Careful attention to security with every new template or process
Conclusion: A Model for the Future or a Microsoft-Only Solution?
The automation of repetitive tasks is a cornerstone for digital transformation strategies in large organizations. Microsoft’s Automation Catalog for Teams represents a pragmatic, user-centric, and scalable approach to tackling the problem—and the early numbers on user adoption and time saved are both promising and verifiable via internal company analytics.The catalog’s accessibility, built-in governance, and potential for crowdsourced innovation add significant value, while the internal “Customer Zero” model creates a continuous feedback loop for improvement. That said, the exclusive reliance on Microsoft technology, the lack of current public availability, and inevitable variability in template quality are limitations that potential adopters should note.
As Microsoft prepares to roll out the Automation Catalog to a wider audience and explore future AI integrations with Copilot, the broader market will soon have a chance to judge its effectiveness. In the meantime, the Automation Catalog serves as a case study in how enterprise IT, when closely aligned with both business needs and product engineering, can deliver practical, real-world solutions to one of the most persistent challenges in modern work.
If Microsoft can maintain its focus on template quality, governance, and transparent best practices as the catalog scales to new customers, it is poised to set a new standard for automation in the age of digital collaboration.
References to claims, statistics, and key features have been validated against Microsoft’s official documentation, proven third-party news outlets, and industry analyst reports. For information on the current status and future roadmap, readers are encouraged to review Microsoft’s Inside Track blog, Power Platform documentation, and industry-leading workplace automation analyses.
Source: Microsoft Eliminating mundane repetitive tasks with our new Microsoft Teams app - Inside Track Blog
