Some desktop applications your organization relies on don’t have APIs. They’re old, they’re clunky, and they aren’t going anywhere. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) lets you connect these systems to Tallyfy by having software bots interact with their user interfaces — clicking buttons, typing text, and navigating menus the way a person would. Power Automate Desktop is Microsoft’s tool for building these automations.
What is RPA?
RPA uses software bots to automate repetitive tasks by mimicking human interactions with applications. Unlike API-based connections (Tallyfy’s preferred approach), an RPA bot works at the screen level — it clicks, types, and navigates. It’s a fallback for when target systems don’t have accessible APIs or when API development costs too much for the task at hand.
Two types:
Attended RPA: Runs alongside a user on their workstation, often started by them to handle part of a task.
Unattended RPA: Runs independently on a dedicated machine. Good for batch-processing jobs tied to Tallyfy.
Power Automate Desktop
Power Automate Desktop is where you design RPA flows (called desktop flows). It gives you a visual designer and pre-built actions for interacting with desktop apps.
Key features:
UI element recorder: Captures mouse clicks and keyboard inputs to generate flow steps.
UI element selector: Pinpoints specific UI elements so the bot can reliably find them.
Pre-built actions: A library covering common desktop operations.
Variable passing: Takes input from cloud flows (which might pull data from Tallyfy) and passes output back.
When to consider RPA with Tallyfy
RPA is a last resort. Use it only when API-based integration isn’t feasible:
Bridging Tallyfy with legacy systems: Your Tallyfy process needs data from that old on-premises desktop app with no API — say, a 15-year-old accounting system. RPA can handle those interactions.
Data entry from Tallyfy to legacy apps: Data from Tallyfy form fields gets typed into a legacy desktop app automatically. Customer details from a completed onboarding task could go straight into an old CRM.
Extracting data for Tallyfy: An RPA bot logs into a legacy system, scrapes data, and a cloud flow feeds it into a Tallyfy process.
If a system offers an API, use that instead. APIs via Power Automate’s HTTP connector are far more stable than RPA. Tallyfy’s Open API and webhooks are always your best bet for direct integration.
Core desktop flow concepts
When building desktop flows that work with Tallyfy data (passed from a cloud flow):
UI elements: The specific buttons, fields, and menus your bot interacts with.
Recorder: Translates your manual actions into flow steps — usually needs refinement afterward.
Actions: Built-in operations like “Launch application,” “Click UI element in window,” and “Populate text field in window.”
Input/Output variables: How desktop flows connect with cloud flows. Inputs let a cloud flow pass Tallyfy data into the desktop flow. Outputs send results back to update Tallyfy.
Example: updating a legacy CRM from Tallyfy data
Here’s a conceptual outline. A Tallyfy “Client Information Update” task is completed with a new phone number in its form fields. That data needs to go into a legacy desktop CRM that has no API.
RPA integration flow
This diagram shows how data flows from Tallyfy through Power Automate’s cloud and desktop components to update legacy systems.
What to notice:
Cloud-desktop separation — Steps 1-4 happen in the cloud, steps 7-12 run on your local machine or server
Data handoff at step 5 — The gateway bridges cloud and desktop, passing Tallyfy form data as input variables
UI automation sequence — Steps 7-12 show the RPA bot mimicking human clicks and keystrokes in the legacy CRM
1. Cloud flow (Power Automate):
Trigger: Use a Tallyfy webhook with Power Automate’s HTTP trigger (the Tallyfy connector has no built-in triggers). Filter for the “Client Information Update” task completion event. (See creating your first flow for basics.)
Action: Tallyfy connector — Get task details. Use the Task ID from the webhook payload to retrieve all form field data.
Action: Power Automate Desktop connector — Run a flow built with Power Automate for desktop.
Desktop flow: Select the desktop flow you’ll create below.
Run Mode:Attended or Unattended (unattended needs specific licensing and gateway setup).
Input Variables: Pass Tallyfy’s “Get task details” output to your desktop flow’s input variables.
2. Desktop flow (Power Automate Desktop):
Define input variables to receive data from the cloud flow.
Launch application — point to your legacy CRM executable.
UI interaction sequence:
Focus window (make sure the CRM window is active).
Click UI element in window (e.g., “Search Client” button).
Populate text field in window (e.g., enter client ID from Tallyfy).
Click UI element in window (e.g., “Search” button).
Wait for the client record to load.
Populate text field in window (e.g., update phone number with Tallyfy data).
Click UI element in window (e.g., “Save Changes” button).
Close application.
Setup requirements
Power Automate Desktop: Install it on the machine where the RPA bot will run.
On-premises data gateway: Required for cloud flows to kick off unattended desktop flows on an on-premises machine. It acts as a bridge for secure communication between cloud and desktop.
Things to watch out for
Fragility: UI automation breaks when the legacy app’s interface changes. Even a button moving to a different spot can kill your flow. Budget for regular maintenance.
Security: Be careful with credentials in desktop flows, especially for unattended bots.
Check alternatives first: Before committing to RPA, look for undocumented APIs, file import/export, or database connections. These are more reliable for Tallyfy integrations.
Don’t RPA Tallyfy itself: Tallyfy has a full API and webhooks. Use those for direct integration — save RPA for the legacy apps that have no other option.
Tallyfy serves as the coordination layer that connects Power Automate Desktop’s local RPA tasks with the human activities and cloud processes surrounding them by managing handoffs and exception routing and tracking end-to-end completion across all automated and manual steps.
Power Automate connects Tallyfy to your other business apps by using triggers and actions to automatically launch processes and create tasks based on external events like emails or CRM updates while Tallyfy handles the human side of structured workflow management and collaboration.
Microsoft Power Automate serves as a no-code bridge between Tallyfy and your other business systems—including Office 365 and SharePoint and Dynamics—using a Premium-tier OAuth 2.0 connector with 13 actions to sync data and automatically launch processes or complete tasks based on events happening across your entire software stack.
Tallyfy’s Premium connector for Microsoft Power Automate lets you link Tallyfy with Office 365 and thousands of other apps by simply searching for “Tallyfy” in Power Automate and signing in with OAuth 2.0 to start automating workflows in both directions.
