Automate, agentify, or nothing?

There’s a special place in work life for those of us who always end up being 'the process person'. People come to us with the same questions. The same requests. The same chaos. And someone (usually us) goes:

“Maybe we should automate this?”

But here’s the thing:

→ Not everything should be automated.

→ Not everything needs an app.

So how do I decide what to automate, what to organize better, and what to just leave alone?

Honestly? I started paying attention to the way I was making these decisions. And I realized that — at the end of the day — everything ends up being a process and a bunch of decisions that end up in a result.

Big or small, simple or messy... it always comes down to a few things you get to choose from, below you can find a simple table where I tried to put all of the stuff together.

Automate, agentify or nothing? the flowchart.

The reality is that the process flow is only an indication, or a suggestion. Processes almost never rely in one solution. Therefore the cases I will show below are very simplified. I might make an attempt to make it similar to reality, but for now let's start.

HR Classic: never-ending vacation request

Situation: Employees send vacation requests in emails, Teams messages, DMs, mail pigeon, or (my personal nightmare) verbal reminder in the kitchen.

Result: HR checks balances manually. Updates Excel. Replies. Updates calendar. Repeat x100.

What is the core thing here? Automation, this should be the engine driving things forward. But around it, of course there is a need of supporting layers to make it feel like a proper experience — not just a workflow hidden in the background.

Never-ending vacation request: how to solve it

HR finally gets to do actual HR things like helping people grow, not chasing vacation dates across tools and their own memory.

Employees get a clear, structured process to request time off, check their balance, and know what’s going on — without awkward Teams messages like 'hey, sorry to bother but...'

The combo requires the use of at least two solutions: Power Automate and Power Apps - potentially Copilot or Teams? The sky is the limit, so maybe this solution doesn't fit your idea, but might help as a starting point.

The reality is that the process lives between clear steps and human mess.

• The clear steps? → Request → Approval → Update calendar → Done.

  Power Automate is perfect to handle that quietly in the background.

• The messy part? → People not knowing how or where to request time off.

  Power Apps gives you a clean entry point — a button, a form, a little app inside Teams — that guides people into the structured process.

This is why I love this little process flow.

At the end of the day, it’s all about clarity. If something happens all the time and follows a pattern, it’s probably a good candidate for automation. If the problem is messy because people can’t find information or don’t know where things are, then it’s time to organize your knowledge better. And if it’s something weird, sometimes the best solution is to just leave it manual — or take a step back and fix the real problem behind it.

Send me your weirdest workflow — work or life — and let’s see where it lands.