Compare: Power Automate

Condexa vs Power Automate: decide, then act

If you are looking for a Power Automate alternative for business rules, you may not need to replace anything. Keep Power Automate for moving the work, and let it ask Condexa for the decision.

See your decision running How it works

Incoming request

evaluating

Which approver does this flow send PO-24019 to?

Look up the approval limit for the cost centre and the requester's grade.
If the amount is within the limit, no approval is needed.
If the supplier is on the new-supplier list, the procurement lead must also approve.
Capital purchases over 25,000 need the finance director.

Answer, with the reason

PO-24019, 31,400 for a capital item from a new supplier: finance director and procurement lead. The flow reads that answer from the JSON response and sends both approval requests. The Condexa trace shows the limit row used and each rule that applied.

Sound familiar?

When the flow becomes the policy

Power Automate is very good at what it does: triggering on events, connecting systems, sending approvals and updating records. The strain shows when the business rules themselves end up inside the flow as conditions.

Conditions inside conditions

Amount over 5,000? Then check the cost centre. Capex? Then check the category. Within a few months the flow is a wall of nested branches that only its author can safely edit.

Changing a limit means editing the flow

The finance director moves an approval limit. Someone who knows the flow has to open it, find every branch that uses the old number, change it and hope nothing else breaks.

The same rule in several flows

The purchase order flow, the expenses flow and a Power App all need the same approval limits. Each has its own copy, and they drift.

The quiet cost

What rules buried in flows quietly cost

Policy changes that wait for the one person who understands the flow.
Different approval answers from different flows for the same request.
Run history that shows which branch ran, but not the business reason in plain terms.
Flows that become harder to test with every new condition.

Before and after

Power Automate moves the work, Condexa makes the call

Today

Approval limits are hard-coded into flow conditions.
A policy change means editing and retesting the flow.
Each flow and app carries its own copy of the rules.
Explaining an approval route means reading the flow's branches.

With Condexa

Approval limits live in a lookup table the business owns.
A policy change is a new Condexa version, and the flow stays the same.
Every flow and app calls the same published decision.
Each answer comes with a step-by-step trace of why.

How you get there

How Condexa and Power Automate work together

1
Move the conditions into a decision
Build the approval logic in Condexa once: lookups against your approval limits table, checks against lists, and a clear output such as the required approver.
2
Add one HTTP call to the flow
In your flow, send the request details to the Condexa REST API with its API key. The answer comes back as JSON in milliseconds, ready to use in the next step.
3
Let the flow do what it does best
Power Automate routes the approval, sends the notifications and updates the record. When the policy changes, you publish a new Condexa version and the flow keeps running untouched.

Testing a decision and reading its trace

A worked example

Example: a purchase order approval flow

A Power Automate flow triggers when a purchase order is created in Dynamics 365. It needs to know who must approve before it sends the approval request.

The rules, in plain English

R1Look up the approval limit for the cost centre and the requester's grade.
R2If the amount is within the limit, no approval is needed.
R3If the supplier is on the new-supplier list, the procurement lead must also approve.
R4Capital purchases over 25,000 need the finance director.

Condexa answers

Side by side

Power Automate vs Condexa: different jobs

Aspect	Power Automate	Condexa
Main job	Orchestrates work: triggers, connectors, approvals, notifications	Decides: returns an answer to a business question
Connecting to other apps	A very wide range of connectors	SQL Server and Dataverse for data, REST API for callers
Sending approvals and emails	Yes, built in	No, it tells the flow who should approve
Complex, changing conditions	Possible, but nested conditions get hard to maintain	Built for it, with lookup tables, lists and step-by-step logic
Changing a limit or threshold	Edit the flow wherever the value is used	Update a lookup table or publish a new version
Testing a rule change	Run the flow end to end	Run the decision with example values and read the trace
Explaining a result	Flow run history shows which actions ran	Decision trace shows every step, lookup and value
Reuse across flows and apps	Child flows help, but rules are often copied	One published decision called by any flow, app or system
Working together	Calls Condexa with an HTTP action	Answers the flow in milliseconds as JSON

FAQ

Questions people ask

Is Condexa a replacement for Power Automate?

No. Power Automate orchestrates work and Condexa makes decisions. Most teams keep their flows and move the complicated conditions out into Condexa, then call it from the flow.

How do I handle complex approval conditions in Power Automate?

Keep the flow for routing and notifications, and move the conditions into a decision that returns the answer, such as the required approver. The flow makes one HTTP call, reads the JSON response and carries on. That keeps the flow short and the rules in one place.

How does Power Automate call Condexa?

With an HTTP action that posts the input values to the Condexa REST API, using an API key issued to a named application. The response is JSON containing the output values.

Can Condexa use data from Dataverse?

Yes. Condexa connects to Microsoft Dataverse, and lookup tables can read live from Dataverse or Dynamics 365, so your decisions use the same data as your flows.

Who changes the rules once they are in Condexa?

Whoever your workspace roles allow. Typically finance or operations authors and publishes changes, while the Power Platform team looks after the flows.

Keep exploring

Related decisions and guides

Integrations

Dynamics 365 and Dataverse

Outgrown Dataverse business rules? Run real decisions on live Dataverse data and call them from any app or flow.

Use cases

Purchase order approval

Stop chasing sign-off by email. Encode your delegation of authority once and let the ERP know who must approve every PO.

Glossary

Rules engine vs workflow engine

A workflow engine manages the sequence of steps, people and systems in a process; a rules engine decides the answer at a step. Most processes need both.

Integrations

REST API

Your app needs an answer, not another rules module to maintain. Send the facts, get the decision back as JSON.

Features

Decision trace

Someone asks why the system said no. Open the run and show them every step, every value and the rule that decided.

Keep your flows. Take the rules out of them.

Bring a decision your team makes every week. We will build it with you, live, test it against your own examples and show your systems calling it.

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