Workflow Automation with Microsoft Flow and Azure Logic Apps

Source: Microsoft

In June 2016, Microsoft released the preview of its Flow workflow productivity app. This app allows you to create transactions that span multiple software products in a similar way to competitors IFTTT and zapier. For instance, I might want an incoming email to save attachments to SharePoint or Dropbox, or generate a notification by text for an email sent from a key contact.

You can start with a Flow template and customize it to your business needs. Flow doesn't require programming and is simple to configure.

Today Microsoft offers connections to 45 services including Office 365, Twitter, Dropbox, Salesforce, MailChimp, and Slack. Microsoft is adding more services and improving the performance and reliability of Flow.

What is even more exciting to me is that Microsoft offers an industrial strength workflow app for business customers. Flow templates can be migrated to Azure Logic Apps which allow developers to build complex and scalable workflows, and to create new connectors to systems that are not covered out of the box. Logic Apps was released into production in late July 2016.

There is even a BizTalk Server connector in preview now. Often workflow conditions and parameters are more complex than can easily be captured in a configuration, so having support for code will make many more scenarios viable for Logic Apps.

The following video offers an introductory tutorial on Azure Logic Apps:

Although workflow software has been around for many years, no vendor has really claimed a leadership position or set a standard for the entire industry. Microsoft has the opportunity to do so with these products and related cloud offerings (Azure and Office 365).

Key Concepts for Microsoft Dynamics 365: Tenant, Instance, App and Solution

Updated 8/15/2022 To understand Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) and Power Apps, you need to learn some new terms and concepts that may be a bit different from what you know from databases and solutions that are hosted on premises. These concepts also apply to Power Apps. The main difference is that with Power Apps you are not starting with a Microsoft app but more of a blank canvas for your custom apps. This post introduces some key terms and how these concepts are important for planning your implementation. While Dynamics 365 is still available on premises, it is most commonly deployed on the Microsoft cloud. This blog post discusses only cloud implementations. Microsoft has multiple clouds such as commercial and government community clouds in several countries. We start with a Microsoft tenant . A tenant is the account you create in the Microsoft Online Services environment (such as Office 365) when you sign up for a subscription. A tenant contains uni

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Solutions for Education

Student Portal by James Townsend For over three years, Microsoft has released solution accelerators based on Dynamics 365 for industries including healthcare, automotive, manufacturing, finance, nonprofits and education. Each year we are seeing new solutions and updates to solutions based on Dynamics 365, Power Apps and the Common Data Model. In August 2021 Microsoft released the Higher Education component in the latest version of the Dynamics 365 Education Accelerator v3.2.3.10 . Here are some highlights from the Higher Ed solution A student portal An advisor dashboard A business partner dashboard for events, hackathons, internships, scholarships, and grants. The Accomplishment extension tracking student work outside courses. The Grants phone app that allows research faculty to keep track of applications and approvals. Rich reporting on students applying for internships, grants, and scholarships. System views for tables including students, faculty, extracurricular activities, pr

Understanding Dynamics 365 and Office 365 Admin Roles

Managing Dynamics 365 instances If you run Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) in the Microsoft cloud, you need to understand how your Dynamics instances relate to Office 365 and choose which of your administrators receives which roles and permissions to manage Dynamics 365. In on premises deployments, your network administrator would create and delete user accounts. The Dynamics 365 admin would then assign permissions to users in Dynamics 365. This post explains three administrator roles: Office 365 Global Administrator Dynamics 365 System Administrator Dynamics 365 Service Administrator You may think that the Dynamics 365 system administrator would have power to do all the actions needed to manage Dynamics 365, but this is not the case. What's different in Microsoft cloud deployments is that licenses and user accounts are managed in Office 365 by an Office 365 Global Administrator. This role is analogous to a network administrator for an on premises

The Townsend Report

Search This Blog