The Azure Logic Apps team conducted their ninth monthly Google Hangout session on April 7, 2016. The team has been very busy lately to take the product to GA, and there were a lot of new exciting functionalities on offer.
Run any Trigger now
You can run any trigger now!! Earlier, the ‘Run’ button was grayed out when you manually try to run a trigger – for instance, you had an FTP trigger and the trigger should execute when a FTP file was available, it wouldn’t have been possible through the logic apps screen. Now, a simple click on the ‘Run’ button will look for the information the trigger requires and fetch it instantly. This functionality is really helpful when you are building and debugging your apps as you no longer have to wait for a particular event to happen for the trigger to execute.
Azure Functions Integration
At Build 2016, Microsoft announced the new functionality called “Azure Functions”. Azure functions is a new service that lets you to write small piece of code that runs in response to various triggers such as an HTTP request, message received on the Azure Service Bus, and so on. You can write code literally in any language – C#, Node.js, Python, F#, PHP, batch, bash, Java, or any executable. You only need to pay for the time your code runs. Azure Functions is a great solution for processing data, and integrating systems, working with the internet of things (IoT), and building simple APIs and microservices.
The logic apps designer is now integrated with Azure functions to allow users to be able to execute small snippets of C#, JavaScript, or any other code within a logic app.
HTTP Webhook in Designer, SQL Stored Procedure
The Webhooks integration with Logic Apps designer is pretty much available. SQL now supports stored procedure for the SQL Azure connector. You can now easily call your stored procedure, and it works pretty much as other SQL functions (query the database, populate a list of stored procedures, use SWAGGER to dynamically define the output that would come, and pass the output throughout).
Ternary Operator – @if()
This operator works very similar to the Microsoft Excel If condition. You can define multiple conditions in a single block.
“Workflow” function type
You can now call nested workflows from your logic app. The workflow has the capability to wait on itself if it has a response action. For instance, if you have a workflow that is set to have a manual trigger, you can nest the workflow in a parent logic app. If there is a response action that is required, the workflow will wait until the response is sent back.
Manual Trigger Schema Support (jsonschema.net)
This is an important update as the manual trigger now supports JSON schema. You can use tool like jsonschema.net to generate a JSON schema for the payload that you will be passing into the manual trigger. The designer will be able to understand the schema and perform the operations. This functionality right now does not exist within the designer and the team is working very hard to embed the tool into the designer.
What’s In Progress in Azure Logic Apps?
We recommend you to watch the video where Jeff Hollan talks in detail about the features that are in progress.
SalesForce Sandbox Support – Option to choose whether you want to use the sandbox or the production portal
Call nested workflow in Designer
Manual Trigger card improvements – if you by chance forget the URL to call the logic app, you now have the option to copy the URL in a single click from the designer itself
Solution/Run/Action Correlation IDs
“Azure Diagnostics” Support for run events
Multi-line text boxes – If you ever found single line text boxes to be confusing/painful, then the Logic Apps has heard you! You will soon see multi-line text box options to enter the data
Exception handling with context on what failed – When you want to know when something in a series of actions has failed, you will start receiving notifications about the failure and in addition, you will also receive information about the context on what actually failed.
Parallel support in designer
BizTalk CTP1
In case you missed it, Microsoft released the BizTalk Community Technology Preview 1 (CTP1) for BizTalk Server 2016 on March 30th. BizTalk Server 2016 CTP1 enables integration with mission critical applications with increased agility, availability and cloud connectivity. The release focuses on a number of important improvements including:
Support for SQL Server 2016 AlwaysOn Availability Groups makes production high availability (HA) workloads in Azure a reality
Support for our newest platforms such as Windows Server 2016, Office 2016, Visual Studio 2015 enabling seamless integration across Microsoft applications.
If you are working on logic apps and have something interesting, feel free to share them with the Azure Logic Apps team via email or you can tweet to them at @logicappsio. You can also vote for features that you feel are important and that you’d like to see in logic apps here.
The Logic Apps team are currently running a survey to know how the product/features are useful for you as a user. The team would like to understand your experiences with the product. You can take the survey here.
If you ever wanted to get in touch with the Azure Logic Apps team, here’s how you do it!
You can watch the full video here to get a feel of the new features and lots more functionalities that are now available in the preview.
Previous Updates
In case you missed the earlier updates from the Logic Apps team, take a look at our recap blogs here –
You can watch the full video here to get a feel of the new features and lots more functionalities that are now available in the preview.
