azure logic apps monthly update

Azure Logic Apps Monthly Update – February 2017 from #MSAUIgnite

Published on : Feb 17, 2017

Category : Microsoft Azure

Sriram Hariharan

Author

The Azure Logic Apps team conducted their monthly webcast earlier this morning – well, not from the same room/venue they normally do! This time it came all the way from Down Under on a bright, sunny Friday morning at Gold Coast, Australia. The entire Microsoft Pro Integration team is at Microsoft Ignite, Australia (#MSAUIgnite) and they have been having a great time talking about Logic Apps, BizTalk, API Management, Azure Service Bus and more. Azure Logic Apps from Microsoft Ignite, Australia Before I get into the updates from the team, a huge shout out to Jeff Hollan, Kevin Lam, Jon Fancey, and of course Jim Harrer for bringing in this session live from Australia and trying out a new outdoor experiment of the remote webcast. Well done!
You can download the entire article as a PDF document.
Azure Logic Apps Monthly Update – February 2017.
Now on to the updates from the session –

What’s New?

  1. Header name-values control – Instead of having the JSON block, you can have the name-value pair in the HTTP control. However, if you want to still have the JSON block, you can get it done through the Logic Apps designer window.
  2. Updates to Portal Management Blade
    1. Clean ups to Resource blade – Users can now search for a particular run id and jump in directly to that particular run
    2. You can filter directly on the status (Flow History filter)
    3. Open a run directly
  3. Relative URL with custom methods – Say, you have a request trigger and you want to change the URL of the request trigger, this is now possible in the designer. The root name however remains the same but you still can add extensions to it. You can now create a Logic App with a GET and pass the parameters as a query string in the URL which gets passed as a token inside the Logic App.
  4. Edit Azure Function from Logic App – If you are having a Function, you will now see a link (easy one click link) from which you can jump directly to your function in the Functions blade and edit it, and come back to the designer. You no longer need to search for your functions in order to edit it.
  5. Generate JSON schema from sample payload – You can put schemas in two different places – request trigger and parse JSON action. You no longer need to go to a different website to generate the JSON Schema, instead there is a button readily available with which you can generate a JSON Schema with some sample payload. You can later edit the schema as per your requirements. This is definitely a time saving option for developers.

New SaaS Connectors

  1. Azure Automation – You can now trigger a Runbook directly from your Logic Apps. The action to run a Runbook will wait for the Runbook to complete and you can get the output from the Runbook. You can achieve a lot of Dev-Ops scenarios with this brand new Azure Automation connector.
  2. Azure Data Lake – Dump your data into the lake easily (LOL!!). Well, that’s exactly what this connector helps developers, data scientists and analysts. Store the data of any size, shape and speed easily into the Azure Data Lake using the new Azure Data Lake connector.
  3. LUIS – You can now do BOT related stuff with this connector
  4. Bing new search
  5. Basecamp 2
  6. Infusionsoft
  7. Pipedrive
  8. Eventbrite
  9. Bitbucket

New Operations

SQL on-prem stored procs – You can now get the stored procs from SQL Azure on to your on-premise installation

Improvements to Logic Apps Designer

Jeff showed a demo on the recent improvements to the Logic Apps Designer. We’ll list out some of the cool things that have been added in the last few weeks –
        1. Improved Logic Apps Designer (Templates) screen – The templates screen definitely sports a new look with a very nice video by Jeff Hollan that shows how you can get started with a Logic App in less than 5 minutes. Yes, Jeff! That deserves an Oscar (wink)! You’ve got to watch the Logic Apps Live webcast video and jump to 7:07 to understand what I mean here.
        2. Start with a common trigger – You may not want to start from a blank template all the time. So, a new section called “Start with a common trigger” has been introduced (as suggested by a fellow Program Manager at Microsoft Pro Integration Team).New Azure Logic Apps Designer Screen
        3. When creating a new Request/Response Trigger, you can now choose from a list of advanced options – the Method of the request trigger (GET, PUT, POST, PATCH, DELETE) and enter a Relative Path (e.g., /foo/{id}).
Azure Logic Apps Designer Steps 1 Similarly when adding an action for this trigger, the designer is now able to identify that an ‘id’ will actually be passed as a parameter with the URL, in addition to the body, header, path parameters, queries. Azure Logic Apps Designer Steps 2
You can download the entire article as a PDF document.
Azure Logic Apps Monthly Update – February 2017.

What’s in Progress in Azure Logic Apps?

Here’s a look at what more is expected from the Azure Logic Apps team in the coming months –
      • Variables – Once implemented, you will be able to declare variables and use them within the Logic App
      • Exposing Retries – You will be able to see the action retries, errors & successes and what the results actually were
      • Expression evaluation in Run History–  Break down of the evaluation of each workflow definition language functions in the Run History so that you can see what/how it actually evaluated
      • Convert array as table or CSV action – This is something similar to a daily/weekly digest. For e.g., you want to convert a set of tweets into a HTML table and send it as an email.
      • Service Bus namespace picker – If you are using the Service Bus connector, the connector will list all the Service Bus namespaces. You can choose the policy that you want and you can easily establish a connection with Service Bus.
      • Partner and EDIFACT tiles in OMS
      • A new region has been added – Canada!! (Well, looks like Jeff, Kevin, and Jon love Canada a lot!!!)
      • Connectors (in the pipeline)
        • Oracle DB
        • Oracle EBS
        • SQL Trigger
        • Blob trigger
        • Zendesk
        • Act!
        • Intercom
        • FreshBooks
        • Lean Kit
        • WebMerge
        • Inoreader
        • Pivotal Tracker
        • Paylocity

This was a Special Session of Firsts. Why??

At the halfway mark, again! there was a surprise on the Logic Apps webcast. Seems like a session of firsts this one!! Jeff, Kevin and Jon had a special guest – Daniel from Perth, Australia who is one of the early adopters of Logic Apps. Daniel gave a brief idea about the project that he has been working on with Logic Apps. In fact, Daniel’s integration solution spans across almost 40 different workflows and Daniel talks about the best practices to manage such a complex solution. You can watch the webcast between 13:20 and 32:40 to understand more about Daniel’s implementations and the technologies they are using. Oh, and did I miss about one more first – Jeff’s laptop getting overheated during the course of the webinar (blazing sun and sunny day) and feel sorry for the guys to have done the recording (continuation) with Daniel at a later time.

Performance Improvements

      • Service Bus Performance
        • Triggers normally use long polling intervals, and a minimum polling interval is about 30 seconds. The Pro Integration team have now added batching to the trigger and the trigger can receive up to 175 messages/trigger.
        • The trigger limits are now increased to 3000/minute (further even upto 6000/minute as testings are underway) from existing 2000/minute
        • Auto complete actions can now handle about 300 messages/second, and this will increase further with more connections and Logic Apps
      • Limitless
        • Larger messages
        • Higher throughput
        • Increased limits on foreach and other logical constructs

Community Content

Towards the end of the session, the team pointed out on the upcoming Global Integration Bootcamp event happening on March 25, 2017 around the world. As on date, the event is happening in 11 different locations – Australia, UK, USA, Belgium, Finland, Norway, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, India, and Sweden.
Did You Know? BizTalk360 is proud to organize the Global Integration Bootcamp in 2 out of the 11 locations – UK and India. You can sign up for these events by clicking the following links: UK – Register Today India – Register Today
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! Reach Out Azure Logic Apps Team You can watch the full video here to get a feel of the new features that were discussed during the webcast.

Previous Updates

In case you missed the earlier updates from the Logic Apps team, take a look at our recap blogs here –
You can download the entire article as a PDF document.
Azure Logic Apps Monthly Update – February 2017.