Logic Apps and Power Automation

(By Sanjaykumar S, Kamalakkannan V (III B.Sc.CS)

Introduction:

Logic Apps is a cloud-based platform for creating and running automated workflows that integrate your apps, data, services, and systems. With this platform, you can quickly develop highly scalable integration solutions for your enterprise and business-to-business (B2B) scenarios.

Power Automate, is an ipaas platform by Microsoft for automation of recurring tasks. It is part of the Microsoft Power Platform line of products together with products such as Power Apps and Power BI.

Power Automate can be divided into cloud flows (what was called Microsoft Flow before November 2019), desktop flows and business process flows. There is also approval flows and an approval engine included among the services within Power Automate.

History

In April 2016 Microsoft Flow went into Public Preview and on the 31st of October 2016 Microsoft Flow became General Available Announcing Microsoft Flow General Availability

On the 4th of November 2019 during Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft announced the launch of the preview of UI Flows Robotic process automation now in preview in Microsoft Power Automate

Features of Azure Logic Apps

The following list briefly defines terms and core concepts in Azure Logic Apps.

A logic app is the Azure resource you create when you want to build a workflow. There are multiple logic app resource types that run in different environments.

Workflow

A workflow is a series of steps that defines a task or process. Each workflow starts with a single trigger, after which you must add one or more actions.

Trigger

A trigger is always the first step in any workflow and specifies the condition for running any further steps in that workflow. For example, a trigger event might be getting an email in your inbox or detecting a new file in a storage account.

Action

An action is each step in a workflow after the trigger. Every action runs some operation in a workflow.

Built-in operations

A built-in trigger or action is an operation that runs natively in Azure Logic Apps. For example, built-in operations provide ways for you to control your workflow's schedule or structure, run your own code, manage and manipulate data, send or receive requests to an endpoint, and complete other tasks in your workflow.

Managed connector

A managed connector is a prebuilt proxy or wrapper for a REST API that you can use to access a specific app, data, service, or system. Before you can use most managed connectors, you must first create a connection from your workflow and authenticate your identity. Managed connectors are published, hosted, and maintained by Microsoft.

Integration account

An integration account is the Azure resource you create when you want to define and store B2B artifacts for use in your workflows. After you create and link an integration account to your logic app, your workflows can use these B2B artifacts. Your workflows can also exchange messages that follow Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) standards.

Features of Power Automate

Their are five type of features they are

Business Process Flow

The Business Process Flow is also quite new to the flow family. However, it is also different from the other flows since it uses Microsoft Dynamic 365 to ensure data consistency throughout the whole process.This is it! These are the five different Flows for Power Automate. It’s quite simple and straightforward.

Desktop Flow

Desktop flows broaden the existing robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities in Power Automate and enable you to automate all repetitive desktop processes. It’s quicker and easier than ever to automate with the new intuitive Power Automate desktop flow designer using the prebuilt drag-and-drop actions or recording your own desktop flows to run later.

Automated Cloud Flow

There are a lot of automated flow triggers, but every one of them starts with “when”. That’s because it will only run when the specified conditions are met. An Automated Flow is recommended when you want a flow to run whenever specific conditions are met, depending on which type of Automated Flow trigger you choose.

Instant Cloud Flow

The Instant Flow is perhaps the most popular and commonly used flow type. It is widely used when building Power Apps applications since most of the time it is required to complete the more complex applications. Instant Flow is perfect for Power Apps applications and whenever you want the flow to run immediately after an action, given that it is on the list of triggers available for Instant Flow.

Scheduled Cloud Flow

Schedule Flow is exactly what it sounds like. The big reveal: the flow will run based on a set date and time. This type of flow is best when you want to set the flow to run on a specific date and time.

Advantages of Logic Apps and Power Automation

v Editing the generated JSON. Logic Apps and Power Automate generate JSON for created apps/workflows.

v Significantly low cost for premium connectors.

v Manage both Azure and Office 365 platforms.

v Easily extendable.

v Trigger from anywhere.

Disadvantages of Logic Apps and Power Automation

Ø While many program instances are permitted in play mode, only one instance is permitted in edit mode.

Ø By default, Power Apps allows for the retrieval of 500 objects, but this limit may be increased to 2000. (performance decreases)

Ø If we use the Canvas application, only one developer may work concurrently.

Ø We cannot integrate JavaScript into Power Apps forms

Highlight key differences between Logic Apps and Power Automation

Description	Power Automate	Logic Apps
Focus	End Users and Makers in Office 365	IT Pros, Developers, Admins using Office 365 and Azure Services
Licensing Model*	Per-User License in Office 365	Consumption-Based or Fixed Pricing Model via an Azure Subscription
Flow Creation	Web-Based Designer, Web and Mobile UI	Visual Studio, JSON Definition and Web- Based Designer
Restricting Connectors	Data Loss Prevention	Azure Policy
Error Handling	Flow Checker - providing a list of errors within the Flow	Save Failed - highlighting errors
Trigger Types	Automated, Instant, Scheduled, UI Flow, Business Process	HTTP (Automated), WebHook, Scheduled, HTTP Call (Manual)