Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Introducing Microsoft Flow: Automating Workflows Between Apps and Services
    Introducing Microsoft Flow: Automating Workflows Between Apps and Services
    Introducing Microsoft Flow: Automating Workflows Between Apps and Services
    Ebook272 pages37 minutes

    Introducing Microsoft Flow: Automating Workflows Between Apps and Services

    By Vijai Anand Ramalingam

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Use Microsoft Flow in your business to improve productivity through automation with this step-by-step introductory text from a Microsoft Flow expert. You’ll see the prerequisites to get started with this cloud-based service, including how to create a flow and how to use different connectors. Introducing Microsoft Flow takes you through connecting with SharePoint, creating approval flows, and using mobile apps. This vital information gives you a head-start when planning your Microsoft Flow implementation.
    The second half of the book continues with managing connections and gateways, where you’ll cover the configuration, creation, and deletion of connectors and how to connect to a data gateway. The final topic is Flow administration and techniques to manage the environment.
    After reading this book, you will be able to create and manage Flow from desktop, laptop, or mobile devices and connect with multiple services such as SharePoint, Twitter, Facebook, and other networking sites.
    What You Will Learn
    • Create flows from built-in and blank templates 
    • Manage flows, connections, and gateways
    • Create approvals, connect with multiple services, and use mobile apps
    Who This Book Is For

    Administrators and those who are interested in creating automated workflows using templates and connecting with multiple services without writing a single line of code. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherApress
    Release dateMay 30, 2018
    ISBN9781484236307
    Introducing Microsoft Flow: Automating Workflows Between Apps and Services

    Related to Introducing Microsoft Flow

    Related ebooks

    Programming For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Top 10 Books

      Nov 5, 2021

      Top 10 Books
      1 min read

    • Article

      Compute This

      Oct 12, 2021

      Compute This
      16 min read

    • Article

      Return Of The Tick-tock

      May 25, 2021

      INTEL HAS A NEW CEO. Pat Gelsinger returned to Intel earlier this year; he previously spent 30 years there, and helped design the 80486 architecture (you may have to ask your dad about that one). He’s made several announcements outlining Intel’s plan

      1 min read

    • Article

      Set Up Your First Database

      Aug 25, 2020

      Set Up Your First Database
      1 min read

    • Article

      Rise Of The Robots

      Jan 12, 2021

      Rise Of The Robots
      7 min read

    • Article

      Roll Your Own Game Server

      Feb 10, 2020

      Roll Your Own Game Server
      4 min read

    • Article

      HostGator

      May 3, 2022

      HostGator
      2 min read

    • Article

      MORE Miss Jen Cruz COLE

      Feb 12, 2021

      MORE Miss Jen Cruz COLE
      3 min read

    • Article

      Pull, Configure And Run

      Apr 7, 2020

      Guacamole offers ready-to-run installation packages that are available for Linux distros such as CentOS or Debian. However, the thrust of this article is to illustrate running Guacamole in a Docker container context. Fire up an environment where you

      8 min read

    • Article

      Three Low-code Options

      Nov 12, 2020

      Counting Intel, Vodafone and VW among its customers, OutSystems helps businesses create cloudbased, on-premises and hybrid applications for mobile and web. Its development environment is predominantly drag-and-drop, with views for processes, data and

      3 min read

    • Article

      Tollring Analytics 365

      Sep 7, 2023

      PRICE 1-500 users, billed yearly, $2.99 per month per user from analytics-365.com The move to remote and home working has driven a huge demand for communication and collaboration services, and none more so than with Microsoft’s Teams, which now boast

      2 min read

    • Article

      Roundup

      Jan 10, 2023

      Roundup
      1 min read

    • Article

      Bitwarden

      Sep 19, 2023

      Bitwarden
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Introducing Microsoft Flow

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Introducing Microsoft Flow - Vijai Anand Ramalingam

      © Vijai Anand Ramalingam 2018

      Vijai Anand RamalingamIntroducing Microsoft Flowhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3630-7_1

      1. Introduction to Microsoft Flow

      Vijai Anand Ramalingam¹ 

      (1)

      New Jersey, USA

      In this chapter, you will learn the following:

      What Microsoft Flow is

      What is required to work with Flow

      How to create a flow using a template

      How to create a flow from scratch

      What Is Microsoft Flow?

      Microsoft Flow is a cloud-based service that allows users to create automated workflows across multiple applications and services. "Work less, do more." Microsoft Flow provides features that help line-of-business users to improve productivity through automation. Previously, there was no way for these apps to communicate with each other; Flow provides a way to connect with multiple services and automate tasks. Flow allows power users to create flows based on certain triggers and actions on their own, all with zero coding skills. For example, you can save your email attachments to a SharePoint document library. Flow can be accessed via web browsers (it supports Microsoft Edge and the current versions of Chrome and Safari) and mobile apps.

      The Flow home page shows the key features that are available such as templates, popular services, an overview of Flow, and more; see Figure 1-1.

      ../images/464567_1_En_1_Chapter/464567_1_En_1_Fig1_HTML.jpg

      Figure 1-1

      Featured templates and popular services

      Figure 1-2 shows a sample flow overview.

      ../images/464567_1_En_1_Chapter/464567_1_En_1_Fig2_HTML.jpg

      Figure 1-2

      Overview of a flow

      The menus available in the top navigation bar are shown in Figure 1-3.

      ../images/464567_1_En_1_Chapter/464567_1_En_1_Fig3_HTML.jpg

      Figure 1-3

      Top navigation on the Flow home page

      My flows: View all of your flows.

      Approvals: Create and automate a business approval process. Refer to Figure 1-4 for a sample approval flow.

      ../images/464567_1_En_1_Chapter/464567_1_En_1_Fig4_HTML.jpg

      Figure 1-4

      Sample approval flow

      Templates: Find many built-in templates to start your flow.

      Connectors: Find all available services

      Learn: Find documentation, blogs, and more information for learning purposes.

      Flow vs. Logic Apps

      Microsoft Flow is built on top of Logic Apps and they both have the same workflow designer. The information in Table 1-1 will help you determine when to choose Flow or Logic Apps.

      Table 1-1

      Flow vs. Logic Apps

      Flow vs. SharePoint Designer Workflows

      SharePoint Designer allows you to create automated workflows specific to SharePoint, whereas Flow can be used for SharePoint, OneDrive, Twitter, Office 365 Outlook, and many other services.

      SharePoint Designer has only 3 triggers and 7 list actions whereas Flow has 7 triggers and 35 actions for SharePoint.

      Note

      These counts are accurate at the time of writing. The counts will increase during the course of Microsoft’s updates.

      Figure 1-5 shows the available workflow triggers in SharePoint Designer.

      ../images/464567_1_En_1_Chapter/464567_1_En_1_Fig5_HTML.jpg

      Figure 1-5

      SharePoint Designer workflow triggers

      Figure 1-6 shows the available workflow actions in SharePoint Designer.

      ../images/464567_1_En_1_Chapter/464567_1_En_1_Fig6_HTML.jpg

      Figure 1-6

      SharePoint Designer workflow actions

      Figure 1-7 shows the available Flow triggers and actions for SharePoint.

      ../images/464567_1_En_1_Chapter/464567_1_En_1_Fig7_HTML.jpg

      Figure 1-7

      Flow triggers and actions for SharePoint

      Connectors

      Connectors provide a way for users to connect to the underlying service using their accounts to create automated workflows. As mentioned, examples of popular services include SharePoint, Office 365 Outlook, OneDrive, Twitter, and more. There are more than 150 connectors; you can see all of the available connectors by navigating to the Flow site, as shown in Figure 1-8.

      ../images/464567_1_En_1_Chapter/464567_1_En_1_Fig8_HTML.jpg

      Figure 1-8

      The Connectors page

      Connectors consist of two elements: triggers and actions. Triggers are used to initiate a flow when a specific event occurs. For example, the available triggers for OneDrive are displayed in Figure 1-9.

      ../images/464567_1_En_1_Chapter/464567_1_En_1_Fig9_HTML.jpg

      Figure 1-9

      OneDrive connector triggers

      An action is something that should take place once the event is fired. For example, the available actions for OneDrive are displayed in Figure 1-10.

      ../images/464567_1_En_1_Chapter/464567_1_En_1_Fig10_HTML.jpg

      Figure 1-10

      OneDrive connector actions

      Templates

      Microsoft Flow provides many built-in templates to create commonly used solutions more quickly and efficiently. All of the available templates can be seen by navigating to the Flow site. They are categorized as shown in Figure 1-11.

      ../images/464567_1_En_1_Chapter/464567_1_En_1_Fig11_HTML.jpg

      Figure 1-11

      The Templates page

      Environments

      You can group flows and their related resources into separate environments for different scenarios. For example, if you want

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1