What is Microsoft Flow?

Microsoft Flow is a Cloud-based business process automation service. It is part of the PowerPlatform that includes PowerApps, PowerBI and Microsoft Flow.

In simple terms, a flow consists of a trigger and an action to be performed on the trigger.

Some examples

• A trigger can be when someone tweets with a hashtag #powerapps you want to perform an action of retweet it.
• A trigger can be when a new customer is added to your CRM you want to perform an action of adding them to your google contacts.

Thus a flow can be used by you to automate simple tasks that you would otherwise do manually.

Flow’s Power

• Flow is a push towards the citizen programmer and no code approach. Anyone with basic knowledge of software like Microsoft office can create flows to automate their basic tasks.
• Flow is also powerful enough to be used as a layer that connects PowerApps with backend services. Currently, there are more than 3000 services that flow can connect with and with custom connectors you can connect with any service online or on-premises.

Components of a Flow

• Connectors — Connects services to Microsoft flow. With Data gateways we can connect to on-prem applications. We can create custom connectors as well
• Triggers– Triggers are the events that start a workflow when they occur. Flows can also be manually triggered or scheduled.
• Actions — An action/job a flow performs like get, list, create, edit, etc.
• Conditions — A condition depending on which a flow action is performe
• Templates — Existing flow templates to quickly create commonly used flows.
• Approvals — Approvals is a way of approving something in a flow.
• Connectors — Connects services to Microsoft flow. With Data gateways we can connect to on-prem applications. We can create custom connectors as well

How can you start using Microsoft Flow?

• If you are an office365 subscriber you can just login tohttps://flow.microsoft.com with your office credentials and start using flow
• You can also signup for a free 90 days trial at https://flow.microsoft.com/pricing
• Flow is also available as mobile apps on both Apple and Google store which makes creating flows very easy. Check out https://itunes.apple.com/app/microsoft-flow/id1094928825?mt=8 for Apple store and https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.flow&hl=en for Google Play store

Microsoft Flow Consulting Services

Contact Us to know more about Microsoft Flow and how it can help you automate your day to day tasks or quickly build connected apps across heterogeneous services.