Azure Logic Apps: why being lazy is being smart when developing apps

Si quieres leer la versión en Español de este artículo, haz click aquí.

With Azure Logic Apps, you can quickly build scalable workflows that integrate apps and data of several cloud services and on-premises systems. With 200+ connectors available, the possibilities are huge but, how easy is to build and maintain these integrations? And how much do you really save by using this tool vs. your own custom code from scratch?

In this series of posts, we are going to show you how easy, but yet powerful, this service is. We’ll cover three scenarios:

1. Easy connecting with know services and send automated replies to emails, based on criteria defined by you.
2. Automating repetitive job tasks to increase productivity
3. Connecting to different Public Social APIs to develop a piece of your app.

But before diving into the examples, let’s try to answer some basic questions.

Why are we doing this?

This question is directly related to the title of this post. Because we are lazy. We are lazy because we, as software developers, we have a ton of things to do and consider along with coding. To name a few, while implementing the code to solve your business logic, you also need to think about how to deploy the app, what tools to use to debug it if a problem arises, how to keep it up to date with the changes in the APIs/libraries you use, etc. Experienced developers learn at some point in their careers that our field is so wide that is practically impossible to be up-to-date with everything.

The real “Jack of all trades” is the one that knows how to balance the knowledge of the available tools (the what) with the individual expertise (the how), and is able to bring all needed disciplines together in a practical manner. A true Master of Integrations.

In essence, being lazy is not about having nothing to do, because there is something to do. Is about having the time to do what you know best. Mastery is all about productivity and to maximize your potential.

And how does Azure Logic Apps help us?

Well, talking about integration, this product claims that it will help you to quickly build powerful integrations. A bold statement, but here’s why:

1. Azure Logic Apps provides a serverless engine to execute automated workflows to integrate apps, data and devices anywhere. Similar to what Azure Functions does, but…
2. You build integrations using a visual designer, without a single line of code. By just moving different boxes (connectors) you can trigger flows based on cloud-events or timers and connect different services together to facilitate business-to-business (B2B) communications.
3. But you can do more: you can develop cloud-based applications that consume on-premises data in a secure way with just a few clicks. And even add your own conditional logic and use others control statements (like a for each, try, etc.).

At first sight, it might look like a low-code tool, but it has the flexibility of both worlds. In just a few minutes, you will be able to automate repetitive manual tasks and execute them right away. This is ideal for non-technical roles, and lazy developers, am I right?

In the next posts, we will learn about the capabilities of this service by practice. Stay tuned!

🎉