Microsoft Flow (by Susie Moore)

Editor's Notes

• #3 Interested in all things integration – which of course includes MS Flow
• #4 Most of these slides are taken from Anjli’s presentation at Integrate 2017 USA
• #5 Human beings are actually great systems integrators today. We constantly move information around, from our phones, to our PCs, to our “data systems” that range from a new SaaS tool, to pen and paper. We receive an input or notification on one of our devices, and we cascade it into another routine action. Some real life examples: Some examples of how you can leverage flow is to automate either - mundane tasks that occur either daily or weekly – such as sending an email based on updates on onedrive or sharepoint to your boss on a weekly basis. if I had some reports from projects I get every week, I could have projects ID’s with a red status sent in a notification email to me - manually intensive tasks such as managing a large amount of follow up emails from a conference, sales or marketing event, for example I went to the Home show the other weekend. The businesses who attend would collect a large amount of leads and get potentially a lot of emails to follow up, each of these could be created as a sharepoint list record and then trigger a lead in Dynamics CRM Prepare content ahead of time to trigger either social media updates or emails to mum so she doesn’t hassle you about not contacting her What if we could enable new uses and accomplish things we can’t currently do today by relying on powerful process automation that does not require lengthy IT projects? Many business units are left with many manual tasks which would not warrant an IT project to automate ---------------------------- Our teams are constantly meeting people at events and following up over email. We want to ensure we don't miss any of these leads, but re-typing information from emails into our CRM system is tedious. We work with agencies who create content and upload large files to OneDrive or Dropbox accounts. Our teams want to know right when the latest files arrive, without having to check every 30 minutes, and then they want to transfer a backup to a save cloud storage as soon as it comes through to ensure we don’t loose any valuable work. I get hundreds of emails every day, and my notification options are all-or-nothing. It’s hard to keep up with all that traffic when I’m travelling. I’d like to get an SMS when specific people like my boss or a key customer prospect reach out directly to me However, humans aren’t especially efficient system integrators. What if we could automate these processes? Most of these system are seen as "not designed to work with each other" and integration projects between these systems will quickly become complex IT projects that take a long time to execute and require deep integration expertise. What if we could automate routine tasks to be more efficient as business users? What if we could enable new uses and accomplish things we can’t currently do today by relying on powerful process automation that does not require lengthy IT projects?
• #6 We have become so good at Remembering tasks across pen and paper, Wunderlist and flagged emails Remembering which version of the doc was final. Was it v5 or v1.1-final Is this the best use of our workforce’s brain cycles? What if something could do this automatically? Automate these mundane tasks so you could focus on real work
• #7 This is where the MAGIC of Flow comes in
• #8 Microsoft Flow is a SaaS service that helps you work smarter by automating workflow across your growing number apps and services that business users rely on. The possible workflows span across a wide variety of possibilities, for example : Get a notifications when a certain file is updated. A user was tired of manually notifying his team of new sales lead in Dynamics so he signed up his team members to receive notifications every time he added a new lead. Synchronize files by connecting your folders to keep data current. I have a folder on my OneDrive for Business that automatically syncs with a specific document library on the team SharePoint. Automatically collect and organize your business data. Collect emails from specific senders/customers and track them in an Excel file that’s shared with your team. Streamline approvals and get instant alerts. Set up an automated system to get approvals for expenses, upcoming trips. Microsoft Flow makes it possible to automate all of these scenarios and more.
• #9 What are the type of roles is everyone is in? Integration is a problem that spans outside of the IT departments. From marketing to HR, even the folks at the front desk have needs for workflow processes.
• #11 The exact same designer that is used in Logic Apps is used here. Under the hood, Flow is built on top of Logic Apps and uses the public APIs and standard runtime. In addition to utilizing Templates, end-users can easily build their own Flows or customize any of the available templates through an easy to use visual designer.
• #12 Just like in Logic Apps, you can connect to cloud services and on premise data. Connectors include Microsoft services (O365 and D365) and external services too – MailChimp, Salesforce, Slack etc. These connectors are common across Flow and PowerApps, Logic Apps, so if you connect to a service in one product, you can use them from the other products as well.
• #13 User aver 100+ templates (and growing) for common scenarios as a starting point to create your new workflow! Various use cases – many of which have been submitted by users like yourselves.
• #14 We have six published verticals at this time, and will be adding more in future updates. You will see verticals for personal productivity, field workers and sales teams coming up in the next few weeks
• #15 For example, in the EDU vertical we have templates for … Teachers – knowing when assignments are completed and to take a specific action when they are. All automated. Getting non-English emails from parents and getting them automatically translated by Flow. Teachers, Students and Staff – view classroom activity such as grades in a dashboard.
• #16 Create more advanced integration scenarios with multiple steps, adding conditions between step and the every expanding list of more advanced enterprise connectors. All without writing a single line of code.
• #17 In addition to utilizing Templates, end-users can easily build their own Flows or customize any of the available templates through an easy to use visual designer. In this example I want to receive and email in my Exchange email box every time a new file gets added to my Dropbox account. Simply select the “Dropbox - When a file is created” trigger and provide my account details to authenticate. Once authenticated and can simplify select the folder I want to monitor on my account. As a next step, I select the Office 365 Outlook – Send email function. This will prompted my to logon to my O365 email account. I have different properties available which I use directly in the subject, body an ‘To’ address of the message that will be send based on the Drop box trigger. I simply save the Flow I just created, and it is now ready for execution.
• #18 Now that I’ve built a couple of flows, what can I do with it next?
• #22 Examples of Flow buttons: Who’s on call? Create bug Share - For co-workers who won’t be able to build flows themselves
• #23 This is exactly what Sulava does
• #24 Lifecycle management of flows Add yourself as an owner if someone leaves an organization, or assign another owner Turn off flows that have too many runs DLP To prevent data loss, as an admin, you can setup policies that classify services into data groups. Any Flow or PowerApp that uses services from the Business data only and No business data allowed groups will be blocked. Policies can be applied to the entire tenant or specific environments
• #27 It is typical for a business workflow to grow in complexity overtime. Accordingly, you can start with a flow at first, then convert it to a logic app as needed.