by Nick Hauenstein | Mar 9, 2016 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Much has happened in the world of Logic Apps and API Apps since the original announcement back in December of 2014. We have seen the continued development of SaaS connectivity within the product, along with the overall expansion of integration capabilities. We have also seen the team responding to customer feedback actively while maintaining transparency in the process, and even providing a roadmap to give insight into what is coming and when we can expect to see the sweet moment that is GA.
Sometimes, customer feedback causes fairly large shifts in the underlying product. Such is the case seen in the latest updates for the product in the form of a completely overhauled designer, new feature support for triggering flows (i.e., any action can be a trigger), and an API deployment model that is more consistent with the rest of App Service and does not require a dedicated gateway.
New Designer
One of the most obvious changes that will stick out immediately as you go out to create a Logic App is the new designer that moved over into App Service from Power Apps.
The new designer supports editing workflows build using the updated workflow language (schema version: 2015-08-01-preview), and sports a vertical layout, rather than a horizontal layout, and conditions that appear to wrap around actions instead of being embedded inside actions (though the code view demonstrates that the underlying behavior is similar).
You might also notice that the experience of adding actions is much quicker, as this act no longer provisions a new instance of an API App within your own subscription. Instead in an interesting reversal, Microsoft hosts managed instances of out-of-the-box API Apps. The result is that configuration information is sent as part of the request, instead of stored inside the API App container, and you will have far more simplified ARM deployment templates given that your deployment will no longer need to take into account each API App used by your Logic Apps.
So how do my own custom API Apps end up in the list? Well, you can apply to have them registered in the Azure Marketplace, or you can use the Http + Swagger action in order to point to a custom API App that already exists. Of course that brings us to the question of what it looks like to actually build a custom API App in this refresh of the preview.
New API App Development Model
In the preview refresh, the process to develop and consume a custom API using the designer is quite a bit different. You still have the ability to use swagger extensions for a clean designer experience – but there are new extensions intended to take advantage of new designer capabilities. These capabilities include things like dynamic schemas for parameters / return types of API (imagine a different object shape depending on the type of entity within a CRM system, or a table within a database), and dynamic values for enumerations.
The biggest change here though is that we no longer have a gateway managing authentication, internal storage, or configuration for our APIs, and get to manage that ourselves, but as a side effect, we’re no longer constrained by where our APIs live – all APIs get the same first class experience.
I would definitely recommend taking some time to read each link within this article before starting out on building a new API. I’m working on building out updates to T-Rex to help with the metadata – while also providing a few example APIs to take advantage of all of the new capabilities – but if you want a head start, the knowledge is out there!
New Triggering Capabilities
What other changes are under the hood that you should know about? Well, you may have noticed the announcement of the availability of Webhooks for Logic apps for one, or even saw the x-ms-trigger extension called out in the article linked above. The end result of this is that any action within a Logic App can have a polling trigger style behavior, or even an async push style behavior, and the Logic App itself can be triggered manually at an endpoint that isn’t tied to a specific Azure subscription.
We can see some of these changes in action as we look at actions like the Send approval email action from the Office 365 connector/API. The action sends an email, and then notifies the Logic App what the response is when the response is available – without polling.
It even includes the shape of the notification as part of the swagger metadata that is exposed, so that the designer can support using the shape of that async output in later steps. The result is that as a developer, I can use the action to build what looks like a synchronous flow without the complexity of an async flow, and yet I’m benefitting from the performance characteristics of the async implementation (i.e., immediate notification when the event happens rather than polling at a fixed or variable interval).
What Are We Doing About It?
Reading about all of this might have you wondering what QuickLearn Training is doing about all of this, and/or what you should do about all of this.
Well, I (Nick Hauenstein) am hard at work on an update to QuickLearn’s T-Rex metadata library that takes into account the new way to build API Apps. I’m on target to wrap up the core code by end of week, and hopefully have some decent sample apps out there shortly thereafter.
We’re all busy learning everything we can about the new functionality so that we can rapidly integrate those changes into our Cloud-Based Integration Using Azure App Service course.
In the meantime, keep an eye out for announcements from the BizTalk 360 folks about Integrate 2016 Europe. You might be able to meet up with myself (Nick Hauenstein), Rob Callaway, or John Callaway to talk about BizTalk Server, or any of the things in this post. Also watch for the next release of TRex on NuGet which will include support for all of the new goodies we have available in Logic Apps.
In the meantime, take care, and have fun building great things!
by Rene Brauwers | Mar 8, 2016 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I still remember when I first I heard Microsoft was working on Project Siena (which later became PowerApps), the first thing which popped up in my mind was Visual Studio Lightswitch, which allows us to easily create business applications. Anyways I am digressing J … I might blog about Lightswitch vs PowerApps in the near future, otherwise just attend the upcoming Global Azure Bootcamp in Sydney, and ask me in person.
On February 22nd I gave a closet presentation on PowerApps on IntegrationUsergroup.com. Yeah you read it right, a closet presentation J. Just imagine the following, to get a better understanding…
6 am Sydney, as the sun rises the temperature slowly increases. I just got my first cup of Coffee. I hooked up my laptop to the Big Screen TV. While the laptop is booting I take a sip of my Coffee and put on my Bluetooth headset. After logging in, I perform a final sound check and open up my power point presentation. Once everything seems to be working, I connect to the IntegrationUserGroup webinar. There I am, sitting alone in the living with a cup of coffee, ready to present to a virtual audience.
darn, I’ve been digressing again. Ok where was I. O yeah PowerApps
Before I dive a bit more into PowerApps, lets briefly look at why Microsoft has created the PowerApps platform.
In this Mobile First, Cloud First world we are surrounded with thousands if not millions of mobile apps, but only a fraction of these apps are truly mobile business apps.
So what is the reason for these mobile business app type apps to be lacking behind? Well that’s the question Microsoft asked, and they were able to narrow it down for the following reasons:
It’s hard to develop true mobile business apps.
Mainly because one will have to target devices running in multiple form factors (phone, phablet, tablet, laptop, desktop) across multiple operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows)
Data is spanned both on premise as well as in the cloud.
Company data is nowadays stored virtually anywhere. Some data might be stored in a SaaS application hosted somewhere in the cloud, while other data might be stored on premise. Accessing this data and integrating these systems is not an easy job.
Application Deployment.
Once the application(s) have been developed they need to be deployed to a user’s device. Currently in order to be able to do this an application has to be published to an official market-place, and in case we target multiple operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows) we will have to target multiple market-places, with their own processes.
An alternative to the above would of course be side-loading apps, or setting up company market-places. However not all platforms might allow this.
In short
it is pretty damn hard to not only create, integrate and deploy business apps it is most likely takes time, hard work and money to develop and maintain these apps.
Concluding we could say
If you are able to build a business app within minutes, and deploy it to all kinds of devices regardless of their operating systems. You should have a pretty darn valuable business proposition.
Wait…Having said the above…
In short PowerApps is Microsoft’s answer to address the business app gap, it does so by offering a platform which includes tooling to enable employees, developers, and integrators to create and share mobile business apps. These apps work on phones, tablets or desktops and they work across iOS, Windows and soon Android and allow to seamlessly connect to disparate data sources spanning both on-prem and the cloud in a secure way viagra en belgique.
Microsoft PowerApps was announced a few months ago and so far getting access to the preview is on an invitation basis only. You can go to https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/ and request an invite.
Pfff, enough of this blurb stuff, let’s cut to the chase. (click here for some more technical details on what PowerApps are)
Why should you use PowerApps?
Easy answer, why shouldn’t you. No seriously. In my opinion, if you as a business have an active ‘power user’ base who are more than comfortable with Excel and Access and want to quickly leverage ‘intranet’ like business apps which boost productivity or simply allow user to gain quick access, anytime and anywhere to business information, PowerApps is the platform to go for, your imagination is your limitation.
Okay, okay; it would be ideal if the following infrastructure and solutions/platforms are being leveraged by your company: Azure Active Directory Tenant, Dropbox, Dynamics CRM Online, Google Drive, Microsoft Translator, Office 365 Outlook, Office 365 Users, OneDrive, SQL Azure, Salesforce, SharePoint Online, Twitter or any publically facing rest API (preferably with a swagger definition)
In short, if you meet the above requirements, go sign up for PowerApps and start prototyping.
Lacking inspiration, well why not build a PowerApp which allows users to report on ‘Hazardous situations’?
So this app would allow users, if they see a hazardous situation to instantly report this by describing the situation, attaching a picture and the exact location (using GPS). Once reported the responsible business unit can take action and once resolved the one who reported would be notified that the hazardous situation is resolved.
Sounds too good to be true; nah in my following post. I’ll show you how to build and deploy this within an hour; Yeah using the Free or Standard version
What type of apps can I build using PowerApps?
In my presentation I identify 2 types of business apps which make prime candidates for PowerApps.
- Intranet like mobile business apps
- Line of business like mobile business apps
The differences between these two apps are best to be explained by listing a few examples
Intranet like mobile business apps, are typically mobile business apps which offer intranet like functionality and usually contain (if any) a simple workflow (logic flows AKA Logic App) such as
- Expense declaration
- Timesheets
- Leave request
- Service Desk
- Meeting room planner
- Event signup
- Company news
Line of business like mobile business apps, typically would expose and tap into core business processes, have more complex workflows (logic flows AKA Logic App) which could span multiple back-end systems, typically these business apps would want to leverage functionality which is contained within the space of
- Warehouse Management
- Order Processing
- Supply Chain
- Payroll
- Transport Planning
This latter type of mobile business apps, usually takes some more time to develop and in my opinion requires a good ‘Design’ process and of course special attention needs to be given to the Integration Architecture.
In short, an integration specialist needs to build a decoupled API layer leveraging the full (professional) integration stack which is to one’s disposal. These APIs can then be surfaces as custom business connections such that they can be dragged, dropped and configured by the ‘Power / Business’ user.
My golden rules
If you want to display ‘simple’ information, go ahead and hook directly into the required API’s or leverage the default connections
However, if you want to display composite information, you’d better keep integration practices in the back of your mind. I can only recommend building custom rest APIs with a ‘single’ purpose.
For applications which tap into a business process and mutate / manipulate / insert / update data which affect the process and applications, require ‘guaranteed processing’ are transactional based or require compensation logic I’d recommend to leverage for example Azure Service Bus (light-weight but powerful) maybe in combination with an on premise Middleware platform such as our beloved BizTalk.
What’s next.
My upcoming posts will be covering more hands-on topics, in which I both will guide you through the building process of a simple intranet like business app as well as a LOB business app.
Well I hoped this post was of any use to you. I purposely did not specifically dive into the different components which make up PowerApps (Designer, Logic Flows) nor the difference between the different PowerApps tiers as there are already some good resources available on the world wide web diving into these.
So if you require some more details on PowerApps please have a look at the following link – http://bit.ly/1THnLL8 -, which I find very helpful and will guide you in your discovery path into the wonderful world of PowerApps
Cheers and feel free to add some comments to get the discussion going!
René
