The document discusses the capabilities and limitations of Microsoft Flow for application developers and citizen developers, highlighting its integration with Office apps and services. Key features include creating custom connectors, managing errors, and various flow patterns for approvals and data management. The presentation emphasizes optimizing flow performance and keeping applications simple while exploring extensibility and automation options.

2. Energize your application
developments with Microsoft Flow
Serge Luca, Isabelle Van Campenhoudt
ShareQL, Belgium

3. Conclusions
The outside
world
Patterns &
Limitations
Flow &
Developers
Citizen
Developer
Agenda

4. Office Apps & services MVP
Business Applications MVP
O365 Architect
@sergeluca
ShareQL Brussels
Office365
Flow
Dev
Architecture
Bullshit
Serge Luca aka “Doctor Flow”

5. Data Platform MVP
Consultant, speaker, trainer
@thesqlgrrrl
ShareQL Brussels
Isabelle Van Campenhoudt
SQL
BI
Tuning
Architecture
Coffee making

6. Questions ?

7. Microsoft Flow &
Citizen Developers

8. The Flow mobile
app is crucial !

9. Demo
Track your time
Automatic timesheet

10. Demo
Expense report
Flow approval escalation
Flow approval & Machine Learning
Approval Analytics

11. Microsoft Flow &
Developers

12. Create REST
Services
(like Azure
functions)
Create
Connectors
Call REST
APIs from
Flow (HTTP
action)
Integrate
Flow in their
Applications
Developers
Activities

13. Demo
Calling
the Graph API

14. Demo
Custom Connector

15. Patterns & Limitations

16. Controller patternNo State Machine
No custom task
forms
Max 5,000 iterations in Do until
Max 5,000 iterations in For each (100,000 in Plan
1)
Loops
Create nested flows250 actions/flow
Flow Approval
duration : 30 days
Flow duration : 30
days
No guest access
No flow provisioning
in SharePoint sites
Each approval in a dedicated nested flow that
calls itself after 29 days (via a controller)

17. Why State
Machine ?

18. State Machine
and > 30 days
Approval controller
Launcher flow
Level 2 approval flowLevel 1 approval flow Level 3 approval flow
escalate
timeout
approved
rejected
timeout
approved
rejected
redirect
timeout
approved
rejected
escalate
Normal flow
Service flow

19. Demo
State Machine Pattern
> 30 days

20. Demo
Manage Errors

21. Demo
Parallelism Pattern

22. Adapt retry policy
Reduce flow concurrency
Use several connectors
Error HTTP 429 : « I’m too busy » come later (in 10 sec)
Flow throttled by the Service (like SharePoint) and by
the Connector (600 calls/min)

23. 202 ACCEPTED
The request has been accepted for
processing, but the processing has not been
completed.
Long Call
Duration Pattern

24. Demo
Asynchronous Long Call

25. Started from
Excel
Started from SP
New Expense
from App
Trigger : Excel for a
selected row
Trigger :
SharePoint for a
selected row
Existing Expense
from App
Trigger :
SharePoint : when an item is
created
Proxy Flows
Service Flow

26. Flow Extensibility
& Communication
With The Outside World

27.  Action When an HTTP Request is received (usually coupled with
Response action)
 Action Http
 Action Send an http Request to SharePoint
 Custom Connector

28. FLOW
DATA ALERTS
DATA SOURCES
POWER B
I
SCHEDULED REFRESH
STREAMING DATA
LIVE
POWERQUERY

29. Demo
Flow & Power BI

30. CONCLUSIONS

31. Keep your
forms Simple
Trigger
properties
Accounts Management Environments
Business
logic in Flow
In variables Owners :
ADD Groups
Connectors :
Services
Accounts
(except
personal
flows)
PowerShell
Flow
Management
connector
Use several
DLP

32. Flow can
complement
PowerShell
Manage
Office 365
…Or run
Powershell via
Azure
Automation
runbooks/hybrid
Webhooks in
O365
compliance &
audit logs
And much
much more…
This is just the
beginning !

33. Questions ?