Hiding your Microsoft Flow valuables I mean variables out of sight

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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Today is a quick #FlowNinja post on a strange technique.

Hiding Microsoft Flow valuables I mean variables out of sight

Yes, a very ninja technique.


This is actually an article about how to use tracked properties in the current Flow. But of course that’s the boring side to this. The fun side is how we can attach properties, like having a utility property bag and store properties as we go along!

Start with three compose (I guess we only need two really)

The expression give us the trackedProperties dictionary off the first action

actions('vars')?['trackedProperties']
// vars is the name of the first Compose action

Toggle to the … settings for the first action - that’s where different tracked properties are defined. We can use expressions if prefixed with the “@…” syntax, or define literal strings or numbers or even nested JSON objects.

What could we use Tracked Properties for?

  • Well, hide things that we don’t want to show - like the back of an envelope.

  • Unfortunately, an action can’t reference itself, so we can’t hide secrets that the action itself needs on the back of itself.

  • Tracking time between two actions - calculating the time difference between approvals can be useful.

  • https://flowstudio.app can ‘see’ tracked property values in the detailed Flow Runs - but there are no UI to display this for now. One idea is to use this to surface data within the Flow run that can be observed at the Runs level - like the Trigger URL or List Item ID of the runs, and allowing sorting on them. Powerful ideas but difficult to build an UI for. Let me know if you are keen about how this works below.

Flow Studio Subscription FAQ

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I added Stripe subscription to Flow Studio today. I also became my first customer (as I’m testing the integration).


Time for this FAQ



How much is a Flow Studio Subscription?

US$10 / month, or US$100 / year.



Is there a trial?

Currently (2018-10-19) the premium features are not blocked by non-subscription status. Everyone is defaulted to Trial status.

In about a month’s time (2018-11-19) a timer job will expire Trial status into Free status, then users will not be able to access subscription features.

The time recurrence job is of course written in Microsoft Flow

Is there a free tier?

Yes! Listing, sorting, metadata grouping, see and filter by runs, triggers and failed runs will all remain in the free tier.

It is our opinion that these features are essential to a pro Flow maker.



What features need a subscription?

Getting Flows as Flow Admin - this requires both Flow Studio subscription and Microsoft Flow Premium 2 - but let you observe all the Flow runs across a tenant / environment.

Edit JSON - this is an advanced feature that is used by Power Users.

There will be additional features as we now focus on making features that will make you love Flow Studio.



What is the coffee donation?

It is a way to let us know that Flow Studio made you smile, but you don’t want a subscription for any reason. It doesn’t grant subscription status.


How did you implement the subscription? Give us the technical blog post!

Flow Studio is an Angular 6 application compiled with AOT and deployed on Azure Functions.

It uses a mixture of LogicApps and Microsoft Flow as serverless middleware. These are proxied behind Azure Functions Proxies.

Timer jobs and triggers coordinate communication between Flow Studio and Stripe payment processor.

This is a blog post on this in the future.



Ask us any questions!

This is an evolving document. Feel free to keep asking us more questions and we’ll provide answers!

Flow Studio has a new logo

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Flow Studio https://flowstudio.app has a new logo!

flow-studio-logo-216.png


I don’t know why I’m so happy about this, but I am.

Did you draw that John - yes on the back of an envelope. Literally. Flow Studio is a start-up that does things the hipster way.

It was digitized by the amazingly talented logo designer people on Fiverr. It is beautiful and very affordable. It was finalized within 24hours of the envelope sketch. No revisions were requested.

The colours have very specific meanings. I’m sure you’ll recognize them immediately.

The logo appeared on Flow Studio in v0.1.47 but will make more appearance in v0.1.48 with the subscriptions implementation.

Microsoft Flow HTTP Trigger <> Request Trigger, and you probably don't want to use it

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Microsoft Flow has a fairly good UI update today, and with this a few “hidden” built-in triggers appeared.

The GeoFence Trigger is not available yet. But the HTTP Trigger is, and I wanted to write this blog post to explain how it works, and more importantly, why you probably don’t want to use this trigger.


HTTP trigger

Create this, the trigger calls the football API, it fetches back data…

The HTTP trigger is not a “new” trigger - it is something that’s in LogicApps for sometime. In essence, it is a polling trigger. So is this a run-once? Does it run many times? The answer is in the definition.


The Definition

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/logic-apps-workflow-actions-triggers#http-trigger

The definition specifies

"HTTP": {
   "type": "Http",
   "inputs": {
      "method": "<method-type>",
      "uri": "<endpoint-URL>",
      "headers": { "<header-content>" },
      "body": "<body-content>",
      "authentication": { "<authentication-method>" },
      "retryPolicy": { "<retry-behavior>" },
      "queries": "<query-parameters>"
   },
   "recurrence": {
      "frequency": "<time-unit>",
      "interval": <number-of-time-units>
   },
   "runtimeConfiguration": {
      "concurrency": {
         "runs": <max-runs>,
         "maximumWaitingRuns": <max-runs-queue>
      }
   },
   "operationOptions": "<operation-option>"
}

But the designer for HTTP trigger does not let us specify the recurrence pattern for this trigger. So it ends up on the default, which is polling at 1 per minute.

That’s probably a really aggressive way to use up your Flow runs :-)

Summary

Four recommendations / notes:

  • Use a Schedule Recurrence trigger to specify what time and frequency we want our polling to run, then call HTTP as an action

  • Wait for a UI update that let us set up the recurrence trigger

  • Use FlowStudio to patch the JSON definition like a hacker. In a future FlowStudio update we will warn when these type of high-run Flows are created in the tenant unintentionally.

  • The Request Trigger turns a Flow into a web service. A HTTP trigger does not accept any requests, having both triggers now in Flow makes describing the correct trigger in text and blogs slightly tricker.

The future of Flow Studio - Trial

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Hi everyone.  This is somewhat serious, and I really need your feedback.

I wanted to write this down and project my intentions clearly and well in advance.  This is something I really would want feedback regarding the future of Flow Studio.

 

Flow Studio today

I love working on Flow Studio, and I heard feedback all the time that there's more I can do with it, there is so much more.  It is always my intention that if I can make it into a product offering - it can supplement my income and I can wholly devote more working days to it.  It is very fulfilling work but very very tiring to work weekends and evenings and have a head full of grey hair from lack of sleep.

A few weeks ago - I implemented Google Analytics to try to figure out which feature area people are using that I need to improve on.  If you are interested I can share the results.  But (to my surprise), I'm now tracking 40 active users per week.  When I last guesstimated 3 weeks ago before I implemented analytics - I thought I had 10 recurring.

The most used activity is Expand - of course we all want to see our Flows, what's been running, and more importantly, what's been failing.

 

Immediately: announcing a new web-3.0 URL

Here's a new thing.  You can use this shiny new URL that makes this a web 3.0 application.  A new URL means we are in serious business.

https://flowstudio.app 

The old address will continue to work, and they both map to the same application at the moment, in the future I consider switching the old URL to an insider/test build.

 

Flow Studio tomorrow

Flow Studio is free.  Whether you add a subscription or not.

The current functionality, navigation, filter, sort, tag will all sit in the Flow Studio base product and provided for free indefinitely.

For the subscription, my thinking is to chase after two particular Stories:

The Flow Studio Professional scenario and the Flow Studio Administrator scenario

Flow Studio will exit Open-Alpha status today, from tomorrow it will be Open-Trial status.  Everyone is on trail status.  There's no subscriptions built yet so it's just a name that implies there's more stuff later.  I will also start to label functions as Pro or Admin.

 

Flow Studio Pro

Flow Studio Pro is a subscription offered for Professionals, Consultants, Makers.  The main work here is to help you make more Flows, quicker and better Flows.

  • I am thinking to move the Edit JSON capability here - because I think the users that really benefit from this feature are super Flow users and will be happy to pay a small subscription.  This is also an area that I think I'll need to build more protection to help people feel safer modifying their Flows and not worry about breaking a Flow.
     
  • I'm thinking to offer a rudimentary backup/restore to give people some assurances.
     
  • The ultimate goal is to provide more Power User focused features.  Do you know you can rename actions with Flow Studio?  (this feature will also move under PRO)
     
  • I am thinking to charge US$5/m per account (email) or $10/m for 3 emails (I think the 3x offering is better suited for teams or for consultants that work on multiple projects - you can choose which 3 emails as you please)

    I have no idea if that's too little or too much.  You have to tell me.  I also think it is a subscription you can turn off and on as you like - if you aren't using Flow anymore on your project just stop the subscription and resume it later. 
     
  • Flow Studio doesn't go into your environment and delete anything when you unsubscribe.  Don't worry!
     
  • Without a subscription the Pro and Admin functions are disabled.  Flow Studio will continue to function.

 

Flow Studio Admin

The Flow Admin scenario is a subscription offered for Administrators - the main work here is to help you see all the Flows within your organization, set up triggers, reports and governance policies when things happen.  Turn off Flows when it exceeds run limits, when it uses specific connectors, what happens to the Flow when its owner leaves the organization etc etc.  What happens when a Flow fail?  When it fails a lot?

  • I am thinking $30/m for Flow Studio Admin - the Flow Admin may need Flow Plan 2 for access to the /admin REST APIs.  So I'm cautious what is coming out of the box with Plan 2, and what I plan to build as extras on top.
     
  • Ultimately, I want Admins to have better visibility into what they have running in their environment, help them build triggers and governance flows (even if they unsubscribe later) and help them feel comfortable configuring Flow to suit their business.
     
  • There will be trials for all these subscriptions so you can see the functionality.  Flow Studio Admin is aimed to be purchased by an IT department and has visibility into thousands of Flows.

 

Variables

US$5, $10 and $30 are monthly recurring subscription costs.  You can switch them on or off from month to month.

But I really want to know what you think.  Ask yourself this: if Flow Studio is $5/m will you buy it now, or will you not.  Tell me what you think.

 

Please tell me what you think

This is really important to me.  Is it too cheap.  Is it too expensive.  Does this help you.  Does this not help you.  What are your worries.

If you are a fan of Flow Studio or a fan of building start ups, I want to hear from you.

If you think Flow is wonderful but nobody should have to learn expressions - I really want to hear from you.  How can I help you, for only $5/month.

My lines are all open:

https://twitter.com/johnnliu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnnliu/ (please mention re: flow studio when connecting)
https://github.com/johnnliu/Flow-Studio-Issues/issues

or comment below