I wanted to write a quick blog post letting everyone know I've put my hands up to present a 10 minute demo on using a Custom Connection for Microsoft Graph $Batch in Microsoft Flow.

Custom Connection = Swagger = WSDL

In Microsoft Flow, Power Apps or Logic Apps, a Custom Connection is a Swagger/Open API definition that allows these low-code solutions access to a well defined API, so it knows what to call and how to call them.

For old API guys that knew what a SOAP Webservice looked like, this is the WSDL that tells other systems how to use this service.

In general, calling Microsoft Graph with App-Only Permissions requires only a client-id and client-secret pair, and we can do it directly via the HTTP action without needing a custom connection.

When we do need to create a custom connection, that's usually because we need to call something with Delegate permissions

Why Flow - Connectors Framework

One of the hidden supper power of Flow and Logic Apps is the connectors framework, which cache, renew and manages connections across various different APIs and auth methods.  

This means - you actually don't need to write any of this code.  Repeat - as a developer, you don't have to write code to manage auth.  Auth is encapsulated away and auth code is no longer your concern.

Why $Batch

You'll have to see the demo (I'll update this later).  Hey, I can't spill all the beans in one blog post.  This is a tease.

The result

If you want to automate any delegate-permission API calls on Microsoft Graph, then Microsoft Flow is the easiest way to do it - far easier than writing code, and this is considered a low-code solution, it's crazy nuts.

Resource

Link to the recording will be updated here once presentation is done and uploaded.