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Latest Logic Apps Community Webcast Recap – Feb 25th 2016

In the latest installment of the logicappsio webcast, Jeff Hollan and Kevin
Lam covered off new features released this month, and also talked about what is coming
up – you can watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iZc1i9d7y0.

Of note in this webcast:

Released features this month:

  • Updated Designer now released – now the cards are smaller, it’s a nicer
    mechanism for adding triggers/actions, and the cards run vertically instead of horizontally.
  • We now have support for manual triggers e.g. a manual HTTP trigger which replaces
    the v1 HTTP Listener
  • There’s a new Response action which can be used to send a response back
    to a waiting party (i.e. solicit-response)
  • There’s a new action called “HTTP + Swagger” which allows
    you to supply a Swagger endpoint, and the designer will read the Swagger and give
    you a first-class experience in using your API App i.e. will show trigger actions,
    documentation etc.
  • If/Else conditions are now supported in the designer.
  • The “connectors” we used in the old designer have been replaced
    by Managed API Apps – these are also known as Connections. These are v2 API Apps,
    and no longer use the gateway service or Zumo tokens, and Microsoft host these connections
    for us. You can also use any custom API app as well, as long as it has a Swagger/Swashbuckle
    API.
  • The trigger blade will now show you the Shared Access Signature URL needed to
    post to the trigger directly. Additionally logic apps will support multiple triggers
    (the designer doesn’t yet support this).

Features coming up soon:

  • Adding support so that recurrence trigger can be run-now i.e. run immediately
    – today this is only supported for the manual triggers.
  • Support for parallel actions in the new designer (this should be very cool –
    convoys anyone?!)
  • Auto discovery of custom APIs – they talked about how any API Apps you have
    in your Resource Group will appear in a separate list, which is awesome. The idea
    that you can call any API you like is very powerful. Link this isn with
    Azure
    API Management Services
     and you get a very powerful set of tools.
  • Auto discovery of workflows – you’ll be able to call another Logic App,
    and you’ll see a list of those logic apps inside your logic app.
  • Flow monitoring – you get a view of your logic app history, but from inside
    the designer so you can see which paths were taken, which were skipped (a bit like
    the old Orchestration Debugger I imagine in BizTalk).
  • Support for the Salesforce sandbox endpoint.
  • The trigger experience in the new designer will get better – there will be more
    information on the trigger card.

Jeff then took us through a demo of how to use a v1 API App in the new designer
(using the JSON Encoder BizTalk Connector as an example).

Jeff has also expanded on my blog post about using BizTalk/v1 connectors in
the new designer, and has included details on how to add the Swagger/Swashbuckle details
to your API App so that the new designer will be able to list any BizTalk/v1 API Apps
you have defined in your Resource Group – you can read Jeff’s post here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/logicapps/archive/2016/02/25/accessing-v1-apis-and-biztalk-apis-from-logic-apps.aspx.

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