Flow – Create automated workflows between your favorite apps

https://flow.microsoft.com

by dvcrn • 10 years ago

213 60 10 years ago

flow.microsoft.com

viraptor2• 10 years ago

This seems like a IFTTT + pipes mashup? With multiple steps, simple logic blocks, and enterprise integration.

dvcrn• 10 years ago

it sure does. But it looks like it's trying to focus mainly on companies and business users instead of normal everyday people. Almost all integrations are very business-ey

What I am also happy to see is a clear pricing model right from the start [0], in contrast to what IFTTT is doing.

[0] https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/

mintplant2• 10 years ago

The business focus reminds me of Zapier.

https://zapier.com/

quanticle• 10 years ago

Yes, and that's probably why it'll be successful. There is a lot of money to be made in taking <consumer facing thing> and adding enterprise integration.

I mean, look at Slack. It's "merely" IRC + enterprise integration, right?

jdc05892• 10 years ago

shit, my company had a "when a user is created or deleted in AD, do X" type of functionality, we could save so much freaking money money its ridiculous. Im still. planning on sitting down and building it.

patomolina• 10 years ago

I don't know if IFTTT should be worried –or happy– about this.

viraptor2• 10 years ago

Maybe worried. I looked at IFTTT a few times and came back with "I'd like to use that, but I need a filter / processor in between". I suspect there are more people like that.

dkarapetyan• 10 years ago

Zapier is in the same game.

indolering• 10 years ago

This is what Yahoo could have gotten into, had Bartz not axed their engineering department.

peterkshultz2• 10 years ago

Given Microsoft's increasing emphasis on businesses, it makes sense that this is more enterprise-focused.

The product itself doesn't seem much different from Apple's Automator. Microsoft's marketing of Flow, however, is better at demonstrating the product's power. Apple never quite did that.

nerdponx• 10 years ago

Hopefully its UI isn't as inscrutable as Automator's.

peterkshultz2• 10 years ago

I agree. I've opened Automator with a naive optimism that I can learn it and become more productive. I've been wrong each and every time!

antarrah• 10 years ago

So like Zapier?

mataug• 10 years ago

Should Zapier be worried ? Probably not, unless Microsoft suddenly forms a large division out of this and manages to get a 100 - 200 integrations going.

omarchowdhury• 10 years ago

Zapier has a built in lock in in their business. Once you get workflows running why move them over to a new service.

voltagex_• 10 years ago

I'm sure I saw this as a tech demo (on the Azure equivalent of AppSpot) a year or so ago. Anyone remember it?

dbish• 10 years ago

Yes. This was announced earlier this year. Just looks like an IFTTT copy. http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/29/11535232/microsoft-flow-if...

huac• 10 years ago

Previously - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11600739

josep2• 10 years ago

I've been using this for a little while. The RESTful interface is pretty cool for stuff that isn't natively part of the interface.

doktorjeep• 10 years ago

So a competitor to AWS SWF?

cyberferret• 10 years ago

Do you have to include a Microsoft asset somewhere in the flow pipeline, or can it work totally independently of any Microsoft apps? (eg/ Twitter => Slack etc.)

sumitgt2• 10 years ago

It doesn't need any Microsoft asset in the pipeline.

mintplant2• 10 years ago

Besides Flow itself, of course.

noahmbarr• 10 years ago

Microsoft's attempt at Zapier?

ocdtrekkie• 10 years ago

I miss Mayhem. Mayhem was an open source IFTTT-like application that ran on your own PC that Microsoft made a few years back.

nodey• 10 years ago

You can follow us at http://www.nodecode.io. It is a flow based programming platform written almost entirely in c++ that runs completely on your local network but you can connect to it using a secure websocket from outside your NAT. It is still early for us and we are still working on adding micro-services but the Raspberry Pi GPIO, Insteon, Twitter and basic remote command line services seem to be working well.

kenrick95• 10 years ago

Microsoft Flow has been around for few months now (in Public Preview), but they just announced its General Availability.

https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-ga/

bbarn• 10 years ago

IFTTT + Sanctioned by corporate IT? This could be huge.

scottmcdot• 10 years ago

Does Google have anything equivalent to this?

patife2• 10 years ago

Doesn't look like it.

nmstoker• 10 years ago

It's got potential, mashing up pipes and IFTTT with Enterprise as others have said, but I can't help hearing Admiral Akbar's "it's a trap!". It would need to be amazing and look long term viable enough before I'd suggest putting key processes in to it. Something like this seems more appealing: https://github.com/cantino/huginn/blob/master/README.md

pgodzin2• 10 years ago

Seems like IFTTT will end up being a niche for IoT-specific integrations while this will be used for enterprise integration. What is the value here for Microsoft when you can create integrations between only competitors like Google services?

sumitgt2• 10 years ago

What is the value here for Microsoft when you can create integrations between only competitors like Google services?

https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/

pgodzin2• 10 years ago

Missed that, thanks

adventurer• 10 years ago

They're trying to charge for the ease? of doing things like sending notifications for item creation in Sharepoint lists, when Sharepoint does this already for you free. It looks like a hard push for transitioning the whole suite of products to the Azure cloud. $$

X86BSD• 10 years ago

So... this is... apples automater?

robinhowlett• 10 years ago

This is an area I work in [1]. Folks understandably mention IFTTT/Zapier a lot but the big players in the enterprise integration space are SnapLogic, Mulesoft, Informatica, Dell Boomi, with maybe a couple of others making noise also.

App integration is only one part of it (and arguably the easiest part) - there's also Data integration, IoT/event streaming pipelines, and integrations suitable for Big Data processing.

Enterprises naturally have quite specific demands on things like security, governance, encryption, support etc. that move things away from the free integration products, and also

I haven't seen much of Flow so far but will pay attention to it. The UX appears quite simple - it is difficult to build an effective integration product that is friendly to non-technical folks, while still being powerful enough for orchestrating complex pipelines by skilled data architects and developers.

It's a crowded space however, so getting traction may be challenging. I'm interested to seeing how they go forward with this.

[1] http://www.snaplogic.com

phest2• 10 years ago

I recommend digging into the available actions, this looks more flexible than anything else in this space (eg IFTTT, Zapier). There's control flow (if and while), and some actions aren't tied to any service: there's a "Recurrence" action that allows to trigger actions at specific intervals, an "HTTP" action that can send a request with any URL+method+headers+body+auth, there's a "Delay" action, FTP and SMTP output actions...

edit: "HTTP" can also be a trigger.

edit:

List of service agnostic triggers:

- Recurrence (RecurrenceTrigger an event to run at regular, customized time intervals)

- HTTP (Trigger an event based on a select REST API)

- HTTP + Swagger (Trigger an event based on a select Swagger-enabled API)

- Button (Manually trigger a flow)

- Request (This is an incoming API call that could use actions in a Logic App or other API to trigger this flow)

- RSS - When a feed item is published (Triggers a workflow when a new feed item is published)

edit:

List of service agnostic actions:

- S/FTP - Create file (This operation creates a file)

- S/FTP - List files in folder (This operation gets the list of files and subfolders in a folder)

- Delay (Set how long an action should be delayed once the flow is triggered)

- Delay until (Delay an action until a specific date. For shorter time periods, use the Delay action instead)

- HTTP (Choose a REST API to invoke)

- HTTP + Swagger (Choose a Swagger-enabled API to invoke)

- Response (This is an incoming API call that could use the results of an action to trigger this flow)

- Compose ?

- Filter Array

- Mail (Sends an email)

- Push notification - Send a push notification (Sends a push notification to the Flow app)

- RSS - List all RSS feed items (Get all RSS feed items)

- SMTP - Send Email (This operation sends an email to one or more recipients)

blahi• 10 years ago

It's worth noting that this is just Azure logic apps with a front end. You can write API and Logic apps yourself and publish to your users.

mwarkentin• 10 years ago

Not sure if you've looked at Zapier recently, but they've added all sorts of functionality: multi-step zaps, filtering + logic

You can even write your own code to extend things in Python and JS.

phest2• 10 years ago

I did not. I'll take a second look. Thanks.

keyle3• 10 years ago

Reminds me of Yahoo Pipes but on a OS level, which is very interesting. I hope it gets the ease of use it deserves so that it's not just a fringe of users that end up automating their tasks. Thumbs up from me!

keyle3• 10 years ago

Side note - Is anyone else's CPU going mad on that page? Chrome PC just goes flat out sitting on that page.

UPDATE: it's my adblocker. It blocks a part of the page and the javascript tries to constantly load it if it fails, resulting in about 1000 errors/second in the console :)

mistermann2• 10 years ago

This might explain a long running mystery I've had when I have loooots of tabs open.

But then, how to find the tab that's stuck in that process? (In FF in my case.)

keyle3• 10 years ago

I had to close the tab while looking at the CPU % to work out that it was that tab.

jamienicol• 10 years ago

about:performance should be able to tell you

NKCSS• 10 years ago

Here's a small how-to on how to add your own service: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/nl-nl/tutorials/register-cus...

Lio2• 10 years ago

Off topic but the name, Flow, will get confusing fast.

Flow is already used by several projects including Facebook's Flow, a direct competitor to Microsoft Typscript.

Meanwhile FlowType.js helps with typography.

Not to be confused with Flowjs, which is for HTML5 file transfer.

This is probably going to end up in a search ranking dance off with whoever has the deepest pockets winning.

https://flowtype.org http://simplefocus.com/flowtype/ https://github.com/flowjs

d0vs• 10 years ago

So only confusing to JS devs

Lio2• 10 years ago

Well that's OK then. :)

That was really just first three things that came to mind as I know that Typescript competes with Flow (the open source project started by Facebook).

Other non-javascript products with the same name include project and workflow management software.

My point was more about how larger organisations usually win when they take a common or functional name for their products.

Microsoft has a long history of trademarking generic terms. I mean if I use the phrase "an SQL database server" or "a windowing operating system" which products do you think of?

In the case of "Flow" it's an overloaded product name and whichever entry comes up first in Google's search results will probably end up 'owning' the name. Currently for my results it's Microsoft.

danjc• 10 years ago

Would love your feedback on our app integration platform - Flowgear (we came first!)

You can see what our workflows look like without creating an account at https://flowgear.me/s/hZfxYnf

kondor6c• 10 years ago

There is also the similar open source project: Bip.io = https://github.com/bipio-server/bipio

pvaldes• 10 years ago

Looks like if in Microsof were trying hard to assimilate things that are present in Linux since decades.

Flow – Create automated workflows between your favorite apps

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