1.
Microsoft Flow Best Practices
Serge Luca, Isabelle Van Campenhoudt
ShareQL.com, Belgium
SharePoint Saturday Bremen (Germany) - 2019

2.
THANK YOU, SPONSORS!
SPS NORTH GERMANY 2019

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

4.
https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/66476

5.
Office Apps & services MVP
Business Applications MVP
O365 Architect
@sergeluca
ShareQL Brussels
Office365
Flow
Dev
Architecture
Bullshit
Serge Luca aka “Doctor Flow”

6.
Data Platform MVP
Consultant, speaker, trainer
@thesqlgrrrl
ShareQL Brussels
Isabelle Van Campenhoudt
SQL
BI
Tuning
Architecture
Coffee making

7.
Our Power
Platform
workshops
www.shareql.com
@sergeluca

8.
Questions ?
#doctorflow

9.
Microsoft Flow &
Citizen Developers

10.
The Flow mobile
app is crucial !

11.
Demo:
Expense report

12.
Microsoft Flow &
Developers

13.
Create REST
Services
(like Azure
functions)
Create
Connectors
Call REST
APIs from
Flow (HTTP
action)
Integrate
Flow in their
Applications
Developers
Activities

14.
Demo:
Calling
the Graph API

15.
Demo:
Custom Connector

16.
Patterns & Limitations

17.
State machine pattern or 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
Controller pattern
In the roadmap for Flow & PowerApps

18.
Reject
RejectApprove
Approve
Why State
Machine ?

19.
State Machine
and > 30 days
« Controller
Pattern »
Controller
Launcher flow
Level 2 Secretariat
Approval
Level 1 Advisors
Approval
Level 3 Big Boss
Approval
escalate
timeout
approved
rejected
timeout
approved
rejected
redirect
timeout
approved
rejected
escalate
Normal flow
Service flow

20.
Best practices
Use logical workflow Ids
Use logical Approval Ids
Bulletproof your code with
Coalesce( ) when using switch

21.
State Machine Pattern
> 30 days

22.
Watch this
Episode 1
Episode 2 (hands on – is coming…)

23.
Demo:
Manage Errors

24.
Demo:
Parallelism Pattern

25.
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)

26.
202 ACCEPTED
The request has been accepted for
processing, but the processing has not been
completed.
Long Call
Duration Pattern

27.
Demo:
Asynchronous Long Call

28.
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

29.
Flow Extensibility
& Communication
With The Outside World

30.
 Action When an HTTP Request is received (usually coupled with
Response action)
 Action Http
 Action Send an http Request to SharePoint
 Custom Connector

31.
FLOW
DATA ALERTS
DATA SOURCES
POWER B
I
SCHEDULED REFRESH
STREAMING DATA
LIVE
POWERQUERY

32.
Demo:
Flow & Power BI

33.
CONCLUSIONS

34.
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

35.
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 !
Watch the April
19 Release
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/business-applications-release-
notes/April19/microsoft-flow/

36.
Questions ?
#doctorflow
@sergeluca
Shareql.com