For small to medium-sized businesses looking to build more accountability into their workflows, a combination of Microsoft’s Sharepoint and Flow was just the right the non-proprietary, non-developer oriented set of tools to get the job done.
However, there were limits to the amount of customization that could be done on a cursory level and in a new update, Microsoft is addressing customer feedback by building in “Advance Condition builder.”
It’s now easier than ever to write conditional logic in Microsoft Flow by using the newly advanced condition builder. Previously, you could write complex conditions using expressions, but now it’s possible to build conditions with the Microsoft Flow designer’s simple point-and-click UI.
The new streamline building flow enables non-developers or developer (lite) employees to build higher levels of customization and conditions with easily identifiable UI elements.
- Add row – Each individual condition you check for (such as the value is greater than 10, or the list does not contain Test) creates a new row in the condition builder.
- Add group – You can combine one or more rows together in a group — each group is combined by either an And or an Or. If you select And then all the rows must be true. On the other hand, if you select Or, then only one of the rows needs to be true.
In addition to a more thorough creator toolset, Microsoft Flow and Sharepoint now combine to offer reminders for capability tests via email and days in advance.
- To create the reminder flow, your list or library should have at least one date/time column in the current view. You’ll then able to create a reminder by selecting the Flow -> Set a reminder menu item.
Other improvements to Microsoft Flow include Peek code which enables full view of JSON representation of an action built into Flow and includes all inputs to the actions. For anyone who’s had to view shoddy customer screenshots for issues, the new Peek Code should be a promising alternative.
There are also new connectors to flow in Microsoft Graph Security and XooaDB, the latter being new PaaS platform for private blockchain and the former using a unified schema to connect different Microsoft and partner security products together.
The updated Microsoft Flow is out now and customers should be seeing the improvements surface in their software soon.
