Logic Apps – Page 2 – Note to self

Using splitOn in a trigger to avoid zero length executions

Last week I was reviewing a logic app with one of the lead developers at Theta. It was a relatively simple logic app. It needed to call an oData endpoint on a regular basis, and process the value back. The developer original design was to:

Poll the oData endpoint on the agreed interval.
Test if the value array length was bigger then zero
If the array was larger than zero, process each value in the array within a for each.
Else, terminate the instance as cancelled, so he could distinguish between real executions and zero-length polls.

That would work, but if felt wrong for a couple of reason.

The logic app was wasting an action to test if the actual logic would be executed or not.
Another action was being wasted just to tag the logic apps that didn’t actually “fired”.

Then it dawn on me that we should be using splitOn instead. This would avoid the check, Setting up the splitOn is as simple as adding this on your trigger:

"splitOn": "#splitOn-expression#",

Treat every Logic App environment as production

This is a cautionary tale… A month or so ago, someone from support asked me why the hell a test environment had spent over a thousand NZD in Logic Apps actions. My first reaction was “Are you kidding?”… my second reaction was that pit in your stomach feeling when you know something is really wrong, but you don’t know why.

Creating Logic Apps Classic Alerts with Powershell

Have you ever created a logic apps solution – maybe 10 or so logic apps – and noticed that you needed to enable basic notification alerts for all of them? I found a while ago that this was kind of a tedious process, so I end up creating a PowerShell script for that. I end up forgetting that I never blogged about that, so here it goes.

Automating API Management Backup and Restore with Logic Apps

I’ve been working during the last week or so on setting up a DR strategy for a solution that is based on API Management, Azure Functions and Service Bus. Most of the deployment to the secondary site is dealt by VSTS, but one of the main issues on the proposed strategy was the fact that APIM instance utilized is Standard, which doesn’t allow multi-region deployments. This way, to guarantee that all APIM configuration, including users, API policies and subscriptions, I had to leverage from the backup/restore functionality available in APIM, based on the Management API.

The API calls for backup and restores are quite straight forward, but use a authorization token that must be requested before the API call can be executed. So, to automate the process to generate the token and execute the backup or restore API calls, I decided to use Logic Apps. Continue reading “Automating API Management Backup and Restore with Logic Apps”

Logic Apps x Microsoft Flow – which one should I choose?

Recently I’ve presented at Directions ASIA 2018 with my good friend and MVP Tharanga Chandrasekara, and I’ve been exposed to a “new world” – the Business Solutions world! Coming from and enterprise integration background, I usually tend to gravitate around the enterprise integration tools and lately iPaaS offering, so my initial reaction to integration will always be BizTalk Server / Logic Apps. But Microsoft Flow had evolved to be quite a reasonable option – and I would say probably the first option for integration within the Office 365 / Dynamics 365 consultants, since it gives you almost the same level of functionality that Logic Apps would give – no surprises here, since behind the scenes they are actually the same engine. Continue reading “Logic Apps x Microsoft Flow – which one should I choose?”

Enable/disable all logic apps in a resource group

Have you ever wanted to stop all logic apps in a resource group in one go – either for production maintenance, or maybe because that set of logic apps in a resource group is eating all your resources? If so, welcome to the club… What you probably found is that there is no way to do this in the portal. Coming from a BizTalk background where you can stop all orchestration – or even the whole application) with a right click, in some cases you will ask “Why?”, while in others you might shout “Khaaaannn!” (I know I probably did both). Continue reading “Enable/disable all logic apps in a resource group”

Developing Logic Apps in the Portal

When it comes to developing Logic Apps, everyone has a preference. Some people like to develop in the portal, while others like to start development directly from Visual Studio. I am in the first group mainly because a lot of my logic apps involves integration with the Dynamics 365 CRM connector, which doesn’t play well with the Logic Apps editor after I apply the required parameterization (which reminds me that I have to blog about that – will write something about it soon). I also like the simplicity of just opening the browser and be able to develop, debug all in one go.

Continue reading “Developing Logic Apps in the Portal”

API Management Gotcha – Empty Body Definition

A while ago I saw a question in the forums where someone was trying to use a POST operation using the API Management action in Logic Apps and the action card didn’t have any way to input the body object.

To replicate the issue I’ve create a very simple logic app, so simple in fact that I didn’t even bother to define a trigger schema. After creating a new API using that logic app, to my surprise I also couldn’t find any input for the message body. Continue reading “API Management Gotcha – Empty Body Definition”

Rethinking an old Logic App deployment package- part IV

Previously in Note to self…

I got one step closer to my goal to export all logic apps from a resource group to a Visual Studio project, using linked templates to deploy all logic apps in one when required, but still being able to deploy individual logic apps for a patch template. In previous posts, I’ve managed to use the extend a open source component originally created by Jeff Hollan and maintained by Mattias Lögdberg, adding a couple of extra cmdlets. You can get the last post here.

Visual Studio ARM Deployment Project

For the last step in this process, I needed to create an Azure Resource Manager deployment project. I decided to go through the most pragmatic route – to use an existing project as template. So as a first step, I created an empty Azure Resource Group VS project and tried to find out how artefacts can be associated to it. Continue reading “Rethinking an old Logic App deployment package- part IV”

Rethinking an old Logic App deployment package – part III

Previously in Note to self…

I’ve been discussing how I’ve leveraged Jeff Hollan’s Logic App Template Generator and some PowerShell goodness to export a ARM templates to all Logic Apps in a specific resource group. You can read about that here.

Linking ARM Templates together

Azure Resource Manager templates have the ability to link templates, creating a “parent-child” or “nested” relationship, allowing a single template to deploy resources that are defined in various individual templates. The advantages of this technique in my opinion are:

Each resource can be defined in isolation, which makes maintenance of that resource simpler.
Related components can be grouped in “parent” templates for a simpler deployment experience, but they can still be deployed individually if required.

This was exactly the type of solution I was looking for, after having to deal with the pain of replacing a logic app template in the middle of a monolithic ARM template containing another 15 templates. That would usually take a couple of hours to make sure that the template was replaced correctly and nothing was removed that would make the deploy to break. Continue reading “Rethinking an old Logic App deployment package – part III”