“This October, Microsoft Flow is doubling down on the platform integration by releasing key capabilities that enhance the power of all the above products,” says Principal PM manager Stephen Siciliano. The key product here is SharePoint, with updates to help migration from SharePoint Workflows. It’s doing so primarily through feature parity, with the addition of several flows that were missing in the SharePoint connector. However, Microsoft is also introducing features like Request Sign-off and a Flow launch panel to enhance ‘modern approvals functionality’. In other Office news, Teams users can now install the Flow app in a team channel.
Making Flows More Reliable
With this update, Microsoft is also trying to ensure Flows function correctly. With organizations utilizing the automation solution for business-critical processes, it’s important they’re reliable. In that vein, the company is introducing a Flow checker. In essence, the feature is to Flow what spell check is to Word. It checks flows against a number of best practices, highlighting performance and reliablity risks. Critically, the app also gives suggestions on how to improve flows, with ‘detailed guidance’ on each issue. Another powerful addition comes in the form of direct Power Query integration. With this update, users will be able to shape data mashups from SQL Server. Finally, admins will get greatly improved analytics. The admin center in Dynamics 365 displays the total runs, successful runs, mostly runs, failures, and more. This should help to make decisions, and can combine with the Flow checker to identify issues.
