The Latest Flow and PowerApps Updates: Visio; CDS; Confirm Exit; Standard Bank

Microsoft announced the 2019 Wave 2 release of Flow in connection with its Business Application Summit in Atlanta, touting its new AI Builder system as the biggest element of the offering for the Power Platform.

Stephen Siciliano, principal group program manager for Flow recommended users take advantage of Microsoft Visio within the Flow portal to sketch out the logic for a flow. The approach replaces older planning methods like using SharePoint workflows or flowcharts. Over 200 users voted on the ideas forum in favor of triggers for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. Instead of the well-known "when an item is created, updated or deleted" actions, these flows will trigger from business events. Microsoft is storing approvals in the Common Data Service and changing the system so that expired flows can still respond to approval requests. Additionally, a new cancel approval button allows admins to withdraw approval for a flow. Approval emails will be updated to indicate that the approval has gone through and admins can even choose to disable the built-in email.

Microsoft highlighted a number of new connectors for Flow launched in May. Microsoft Translator V2, a connector for V2 of the LinkedIn API, Dynamics 365 Sales Insights and Video Indexer V2 are just a few examples.

The June update to the on-premises data gateway released on June 11, with HTTPS by default, a new performance monitoring template, a Performance Profile founded on gateway CPU usage and a port test issue resolution. Some operating systems may not be supported after July when the Flow team will begin using the .NET 4.7.2 framework for gateways.

Microsoft software engineer, Jack Sigmund, shared Office 365, Outlook and Gmail templates and a solution overview for creating email alerts about meetings prior to 10 a.m. He navigated the "get current time" function with UTC and added a day to indicate the following date on the calendar and filtered for hours early in the day. Sigmund noted that there are differences in the way calendars are set up between Google Calendar and Outlook. Google Calendar doesn't have a filter for all day events.

Jonathon Levesque, senior platform evangelist, and Anton Khritonenkov, co-fouder of Plumsail shared a way to automate PDF creation from a template. Khritonenkov started with Plumsail Forms for Web, setup as a wizard, and used a DOCX file. He enabled a form ID so that Flow would trigger when the form is created and converted the generated DOCX file to PDF, finally saving it into SharePoint and sending it in an email.

Microsoft shipped the June update for EasyRepro on GitHub, the Automated UI testing API for Dynamics 365 and model-driven standalone PowerApps. NuGet packages will be easily downloadable and EasyRepro added API updates work better with Dynamics 365 and standalone PowerApps. Data Table controls are also getting an overhaul, with new controls demoed in an experimental section. Like the form control it has a new field selection experience, with call outs to add existing fields and configurable column controls.