This post contains a recap of the (almost) monthly Logic Apps Live webcast.  In case you missed it or you don’t want to watch the complete session, you can find here the most important highlights!  Watch the complete recording over here.

What’s new?

• Export a Logic App to Visual Studio, as an ARM template.  This enables fast trial/error development in the Azure portal, but ensures a smooth release pipeline when the Logic App becomes stable.
• Support for web hooks in for each loops.  This may come in handy for dealing with many parallel approval workflows.
• Authenticate with Active Directory Service Principals, instead of using user credentials.  This is available for the Azure Data Lake and ARM connector.  Will be rolled out to more connectors soon.

• Better array handling in the designer, this will definitely improve the user experience.  More info about working with arrays / collections in Logic Apps can be found here.
• Support for batch processing.  At the moment only count-based batch release trigger, but more to come soon!  Read more about it here.
• More variable types are supported now.  Currently the following types are available: Boolean, Integer, Float, String, Object and Array.  The decrement action has been added.

• Run history compressed view, including filtering runs based on a time range. This will be a real timesaver!  I’ve requested a refresh button in the compressed run history.  It should be added quite soon.

• Configure action settings in the designer.  No more need to struggle with JSON inside the code view.  The settings tab includes configuration of retry policies, timeouts, parallel execution options, singleton triggers and disabling async patterns.  The settings depend on the action type.

• Pan and zoom support in the designer.  This will make our lifes easiers when developing large and complex Logic Apps.  Don’t forget you can avoid them, by using nested Logic Apps!

• Support for server side paging.   This is often required when working with large result sets that are paged server side.  The Logic Apps connector handles the paging for you, so you receive the complete result set.  This is available in the SQL and the Dynamics 365 connector (up to 100 000 entities).
• Better expression authoring in the designer.  Complex expressions can now be written easier, without the need for the code view.  It’s not perfect, but it really helps.  For complex expressions, I still prefer the code view.

• Smart tips, a reminder for common mistakes.  This is some kind of proactive support, pointing the user to potential issues.  Examples are forgetting to set the Content-Type to application/json or using a PeekLock Service trigger, without a Complete action.

• Configurable Byte Order Mark handling, when transforming XML messages.
• Logic Apps templates have been open sourced.  You can submit updated or new templates yourself!  The templates are stored on Github.

New connectors!

A whole bunch of new connectors have been added.  These are the most important ones for me:

• Azure File Storage.  Ideal connector for very simple hybrid integration, allowing legacy applications to upload messages to the cloud  using the file system.  This is done by mounting an Azure File Share locally.  A real pity that the connector does not have any trigger at the moment!

• The Azure Resource Manager connector supports now Service Principals and can invoke specific resource operations.  This is a very powerful addition to this great connector!

• Azure Application Insights.  The current connector supports only query operations on Application Insights.  This might come in handy for notification scenarios.  If you want to write traces to AppInsights, you still have to use this custom API  App for the time being.

You can find the complete list of new connectors here:

Work in progress

This is a long list of features the product team is currently working on!

• Support large files, up to 1 GB, for specific connectors (blob, FTP).
• Native SOAP support to consume both cloud and on-premise SOAP services.
• Expression intellisense, using similar technology as Visual Studio code is using.
• Expression tracing, to see the intermediary values for complex expressions.
• For each nesting in the designer.
• Navigating to the next failed action inside a for each loop.
• Variables append in arrays.
• Publish Logic Apps to PowerApps and Flow, in a very easy way.
• Export Microsoft Flow to Logic Apps ARM template, for migration scenarios.
• A time-based and count-based-with-timeout batch release trigger is coming!
• OMS dashboard for cross-Logic Apps monitoring!  A first preview will be released in August.  Query support for tracked properties and bulk resubmit is on the roadmap.  Really looking forward to this one!

Connectors coming soon!

The following connectors have been announced!

• Azure Table Storage (!!)
• Azure SQL Data Warehouse
• Service Now (!)
• Workday
• Feedly
• MySQL
• Amazon Redshift

Conclusion

Exactly one year after Logic Apps went GA, we received again a huge update with tons of new features!  Really looking forward to try some of them out.  And of course, you’ll be able to read my findings on this blog!

Stay tuned for more!