One of the newest services from Microsoft is Flow – a cross application workflow and integration tool very similar to more established services like IFTTT and Zapier. Even though the service has been out of preview only since November 2016 it already integrates more than 80 services, with more coming on each month. January 2017 saw the addition of several new services, most notably OneNote and WordPress. Microsoft Flow is free for anyone with a work or school email address – a subscription to Office 365 is not required.
Microsoft Flow and Dynamics 365
For Microsoft Dynamics 365 users the integration was included at release date. I can see many uses for Flow in Dynamics CRM – for example – Integration with Typeform web forms to automatically create leads and support cases from submitted webforms. Other uses include updating Excel or Google Sheets when data is updated in Dynamics 365, copying email attachments to OneDrive or SharePoint or creation of tasks on non Dynamics 365 user’s Wunderlist app.
How enCloud9 uses Microsoft Flow
We have built a few simple Flow apps that integrate with our Dynamics 365 system for social media management. The first Flow is triggered when a blog is published on our WordPress website. A custom blog record is created in CRM with the test of the blog, its publish date, a link to the blog image and other information including keywords and metadata. We then tie this record to page views collected by ClickDimensions. The second Flow we use creates a short url in CRM to the blog entry using Bit.ly. Finally we store our collection of tweets in CRM tied to blog entry records. We can then trigger publishing these tweets from CRM using a third Flow.
What Services use Flow?
As of January 2017 84 apps and services work with Flow – we have sorted them based on categories. All indications appear that Microsoft will continue to add new services regularly and we will update this blog entry as they are added.
- Microsoft Applications and Services
- SharePoint
- One Drive
- OneDrive for Business
- Dynamics 365
- Dynamics 365 for Financials
- Dynamics 365 for Operations
- Excel
- SQL Server
- Translator
- Weather
- Office 365 Outlook
- Office 365 Users
- Office 365 Video
- One Note
- Outlook.com
- PowerBI
- Project Online
- Visual Studio Team Services
- Wunderlist
- Yammer
- Microsoft Azure Services
- Azure Resource Manager
- Azure blob Storage
- Azure Queues
- Cognitive Services Text Analytics
- Cognitive Services Face API
- Azure DocumentDB
- Azure Service Bus
- Google
- Calendar
- Contacts
- Drive
- Sheets
- Tasks
- Blogging and web
- Blogger
- WordPress
- Typeform
- Disqus
- File Storage
- Dropbox
- Box
- Asana
- CRM and Project Management
- Insightly
- Basecamp 3
- Easy Redmine
- Harvest
- Smartsheet
- Todoist
- Trello
- Social Media
- Vimeo
- YouTube
- Buffer
- Medium
- Instapaper
- Email Services
- SendGrid
- SparkPost
- Group Chat
- Campfire
- HipChat
- Slack
- Twilio
- Infrastructure
- SFTP
- SMTP
- Push notifications
- FTP
- RSS
- Other Services
- appFigures
- Bitly
- GitHub
- Pager Duty
- Premium Services
- Salesforce
- Salesforce Chatter
- Docusign
- EasyRedmine
- Freshdesk
- GoToMeeting
- GoToTraining
- Jira
- MailChimp
- Mandrill
- Common Data Services
- SurveyMonkey
What next?
Microsoft Flow certainly seems to be indicative of where Microsoft wishes to take App Integrations. With its long list of integrated apps and services this drastically changes how data can be integrated with and from Dynamics 365 CRM. Microsoft is publishing regular “Flows of the Week” to inspire users. enCloud9 will continue to use Flow as a workflow and data integration service as well as recommend it to our clients when we see benefits. As another tool in our consulting toolkit we expect to begin using this with greater frequency as Microsoft continues to add new integrations.
