In this issue:
Ace Aviator of the Month
Novembers’s Ace Aviator: Al Ghoniem
Al Ghoniem - Senior Integration Consultant @ARINCOWhat's your role and title? What are your responsibilities?
As a Senior Integration Consultant, I design and deliver enterprise-grade integration on Microsoft Azure, primarily using Logic Apps Standard, API Management, Service Bus, Event Grid and Azure Functions. My remit covers reference architectures, “golden” templates, governance and FinOps guardrails, CI/CD automation (Bicep and YAML), and production-ready patterns for reliability, observability and cost efficiency.
Alongside my technical work, I lead teams of consultants and engineers, helping them adopt standardised delivery models, mentor through code reviews and architectural walkthroughs, and ensure we deliver consistent, high-quality outcomes across projects. I also help teams apply decisioning patterns (embedded versus external rules) and integrate AI responsibly within enterprise workflows.
Can you give us some insights into your day-to-day activities and what a typical day in your role looks like?
- Architecture and patterns: refining solution designs, sequence diagrams and rules models for new and existing integrations.
- Build and automation: evolving reusable Logic App Standard templates, Bicep modules and pipelines, embedding monitoring, alerts and identity-first security.
- Problem-solving: addressing performance tuning, transient fault handling, poison/DLQ flows and “design for reprocessing.”
- Leadership and enablement: mentoring consultants, facilitating technical discussions, and ensuring knowledge is shared across teams.
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Community and writing: publishing articles and examples to demystify real-world integration trade-offs.
What motivates and inspires you to be an active member of the Aviators/Microsoft community?
The community continuously turns hard-won lessons into reusable practices. Sharing patterns (and anti-patterns) saves others time and incidents, while learning from peers strengthens my own work. Microsoft’s product teams also listen closely, and seeing customer feedback directly shape the platform is genuinely rewarding.
Looking back, what advice do you wish you had been given earlier that you'd now share with those looking to get into STEM/technology?
- Optimise for learning speed, not titles. Choose problems that stretch you and deliver in small, measurable increments.
- Master the fundamentals. Naming, idempotency, retries and observability are not glamorous but make systems dependable.
- Document everything. Diagrams, runbooks and ADRs multiply your impact.
- Understand trade-offs. Every decision buys something and costs something; acknowledge both sides clearly.
- Value collaboration over heroics. Ask questions, share knowledge and give credit freely.
What has helped you grow professionally?
- Reusable scaffolding: creating golden templates and reference repositories that capture best practice once and reuse it everywhere.
- Feedback loops: leveraging telemetry, post-incident reviews and peer critique to improve.
- Teaching and mentoring: explaining concepts to others brings clarity and strengthens leadership.
- Cross-disciplinary curiosity: combining architecture, DevOps, FinOps and AI to address problems holistically.
If you had a magic wand that could create a feature in Logic Apps, what would it be and why?
"Stateful Sessions and Decisions” as a first-class capability:
- Built-in session state across multiple workflows, durable correlation and resumable orchestrations without external storage.
- A native decisioning activity with versioned decision tables and rule auditing (“why this rule fired”).
- A local-first developer experience with fast testing and contract validation for confident iteration.
This would simplify complex, human-in-the-loop and event-driven scenarios, reduce custom plumbing, and make advanced orchestration patterns accessible to a wider audience.
News from our product group
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Logic Apps Community Day 2025Did you miss or want to catch up again on your favorite Logic Apps Community Day videos – jump back into action on this four hours long learning session, with 10 sessions from our Community Experts. And stay tuned for individual sessions being shared throughout the week. |
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Announcing Parse & Chunk with Metadata in Logic Apps: Build Context-Aware RAG AgentsNew Parse & Chunk actions add metadata like page numbers and sentence completeness—perfect for context-aware document Q&A using Azure AI Search and Agent Loop. |
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Introducing the RabbitMQ Connector (Public Preview)The new connector (Public Preview) lets you send and receive messages with RabbitMQ in Logic Apps Standard and Hybrid—ideal for scalable, reliable messaging across industries. |
News from our community
EventGrid And Entra Auth In Logic Apps Standard
Post by Riccardo Viglianisi
Learn how to use Entra Auth for webhook authentication, ditch SAS tokens, and configure private endpoints with public access rules—perfect for secure, scalable integrations.
Debugging XSLT Made Easy in VS Code: .NET-Based Debugging for Logic Apps
Post by Daniel Jonathan
A new .NET-based extension brings real debugging to XSLT for Logic Apps. Set breakpoints, step through transformations, and inspect variables—making XSLT development clear and productive. This is the 3rd post in a 5 part series, so worth checking out the other posts too.
Modifying the Logic App Azure Workbook: Custom Views for Multi Workflow Monitoring
Post by Jeff Wessling
Learn how to tailor dashboards with KQL, multi-workflow views, and context panes—boosting visibility, troubleshooting speed, and operational efficiency across your integrations.
Azure AI Agents in Logic Apps: A Guide to Automate Decisions
Post by Imashi Kinigama
Discover how GPT-powered agents, created using Logic Apps Agent Loop, automate decisions, extract data, and adapt in real time. Build intelligent workflows with minimal effort—no hardcoding, just instructions and tools.
How to Turn Logic App Connectors into MCP Servers (Step-by-Step Guide)
Post by Stephen W. Thomas
Learn how to expose connectors like Google Drive or Salesforce as MCP endpoints using Azure API Center—giving AI agents secure, real-time access to 1,400+ services directly from VS Code.
Custom SAP MCP Server with Logic Apps
Post by Sebastian Meyer
Learn how to turn Logic Apps into AI-accessible tools using MCP. From workflow descriptions to Easy Auth setup and VS Code integration—this guide unlocks SAP automation with Copilot.
How Azure Logic Apps as MCP Servers Accelerate AI Agent Development
Post by Monisha S
Turn 1,400+ connectors into AI tools with Logic Apps Standard. Build agents fast, integrate with legacy systems, and scale intelligent workflows across your organization.
Designing Business Rules in Azure Logic Apps: When to Go Embedded vs External
Post by Al Ghoniem
Learn when to use Logic Apps' native Rules Engine or offload to Azure Functions with NRules or JSON RulesEngine. Discover hybrid patterns for scalable, testable decision automation.
Syncing SharePoint with Azure Blob Storage using Logic Apps & Azure Functions for Azure AI Search
Post by Daniel Jonathan
Solve folder delete issues by tagging blobs with SharePoint metadata. Use Logic Apps and a custom Azure Function to clean up orphaned files and keep Azure AI Search in sync.
Step-by-Step Guide: Building a Conversational Agent in Azure Logic Apps
Post by Stephen W. Thomas
Use Azure AI Foundry and Logic Apps Standard to create chatbots that shuffle cards, answer questions, and embed into websites—no code required, just smart workflows and EasyAuth.
You can hide sensitive data from the Logic App run history
Post by Francisco Leal
Learn how to protect sensitive data like authentication tokens, credentials, and personal information in Logic App, so this data don’t appear in the run history, which could pose security and privacy risks.
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