In this issue:

• Ace Aviator of the Month
• News from our product group
• News from our community

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Ace Aviator of the Month

May 2026's Ace Aviator: Yahya Ajwad

Yahya Ajwad - Chief Architect Cloud Integration @ Epical

What's your role and title? What are your responsibilities?

I work as Chief Architect and AI Lead at Epical. My role is centered around technical leadership, architecture, and advisory mostly within cloud adoption and transformation programs. I help customers design and implement integration platforms. I also support customers in navigating the AI landscape, with a focus on how integration platforms impact AI readiness and how AI can be used to create value in the platforms we build. Internally at Epical, I lead our Microsoft and Azure cloud integration offering, as well as our CoreAI team and AI initiatives.

Can you give us some insights into your day-to-day activities?

One moment it is about how we can utilize AI to deliver things cheaper and faster without compromising security, governance and quality. Next, a customer contacts us with an undocumented BizTalk environment asking us what to do next (that's where the fun begins). Usually followed up by the question about how much does their future integration platform in Azure will cost down to the last cent (good luck answering that 😜 hint: the right answer is always: "less than BizTalk"). And hey, public cloud might not be good enough for their security, so thank God for private connectivity.
I also spend time helping customers identify the best cloud integration strategies and patterns and for their business needs, choosing the right platforms and components for specific use cases, and ensuring that the platforms we design are as secure, scalable, maintainable, and cost-efficient as possible. Increasingly, this also includes sprinkling AI so bosses are happy (joking I'm a true AI believer myself).
Internally, I support Epical with technical business development and help ensure that we stay relevant.

What motivates and inspires you to be an active member of the Aviators/Microsoft community?

I honestly believe that IT in general would never have been the same without communities and the willingness to share knowledge and support one another. The Logic Apps and Azure Integration community is especially unique because it is both practical and open. People share real experiences which makes it incredibly valuable when trying to solve real-world challenges. What motivates me is the opportunity to learn by sharing, receive feedback, and be part of a community where everyone contributes to each other’s growth. Between us, I'm here for the stickers ;)

Looking back, what advice do you wish you had been given earlier?

Be kind, stay curious and be helpful. Share what you know, even if it feels small or irrelevant. Those small insights often help others more than you think and that will definitely help you grow. Also, focus on learning the fundamentals. Tools and platforms change quickly, and what is popular today might not matter in a few weeks. Strong basics will always stay relevant. Keep learning and try new things all the time.

What has helped you grow professionally?

Being around kind, skilled, and generous people both in the community and at work who are willing to teach, challenge my thinking, and share their knowledge. Also, finding mentors who are open to mentor me, listen to all my questions even the silly ones, and who are willing to guide me and correct me when I’m hallucinating.

If you had a magic wand that could create a feature in Logic Apps, what would it be?

I don’t need to wish for one, you guys (Shout-out to Harold, Dyvia and the team) have already created it: Logic Apps Migration Assistant Agents. That stuff is definitely magic.

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News from our product group

Network Connectivity Check APIs for Logic App Standard

This post introduces built-in network troubleshooting APIs for Logic App Standard when integrated with a virtual network. Three endpoints—connectivityCheck, dnsCheck, and tcpPingCheck—let you validate end‑to‑end connectivity to services such as Azure SQL, Key Vault, Storage, Service Bus, and Event Hubs, perform DNS resolution, and test TCP reachability from the actual worker hosting your workflows. It covers supported provider types, credential options including Managed Identity and app settings, example payloads, and known limitations (e.g., SMB port 445 cannot be tested). Step-by-step guidance shows how to call the APIs via Azure API Playground or CLI to quickly isolate network issues.

Service Bus SBMP Retirement: What BizTalk Server 2020 Customers Need to Know

Azure Service Bus will retire the Service Bus Messaging Protocol (SBMP) on September 30, 2026, impacting BizTalk Server 2020 customers using the SB‑Messaging adapter. Microsoft has released a hotfix that adds Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) support to the adapter for CU6 and CU7. With the hotfix, AMQP becomes the default transport while SBMP remains an opt‑in fallback; an updated hotfix based on the new Service Bus SDK is expected in June. Guidance includes migrating configurations to AMQP, installing and validating the hotfix in non‑production, and testing large message/file scenarios. The hotfix can be requested via support (KB5091375).

Migrate Data Ingestion from Data Collector to Log Ingestion

With the HTTP Data Collector API for Log Analytics deprecated and heading out of support in September 2026, this guide shows Logic Apps users how to move to the Log Ingestion API. It explains impacts—such as 403 errors for new Data Collector connections and missing data in newly created custom log tables—and provides a migration path using the HTTP action. Steps include creating a Data Collection Endpoint (DCE) and Data Collection Rule (DCR), deriving the full ingestion URL, mapping sample data to define schema, assigning the Monitoring Metrics Publisher role to the Logic App’s managed identity, and verifying success (HTTP 204).

Introducing AI Skill Assessment in Azure API Center

Azure API Center now includes automated AI skill assessment, providing governance and quality scoring for skills at scale using an “LLM‑as‑a‑judge” approach. The system evaluates outputs against defined criteria and ships with four default dimensions—Documentation Clarity, Help Completeness, Discoverability, and Safe Usage—each scored 1–5 with configurable thresholds. Developers get detailed reports showing pass/fail, per‑dimension scores, structural checks, and schema validation, helping them decide which skills are production‑ready. Platform administrators can extend or customize criteria to match organizational standards. The feature centralizes oversight and reduces manual review effort, improving confidence when adopting AI skills across integration solutions.

Introducing the plugin marketplace for Azure API Center

Azure API Center adds a plugin marketplace endpoint (public preview) that exposes a version‑controlled catalog of organizational AI plugins—such as MCP servers and skills—directly from your API Center data plane. Developers can discover and install plugins from familiar tools like Claude Code and GitHub Copilot CLI using simple marketplace commands. The endpoint inherits the API Center portal’s authentication model, ensuring governance and security while platform teams control publication. The article explains the problem it addresses, the marketplace.git URL format, quick start commands, and documentation to enable the feature—streamlining how teams curate, manage, and consume AI plugins in enterprise environments.

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News from our community

Control the Initial State of Logic Apps Standard Workflows

Post by Sandro Pereira

This tip explains how to prevent Logic Apps Standard workflows from auto-starting after deployment, a risky default in production. Unlike Consumption, Standard doesn’t expose a state property in ARM. Instead, each workflow’s initial state is controlled via App Service application settings using the pattern “Workflows.<WorkflowName>.FlowState=Disabled.” The post shows how to define these keys in local.settings.json (or pipelines/Bicep), deploy with workflows disabled, and enable them when ready. It also notes acceptable values (Disabled/disabled) and clarifies that omitting the keys leaves workflows enabled by default—reducing unwanted executions and noisy alerts.

10 Azure Function App Limitations for Enterprise Integration

Post by Tarun Garg

The post outlines ten reasons Azure Function Apps may be a poor fit for enterprise integration workloads. Issues include cold-start latency, limited orchestration and state management, operational complexity at scale, and the need to hand-roll observability. It also highlights security and network isolation challenges, cost variability under heavy throughput, strong dependence on custom code, risks around versioning and breaking changes, and insufficient governance controls for integration use cases. The takeaway: Function Apps excel at granular compute, but integration programs often benefit from managed orchestration layers and patterns better aligned to enterprise requirements.

Logic Apps Standard: how accidentally blocking access from Edge results in CORS errors

Post by Şahin Özdemir

Şahin Özdemir explains a troubleshooting case where Logic Apps Standard action inputs/outputs stopped loading in the Azure portal, appearing like a CORS issue. The root cause was a blocked “Local Network Access” permission in Microsoft Edge, not misconfigured CORS. The article advises checking Edge’s site permissions and re-enabling local network access before diving into CORS diagnostics. By validating browser settings first, engineers can avoid unnecessary changes to integration apps and resolve portal rendering failures quickly—saving time and reducing confusion when workflow views suddenly fail to load.

Logic apps – Handling AND OR conditions

Post by Anitha Eswaran

Anitha Eswaran explains how to correctly implement combined AND/OR logic in Azure Logic Apps when the designer view becomes confusing. Using a real example—validating item numbers—she shows how to check for empty values or specific suffixes (W/WN) and when to terminate processing. The article demonstrates building expressions to explicitly control evaluation order and outcomes, avoiding unintended behavior from default AND logic. Practical screenshots and expression snippets help readers structure conditions, handle arrays from trigger data, and create maintainable workflows that reflect real business rules.

Why Enterprises Are Migrating from Logic Apps (Consumption) to Logic Apps (Standard): Practical Insights from the Field

Post by Kunal Saha

Kunal Saha outlines why organizations reach an inflection point where Logic Apps Standard becomes a better fit than Consumption. Drawing from field experience, he highlights drivers like consolidated app-level management, richer local development workflows, environment isolation, and cost predictability for sustained workloads. The piece discusses when per-execution billing ceases to be efficient, how Standard’s hosting model supports enterprise governance, and migration considerations around triggers, connectors, and stateful patterns. The article encourages teams to evaluate workload characteristics and operational needs to determine the right time to modernize to Standard.

Event Debouncing with Logic Apps and Azure Table Storage

Post by Daniel Jonathan

This article presents an event debouncing pattern for webhook-heavy systems using three Logic Apps and a single Azure Table Storage table. Incoming events are buffered by upserting rows keyed by entity ID, ensuring only the latest state is retained. A timer-driven workflow processes pending rows after a cooldown window, fetches fresh state from the source, and calls downstream APIs, deleting entries on success or resetting on failure. Benefits include implicit deduplication, reduced downstream load, and operational transparency in Storage Explorer. The pattern suits moderate scale without Service Bus, with caveats for strict ordering or very high throughput scenarios.

XML to JSON in Logic Apps: Fixing the “Object vs Array” Trap

Post by Prashant Singh

Prashant Singh explains a common pitfall when converting XML to JSON in Logic Apps: json(xml(...)) yields an array when multiple nodes exist, but a single object when only one node is present—breaking For each loops. He outlines three remedies: debatch directly with xpath() to always return a node set; wrap the target node with array() to normalize object/array differences; or use coalesce() with array() to safely handle missing nodes. With clear examples and expressions, the post helps engineers avoid brittle assumptions and build resilient workflows that handle single, multiple, or absent records cleanly.

DevUP Talks 02 - 2026 Q1 Reflections with Ahmed Bayoumy, Sebastian Meyer and Andrew Wilson

Video by Mattias Lögdberg

This 12‑minute panel discussion surveys how AI and automation are changing day‑to‑day engineering work. Mattias Lögdberg hosts Ahmed Bayoumy, Sebastian Meyer, and Andrew Wilson to share early field perspectives: the shift from experimentation to production, emerging testing responsibilities around AI‑assisted code, and how integration teams are adapting operating models and skills. The conversation favors practical observations over hype, offering a snapshot of what practitioners are seeing at the start of 2026. It’s a compact watch for leaders tracking real impacts rather than theoretical roadmaps.

How low can you code? From ‘drag-and-drop’ dreams to try–catch reality

Post by Sonny Gillissen

Sonny Gillissen argues that early low‑code promised simplicity but often obscured complexity with visual designers and limited tooling. He suggests AI can shift low‑code from diagramming boxes to describing intent—letting teams express business behavior in natural terms, with systems generating implementations. The piece calls for focusing on domain clarity, robust data/APIs, and guardrails over chasing more drag‑and‑drop. For integration engineers, it frames a path where Logic Apps and related platforms become orchestration shells around AI‑assisted specifications, improving maintainability without hiding the hard parts.

Legacy Integration to Azure: 40% Cost Savings and Faster Delivery

Post by Adaptiv (post by Simon Clendon)

This piece outlines lessons from migrating legacy integration platforms to Microsoft Azure. It details the discovery work needed to untangle historical integrations, the diplomacy required with stakeholders, and the engineering patterns that de-risk cutovers. Highlights include modernizing HR workflows, establishing clear migration decision trees, and treating AI as a force multiplier rather than a silver bullet. The article emphasizes measurable outcomes—around 40% cost savings and faster delivery—while cautioning against underestimating analysis, testing, and organizational change, and recommending experienced partners to accelerate the journey.

Using the Right Tool Is Not Over‑Engineering

Post by Marcelo Gomes

Marcelo Gomes argues that many integration failures stem from tool misalignment rather than flawed logic. Using a market‑stall analogy, he outlines when to rely on API Management for exposure and control, where Logic Apps should orchestrate rather than absorb all work, and why Azure Storage underpins durable, production‑ready designs. The piece encourages architects to map responsibilities explicitly—governance at the edge, orchestration in workflows, compute where it belongs—so systems scale cleanly without masking complexity under a single service. Choosing fit‑for‑purpose components, he suggests, is discipline—not over‑engineering.

Using Event Grid to detect deleted files and trigger Logic App

Post by Sandro Pereira (author: Luis Rigueira)

This walkthrough shows how to capture Azure Storage blob deletion events with Event Grid and invoke a Logic App for downstream actions like audit, recovery, or notifications. It explains why native Blob triggers don’t fire on delete, then sets up a System Topic on the storage account, configures a Logic App with the “When a resource event occurs” trigger for Microsoft.Storage.BlobDeleted, and parses the event payload for container, file name, content‑type, and timestamp. The post provides expressions and screenshots to build the flow end‑to‑end, enabling reliable reactions to file deletions without custom functions.