In this issue:
- Ace Aviator of the Month
- Event reminder: Logic Apps Aviators Day
- News from our product group
- News from our community
Ace Aviator of the Month
What is an Ace Aviator?
Calling all Aviators! The Logic Apps Aviators team is thrilled to introduce an exciting opportunity for our growing community. You now have a chance to be featured in our monthly newsletter, showcasing your exceptional work and commitment to the Logic Apps community. We're constantly on the lookout for our next spotlight, so keep generating content and bolstering your contributions with the #LogicAppsAviators hashtag. Your invaluable expertise and dedication will be recognized, so don't miss out on this chance to fly high and be featured next month! Without further ado, we are pleased to introduce our first Ace Aviator...
June's Ace Aviator: Daniel Probert
What is your role and title? What are your responsibilities associated with your position?
My title is Chief Technical Officer at Affinus Limited. What that means is that I set the technical direction for our company. Think of me as a glorified architect. I’m responsible for researching and understanding the future of integration technologies and communicating these to our team members. If there’s a new or changed technology that looks like it would be useful to us or our customers, I’ll find out more about it and, if necessary, arrange a Proof of Concept or some training in it. As I’m involved in all the technical and architectural decisions we make, I also help shape the technology we use to meet our customer’s requirements. I also help produce ideas for any internal tooling we may need (although this is more collaborative).
Can you provide some insights into your day-to-day activities and what a typical day in your role looks like?
No day is really the same. Usually, I’m working on multiple parallel projects, and there are many balls to keep in the air. Our company prides itself on hand-on technical effort, so you’ll often find me developing in AIS just as much as drawing diagrams in Visio or writing design briefs in Word. But a typical day will involve meeting with member of our teams (depending on which projects I can best help on), and then chunking away at my list of tasks for that day.
A lot of my role involves providing guidance to other team members or to clients, so I spend a lot of time on calls looking at requirements, discussing technical options, or answering questions. Within our company, I’m the go-to person for Logic Apps (and AIS in general), so I tend to get involved whenever there’s an issue to be solved or a discussion to be had. I’m passionate about improving the technical proficiency of my team, and in an ideal world I’d spend more of my time mentoring and training our team.
What motivates and inspires you to be an active member of the Aviators/Microsoft community?
A passion for technology, and a strong desire to help others educate themselves to the best of their ability. I’ve been working in Integration (with Microsoft technologies) since 2002, and I feel I have a deep and broad understanding of the challenges and benefits these technologies can bring. And like a lot of complex technologies, it can be difficult to access as a newcomer. There’s a real need for a common place where people can share their experiences, and others can learn, which is accessible to all.
When I started with Microsoft BizTalk Server, the internet was still young, and we relied on the (fairly) minimal set of books that existed, often having to solve problems on our own. But then Alan Smith (an early BizTalk MVP) released the Bloggers Guide to BizTalk, a downloadable compendium of blog posts on how to solve a wide range of Integration problems using BizTalk. And this (along with a few compendium websites such as BizTalkGurus) marked the start of a community of integration professionals sharing their knowledge.
To me, Logic App Aviators is the natural progression from that – bringing together people who have any level of experience and a desire to share that experience, to help all of us learn. Integration technologies can be opaque for beginners: – the Aviators programme (and the Microsoft community as a whole) can help make learning more transparent, providing patterns and guidance so that anyone can become an expert.
Looking back, what advice do you wish you would have been told earlier on that you would give to individuals looking to become involved in STEM/technology?
That there's no magic – even the most complex design or technology, will be made up of simple ideas. You just need to learn to break down the design to see those simple ideas.
What I wish I’d known is how to find those people that are both passionate about what they do, and who really want to help educate others (as opposed to those who just want an audience!). Someone who will listen to you and have the patience and time to help you learn at your own pace. And that it’s ok to not know something – it’s ok (and indeed important) to make mistakes. We’re better when we work together as a team, rather than as a collection of individuals.
I’m aware that as a white male from a middle-class background, I was already in a privileged position to be able to learn about technology. We have built quite a diverse team at Affinus now and we encourage all our staff not to be afraid to ask for help or mentoring.
My opinion is that cloud-based technologies (and especially the rise of browser-based development environments, such as that offered by Logic Apps) lower the bar needed to learn a new technology. No longer do you need a high-spec PC, or to download and install software. You can do your development anywhere you can access a web browser.
Throughout your career, what are some of the most important lessons you have learned?
Make mistakes. Break things. But always try to learn from those mistakes. If you consistently make the same mistakes, ask someone for help, be willing to learn, and be willing to admit that you might be wrong. People are generally kind, and most people want to help – they just need to be asked in the right way. Ask questions. In fact, question everything. We all build models in our head for how things work – it’s just that some people’s models are much more detailed. Try and be one of those people that add a lot of details to their models. If you can learn the skills needed to quickly build a fairly accurate internal model of how something works, you’ll be able to pick up almost any new technology or be able to understand the impact of a change on an existing technology. Both of those skills are incredibly valuable.
Ultimately, I would say the same things I’d say to my children: – be kind and compassionate. Many of us enjoy roles in Information Technology because we relate well to technological ideas, but that doesn’t mean we’re not human! There’s always a place for kindness and compassion. And humour.
Imagine you had a magic wand that could create a feature in Logic Apps. What would this feature be and why?
Only one feature??!!! My top request would be better joined-up support for throttling/rate limiting across technologies e.g., across connectors, especially the service bus and HTTP connectors.
Ideally the ability to control how many instances are spun up and down to handle load, based on several measures e.g., based on either configurable rate limit, or the capacity in the current App Service Plan, or some other metric). With the ability to scale up and down as needed within defined limits. And the ability to suspend and resume messages as needed! I know several clients who are nervous about putting too much into Logic Apps as they’re not sure how well they can scale the connected systems; making it easy to throttle their workflows would go a long way in helping them make the transition.
It’s possible to do all this today, but only by designing and writing code – it would be nice if this was all baked in.
And if I can squeeze in a second (possibly more achievable one): a built-in sample monitoring dashboard that shows how many instances are running, how many are queued, how many errors, what load is in the ASP – with professional looking dials and the like. Something we could show off to customers and say, “look what you get out of the box to monitor your Logic Apps”!
Event reminder: Logic Apps Aviators Day
Don't miss out on our first Logic Apps Aviators Day on June 22nd, 2023 (Pacific Time). This free virtual event is driven by Microsoft for anyone looking to learn more about Logic Apps and how you can use it to solve real world integration problems. Logic Apps Aviators Day is a full-day event where we'll deep-dive into various aspects of Logic Apps. We have a range of beginner to advance sessions focusing on topics from patterns and practices to real life scenarios, all hosted by your fellow Aviators Community members! We look forward to seeing you there!
News from our product group:
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Announcing General Availability of the New Logic Apps Designer We are excited to announce that the new Logic Apps Designer is now Generally Available. With enhanced performance and usability, our new designer is ready to support you in creating more powerful and efficient workflows. This new improved experience is available across all Logic App surfaces and SKUs. |
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Announcement!! Azure based Custom connectors support for Logic Apps Standard We are thrilled to announce that we now support Azure managed custom connectors for Logic Apps Standard. You can build connectors for services and applications not available with out of box connectors. This allows you to use your existing custom connectors from Logic Apps Standard along with Logic Apps Consumption. |
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Announcement!! APIM connector for Logic Apps Standard Introducing support for built-in APIM connector for Logic Apps Standard, allowing you to consume your APIs hosted in APIM from Logic Apps workflow. The APIM connector lets you extend the out of box connectors and consume your backend services and APIs. This also means we now support connecting your services and APIs hosted on-premises or in VNET. |
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Enabling Service Bus and SAP built-in connectors for stateful Logic Apps in Standard In this blog post you will learn the requirements needed to successfully use Service Bus and SAP built-in connectors in Logic App Standard that are now available for use in stateful Logic Apps. |
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LA Standard options for connecting to custom services or APIs This blog post covers multiple options to consume custom services and APIs hosted in VNET from Logic Apps Standard using the new custom connector. |
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Built-in Connectors Demo on Azure Logic Apps channel A few Built-in Connectors for Logic App Standard have become Generally Available in the last quarter. To get a glimpse of what’s now possible, check out the demo videos for Azure blob storage connector, Azure Table storage connector, and XML transformation on the Azure Logic Apps channel. |
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Use Azure Data Factory to invoke Logic App via Managed Identity Authentication Follow the steps in this article to learn how to configure a Logic App Consumption with Azure Active Directory Open Authentication that can be called by an Azure Data Factory Web Activity via Managed Identity. |
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Generate Logic App Standard run history URL in Application Insights log Learn a different way to generate run history URL based on Application Insights logs to find failure runs based on specific exceptions. |
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From zero to hero security coverage with Microsoft Sentinel for your critical SAP security signals –...
This blog series sheds light on the plug-and-play automation content available to act on suspicious🕵🏽:male_sign: activity on SAP RISE, SAP ERP, Business Technology Platform, and Azure AD with Microsoft Sentinel. |
News from our community:
Attaching a file to a DevOps Work Item
Post by Pedro Almeida
Pedro Almeida provides a guide on attaching files to Azure DevOps work items, enabling seamless collaboration and efficient file management within the DevOps workflow.
Post by Mattias Lögdberg
In this article, Mattias Lögdberg discusses the importance of securing Logic Apps built on the Azure App Service Environment (ASEv3). Learn insights on implementing security measures to ensure the protection of sensitive data.
Deploying Logic App Standard resource using Bicep templates and DevOps pipeline
Post by Shree Divya
Follow this step-by-step guide thanks to Shree Divya on creating a Bicep template, configuring deployment parameters, and setting up the Azure DevOps pipeline to deploy the Logic App.
The simple way to add alerts to Logic App Workflows
Post by Simon Clendon
Learn how to easily add alerts to your Logic App Workflows using Azure Alerts. Simon Clendon demonstrates the use of Bicep templates and arrays to create alerts for multiple workflows.
Azure Event Grid dead letter messages reprocessed to an API Endpoint
Post by Mike Stephenson
Watch and learn from Mike Stephenson as he explains the tricky task of reprocessing a dead-lettered event when you want to reprocess to a particular API endpoint only.
