🎉Announcing the General Availability of the XML Parse and Compose Actions in Azure Logic Apps
The XML Operations connector We have recently added two actions for the XML Operations connector: Parse XML with schema and Compose XML with schema. With this addition, Logic Apps customers can now interact with the token picker during design time. The tokens are generated from the XML schema provided by the customer. As a result, the XML document and its contained properties will be easily accessible, created and manipulated in the workflow. XML parse with schema The XML parse with schema allow customers to parse XML data using an XSD file (an XML schema file). XSD files need to be uploaded to the Logic App schemas artifacts or an Integration account. Once they have been uploaded, you need to enter the enter your XML content, the source of the schema and the name of the schema file. The XML content may either be provided in-line or selected from previous operations in the workflow using the token picker. For instance, the following is a parsed XML: XML compose with schema The XML compose with schema allows customers to generate XML data, using an XSD file. XSD files need to be uploaded to the Logic App schemas artifacts or an Integration account. Once they have been uploaded, you should select the XSD file along with entering the JSON root element or elements of your input XML schema. The JSON input elements will be dynamically generated based on the selected XML schema. For instance, the following is a Composed file: Learnings from Transition from Public Preview to General Availability: Upon feedback received from multiple customers, we would love to share the following recommendations and considerations, that will you maximize the reliability, flexibility, and internationalization capabilities of XML Parse and Compose actions in Azure Logic Apps. Handling Array Inputs in XML Switch to array input mode when mapping arrays. By default, the Logic App Designer expects individual array items for XML elements with maxOccurs > 1. If you want to assign an entire array token, use the array input mode icon in the Designer. This avoids unnecessary For Each loops and streamlines your workflow. For instance, the following: Click the Switch to input entire array Enter your array token. Managing Non-UTF-8 Encoded XML Leverage the encoding parameter in XML Compose. Customers can specify the desired character encoding (e.g., iso-2022-jp for Japanese). This controls both the .NET XML writer settings and the output encoding, allowing for broader internationalization support. Example configuration: Use the XML writer settings property to set encoding as needed. Safe Transport of Binary and Non-UTF-8 Content Utilize the Logic App content envelope. The XML Compose action outputs content in a safe envelope, enabling transport of binary and non-UTF-8 content within the UTF-8 JSON payload. Downstream actions (e.g., HTTP Request) can consume this envelope directly. Content-Type Header Management XML Compose now specifies the exact character set in the Content-Type header. This ensures downstream systems receive the correct encoding information. For example, application/xml; charset=iso-2022-jp will be set for Japanese-encoded XML. Consuming XML Output in HTTP Actions Reference the XML output property directly in HTTP actions. The envelope’s content-type is promoted to the HTTP header, and the base64-encoded content is decoded and sent as the raw HTTP body. This preserves encoding and binary fidelity. Documentation and External References Consult official documentation for advanced scenarios: Support non-Unicode character encoding in Azure Logic Apps. Content-Type and Content-Encoding for clarifying header usage. Do not confuse Content-Type with Content-Encoding. Content-Type specifies character set encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO-2022-JP), while Content-Encoding refers to compression (e.g., gzip). Check this short video to learn more:Announcing the General Availability of the Azure Logic Apps Rules Engine
This week we announced our agent loop, a groundbreaking new capability in Azure Logic Apps to build AI agents into your enterprise workflows. With agent loop, you can embed advanced AI decision-making directly into your processes – enabling your apps and automation to not just follow predefined steps, but to reason, adapt, and act autonomously towards goals. Now, we are announcing the General Availability of our Azure Logic Apps Rules Engine. A deterministic rules engine runtime based on the RETE algorithm that allows in-memory execution, prioritization, and reevaluation of business rules in Azure Logic Apps. The Azure Logic Apps Rules Engine is a decision management inference engine in Azure Logic Apps, which provides the capability for customers to build Standard workflows in Azure Logic Apps and integrate readable, declarative, and semantically rich rules that operate on multiple data sources. The native data sources available today for the Rules Engine are XML and .NET objects. These data sources are called "facts" and are used to construct rules from small building blocks of business logic or "rulesets". To create rules, you need the Rules Composer. It can be downloaded from the download center. The Rules Engine can also interact with the data exchanged by all the connectors available for Standard logic app resources. This design pattern promotes code reuse, design simplicity, and business logic modularity. Our Rules engine uses a VSCode experience to create Logic Apps projects with Rules engine support. For more information on how to create projects with Rules Engine, visit here. Now. What can I do with it? In a world of AI that essentially follows a probabilistic approach, rules engines are vital because they provide consistency, clarity, and compliance across different business goals. When you use rules with a workflow in Azure Logic Apps, you can define the logic, constraints, and policies that govern how to process, validate, and exchange data across systems, while you avoid AI hallucinations. Rules also help you make sure that applications follow the regulations and standards of their respective industries and markets. By using a rules engine, you can manage and update your workflow's business logic independently from the code and without having to alter your workflow. This approach helps you reduce the complexity and maintenance costs of your applications and increase their agility and scalability. From a technical perspective, the Azure Logic Apps rules engine allows you to do forward chaining or forward reasoning, in other words to do a re-evaluation of rules triggered by changes in the facts because of a rule’s execution. This is one of those scenarios where rules engine is unique; instead of writing complex code or creating complex “state-machine” workflows, the logic apps rules engine conducts this task with an instruction called “Update”. Getting started In the example below, I will show how to use the Logic Apps rules engine to ground an AI workflow loop. For this to scenario, I am adding a Rules Engine workflow, to an existing agent loop workflow, and use it to correct rates and provide a “cross-sell” recommendation. First, I need to deploy the workflow from VSCode to Azure. As the rules engine currently only supports XML and .NET Framework objects, I create an XSD schema (using Copilot if you don’t have an existing one) and use it with a “Compose XML with schema” action to create the XML fact that is needed. To obtain the returned data, I am using the “Parse XML with schema” action as well. After the logic app was deployed, I added it as a tool in the Logic Apps agent workflow loop, with a Call workflow in this logic app. I then pass the values that I need for parameters for the Rules engine to work. And I leave the rules engine return values empty. Then I updated my system prompt to indicate how I want the Rules engine to be used. The agent loop will find the right tool for the right job. Once the system prompt has been updated, I proceed to run the workflow with a payload. I have highlighted in red in the Agent chat, the guardrails imposed by the Rules Engine. Those rules have been used to make sure that the AI responses fall within the internal compliance and cross-sell company criteria. Some of the business rules can have different priorities and might require re-calculation for accuracy. The Logic Apps Rules Engine takes care of it without coding or adding complex business logic through additional workflows. Further adjustments to the rules using the Rules Composer will ground the agent’s results even more. What else can I do with it? You can use a Rules Engine in any context. In fact, decision management that falls under Intelligent business processes automation is growing in customers who want to provide flexibility, governance and compliance with their cloud workloads. Another well-known scenario is for BizTalk Migrations to Azure Logic Apps. For customers who have implemented the BizTalk BRE for decision management, content redirection, SWIFT or .NET framework. Demo Please watch the following short demo of this sample. How to use it If you are running the public preview version of the Rules engine, we recommend you to recreate your Rules engine project to get the latest rules engine nuget package loaded. If you cannot recreate your project, conduct the following steps: Update to csproj file by adding the rules engine nuget and updating the Webjob sdk nuget as follows: <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Azure.Workflows.RulesEngine" Version="1.0.0" /> <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Azure.Workflows.WebJobs.Sdk" Version="1.2.0" /> Update to the code making the rule explorer to be created as part of the constructor: public user_function_class(ILoggerFactory loggerFactory) { logger = loggerFactory.CreateLogger<user_function_class>(); this.ruleExplorer = new FileStoreRuleExplorer(loggerFactory); } The above rule explorer needs to be used for getting any rule set in the RunRules method as: var ruleSet = this.ruleExplorer.GetRuleSet(ruleSetName); Open a terminal and run dotnet restore Run dotnet build. Contact Us Have feedback or questions about the Rules Engine? We’d love to hear from you. Reply directly to this blog post or reach out to us through this form. Your input helps shape the future of Logic Apps and the rules engine.
