Logic Apps Aviators Newsletter - January 2026
In this issue: Ace Aviator of the Month News from our product group Community Playbook News from our community Ace Aviator of the Month January's Ace Aviator: Sagar Sharma What's your role and title? What are your responsibilities? I’m a cross-domain Business Solution Architect specializing in delivering new business capabilities to customers. I design end-to-end architectures specially on Azure platforms and also in the Integration domain using azure integration services. My role involves marking architectural decisions, defining standards, ensuring platform reliability, guiding teams, and helping organizations transition from legacy integration systems to modern cloud-native patterns. Can you give us some insights into your day-to-day activities and what a typical day in your role looks like? My day usually blends architecture work with hands-on collaboration. I review integration designs, refine patterns, help teams troubleshoot integration flows, and ensure deployments run smoothly through DevOps pipelines. A good part of my time is spent translating business needs into integration patterns and making sure the overall platform stays secure, scalable, and maintainable. What motivates and inspires you to be an active member of the Aviators/Microsoft community? The community has shaped a big part of my career. Many of my early breakthroughs came from blogs, samples, and talks shared by others. Contributing back feels like closing the loop. I enjoy sharing real-world lessons, learning from peers, and helping others adopt integration patterns with confidence. The energy of the community and the conversations it creates keep me inspired. 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? Focus on core concepts—messaging, APIs, security, and distributed systems—because tools evolve, but fundamentals stay relevant. Share your learning early, even if it feels small. Be curious about the “why” behind patterns. Build side projects, not just follow tutorials. And don’t fear a nonlinear career path—diverse experience is an asset in technology. What has helped you grow professionally? Hands-on customer work, strong mentors, and consistent learning habits have been key. Community involvement—writing, speaking, and collaborating—has pushed me to structure my knowledge and stay current. And working in environments that encourage experimentation has helped me develop faster and with more confidence. If you had a magic wand that could create a feature in Logic Apps, what would it be and why? I’d love to see a unified, out-of-the-box business transaction tracing experience across Logic Apps, Service Bus, APIM, Functions, and downstream services. Something that automatically correlates events, visualizes the full journey of a transaction, and simplifies root-cause analysis. This would make operational troubleshooting dramatically easier in enterprise environments. News from our product group Microsoft BizTalk Server Product Lifecycle Update BizTalk Server 2020 will be the final release, with support extending through 2030. Microsoft encourages a gradual transition to Azure Logic Apps, offering migration tooling, hybrid deployment options, and reuse of existing BizTalk artifacts. Customers can modernize at their own pace while maintaining operational continuity. Data Mapper Test Executor: A New Addition to Logic Apps Standard Test Framework The Data Mapper Test Executor adds native support for testing XSLT and Data Mapper transformations directly within the Logic Apps Standard test framework. It streamlines validation, improves feedback cycles, and integrates with the latest SDK to enable reliable, automated testing of map generation and execution. Announcing General Availability of AI & RAG Connectors in Logic Apps (Standard) Logic Apps Standard AI and RAG connectors are now GA333, enabling native document processing, semantic search, embeddings, and agentic workflows. These capabilities let teams build intelligent, context‑aware automations using their own data, reducing complexity and enhancing decisioning across enterprise integrations. Logic Apps Labs The Logic Apps Labs, which introduces Azure Logic Apps agentic workflows learning path, offering guided modules on building conversational and autonomous agents, extending capabilities with MCP tools, and orchestrating multi‑agent workflows. It serves as a starting point for hands‑on labs covering design, deployment, and advanced patterns for intelligent automation. News from our community Handling Empty SQL Query Results in Azure Logic Apps Post by Anitha Eswaran If a SQL stored procedure returns no rows, you can detect the empty result set in Logic Apps by checking whether the output’s ResultSets object is {}. When empty, the workflow can be cleanly terminated or used to trigger alerts, ensuring predictable behavior and more resilient integrations. Azure Logic Apps MCP Server Post by Laveesh Bansal Our own Laveesh Bansal spent some time creating an Azure Logic Apps MCP Server that enables natural‑language debugging, workflow inspection, and updates without using the portal. It supports both Standard and Consumption apps, integrates with AI clients like Copilot and Claude, and offers tools for local or cloud‑hosted setups, testing, and workflow lifecycle operations. Azure Logic Apps: Change Detection in JSON Objects and Arrays Post by Suraj Somani Logic Apps offers native functions to detect changes in JSON objects and arrays without worrying about field or item order. Using equals() for objects and intersection() for arrays, you can determine when data has truly changed and trigger workflows only when updates occur, improving efficiency and reducing unnecessary processing. Logic Apps Standard: A clever hack to use JSON schemas in your Artifacts folder for JSON message validation (Part 1) Post by Şahin Özdemir Şahin outlines a workaround for using JSON schemas stored in the Artifacts folder to validate messages in Logic Apps Standard. It revisits integration needs from BizTalk migrations and shows how to bring structured validation into modern workflows without relying on Integration Accounts. This is a two part series and you can find part two here. Let's integrate SAP with Microsoft Video by Sebastian Meyer Sebastian has a new video out, and in this episode he and Martin Pankraz break down SAP GROW and RISE for Microsoft integration developers, covering key differences and integration options across IDoc, RFC, BAPI, SOAP, HTTPS, and OData, giving a concise overview of today’s SAP landscape and what it means for building integrations on Azure. Logic Apps Initialize variables action has a max limit of 20 variables Post by Sandro Pereira Logic Apps allows only 20 variables per Initialize variables action, and exceeding it triggers a validation error. This limit applies per action, not per workflow. Using objects, parameters, or Compose actions often reduces the need for many scalars and leads to cleaner, more maintainable workflows. Did you know that? It is a Friday Fact!
🚀 General Availability: Enhanced Data Mapper Experience in Logic Apps (Standard)
We’re excited to announce the General Availability (GA) of the redesigned Data Mapper UX in the Azure Logic Apps (Standard) extension for Visual Studio Code. This release marks a major milestone in our journey to modernize and streamline data transformation workflows for integration developer. What's new The new UX, previously available in public preview, is now the default experience in the Logic Apps Standard extension. This GA release reflects direct feedback from our integration developer community. We’ve resolved blockers that we heard from customers and usability issues that impacted performance and stability, including: Opening V1 maps in V2: Seamlessly open and edit existing maps you have already created with latest visual capabilities. Load schemas on Mac: Addressed schema-related crashes on macOS for a smoother experience. Function documentation updates: Improved guidance and examples for built-in collection functions that apply on repeating nodes. Stay connected We would love to hear your feedback. Please use this form link to let us know if there are any missing gaps or scenarios that are not yet covered🧩 Use Index + Direct Access to pull data across loops in Data Mapper
When working with repeating structures in Logic Apps Data Mapper, you may run into situations where two sibling loops exist under the same parent. What if you need to access data from one loop while you’re inside the other? This is where the Direct Access function, used in combination with Index, can save the day. 🧪 Scenario In this pattern, we’re focusing on the schema nodes shown below: 📸 Source & Destination Schemas (with loops highlighted) In the source schema: Under the parent node VehicleTrips, we have two sibling arrays: Vehicle → contains VehicleRegistration Trips → contains trip-specific values like VehicleID, Distance, and Duration In the destination schema: We're mapping into the repeating node Looping/Trips/Trip It expects each trip’s data along with a flattened VehicleRegistration value that combines both: The current trip’s VehicleID The corresponding vehicle’s VehicleRegistration The challenge? These two pieces of data live in two separate sibling arrays. 🧰 Try it yourself 📎 Download the sample files from GitHub Place them into the following folders in your Logic Apps Standard project: Artifacts → Source, destination and dependency schemas (.xsd) Map Definitions → .lml map file Maps → The .xslt file generated when you save the map Then right-click the .lml file and select “Open with Data Mapper” in VS Code. 🛠️ Step-by-step Breakdown ✅ Step 1: Set up the loop over Trips Start by mapping the repeating Trips array from the source to the destination's Trip node. Within the loop, we map: Distance Duration These are passed through To String functions before mapping, as the destination schema expects them as string values. As you map the child nodes, you will notice a loop automatically added on parent nodes (Trips->Trip) 📸 Mapping Distance and Duration nodes (context: we’re inside Trips loop) 🔍 Step 2: Use Index and Direct Access to bring in sibling loop values Now we want to map the VehicleRegistration node at the destination by combining two values: VehicleID (from the current trip) VehicleRegistration (from the corresponding vehicle) ➡️ Note: Before we add the Index function, delete the auto-generated loop from Trips to Trip To fetch the matching VehicleRegistration: Use the Index function to capture the current position within the Trips loop 📸 Index setup for loop tracking Use the Direct Access function to retrieve VehicleRegistration from the Vehicle array. 📘 Direct Access input breakdown The Direct Access function takes three inputs: Index – from the Index function, tells which item to access Scope – set to Vehicle, the array you're pulling from Target Node – VehicleRegistration, the value you want This setup means: “From the Vehicle array, get the VehicleRegistration at the same index as the current trip.” 📸 Direct Access setup 🔧 Step 3: Concatenate and map the result Use the Concat function to combine: VehicleID (from Trips) VehicleRegistration (from Vehicle, via Direct Access) Map the result to VehicleRegistration in the destination. 📸 Concat result to VehicleRegistration ➡️ Note: Before testing, delete the auto-generated loop from Vehicle to Trip 📸 Final map connections view ✅ Step 4: Test the output Once your map is saved, open the Test panel and paste a sample payload. You should see each Trip in the output contain: The original Distance and Duration values (as strings) A VehicleRegistration field combining the correct VehicleID and VehicleRegistration from the sibling array 📸 Sample Trip showing the combined nodes 💬 Feedback or ideas? Have feedback or want to share a mapping challenge? Open an issue on GitHubLesson Learned #61: Using Schemas in Azure SQL Managed Instance
First published on MSDN on Jan 19, 2019 Hello Team,This week I worked on a service request where our customer asked about the compatibility feature using schemas and partitioning, for this reason and thanks to near 100% compatibility of SQL Server we have the option to create schemas and split tables among different filegroups.
