Microsoft Azure has lot of interesting resources which can be really helpful for your products. One of my favorite resource in Azure would be Logic Apps. The main advantage of Logic App is, you can perform complex operations where you don’t need much knowledge on coding. If you know basic english, Logic App can be learnt at ease.
Microsoft Flow is similar as Logic App. You can do most of the operations that are being done in Logic Apps.
In this blog, we will see detailed explanation of Logic Apps and Microsoft flow and at last we will compare both of these resources.
Logic Apps
Logic Apps allows you to define a workflow where you can build automated scalable workflows, business processes, and enterprise orchestrations to integrate your apps and data across cloud or on-premise systems. You can create logic app using,
- Azure Portal
- Visual Studio
- Visual Studio Code
We have an extension called Logic Apps that can be installed in Visual Studio Code where you can manage all your logic apps from VS Code rather going to Azure portal.
Connectors
Logic App consists a lot of predefined connectors. A connector is a step defined in an logic app. By using connectors, you expand the capabilities for your cloud and on-premise apps to perform tasks with the data that you create and also with the data that you already have.
Some of the predefined connectors are Gmail, Facebook, Azure Function, Azure Storage, B2B Connectors etc., And also the connector count is increasing day by day which makes Logic App more stronger.
You can also build your own custom connector and you can publish it in the Azure marketplace if it’s necessary.
Let’s create a sample logic app,
In this workflow i have two steps.
- In the first step i’m using twitter connector and I’m trying to find out the tweet with #nullablereference. And this logic app will run for every 5 minutes.
- If there are any tweets, in the second step i’m using the gmail connector to send the original tweet text to my respective mail Id.
As you see, creating an application to perform these kind of operations will be tedious but using logic app you can do it in few minutes.
Microsoft Flow
Microsoft flow is almost same as Logic App where you can build workflows which will be very helpful to automate your tasks. It also contains some good collection of connectors and also you can build your own custom connectors and you can make use of that in your respective flow.
Let’s try to recreate the same scenario as in Logic Apps.
It also has the same twitter connector and gmail connector.
- In the first step it will check for #nullablereference.
- If it find’s any, it will send us the email to the respective mail Id provided.
What’s the difference?
So both looks the same. Let us explore some of the differences between them.
Cloud Computing Model
Microsoft flow provides you Software as a Service. There aren’t too much obstacles for the user to get started off with flow. And also they don’t need any Azure Subscription to build Microsoft flow.
Logic App provides you Integration Platform as a Service. Basically you need an Azure subscription in order to build and run logic apps. It follows Consumption based billing service.
Integration with Developer Tools
Logic App can be managed using Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code. Visual Studio is one of the coolest IDE where you can build, code, debug your applications whereas Visual Studio Code is an text-editor which is an light-weight version of Visual Studio.
Microsoft flow can be managed only in the flow portal. It cannot be managed by any external tools.
Governance
Governance is one of the major advantage of Microsoft Flow. Some of the core governance capabilities include Admin Management Connectors, Data Loss Prevention(DLP) policies, office365 Security and compliance Center and Admin Analytics.
Governance is different in Logic Apps. But some of the Governance are not available in Logic Apps such as Data Loss Prevention does not exist within the logic apps. If you want governance for office365 it totally depends upon the IAM(Identity Access Management).
Monitoring
You can monitor your Logic Apps using Azure Monitor which is available in the Azure portal. It provides you the exact insights of your logic apps.
But you cannot monitor Microsoft Flow. There’s an analytics page available where you can see the overall insights of your respective flow.
Connectors
Logic App has large number of enterprise connectors like SAP, IBM MQ and B2B support for AS2 and EDIFACT.
Microsoft Flow consists of some good collection of connectors which can be used for personal stuffs.
Conclusion
These are some of the key differences between Logic Apps and Microsoft flow. Based upon you requirements and your organization growth choose the right tool to automate your things.
Most the enterprise companies, go for Logic Apps if they want to do some automation in their products rather than flow. Microsoft Flow can be used to automate things for your personal stuffs.
In our next blog, we will see about why developer should need design knowledge to develop a product.
Happy Coding!
Cheers! 🙂
DevSuhas 
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