Microsoft Flow is Now Available

Microsoft Flow—the software giant’s answer to IFTTT—is now available, following about six months in beta.

Flow is a new cloud-based service that helps you automate tasks and business processes across multiple applications and services, such as Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter, and many others, plus Microsoft solutions like Outlook, Excel, Office 365, Onedrive and more. The result is an action or set of actions called a “flow”—short for “workflow”—that takes place when something else happens.

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

When Flow first arrived in beta form in April, it was available only on the web, limiting its usefulness. But Microsoft added a limited iOS client, also in beta, back in June. And now the web and iOS versions of Flow are generally available, as is a new client app for Android. (There’s no word about a Windows client, though one has to assume that is happening too.)

During this time, the number of supported apps and services has also increased, to 58. That falls far short of the 375 services supported by IFTTT. But Flow is supported in 42 languages and six regions, Microsoft says. And its business focus means it gets an SLA, or Service-Level Agreement, of 99.9 percent (or “three nines”). Aside from this reliability guarantee, Microsoft also provides a Flow Admin Center for businesses.

Despite the business focus, Flow may find fans among individuals who would like to automate their daily workflows, much like IFTTT.

“Anyone can create flows directly on their phone,” Microsoft’s Stephen Siciliano notes. “Browse our rich template gallery, navigate through our services list, search the gallery by keyword, or select a category of solutions. Even if you are new to Flow, we’ll help get you started with our new, ready-to-use experience, which makes it possible to wire up flows with just a click or two … You can do everything from texting a colleague that you’re running late to a meeting, to triggering a new product build in Visual Studio, all with a single tap.”

Microsoft Flow is free for individuals. But Flow also offers additional functionality for those with commercial Office 365 accounts. Otherwise, businesses can sign up for an added cost plan called Microsoft Flow Plan 2.

 

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 7 comments

  • 1571

    Premium Member
    02 November, 2016 - 7:13 am

    <p>Why do they always ignore OneNote when they introduce new services/products/platforms? Would be a natural for Flow.</p>

  • 2372

    02 November, 2016 - 7:30 am

    <p>The back end for this has to be the Azure Logic App service (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/apis-list/). &nbsp;The connector list is similar, and if you use the designer for one in Azure, the template blocks look about the same. &nbsp;This looks like a great start, but they need a lot more connectors, which hopefully they are still building out.</p>

    • 5783

      02 November, 2016 - 8:29 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#24239">In reply to </a><a href="../../users/mikestu">mikestu</a><a href="#24239">:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>they’re going to support it just enough to make it interesting and get people talking. Then they’ll kill it.</p>

  • 265

    Premium Member
    02 November, 2016 - 7:50 am

    <p>I’m liking it! I wonder if they’ll add LinkedIn to the Services? &nbsp;It would also be nice if they added W10M. &nbsp;</p>

  • 427

    02 November, 2016 - 8:47 am

    <p>Looking at the short video its seems as if you can do more complex things here than you can with IFTTT.&nbsp; Seems like IFTTT at least on adroid doesn’t allow for more than one That.&nbsp; For that reason I think its pretty sweet.</p>

  • 5496

    02 November, 2016 - 7:23 pm

    <p>so Microsoft has its period? The iPad can help with that.</p>

  • 5539

    03 November, 2016 - 12:15 pm

    <p>(There&rsquo;s no word about a Windows client, though one has to assume that is happening too.)</p>
    <p>I have to believe…I just have too.</p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC