Microsoft develops IFTTT rival called Flow for connecting apps and services - andrewsfiltaked

Apps like IFTTT (If This So That) connect services in logical slipway: texting your spouse, e.g., when you leave work. Microsoft has created a business-oriented preview service called Flow that Acts of the Apostles in much the comparable way, merely with its own software program and partner apps.

Flow isn't an app, just a way to connect apps and ask them to do specific tasks. To help users get started, Microsoft has created a series of "templates" of common use cases: for example, having Twitter tweets rescued in a CSV single file in OneDrive, or having a schoolbook conveyed to yourself when you undergo an email from your direct superior.

"I get hundreds of emails every day, and my notification options are all-Beaver State-nothing," James Phillips, a Microsoft elderly vice president, wrote in a blog post. "IT's hard to living up with completely that traffic when I'm travelling. I'd like to get an SMS when specific people, like a key customer scene, reach out directly to Pine Tree State."

Confinguring a Flow template really just means tweaking a number of options, rather than really typewriting in an primitive string of commands.

Wherefore this matters: Microsoft has oriented its services approximately productivity, and combined of the key obstacles to acquiring things done is constantly being interrupted with diligent work and irrelevant details. Automating tasks isn't that new; users have created custom scripts and macros to simplify workloads for years. However, that sort of automation has mostly been confined to a fastidious app OR service. Flow allows you to essentially program assorted apps to work together, one of the key tenets of Microsoft's latest Office apps. (Microsoft also announced a more sophisticated variant of Feed, known as PowerApps, that allows businesses to create their ain custom business apps.)

How to aim started with Microsoft Flow from

For like a sho, Microsoft only allows you to work with a selected lean of apps, as well as specific functions within those apps—IT's a trailer, after all. The list includes Box, Dropbox, Kinetics CRM, Facebook, Github, MailChimp, OneDrive, Salesforce, SharePoint, Twitter, Wunderlist, and Whine, as well atomic number 3 general HTTP (Entanglement) connections and Swagger APIs.

If you'd like to start using Flow, your best bet is to begin redaction the templates that Microsoft has already created. I selected a recurring admonisher that I asked Microsoft's Office 365 to send me connected a day by day basis. Using Sharpness, I just had to sign into my existing services to connect them to Flow. And configuring the template proceeds by nature: I chose how frequently I wanted the emails to be sent, then specified what name I yearned-for to cost old. IT's silent a trifle clunky, however: The field where I could configure what time a reminder could be launched didn't seem to bear conventionally formatted times like "9:00 am."

Obviously, adding additional apps and functions testament be the key to Flow's long-term success. An video demo, e.g., shows how Flow could hunting Twitter tweets for a particular mention, follow them, and send back a nice reply. For now, it appears that the only way to interact with Twitter is to search out a new tweet.

Still, Flow appears to be some other tool in your pack to chip away the mountain of busy mold we all face—and that's a good thing.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/414679/microsoft-develops-ifttt-rival-called-flow-for-connecting-apps-and-services.html

Posted by: andrewsfiltaked.blogspot.com

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