Microsoft Flow

[pella]

a new IFTTT competitor.

more alternatives:

* https://github.com/pjf/exobrain

* https://github.com/cantino/huginn/

* https://github.com/bipio-server/bipio

* https://github.com/ottawaruby/whenbot

[tootie]

Wasn't this called Yahoo Pipes in 2008?

[anc84]

Also https://github.com/node-red/node-red , comes ootb on Raspbian.

[apeace]

Another popular option is: https://zapier.com/

[Perixoog]

Is there anything that both has an android client and is open source?

[alexed]

The Fr8 Company is at http://www.fr8.co. They're going to make a bunch of their code available as open source shortly.

[blazespin]

Yeah, but this one will integrate pretty well with visual studio

[justsaysmthng]

Just watched the "how it works" video and I'm less than impressed (can anything impress me these days?).

"Why constantly check e-mail when you can get a text message when anyone important e-mails you..."

Actually, I receive a push notification whenever I receive an email. I'd hate to receive SMS messages instead of e-mails.

---

"Say someone tweets something about your company. Set up a flow that follows them, sends a nice reply, adds him to a spreadsheet which then gets sent to Salesforce".

Yeah, so someone tweets "YourCompany fucking sucks!" and now the flow automatically follows him, sends a ridiculous "nice reply" and adds an obviously unsatisfied customer (or whatever) to the CRM..

---

"Working smarter, so you can work less and do more",

I think I've heard this promise a thousand times before.

I don't know about the Flow service, but the ad video is quite dumb and uninspired, just like the background music.. who composes all these identical tech ad songs ?

[CamatHN]

You might be right in the certain situations but this is an open tool with a wide array of possible uses for people. Such a pessimistic approach doesn't allow for any exploration when think about its potential uses.

[chris_wot]

...who composes all these identical tech ad songs ?

Microsoft Songsmith. [1]

1. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/song...

[andrei_says_]

It's a genre in itself. Upbeat, empty, disconnected, fake. Just like the copywriting and actors in Microsoft ads.

It's called "Forced Fun."

[jdc0589]

> Yeah, so someone tweets "YourCompany fucking sucks!"

No one would ever use twitter solely for that purpose...surely...

[coldtea]

>I don't know about the Flow service, but the ad video is quite dumb and uninspired, just like the background music.. who composes all these identical tech ad songs ?

Ad composers with a production note: "Make it bland and copying for the Nth time, 2010-era Apple video music".

And stock music services, like this: https://www.musicbed.com/

[soared]

Is it so difficult for you to imagine someone who doesn't have push notifications enabled? I don't like being alerted by emails, but that means I sometimes miss time-sensitive messages from my boss. I would actually like texts when my boss emails me, because that would be the only alert I get outside of normal SMS.

[tryitnow]

Interesting. I love the idea of this product, I work in finance and accounting and I'm already thinking of ways to apply.

However, the examples used in this video are awful for the reasons you outlined. Plus, there's already good software solutions for email management and social media monitoring.

I think this ad is pretty bad, but the actual product could revolutionize workflow in many business functions.

[skocznymroczny]

Good thing they picked up a unique name that won't collide with any other similar named projects.

[AnkhMorporkian]

They obviously did some type checking on the name[1]. I'm sure they Squared up the UI elements while they were developing it[2]. The moments before launch must have been pretty tense though[3]. I just hope this service supports file uploads[4].

1. https://github.com/facebook/flow

2. https://github.com/square/flow

3. https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow

4. https://github.com/flowjs/flow.js

[NetStrikeForce]

Yeah, because (Apple) Pages or (Google) Docs or (Apple|Google|Yahoo) Mail or (Google) Cloud are unique names. You could argue all these add their brand in front of the name, like this case exactly.

:-)

[seang]

I'm glad someone else thought this. Almost seems like an elaborate ruse to hide the other flows. Or for their service to never be found again.

[georgehotelling]

Someone should send a Lync message to them about writing a Linq query to find all the links for projects with similar names.

[mistermann]

I wish when companies picked these common names that they would also define a ~unique search team for people to use, ie: "when discussing on forums please use msflow" or something like that.

[hadrien01]

Microsoft already created (and abandoned) a IFTTT competitor in 2012: http://onx.ms

[tyingq]

"on{X} lets you control and extend the capabilities of your Android phone using a JavaScript API to remotely program it."

Perhaps in the same space, but that's a very specific sub-niche. This new offering looks more like an actual competitor.

[nippur72]

yeah, I still have it installed on my phone, it was a great tool, I can't believe MS abandoned it and now it's reinventing a less cool version of it :-(

[stonedge]

To me, this looks like their own implementation of the Azure Logic Apps product. (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app...).

I don't believe this is intended to be a consumer level product at all. In that sense, it's not an IFTTT competitor. Given it's got implementation points to Sql Azure, Azure Blob storage, swagger, etc. this is likely meant as a product for devs to use to hook-up integrations.

[tyingq]

I think you're right...the available services list looks very similar to what's available in Flow: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/api...

[sheraz]

Exactly what I was going to say. I setup some logic apps but never really dug into this much beyond their demos.

Following on the heels of this will be Azure's Functions (Serverless/Lambda) architecture, which will overlap some things here (for devs).

[tedmiston]

It sounds like they're going more for Zapier than IFTTT.

[g051051]

It says it's a free service and doesn't directly mention any restrictions, but when you try to sign up it will only accept something it thinks is a work or school email address. So I guess self-employed people who use Gmail don't count?

[tyingq]

It looks like they are just trying to limit abuse during a rollout. Forcing a "work" or "school" email to try and hold back anonymous signups.

You can pre check an email with their embedded ajax call:

https://flow.microsoft.com/providers/Internal.User/users/use...

If the JSON comes back with "consumerDomain":true, then it won't allow the signup.

They don't seem to be catching all free email services. At the moment, it appears you could sign up for a free Yandex email and get signed up for Flow:

https://flow.microsoft.com/providers/Internal.User/users/som...

[huac]

assume they're doing a soft launch with o365 for business customers before full launch

[blazespin]

I really hate how MSFT doesn't always respect its own SSO. Jeebus. I can't login with my live account. It's free, but you have to use a work/school account. Really?

[tyingq]

They have more integrations than are showing on the home page, but the only way to see the full list is to sign up.

I uploaded some screen shots showing the available services/integrations:

http://imgur.com/a/NR7Af

[toyg]

Dev A: "So, what other integrations should we add?"

Dev B: "What about Skype? It's one of our products."

Dev A: "I don't care, I only use Slack. Screw our users, right?"

Dev B: "What about Skype for Business? People actually pay for that."

Dev A: "Nah, Wunderlist is much more important. Much."

[clamanna]

There are 35+ services supported today, with new ones planned each week for quite some time.

Also, it is possible to register your own REST APIs and share them with others in your organization.

Within Microsoft, we have a lot of internal custom APIs registered to light up some interesting automations / flows. Details here: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/tutorials/register-cus...

Disclaimer: am a dev on the team

[chris_wot]

There used to be a tool called conduit, part of Gnome. It was pretty amazing, in fact pretty much did DropBox before Dropbox but also synced everything and allowed for custom actions.

Could have been a killer app for Gnome, but Gnome decided that redesigning the notifications area and the clock was more important.

[dbarlett]

It's not mentioned on the landing page, but Flow integrates with PowerApps [1]. The PowerApps console shows Flows [2], and PowerApps can trigger Flows [3].

[1] https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/

[2] http://i.imgur.com/dKxw9Tz.png

[3] http://i.imgur.com/UjJ7Bcg.png

[meesterdude]

yet another stupid and uninformative $company_name + $company_product title.

Better title: "Microsoft Flow: Automation Workflow and Task automation"

[blazespin]

I don't get it, what's the problem? Just google "Microsoft Flow". Seems fine to me.

[jszymborski]

Would love to see an IFTT.com integration :P

[daw___]

Any clues on why the site asks to uniquely identify my phone?

[based2]

http://www.automator.us/leopard/index.html

[chinathrow]

A new Zapier competitor (happy paying customer here).

[piyushco]

Looks like Microsoft is making zapier / ifttt.

[jhwhite]

Why would I use Flow over IFTTT?

[Touche]

If the developers are reading this, when I watch the video in Opera and make it full screen the video doesn't stay centered and I can only see half of it. It's falling off the left side of the page.

[pella]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11594951

[sdfjkl]

Microsoft Automator?