What are Azure Logic Apps: Components, Advantages and How it Works

Every enterprise relies on workflows and processes to run successfully. Thus, businesses need a mechanism to automate multiple business processes and integrate multiple applications. However, as cloud adoption increases, there is a growing need to integrate cloud-based applications, data, and workflows.

Azure Logic App helps to integrate and automate business processes by orchestrating SaaS components so you can create workflows.

In this definitive guide, you will get all the information on Azure Logic Apps. In a nutshell, it covers Logic App concepts, uses, advantages, pricing, how it works, and more.

The topics covered in this blog are:

• What are Azure Logic Apps?
• Why use Azure Logic Apps
• Microsoft Azure Logic Apps Components
• How Logic Apps Work
• Azure Logic Apps Advantages
• Azure Logic Apps Pricing
• Conclusion
• FAQs

What are Azure Logic Apps?

Azure Logic Apps is a cloud platform for creating, developing, and deploying cloud-based integrations and automated workflows.

Also, Azure Logic Apps helps you integrate data, applications, systems, and services by automating tasks, business processes, and workflows.

Additionally, you can create simplified dynamic applications that connect with legacy, web, and cloud applications.

Why use Azure Logic Apps

Azure Logic Apps are useful for nine reasons:

1. Visually Create Business Processes and Workflows

With Azure Logic Apps, you can arrange different business-oriented processes and systems. A logic app executes these processes in a logical order, starting with a trigger for a business workflow. For example, uploading a document.

Also, upon installation of the connectors, orchestration, and integration with multiple systems are possible. Such as sending a notification email. Moreover, through visuals, code is reduced and logic can be reused.

Creating composite workflows is possible without waiting for application vendors. Thus, this reduces the time to market.

2. Integrate Web, Mobile, and API Apps

With Azure Logic Apps, you can manage websites, mobile apps, and APIs in one place. Also, with REST and JSON, developers can easily integrate any system via HTTP.

Additionally, by utilizing metadata-driven APIs, custom UIs for API connectors are no longer required. Hence, this speeds workload design.

3. Integrate SaaS and Enterprise Applications

Azure Logic Apps provide more than 100 connectors, including Salesforce, Office 365, Twitter, Dropbox, and Google services, which make it easy to integrate SaaS applications. Also, these connectors provide real-time updates to heterogeneous systems, which complement existing applications.

Without API connectors, integration is possible if the application exposes an HTTP API (REST, SOAP).

4. Automate Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)/B2B Workflows and Business Processes

Organizations can exchange messages electronically. In Azure Logic Apps, business-to-business data can be decoded from enterprise applications, processed via workflows, and encoded into the target’s format.

For business-to-business (B2B) workflows, XML processing and validation, and transmission are essential. Moreover, B2B transfers can use EDIFACT, X12, and AS2.

With Azure’s Enterprise Integration Pack, all workflows can be converted to a standard protocol that can be easily interpreted and processed.

5. Connect to On-Premise Data

With Azure Logic Apps, you can retrieve data from multiple sources via a secure connection to cloud-based services via Azure Service Bus. Also, it supports connections to a variety of systems. These include SharePoint, MySQL, Biztalk, SAP, Teradata, and Informix.

6. No Upfront Setup Cost

With Logic Apps, there is no upfront setup or infrastructure cost. The organization pays only when the app runs.

7. Increase Performance

You can scale according to your user load and perform with agility. Additionally, code creation is easy with the help of various built-in modules, which ensure faster delivery of projects.

8. Gain Insight through Monitoring

By using Azure Logic Apps, organizations can gain insight into the status of their applications. With Azure OMS (Operations Management Suite), Logic Apps offers strong diagnostics and auditing. Also, you can monitor and track the creation of custom queries. Moreover, they generate custom Power BI reports.

9. Ability to Experiment

Logic Apps let organizations experiment with different workflows in a controlled environment. In order to do this, they divide their systems into modular, decoupled services that are bound together by APIs.

It is possible to delete the workflow if something does not work. As a result, it is much more flexible and easy to adapt the process according to business needs.

With new connectors and templates, Azure Logic Apps can help developers build cloud-based solutions.

Also Check: Top 60+ Azure Interview Questions

Microsoft Azure Logic Apps Components

Workflow – A workflow is a graphical user interface used to define the steps of your business process.

Managed Connectors – These connectors enable you to connect to a wide range of data sources and services. With Azure Logic Apps, you can connect to social media, file sharing, and many other areas with its in-built connectors.

Triggers – A trigger initiates a workflow and creates a new instance. It may be the arrival of a file on the FTP site or receiving an email that triggers an event. As mentioned below, there are different types of triggers:

1. Poll Triggers: Using these triggers, you can check for new data at a specified frequency. Your logic app runs in a new instance when new data is available.
2. Push Triggers: The triggers detect data on the endpoint, or events, and then launch a logic app instance.
3. Recurrence Trigger: This trigger creates a logic app on a schedule.

Actions – An action is a step in the workflow. It can invoke an API operation.

Enterprise Integration Pack (EIP) Connectors – EIP connectors provide BizTalk-like functionality. They are used for XML messaging and validation in enterprise integration scenarios. A number of industry-standard protocols are supported, including AS2, X12, and EDIFACT. To store schemas, partners, certificates, maps, and agreements, requires “Integration Accounts”.

Also Check: Our blog post on Azure Firewall vs Azure NSG

How Logic Apps Work

Logic apps start with a single trigger for each workflow. Whenever a certain event happens or when certain criteria are met, a trigger will send an alert.

Triggers often have scheduling capabilities that control how often your workflow runs. When a trigger is set, one or more actions run to process, handle, or convert data, advance the workflow, or perform other tasks.

To determine the next action, the workflow uses conditions and switches. Consider an order system with a workflow that processes incoming orders. You want to manually review orders over a certain cost. In your workflow, previous steps determine how much an incoming order will cost. Based on that cost value, you create an initial condition.

For example:

• When the order is below a certain amount, the condition is false. As a result, the workflow processes the order.
• When the condition is true, an email is sent to a user for manual review. A switch determines what will happen next.
  • Order processing continues if the reviewer approves.
  • When a reviewer escalates, the workflow sends an escalation email to get more information.
    • Escalation requirements are met, the response condition is true, and thus the order is processed.
    • If the response condition is false, a problem email is sent

You can visualize Azure Logic Apps workflows in the Azure portal, Visual Studio Code, or Visual Studio. Additionally, each workflow has an underlying definition described in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). You can edit workflows by changing this JSON definition if you prefer.

For some creation and management tasks, Azure Logic Apps provides Azure PowerShell and Azure CLI commands. In Azure Logic Apps, templates for Azure Resource Manager are available for automated deployment.

Read More: About What is Microsoft Cloud Background Check?

Azure Logic Apps Advantages

1. Inbuilt Connectors

There are plenty of inbuilt connectors, triggers, and actions that cover the most common business scenarios. Twitter sentiment analysis is an example.

2. Minimal Development Efforts

You can define and configure complex business processes with the graphical designer available in a browser or Visual Studio. In the background, the Logic App generates the code automatically.

3. Extensibility

If in case the list of connectors does not meet your needs, you can use Azure functions and APIs to build your own custom APIs.

4. Integration

You can integrate disparate systems. In the cloud, you can integrate legacy systems with new ones. You can also integrate different Logic Apps.

5. Templates

In common business cases, like HTTP Request-Response, there are many predefined templates that greatly simplify the development team’s work. With Logic Apps, you can create templates quickly.

6. DevOps Support

The platform supports continuous integration and continuous deployment.

7. Advanced Integration

It supports XML messaging, trading partner management, and more mature integration scenarios. With BizTalk, a popular integration solution for industries, you can get the most out of your integrations.

8. Inbuilt Diagnosis

In order to diagnose Logic App issues, there are many diagnostic tools available on the Azure portal. If the trigger didn’t instantiate a Logic App, you can examine the trigger history.

Azure Logic Apps Pricing

Logic apps differ by their capabilities and the environment in which they run (multi-tenant, single-tenant, integration service environment). As an example, multi-tenant logic apps use consumption pricing, while logic apps in an integration service environment use fixed pricing.

Check Out: Azure Logic Apps Pricing Page

Conclusion

In Azure Logic Apps, you can plan, automate, and arrange assignments, business processes, and work processes across companies or associations when you need to coordinate applications, data, frameworks, and services.

With Logic Apps, you can plan and build flexible solutions for application integration, data integration, framework association, enterprise application integration (EAI), and business-to-business (B2B) communication, whether in the cloud, on-premises, or both. From the scenarios we just saw, I believe it is useful in a wide variety of situations.

FAQs

Related/References

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• What is Azure Logic Apps? – MS Doc