If you’ve been building Logic Apps for a while, you’ve probably felt the designer evolve in waves. And recently, the Logic Apps team announced a major redesign of the Azure Logic Apps designer, now in Public Preview for Standard workflows. I call it Logic Apps Designer “v4”!
The 4 designer “eras” (how most of us remember them)
The main reason I personally call this redesign Logic Apps Designer “v4” is because this will be the 4th major redesign of the Logic App designer (at least if I’m aware of)
- The original Logic App design — v1 — its main characteristic was its left-to-right process layout. Left to right
- The original “horizontal flow” experience that most of us already forgotten, and maybe a lot of you were not aware of its existence
- The second version — v2 — “The godfather” of the current designer brought to use the top-down design experience similar to BizTalk Server orchestrations with big shapes (actions)
- Vertical canvas – a more “diagram-like” feel, large cards/steps where configurations of the actions were made inside that shape.
- The currenct version — v3 — Top to bottom, smaller shapes + right configuration panel
- Same general layout, but denser steps and most configuration moved into a right-side panel (instead of expanding everything inside the step).
- The new kid on the block — v4 — The new redesigned preview designer
- A cleaner layout. Basically, a different organization of the functionalities, we don’t have the left-side three anymore with Designer, code, and run history options; But there is more!
What’s new in this redesigned preview designer (the “v4” moment)
- Draft mode with auto-save: changes are saved as a draft, not straight to production.
- Now your workflow auto-saves every 10 seconds in draft mode. If you refresh the window, you’re right back where you were—but your changes aren’t live in production.
- Another benefit: draft saves won’t restart your app. Your app keeps running. Restarts only happen when you publish.
- A clear Publish step to promote draft → production.
- Run history on the same page as the designer, including the ability to view draft and published runs side-by-side for faster validation.
- Capability to document your Workflows with notes – different types of notes! Not the notes/descriptions in the shapes!
- You can now add sticky notes anywhere in your workflow. Drop a post-it note, add markdown (yes, even YouTube videos), and document your logic right on the canvas.
And many more!
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