Logic Apps: Tips and Tricks about the “new” Logic Apps Designer

If you have been following Logic Apps since its beginning, you must love the new Logic Apps Designer! That is a little closer to his on-premise brother (BizTalk Orchestration Designer). I am saying this because, finally, the new designer uses a top-down approach instead of the left-right approach used in the previous version of Logic Apps.

Besides this big improvement in the Visual Flow (top-down approach instead of a left-right approach), the designer is being constantly improved with several new capabilities, such as:

• Managed Connectors and search capabilities within the designer.
  • Adding API Apps to a logic app is now more intuitive.
• We now also have the ability to collapse and expand the tiles/shapes.
• We have a first-class experience with the HTTP + Swagger connector within the designer.
• If-else conditions within the designer itself. No need to open up the code view to look into the conditions box.
• Call nested Logic Apps within the designer.
• And much more, the list goes on and on!

In this post, we will provide some tips and tricks for working within the new Logic Apps Designer, including actions we can perform on it and its behavior.

Adding actions (tiles or shapes) …

Adding actions in the middle of the existing flow is not allowed, at least for now. We are only able to add actions at the bottom of our Logic App flow or at the bottom of each condition branch.

To add an action or condition to the Logic App flow, click the plus sign, then choose Add a condition or Add an action.

To add an action inside condition branches, we need to click on the Add an action button that is present on the top right corner of the condition branch.

• We can add several actions inside a branch.
• Nested conditions, at least for now, are not allowed.
• And we can only add actions on the If no, do nothing branch if we have at least one action in the If yes branch.

Deleting actions (tiles or shapes) …

If we consider the flow in the picture above, you will notice that 4 actions will have the “…” (three dots) option in the tile. This means that we can take an action on them, in this case, the Delete option:

However, in this sample, the other two tiles/shapes available, Search tweet and Condition, do not have this option, and we cannot easily delete this action or step.

The reason is that:

• Their outputs are being used by other actions:
  • In this case, the Search tweet output is being used as input on the Condition, Create File, and Send approval email.
• or they contain child action:
  • The Condition tile has one “child” action in each branch.

If we remove the Search tweet output being used as input on the Condition, Create File, and Send approval email, or remove these actions, we will now be able to delete the Search tweet action.

Moving actions (tiles or shapes) …

Noticed that you made a mistake and forgot to add an action between the previous ones! Well, adding actions in the middle of the existing flow is not allowed, at least for now. However, we have the possibility to add an action in the end and drag and drop to another position inside your flow (arranging/modifying shape dispositions) … within certain conditions…

Again, if we take into consideration the Logic App that we are working on above. We have several shapes, Condition, Create file, and Send approval email that are consuming the output of a previous action, the Search tweet.

If we try to move the Condition shape on top of the Search tweet shape:

We can’t move because it depends on the Search tweet action. However, if we try to do the same for the Dynamic CRM Online – Create a new record, that is still to be configured, i.e., it doesn’t have any dependency on previous ones.

We will then be able to drag and drop to any place in our flow:

The only exception is that you cannot put on top of the trigger, in this case, the Recurrence shape.

In summary, you can move shapes only to:

• Underneath the Logic Apps trigger.;
• Underneath their dependencies.

Moving actions inside conditions

Yes, we can move actions into the conditions branches, between them, or remove them from within the conditions branches… again, within certain conditions regarding mainly the If yes branch:

• If we have only one action inside the “If yes” branch
  • We cannot remove this action to outside the If yes branch if the If no branch contains any action.
  • We need to delete or remove the shapes inside the If no branch, to be able to move/remove the action inside the If yes.

The reason that this happens is that the design doesn’t allow you to add an action in the If no branch until you have an action inside the If yes branch.

• If we have several actions inside the “If yes” branch
  • We cannot remove the first action to outside the If yes branch if the If no branch contains any action.
  • We need to delete or remove the shapes inside the If no branch to be able to remove the action inside the If yes.
  • Or we need to move the first action to another position inside the If yes branch and then move it to another position inside your flow (outside the If yes);

The reason that this happens is that the first action inside the “If yes” is the “trigger” that allows you to add actions in the “If no” branch… so it will be deeply tied to the “If yes” branch, and the design will not allow it to be moved

• If we don’t have any action inside the “If yes” branch.
  • We cannot move or add an action to the “If no, do nothing” branch.
  • We need to first add an action in the “If yes” branch.

The reason that this happens is that we need to have at least one action inside the If yes branch to be able to add or move actions to the If no, do nothing branch – this is a default behavior of the design. The first action inside the If yes is the trigger that allows you to add or move actions in the If no, do nothing branch.

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