Just watched the "how it works" video and I'm less than impressed (can anything impress me these days?).<p>"Why constantly check e-mail when you can get a text message when anyone important e-mails you..."<p>Actually, I receive a push notification whenever I receive an email. I'd hate to receive SMS messages instead of e-mails.<p>---<p>"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".<p>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..<p>---<p>"Working smarter, so you can work less and do more",<p>I think I've heard this promise a thousand times before.<p>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 ?
To me, this looks like their own implementation of the Azure Logic Apps product. (<a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-service-logic-what-are-logic-apps/" rel="nofollow">https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app...</a>).<p>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.
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?
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?
They have more integrations than are showing on the home page, but the only way to see the full list is to sign up.<p>I uploaded some screen shots showing the available services/integrations:<p><a href="http://imgur.com/a/NR7Af" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/a/NR7Af</a>
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.<p>Could have been a killer app for Gnome, but Gnome decided that redesigning the notifications area and the clock was more important.
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].<p>[1] <a href="https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/" rel="nofollow">https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/</a><p>[2] <a href="http://i.imgur.com/dKxw9Tz.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/dKxw9Tz.png</a><p>[3] <a href="http://i.imgur.com/UjJ7Bcg.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/UjJ7Bcg.png</a>
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.
Microsoft always gives the vibe of a company that is desperate to salvage some pride from its glory days. It was once a giant, but now they're on the brink of redundancy, in terms of being viewed as "innovative".<p>This opinion may be controversial to many, but it is what a lot of people are thinking. They experiment, which is phenomenal. But none of those experiments have been a major hit.<p>Apple has flagship products like the iPhone, etc. Google has search, Android, and even Youtube at the center of its existence. A fallback option, if you please.<p>Mircosoft "somewhat" has Windows, but hasn't really nailed it yet. These "experiments" will not bring back the glory days.