Microsoft announces new Flow updates to enhance team productivity

In addition to the new approval processes management, Microsoft today announced new updates to enhance team productivity in Flow. Back in February, Microsoft announced a new feature in Flow that allowed users to share their Flow Buttons with others to run. This allowed anyone to create a Flow button for a specific process and share it with their peers or distribute them to the wider org such that these users can run them as well. These buttons are now accessible from a variety of different products, including the Microsoft Flow mobile app on iOS or Android and the Microsoft Dynamics 365 home portal on the web.

Team flows allow multiple people to own and manage a flow together and Microsoft is announcing the general availability of this feature. Microsoft Flow button shortcuts on the home and lock screens of mobile devices make it faster than ever to trigger a flow. Flow button shortcuts are available already on Android, and coming soon to iOS. Microsoft highlighted that Microsoft Executive Briefing Center uses team flows and buttons to more effectively meet visiting customers’ needs. They use the following flow.

• Logging orders. Baristas inside the Executive Briefing Center previously used a cumbersome paper process to track how many espressos they made in a day. Now, with a simple Flow button on their mobile phone, they can tap the home screen to log each Espresso in SharePoint. Each week, Flow summarizes the total orders and sends out a report for managers.
• Synchronizing calendars. A number of Executive Briefing Center devices, such as Surface Hubs, are connected to calendars and must be reserved ahead of time, but these devices were not typically included on meeting invitations, leaving them unreserved. To solve this issue, the Executive Briefing Center team created a collectively managed team flow that automatically copies calendar events to the Surface Hubs’ calendars.
• Requesting support. The Executive Briefing Center’s phone rooms allow guests to make private Skype calls, but when occasional hardware issues arose, it was hard to get timely support. To address this problem, the Executive Briefing Center team implemented a physical support button inside each room. When pressed, a button flow immediately contacts support staff. If a staff member does not respond within a minute, the flow escalates the support incident to ensure the technical issue is quickly resolved.

Learn more about Flow Q1 Updates here.