Community Corner 11: News/Flow Preview Program/SharePoint Fest Seattle

[GabrielStJohn]

Flow in the News

I went online to round up some news articles about Flow that I found interesting. I was able to find some articles that speak to a few of the different types of Microsoft Flow users. I hope you find interest in at least one of the articles that I've gathered. If there's a tech news source that publishes Flow articles and/or stories that you know of, please let me know and I will incorporate sharing those articles in this weekly blog!

This is an article about a new Flow connector and how it is important to the people in the field who are collecting data with the software that has now been made available to use within Flow:

https://www.citizentribune.com/news/business/new-esri-connection-to-microsoft-flow-offers-instant-ma...

This is an article about how Microsoft was named a Leader in the Magic Quadrant once again, by Gartner:

https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-named-again-as-a-leader-in-magic-quadrant-for-content-collaboratio...

This article explains how the SharePoint Server 2019 Preview is now available:

https://redmondmag.com/articles/2018/07/25/sharepoint-server-2019-preview.aspx

This is an article that rounds up some important ways to use Flow, Dynamics, Excel and LUIS:

https://msdynamicsworld.com/story/flows-field-email-microsoft-dynamics-365-reports-excel-integration...

Flow Preview Program

Microsoft Flow Principal Group PM Manager, Stephen Siciliano, has written a beautiful article for the Flow Product Blog page that goes over the details of the newly released Flow Preview Program. Here is the opening snippet of the article to get you interested enough to click over there and read the rest of his article... Enjoy!

Microsoft Flow updates every few days or weeks. The Flow Preview program is a way to get early access to those upcoming functionalities and updates, prior to, them being available in rest of the world (where your flows are normally deployed).

With this, you can:

• Try out, learn, and dogfood upcoming functionality. Much of our functionality will be rolled out first in preview, for a minimum of a few days, to get feedback. By participating in the Preview program, you can learn about new capabilities sooner, and as well provide feedback on it. Also, you will be ready to quickly take advantage of new functionalities as soon as they reach regions where the remainder of their flows are created.
• Enable business continuity by ensuring their current flows will continue to work with the upcoming updates (vNext) of Microsoft Flow.

To access the preview functionalities across Microsoft Flow and PowerApps, you need to be in the context of a preview environment (More details on the preview environment are given in the next section). In a preview environment you can:

1. Create and edit flows
2. Run your flows from the portal or from the Flow app for iOS or Android
3. Administrating Flow: Admin experiences are available for preview using the preview version of Flow admin center

Click Here to read the rest of Stephens article on the new Flow Preview Program!

SharePoint Fest Seattle 2018

So there is an awesome SharePoint connecting event that takes place in a few select locations around the world, and one of those lucky locations happens to be Seattle. There are not many places in this world like Seattle. It is such a unique place that really just has it all when you step back and look at the things that people desire to have within the area that they dwell. There is a beautiful mountain range in our backyard, the vast and wondrous Pacific Ocean is just to our left, and close by both of those great things, there's a giant city where you can find pretty much anything under the sun that you'll need to survive. Anyways, enough about this perfect place that we call Washington State...

Are you or your organization utilizing SharePoint for any of your processes or solutions? Do you see a benefit in connecting with people from other organizations that are utilizing SharePoint in the same ways that you are?! Have you ever heard of SharePoint Fest?! 

SharePoint Fest is an event where you'll have an opportunity to meet and connect with some of the world's leading SharePoint experts. You'll be able to choose from a large selection of focused sessions. There will also be a number of in-depth workshops that can help you get hands-on with SharePoint in the presence of experts.

Ultimately, your organization will really benefit from the amount of access that you will have to the experts and the sessions delivered by these experts on the specific topics that you've been struggling with or are frequently dealing with and are looking to improve.

If your organization uses SharePoint on a regular basis, there is a guarantee that you will walk away from this event with a greater knowledge of SharePoint and the ways that you use it.

Thanks for reading! 

-Gabriel 

Microsoft Flow Community Manager