Flow Community Corner Blog 01: Exploring the Forum

[GabrielStJohn]

What would be better to showcase in the first Community Corner Blog post than an in-depth explanation of all the different tools available for users on the Microsoft Flow Community?! I know there's potentially a corner of this community site that you still haven't quite ventured to! And if you think there's not, after reading this article you might find that there is! 

So I'll just start explaining things at the top of the Microsoft Flow Community Home Page  and then we'll work our way down that page going over everything. First of all, the "Flow" link right next to the pretty little Microsoft logo will take you to the Microsoft Flow Product Home Page. If you've used Flow at all, you're familiar with this url. I'll just go over a few of the most important parts of this page because in this article I am showcasing the Flow Community Site. Once you're logged in, you can use the "My Flows" tab of this page to manage and edit all of the Flows that you and your teams have curated and created. You can use the "Templates" and "Connectors" tabs to stay updated on all of the latest templates that have been chosen to be shared by other trusted Flow users and to see which connectors have been recently added to Flow's ever-growing list of data connectors. The "Learn" tab is where we will explore for the majority of the rest of this article. 

If you are on the Flow Community Home Page and you hover your cursor over the "Learn" tab, you'll find several very useful links when you are looking for some type of assistance or direction when using Flow. Firstly, the "Guided Learning" tab will take you to a page that houses and excellent collection of articles and videos that will walk you right through getting started with Flow, building Flows, working with approvals, and administering Flows. Secondly, the "Documentation" tab will bring up a page where you can select the section that corresponds to your Flow skill level and be shown links to places that are recommend to Flow users of your skill level to find Flow information. I recommend coming back to this page as your Flow skill level increases to make sure you're not missing out on anything! Next, we have the "Support" tab. This page is reserved for your issues that simply can't be solved within the Flow Online Community. Which isn't applicable to very many Flow issues. You'll also find links to the "Guided Learning" page, the "Flow Community Ideas" page, and a few other useful links to check out if you are tying to work through a technical issue. However it seems as though most Flow related issues find resolution within the Flow Community!

The next section is my favorite part, by far. It's the Community! It's what makes all of this information so universally available! In the Flow Community, users are able to talk amongst themselves and search for resolutions to their issues from other real-life Flow users! I can't think of a more "humanized" way to receive assistance with an issue about a product than to speak directly with another user who may have recently overcome the same exact issue. The "News and Media" section is where you can find Flow "News and Announcements", "Webinars and Video Gallery", the "Microsoft Flow Community Blog", and also the "Professional Networking & Careers" forum! 

"News and Announcements" will bring you to a forum where updates are posted in regards to the Flow Community page. If there's going to be something new implemented or any changes made, this is where you'll find it. This section even features special product and connector updates sometimes! The "Webinars and Video Gallery" page is loaded with great content that will give you a look at how Flow is used in real life instances, and even offers Flow tutorial videos along with webinars from our awesome Flow MVPs out there!

The "Microsoft Flow Community Blog" is a place where I hope everyone reading this will go and check out! The authors there are real experienced Flow Community Users who have stepped up to blog about their favorite Flow adventures! This is where you can find awesome new Flow related articles to read, every single week. The  "Professional Networking & Careers" forum is there to connect community users with fellow Flow User opportunities that might be otherwise missed. You could write a post asking to hire someone to build flows for you if you don't have the skill level yet, or you could write a post showing off your beautiful Flow creating capabilities to any potential clientele! 

"Flow Feedback" is where you'll find the "Flow Ideas" forum. Here is where you could write a post about a Flow idea that you want other users to see and vote on. If your idea is popular among community users it might make it's way all the way to our Developer Team, who are in charge of the "Flow Ideas" Page.

The "Microsoft Flow Community Boards" are where you'll post to receive replies of assistance from the vast reaches of the Flow Community. "General Flow Discussion" is where users post about broad spectrum issues in regards to the general functionality of their Flows or the Flow Community. "Connecting to Data" is where you can post about anything in relation to the over 200 currently available Flow Data Connectors and their functionality. In this forum, users can get all of their Flow Connector questions answered. The "Building Flows" forum is where help is offered in relation to the actual construction of Flows. Posts in this forum are commonly accompanied with plenty of screen shots to display how your Flow was constructed in order to help other users understand how the Flow is built so that they can help dissect the issue from the ground up. In the "Using Flows" forum, you can post about the way that your flows are running. If you've invested your time into creating a long beautiful Flow and it fails to run, you know how frustrating this can be. This is where you would explain the issue to find out where your Flow could be misfiring. The "Flow Mobile App" forum is where posts are made to ask for help with using the beautiful Microsoft Flow Mobile App which lets you operate your manually triggered Flows literally at the push of a button. Simply put, if you're running into issues using your Flow Mobile App, explain them in a post here and you will receive assistance! The "I Found a Bug" forum is for when you're sure that your Flow is constructed correctly and should be operational but there's obviously a bug somewhere because a certain something just isn't functioning how it should. The "Translation Quality Feedback" forum is where users who are experiencing difficulties with a translated version of Flow can post and let Microsoft know that they think there is something wrong with the translation. 

Below that section is the "Flow Knowledge Base" and  "Other Community Stuff". Flow Knowledge Base is where Microsoft Employees will offer knowledge about specific Flow topics. Other Community Stuff is where you'll find the "Help With the Forum" section, which is pretty self explanatory! The "Flow Cookbook" is where you'll find users posting their favorite Flow recipes. Users post things like links to YouTube tutorial videos showing how to create Flows, step by step screen shots of how to construct flows, and also links to Flow templates as well. "Off Topic" is where you can talk about anything that doesn't have to do with Flow. Yes, we even created a section for that! We want to help our users stay in touch with one another, even if they aren't directly discussing Flow. The "Flow User Group" forum is where users can come together to form group and reach out directly to the Microsoft Flow product team or other community user groups with questions or propositions relating to Flow content. Below these sections are "Top Kudoed Posts", "Latest Topics", and "Latest Posts" to help keep you updated with what users are talking about across the entire community!

So there you have it. Now that I've wrapped up some details about all of the important features of the Community Page into one article for you guys, I can promise that our future Community Corner Blogs will be saturated with more interesting details and updates about Flow and all of these different sections of the Flow Community. So stay tuned to the Flow Community Blog page for more Community Corner and other awesome new Flow Community Blog articles written by user authors every week!

Thank you for being a member of the Microsoft Flow Community!

-Gabriel

Microsoft Flow Community Manager