Please allow Code view of a Flow like Logic Apps

[TechShed]

Please allow Code view of a Flow like Logic Apps so I can add advanced functions and manipulate actions easily and quickly.

Code view offers so many possibilites to quickly build combinations of functions and add additional properties to actions that are not exposed in the Visual Designer.

Also being able to see the format of inserted dynamic content helps debug and get to more properties easily.

I find myself using Logic Apps to build and debug workflows before transitioning to Flow because I can see how to access dynamic content especially in more complex JSON structures, collections, arrays and loops etc.

[dgusoff]

Agreed, the ability to directly edit the JSON would be fantastic. The visual designer becomes really unwieldy when you start to get lots of conditions nested and stacked. I'd love to just code everything in Logic Apps but my users still need to be able to access Flows through the portal.

[hjaf]

Totally agree! 

Whats the reason for not adding a code editor interface like they have in azure logic-apps? Is it to not scare people without programming experience from developing flows? Then it sure scares away those who have some experience. Why not add it like an advanced menu option? Can't be hard to add this feature as the GUI-editor is nearly identical to the one in azure logic-apps.

I often feel like coding blindfolded because of all the dynamic content having ambiguous names in the UI. Being forced to do workaround hacks like selecting the function tab, input some character and then go back to the dynamic-content tab to see what each dynamic content actually represent feels unnecessary 😕 

Flow seems to be a "language" that makes more sense for people without any programming experience. Then again, that is perhaps what Flow is all about. One could perhaps just stick to azure-logic apps for "advanced" development, but in my case the company I work for has not made azure available for people in my position.

[Anonymous]

Some sort of in-between would be very helpful. If was able to just type what I'd like flow to accomplish, IE code, that would be much faster for me personally to implement these flows. I feel limited in productivity because every time I interact with the flow on the web page I have to wait for it to buffer.

That said, as a product I love flow because it gives me easy access to tie together so many services and data flows, and its a great value add to what I'm trying to accomplish. 

[Berny]

I really wish this was an option. I am currently trying to use a fucntion to check if the returned values from a SQL query are empty but I don't know what the name of the SQL Query is. It would be really nice to see the code view of the flow so I could work on functions and actually replicate commands as well.

For example if I am updating a value (workflow state) on a sharepoint list with a LOT of values it would be really nice to just see the code value for it so I can set the workflow state at multiple points without having to edit the whole "SharePoint - update item" action multiple times.

[dhock]

There is another reason that this feature is especially important to have. I've found that for more than one action (create/update list item, for example), if a field in the list gets deleted, even if it isn't explicitly used in the action, the action will fail and the reason given indicates that it's because the action is not finding that field. Since you can't get to the JSON behind it, you cannot remove the reference to the field. The only solution I've found (short of potentially exporting the Flow and modifying the code, then re-import it, etc. -- haven't tried that but from what I've read, that might work) is to re-create the action, which can be time-consuming if you're setting several fields, not to mention that any dependent actions also have to be re-created because you cannot delete an action with "dependent" actions (actions that come after) and you also cannot move these dependent actions. As the developer, I'm responsible for the Flow working but site owners or people with Edit rights (the default permission for the Members group) can delete site columns, and frankly you should be able to if they are not explicitly being used in the workflow. You certainly could when using a SharePoint Designer workflow. I'm finding more and more that Flow is not really ready to replace it when it comes to SharePoint, yet I'm being pushed in that direction. Sigh...

[Anonymous]

Like dhock, I find Flow very restrictive without a code view. Once you make some changes you end up with errors you can't debug and have to remove and re-configure blocks of your flow. 

[Anonymous]

I'd also be really interested in a more advanced view. Handling longer Approval Chains with similar conditions would be a lot easier to handle in a "classic" code view. 

[Stephen]

Thank you for the suggestion, we will look at this for the future.

[ganesh_majeti]

@Stephen I see this implemented now.. why was this idea still open and under review, leading to confusion?

[Berny]

@ganesh_majeti  I think the implementation is only somewhat present. It allows us to look at the code for a particular item but it does not allow us to edit the code nor see the code for the whole workflow. So No I do not think this idea should be closed.