My European collaboration summit 2021 slides. Design mission-critical enterprise applications with Power Automate and Doctor Flow - 2021

1. DESIGN MISSION CRITICAL ENTERPRISE
APPLICATIONS WITH POWER AUTOMATE AND
DOCTOR FLOW

2. ♡ ♡

3. Doctor Flow aka “Serge Luca”
Business Application MVP, Brussels
MVP 15th year
Business Apps, Office 365 Solution architect
Creator of the open-source Power Platform BPM Toolkit
Author of “Power Automate in a day”
Blog: sergeluca.wordpress.com
sergeluca@shareql.com
Twitter: @sergeluca

4. Introduction
Architecture
Limitations
Good practices
Patterns
Conclusions

5. Introduction

6. We focus on enterprise applications
Concepts fully tested since 2016
Some concepts can inspire citizen developers

7. Keep it simple,
yes but…

8. Presentation Layer
Business Layer
Data Access Layer

9. Presentation Layer
Business Layer
Data Access Layer
Power Apps, Teams, SharePoint Forms, MS Forms, bots…
Child Flows
Child Flows
SharePoint Dataverse Oracle …

10. Presentation Layer
Business Layer
Data Access Layer
Power Apps, Teams, SharePoint Forms, MS Forms, bots…
Flows
Child Flows
SharePoint Dataverse Oracle
Analytics Layer
Power BI
Logging Layer
Azure Application Insight Or
Dataverse
…
Security Layer
Role Based Access Control (RBAC)
Classify/Protect (Microsoft Info
Protection) Information) Protection)
Archiving Layer
Scheduled + child flows

11. Code reusability
Easier to unit test
Easier to work in teams
Easier to debug
Easier to maintain

12. Know the limitations

13. No State Machine
Flow Approval
duration : 30 days
Flow duration : 30
days
ALM/devops weak
Cannot resume
flow
API Calls limitation
use the BPM Toolkit
Use the CDS trigger : “when a record is updated”
(Premium) or Use the Controller Pattern or use the BPM
Toolkit
use the BPM Toolkit
DevOps Tools not mature enough
500 calls/5 minutes/user + limitation/24h
depending on the license (2.000 calls/user for
O365 license).
Buy Capacity add-ons
No custom task
Forms BPM Toolkit or Adaptive Cards
No tasks
delegation BPM Toolkit
use the BPM Toolkit

14. End users cannot stop a
workflow
End users cannot see the
workflow
Approvals linked to
environments
End users cannot
create/modify workflow
End users cannot modify a
running workflow
use the BPM Toolkit
use the BPM Toolkit
use the BPM Toolkit
use the BPM Toolkit
use the BPM Toolkit

15. https://github.com/sergeluca/Power-Platform-BPM-Toolkit

16. Power Automate
SharePoint Online OR Dataverse
Core
WF Runtime
Workflow Generator
Security Module
Proxy Flows
Tasks Delegation Analytics
Process Management
Notification
Task Manager
Tracing
Case Launcher
Workflow Optimizer Archiving
SharePoint Access Layer Dataverse Access Layer
Task Forms Processes dashboard
Cust. Request forms Cust. Task Forms
UI

17. Good practices

18. It is the maker account
Ideally an Office 365
account with a mailbox
for sending mails
• Good luck with IT 
Should be a premium
account
• More api calls
• In some case the
premium features
can be leveraged
without multiplexing
issue
Should be MFA
• Password updates
won’t interrupt the
running
flows/connexions
• Because Power
Automate is a
“confidential” client

22. Use child flows !
Don’t block the Http connector in your DLP
policy, it is needed for child flows
An alternative is to create/ share custom
connectors (Premium)

23. Interesting for external users or if your “testers” are on a
different tenant
Everything should work except :
It works if your flow runs with the owner account

24. Aka “the Monster”
Frequently asked questions about Power Automate licensing - Power
Platform | Microsoft Docs

25. Patterns

26. Pattern 1 : elevation of
privilege

27. Alex
Flow1
(Flow Maker
Account)
Alex access
SharePoint
PowerApps

28. 1 per flow license for
the whole company
Flow 1
(Flow Maker
Account)
Flow 2 (Flow Maker
Account)
PowerApps
Premium
Alex

29. Flow 1 = “Proxy Flows”

30. Pass current
user claims to
child flow
Danger : no
traceability
Advice

31. Alex
Flow 1 (run with
Alex account)
Flow 2 (runs with
Maker account)
Question :
who pays Flow 2 api calls ?
Answer :
Today : the Maker account
Next year : Alex account

32. Pattern 2 :
Secure record pattern

33. Create blank
record
Secure the
record
Fill in the
record

34. Pattern 3 :
generic way to submit
information

39. Pattern 4 :
Error handler: Try Catch
Finally

41. Pattern 5 :
Centralized error handling

44. Pattern 6 :
Don’t lock the App UI
during long processes

46. Pattern 7 :
Think “business process”,
not “flow”

47. Leave Request (medical reason)
from an employee in Paris
Validation by Doctor
Validation by 1st Line HR Paris
Validation by Supervisor HR Paris
Validation by Supervisor HR Brussels
Validation by Director Brussels
Validation by Line Manager
Legal dept checks if it is a right
Case ID

49. Pattern 8 :
The Case Management
Pattern

50. Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Cases
Cases lifecycle
Requests
BPM Toolkit

51. Demo : BPM Toolkit

52. Conclusions

53. Keep it simple but apply the good practices
Creating/using child flows is key
You can really create mission critical application with
Power Automate
In most cases, using Dataverse (or Dataverse for Teams)
with Power Automate is a great robust option
Think in term of business processes