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Enhanced Logic Apps Designer: A New Foundation Update
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Developer Tools
Oct 19, 2022 8:34 PM

Enhanced Logic Apps Designer: A New Foundation Update

by HubSite 365 about Michel Mendes [MVP]

Microsoft MVP | Senior Consultant at Avanade | Microsoft 365 | Power Platform | SharePoint

Citizen DeveloperDeveloper ToolsM365 Release

Experience the new Logic Apps Designer: enhanced performance, easy workflow navigation, seamless search features and more from your trusted Microsoft expert.

A Fresh Approach to Logic Apps Designer

The Logic Apps Designer, initially introduced about seven years back, has experienced significant development. Its recent facelift, aligned with Logic Apps Standard, however, brought to light the need for a more scalable model. As such, a restructured design has been in the works to overcome key performance and usability constraints linked to its current version.

The reimagined Logic App Standard designer, largely built on the React framework, offers a significant jump in performance while maintaining ease of use and enhanced visual interpretation.

One critical issue identified in the original interface was the difficulty in controlling how components are re-rendered – a result of having a core context object that carries the app’s entire state. This challenge has increased as more elements are added to the designer, leading to cascading re-renders that can compromise UI responsiveness.

With the reconstruction, the workflow state has been moved to a Redux store. This revision not only eliminates the cascading re-renders issue but also enables each component to subscribe to specific state changes, ensuring better control over the developer toolkit.

Despite such fundamental changes under the hood, the user interface of the Designer Tools maintains its familiar look and feel. Two primary areas of enhancement are the canvas and operation search.

The canvas area now offers improved workflow navigation, with mouse panning, zooming, and a mini-map indicator. These improvements aim to simplify development and navigation of large workflows without performance issues.

The operation search has undergone a complete overhaul for a more simplified and quicker search experience. The enhancements, still in their early stages, are designed to offer developers an even more streamlined experience.

In light of these developments, the Logic App Standard designer is set to function more effectively. If you're as excited about the new design as the creators, you'll be able to try it from October 31st by clicking a button in the designer command bar labeled "Try Preview Designer".

Even though this Designer Tool update has only recently gone live, the developers are focused on improving performance and capabilities. Towards this, they have open-sourced the codebase on GitHub, and are hoping for open conversations via the platform to rectify issues expediently.

To revert to the previous version you would need to leave the blade and return, but the preview designer will be your default experience once switched. They also underline that this new improvement still is in public preview and it's only for evaluation.

Furthermore, the evolution of the Designer Tools isn't stopping here. The team plans on integrating the new features into consumption Logic Apps and the Logic Apps Visual Studio Code extension, eyeing an all-encompassing and cohesive experience across all Logic app SKUs and Visual Studio Code.

For further information about Developer Tools in general, you can visit this link.

Extras on Designer tool improvement

Changes in developer utilities like Logic Apps Designer are impactful and essential; after all, they determine the efficiency and productivity of developers. The ongoing efforts for Logic App Standard designer improvement is a testament to the need for fast, reliable, and user-friendly tools in today's fast-paced tech environment.

Read the full article A New Foundation For Logic Apps Designer

Developer Tools - Enhanced Logic Apps Designer: A New Foundation Update

Learn about A New Foundation For Logic Apps Designer

Microsoft's saga of development for Logic Apps Designer has been a vibrant one; the software's evolution spanning over a time frame of nearly seven years. Over this prolific period, Logic Apps Designer, often synonymously termed as the 'designer', has diversified its features and subsequently amplified its associated functionalities as well.

In due course of recent developments, the Logic Apps Standard version of the 'designer' underwent a major overhaul. Immensely welcomed by users and popular in the software realm, the applications have noticeably enhanced the comprehensibility. Despite exhibiting certain performance and accessibility constraints, it has reframed the dimensions of usability.

The Core Context centers around the framework of the entire 'designer'. Interestingly, the base framework borrowed from React does not differentiate the current and redesigned 'designer'. A major stumbling block posed by React Apps is the issue regarding the re-rendering control. This problem occurs due to the core context object that carries the entire state of the app. Over a period, the designer has witnessed an exponential augmentation in the number of context components. This spiraled into a chain reaction of re-renders resulting in interface lagging, causing displeasure among users.

In the necessities to limit this perpetual cycle of re-rendering, they established a new architecture capable of manifesting many actions as a Logic App runtime can. By refurbishing the architecture, the workflow's state transitioned into a redux store, facilitating better control and reduced re-renders.

Fine-tuning the Functionalities
A gamut of experience changes was encompassed with the prime focus altered towards enhancing under-the-hood performance. The users experienced a wave of changes while designing their workflows. The features ranged from seamless movement and zooming abilities to developing large workflows.

  • The designers' canvas now flexibly allows panning and zooming, coupled with a mini-maps' assistance to provide location supervision within the workflow.
  • The operation search was revamped to ensure an explicit experience for the user. Although in its early development stage, it shows promising scope for future assignments.
    • Moving ahead with Trust
      Inspite of last year's improvement, the designer wasn't quite able to meet the performance standards for supporting your work, especially due to the above-discussed issues with performance. But, interestingly, the future seems bright, as things are expected to change for the better as the codebase has now been open-sourced, enabling a more open dialogue with you and collecting invaluable feedback.

      The experimental preview of this new 'designer' has evoked quite some anticipation. Starting from October 31st, a button labeled 'Try Preview Designer' has been integrated into the designer command bar. A smooth transition to the new 'designer' is anticipated, and any glitches should be reported at our GitHub to ensure steady improvements.

      As of now, the release is an opt-in phase and is solely for Standard Logic Apps. But there are broader plans in the pipeline to also integrate into consumption Logic Apps and the Logic Apps studio code extension.

      More links on about A New Foundation For Logic Apps Designer

      A New Foundation For Logic Apps Designer
      Nov 2, 2022 — The Core Context. Both current designer and the re-written designer is built using React as a framework. · State Flow. With the re-architecture, ...
      A New Foundation For Logic Apps Designer
      Logic Apps Standard designer updates are now in public preview in the portal! The update improves the performance of the designer when dealing with large…
      Kent Weare's Post - Azure Logic Apps
      New @logicappsio Designer for Logic Apps (Standard) available in Public Preview. Read all about the improvements (including performance) in a blog post by…

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