Microsoft 365 Community Power Platform, 26 Jan 2021

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From YouTube: Demo: Integrating Services the the Azure API Management Connector

Description

Learn how to integrate services with the Azure API Management Connector in this community demo by Deepak Shrivastava (@deepak_s22).

For more information, please visit https://powerapps.microsoft.com

This demo is taken from the January 2021 Power Apps community call https://youtu.be/gQfUxNAZfmk

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A

Azure api management and powerapps.

B

It's very interesting topic: it's going to connect a bridge between the core developer and the citizen developer. So let me start uh giving a brief of what is api management is, if you guys have not seen it before.

B

Api management is a hub for enterprise api. Now we all know every enterprise has many apis, or maybe external ap apis are available across what azure has provided it, provided this control environment, where we can have those api controlled and applied policy, so that app my api manager or developer, who are building those api, can easily publish their api and as an app developer or the consumer of those api can easily consume those api.

B

Now, if you are an api manager or api developer, and if you are creating cools a cool api, you need to you, you always wanted to publish them easily. You also wanted them to be abstracted, secure and protected, so it's not be visible for uh so not everyone can see how you are creating those api. You also want want to make sure that it is easy to update and and make new revision or version of your api, and at the same time, if you are an app developer, that's most of us are going to be.

B

uh You need to know what all apis are available and how you can consume them or how you can use them and all of these features provided by apim fairly easily, and on top of that there can be many policies that api manager can define to control those api and those can be who can access what api in even in the api. If you have multiple method or operations, you can restrict those operations to a restricted group of people.

B

Now this is good. This is pretty much what apim does now. What is an api in apim? So if you have any api, if you like to have api in apim, any api that had or that has an http endpoint. So if your api is saying http and the url, you can easily host that api in the api. So this can be an api hosted in azure, an external api, and if you look at these two icons, this is very important, a logic app a logic app can be exposed as an api in the apim.

B

Even if you are creating a function app or as your function, you can have them as an api available in your api. So this is cool. This is all about azure.

B

Now why we are talking apim for power platform, so what you can do if you have an api in the apim, you can export those api as in custom, connector for your power platform, environment and that's fairly on few clicks, you can export that api as a custom, connector and that will be available in your environment, whichever environment you are selecting to export to for the exporting it will be available in that environment as a custom connector and with that I'll go to the next slide and in this slide this is the presentation of if I like, to use an api in my app or in my power automate right now.

B

As of now, if I like, if I like, to consume an api in my powerapps on my power automate, what I have to do today, either I have to create a custom connector or I have to use an http action or I need to go with a premium connector. That means a third-party connector. Those are available right now and if you look at this icon, all of these are a premium feature, so you have to have a premium license for the app maker who want to consume these apis.

B

That problem has been resolved or addressed by the recent announcement from microsoft, and that's why we are here today so, as I said in the earlier that you can export your api as a custom connector for power platform from apim.

B

If- and this is very carefully- and this is very interesting- this is where the game is going to change. If you are exporting that api to your dataworks for teams, environment, that custom connector going to be a standard connector, so you are not paying a premium license for the connector that has been exported from the apim to your microsoft teams, environment.

B

So now you can think you can imagine what you can do now. You can create or use any api that is exist right now, or maybe your organization has created some cool, app services or logic app that you like to use on your app on your power automate. You can use it in few clicks.

B

This is now final picture. What you can do with the teams and apim you can export your api fairly easily from apim to your database for teams, environment and the only price that you are paying is as your cost and trust me. That is very low. I am using this since, like a couple of months now I not even reach the dollar.

A

Absolutely especially if you're calling something like a consumption-based function app right right, but it might be a few cents a month.

B

So what I did I used that apim feature and I created or I extended so all of you have seen this app what I'm presenting right now. This is a my expense template created by microsoft, and you have seen the demo of this at many times by many of the great of mvp and other users. So what I did I took this app.

B

I added a feature on this app. So if I go to the expense I edit the scan receipt so what I extended, I am connecting this app with azure cognitive services, for which I created a logic app that is exposed in apim as an api. I am consuming that in my power app. So whenever I'm going to click on the scan receipt, I'm going to again, unfortunately, I cannot uh mirror my iphone today. There is some issue going on with that.

B

So, as a user, I can select my my receipt and when I click on the process, we see what's happening right now, I'm sending a request from powerapps to the apim, to the logic, app and the logic app using all these cognitive services and responding back all the receipt line. Item that I have here, there's one more api that I added here as you can see: here's the currency. So let me pick another receipt.

B

So this is the receipt, as you can see here once I proceed, let me so you what you can do now. You can pick a receipt that is not in the uh us local. You can pick any receipt that is outside us. So, for example, if you are, if you have a receipt that is for uh for uk right and that's the receipt that I'm going to pick so you can change the locale and this again this is all of this.

B

Via cognitive services provided by the azure, I can click on process receipt and what it is going to do. It's going to process that receipt provide me the response, and then I'm going to use another api that I have hosted in the app. I am for concurrency conversion, so once it's load, I will show you that it take a little bit of time.

B

Meanwhile, any question taught.

A

I see one here from krishna when we export apis as a custom. Connector. Then time goes by. If my apis have gone through changes, do I need to re-export the connector, or will it automatically refer to the main source of the apis.

B

Yeah so that so to answer a question, if you are using in my case like, for example, if you have created a logic, app or function app, and if you are making changes there, you don't need to re-export because it's going to pass the request. So there's a back end. If back end is changing. You don't need to make changes. But if you have made some update on the api itself, yeah.

A

B

You are making some changes there. Then you need to re-export it. So.

A

Like you change the arguments, perhaps that you pass into the api something like that. Yes,.

B

Yeah or if you are, if you are passing any custom header.

A

Now, when you've done that, and you do re-export the connector, have you done that? Have you seen how you've tried that already? How well did that behave? Did you have to rip everything out of the power app to get it to pick the changes up and save and shut down the power out and reopen it? Or did you just bang put the new connector in and it picked it up.

B

Yeah, so until unless you are keeping the name of the connector same, you don't need to lift the power apps off right.

A

B

You need to so there is a little challenge there. You need to remove the older one first, so your app will break for a moment and then you can re-export and then it will automatically pick it up. Okay, so so this is my ad. This is my receipt that was not in the dollar, so there's another api that I'm calling and what I'm what this is gonna do is gonna convert the pawn to the dollar in the real time.

B

Now. The app itself is not what we are trying to show here. What I'm trying to show here, how you can easily do it without creating a custom connector or without even calling a power automate from here. So if I jump back to my power apps, so this is my azure and uh once you create your uh apim service and if you go there, you can see all of your api listed. Are you going to see many api here, but the api that I'm using for this demo is one of these ones.

B

This is for cognitive services and you can see, as there is very simple api, because I'm using the logic act. So this is my logic app that I've created and the logic app also very pretty simple. This is a very simple http request response, logic app and if you have created a power automate before this looks pretty similar.

B

So the only thing I'm doing in this http, I'm asking user to provide the information about the request, so input data is actual data of the receipt, the request type in the locale and then making a call to this cognitive service. So for for the demo, what I used, I used form recognizer api. This is in preview. There is another one that is already live, but I use preview because it has more functionality now, I'm using logic app, because now what you can do with the logic app.

B

As you can see, I'm see here, I'm asking user to provide the request type and I'm right now, I'm providing request type as a receipt.

B

But what I can do here, I can also use the same logic app for business card reader and the only thing that user need to provide me the request type as a business card, because that's that's the request that they need to provide in that case, and I can also use it for another endpoint for the layout.

B

So one logic app can address all of these different scenario and you can use the same response, because the response is very universal from the from these cognitive services. You just need to read it correctly. So now you have one logic app that is providing you all the services in the cognitive. The second api that I created is for currency conversion.

B

Now this is an external api and, as you can see here, this is my api that I'm calling right now and the only thing I'm doing uh the simple method passing the two currency and from currency and getting the response back now. You might be thinking that this is super complex. What I'm showing right now is.

B

It may take a lot of time because I was showing it to someone and he said that yes looks cool, you can do a lot, but then powerapps maker is getting dependent on the app apim and apim developer or they need to learn something. So let me show you quickly in five minutes: you can actually create an api in the api and use it so for that purpose. What I'm gonna do? I'm gonna use this national weather service api very simple api.

B

What it does it once you pass the area there is a state name, it's going to give you if there is any alert, any weather alert is there. So if you look at this example, this is my api, and this is my query parameter that I need to pass to create an app api. You go to the your api screen, click on add api. Now you have multiple options which you can pick from. You can start from the blank api.

B

You can start from open api open api is a swagger or a definition that you get. Sometimes you get the open api definition for most of the api. You can pick wadl or wsdl logic, apps app service and function apps. All of that is available. What we're gonna do we're gonna do the blank api here. So click on the blank api just give a name. That's the name, just the display name of your api.

B

B

The url- this is my url, as you can see here,.

B

So you can paste the url, then, if you provide a name for the suffix and this url, what you are seeing here. This is the url. What every app developer is going to know about your api. They will never know if the api is this one. So that's the another layer of security that added by apim, so the end user or consumer will not will never know what api is actually getting called. They're always going to know this api so.

A

And this is also how you can go back and rev your api. Yes point it at a new api or dev, or prod or qa, whatever.

B

Right, so you can provide any name, whichever you like uh the end user to see, so I'm gonna type alert click on create and what this is gonna do is gonna create the api. Now this is how an empty api created. We need to add operation to api.

B

What should happen when someone call this api, so I click on this add operation again very similarly, I can type any display name that I like, because this isn't get operation, I'm trying to get information about the alert on this particular state, so you will say get and if you don't have any method defined in your api like in here, there's no method.

B

It's just the plain api that I'm calling you can always just type the backslash here and then in the query parameter- and this is where you can define different header request response that you needed. So in the query parameter, you can define a query parameter in our case. The query parameter is the state, as you can see all the area. Sorry.

B

And this is the default value that you can pass on uh then, and once the user is going to call this api, they can pick from the default value or they can. They can override it and I'll click on save.

B

And none of the information that I need to pass here, so let's go ahead and test it and I'm going to bypass the course proxy. This is for cross domain, calling because that weather api is going to throw in error. If you don't pass this and I'm going to click, I'm going to select my state and click send. So what do not do is going to work and you can see here. I got all the alert that is right now in the taxes, so we created the api now is simpler than creating.

B

You can export it. Now. If you click on these two three dots click on export. Now you have option for powerapps in power automate once you click on that api is gonna, pick all the environment, those are available, it's gonna and again you can actually export this to a standard environment. Also, you can export it to things. So I'm gonna pick my teams model here and click export and meanwhile, while it's exporting, let me quickly go to the floor.microsoft.com, so we can see uh that exported connector. There.

C

Hi deepak, I have a question yep. My name is ramon. uh I was just wondering regarding, like the api management version that you're working with, like which version is this because I see they have a different price levels there right so which one did you pick.

B

C

B

Yes, so I picked the standard consumption based version and if you go to the azure pricing tool that has your head, it actually give you a good uh understanding of how much price is going to be. But if you look at these uh notification here, I had 200 credit long back and I've already expanded and I'm I'm just not using api, I'm using other key technology.

B

So because this is consumption based and it's going to be around, I think 0.00 something uh dollar per uh per apim call, but you can definitely calculate all of that in your calculator.

C

Good. Thank you. Hey another question. Can uh api return tabular data.

B

Yes, so this is what this and that's the cool thing about it, because in the api and what you can do there is twofold of it. Your actual api can definitely respond to your any tabular format or the json right. What you can also do in an apim, you can define more response object.

B

So if I, if you look at this one- and if I go to the definition here, you can define your definition for any response type that you like to have so, for example, in case I define this response, so you can do a lot complex and you can also do very simple, like we are just doing for this with a weather api. So, yes, now answer your question. Yes, you can define definitely to find the tabular response as needed by your uh api, so.

C

I go back to the.

B

My environment, where I exported that connector that we just created under custom connector, I should be seeing that connector that I just published, and here it is now. If I added this one, you can see all of the information that we have created. We have and now the cool thing about in this connector. You won't see that weather api at all.

C

B

Is the api that connector is calling, and if I go to the definition, it has the cat, and it has this api that we have created.

A

Now, if you use the monitor, that's the url, you would see in the monitor too now.

B

And then again same thing: you can test it from here too, so pretty quickly. You can create these api. Now again, as I said, uh you can start from the very basic like I did here for uh for this one or you can go very complex from logic app to function app to the app service.

B

So there is, there is a totally uh uh what I said of the bandwidth of possibilities here that you can try like, for example, graph api is very useful for powerapps or power automate. You can create an api for the graph api where you can pass in.

B

You can operate multiple graph operation and there are so many things that you can do for me.

A

And you can save yourself a lot of money at the same time. Yes, yes,.

B

And, and with this receipt scanner, this cognitive service that I'm using it's it actually very real business case, because now you can have logic app again, logic app is also not that much expensive and you can operate all of these different operations, not even these operations. Those are already exist. What you can also do you can create your custom model with these api, so you don't need to uh again there's. There is much dependency that you can remove by using these things.

B

So that's it. I think uh if, if you have any other question, I'm happy to answer.

A

So this brand new feature, I have a question for you, then brand new feature right. You you and I started chatting about hey that would be cool to get on the call and how many hours did you put into it from the time where you had this? The leave request power app installed until you went okay now it does what we saw in the demo today.

B

Right so, as you can see here, the number of api that I have in my api, so what? Where the most of the time that I invest, is actually trying to see? If I, what is the best api that I can pick from to use right, that's the most time I took because if you can see here, I have picked many api. I have the graph and the form recognizer.

C

B

App, I just so actual app creation and the demo doesn't take that long. Maybe this is a few hour of work.

B

The logic app, also very simple, because if you are doing the power automate and this logic app is very simple, straightforward logic app.

B

But if you are starting and if you are new to this whole apim, I think, if you can, if you spend maybe a week, understanding and analyzing what you need to do, that's enough for you to get started and start doing things.

A

This sounds like one of those really good scenarios for what donna talked about in her latest blog post and she talked about fusion dev teams, which is, if you didn't read that as combinations of pro developers and citizen developers working together, I could totally see pro developers getting in azure here, dialing in all the apis and then just basically saying: hey all citizen devs. Here's your api set for the whole org have fun.

C

Right is this: is this only available in teams, though,.

B

Actually, not if you are, if you want to use this as a free or the standard connectors, that's the theme, but you can export any api from apim to any environment, any power platform environment, the only difference between if you are exporting it to the normal or the like, a regular environment. It's going to be a custom connector that is premium right now, but again you can do the calculation, how many pm, how many premium license you want versus?

B

What is your azure cost.

A

Very good, that's a great demo, all right so reza put in a uh thing in chat here about your youtube channel. It looks like you've already made a deeper dive. Video on this too.

B

Yeah, so I I yeah this is my. This is my very. This is where I'm starting so again, this video may not be the perfect for everyone, but yeah. So I thought of putting this video a little bit more detail, because I knew the 15 minute is not going to be enough plus we don't want it to be confused that this is pro code pro code. It is pro code, but it's not only pro code. You can actually, as a citizen developer.

B

You can use this feature as of today, if you like to like, if you are building the power automate, if you are creating those http uh request response and if you're creating custom connector, this is going to be pretty much like that. Of course, we are not. We are not thinking that you are going to create a function app or writing a like a.net application that you're going to host it. Yes, that is pro code, definitely but give a try. You will like it. I like it a lot yeah.

A

Yeah, it's it's a lot more configuration back on the azure side here than anything right, you're, not really! Writing any code there in.

C

A

Well, thank you for sharing that with us. That's a great demo, too! I really like how you hook those two different pieces in there and combine them into an existing app too, which is always great. Thank.

C