New Microsoft Flow portal navigation and designer experiences

As a part of the October release, we are overhauling several key aspects of the Microsoft Flow portal and designer experiences.

Navigating in the Flow portal

We have an all-new way to find the different key pages on the Microsoft Flow portal. Previously, there were a few links along the top of the portal. Some pages, such as Connections and Custom connectors, were relegated to the Settings gear in the top right, and many people had difficulty finding these pages.

With the October release, we are moving to a left-side navigation. This new navigation has a Data section, which includes access to aspects of Connections, but also to your Common Data Service Entities:

This change is also important because it allows us to add more items into the navigation in the future, such as the solution management feature that is coming soon. This will enable you to group your flows into logical components (one of the top ideas in the Ideas forum).

Finally, you can expand and collapse the left navigation from the button at the top of the nav.

The My flows list

We are simplifying the experience in the My flows list, and making it consistent with other Microsoft user interfaces.

In this new experience, you can run Instant flows (those flows triggered manually, such as flows triggered by the Flow button for mobile) by selecting the Run button from the Flow list. We have also made it easier to identify which flows are on by dimming the icons of flows that are off.

Adding triggers and actions in the Flow designer

Third, we have a new experience for adding triggers and actions in the Flow designer. When you add a trigger you will see an experience like this:

This new experience gives you the ability to browse your connectors by category. For example, you can see which connectors are Premium or the Custom connectors in your environment.

Next, when you select New step, you’ll no longer see the secondary flyout where you would choose between adding an action, condition, or more. Now, you’ll immediately be taken to the Choose an action dialog, which saves you from always making an extra selection.

We have combined all of the Control actions into this dialog, so you can still select Condition immediately. You can search, or select the Control connector to get to the other control-flow concepts like Apply to Each or Scopes: