Playing with Azure Connectors
Guest Post by Ivan Lukianchuk
Ivan Lukianchuk is a seasoned startup founder and award winning pitch artist turned consultant who currently runs Strattenburg Inc . He's a full stack .NET developer who has done a lot of work with Azure over the years building entire solutions from the ground up for clients ranging from independent professionals, to funded startups to $50MM organizations.You can follow Ivan on twitter: @Chronos or contact him via email at ivan@strattenburg.com
As a startup guy I’ve always been intrigued by Twilio. It seems like a set of features that no tech person in my generation should care about, because you who uses the phone right? But the sheer simplicity and ubiquity of phones is full of incredible allure. We can take something so simple and basic and turn it into a real business tool or interface in its simplest form via text messages.
I ended up building out 2 startup ideas on the Twilio platform, although neither made it to where I wished it to be, but I still think about the “what else can I do with it” quite frequently. The fact that Azure has a connector is also very intriguing as I can now integrate things easier and more quickly, but to what end exactly and what does it help me avoid doing?
Going through this tutorial has lead me to understand that there is something called Logic Apps, which appear to be like a form of IFTTT that you put together yourself! Cool, I had no idea these existed, there is so much stuff in Azure it’s hard to keep up! I can build a simple workflow quite easily that takes a trigger and then subsequently takes an action through a connector like the Twilio connector.
As I try adding a Twilio connector to a Logic App I realize that Twilio only has actions, no triggers yet, so I need to figure out some sort of trigger first before I can see some actions happen. I decided on using the Twitter connector, which was simple to create following the instructions here! Now I can text myself when a search term comes up, or call someone every time they are mentioned. The possibilities!
As I play around with building flows in the Logic App I’m already discovering new possibilities as well with all of the examples and potential other connectors. It’s definitely cool to see what services like these are coming out and being expanded on as the Azure suite grows. Look out IFTTT! Learn more about the available connectors here and see what you can do!
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