tutorial-build-schedule-recurring-logic-app-workflow.md

title	description	services	ms.suite	ms.reviewer	ms.topic	ms.custom	ms.date
Build schedule-based automation workflows with Azure	Tutorial - Create a schedule-based, recurring automation workflow that integrates across cloud services by using Azure Logic Apps.	logic-apps	integration	estfan, azla	tutorial	mvc	03/24/2021

Tutorial: Create schedule-based and recurring automation workflows with Azure Logic Apps

This tutorial shows how to build an example logic app that automates a workflow that runs on a recurring schedule. Specifically, this example logic app checks the travel time, including the traffic, between two places and runs every weekday morning. If the time exceeds a specific limit, the logic app sends you an email that includes the travel time and the extra time necessary to arrive at your destination. The workflow includes various steps, which start with a schedule-based trigger followed by a Bing Maps action, a data operations action, a control flow action, and an email notification action.

In this tutorial, you learn how to:

[!div class="checklist"]

• Create a blank logic app.
• Add a Recurrence trigger that specifies the schedule for your logic app.
• Add a Bing Maps action that gets the travel time for a route.
• Add an action that creates a variable, converts the travel time from seconds to minutes, and stores that result in the variable.
• Add a condition that compares the travel time against a specified limit.
• Add an action that sends you email if the travel time exceeds the limit.

When you're done, your logic app looks like this workflow at a high level:

Prerequisites

• An Azure account and subscription. If you don't have a subscription, sign up for a free Azure account.

• An email account from an email provider that's supported by Logic Apps, such as Office 365 Outlook, Outlook.com, or Gmail. For other providers, review the connectors list here. This quickstart uses Office 365 Outlook with a work or school account. If you use a different email account, the general steps stay the same, but your UI might slightly differ.

  [!IMPORTANT] If you want to use the Gmail connector, only G-Suite business accounts can use this connector without restriction in logic apps. If you have a Gmail consumer account, you can use this connector with only specific Google-approved services, or you can create a Google client app to use for authentication with your Gmail connector. For more information, see Data security and privacy policies for Google connectors in Azure Logic Apps.

• To get the travel time for a route, you need an access key for the Bing Maps API. To get this key, follow the steps for how to get a Bing Maps key.

• If your logic app needs to communicate through a firewall that limits traffic to specific IP addresses, that firewall needs to allow access for both the inbound and outbound IP addresses used by the Logic Apps service or runtime in the Azure region where your logic app exists. If your logic app also uses managed connectors, such as the Office 365 Outlook connector or SQL connector, or uses custom connectors, the firewall also needs to allow access for all the managed connector outbound IP addresses in your logic app's Azure region.

Create your logic app

1. Sign in to the Azure portal with your Azure account credentials. On the Azure home page, select Create a resource.

2. On the Azure Marketplace menu, select Integration > Logic App.

   

3. On the Logic App pane, provide the information described here about the logic app that you want to create.

   

   Property	Value	Description
   Subscription	<Azure-subscription-name>	Your Azure subscription name. This example uses Pay-As-You-Go.
   Resource group	LA-TravelTime-RG	The name for the Azure resource group, which is used to organize related resources. This example creates a new resource group named LA-TravelTime-RG.
   Name	LA-TravelTime	Your logic app's name, which can contain only letters, numbers, hyphens (-), underscores (_), parentheses ((, )), and periods (.). This example uses LA-TravelTime.
   Location	West US	The region where to store your logic app information. This example uses West US.
   Log Analytics	Off	Keep the Off setting for diagnostic logging.

4. When you're done, select Review + create. After Azure validates the information about your logic app, select Create.

5. After Azure deploys your app, select Go to resource.

   Azure opens the Logic Apps template selection pane, which shows an introduction video, commonly used triggers, and logic app template patterns.

6. Scroll down past the video and common triggers sections to the Templates section, and select Blank Logic App.

   

Next, add the Recurrence trigger, which runs the workflow based on a specified schedule. Every logic app must start with a trigger, which fires when a specific event happens or when new data meets a specific condition. For more information, see Create your first logic app.

Add the Recurrence trigger

1. In the Logic Apps Designer search box, enter recurrence, and select the trigger named Recurrence.

   

2. On the Recurrence shape, select the ellipses (...) button, and then select Rename. Rename the trigger with this description: Check travel time every weekday morning

   

3. Inside the trigger, change these properties as described and shown here.

   

   Property	Required	Value	Description
   Interval	Yes	1	The number of intervals to wait between checks
   Frequency	Yes	Week	The unit of time to use for the recurrence

4. Under Interval and Frequency, open the Add new parameter list, and select these properties to add to the trigger.

   • On these days
   • At these hours
   • At these minutes

   

5. Now set the values for the additional properties as shown and described here.

   

   Property	Value	Description
   On these days	Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday	This setting is available only when you set the Frequency to Week.
   At these hours	7,8,9	This setting is available only when you set the Frequency to Week or Day. For this recurrence, select the hours of the day. This example runs at the 7, 8, and 9-hour marks.
   At these minutes	0,15,30,45	This setting is available only when you set the Frequency to Week or Day. For this recurrence, select the minutes of the day. This example starts at the zero-hour mark and runs every 15 minutes.

   This trigger fires every weekday, every 15 minutes, starting at 7:00 AM and ending at 9:45 AM. The Preview box shows the recurrence schedule. For more information, see Schedule tasks and workflows and Workflow actions and triggers.

6. To hide the trigger's details for now, collapse the shape by clicking inside the shape's title bar.

   

7. Save your logic app. On the designer toolbar, select Save.

Your logic app is now live in the Azure portal but doesn't do anything other than trigger based on the specified schedule. So, add an action that responds when the trigger fires.

Get the travel time for a route

Now that you have a trigger, add an action that gets the travel time between two places. Logic Apps provides a connector for the Bing Maps API so that you can easily get this information. Before you start this task, make sure that you have a Bing Maps API key as described in this tutorial's prerequisites.

1. In the Logic App Designer, under the Recurrence trigger, select New step.

2. Under Choose an operation, select Standard. In the search box, enter bing maps, and select the action named Get route.

   

3. If you don't have a Bing Maps connection, you're asked to create a connection. Provide the connection details as shown and described, and then select Create.

   

   Property	Required	Value	Description
   Connection Name	Yes	BingMapsConnection	Provide a name for your connection. This example uses BingMapsConnection.
   API Key	Yes	<Bing-Maps-API-key>	Enter the Bing Maps API key that you previously received. If you don't have a Bing Maps key, learn how to get a key.

4. Rename the action with this description: Get route and travel time with traffic.

5. In the action, open the Add new parameter list, and select these properties.

   • Optimize
   • Distance unit
   • Travel mode

   

6. Now enter the values for the properties shown and described here.

   

   Property	Required	Value	Description
   Waypoint 1	Yes	<start-location>	Your route's origin. This example specifies an example starting address.
   Waypoint 2	Yes	<end-location>	Your route's destination. This example specifies an example destination address.
   Optimize	No	timeWithTraffic	A parameter to optimize your route, such as distance, travel time with current traffic, and so on. Select the parameter value, timeWithTraffic.
   Distance unit	No	<your-preference>	The unit of distance for your route. This example uses Mile as the unit.
   Travel mode	No	Driving	The travel mode for your route. Select Driving mode.

   For more information about these parameters and values, see Calculate a route.

7. On the designer toolbar, select Save.

Next, create a variable so that you can convert and store the current travel time as minutes, rather than seconds. That way, you can avoid repeating the conversion and use the value more easily in later steps.

Create a variable to store travel time

Sometimes, you might want to run operations on data in your workflow, and then use the results in later actions. To save these results so that you can easily reuse or reference them, you can create variables that store those results after processing. You can create variables only at the top level in your logic app.

By default, the Get route action returns the current travel time with traffic in seconds from the Travel Duration Traffic property. By converting and storing this value as minutes instead, you make the value easier to reuse later without converting again.

1. On the designer, under the Get route action, select New step.

2. Under Choose an operation, select Built-in. In the search box, enter variables, and select the action named Initialize variable.

   

3. Rename this action with this description: Create variable to store travel time

4. Provide this information for your variable as shown in this table and in the steps below the table:

   Property	Required	Value	Description
   Name	Yes	travelTime	The name for your variable. This example uses travelTime.
   Type	Yes	Integer	The data type for your variable
   Value	No	An expression that converts the current travel time from seconds to minutes (see the steps under this table).	The initial value for your variable

   1. To create the expression for the Value property, click inside the box so that the dynamic content list appears. If necessary, widen your browser until the dynamic list appears. In the dynamic content list, select Expression, which shows the expression editor.

      

      The dynamic content list shows the outputs from previous actions that are available for you to select as inputs to subsequent actions in your workflow. The dynamic content list includes an expression editor that you can use to select functions that perform operations in your expression. This expression editor is only available in the dynamic content list.

   2. In the expression editor, enter this expression: div(,60)

      

   3. Within the expression, put your cursor between the left parenthesis (() and the comma (,), and select Dynamic content.

      

   4. In the dynamic content list, under select the property value, Travel Duration Traffic.

      

   5. After the property value resolves inside the expression, select OK.

      

      The Value property now appears as shown here:

      

5. Save your logic app.

Next, add a condition that checks whether the current travel time is greater than a specific limit.

Compare the travel time with limit

1. Under the Create variable to store travel time action, select New step.

2. Under Choose an operation, select Built-in. In the search box, enter condition. and from the actions list, select the action named Condition.

   

3. Rename the condition with this description: If travel time exceeds limit

4. Build a condition that checks whether the travelTime property value exceeds your specified limit as described and shown here:

   1. In the condition, on the condition's left side, click inside the Choose a value box.

   2. From the dynamic content list that appears, under Variables, select the property named travelTime.

      

   3. In the middle comparison box, select the operator named is greater than.

   4. On the condition's right side, in the Choose a value box, enter this limit: 15

      When you're done, the condition looks like this example:

      

5. Save your logic app.

Next, add the action to run when the travel time exceeds your limit.

Send email when limit exceeded

Now, add an action that sends you email when the travel time exceeds your limit. This email includes the current travel time and the extra time necessary to travel the specified route.

1. In the condition's True branch, select Add an action.

2. Under Choose an operation, select Standard. In the search box, enter send email. The list returns many results, so to help you filter list, first select the email connector that you want.

   For example, if you have an Outlook email account, select the connector for your account type:

   • For Azure work or school accounts, select Office 365 Outlook.
   • For personal Microsoft accounts, select Outlook.com.

   This example continues by selecting Office 365 Outlook.

   

3. When the connector's actions appear, select the action that sends email, for example:

   

4. If you don't already have a connection, sign in and authenticate access to your email account when prompted.

   Azure Logic Apps creates a connection to your email account.

5. Rename the action with this description: Send email with travel time

6. For the To property, enter the recipient's email address. For testing purposes, you can use your email address.

7. For the Subject property, specify the email's subject, and include the travelTime variable by following these steps:

   1. Enter the text Current travel time (minutes): with a trailing space. Keep your cursor in the Subject box so that the dynamic content list stays open.

   2. From the dynamic content list, in the Variables heading, select See more so that the variable named travelTime appears.

      

      [!NOTE] The dynamic content list doesn't automatically show the travelTime variable because the Subject property expects a string value, while travelTime is an integer value.

      

8. For the Body property, specify the content for the email body by following these steps:

   1. Enter the text Add extra travel time (minutes): with a trailing space. Keep your cursor in the Body box so that the dynamic content list stays open.

   2. In the dynamic content list, select Expression, which shows the expression editor.

      

   3. In the expression editor, enter sub(,15) so that you can calculate the number of minutes that exceed your limit:

      

   4. Within the expression, put your cursor between the left parenthesis (() and the comma (,), and select Dynamic content.

      

   5. Under Variables, select travelTime.

      

   6. After the property resolves inside the expression, select OK.

      

      The Body property now appears as shown here:

      

9. Save your logic app.

Next, test and run your logic app, which now looks similar to this example:

Run your logic app

To manually start your logic app, on the designer toolbar, select Run.

• If the current travel time stays under your limit, your logic app does nothing else and waits or the next interval before checking again.

• If the current travel time exceeds your limit, you get an email with the current travel time and the number of minutes above your limit. Here is an example email that your logic app sends:

  

  [!TIP] If you don't get any emails, check your email's junk folder. Your email junk filter might redirect these kinds of mails. Otherwise, if you're unsure that your logic app ran correctly, see Troubleshoot your logic app.

Congratulations, you've now created and run a schedule-based recurring logic app.

To create other logic apps that use the Recurrence trigger, check out these templates, which available after you create a logic app:

• Get daily reminders sent to you.
• Delete older Azure blobs.
• Add a message to an Azure Storage queue.

Clean up resources

Your logic app continues running until you disable or delete the app. When you no longer need the sample logic app, delete the resource group that contains your logic app and related resources.

1. In the Azure portal's search box, enter the name for the resource group that you created. From the results, under Resource Groups, select the resource group.

   This example created the resource group named LA-TravelTime-RG.

   

   [!TIP] If the Azure home page shows the resource group under Recent resources, you can select the group from the home page.

2. On the resource group menu, check that Overview is selected. On the Overview pane's toolbar, select Delete resource group.

   

3. In the confirmation pane that appears, enter the resource group name, and select Delete.

Next steps

In this tutorial, you created a logic app that checks traffic based on a specified schedule (on weekday mornings), and takes action (sends an email) when the travel time exceeds a specified limit. Now, learn how to build a logic app that sends mailing list requests for approval by integrating Azure services, Microsoft services, and other Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps.

[!div class="nextstepaction"] Manage mailing list requests