Case Study: Microsoft Power Automate and Teams Collaboration

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 The Challenge 

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Hentsū has identified an opportunity to enhance internal communications in a way that fosters quality of life and reduces e-mail chatter. In this case study, we will be covering Power Automate use cases, as well as MS Teams collaboration, workflow automation, and more. The use of automated flows delivered through Teams channels allows Professional Services, DevOps, Managed Services, and Client Relations to communicate in a fluid and natural setting. Relying on an email to be manually composed after a priority incident or anomaly has been detected, leaves a single point of human failure open. 

Hentsū has decided to automate our client’s service escalations and high priority incidents through Power Automate. Formally known as Microsoft Flow, this platform streamlines communications between third-party and Microsoft apps to enhance productivity and reduce manual overhead. Think of Power Automate as a cloud-based algorithm service, that combines sets of flows to reduce manual or repetitive work that is often associated with reporting and communications between applications. This solution has also been curated internally for Bitbucket repository notifications related to merge or pull requests, as well as informative tech news updates.  

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REQUIREMENTS

  • Remove the risk associated with manual email communications
  • Fully automated alerting of priority incidents, service escalations, modifications to in-house code repositories and change control requests
  • Encourage MS Teams channels to be used as the primary internal communication vector between internal departments
  • Reduce e-mail traffic
  • A cloud-based technology news alert platform within MS Teams
  • Sufficient M365 licensing is required to support the solution
  • Overall workflow automation
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DOWNLOAD THIS CASE STUDY

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document icon Key Considerations 

  1. Identifying the triggers required to initiate each flow 
  2. Locating the compatible Jira Service Desk and Bitbucket APIs/Webhooks required to establish secure connections to Power Automate 
  3. Designating the purpose for each O365/Teams group and which members to be included in each 
  4. Hentsū staff were already accustomed to MS Teams and its many collaboration features
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 The Solution - Workflow Automation  

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TECHNOLOGIES USED 

  • AWS (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft Azure, Citrix, Duo Security, Zabbix, and FortiGate
    • All sending vendor PSIRT advisories to Microsoft Teams channels which inform Hentsū of required/emergency security patches and events
  • Atlassian (Jira & Bitbucket)
    • Service escalations and change control request notifications
  • RSS technology news feed subscriptions
    • Centralized to a single Teams channel to encourage technical discussions and debates
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type="1_2" _builder_version="4.1"][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.1"]Hentsū had reached a crossroads and identified that e-mail is not the most effective method to collaborate on service-related escalations and priority requests. Instead, we sought out to leverage the tools already available to us with our Microsoft 365 subscriptions to remove the human element from the detection of a variety of events. It was quickly evident that MS Teams with the help of Power Automate flows, has the capability to effectively tie the appropriate teams together and promote collaboration in an automated fashion. In short, workflow automation was achieved. We no longer had to rely on a single person(s) to detect a problem and manually loop individuals in through an e-mail chain. This can often be difficult to track. Alternatively, Power Automate would monitor our Jira Service requests and the bulk of our core technology vendors,’ based on the priority level.[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version="4.1"][et_pb_column type="4_4" _builder_version="4.1"][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.1" custom_padding="||20px||false|false"]

These alerts are visible in the dedicated Teams channel and using group membership, the correct individuals are always included. In addition to workflow automation, our goal was to achieve consistency, both in the fashion that the alerts are delivered and the syntax in which they appear.

After designing the initial HTTP request-based flows from our vendors’ PSIRT advisory alerts and internal Jira ticketing system, we re-purposed the flows for other scenarios. Bitbucket repository updates, branch changes, commit/pull requests, and informational messages were integrated into Power Automate by modifying existing flow templates. This allowed our DevOps and Professional Services teams to collaborate and review one another’s code in an open channel that is inclusive to all team members. Members of these channels can modify their Teams chat notifications to be as informative as they would like.  

To add some alure and showcase the innovative solutions, we connected RSS news feeds to an internal channel dedicated to Cloud Technology News. This provides a consistent platform that engineers could use to stay up to date with the most recent news in our sector. This concept is quite attractive for Financial Services clients who are looking for curated news presented in a central location, relating to their corresponding sector(s). 

The beauty of these automated workflow solutions are their sustainability and re-usability. Using traditional e-mail has its benefits but does not have the consistency required by many developers and in-house technology teams.

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  Technical Details 

During the planning phase, the most difficult challenge was deciding on the trigger that would actuate each flow. Though a simple HTTP request was used for most scenarios, each trigger required vigorous fine-tuning to ensure consistency across all platforms, especially for external vendors, due to the lack of insight into their internal systems. When using HTTP based webhooks, it is a challenge to figure out which applications expose their APIs. It is important to consider the limitations of Power Automate in relation to specific connections and the available actions associated with each. 

For our internal based Atlassian applications (Jira & Bitbucket), research and probing were required to locate the exposed APIs used to set off the desired webhook events. Once located, the Webhook URLs were used as an initial trigger for each flow. Observing the specific responses and behavior from each app was necessary to curate the final communications via Teams and reduce un-necessary chatter or errors. Defining the variables and deciding on how to initialize each variable within the flow was necessary to deliver an informative notification which makes sense. Specific actions or behaviors are associated to each defined variable based on certain conditions. For example, when a variable matches “Priority 1,” the flow will then take action to inform the relevant Teams channel with a matching event title. The output formatting for an event is directly related to the variables within each flow. The output message syntax for each event went through multiple revisions before being considered acceptable. 

One of the most important aspects of the project was to utilize malleable templates, which allow for exporting and re-use in similar scenarios. We designed the flows so that only select triggers and variables would need to be altered during future re-purposing efforts. The sustainability of a solution and its potential to be recycled, is one of the main requirements for the approval of a project within Hentsū. 

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 Caveats 

  • Users must be willing to default to MS Teams rather than email for alerting and reporting 
  • Not all applications and vendors have the required APIs exposed for webhooks to be utilized as a trigger 
  • A dedicated and licensed M365 service account is required to host the Power Automate flows 
  • Flows may require maintenance if the webhook call-backs or variables are altered 
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 Impact 

The choice to automate over a fixed platform comes with its advantages and disadvantages. Workflow automation is accomplished with this particular solution. Overall, the automated flows that Hentsū adopted have enhanced team collaboration and increased communication between our global departments. Reducing human error and relying on manual alerting processes is no longer a concern for most of our core systems. The ability to templatize the flows for re-use has added huge benefits and ensured sustainability of the solution. We are looking forward to the enhancement and up-cycling of these solutions for both internal and external use cases.

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Date/Time

Date(s) - 01/01/1970
12:00 AM - 12:00 AM

Location

600 5th ave. NY, NY

Grid Computing: Scale and Automate with Slick Cloud Tools

Cloud technology has already helped define the ‘new normal’ and shape the digital landscape. It’s a way to improve how people communicate, operate and develop within the competitive business environment. By introducing grid computing into the cloud, you are effectively escalating, scaling and generally improving your own businesses operations. With grid computing you get speedy research performance. In other words, farming out large problems to be solved using parallel processing across many worker nodes or running multiple different jobs at once, speeds up research throughput. Also, the elastic capacity of the cloud allows for the freedom to adjust your cloud grid computing resources based on immediate needs. This denotes that you can scale up or down as necessary, of course. In addition you unlock a wide range of powerful cloud tools. Things also become cost-efficient very fast, as cloud solutions eliminate the upfront cost of IT – unlike traditional research computing that may require upfront decisions on the technology and the purchasing of all the required machines before they can be used. Rather than being tied down to one location, your data and applications are available and accessible wherever you are and easily shared across multiple teams and offices. Where do we go from here? Well, for the past few years it has become obvious that there are other methodologies that can enhance the process of running complex workloads. Staying serverless is the focus, but beyond that, we should look at a variety of valuable cloud-powered tools and Kubernetes (or more widely known as k8s). Kubernetes is an open-source system that automates your application deployment, scaling, and management.

Incorporating Cloud Tools: Azure Batch and Azure App Services

The most important facet of serverless compute platforms is giving developers a chance to concentrate on application and script development, versus spending time and energy managing its underlying infrastructure. The goal is to handle huge workloads via a platform that was crafted as an elegant serverless solution; the sort of solution we facilitate regularly here at Hentsu. So, when moving to the cloud environment, the customary method is rewriting the code, thus creating a modernized cloud native stack. For example, batch work can utilize Azure Batch; scripts are turned into Docker containers, which are scheduled onto temporary machines. The key term there is ‘temporary’ – the machines are used and paid for only as much as necessary, with provisioning handled completely automatically. The main drive here is easy management, lower cost, and parallelism. A parallel for application servers is hosting them with Azure App Service, which denotes reliability and even more useful management tools. However, if you are looking to utilize powerful systems such as Kubernetes instead, you must understand certain basics first. Kubernetes is currently one of the most popular methods of running production workloads at scale, but more than that it brings other big cloud-based advantages, as well as vital improvements for enterprises. Kubernetes is great for building containerized and resilient applications.

Kubernetes in the Cloud: 4 Essential Benefits for Enterprises

When it comes to data processing, the huge Kubernetes ecosystem has truly turned things around, offering a variety of ways to reduce its generally high complexity. The immense advantages of Kubernetes may get you to where you want to go, however managing it is a great challenge, especially if you are doing things on-premise, where you may well need someone to manage the infrastructure full-time. In contrast, AWS and Azure can do that bit for you; a reliable, managed cluster is only a few clicks away. Let’s have a peek at the biggest advantages of Kubernetes to any business or enterprise: Scalable When you’re developing applications and running workloads, Kubernetes delegates infrastructure utilization and boasts the ability to scale up in case CPU usage threshold is surpassed. As soon as the workload is reduced, Kubernetes scales back the application. Flexible and Cloud-friendly The massive benefit is being able to utilize several existing tools for cloud-native software. Staying true to the general scalability and flexible nature of the public cloud, Kubernetes is a great addition when resolving issues with clusters and deployments. Apps You Run Are Stable With Kubernetes applications are up and running quite quickly and they are much more stable. In addition, updates and changes can roll out without any downtime. Smooth Cloud Migration Since K8s runs consistently across all environments, on-premise and clouds like AWS, Azure and GCP, Kubernetes provides a more seamless and prescriptive path to port your application from on-premise to cloud environments.

Utilizing Databricks and Other Azure Collaboration Cloud Tools

Azure Databricks is another different and rather vital product for data experts, focused on allowing them to analyze data efficiently and smoothly. One of the biggest additional advantages is having actionable insights, which are understandable to non-data individuals within your company. For instance, if the data team delivers new data, business execs, marketers or sales can go over the data without requiring too much technical knowhow. Benefits for data engineers: a clear major advantage for data engineers is the ability to create, clone and edit clusters of intricate data, which they can transform and deliver effectively for review to data scientists and data analysts. Benefits for data scientists: they run advanced analysis on the same cluster of data in one interface - Databricks auto-scales within the cloud, thus decreasing the resources needed for optimized performance. Azure Databricks is easily integrated with numerous data analysis and storage tools from the Azure library, such as Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS), Azure Blob Storage,  Azure SQL Data Warehouse, or reporting via Power BI which is known for its user-friendly dashboards. Thanks to the elasticity of the cloud no matter how complex the data is, all the gathered information becomes much more accessible for non-data experts.

Adopt Your Own Cloud Sanctuary

Cloud grid computing is the future for research, and it helps companies shift from traditional workstations to the grid, thus leading to lower operational costs, auto-scaling, and speedy research performance. We have already taken a closer look at why grid computing is important for today’s large financial companies (hedge funds, and financial services). To learn even more, feel free to check out our recent post: Infinitely Scalable Clusters: Grid Computing 101. The bottom line is, if you have open-source tools such as Kubernetes by your side, they will no doubt help reorganize your business towards better production. However, the ultimate goal is quality, saving time through automation, and managing things more efficiently. Utilizing reliable tools that are cloud-based, means you have all the heavy lifting done for you. That’s where Hentsu and public cloud services’ features and functionalities come into play, complete with a solid infrastructure foundation.

Date/Time

Date(s) - 01/01/1970
12:00 AM - 12:00 AM

Location

600 5th ave. NY, NY