A continuation of my previous blog post: Power Platform – Dataverse Low Code Plug-Ins Part 2: Instant Plug-Ins, the line between Child Flows and Actions…and plugin?
[Note! This blog is written about the public preview version of Low Code Plug-Ins. I will try to update it whenever possible.]
Introduction
This will be a rather short post.
Initially when I stumbled upon ILCP several weeks ago, I automatically thought it would be a soon-to-be replacement for classic workflows1 and custom actions2 but I got one part wrong. That is the workflow. We have yet not seen anything that will be replacing workflows. In comparison to Automated Low-Code Plug-in, I feel like this does not give as much impact/value 💥.
Problem
As nice as ILCP is, it feels empty 🫙. It is basically just a nicer, cooler and a modern way of implementing an custom action… just like custom API (but simpler). From my perspective, the two major changes are the UI and the option to implement business logic using PowerFX otherwise the rest is the same (for now…?). So the question is, does it provide enough value to completely disregard ❌ custom action?
What I’m getting at is that, in my opinion, Instant Plug-ins aren’t particularly useful at the moment. This stems from a specific and rather significant detail.
You can’t orchestrate or call it within a classic workflow (as of writing). Why does this matter you may ask 🙋. While you can use some other component to orchestrate it, Power Automate being the first choice ☝️, and yes that is possible and very doable. But… it is not synchronous… and definitely not FREE! You know what is free? Classic Workflows. You know what is synchronous? Classic workflows.
This detail may not be that important to your customers/projects, but it probably will be to others. Classic Workflow is currently still important, but not very fun to use 🙅. That would be a understatement, it is a major party pooper.
If I am wrong about not being able to orchestrate ILCP within classic workflow, please prove me wrong! 🙂
Related Links
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/maker/data-platform/overview-realtime-workflows ↩︎
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/developer/data-platform/workflow-custom-actions ↩︎
Happy plugin-ing!
Van Carl Nguyen 
One response to “Power Platform – Dataverse Low Code Plug-Ins Part 2.1 [Preview]: Instant Plug-ins, not that great… yet?”
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