Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Microsoft Flow vs IFTTT

Microsoft announced that their IFTTT-like Flow service is now out of beta.  They're targeting it more at the enterprise.  From the The Verge:

A Flow is an action that takes place after something else happens — like having a photo uploaded to Dropbox after emailing it to yourself. Unlike IFTTT, which lets you link two single actions with each other, Microsoft’s version can perform multiple actions in a single Flow. For example, you can choose to have a tweet containing a certain keyword trigger both a push notification and an email simultaneously instead of creating two separate recipes.
Compared to IFTTT, Flow is compatible with fewer third-party apps (58 supported apps to IFTTT’s 366). This makes sense, though, given that Flow is designed to be used at an enterprise level while IFTTT targets Internet of Things users.

IFTTT uses the idea of "recipes" where you link actions from different accounts so that an action can trigger something else.  IFTTT greatest feature has been it's "Do" mobile app which allows you build recipes based on your location.  Microsoft's Flow has a similar app.  I'll have to review it (first 750 actions are Free!) and see which works better.