Using SOAP Services with Logic Apps

Logic Apps is a new Microsoft cloud integration technology, currently in preview. It allows API centric workflows to be automated and executed within the Azure Platform. The technology is planned to be in general availability in Q2 2016, according to Microsoft’s Integration Roadmap published last year.

Logic Apps bases its actions on Managed Connectors and Custom APIs. Managed Connectors are APIs hosted within Azure that can be used to execute common workflow tasks, like sending an email via SMTP, or connecting to an SQL Server database hosted in Azure, while custom APIs are bespoke APIs created and deployed in the Azure Resource Group the Logic App resides in.

One connector that has been missing for some time is a SOAP connector. With a large ecosystem of SOAP services deployed today, interfacing all sorts of products, from SaaS offerings to custom web services, there is a good chance that integration workflows will need to use one of those services.

Whilst there is no managed SOAP connector, there are a couple of workarounds that can be applied when connecting a Logic App to a SOAP service. Developers can either connect to a SOAP service using the HTTP connector or, when that option is not suitable, they can leverage the Logic App ability to consume Custom APIs, wrapping the SOAP client code around an API App.

Read more about these workarounds on Microsoft’s Azure Logic Apps blog.