Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Did you know that you can leverage Azure Cognitive Services without writing a single line of code?

Microsoft Flow has dozens of GUI-based templates for common tasks. Just add your subscription keys, connect your accounts, and go!

WHAT IS MICROSOFT FLOW?
Microsoft Flow is a codeless automation environment that enables end users to orchestrate multi-step workflows that allow them to execute repetitive tasks or trigger automated processes.

And anyone is licensed to use Microsoft Flow via the “Free” version – especially if they have Office 365 subscriptions for its employees, in which case they have “Flow for Office 365”. (https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/)

WHAT CAN COGNITIVE SERVICES DO?
Cognitive Services includes things like text analytics that can scan text content for “whether a Tweet is positive or negative” or “whether a person is happy or sad”.  These can act as triggers for other actions that Flow can automate.

Here’s some Microsoft Flows using:

• Text Analytics” from Azure Cognitive Services:
  https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/shared_cognitiveservicestextanalytics/text-analytics/
• Face Recognition API:
  https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/shared_faceapi/face-api/
• Computer Vision API:
  https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/shared_cognitiveservicescomputervision/computer-vision-api/

…and there are Connectors to use the Bot Service, QnA Maker Service, Custom Vision API, and more!

For a brief tutorial on how to use Microsoft Flow & how to incorporate Cognitive Services:

• Microsoft Flow Tutorial – Cognitive Services – Hot Dog, Not Hot Dog
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5Oe0Yjmu-k