The learning path: Architect
Flow as the glue between systems: patterns, DTAP, edge and core, compliance.
- 1
DTAP: from development to production
Flow separates building from running. Only Development changes; Test, Acceptance and Production receive only committed versions, in a fixed order, with a trail of who promoted what and when. You add a test environment, move one version down the whole street, look at production's protection and the release history, and roll back the Flow version of an environment.
- 2
API gateway patterns
The gateway is the one front door for every API your organisation offers — including systems you do not build yourself. You put an existing stock system behind a proxy endpoint, choose per API how consumers sign in (API key, OAuth 2.0, webhook signature), see a signed call get in and an unsigned one fail, and make the API's description public.
- 3
Identity management and single sign-on
Who may get in, and who decides? With single sign-on your own identity provider decides (Entra ID, Google, Okta, Keycloak …): whoever leaves there can no longer get into Flow either. You connect the provider to your organisation in the portal, under Security and sign-in, and see how a colleague on your domain is sent there when signing in.
- 4
Flow as the glue between systems
The most built pattern: something comes in through an API, a workflow records it and passes it on to another system. You build a sign-up form integration: POST /sign-ups → workflow → a Flow table and the CRM. Along the way the trade-offs: what you keep in Flow and what not, and who decides who may come in and what may go out.
- 5
Identity between Flow and your cloud
A vault in your own cloud (Azure Key Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Google Cloud Secret Manager) needs a key of its own to get in. Putting that key in Flow as a password only moves the problem. That is why every environment has an identity of its own, issued by the portal: you trust exactly that identity in your cloud and give it read access. Flow then gets a short-lived token each time, and no secret is stored anywhere. You see where the portal shows that identity and what you set up per cloud.