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Comment l’IA générative impacte-t-elle l’expérience développeur?
Adlene Sifi explore l'impact de l'IA générative sur l'expérience des développeurs. Dans cet article, nous allons tenter de déterminer s’il existe un lien entre l’utilisation de l’IA générative (ex. : GitHub Copilot) et l’expérience développeur (DevEx). Nous souhaitons vérifier plus précisément si l’utilisation de l’IA générative a un impact positif sur l’expérience développeur. Nous tenterons même de vérifier s’il existe un lien de causalité entre l’utilisation de l’IA générative et l’amélioration de l’expérience développeur. Nous allons dans un premier temps commencer par définir ces deux concepts. ...
How does generative AI impact Developer Experience?
Adlene Sifi explores the impact of generative AI on developer experience. In this article, we will try to determine if there is a link between the use of generative AI (e.g., GitHub Copilot) and developer experience (DevEx). Specifically, we aim to verify whether the use of generative AI has a positive impact on developer experience. We will even try to see if there is a causal link between the use of generative AI and the improvement of developer experience. First, let's define these two concepts. What is developer experience? Is it a new buzzword? A market trend? Worse, is it a new marketing tactic...
Supercharge Developer Workflows with GitHub Copilot Workspace Extensions
David Minkovski takes you on a hands-on journey to extend GitHub Copilot beyond just being a code assistant — turning it into a true AI-powered teammate inside VS Code. Motivation It is 2025 and Software Developers are faced with an incredibly fast-paced high-tech landscape — full of innovation and automation around every corner. Even with the consideration of AI taking on many roles (and hopefully not our jobs just yet) we are constantly challenged with rising complexities of distributed systems, cloud-native architectures and cognitive loads as well as context switching and endless interruptions. I c...
AI-Powered Customer Support: The Ultimate Multi-Agent System
David Minkovski explores using Azure OpenAI and Rust to Build Intelligent and Scalable AI Systems Motivation For the past few months, I’ve had the pleasure of taking the front seat to some really fascinating and exciting AI projects, thanks to my amazing customers and colleagues at Microsoft. During these sessions, I noticed a common challenge: How do I use ChatGPT while keeping control? So, I thought to myself, why not write a little article to help? Let’s break it down and create a super simple “multi-agent” system. This system will handle everything from the initial customer support request to e...
Deploying WebJobs to Azure Container Apps
Debjyoti Ganguly walks through the process of migrating existing WebJobs to Azure Container App Jobs, highlighting the benefits and providing practical steps to implement this migration effectively Introduction As businesses scale, the need for a robust and scalable environment for running background jobs becomes essential. Azure Container App Jobs offer a modern, scalable, and containerized solution for running background jobs, providing significant benefits over traditional Azure WebJobs. This guide will walk you through the process of migrating existing WebJobs to Azure Container App Jobs, highlighting...
AI: The New Frontier for Developers
AJ Enns reflects on his journey as a new developer and the impact of AI as an integrated, coding assistant for improving developer velocity. The year is 2024, and AI has been around for a while. ChatGPT broke onto the scene and changed the world forever. As soon as I heard about it, the first thing I did was try to learn Blazor with the help of AI. Within 3 weeks, I had a working example in a language I did not know before, as a result I was hooked. How do I share my recent learnings and amazement? Working as a Developer Advocate, I quickly learned that both the Developer and the Business were not early ad...
Debugging a managed identity connection to Azure SQL in Azure App Service using containers
Dominique St-Amand explores how to debug a managed identity connection from a container-based App Service to Azure SQL. So you’ve been eager to deploy your containerized web application that you’ve been working on for a while, to Azure App Service. You follow the best security practices which means you’ve setup your connection to your Azure SQL database using a managed identity. Upon loading your application, you get a dreadful exception that you can’t connect to the database. You then wonder, is this a database permission problem or some another problem, such as the application cannot connect to the datab...
Autogen RAG
Linkai Yu explores the retrieval-augemented generation pattern with Azure OpenAI Assistants API. The Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pattern is the standard for integrating ground AI with local data. One powerful way to implement RAG is through the function call or tool call feature in the Function Call API. When examining the samples provided by the Azure OpenAI Assistant API Function Call, Completion API Function Call, or Autogen Function Call, they all require the function metadata to be specified in the code. Imagine you have hundreds of data I/O functions, ranging from SQL queries to microservice...
Boosting Azure DevOps Security with GHAS Code Scanning
Debjyoti Ganguly shares insights on the security benefits and configuration of GHAS Code Scanning with Azure DevOps. Boosting Azure DevOps Security with GHAS Code Scanning Code scanning, a pipeline-based tool available in GitHub Advanced Security, is designed to detect code vulnerabilities and bugs within the source code of ADO (Azure DevOps) repositories. Utilizing CodeQL as a static analysis tool, it performs query analysis and variant analysis. When vulnerabilities are found, it generates security alerts. CodeQL CodeQL is a powerful static analysis tool used for showing vulnerabilities and bugs in so...
Running Open AI Whisper on Azure
Monu Bambroo explores Whisper, a speech to text model from OpenAI that you can use to transcribe audio files. The model is trained on a large dataset of English audio and text. The model is optimized for transcribing audio files that contain speech in English. The model can also be used to transcribe audio files that contain speech in other languages. Whisper is an advanced automatic speech recognition (ASR) system, developed using 680,000 hours of supervised multilingual and multitask data from the web. This extensive and diverse data set enhances its ability to handle various accents, background noise, a...
Copilot Studio – Prompt Response Times
Tahir Naveed walks through how to measure prompt response times with Microsoft Copilot Studio and explores considerations that factor into the overall performance of these requests. Building custom copilots (GenAI chatbots) in Microsoft Copilot Studio is amazing. Especially with the new functionalities which were released in Microsoft Build 2024. What’s more amazing is when we can point the custom copilots to different kinds of external and internal data sources like public websites (external), Dataverse tables (internal), SharePoint etc. Today we will be looking at how to check the response time of a p...
VBScript deprecation: Timelines and next steps
Scripting options for web development and task automation are modernizing. To provide you with the most modern and efficient options, we are replacing VBScript with more advanced alternatives such as JavaScript and PowerShell. Find out what VBScript deprecation means for you and how you can get ready. What is VBScript? Visual Basic Scripting Edition, commonly referred to as VBScript, is a lightweight scripting language first introduced by Microsoft in 1996. The language has been available as a system component in Windows OS and has been widely used for automating tasks and controlling applications on Windows-ba...
Azure CI/CD: Govern seamlessly from start to finish
Debjyoti Ganguly shares insights on a resilient end-to-end cloud governance framework for Azure CI/CD pipelines. Hey there, tech enthusiasts! This article serves as a technical guide to implementing a resilient end-to-end cloud governance framework for Azure CI/CD pipelines. It is designed to be vendor-agnostic and aligns seamlessly with enterprise security objectives, considerations, and compliance requirements. Throughout this discourse, we will employ the Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) model, a familiar concept utilized within the Azure Resource Manager framework. Decisive Process Deconstructi...
Azure Machine Learning Service for Kubernetes Architects: Deploy Your First Model on AKS with AZ CLI v2
Joseph Masengesho provides a step-by-step tutorial on how to deploy your first ML model on AKS. In a previous post, I provided a lengthy write-up about my understanding of using Kubernetes as a compute target in Azure ML from a Kubernetes architect’s perspective. In this post, I will offer a step-by-step tutorial that teaches you how to deploy your first ML model on AKS. As a disclaimer, I am not a data scientist; however, I work with customers who deploy ML workloads on Kubernetes. In this tutorial, we will deploy a trained regression model based on the MNIST Dataset, which consists of 60K handwritten digi...
How to visualize Semantic Kernel & Azure OpenAI plans using Mermaid
Jordan Bean explores how to visualize Semantic Kernel & Azure OpenAI plans using Mermaid. Using the function calling ability of Semantic Kernel/OpenAI is very exciting from an application development point of view. Instead of hard-coding paths though the system, Semantic Kernel & OpenAI can decide for themselves what plugins to call, the order of operations, parsing input & output, etc. However, it can be challenging to understand why the system decided to go down a path & all of the operations, prompts, function calls, etc. that occurred. Semantic Kernel provides a class that record...
Azure DevOps Pipelines: Discovering the Ideal Service Connection Strategy
John Folberth explores various configurations, decisions, and pros/cons that should be evaluated when deciding how your DevOps environment will deploy code into Azure. About This post is part of an overall series on Azure DevOps YAML Pipelines. The series will cover any and all topics that fall into the scope of Azure DevOps Pipelines. I encourage you to check it out if you are new to this space. Introduction When an organization is trying to configure their Azure DevOps (ADO) environment to deploy into Azure, they are immediately met with the dilemma on how their DevOps instance will execute the deploy...
Hands-On Azure Container Apps 101 — Deploying a scalable Go-Backend
David Minkovski shares a hands-on guide to explore the power and simplicity of Azure Container Apps and Azure Front Door as a great alternative to Azure Kubernetes Services and other Kubernetes implementations for developers. Motivation I am sure you have seen the world go crazy about Kubernetes and while this technology is amazing and has many benefits, the complexities of managing these clusters can be quite, how shall I put this…challenging. Well lucky for us Microsoft has come up with some real magic — Embrace the simplicity and power of Azure Container Apps and enjoy hassle-free web app deployment....
How to enhance your chatbot so it can retrieve data from multiple data sources & orchestrate its own plan with C# Semantic Kernel, planner & Azure OpenAI – part 4 (local development & deployment details)
In this multi-part series, Jordan Bean shares how to enhance a chatbot to retrieve data from multiple data sources and orchestrate plans with C# Semantic Kernel, planner, and Azure Open AI. In the previous post, I detailed how the demo app runs. In this post, let’s talk about some of the techniques & technologies I used to make the demo easy to deploy & run. Here is the link to the GitHub repo. Project Tye Project Tye is an open-source project that makes it easy to stand up a microservice-based application locally. It is easy to run any individual API or web app, such as running or . Ho...
How to enhance your chatbot so it can retrieve data from multiple data sources & orchestrate its own plan with C# Semantic Kernel, planner & Azure OpenAI – part 3 (demo app)
In this multi-part series, Jordan Bean shares how to enhance a chatbot to retrieve data from multiple data sources and orchestrate plans with C# Semantic Kernel, planner, and Azure Open AI. In the previous post, we talked about the implementation details of how the demo app works & how to set up Semantic Kernel, with the and Azure OpenAI. Now that you understand the code, let’s look at the demo application. Here is the link to the GitHub repo. Use case As a reminder, we are building a customer support chatbot for our fictional outdoor sporting equipment company. We want to be able to answer commo...
How to enhance your chatbot so it can retrieve data from multiple data sources & orchestrate its own plan with C# Semantic Kernel, planner & Azure OpenAI – part 2 (demo app implementation)
In this multi-part series, Jordan Bean shares how to enhance a chatbot to retrieve data from multiple data sources and orchestrate plans with C# Semantic Kernel, planner, and Azure Open AI. In the previous post, we discussed how the RAG pattern isn’t enough to answer complex user questions. We talked about using Semantic Kernel to orchestrate AI calls can allow AI to generate its own plan for answering questions from various data sources. In my GitHub repo, I have a sample application that demonstrates this idea. Azure Architecture In this example, all the APIs & web apps are hosted in Azure Con...
How to enhance your chatbot so it can retrieve data from multiple data sources & orchestrate its own plan with C# Semantic Kernel, planner & Azure OpenAI – part 1
In this multi-part series, Jordan Bean shares how to enhance a chatbot to retrieve data from multiple data sources and orchestrate plans with C# Semantic Kernel, planner, and Azure Open AI. As discussed in the previous post about Azure OpenAI, using the Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) pattern is a simple & effective way to enable Azure OpenAI to “chat with your data”. This pattern enables you to search your data with Azure Cognitive Search (a search engine), retrieve relevant snippets of information from your data, then add that additional information to your prompts to the Azure OpenAI service to...
Configuration of Data Movement between On-prem or private network to Azure Cloud
In this post, Yanzhong Liang (Microsoft Cloud Solution Architect) and Todd Shain (United Healthcare Group) share some learnings from the field, moving data between environments with Azure Data Factory. In this article, we will take a look at how to transfer files between your on-premises or private network and Azure cloud storage, automatically. Consider a scenario where researchers need to securely transfer small or large files, like databases, from virtual machines to Azure cloud storage for archiving and backup purposes. They also need to download result files or data to local machines, then upload t...
Effective Kubernetes for JakartaEE and Microprofile Developers
In this post, David Minkovski explores some best practices to get your deployment up and running on Kubernetes and Azure. Motivation Kubernetes has become one of the most loved solutions for managing containers. But can you tell me why people love it? Because it runs magic containers (essentially what you want) where you want. Whether on-premises or in the cloud (Azure), Kubernetes enables engineering teams to ship containers and scale and manage deployments and clusters easily. Let’s look at some of those benefits some other time, OK? I am sure you will find plenty of resources out there explaining why...
Azure DevOps Workload Identity Federation
With the recent arrival of the Public preview of Workload identity federation for Azure Pipelines, you may be wondering how to efficiently migrate dozens or even hundreds of ARM Service Connections to take advantage of these benefits. In this post, Emmanuel Knafo dives right in. Updating Your Azure DevOps ARM Service Connections To Use The Recommended Workload Identity Federation With the recent arrival of the Public preview of Workload identity federation for Azure Pipelines, you may be wondering how to efficiently migrate my dozens or even hundreds of ARM Service Connections to take advantage of these ...
Part 5 – Unlock the Power of Azure Data Factory: A Guide to Boosting Your Data Ingestion Process
John Folberth and Joe Fitzgerald share sample guidance for developing and deploying an Azure Data Factory into multiple environments. Introduction Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 This section will build on that and include how to build/deploy larger Data Factories which leverage Azure Resource Manager Linked Templates for deployment. When Linked Templates Are Required Typically, users will not desire to use linked templates; however, there are explicit limitations of a single ARM template which may require one to dep...
Configuring Azure Blob Trigger Identity Based Connection
So want to connect your blob triggered function to a storage account, but you don’t want to put your connection string or secrets into the configuration? Andrew Redman explores how to do it in this blog post. What’s the problem? You want to connect your blob triggered function to a storage account, but you don’t want to put your connection string or secrets into the configuration. Prior to Azure Blobs extension 5.0.0, this was your only option, but not anymore. With these later versions you can now connect to your storage account using a managed identity. Here are the simple steps involved to make thi...
Part 4 – Unlock the Power of Azure Data Factory: A Guide to Boosting Your Data Ingestion Process
John Folberth and Joe Fitzgerald share sample guidance for developing and deploying an Azure Data Factory into multiple environments. Background This post is the next post in the series Unlock the Power of Azure Data Factory: A Guide to Boosting Your Data Ingestion Process. This also happens to overlap and is included in the series on YAML Pipelines. All code snippets and final templates can be found out on my GitHub TheYAMLPipelineOne. For the actual data factory, we will leverage my adf_pipelines_yaml_ci_cd repository. Introduction After reading parts 1-3 on Unlock the Power of Azure D...
Programmatically Create SAS tokens in .NET
Andrew Redman explores how to programmatically create SAS tokens using .NET. Introduction In today's digital landscape, data security and controlled access are critical concerns for businesses. Azure Blob Storage is a popular cloud storage solution, allowing you to store and manage unstructured data. To safeguard your data while granting controlled access to authorized users, one effective approach is to generate Shared Access Signature (SAS) tokens programmatically in .NET. In this blog post, we'll explore how to create SAS tokens in .NET, to enhance the security of your Azure Blob Storage. ...
Part 3 – Unlock the Power of Azure Data Factory: A Guide to Boosting Your Data Ingestion Process
John Folberth and Joe Fitzgerald share sample guidance for developing and deploying an Azure Data Factory into multiple environments. Introduction To see a complete introduction to this blog series, including links to all the other parts, please follow the link below: Part 1 - Unlock the Power of Azure Data Factory: A Guide to Boosting Your Data Ingestion Process Part 3 of the blog series will focus on: Access to all files is in GitHub. The YAML Pipeline Structure To create the YAML pipeline for publishing data factory artifacts and then deploying those art...
Azure DevOps Pipelines: Practices for Scaling Templates
John Folberth explores what is considered "good practices" when looking to leverage one repository consisting of YAML templates in this blog series. Introduction This article is part of a larger series on Azure DevOps Pipelines regarding leveraging YAML templating. As part of this series, I have had numerous requests or questions around what is considered "good practices" when looking to leverage one repository consisting of YAML templates. Objective The objective on what we are trying to achieve is create a structure by which we can create a task, job, stage, or variable template once and let...
Part 2 – Unlock the Power of Azure Data Factory: A Guide to Boosting Your Data Ingestion Process
John Folberth and Joe Fitzgerald share sample guidance for developing and deploying an Azure Data Factory into multiple environments. Introduction To see a complete introduction to this blog series, including links to all the other parts, please follow the link below: Part 1 - Unlock the Power of Azure Data Factory: A Guide to Boosting Your Data Ingestion Process Part 2 of the blog series will focus on: Configure Azure Data Factory Source Control After you have the Azure resources created Launch the Azure Data Factory Studio for the development instance, adf-demo-dev-eastus-001...
Load testing your applications using Azure Load Testing, JMeter and GitHub Actions
Dominique St-Amand shares an introduction on JMeter concepts and goes on to create a basic test plan to load test a sample application and run it through a GitHub Action workflow. I’ve been working with more customers that are starting to take testing (unit, integration, end to end and load testing) more seriously. You may ask, “Dom, really? I thought testing was trivial”. Unfortunately not. As we’re entering an era where businesses are producing software like never before, relatively speaking, these businesses are not software companies. They are seeking to prioritize the speedy creation of business value...
Part 1 – Unlock the Power of Azure Data Factory: A Guide to Boosting Your Data Ingestion Process
John Folberth and Joe Fitzgerald share sample guidance for developing and deploying an Azure Data Factory into multiple environments. Introduction In the fast-paced world of cloud architecture, securely collecting, ingesting, and preparing data for health care industry solutions has become an essential requirement. And that's where Azure Data Factory (ADF) comes in. As an Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) cloud service, ADF empowers you to scale-out serverless data integration and data transformation with ease. Imagine being able to effortlessly create data-driven workflows that orchestrate data movem...
The Art of HTTP Connection Pooling: How to Optimize Your Connections for Peak Performance
Ramakrishna Thanniru, Engineering, Optum / United Health Group Pete Tian, Sr Cloud Solution Architect, Microsoft Migrating an on-prem system to the public cloud can be a daunting task. While many companies have successfully made the transition, some have struggled with unexpected issues. One common problem is the sudden decrease in transaction speed, which can lead to system crashes and frustrating downtime. The Ops team may find themselves scratching their heads when faced with messages such as "timeout exceptions" or "HTTP 504 Gateway Timeout" in the logs, unsure of how to address these issues. As ...
Hosting Option for OpenEMR in Azure
Cloud Solution Architect, Monu Bambroo, spotlights OpenEMR and various ways to host the service in Azure. OpenEMR is the most popular open source electronic health records and medical practice management solution. OpenEMR is designed to be used by healthcare providers and organizations of all sizes, from small clinics to large hospitals. It is a web-based application that can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection, making it easy for providers to access patient records from anywhere. Open EMR software is also fully customizable, allowing providers to tailor it to their specific needs and...
Azure DevOps Pipelines: Leveraging Stages with YAML Objects
John Folberth continues his series on Azure DevOps Pipelines, by Leveraging Stages with YAML Objects. Introduction By now we’ve covered the basics on tasks, jobs, stages, environments, variables and templates for jobs and tasks. It is now time to move towards stage templates. Additionally, to assist with templating we will cover one way to leverage YAML objects which is a key tool when templating up and keeping your pipelines DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself). To follow along I am leveraging non-ADO code in from Azure IaC Flavors and YAML templates from TheYAMLPipelineOne Stages Recapping from a previous...
Azure DevOps Pipelines: If Expressions and Conditions
John Folberth continues his series on Azure DevOps Pipelines by taking a deep dive into If Expressions and Conditions. At this stage in the series we’ve talked about tasks, jobs, stages, how to template them, and how to leverage environments in variables. This post will attempt to cover some basics around using if and conditions in your YAML Pipelines. If Expressions If expressions are simple and easy enough in YAML pipelines, they are a powerful tool. In my experience I have leveraged if expressions to: The key to unlocking their power is the understanding that an if expression will e...
Developer Support and MSDN/Visual Studio Subscription Benefits
Visual Studio provides valuable subscription benefits for building software and creating test environments. This includes access to installation media, developer tools, online training, Azure/Office 365 subscriptions, and even basic support. Since most development teams have access to MSDN/Visual Studio Subscriptions, businesses will frequently ask: Why would we need to add Developer Support as part of a Unified Support Contract? It is important to understand the limited scope of support benefits included with a Visual Studio Subscription. Some VS subscriptions include incident support made available to...
Azure DevOps Pipelines: Tasks, Jobs, Stages and more!
John Folberth recently contributed a series of Azure DevOps posts in our Tech Community covering a range of Pipeline topics, including Template Tasks, Jobs, Environments, Variables, Jobs, and Stages. There is a lot of great information, so be sure to check these out. Azure DevOps Pipelines: Tasks, Jobs, Stages When starting in Azure DevOps Pipelines one can immediately become inundated with terminology that may seem foreign or question what pipeline structure will lead to the most flexibility and streamlining of their build/deployment process. This post will focus on the hierarchy of Tasks->Jobs-Sta...
Deploying Kubernetes Cluster on Azure VMs using kubeadm, CNI and containerd
Cenk Caglar and Toros Gökkurt walk through how to deploy Kubernetes clusters on Azure VMs using kubeadm, CNI and containerd. Although managed Kubernetes clusters are great, ready for production, and secure, they hide most of the administrative operations. I remember the days I was working with Kubernetes the hard way repository to deploy on Azure Virtual Machines and I was thinking that there should be an easier way to deploy your cluster. One of the well-known methods is kubeadm which is announced at 2018. Since then, it is part of the Kubernetes and has its own GitHub page. When we were studying for K...
Azure DevOps – Leveraging Pipeline Decorators for Custom Process Automation
In this post, Jin Lee explores how Azure DevOps Pipeline Decorators can bridge the gap in a cloud environment with a customer's existing security processes on their on-premises IIS server. Background In the recent pandemic, health institutions all across the world have been pushed to their limits on about every facet. Through this, many such institutions have begun to reprioritize their modernization efforts around their cloud infrastructure to support increasing demands and hedge against uncertainty. As institutions are migrating their existing workloads into the cloud, a common challenge they are faced ...
Introduce RBAC in PostgreSQL Flexible Server
Pete Tian spotlights RBAC for PostgreSQL Flexible Server. As more enterprises modernize identity management by using RBAC and simply authentication with Single Sign-On, the efforts of maintaining separate sets of username/password for every legacy database instance is still excessive operational overhead that is considerable for IT admins. Even worse, once the databases migrated to public cloud with public IP exposure, the legacy identity management system became a security nightmare. The voice demanding integration of RBAC / RDBMS access management has been crescendo in recent years, and finally a solu...
Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL w/ React QuickStart
John Folberth and Daniel Kim dive into Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL and React with this overview and QuickStart. At Ignite 2022, Microsoft made an announcement for PostgreSQL in Azure CosmosDB! What is Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL? Azure Cosmos DB - is a fast, distributed NoSQL database. Scalable with 99.999% availability! (Get started) PostgreSQL - Here are some reasons why you might want to use PostgreSQL – Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL has combined these two technologies and extended with Citus extension to bring distributed tables for PostgreSQL. Combining Azure Cosmos DB...
Tracking Azure History with Azure Resource Graph
John Folberth explores how Azure Resource Graph can help you can track environmental changes that span multiple subscriptions and resources. When administrating an Azure environment, or any environment really, one will most likely find a way to track changes that were introduced. There are a number of ways to do this. Within Azure can query the Subscription or Resource Group Deployment, the downside though is this approach is limited to just the scope you are querying on. What if this is a larger organization with multiple subscriptions? You could also rely on a well-established CI/CD pipeline, a third-par...
Deep Dive into Social Media Analytics
Daniel Kim shares a two-part series exploring how to use Social Media, Azure Synapse & Power BI to make Insightful decisions with Social Media Analytics. Imagine you are a product developer for a healthcare company who wants to find trending topics around your recently developed product - or - you are a researcher for a company who wants to search around what is trending on the market to come up with new innovative products. You’ll first need to find a way to scrape different news sites and search popular social media platform, like Twitter, to find trending topics. Also imagine, after all the sc...
Learn, connect, explore – stay at the forefront of rapidly evolving technologies!
Looking for a way to stay current and get hands-on experience with Azure? Now you can get notified about events—from local hacks, workshops, and training sessions to virtual meetups and global conferences. Get the latest articles, documentation, and events from Microsoft.Source—the curated monthly developer community newsletter. Learn about new technologies and find opportunities to connect with other developers online and locally. Interested in learning more about Kubernetes or just want to get started developing apps with Azure using Python, Java, .NET and more? Get the...
Getting secrets from Key Vault in YAML pipeline
Andrew Redman spotlights how to use a Key Vault Task inside an Azure DevOps pipeline to automate a deployment using secrets. Keeping your connection strings and secrets secure is not necessarily only a concern of just one type of industry. The best practice would be to keep security at the top of your mind regardless of if you are working on an app for a company in the Healthcare space or Finance, Retail, etc….Azure Key Vault can help in doing just that. If you have ever created an Azure App Service or Azure Function App that uses app settings, then you have dealt with the problem of how you ...
Azure AD OAuth client credential flow with custom certificate walk-through
Nicola Delfino demonstrates how to use a certificate to request an access token to Azure Active Directory, using the OAuth 2.0 client credential flow You can use the OAuth 2.0 client credentials grant specified in RFC 6749, to access web-hosted resources by using the identity of an application. This type of grant is commonly used for server-to-server interactions that must run in the background, without immediate interaction with a user. The OAuth 2.0 client credentials grant flow permits a web service (confidential client) to use its own credentials, instead of impersonating a user, to authenticate whe...
The Microsoft Planetary Computer
Susan Leighton spotlights the Planetary Computer, combining a multi-petabyte catalog of global environmental data with intuitive APIs, a flexible scientific environment that allows users to answer global questions about that data, and applications that put those answers in the hands of conservation stakeholders. In Microsoft’s 2021 Environmental Sustainability Report, in addition to discussing the early progress on commitments around being a carbon negative, water positive, and a zero-waste company by 2030, we stated that we would build a Planetary Computer. So, what is it? This blog contains a consolidate...
Express Design – AppDev on Steroids
Tahir Naveed spotlights Express Design, a new way to quickly get started with Power Apps by instantly transforming your visual design into an app. As soon as the announcement of Express Design came out on Microsoft Build, I wanted to get my hands dirty with it. Here is a quick tutorial on how it works. Express Design (Preview) is a new way to quickly get started with Power Apps by instantly transforming your visual design into an app. App design can be in the form of paper forms, whiteboard sketches, or Figma files without the knowledge of the database or any programming language. Design an app: ...
DevOps Fragility, Antipatterns, and Consequences
Mark Eisenberg and Keith Anderson spotlight app architecture, organizational structure, and testing responsibilities and the importance of how these areas can improve or hinder the effectiveness of DevOps practices. Overview DevOps was born from the idea of applying development practices and tooling to the creation and management of IT infrastructure. The specific practice that caught the attention of these IT experts was Agile. They saw the promise of applying iterative development to infrastructure automation in a practice that would come to be known as infrastructure as code. From that simple idea, ...
Kubernetes and Challenges in Cloud-Agnostic Strategies
Stephen Abdo and Pete Tian examine cloud-agnostic strategies and explore common challenges and misconceptions. Overview and Industry Trends Over the past several years there has been an increased focus on adopting cloud-agnostic strategies. Some common reasons to do this are to avoid becoming dependent on any one cloud provider and the freedom to pursue a best-of-breed ecosystem. Kubernetes is one technology that has been used to accomplish these goals. Microsoft has even been making more and more PaaS services available in Kubernetes to aid in that effort. However, we sometimes see customers who are n...
How To Batch Importing Azure DevOps Work Items Using Azure DevOps APIs and C#
Kyle Johnson and Sash Kavalaparambil explore batch import for Azure DevOps work items using REST APIs. While you can upload a CSV with work items into Azure DevOps, there is so much flexibility you get when you import work items using the Azure DevOps API. What you need You can do this by creating an app registration and using MSAL to authenticate but to keep it simple for this blog post, we will create a Personal Access Token (PAT) then use that PAT token in the code. Steps to create a PAT token - Use personal access tokens - Azure DevOps | Microsoft Docs Below is a sample CSV file. Now let’s...
DevOps Nirvana – Part 1
Randy Pagels takes you on a DevOps journey to frame up the way an organization would foster a strong DevOps culture. Contributions made to this blog post by Kyle Burns, Microsoft Cloud Solution Architect and Able Wang, former Principal Cloud Advocate and DevOps Lead at Microsoft, his contributions and skills will be forever appreciated. During this blog series I will be taking you on a DevOps journey to frame up the way an organization would foster a strong DevOps culture. I’ve referenced this fantastic blog written by Niels (Nells) Talens on the “AgileThings” website. Source: AgileThings. This blog is ...
Software Carbon Intensity?
Tammy McClellan is an advocate for sustainability and the Green Software Foundation (GSF). Learn more about how developers are putting this passion into practice. When Microsoft announced of the Green Software Foundation (GSF), I jumped at the opportunity to join the initiative and went all in - joining 3 out of 4 working groups. As a developer and a sustainability advocate, I’m keen to understand and help reduce the amount of carbon we emit as a farm, but also in my job working with software and customers. Back in October of 2021, I participated in a Global Hackathon for Sustainability and got 3 day...
Implementing Power BI Row-level security (RLS) at the user level
Bill Bevan spotlights row-level security at the user level with Power BI. Have you ever had to restrict data, but didn’t know how to filter per user? Using Power BI’s Row-level Security (RLS) is a great way to accomplish this. In this short blog you will be introduced to a scenario on how to do just that. Note: The data used in this blog was downloaded from the ‘Microsoft Contoso BI Demo Dataset for Retail Industry’ that can be found here. Implementation of this solution is done in three stages, as follows and detailed below: Identify Source The following sample is a subset of...
Performance regression tests at Microsoft Security
In this post, Maor Frankel shares insights about performance regression testing in Microsoft Security. During the past 6 years, a significant amount of my work has gone into improving the performance of the Web application I work on. This has been the case at my previous work at Outbrain and at my current position in the front end (FE) core team at Microsoft Security. The typical approach to testing performance in similar cases is to add logs from the client code that measure user flows you want to track (aka RUM, Real User Monitoring). For instance, you might add a start page load marker every ti...
Exploring Service Bus with Fantasy Football
Chris Tjoumas explores the power and flexibility of Azure Service Bus through some fun with Fantasy Football. For the past 15 years, I’ve been playing fantasy football and probably spend too much time each Sunday during the regular season watching every single game. Rather than trying to convince me to do other things such as finish my home improvement projects or visit a winery (rather than football?!?), my wife decided to join me instead and she created her own women’s league. After several years, her league disbanded, but to keep her and I sharing this hobby of mine, she said that I should create a head...
Hybrid Model for GitHub and Azure DevOps – Enjoy the best of both worlds
Shany Wiesel explores the benefits of a hybrid model using GitHub Enterprise and Azure DevOps. We often hear repeating conversations with Enterprise customers who have invested in Azure DevOps and have great working dev sec ops processes and success enabled by Azure DevOps: While we know that Microsoft is investing in Both products, Azure DevOps and GitHub Enterprise, we also know that more options for Cross Service avenues are being introduced. This opens endless possibilities to consider the “what, when and why.” Keeping in mind that GitHub enterprise is constantly being introduced a...
Azure Container Apps
Monu Bambroo explores Azure Container Apps -- a serverless container service built for microservice applications and robust autoscaling capabilities without the overhead of managing complex infrastructure. Microsoft recently announced Azure Container Apps in Preview – a new serverless container platform. The idea behind this offering is to run your microservices style applications without needing to focus on the infrastructure and is built on top of industry standard Kubernetes. This platform provides value added services like out of the box Ingress, Auto Scale, Dapr integration with features like pubs/sub...
Data modeling for Power BI
Data Modeling is used to connect multiple data sources in Power BI tool using a relationship. A relationship defines how data sources are connected with each other. In order for you to get the most out of your data it is important to follow several Power BI data modeling best practices.
Marketplace Office Hours (Business and Technical)- Register Now for February Sessions
The commercial marketplace services team in Azure engineering has upcoming (February 2022) Marketplace Office Hours on business and technical topics; providing publishers with the information and resources to successfully publish their solutions to the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace.
Marketplace Office Hours (Business and Technical)- Register Now
The commercial marketplace services team in Azure engineering has upcoming Marketplace Office Hours on business and technical topics; providing publishers with the information and resources to successfully publish their solutions to the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace. Register for one of the following Marketplace Office hours sessions now.
Community is one variable of the Certification equation
A learn-it-all, growth mindset is critical for personal growth and development in addition to building a successful team.
Workshop Spotlight: GitHub
If you are looking to build your team's expertise with GitHub, there is no shortage of resources available. This post is to spotlight a few of the popular workshops available to organizations looking to build expertise with GitHub.
Deconstructing Azure PowerShell APIs with Fiddler
There are a ton of great PowerShell libraries out there that are super easy to use. Most of these just sit on top of standard REST APIs and abstract all the details away. When you are building code to use REST APIs, it’s easy to use Fiddler and a PowerShell API to generate your own sample of a working request payload.
Workshop Spotlight: Secure DevOps – Application Security Principles and Practices
Secure software requires design well beyond parameter and infrastructure security. It starts with getting developers on board with important concepts and considerations as the code is being written—long before it’s released.
Getting Started with GPT-3 in Power Platform
Now you can write natural language to generate Power Fx formulas and use them to build your app in Power Platform.
Getting acquainted with Azure Synapse SQL Serverless
Synapse SQL Serverless was built for large-scale data processing. The service provides fault-tolerance and enables high reliability even for long-running queries involving very large datasets.
Getting Started with Graph API and Teams
In this post, I’ll look at how to setup an app registration and move some of these concepts into a custom application that uses Graph API. We'll build on an existing Graph Tutorial, review some concepts, and add support for sending a chat message in Teams.
Getting Started with Graph API and Graph Explorer
Some SDKs may be better tailored for a particular environment or language, but just about everything supports basic REST calls. That’s what makes Microsoft Graph API so attractive. Not only does it provide simple REST interfaces for all kinds of Microsoft products and services, but it’s relatively easy to work with.
Workshop Spotlight: Developing Cross-Platform Web Apps with ASP.NET Core
.NET Core: Developing Cross-Platform Web Apps with ASP.NET Core WorkshopPLUS establishes fundamentals of ASP.NET Core before diving into full-stack development techniques.
How to deploy Angular app to Azure App Service running Linux from GitHub
This sample demonstrates how to deploy, from GitHub, an Angular single page application (SPA) to Azure App Service running Node.js on Linux. A continuous delivery/continuous integration pipeline will be also put in place with a GitHub Action.
Deploying an Azure APIM Self-Hosted Gateway
With so many customization and integrations options, organizations can leverage these powerful Azure services for a variety of architectures and applications. Self-hosted gateways help improve performance, while ensuring secure and efficient API traffic.
Workshop Spotlight: DevOps Fundamentals
The DevOps fundamentals workshop introduces the business value of DevOps then walks the attendees through the essential practices required for a healthy implementation of DevOps within an Organization.
Using COPY command with Azure Synapse Analytics SQL Dedicated Pool
Azure Synapse Analytics includes many features and capabilities, among those is the COPY command which makes copying data into a data warehouse very easy. This video will walk you though using the COPY command to import data into a data warehouse table for use by data consumers.
Integration with On-Premises Data Sources in Azure Synapse Analytics
Today many organizations are cloud hybrid in nature so they need to read from and write to on-premises data stores including file systems and relational databases.
Adding source control to Azure Synapse Analytics Studio
Most users of Azure Synapse Analytics will need to use it within a team environment, as such using source control to handle multiple users writing code and building processes in the service will be needed. Thankfully Synapse Analytics Studio includes built-in support for 2 of the most popular Git service providers – GitHub & Azure DevOps.
To B2B or to B2C?
While one uses B to signify it’s focus on business partnerships, while the other uses C for consumers, at the end of the day either can be used to accomplish roughly the same access. My intent here is to focus on what I see as the fundamental difference; one that is most likely to drive the appropriate choice of technology.
No Batch No Problem
This post will go over how to expand sub-properties of an OData REST API request without using a batch request. This will be useful in SharePoint 2013+ On-Premise environments where the batch request is not available.
Dangling DNS and Subdomain Takeovers
This post explores what is commonly referred to as a “Dangling DNS Subdomain Takeover” and why you never delete a resource that backs a CNAME entry in your DNS without first redirecting or removing the CNAME record first.
Calling a Helper API in an Azure APIM Inbound Policy
With Azure APIM, you can completely control how developers consume your services. Through policies, you can transform data, validate requests, integrate backends, and probably cook the world's best cheeseburger. This powerful feature enables complex systems and architectures to be seamlessly connected, ensuring your data and process stay safe.
Managing ADX Data with .NET Core and Azure B2C
In this article, I wanted to show how you can create a custom .NET Core web app to access and manage ADX data. For additional demonstration, I showed how to authenticate with Azure B2C, leverage Dependency Injection and Caching, as well as integrate with a custom API for filtering.
Calling an API in Power Apps Portals using JavaScript
The Microsoft Power Apps Platform allow you to build powerful and stylish applications quickly, all from within the browser. By integrating your business systems and APIs, you can expose functionality to users quickly, secure it with your favorite Identity Provider, and have something to show off at the next family reunion.
Grow your business through the Microsoft commercial marketplace
We have upcoming business and technical webinars designed to help you scale your business through the Microsoft commercial marketplace and the Azure government marketplace.
PowerApps – Filtering BrowseGallery by Choice Field Values
After researching, it is clear that the Choice fields are not seen as Text fields (despite SharePoint treating them as Text fields). So the Search ignores the “Track” Choice field.
Cloud Economics
In this article, we will explore how to track costs from these 3 cloud service providers. We will also carve out a strategy to estimate on-premise costs.
Connecting an Azure Logic App to a local Web API
In this article, I’ll show you how you can test your Logic Apps with your on-prem systems using a few cool tools and services.
Working with Azure Storage Blobs with a Java Azure Function
As a long-time C# developer, working with Java is a big change. It’s a completely new way to package files, include dependencies, and host applications. Luckily, the code syntax is very similar. Hopefully, this blog helps anyone looking to make a similar transition and work with Azure Functions using multiple languages.
Importing an OpenAPI API into Azure API Management Service
By leveraging Azure API Management for administration, developers can quickly import their applications and manage their systems on a global level. Through the Azure portal or code, you can get your APIs into a managed environment and help your users develop their applications.
How to Post a File to an Azure Function in 3 Minutes
Recently, I needed to upload a file to Azure Functions, and found a hard time finding a blog on the easiest/fastest way to do it. So, I decided to write this quick article to show you how. And I think I can do it under 3 minutes!
Setting up for Azure B2C development
The following describes some techniques, tools and approaches I found useful when developing applications with Azure AD B2C. The first part deals with setting up a newly created B2C tenant using the Azure portal only. The second part deals with developing custom journeys (Identity Experience Framework) xml policies.
Reducing SNAT Port consumption in Azure App Services
If you find yourself struggling with SNAT ports using Azure App Services and your destination is an Azure service that supports service endpoints, regional VNET integration with Service Endpoints or Private Endpoints can provide a fairly simple way to allow these requests to use an internal, optimized route and avoid SNAT port limitations.
MicroFrontends With Blazor WebAssembly
In this post we were able to demonstrate how to maintain different components as separate libraries which could be imported into the main shell in order to allow modular distributed development.
SharePoint Workflow transformation to Power Automate
The SharePoint Workflow transformation to Power Automate workshop is targeted toward a Business and IT audience and focuses on workflow assessment and migration guidance to Power Automate in a discovery and hands-on learning event.
There’s more to Power Platform than low-code/no-code development
Power Platform is incredibly powerful and capable. If you are new to Power Platform, there are a lot of great reasons to check it out, but if you are already an organization using Office 365, you may be missing out.
Claims encryption for B2C tokens
Once you sign in and consent, you should see TokenEncryption API in your Enterprise Apps. You will then be able to register your own client applications (recipients of encrypted tokens), set their API Permission to access the Token Encryption API with decrypt application permission, and use client credentials to request a token.
Sample script to transform SharePoint Migration Tool reports
This is a simple script that transforms SPMT reports into folders, broken out by website so people working on specific pages can easily see which action items pertain to them.
Generate a Service Bus SAS Token and Manage Token renewal using Azure Runbooks
This article covers the process of generating a service bus token using PowerShell, using an azure runbook to cover token generation and renewal, and the how process can be automated and managed with a CI/CD pipeline.
Microsoft Identity Platform which OAuth flow should I use?
Microsoft Identity Platform: which OAuth2 flow should I use? My non-prescriptive one-page guide in choosing the right auth flow for every situation.
How to Surface a Classic Solution in a Modern Page
This post will go over how to surface a classic SharePoint HTML/JS/CSS solution in a modern page or teams tab.
Collect and Automate Diagnostic Actions with Azure App Services
Troubleshooting production systems is often a balance between restoring services quickly and trying to collect enough information to isolate what caused the issue. For complex application issues, it’s almost always helpful to capture a memory dump.
Azure DevOps Services: Essentials – Git with Visual Studio and VS Code
The Azure DevOps Services: Essentials – Git with Visual Studio WorkshopPLUS is an instructor-led training course that provides participants with the fundamental knowledge that is required to use Git with Visual Studio. It provides detailed guidance for working with version control, work items, automated builds, and deployments.
Introduction to Supervised Machine Learning
Machine learning is a very powerful tool for businesses and researchers to create predictions for data problems. However, there are many steps to creating models and not every model is suited for each problem. We have to use a combination of human judgment and computational techniques to create the right model.
Scaling User experiences with Micro frontends
Users expect software to be approachable and familiar on any device they use. Modern user experiences are cross platform spanning the web, apps, and operating systems putting users in the center.
Go and C# Comparison
In this post, App. Dev. Manager Vishal Saroopchand showcases similarities and differences on important topics for C# developers learning Go.
Taste of Premier: Azure Security Center
Security is foundational for Azure. Take advantage of multi-layered security provided across physical data centers, infrastructure, and operations.
Measuring Concurrent Jobs Over Time
If you are looking to move your Azure DevOps Server or TFS implementation to Azure DevOps Services, you will find that the licensing and pricing around concurrent jobs has changed.
Using OAuth2 OBO with Azure AD B2C
This sample uses a custom web service (B2BOBOWeb) to provide a token endpoint, which handles the Extension Grant requests and communicates with B2C to respond with a valid response (access token). It uses a specific B2C tenant configured with custom journeys to handle this communication.
Securing Blazor WebAssembly Application With Azure Active Directory
In this post, Consultants Wael Kdouh and Marius Rochon shows how to secure Blazor WebAssembly Applications with Azure Active Directory.
Microsoft Design Inclusivo
O Design Inclusivo não apenas abre nossos produtos e experiências para mais pessoas com uma gama maior de habilidades como também reflete como as pessoas realmente são. Todos nós estamos evoluindo, mudando e se adaptando ao mundo ao seu redor todos os dias. Queremos que nossos projetos reflitam essa diversidade.
Microsoft Inclusive Design
Designing for inclusivity not only opens up our products and experiences to more people with a wider range of abilities. It also reflects how people really are. All humans are growing, changing, and adapting to the world around them every day. We want our designs to reflect that diversity.
GitHub Actions Overview
In this post, App Dev Managers Bernard Apolinario, Sujith Nair, and Latha Natarajan gives a thorough overview of GitHub Actions.
Opening an Incident Using Microsoft Premier Online, now Services Hub
Microsoft Services Hub is a secured online portal exclusively available for Premier and Unified support customers. The site provides a wealth of support resources to help you troubleshoot issues and stay knowledgeable about Microsoft technologies.
What’s In A Name?
Productivity and efficiency (pronounced developer happiness) are hinged on reducing one's cognitive overhead; if I have to stop what I’m doing to process why something is the way it is, there's a chance that the design was flawed. Norman Doors exist everywhere; let’s get rid of them a name at a time.
Extending Teams with Broadcast Messaging
One of the common and important scenarios for many organizations these days is the necessity of sending a message - or even an alert - to all the users across the company. This is also called “broadcast messaging” or “proactive messaging”.
How Microsoft helps customers adopt Azure through developer education
In this post, we review how Microsoft is helping our customers achieve tech intensity by providing a wide array of Azure learning opportunities to constantly build, maintain and strengthen the cloud capabilities of their developers and IT staff.
How to Utilize gRPC-Web From a Blazor WebAssembly Application
It is currently impossible to implement the gRPC HTTP/2 spec in the browser because there are no browser APIs with enough fine-grained control over requests. Well the good news is that gRPC-Web is here for the rescue!
5 Super Useful Azure DevOps Extensions
Thanks in part to Microsoft's recent embrace of open source principals there is a large marketplace of community driven extensions available.
Azure Private Link vs. Azure Service Endpoint for App Services
In this post, App Dev Manager Chris Hanna compares Azure Private Links and Azure service Endpoints for App Services.
How to Debug and Step Into Service Fabric SDK Source Code
In this blog, Premier Consultant Kurt Schenk shows how to debug into the source code of the Service Fabric SDK which is used to develop Reliable Services and Reliable Actors.
How To Detect Unsupported Browsers Under a Blazor WebAssembly Application?
I recently ran into an issue where running a Blazor WebAssembly application under unsupported browsers would simply get stuck on the loading page. Whereas older browsers are supported under the “Server Side” model, it would be a much better experience to present the user with a more meaningful indicator that the browser is not supported.
Maintain projects with different SharePoint Framework versions using Azure Container Registry
Azure Container Registry (ACR) is a managed Docker registry service based on the open source Docker Registry 2.0. ACR is the ideal choice if you want to have standard images for all of our developers, shared images with our continuous integration (CI) processes, and manage everything from a single platform and provider.
CI/CD with SharePoint Framework (SPFx)
In this post, App Dev Manager Dhaval Shah shows how to get started with CI/CD for SharePoint Framework (SPFx).
The Importance of Quality Assurance in the Development Life Cycle
Whether it's a software lab or an in-house department that creates its own applications, its reputation can be made or destroyed whenever a product is launched. Therefore, the concern with software quality becomes increasingly essential for any company that wants to stand out in the market.
How to Get Workflow Definitions Using the REST API
This post will give an example of getting all 2010 and 2013 workflow definitions, using the gd-sprest library to interact with the REST API.
Manage Service Bus Queue messages with Python
In this post, Big Data Consultant Rakhi Guha shows how to get started with Python scripting to manage Service Bus Queue messages.
App Registration of .NET Application in Azure AD
Now that we have validated that we are able to query the presence for the particular user, we proceed to building a tool to further validate the Presence API query and handling the various output. In preparation for our Windows .Net Forms application, we must Register our application in our Azure Active Directory admin center.
Teams Presence Prototype in .NET
In this segment, my goal is to get the Teams presence in a stand-alone application. In this app, we will do the following: Connect to the Graph Beta API programmatically. Use the Client ID from my App Registration and validate the permissions. Read my presence and display the presence retrieved. Verify that the solution is displaying Status.
Using the Microsoft Graph Explorer
Working from home has created new opportunities and challenges. In the following guide, the Microsoft Graph Explorer is used to access the Teams presence indicators. This is one of several blog posts leading towards the creation a visual indicator using LED RGB string for Teams presence in a home office scenario.
Upgrading to the New Work Item Form in Azure DevOps
This blog post will highlight a case from the field to shed some light on what changes are made to the work item form, also known as the 'Best-effort transformation'. We'll walkthrough a case from the field where the custom work item was very different after upgrade.
Managing Cloud Ready .NET App Secrets in Visual Studio
Secrets need to be handled with care and this is the responsibility of every developer. We’ve all read those news reports of someone accidently checking a production password into source control only to find out the next day that their credit card has been maxed out.
Power Apps Build Tools for Azure DevOps
Given the dire need expressed by many of our enterprise customers for a complete ALM and DevOps support in to the Microsoft Power Platform I felt like writing this blog to give a very quick high-level overview of the tool and its capabilities.
Simplified Automated QA Testing on Azure DevOps
Setting up automated testing can be complex, but I wanted to build out an automated testing system that would be simple to understand and implement, yet cover most of the basic needs of test automation.
Multi-vendor Service Level Agreement (SLA) model based on Business Availability
App Dev Manager Dipanjan Ghanti shares an example of how to frame a multi-vendor SLA based on business availability. Introduction Enterprises often run business critical applications that are supported by multiple vendors. While each vendor takes responsibility for their component’s availability, the need to tie it up with the overall business service availability is frequently overlooked. In the traditional service level models, each organization has its own target service levels and is strictly accountable for their availability, regardless of whether their unavailability resulted in the loss of the bus...
Approach for Merging Dynamics CRM Solutions with DevOps implementations.
How do I merge solutions in CRM? How do I perform feature-based deployment in Dynamics CRM? These are a few frequently asked questions when I am presenting DevOps for CRM talks or asked about my post on “Continuous Integration, Deployment and Test Automation for Dynamics CRM.
Productivity taking a hit lately? Give OMG a try.
The right productivity software tools can make life much easier. I use Microsoft 365: Outlook for PC for calendar and email, Planner to track work, and MyAnalytics to gain insights. Here are some tips to get organized.
Monitoring & Alerting – Operations in the Cloud
Application Insights monitors the availability, performance, and usage of your web applications. It provides you with deep insights into your application's operations and diagnose errors without waiting for a user to report them. It gives you the ability to continuously improve performance and usability.
Your Ally in Premier
As an ADM, I am expected to be that squeaky wheel that is passionate about doing what is right for you, my customer, in the long run. I am on your side and I take pride in helping you grow to be the best that you can be. This often arises in the form of ensuring you and your developers get the best tools and guidance on app modernization.
Migrate SSRS Subscription Owners with PowerShell
You may find that after you move the content that subscription owners are automatically set to the account used to perform the migration. There is an API you can use to assign a new owner and scripts to list subscriptions owners, but I if you have to do this for a large number of servers, it can be a lot of work.
Using Localization in the Microsoft Healthcare Bot
Microsoft’s Healthcare Bot Service is an extendable SaaS solution to build a powerful industry aware conversational bots that can be leveraged from the PC, Mobile or chat clients like Microsoft Teams.
Azure SQL TDE failures – Activity log Alerts to rescue
The SQL Server connection to the Key Vault can be lost for various reasons of either the SQL Server (updates, backups etc..) or the Key Vault (Key expired, disabled etc.) Luckily Azure provides detailed logging and alerting through Azure Monitor Logs and Alerts.
Application Insights Connector – What happened to it?
In this post, Azure Consultant Nasir Sayed explains integration preferences between Log Analytics and Application Insights.
Looking Back – Rediscovering the Basics of Technology Planning
Agile’s approach to balancing capacity against demand starts from the principal of embracing change. Adaptability is Agile’s superpower. Waterfall projects will have a place for the foreseeable future. The most important thing that an organization can do is define when and how to apply each of the strategies.
DAX Calculation Groups for Time Intelligence
Power BI Premium (Preview), Azure Analysis Services and SQL Server Analysis Services 2019 now support Calculation Groups! Why am I so excited? Because this functionality was one of the best capabilities in Multidimensional Analysis Services through Named Sets and Calculated Members.
Moving legacy ASP.NET apps with Windows authentication to Azure App Service (Part 2)
We discuss moving legacy backend services that use Windows authentication over to an Azure App Service, with emphasis on web service stack and authentication & authorization considerations.
Tips & tricks to run a Power Apps hackathon
Power Platform provides a low code approach to developing mobile friendly apps, or to perform business process automation. A Power Platform hackathon can help users ideate and put together a Proof of Concept to validate an approach and demonstrate value quickly.
Resolved JavaScript Promises Can Be Used Multiple Times!
JavaScript Promises are powerful, and they become more powerful once we understand that a "resolved" Promise can be used more than once!
Azure DevOps setting up Repository permissions
As your organization grows, you will start to have many repositories inside of your Azure DevOps projects. Most organizations allow developers to browse and contribute to any repository, and put policies on pull requests for specific branches to protect them.
Using Azure DevOps Pipelines with Redgate to Automate Oracle Database Deployments
In this post, I will cover a basic end to end-to-end example of taking a local Oracle database, setting up a project in a Git repository and using a Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline to take your database changes from code through to production.
3 Reasons You Should Have Designers in Your Agile Teams
The importance of having designers (user interface & user experience) skills in your agile teams.
Quantum Computing for Software Developers – Part II
In these two parts of my blog entry, I have demonstrated what Superposition and Entanglement mean from a quantum computing perspective. In Part 3, I’ll get into quantum operations!
So You Want to Build an AI Solution?
The most valuable lesson from our recent work was the time invested in identifying opportunities on how best to leverage AI to enhance our customer’s solutions before delving into architectural decisions and proceeding with a proof of concept.
nopCommerce running in Azure (PaaS)
Microsoft and the nopCommerce team has made it incredibly easy for the average computer user to get an e-commerce solution up and running with just a few click. The real beauty in this relationship however, is the power the user inherits post the "click click done" phase.
Control Access to Power Apps and Power Automate with Azure AD Conditional Access Policies
With just a few quick steps using the Azure AD Conditional Access Policy, it is easy to limit access to PowerApps and Power Automate. This quick fix allows time for companies to evaluate the platform, experiment with pilot users, and take the time to implement governance and administration best practices.
Introduction to CMMI Development for Developers
CMMI may seem like overkill, but even on small projects, the knowledge captured by following the process shortens the cycle the longer you are away from the project. Not to mention if you’ve never worked on the project before.
How to Change Azure Monitor Log Agent Workspace Information For All VMs in a Subscription
In this post, Sr. Consultant Tim Omta shows how to change Azure Monitor Log Agent Workspace for all VMs in an Azure Subscription.
In-Memory OLTP Best Practices – Part 2
This is a continuation of our first blog post where we shared our best practices and thoughts around the following key decisions you will make when deploying the In-Memory OLTP solution.
3 Tips for Adding Security to CI/CD Pipelines
When working with customers that are just starting their journey of converting to CI/CD pipelines within Azure DevOps, the initial focus is making sure their current manual build and release processes are automated. Can our pipeline do more? How do we build security steps into the process?
Helping Enterprise Customers Develop High Performant and Scalable Solutions in Azure
This is just one representative example of Premier Developer team helping our customers to develop highly performant and scalable solutions by doing code, design and architectural reviews.
Upgrade Spring Boot App to Java 11 (LTS): What’s to be done in project config and Azure DevOps Pipelines
As one of the most popular open source platforms, Java has accelerated its release cadence to 6 months after the debute of Java 9. Enterprise application systems usually are built upon Long Term Support (LTS) version. The current Java LTS is version 11, although massive systems are lagged in Java 8 which is the previous LTS released in 2015.
Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Software Development Project Management, I Learned from World of Warcraft
As more companies are pursuing their DevOps journey and looking at the union of People, Process, and Products to enable continuous delivery of value to end users, it is important to realize that there is a reason People come first in that list.
5 Azure Services You Should Know About
Microsoft Azure consists of over 100 services to build, deploy, and manage your applications and solutions. With innovative new services and features being added constantly, it can be a challenge to keep up with all the goodness available to you in Azure. Here are five awesome services and features you should know about.
Global Power BI User Group: Tales from the Forum (Video)
Our own Dev Consultant Jorge Segarra answers questions from the Global Power BI User Group on all things Power BI in this video, "Tales from the Forum."
Using Azure App Services with Hybrid Connections
Guidance to help fast track cloud migration and application modernization using App Service hybrid connections to open a whole new world of possibilities.
From a Storm to Order – Part I
The biggest challenge that we face as developers is understanding the problem that we're trying to solve, understanding the business logic that we're trying to implement inside of our code. In my opinion, this challenge has been one of the most significant issues we deal with as software designers and developers.
Microsoft certification during COVID-19 using online exams – You, your space, and your machine
Much of the world is in various stages of stay at home orders. These orders have required the closing of most testing centers thereby disrupting the plans many people had to complete Microsoft certifications at this time. Fortunately, you have the option of taking your exam in your home or other private location by using a proctor.
Azure DevOps and Continuous Learning
Application Development Manager Kelly Wilson demonstrates using Azure DevOps to transform certification knowledge to practitioner knowledge. Introduction Microsoft offers a vast array of certifications designed to increase your knowledge and skills in a wide variety of platforms and architectures, from Azure to Dynamics 365 to the Power Platform. Unfortunately for many of us, taking the certification exam might amount to little more than an academic exercise with very few acquired skills. If you or your company has invested the money and time for you to acquire a certification, that certification shoul...
Azure Active Directory: Automating Guest User Management
Augment built-in Azure AD features using Azure Automation and Microsoft Graph to manage and audit guest users.
Azure API Management Custom Subscription Approval
This guide will walk through how to create a Logic App that will allow for a custom subscription approval flow per product in Azure API Management.
The Journey to a DevOps Culture
Sharing best practices across the enterprise becomes more important and reshaping organizational structure and transforming into modern Agile practices with a DevOps culture, while difficult, will lead to the faster delivery of stable high-quality applications with fewer bugs, less technical debt the ability to more rapidly deliver value.
A How-To Guide For pssdiag and SQL Nexus: Creating a pssdiag Package
In this post, Sr. Consultant Kendal Van Dyke explores pssdiag and SQL Nexus, free tools from Microsoft that help you capture and analyze SQL Server performance data.
Integration of Power Apps with Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams and Power Apps together offers your organization a rapid and low-cost app development platform to achieve a quick win in business productivity and efficiency.
Best practices to prepare for a high priority event
How do you best align your team and prepare your services to ensure a successful event? We will walk you through the proven practices to ensure your team executes on your event successfully.
Hands-On Walkthrough (HOW) Sessions: A new way to learn
One of my focuses when I engage with customers is having participants follow along with my live coding exercises, allowing them to practice these methodologies and stay engaged during delivery. This live coding style engagement has proven to be very effective with hands on keyboards, facilitating greater engagement and retention.
WFH DIY Meeting Light Bulb
In this post, Dev Consultant Ben Williams shares his unique solution involving a Wi-Fi enabled Smart LED Light Bulb to avoid interruptions while working from home.
How to retrieve all work items associated with a release pipeline using Azure DevOps API
In this article we are going to learn how to retrieve all work items associated with a release pipeline using the Azure DevOps API.
Tips and Tricks for getting your Microsoft Certification
During the last 12 months, I’ve put a concerted efforted to beefing up my technical chops - I’ve passed 17 Certification Exams. See my LinkedIn profile if you want to see what certs I’ve obtained. I want to share my personal story Tips and Trick on how I did this so it may help you.
Create Content Types in SharePoint
This post will give an example of creating content types in SharePoint. The gd-sprest library will use the SharePoint Configuration helper class to create the content types. This post will focus on the configuration file for creating site and list content types.
Ghost Update Take Two – 64-bit NodeJS
In my previous post, I explained how to deploy Ghost on Azure Web App; however, Ghost v2.25.5 now requires Node.JS 64-bit to support the sharp package v0.22.1. If you followed my initial instructions to create the free App Service, you will notice that this build will break your post images.
Como fazer: Arquivos de Configuração Editáveis
Esse Post vai explicar em alguns passos e exemplos como usar um arquivos JSON de configuração que pode ser customizado para múltiplos ambientes.
Introdução ao Node.js
Segue um simples passo-a-passo para guiá-lo e ensinar como configurar sua aplicação Angular com Visual Studio Code e Node. Esse guia irá ajudá-lo a identificar o que instalar, quais comandos executar em PowerShell e alguns conceitos básicos de por onde começar a construir seu app usando Visual Studio Code.
Azure DevOps Pipelines – Multi-Stage Pipelines and YAML for Continuous Delivery
YAML Pipelines enable you to store your pipeline as code, and Multi-stage YAML pipelines provide the ability to scale this to CI, CD, or the combination of the two.
10 Reasons to Avoid DevOps
In this post, Premier DevOps Consultant Assaf Stone touches on 10 realities you must consider before implementing a DevOps transformation.
AZURE BASTION – SECURE ACCESS to AZURE VMS
Azure Bastion is a new fully platform-managed PaaS service. It provides secure and seamless RDP/SSH connectivity to your virtual machines directly in the Azure portal over SSL.
B2C Identity Experience Framework – getting started
This sample configures an existing B2C tenant for use with Identity Experience Framework custom policies. It performs all tasks defined in the getting started document except creating a Facebook signing key required by some starter policies.
Machine Learning – Lessons from our POC
Using multiple algorithms and tuning the algorithms to find the optimum value for each parameter also improves the accuracy of the model. However, it is not necessary that higher accuracy models always give the accurate results, as sometimes, the improvement in model’s accuracy can be due to over-fitting too.
Customizing Azure DevOps with Extensions
Before embarking on building your own extension, I would endorse looking through the Marketplace for a solution, when I last looked there were over 1250 extensions available to add to your system.
Integrate Azure API Management with Okta
In this post, App Dev Manager Chris Hanna explains how to integrate Okta with Azure API Management for authentication.
Injecting content to every page on a site
I had to come up with a way to magically inject a script on every response, regardless of what technology was used to create the application or web page… believe it or not, this was not only possible but it is quick and simple!
Bias in Machine Learning
Machine learning is the scientific study of algorithms and statistical models that result in devices automatically learning and improving from experiences without being explicitly programmed. With so much success integrating machine learning into our everyday lives, the obvious next step is to integrate machine learning into even more systems.
Integrating Support cases into your DevOps process with the Azure Support API
So you have a fairly mature DevOps model in-place but you are missing the ability to integrate Azure Support issues into your processes. Well, that is no longer the case as we have released to the public our Azure Support Ticket REST API.
![[Service Fabric] Using the Azure Files Volume driver with multiple volumes](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/premier-developer/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2020/03/servicefab_fi.png)
[Service Fabric] Using the Azure Files Volume driver with multiple volumes
I was recently working with a customer who has an application running in a Windows container and that application outputs log files into different folders inside of the container. Their log extraction process was to manually remote desktop into the node, then go into the container to get the logs out.
InnerSource with Azure DevOps
Azure DevOps provides features that enable your organization and teams adopt modern software engineering practices, such as InnerSource using features like forks and pull requests. Thus, enabling and encouraging code sharing and reuse thereby reducing engineering costs, facilitating faster time to market, and additional feature enablement.
AKS Series–Monitor AKS Cluster with Prometheus – Basic Monitoring – Part 2
Premier Developer Consultant Monu Bambroo explores how to use Prometheus Server on AKS for enhanced monitoring and deeper insights.
Enabling Remote Learning with Office 365 Education
In this post, I will go through the broad strokes of setting up Office 365 Education. The starting point is the Office 365 A1 trial sign up page.
Implement App Insights Telemetry Processor in Azure Functions
Telemetry Processor is a plug-ins that can be ingested in your application to customize how telemetry can be processed before it’s sent to the Application Insights service such as filtering out telemetry, replace or discard a telemetry item, etc.
Mock your APIs in Azure API Management and speed up development
With microservice architecture being as popular as it is today, being able to Mock your services makes it easy to get all your developers coding right away. We no longer have to wait for backend services to be completely developed or spend time coding throw away responses to provide our calling applications.
Leverage ServicesHub for All of Your Training Needs!
ServicesHub, which replaces the legacy Premier Portal is the central tool for interaction with Unified Support. The ServicesHub is partitioned into four child sections beneath the Home page: “Support”, “IT Health”, “Learning”, and “Resources”.
Connecting A Durable Function to SharePoint Online
We decided on another great Azure Resource, the Azure Durable Function, because we wanted to provide SharePoint a custom status that could be leveraged for a progress bar, we also had the need to build a separate function that had a workflow that could span hours or even days.
Application Insights – Use case for TelemetryClient flush calls
Ideally, the right usage pattern for Flush method is when the application encountered something unexpected, shutting down and needs to upload exception before crashing.
Enabling remote workers with Azure Windows Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
This retail customer was able to implement a critical business work-from-home policy using Azure VDI pools, auto-scale capacity on-demand to meet dynamic usage requirements, exploit existing Azure Active Directory and Azure ExpressRoute investments to provide seamless access to corporate compute services.
Modernize your legacy Windows desktop apps with ease using Xaml Islands
Xaml Islands enables developers to enhance the look, feel and functionality of legacy Win32 C++ or WPF apps using UWP controls without having to do a complete rewrite. Xaml islands also offers the ability to leverage new UI controls on specific parts of the app so you can modernize at your own pace.
5 Reasons Why Engaging with Your End Users Improves Your Code
One of the biggest mistakes I see in any project is the development team failing to get outside feedback. Whether project teams wait until the very end of a project to reach our or they don’t get feedback at all, these teams are missing out on one of the best sources of information to help build a better solution.
Routing in Blazor Apps
Based on the current implementation, Blazor Router makes routing much easier to implement and developer hardly need to maintain routing as the application evolves. Bugs due to misconfiguration of routing might become a thing of the past.
Angular How-to: Add Application Insights to an Angular SPA
Application Insights is an Azure service for monitoring web applications. It includes analytics tools to help you understand application usage and to diagnose issues with the goal of continuously improving performance and usability.
Push an ASP.NET Core API Container to Azure Container Registry Part 2 of 2
ASP.NET Core is a cross-platform, open-source framework for building modern , cloud-based, connected applications. With ASP.NET core you can build web apps, API APS, Microservices, mobile backends, and IoT apps.
Hosting and ASP.NET Core API in a Container Part 1 of 2 – Building the Container
ASP.NET Core is a cross-platform, open-source framework for building modern , cloud-based, connected applications. With ASP.NET core you can build web apps, API APS, Microservices, Mobile backends, and IoT apps.
What Is Cloud Native, Exactly?
I had the pleasure recently of interviewing Robert Vettor, a Premier Developer consultant who specializes in microservices and cloud native architecture. Robert’s in the process of writing a great book on “Architecting Cloud-Native .NET Apps for Azure” which is available now in a preview version.
Improving Angular CI Build Time Using Azure DevOps “Cache Task”
As demonstrated above I was able to drop the build time from 5m 10s to 2m 34s which is roughly a 50% reduction in build time. This is a significant saving especially when you factor in the fact that you will run the build several times a day. This can quickly add up to hours of saved build time each day.
Using Azure DevOps Artifacts as Upstream from another Organization
In this post, App Dev Manager Chris Westbrook explores scenarios for Azure Artifacts upstream sources.
From 0 to continuously delivered microservices applications – part 2
In part 1 of this blog post series, I talked about one of the most critical “technologies” that people leverage to create microservices, and that is containers. In this post we will discover, the most used product to create and run containers and that is Docker.
Evolutionary Change to Cloud Computing
As the cloud visionary, your job is to keep your band of pioneers dogmatically cloud native. You will be able to back off the dogma after a while, but one of the best ways to get out of an old groove and in to a new one is to use a well-defined methodology.
GitHub with Azure DevOps
With GitHub and Azure DevOps you have a powerful combination of tools to help you develop world class applications where you are an open source or enterprise developer.
Microsoft Teams for Developers – 5 Ways to fortify your dev team while working remotely
Working effectively as remote teams has never been more critical. Remote work brings significant challenges to development teams, especially as more and more organizations place a premium on working remotely.
.NET Platforms Feature Comparison
There are situations where people would like to have a comprehensive view of the feature comparison. Instead of digging into every feature across all three platform, I compiled a list of name spaces in each platform and put them side by side so you can easily see the differences.
DevOps for low code Business Applications
The tech industry has made great progress over the last few years building low code environments such as Power Platform. Overall, the robust features can bring great value to business quickly with world class integrations, wide array of user interface templates and outstanding mobile functionality.
Sharing gRPC ProtoBuf contracts using a REST endpoint
One of the challenges of implementing gRPC services is distributing the required ProtoBuf contracts and updates to clients. Delivering the contracts using a URL can make the services easier to use and discover. Learn how you can use ASP.NET Core static files middleware to distribute your proto files.
Create a Callout in SharePoint
This post will give an example of creating a callout in SharePoint. The gd-sprest library was recently updated to include the SharePoint Callout Manager helper class, which we will be using for this example.
How do I get data from SQL CE to Azure DB?
In this post, Premier Consultant Tim Omta explains how to migrate from SQL CE to SQL Azure.
Azure DevOps Cross-Organization Reporting and Analysis using Power BI
In this post, App Dev Manager Andy Moore shows how to create cross-organizational reports for Azure DevOps with Power BI. When using Azure DevOps to manage teams, backlogs, work items and bugs there are tools available for quick reporting and understanding of the current state of the project. Dashboards provide an easily digestible view of daily activities, sprint burndowns, and team velocity through clear visualizations, and Queries give the ability to define reports and charts for evaluation and analysis. However, when there is a need for cross-organization understanding there is currently no native a...
In-Memory OLTP Best Practices – Part 1
In this multi-part series, App Dev Manager Jon Guerin and Premier Consultant Daniel Taylor (@dbabulldog) lays out some best practices around setting up and using In-Memory OLTP.
Updating Cosmos DB Documents with Azure Logic Apps
When creating workflows with Azure Logic Apps, developers are often amazed at the amount of functionality at their fingertips. With a few simple clicks, you can create extremely capable automation, with integrations into multiple systems.
DevOps Dojo de Microsoft Services
Le DevOps Dojo: Ceinture blanche contient huit modules, chacun aligné sur les concepts clés DevOps tels que l’intégration continue, la sécurité continue, la planification continue et autres.
A DevOps Dojo for Microsoft Enterprise Services
The DevOps Dojo: White Belt contains eight modules, each aligned to key DevOps concepts such as Continuous Integration, Continuous Security, Continuous Planning, and others.
DevOps Dojo de Microsoft Servicios
“DevOps Dojo: Cinta Blanca” contiene ocho módulos, cada uno alineado con conceptos clave de DevOps como integración continua, seguridad continua, planeación continua y otros.
Technical Debt – The Anti-DevOps Culture
Technical Debt can be defined as as “the concept in software development that reflects the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy (limited) and faster solution now instead of a using a better approach that would take longer”
Dapr in a microservices architecture
Dapr is an event driven runtime that helps to build stateless and stateful microservice applications, with a diversity of languages and frameworks.
Developing SaaS Solutions for Government Customers
Are you already developing for, or want to extend your SaaS solutions to, the Microsoft Azure Government cloud? Read this article to learn more about considerations for your planning process.
From 0 to continuously delivered micro services applications – Part 1
In this first post in a 7-part series, Premier Consultant Ilias Jennane explains the fundamentals of containers and Docker.
Sprint Zero Considered Harmful!
Successfully delivering valuable functionality in the first sprint or three can be difficult, and for some, simply impossible. But the lessons learned from the attempt are invaluable! Taking an early hit, failing in the short term is unimportant if it improves the chance of success in the long run.
Azure Key Vault and Transparent Data Encryption
Azure Key Vault is a tool for securely storing and accessing secrets. A secret is anything that you want to tightly control access to, such as API keys, passwords, or certificates. A vault is a logical group of secrets.
How to Maximize the Value of Your Planning Session
Asking these questions during sprint planning is a great way to start a conversation that will both achieve the principles of collaboration and engagement, and ensure a greater understanding of the value that the product is expected to deliver to its users.
Get WebPart Information using REST
This post will give an example of getting WebPart information for a page, using the REST API. The gd-sprest library will be used for this example.
Using B2C to support multi-tenant SaaS apps
AAD multi-tenancy is ideal for medium-to-large enterprises who own and manage their own identity infrastructure. This sample is for small enterprises, usually without their own identity infrastructure. It provides support for an application that needs to group it's users into discrete groups, each representing an application tenant.
The Soul of Innovation
What's the soul of innovation? It is energy. It is knowledge. It is having a purpose. It is a DevOps culture. A better question, however, is "who is the soul of innovation in your organization?"
Creating Words Cloud For Sentiment Analysis With Azure Cognitive Services Text Analytics
In this post, App Dev Manager Fidelis Ekezue explores Azure Cognitive Services Text Analytics.
Connect to SharePoint using NodeJS
Premier Field Engineer Gunjan Datta demonstrates how to retrieve data from SharePoint using NodeJS.
Unseen secrets – using KeyVault to protect OAuth2 token requests
This sample implements an Azure Function App, which uses Azure KeyVault to sign OAuth2 client assertions used to obtain JWT tokens from Azure AD. The private key used to sign the client assertion and thus authenticate the function to Azure AD is generated in the KeyVault and never leaves that service (it is not exportable).
PowerShell to upload IEF policies to multiple B2C tenants
Premier Dev Consultant Marius Rochon shares an example of a PowerShell script to upload a set of B2C IEF policies to one or more B2C tenants.
Adding Tags to New Resources with Azure PowerShell
Learn how to add tags to your PowerShell-scripted Azure resources and keep your systems categorized.
Centralized VM Certificate Deployment Across Multiple Regions with ARM Templates
Many systems still rely on certificate authentication. Those certificates need to be rotated and often managed from a central location. In this post, I will explain how to centralize your VM certificate deployment across multiple Azure Regions with ARM Templates and Key Vault.
Leverage QnA Maker Search within a Client Application
QnA Maker is an Azure Cognitive Service that enables you to ask questions and get answers from a knowledgebase built from your own documentation. In this post, learn how to integrate a QnA Maker knowledgebase into a client application.
Azure DevOps Security API demystified
In Azure DevOps, you can manage your security for a given team or group using the Permissions module. In this example, the API New Team has inherited and granted permissions. The “Allow permissions to view project level information” has been granted explicitly, while the permissions to delete, edit and manage projects has been inherited...
Start a SharePoint Workflow using REST
This post will give an example of starting a SharePoint workflow using the REST API. The gd-sprest library was recently updated to include the SharePoint Workflow REST API endpoints, which we will be using for this example.
Accessing Azure Resource Consumption Data Using .NET
I thought it would be helpful to show you how you can access your Azure resource consumption data via .NET. Having access to this data at the code level can allow ways to do other things if a budget limit is reached for a particular resource.
Using Azure DevOps Marketplace extensions with scrum projects
In this post, Senior App Dev Manager, Alexei Govorine shares three of his favorite marketplace extensions for scrum projects.
Flawless Demos using Git
Premier Consultant Andrew Charbonneau explains how he conducts flawless demos with help of Git.
Using Azure Cognitive Services Text Analytics API Version 3 Preview for Sentiment Analysis
In this blog, I will demonstrate how Text Analytics API Version 3 Preview of the Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services can be used to analyze large unstructured data. This analysis aims to understand the sentiments expressed in a solicited public comment process and determines the degree of the positivity or negativity of the comments.
Collecting and Analyzing Dumps with .Net Core on Linux
In this post, App Dev Manager Andrew Kanieski discuss options for collecting and analyzing dump files of your .NET Core apps running on Linux.
Understanding how to port your ASP.NET web apps to ASP.NET Core
There are several reasons that developers and architects may consider moving to ASP.NET Core. In this post, learn all the considerations when planning an upgrade from ASP.NET to ASP.NET Core.
Integrating Blazor Components into existing Asp.Net Core MVC apps
In this post, Premier Consultant Wael Kdouh explains how to run Blazor Components in existing ASP.NET Core MVC apps.
Simplificando los pipelines de Azure DevOps con decoradores
Cuando se trata de DevOps, no faltan la cantidad de personalizaciones que las empresas necesitan. Desde entornos especializados hasta comprobaciones de calidad, cada empresa tiene su propia manera para determinar cómo es una implementación exitosa.
Azure API for FHIR
Azure API for FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) enables rapid exchange of data through FHIR APIs, backed by a managed Platform-as-a Service (PaaS) offering in the cloud. It makes it easier for anyone working with health data to ingest, manage, and persist Protected Health Information PHI in the cloud.
Misty Robotics and Azure
Social bots on the way. Now that we’ve voice commanded everything in our house, the natural next step is to give it a face, a response, a smile. When I demo’d Misty to our FIRST Robotics team, they immediately fell in love – it’s so cute, you just wanna pitch the cheeks.
Using BizTalk transform maps in Logic Apps
In this blog post, Sr. Consultant Larry Wall explains how to use BizTalk transform maps in Logic Apps.
Secure Access to Azure SQL Servers for Power BI
How do you refresh Power BI datasets in the Power BI service from Azure SQL server resources while restricting traffic to specific resources? Learn how using the On-Premises Data Gateway and SQL endpoints can help you tighten security.
Use Azure Application Insights in Java Spring Boot Projects
In this post, Premier Consultant Pete Tian demonstrate how to use Azure Application Insights in Java Spring Projects.
Why are Compiled Data Bindings Important in XAML
Traditional data binding is expensive. It uses reflection and there are heavy demands on the CPU and on memory. In this post, Premier Consultant Bill Reiss explains how compiled bindings can improve performance in UWP apps.
Deploying React apps to Azure with Azure DevOps
In this post, Sr. Consultant Sidi Merzouk shows how to create a CI/CD pipeline for your React Apps with Azure DevOps Pipelines.
Hosting a Containerized Client Side Blazor Application On Azure
In this post, Premier Consultant Wael Kdouh explains how to containerize a client-side Blazor application for Azure deployment.
Introduction to Azure Go SDK – Part 1
In this 3-part series, Sr. Consultant Carlos A. Perez will showcase Azure SDKs for Go & gRPC. In Part 1, learn how to get started with gRPC and .NET Core.
Mindset & Culture at Microsoft
For a few days afterwards that moment kept replaying in my head making me think about the mindset and culture of a company like Microsoft. How being part of a community of learners who are encouraged to “stretch” one’s skills and experiences really does make a difference both personally and professionally.
Making the Transition: The key differences between university and working in the industry
Premier Developer Consultants, Ashley Shorter & Tamar Zamba, describe the experiences, challenges, and lessons of going from undergrad to Microsoft Consultant.
Tracking Santa with Azure
Learn how Azure PaaS powers NORAD’s Santa Tracker allowing for 51 million Page Views with an average response time of 100MS across the globe.
AKS Series – Monitoring Application(s) inside AKS with Prometheus and Azure Monitor
AKS to bring rapid development, deployment, scale and monitoring for your applications with confidence. Prometheus is a leading open source monitoring solution. Learn how to integrate Prometheus with AKS for your application monitoring needs.
Run Powerful Interactive Analytics Queries against Azure Service Fabric’s Internal Traces and Diagnostic Data
Collect Service Fabric traces and diagnostic data with CollectServiceFabricData - a tool used by the Azure Service Fabric Support team to help diagnose and troubleshoot issues. Learn how to configure your cluster today and start using CollectServiceFabricData.
DBA’s thoughts about monitoring SQL Server in Azure
Monitoring our systems is key to a healthy, predictable, and stable environment. Learn how Azure Monitor helps simplify monitoring of Azure solutions including data platforms such as Azure SQL.
DACPAC always changes previously replicated tables on the target
Learn how to prevent the DACPAC from rebuilding all objects that once participated in transactional replication and have no changes in development.
Microsoft Teams – What’s in it for Developers, Part 2
Microsoft Teams continue to gain adoption in the Enterprise. See how Teams can help development organizations increase collaboration and streamline processes with integration with GitHub and Azure DevOps.
Testing – When is Enough, Enough?
Microsoft Testing Services is a global practice with almost twenty years of experience. Working with thousands of customers around the world, the services are delivered by a highly-skilled team of experts including best-in-class certified test consultants.
5 User Centered Development Tactics to Start Using Today!
With a mission to “empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more”— it’s increasingly important for Microsoft employees to have a conversation about User Centered Design4 (UCD). As developers, we are building products for people to use, so we need to ensure we are putting them at the center of it.
Introduction to Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, its licensing, and Premier Support
Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) Protocol is the language communicated between a mobile device and server to enable synchronization of emails, calendar items, contact information, tasks, and push accurate and reliable data. Microsoft has a flexible support framework in place to help customers and partners adopt AES on Android and iOS.
Intro to GitHub Actions
GitHub Actions makes it easy to automate all your software workflows, now with world-class CI/CD. Build, test, and deploy your code right from GitHub. Make code reviews, branch management, and issue triaging work the way you want.
Azure AI does that?
Whether you’re just starting off in tech, building, managing, or deploying apps, gathering and analyzing data, or solving global issues —anyone can benefit from using cloud technology. In this post, we will explore some practical examples where Azure AI is driving innovation.
DevOps Handbook review
The DevOps Handbook describes the aspects of working toward a satisfying result for a customer while handling apparently conflicting goals within the organization. The book explains through case studies how companies have resolved the apparent contradictions, aligning everyone’s goals can bring about greater rewards and process improvements.
Demystifying the new .NET Core 3 Worker Service
.NET Core 3 introduced a new project template called a Worker Service. This template is designed to give you a starting point for cross-platform services. As an alternate use case, it sets up a very nice environment for general console applications perfect for containers and microservices.
Serverless Compute – Logic Apps, Functions and Event Grid
For this post, I want to introduce the serverless capabilities in Azure. With this, I’m hoping to spark the interest of developers, architects, and DevOps engineers to think differently. While not all problems can be solved with serverless, many can – and with that in mind, why not consider it?
Microsoft Security Code Analysis – a tool that seamlessly empowers customers to enable security controls in your CI/CD pipeline
We believe that Secure DevOps encompasses both a set of practices and a mindset shift to help customer adopt security principles and practices aligned with the culture shift and integrated with the practices, of DevOps. Secure DevOps practices include and build on those practices that are part of the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle.
Rastreamento de projetos cross-team a nível de portfólio com Azure DevOps Boards
A inclusão das extensões Feature timeline and Epic Roadmap no processo de gerenciamento de portfólio está ajudando meus clientes a tornar a vida do PMO ainda mais fácil do que antes. A extensão Delivery Plans permite atualizações de portfólio colaborativas, constantes e automatizadas. Isso permitiu que todos evoluíssem no processo de desenvolv
Advanced Error Handling with Power Automate
Sr Consultant Adam Toth demonstrates how to handle errors properly in Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow), including expected errors from APIs and connectors, and how to deal with throttling conditions (HTTP 429 Responses). Power Automate’s default response to errors from connectors is pretty simple – exit the workflow right there and record the entire run as a failure. In most cases, this is what you might want, however sometimes you need to handle an error yourself and take custom actions, such as ignoring it or apply a retry pattern. Continue reading on Adam’s Blog…
GitHub Learning Path
GitHub opens exciting possibilities for you and your customers. This article helps answer the question “Where do I start?” learning about Git and GitHub.
Simplifying Azure DevOps Pipelines with Decorators
In this post, Sr. App Dev Manager Bryan Soltis demonstrates how to use DevOps Pipeline Decorators to standardize complex pipeline requirements. When it comes to DevOps, there is no shortage of the amount of customizations companies need. From specialized environments to quality checks, every business has their own recipe for determining what a successful deployment looks like. Many of these customizations need to be applied across an organization, ensuring that every project pass the test before it gets rolled out. If you are dealing with 100’s of projects, this is no easy feat. Luckily, in Azure DevOps, ...
Outlook Email Automation with PowerShell
In this post, App Dev Manager Edward Fry demonstrates how to use Microsoft Outlook Object Library from PowerShell. Introduction Time is a precious commodity. For many professionals, there just aren’t enough hours to accomplish all the tasks in a day. Thankfully, today’s world thrives on automation. Computers can perform painstaking, mundane tasks in a matter of seconds, leaving you the extra time to work on a multitude of more mentally intensive jobs. Whether you have an advanced technical degree or just use the computer for day-to-day tasks, it isn’t too hard to make the computer your personal assistant....
50/50 Tech Equity for All Women by 2025!
I had a chance to connect with women who had similar plights during their careers. I found it very fulfilling, to take the opportunity to mentor and share with some who were in situations that I faced professionally over 20 years ago alone.
Azure VM and Disk Throttling
Using Log Analytics to efficiently monitor Azure virtual machine disk throttling.
Creating and refining your automated testing strategy
We all know that automated testing is a key component of a successful DevOps practice. However, it’s also common for organizations to underestimate the change effort required to create a complete testing strategy. In this blog post we are going to demonstrate the advantages of creating a clear automated testing strategy, in three simple steps
Meetup RECAP – Automated Testing for Excel Workbooks
Check out the innovative ways to use Python with Excel from a recent community Meetup event in NYC.
You need to invest in developers
Investing in your people not only helps build essential, competitive skills but it can also reduce employee churn that will disrupt projects. Show me any highly effective dev team and I’ll show you passionate learners that share knowledge and try new things. These things go hand in hand.
Tracking Cross-team Projects Portfolio with Azure DevOps Boards
Feature Timeline and Epic Roadmap in portfolio management process has improve the PMO’s process. The Delivery Plans extension allows for collaborative, constant and automated portfolio updates. This enables everyone evolved in the software development process to better manage the cross-dependencies between Projects, Epics and Features.
How to Alert on Azure BLOB Access
In this post, learn how to use Azure Monitor and Log Analytics to determine metrics not available under standard Metrics blade in Azure Portal. In this post, I will show you how to leverage Azure Storage $logs for enhanced reporting.
AI, ML & Data Science – Explained
Where would you find all three (AI, ML and DS) at work? The most common place today is in autonomous driving vehicles. All three disciplines work together to help train an algorithm to recognize obstacles (MS), then to provide real-time actions (AI) to the vehicle, all based on large amounts of information that data science (DS) can analyze.
The Buzz around InnerSource
InnerSource takes the lessons learned from developing open source software and applies them to the way companies develop software internally.
Go from a C# Developer’s Perspective
As a cloud developer, I increasingly encounter projects that involves Go. Azure services such as AKS, Blockchain, Terraform, and supporting technologies such as Helm are all heavily Go. In addition, Go is a first-class citizen on Azure as all core PaaS SDKs offer Go libraries. In this post, let's compare Go and C# key concepts.
A Survey of Kubernetes Features in Azure
Using Azure services like AKS, Azure Container Instances and Azure Dev Spaces makes setting up a cluster and testing your containers relatively simple.
.NET Conf 2019
.NET Conf 2019, a free, 3-day, virtual developer event
Workshop Spotlight: Modern Authentication and Authorization
Building applications operating in the internet environment requires understanding of options available for performing authentication and authorization. These options include, both a variety of protocols such as OAuth2 and WS-Federation, as well as tools and toolkits such as Azure AD, AD FS and ADAL.
Astuces pour réussir votre certification CKAD (Certified Kubernetes Application Developer)
Dans cet article, Nous vous proposons des astuces pour réussir votre certification de développeur Kubernetes (CKAD – Certified Kubernetes Application Developer).
Ordering Messages in Azure Service Bus
This post illustrates how we can force an ordering of messages processed by Azure Service Bus. The intent is to illustrate some of the existing and exciting features of Azure Service Bus.
Update My Blog Via Email with Azure Functions
In this post, App Dev Manager Isaac Levin showcase the versatility of Azure Function with a solution that updates his Blog via Email. I have blogged about the changes I made to streamline my site architecture and continue to work on ways to improve it. One thing that I did a month ago was replace the static page that was my [speaking page][/speaking] and make it more dynamic. In this post, I will expand on my previous implementation by using Azure Functions with Email integration to update my Blog. Continue reading...
GitHub and Microsoft Services: Developer Support – elevate and accelerate
Pairing GitHub with Microsoft Services: Developer Support is a combination that can lead to an elevated software development lifecycle experience. And we know software development!
Azure Ultra Disk Storage is here
With the recent GA announcement of Azure Ultra Disk Storage, customers now have access to Managed Disks for extremely high performance and mission critical workloads. With increased IOPS and throughput, it's important for architects to understand Azure's throttling limits to ensure they design systems optimally.
Using a Custom Translator with Azure Cognitive Services
Translating text can be tricky business. Sure, by using online services and tools, you can quickly find out how to say “Hello”, "that dog is green", and “where’s the closest taco stand?” But what about when the conversation needs to be more contextual and specific to your company/business/audience?
Introduction to ML.NET with Permutation Feature Importance
ML.NET enables developers to implement machine learning tasks like classification, regression, clustering, and recommendation ... etc. In this post, I will show you how to get started with ML.NET implementing permutation feature importance for employee attrition.
gRPC + ASP.NET Core as a Migration Path for WCFs in .NET Core
The intended audience for this blog post is one who wants to migrate from the full .Net Framework to .NET Core and has a large library of WCFs, now considered technical debt. This post will attempt to at least partially answer the question: How difficult will it be to migrate my current code base of WCFs to gRPC in .NET Core?
Prevent reopening work item once closed | Azure DevOps (with Video)
Learn how to adopt Azure DevOps Rules to control your DevOps processes such as locking down Work Items after they are closed.
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) Exam Tips
In this post, we'll offer guidance on preparing for the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) exam.
DevOps and Beyond Outcomes
Not only do high-velocity organizations get better at what they do, they get better at getting better at what they do. This scales so that no one can keep up with them. After all, most companies hire from the same pool of talent, they use the same software practices such as Agile/Scrum, they use the same tools, and so on.
Configure Azure App Service for 64-bit platform and Node.js
As a follow-up to my original post explaining how to Deploy Ghost CMS on Azure Web App, learn how to configure Azure Web App Platform and Node.js to run as 64-bit, a prerequisite for the latest Ghost build.
DevOps and Safety
Beyond Lean, another important contributor to DevOps is the safety science movement. In this blog, Ron discusses this subject and show how important this is and how it changes the ways we think of the systems we build.
Accessibility at all stages: A Good-for-All SDLC approach
Accessibility improves usability; considering accessibility reviews early-on and at all stages gives us an opportunity to not only save cycles of design, dev, and QA, but more importantly, it creates a more usable product for everyone.
DevOps and Mental Models
We need to regularly update our Mental Models but more importantly we need to find better means to update our Mental Models if we are serious about enabling a better culture which enables more innovation and happier individuals in our organization.
Creating a Ghost Blog on an Azure App Service
Have you ever wanted to run your own blogging website but not sure if you want to build your own site or purchase an existing service? I had the same question myself and when I was studying for an Azure certification, I came across a demo of using this Ghost platform and the Azure Container Registry (ACR).
DevOps and Complex Adaptive Systems
What is DevOps? This is a question that I find challenging to answer and the more I study the subject the more difficult it is to define the term. One way to think of DevOps is by applying the notion of Complex Adaptive Systems.
Versioning REST APIs in Azure Serverless
In this post, you will see practical examples on how to version Logic Apps and Function Apps for breaking and non-breaking changes with common API versioning schemes and related techniques such as API gateway pattern.
Angular How-to: Page load times using Application Insights
Find out how to integrate Application Insights into your Angular SPA and track custom metrics such as Page Views and Load Time. You will also learn how instrument Angular apps with Application Insights with some best practice guidance.
Automation and Integration with Azure Logic Apps
Azure Logic Apps are pretty amazing. You can quickly create elaborate workflows, integrating with many of your favorite Microsoft applications and develop your own custom connectors for 3rd party systems and platforms.
Scrum Isn’t Always Perfect (and that’s okay)
Over the years, I have coached and researched dozens of scrum teams to adapt to “real world” scenarios. Some may call them anti-patterns or some may call them “not scrum”-- but that is okay too because sometimes we have to work with what we have and still find ways to be successful.
DevOps or Economies of Flow
The very notion of economies of scale arose during the early industrial age but unfortunately is still prevalent in many industries, including software development. However, that has changed with DevOps but it still isn’t obvious otherwise I would not come across customers that still work in this paradigm.
One Project To Rule Them All
Unfortunately, many enterprises have multiple organizations and projects in their portfolio and merging them into a single project can seem a daunting task. While there are tools out there that can help, there is no “Single Tool To Rule Them All”.
Deploying a Virtual Assistant on the cheap
The thing I was interested in recently was deploying to the smallest and least expensive dev/test instances of the various services in order to keep the cost down. Since this was just for demo purposes and I would be the only one talking to the bot, I didn’t need the capacity and scale of the default install.
Deoptimize Your Snapshots Now in Snapshot Debugger
This setting allows developers to configure the level of deoptimization suitable for their apps. To enable deoptimization, be sure to enable Snapshot Debugger call stacks and local variable support from the Application Insights configuration page.
Learn How to Ask the Right Questions!
if you want to change something, never immediately assume that current conditions are immutable. If you’ve never discussed the possibility to change, you cannot know whether others – your partners, customers, teammates, or managers – would resist, or the reverse – enthusiastically gush and support the change.
4 Ways to Integrate Development and Operations Efforts
How do you deal with the fact that the developers in your organization cannot or will not own the process of delivering into production? How do you deal with the fact that your operations engineers cannot or do not fully understand the software to which they have been given stewardship?
The Journey Begins – DevOps starts with culture!
At this point we were five plus years into a local transformation that was underappreciated and overlooked by the global IT organization. The frustration was high and the hope was waning. For me this became my motivation to start a journey to understand why some organization can adopt DevOps strategies successfully and other struggle.
Tribal Knowledge – The Anti-DevOps Culture
By removing or reducing tribal knowledge from projects and teams, organizations set themselves up for success in an ever-changing landscape (exponentially changing). In other words, you can add to your DevOps culture (or create one) simply by subtracting the bad habits and behaviors.
AI and the Art of What’s Possible
Application Development Manager Rich Maines explores the art of the possible with AI in the context of Microsoft services and the ethical principles that we believe should drive the development of AI.
Setting up a cloud server to run UniFi Controller
In this post, we'll explore how to setup an Azure virtual machine to act as a UniFi controller in the cloud, enabling 24x7 guest access without the overhead of running a physical machine continuously in your home.
Getting started with Docker for Windows
In this walkthrough, our App Dev Managers show how to install, configure and containerize a simple webapp to help you get up and running with Docker.
Easily create a low-cost WordPress blog on Azure
These directions apply if you want to create a personal blog which is hosted on someone else's domain, and that won’t get a lot of traffic, and you want to do this cheaply.
Choosing the OAuth2 grant flow
Premier Dev Consultant Marius Rochon explores OAuth2 questions you need to ask and how the answers lead to the selection of the grant. The OAuth2 specifications define six different grant types (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6749 and https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-oauth-device-flow-15). Each provides the most optimal (from the security point of view) way of obtaining access or (for OIDC) id_tokens given the circumstances of the client application. This blog summarizes the questions that the implementer of the OAuth2 client application needs to ask and how the answers lead to the selection of the a...
Understanding ‘Why’ you should take CompTIA’s Security+ Exam for DoD Programs
It is extremely difficult to find individuals with Security+ accreditation. Achieving this accreditation not only helps you but also helps defense contracting companies and the DoD community to fill in those national security related positions with those specialized needs.
Is the latest technology the key to your team’s success, or is there something else?
We experienced many different emotions with what seemed like a daunting task. What made it less daunting, the facilitators reminded us, was that we are not alone - we are team - so, leverage each other.
Install IoT Edge on the Jetson TX2 running JetPack version 4.2
JetPack 4.2 includes an Ubuntu 18.04 environment and updates to CUDA, Tensorflow, and Open CV. One of the best changes is support for Python 3 in the version of Open CV provided. In JetPack 3.3 a build of Open CV was necessary to support Python 3, and this was not a trivial undertaking.
Azure AD Endpoint V1 vs V2
The objective of this post is to summarize in one single page, the main differences between Azure AD Endpoint V1 vs V2, with a focus on client libraries and supportability.
Migrating an Open, Object-Oriented Application Framework to Azure
I start with a high-level overview of the TMIP Open, Object-Oriented application framework and technology stack that was designed and implemented fifteen years ago and explore recommendations (Table 1) for migrating TMIP to Azure. The goal-- to support the DoD mission and for bring continuous value and future expansions to stakeholders.
![[Service Fabric] Why won’t Visual Studio connect to my cluster?](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/premier-developer/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2019/06/larry_fi-e1559663437404.png)
[Service Fabric] Why won’t Visual Studio connect to my cluster?
In this blog post, I’ll discuss something that has frustrated both myself and many others for quite a while, and that is, failure of Visual Studio to connect to an Azure Service Fabric cluster. We’ll be using Visual Studio 2017 as an example.
DevOps and Your Definition of Done
DevOps, among other things, is about collaboration, and a shared responsibility for delivering features into production. Your Definition of Done should reflect this. Learn why and how you should explicitly define Done to improve collaboration and quality.
Adding User Optional and Mapped Claims in the Azure AD Authentication Token
When we are using Azure Active Directory, we need to add extra information related to the user in the token that we received once that we get an authenticated user in our app. By Default, in our token we only see some user’s information like preferred username, email, name, roles assigned to this user and the unique name.
Understanding Your Cloud Adoption Maturity Level
To be successful an enterprise must address people, process and technology when adopting the cloud. I often witness organizations migrating to Azure focus primarily on the cloud technologies and fail to assess their current maturity readiness.
Installing .NET Core 3.0 preview to work with Visual Studio Code
I need to develop cross platform solutions and am often working in Linux, so I have taken to using Visual Studio Code as my IDE instead of Visual Studio.
Developing a Dockerized Asp.Net Core Application Using Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code offers feature parity with Visual Studio 2017/2019 when it comes to developing a containerized Asp.Net Core application. Since VSCode is cross platform, you can develop your next container DotNetCore application on a Linux or Mac while having access to all the great features that Windows users enjoy on VS2017/2019.
Azure DevOps: Build pipelines for Arduino microcontrollers
Azure DevOps applies to any language, any platform including Arduino. In this post, I will show you how to build Arduino microcontrollers using Azure DevOps Build pipeline and a custom build agent.
Making Sense of .NET 5
At the first day of Microsoft’s annual Build conference, Microsoft announced .NET 5 which will be released in November 2020. This led to some confusion in discussions with some of my colleagues and friends. What about .NET Core? Isn’t that the future? The road forward?
React Native for Windows Goes Mainstream
React Native for Windows adds support for Windows 10 SDK to React Native, which allows you to build apps for all Win-10 devices such as PCs, Tablets and Xbox using React.
Getting started with Azure Logic Apps
If you’ve ever struggled with automating cloud/on-premises workflows or wondered what of your workflows could be automated, Azure Logic Apps now makes it possible for development and IT teams to automate these workflows with little to no code.
How to fetch a user’s profile from Azure Active Directory using PowerShell
On my recent journey helping customers migrate from TFS to VSTS; one of the most common obstacle is verifying that users marked for active import to VSTS have matching AAD records. Thankfully there is a fairly streamlined way to do this using PowerShell and the Azure Graph API.
Migrating a repo from Bitbucket to Azure DevOps
Migrating from Bitbucket to Azure DevOps is a quick and easy process. Once your code is in DevOps, you’ll have access to all the powerful services Azure has to offer.
Have you considered Azure Reserved Instances?
We recently had the opportunity to work with a customer and help manage their Azure cost. This topic came up and it ended up resulting in significant saving by reducing the cost of resources they had already planned to deploy. Based on that interaction, we thought it would be useful to highlight this option in a blog post.
Dynamics 365 Implementation Pt. 3 – Postman
With tools such as Postman, you can easily send HTTP requests to your APIs. This technique can help test the fields that are being added to the integration message to see if they pass or fail. This helps in the efforts to test if the integration message being sent will successfully get posted in Dynamics 365.
Getting Started with Azure Blueprints
Azure Blueprints now makes it possible for development teams to rapidly build and stand up new environments with a set of built-in components -- such as networking -- to speed up development and delivery.
Understanding how Microsoft Azure keeps your data safe
When it comes to data, there is never a thing as too much security. With identify theft and breaches becoming a daily occurrence, ensuring sensitive information is protected is essential to business. Microsoft Azure has been designed from the ground-up to be one of the most secure places to store your information. Let me prove it!
Dynamics 365 Implementation Pt. 2 – Data Migration Process
Throughout a typical Dynamics project, various environments are setup to prevent the existing environments from being affected by the changes being pushed to an environment. This is the model most firms follow when they have mastered the release sequence in their CI/CD.
Quantum Computing: Learn Now and Prepare for the Future
Microsoft is developing Q#, "the domain-specific programming languages used for expressing quantum algorithms." Ingest as much as you can. There are also a host of resources online from videos to White Papers, including resources on the Microsoft Quantum Computing site.
Blockchain: Let’s think this through again
The strategy / business operatives should define the problem space and leave it to the Solution Architect to evaluate and build the best solution. Any decent Solution Architect would apply Occam's Razor to any solution (s)he creates; the end solution would be as simple as could be (but not simpler).
Using Groups in Azure AD B2C
Accessing Groups claims in Azure AD B2C requires adding some custom code through custom (IEF) policies. This post shows how to configure AD B2C IEF policies to access Groups in JWT Tokens.
404 response code caused by App Services – AlwaysOn feature
In this post, Sr. Consultant Adel Ghabboun shows how to optimize Azure App Service Always against cold starts.
Hour of Code and Minecraft for All Ages
Learn how to organize and run your own successful Hour of Code learning events.
Enabling DevOps in A Hybrid Cloud Environment at DoD
Learn how DoD leverages Azure DevOps to promote code from higher information level (IL) environment from a lower IL environment using Microsoft-Hosted and Self-Hosted Agents.
How Microsoft Tracks Santa
In this post, App Dev Manager Casey Kriutzfield shed some light on the NORAD Tracks Santa Azure architecture allowing for some impressive page view metrics. I’m Casey Kriutzfield. One of the leads for NORAD Tracks Santa. For the past several years, we’ve been a key partner in the NORAD Tracks Santa website. Along with development, we coordinate support and hosting as well. Naturally, a site like NORAD Tracks Santa is best hosted in the cloud, and there is no better cloud than Azure. For most of the year we run a static website, but come December 1st, we change over to the full site. Changing over isn’t all...
Conflicting Principles; DevOps VS ITIL.
On the surface DevOps and ITIL seem to be contradictory practices, with the former being more used in development work and the latter being more used for services/operations. However, if we drill down into their fundamentals you will find that DevOps cannot exist in its entirety without a framework such as ITIL.
Using Azure DevOps REST API with Node.js to retrieve repo permissions
In this post, we will show you how to retrieve Azure DevOps permissions using the REST APIs with NodeJS. You can use this as a starter to consume other Azure DevOps REST APIs as documented at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/devops/?view=azure-devops-rest-5.0.
Legacy Apps
Many developers have had the opportunity to inherit code and applications. When that happens the first response is often to want to rewrite, refactor or kill it if it is using older or unsupported technologies. Oftentimes, we also have to consider modern design and improvement to existing technologies that have made the application obsolete.
Setting Up Permissions at the ListItem Level in SharePoint 2010 Using CSOM
This article will examine one approach to set up permissions at a ListItem level in SharePoint 2010 using the Client-Side Object Model (CSOM) and ways to mitigate performance issues associated with ListItem management.
Insights to Application Awareness and Understanding
Application Insights is an Azure-hosted service which provides for in-depth application monitoring, whether running in the cloud or on-premise. It provides powerful tools for monitoring, analysis, and diagnosis, with capabilities such as live metrics streaming, tracking response times and failure rates, and much more.
Azure DevOps Pipelines: Leveraging OWASP ZAP in the Release Pipeline
As part of an organization’s automated Release pipeline, it is important to include security scans and report on the results of these scans. One tool used in the industry is the OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP).
Adding Authentication to Your App Easily with Azure AD
Secure your applications with Microsoft Identity Platform couldn't be any easier. In this blog, we’ll walk through very quick steps to help you start experimenting with authentication capabilities using Azure AD identities.
Microsoft Security Risk Detection – What’s New
MSRD is a self-service, AI-powered Dynamic Application Security Testing service that optimizes your web development cycle to identify and remediate bugs and security risks as they’re introduced into the codebase – not after they are already in production.
Building a better DSC script
For those people that want to build a better DSC script, one that checks for most conditions and wants to keep their custom scripts from failing with no error handling, check out these recommendations.
Moving legacy ASP.NET apps with Windows authentication to Azure App Service (Part 1)
App Dev Manager Mike Lapierre explores authentication options when moving legacy ASP.NET apps to Azure App Services. When attempting to move legacy ASP.NET apps to Azure App Service, you might encounter a few challenges which are documented here. I want to cover specially the use Windows authentication which is not supported in Azure App Service. Let’s split this in two parts, first authentication and then authorization. Authentication The obvious solution is to use Azure AD which allows authentication on the Intranet without entering your password with technologies like Seamless SSO or ADFS. There are a...
Migrating a static web site using custom HTTP modules to Azure App Service
I was asked recently about migrating a local Internet Information Server (IIS) static web application to an Azure App Service. For this type of question For migrations to Azure, resources like the App Service Migration tool are usually a good place to start. In this case the App Service Migration tool reported issues...
Three most popular Git workflows
Coding has evolved from incubators to online hubs which allow for remote coding. The size of applications has become increasingly difficult for a single person to code. Experts in various coding areas, therefore, converge on the virtual platform in order to contribute to the more massive code repository.
Microsoft Build Kickoff 2019
Microsoft Build is set to kick off next week from May 6-8. As a developer, this is not an event you want to miss. Build sets the stage for what is to come from Microsoft in the months ahead-- announcements, strategy, and technology innovation that will shift the landscape.
How To Update Visual Studio 2019 Asp.Net Core Angular Project
The updated Angular project template in Visual Studio 2019 (and 2017 before that) provides a convenient starting point for ASP.NET Core apps using Angular and the Angular CLI to implement a rich, client-side user interface (UI). The template is equivalent to creating an ASP.NET Core project to act as an API backend and an Angular CLI project to act as a UI.
Using Azure DevOps to Deploy Web Applications to Virtual Machines
While it’s worth mentioning that hosting web applications using Azure PaaS offerings or via containers would be the preferred route for a variety of reasons, VMs are still widely used in many organizations. With that scenario in mind, this post is geared to helping you get started with streamlining your release process. As a note, much of this process translates easily to using Azure PaaS offerings.
AKS Series– Using Azure Dev Spaces with Visual Studio Kubernetes Tooling
Azure Kubernetes Service brings a world class managed kubernetes service to the cloud. Customers can now leverage the power of Kubernetes platform without having to worry about managing the control plane. As a result of that, customers are now able to embark on the containerization journey with confidence. In this blog post, we will see how Visual Studio makes it easy to collaborate with AKS using Azure Dev Spaces.
Tips on Starting DevOps Projects
DevOps uses Agile principles and combines infrastructure, development, QA, and operations engineers together through the entire cycle of software development, deployment, and support, eliminating many of the silos between teams. Most importantly, DevOps improves communication and enables better collaboration, helping enterprises to bring products and innovation to market much more rapidly.
AKS Series – Use Azure Storage Option as Persistent Volumes in AKS
One of the best practices with containers is not to persist data inside the containers for long term as containers are ephermal. These containers can be removed and rebuilt very often and may require storage that persists across pods beyond the application lifecycle. In this blog post, we will learn about how to create Persistent Volumes in AKS with Azure Files.
Private CDN for hosting data on SharePoint for improving performance
When we target performance issues with SharePoint, the focus is generally on database related queries and all the requests that are being made to critical assets for the site like images, JavaScript files, CSS etc. A quick response time for these resources are vital for your page to function optimally.
Azure DevOps Hands-On Labs
I love to learn about new technologies. You install the product, grab a few samples, pour over blogs & documentation and away you go. I have found over the years as systems have gotten more complex its harder to explore new products. Sure you can install them, VMs have even made that quick, you don’t even have to install. But to truly explore you really need the data. Even worse, a lot of the time the samples are just a small subset of the scenario and require a lot of work to go beyond the basics. But the Azure DevOps team has put together a great program with dive in, enter Azure DevOps Hands-On Labs.
Quantum Computing for Software Developers – Part I
The underpinnings of quantum computing (QC) is quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, quantum mechanics is very weird and hard to understand. Most articles on QC are of the pop science variety and introductions to QC are usually heavy on mathematics (linear algebra). I want to do something different. I want to explain QC using the language of software development.
Angular How-to: Hide Logic from Users by Moving it out of the Browser and into Azure Functions
A common question from developers building Single Page Applications is how to hide proprietary calculations or other logic from end users. The answer is always to move that logic out of the JavaScript running in the browser and onto a server, which leads to building and hosting an API service. However, in the new world of serverless computing, there is a simpler option. Azure Functions is a compute service that enables you to run code on-demand without the hassle of building an entire application or managing any infrastructure.
Updating Git certificate bundles to use Department of Defense signed certificates
The most recent problem revolves around Git 4 Windows (Or any other Git client) and certificate revocation checking against Team Foundation Server (Or other source control) secured with a .mil URL, or any URL secured with a Department of Defense (DoD) signed certificate.
Cost Saving on Azure DevTest Lab
Azure DevTest Lab is a SaaS offering by Microsoft that empowers development team to stand up a fully functional dev/test environment in a matter of minutes. Check out the documentation and quick-start tutorial on how to get started today! See docs for more information: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/lab-services/lab-services-overview
Azure SQL MI Replication – New Possibilities for Hybrid Environments
As customers continue to have more applications deployed in Azure, it’s common that data from those on-premises applications has to be shared with the new cloud applications or vise-versa. A simple batched methodology may be suitable for table data that is rarely updated, but for data that changes frequently, this may introduce an unacceptably high latency and undermine any data concurrency, expected by the business users. One of the limitations of SQL Azure database is that it can’t support a SQL agent, so replication, while possible from on-premises to the cloud, is not available in the opposite directio...
Business-Driven Digital Transformation with Azure and Azure DevOps
Business-driven development (BDD) is a methodology in which business decisions and requirements drive an IT solution. Without adequate business needs identified, development cannot begin. Business-driven digital transformation is taking this a step further and having a company embrace a larger change, and therefore improve from it. The scale of digital transformation is of a larger magnitude, and it relies on buy-in of all business folks, as well as the IT department.
Testing Online Connectivity in PowerApps
This post will walk through testing the Connection.Connected property in your PowerApps. If you are building a PowerApp with offline capabilities, then it becomes very important to test whether the device has an active internet connection. The sensor function Connection.Connected can be used to test for connectivity – if true, you are connected, false not so much. A common scenario is to check the result of this function in an OnSelect formula. If connected, write or submit to a live data source, if disconnected, write to local collection for submittal later.
My Experience Starting a FIRST LEGO League Jr. Team
Programs, like FIRST, are important because they are creating the next generation of leaders and doers. Through the programs, the kids learn to work together to make the world a better place. If I can make a difference with just one kid, then I feel I have accomplished my goal of helping shape our future leaders make the world a better place.
Dynamics 365 Implementation Pt. 1 – Methodology
Over the course of the next 3 blog posts in my Dynamics 365 implementation series, I will go over the process and experiences my client had with implementing an ERP solution for their 50 year old, multi-billion dollar company. This first post will explain the implementation process used for this successful rollout of Dynamics 365.
Azure Automation DSC via ARM Template
One of the challenges was figuring out a way to get the commercial software installed and configured on the virtual machines in a completely automated fashion, which is where Azure Automation DSC fit into the solution. DSC or Desired State Configuration is not a new concept, but I recently learned that Azure Automation can be used as a DSC pull server that hosts your DSC configurations and resources in a convenient location.
Compliance, Auditors, and Documentation Oh My!
Azure Trust Center should be your first destination for our compliance offerings. Did you know independent audit reports along with Azure compliance offerings can be found there? This documentation is a free, but protected resource for those that utilize Microsoft cloud services (Azure, Office 365, Dynamics 365, etc.). Compliance documentation for HITrust, HIPPA/HITECH, FedRAMP, CSA CCM and many others are stored here.
PowerApps Reusable Components
In this post, I’ll show you how to create reusable canvas components for your PowerApps. For this example, I’m going to create a control to display today’s date, visualized as one of those daily tear-off calendars you might have seen at some point on someone’s desk. Since the component will be reusable on multiple screens, I’ll add properties to the control to set the data and visual configurations. I’ll also show how to use relative sizing to scale the controls when the component is resized, and how to scale font sizes as well.
Designing IoT Applications for Failure: Cloud Design Patterns that leverage the Retry Pattern
The inherent nature of the cloud is that there can be momentary loss of network connectivity, temporary loss of service, and timeouts that can occur for a variety of reasons. By designing your application to handle these types of events gracefully, you can improve availability and minimize impact from transient events.
Installing WindowsToGo on USB Drive for Mac
This article is written to show you how to run Windows on a Mac that doesn’t have enough local storage by working around issue using an external USB drive and Windows To Go product to create image.
The Cost of Bad UX Part 2: Improving the UI to Shrink Cost
This example illustrates why building a better UI and caring about how your end users is so valuable. Not only can it improve their experience, but it can also save your business time and money.
The Cost of Bad UX Part 1: Putting a price on look and feel
One thing that I’ve heard more than a few times while working in UX is that you can’t put a price on look and feel. Personally, I want to clear the air right now and say you absolutely can. It’s not hard, but it does require narrowing your focus to a particular workflow.
Custom AI Models with Azure Machine Learning Studio and ML.NET
From the ready-to-consume set of Azure Cognitive Services to the comprehensive set of tools for data scientists available in Azure Machine Learning Service, there are many ways to apply AI into your products and services.
PowerApps Design – Create a Digital Alarm Clock Display
In this post, we’ll look at how to use SVG images and some formulas to create a digital alarm clock style display in PowerApps. This is going to involve some image manipulation, so I’ll use one of my favorite free vector programs, Inkscape, to create SVG files that can be used in the clock display. I’ll also be using a free-for-commercial use digital clock font for this example (thanks to the author).
Bypassing authentication for the local Kubernetes Cluster Dashboard
It’s no secret that you can run a local version of Kubernetes on Docker Desktop for Windows, however, getting the Dashboard installed and configured correctly can be challenging. The problem is that the default installation requires you to manage an admin user and copy that user's bearer token into the portal to login.
Preparing for AZ-300 and AZ-301 with Pluralsight courses
Microsoft and Pluralsight have partnered to give Azure learners access to 46 Pluralsight video courses. Anyone who redeems this benefit can use all Pluralsight features available to individual subscribers, including paths, Skill IQ, channels, and notes.
Investigating Production Issues with Azure Monitor and Snapshot Debugger
On this episode of the On.NET Show, ADM Isaac Levin talks about how we can better triage issues in Production environments using Azure Monitor, Application Insights, Snapshot Debugger, SnapPoints and LogPoints.
How to link your MCP profile to a partner organization
Anyone who has ever passed at least one of the Microsoft certification exams has a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) profile created with an ID (MCID) generated. This profile is now part of the Microsoft Learning platform that allows a person to track all activities related to certification accomplishments, both active and past.
Mixing Windows and Linux containers with Docker Compose
Running Linux containers on a Windows host has been available for awhile now. However, getting Windows and Linux containers to communicate without Docker Compose results in using the containers’ IP Addresses. This is not a good solution since container IP Addresses change often.
New Concept: Diversity Driven Development
Diversity Driven Development (DDD) is concept that I’ve envisioned for some time. DDD can enable you, your team and/or your organization to build software and services that provide solution beyond just the current customer demographic.
Planning the future for NoSQL Cassandra DB Applications on Azure
In this post, App Dev Manager Shany Wiesel explains the different deployment models for Apache Cassandra on Azure. Microsoft Azure is an open cloud platform that runs both Microsoft as well as non-Microsoft software which includes operating systems, application servers, messaging middleware as well as SQL and NoSQL databases from both commercial and open source models. Apache Cassandra is a commonly used, high performance NoSQL database. Customers that currently maintain Cassandra on-premises may consider migration Cassandra DBs workloads to the cloud. This post explores Cassandra deployment options, as...
Getting Started with Windows 10 IoT Core & Raspberry Pi 3B+
In this post, App Dev Manager, Robert Schumann shows how to get started with Windows 10 IoT Core with Raspberry Bi 3 B+. Jumping right in, let’s get a few matters out of the way upfront. Everything you need (to complete this article) You will need the HDMI cable to connect the Pi to a monitor for checking installation status. Likewise, having a USB keyboard and mouse for installation is suggested in case they’re needed for troubleshooting. Technically speaking, a lot of functionality can be accomplished through the browser or remote con...
Moving to the Cloud is NOT about the Cloud
One of the questions that I get asked very regularly by customers, colleagues, and friends is “Why do I need to move my … to the cloud?“ Almost every time this question comes up, the conversation very quickly gets into technical capabilities of the cloud, cost saving or the last service that this or that cloud vendor has released. These are all valid reasons, but that’s not what drives people, teams, or organizations.
Consider This When Planning your TFS to Azure DevOps Migration
Depending on what version of TFS you intend to migrate and what features you are using, there are a few things that in my opinion are “major” considerations because they have the potential of adding scope to your migration efforts. While you will find out about them as you read through the official migration guide, I believe there is value to knowing these things prior to embarking in such journey.
Angular How-to: Microsoft ADAL for Angular 6+ with Configurable Settings
Laurie Atkinson, Senior Consultant explains how to use the microsoft-adal-angular6 wrapper library to authenticate with Azure Active Directory in your Angular 6+ apps.
e-signature requirements in Azure DevOps service and Azure DevOps Server
The reason for this post is to help customers realize how to satisfy the CFR – Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21, PART 11 ELECTRONIC RECORDS; ELECTRONIC SIGNATURES requirements with Team Foundation Server, Azure DevOps Service and Azure DevOps Server.
Exploring Blazor with Visual Studio 2019
In this post, Senior App Dev Manager Keith Beller walks use through Blazor, a new experimental framework for WebAssembly. What is Blazor? After 22 years of dominance as “the” native language for client-side browser interaction, JavaScript is facing new competition from other popular languages such as C/C++, Go, PHP, C# and others thanks to the growing adoption of WebAssembly or Wasm. All four major browser engines Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Edge now support WebAssembly. In fact, according to caniuse.com as of March 1st 2019 80.62% of users globally are using web browsers that support WebAssembly. Blaz...
Remediation of old versions of Visual Studio Isolated Shell
With this little tidbit of information, we were able to write a powershell script that iterates through a given folder recursively and identifies executables that are dependent on VS Isolated Shell.
Gathering real-time Perfmon Counters in a cluster
Performance (aka. Perfmon) Counters are critical to understanding the health of and diagnosing issues on Windows. In recent performance and scalability testing of a solution built on top of Azure Service Fabric, we collected Perfmon Counters across 15 VMs and sent them to Log Analytics. This was very helpful; however, there were times when we wanted them to be real time.
Accessibility Testing with Azure DevOps Pipelines
I was recently working with one of my customers to help them improve the usability of their applications as mandated by their IT staff. The goal was to create quality web applications that can be equally useful to all users including those with disabilities. Together, we reviewed many good tools and potential best practices, but we wanted something that would specifically run as part of the application release process.
Walk through Running Traefik on Service Fabric Local Cluster
In order to help you get up and running quickly to test Træfik and Service Fabric, this post will walk you through how to set this up on your local development cluster. There is good documentation at Running Træfik on Azure Service Fabric, but with a local development cluster you can skip some steps, and there are one or two snags I can help you avoid.
Azure BOTs – getting extra access tokens
In this post, Premier Dev Consultant Marius Rochon show us how to obtain extra access tokens using OAuth2 Extension flow (on-behalf-of flow). The following describes an approach for getting access tokens to more than one resource, without re-displaying the sign in dialog (using the V2 Azure AD endpoint). In a nutshell, the procedure uses the existing authentication dialog to acquire one token and then the OAuth2 Extension flow (on-behalf-of flow) to acquire additional access tokens with the originally acquired token. Continue reading...
Classroom Labs with Azure Lab Services
With the Azure Lab Services, customers can quickly set up classroom labs for its employees to gain practical experience not only with the latest technologies, but also with their internal and external business applications. Classroom labs can also be used for hosting hackathons as it applies to any workload that needs on-demand temporary environments.
Preserving Date Modified on Files Deployed via Build/Release Pipelines
I was working on a DevOps scenario that involved automating the deployment of batch process files from one server to one or more other servers. To accomplish this, I created a build pipeline to collect certain files from the staging location and store them as Build Artifacts. I then created a release pipeline to ask for deployment approval and then deploy the build artifacts to servers in other environments.
Calculating server capacity and planning for future user growth
Do I need to add more servers if my user load grows by 10% each month for the next 12 months? That is a hard question to answer. Unless you have an Application Platform Management solution, it is hard to correlate function calls to CPU time and response times.
Exploring Feature Weights using R and Azure Machine Learning Studio
I find that machine learning experiment’s results are always interesting and somewhat unexpected in certain cases. On this comparison, the feature ranking results of PFI are often different from the feature selection statistics that are utilized before a model is created. This is useful in many cases, especially when training “black-box” models where it is difficult to explain how the model characterizes the relationship between the features and the target variable.
Using Go Lang with Azure
In this world of digital transformation, languages like Go Lang have a major impact on project success as it helps increase developer and software efficiency. Leveraging languages like Go Lang and combining this into your Cloud Development Strategy can make a lot of sense. If you are interested in reading more about the features/benefits of Go Lang, this post is for you.
Running a .NET Core Web Application in Docker container using Docker Desktop for Windows
App Dev Managers Anand Shukla and Sash Kavalaparambil provide step by step instruction to run a .NET Core Web Application in Docker container using Docker Desktop for Windows.
Enterprise Application Modernization using Windows Containers
Enterprise organizations today have numerous simple CRUD based applications that call for modernization without necessarily needing to re-architect the legacy apps. If you have an existing .NET app that could use CI/CD but not necessarily any immediate rearchitecting efforts, this blog is for you.
Azure Lab services scheduling now Available
Azure Lab services is a quick and easy way to manage environments for your team in the cloud. It is versatile enough to set up development environments, testing and even classroom lab environments. The service handles all the infrastructure, user management, and now scheduling when the lab is available. The ability to stop a lab VM has been around for some time, but the ability to schedule when a VM starts, how long it remains up and then when it is to shut down recently became available.
IIS Remote Management for Docker Containers
When running IIS in a Windows Container, you configure it using PowerShell commands in your Dockerfile. While determining the correct PowerShell commands is not a difficult process it is inconvenient to verify the settings using the command line only. Sometimes, you just need a UI to quickly view and manage your IIS configuration.
Move or Clone TFS from one hardware to another in TFS 2017/2018
Prior to Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2017, moving or cloning of a TFS instance required manual preparation and configuration of existing instance’s backups. You can now configure your restored databases completely through the application tier. This blog walks through the new process to demonstrate how to restore and configure an instance of TFS to new hardware.
Why you should consider VS Code for your Kubernetes/Docker work – Part 2
In this follow up article, we will cover how it can help to deploy Container images stored into Azure Container Registry (ACR). We will also cover the kubectl explain integration which is helpful to understand the structure of YAML files used to describe Kubernetes API objects.
AZ-202 Microsoft Azure Developer Certification Transition Study Guide
As Microsoft embraces the spirit of “lifelong learning”, expect updates to the suite of training resources and certification exams to ensure content reflects new technologies. Microsoft has published the exam guide for AZ-202 Microsoft Azure Developer Certification Transition for those who have passed the 70-532 Azure Developer. Developers will get the “Microsoft Certified Azure Developer Associate” certification if they pass the new AZ-202 Microsoft Azure Developer Certification.
Convert ASP.NET WebForms with Windows Authentication to use AAD
I work with a lot of enterprise customers that have sizable portfolios of Intranet web sites using Web Forms and Windows Integrated Authentication that they would like to move to Azure PaaS; however, we’ve found that a lot of documentation on these topics doesn’t extend back to Web Forms and instead targets .NET Core and MVC.
Using Azure CloudShell as a Dev Sandbox
Being able to create, develop, test, and deploy an application to Azure AND commit to source control with no tooling other than a browser is pretty powerful. This example was with .NET but there are tons of languages supported in CloudShell.
Handling Error AADSTS54005
On November 15, 2018 an update to Microsoft Azure Active Directory was released to bring AAD in line with the OAuth specification. This update prevents an authorization code from being used to obtain access tokens for multiple resources. The full release notes for this change can be found here.
AZ 203 Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure Study Guide
As a Microsoft employee who works with customers and a cloud enthusiast, I see it essential to be knowledgeable of how the cloud can bring the best value to the developer. Because of this, I am taking the AZ 203 exam, which is titled “Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure”. This exam was in beta for some time and was recently released proper in January 2019. Developers used to the Microsoft certification world will see this exam as a replacement for 70-532, which is the older iteration of Azure technology geared for developers. Passing this exam will reward developers with the “Microsoft Certified Azure Develo...
Durable Functions
While one thinks of event driven code, the requirements (operational) cab be broken into smaller functions, which is usually the code snippet executed as a response to a request. As the end user, one are not concerned about underlying infrastructure.
UX is not UI, but UI is definitely UX
When I first joined the Premier team here at Microsoft, a lot of the work I initially did for our customers was just that – advisory front-end design work. After many discussions about how I can provide value to our customers, I started to realize that even though words likes User Experience and User Centered Design are starting to be thrown out more and more in development, very few people have a full grasp of what exactly User Experience is.
![[Service Fabric] Stateful Reliable Collection Restore –The New Way](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/premier-developer/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2019/01/sf_restore_fi.png)
[Service Fabric] Stateful Reliable Collection Restore –The New Way
I wanted to provide a separate blog post because although the PowerShell code for performing a Restore isn’t too complex, the amount of information you need and how to find that information is critical to your success in the Restore operation.
![[Service Fabric] Stateful Reliable Collection Backup –The New Way](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/premier-developer/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2019/01/sf_backup_fi.png)
[Service Fabric] Stateful Reliable Collection Backup –The New Way
Recently, the Service Fabric team announced general availability of a new method of backup and restore of stateful reliable collections. What this blog post will provide, is a complete project sample on how to setup and perform a Backup (but not a Restore), with PowerShell, ARM template and code, to help you understand how to tie this all together. I’ll cover restore in a future post.
Want to be an ADM?
I’ve had the pleasure of working with customers who challenge me every day with questions that test my knowledge and experience, my ability to learn, my ability to research, and almost paramount, my ability to network amongst the vast expert resources in our consulting, support engineering, and product management teams.
Upload a file from an Azure Windows Server Core machine to Azure Blob storage
The title for this could be a lot longer like ‘how to upload a file using the Azure CLI to Azure storage on a Windows Server 2016 Core DataCenter’ because that’s what this blog post is about…but that’s a ridiculously long title.
Taking small steps into Azure (with Developer Support)
Premier Developer Application Development Managers and Consultants are all well versed in Azure; we are all certified. Our goal is to help your organization achieve more through your Azure usage: by helping you architect a solution, enabling and training your developers to develop for the cloud, and working through a proof of concept. We can be there every step of the way from planning through implementation.
Microsoft Teams: What’s in it for Developers?
Microsoft Teams presents a lot of opportunities for developers and development teams, from helping to improve Team collaboration and agility to providing a platform for deploying great functionality for users.
Demystifying Docker Containers Support on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016
Both my colleague Kendall Roden and myself were recently taking a deep dive into docker containers support on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. We knew that we could install “Docker for Windows” to add support for Docker, but as we dug deeper we found out that there is more to it than simply installing “Docker for Windows”.
Paired Programming & Visual Studio Live Share
My first experience matched many of experiences I remember mentioned in the books I read. At first, paired programming was extremely intimidating. I had to pair with an extremely seasoned developer thinking that I was about to be proved that I was not as smart as I thought I was – see Imposter Syndrome. Well, I learned many lessons from this developer by pairing with him. And in the end the developer learned quite a bit from me.
Set up IIS on Windows Virtual Machine
App Dev Manager Vijetha Marinagammanavar provides a walk-through of setting up IIS on a Windows Virtual machine hosted in Azure.
Cross (micro) services authentication with Azure B2C
Microservices is an architectural style that structures an application as a collection of loosely coupled services, which implement business capabilities. The microservice architecture enables the continuous delivery/deployment of large, complex applications. It also enables an organization to evolve its technology stack.
Hosting Python packages in Azure DevOps
What I wanted to accomplish here was simply to create a redistributable Python package. Also show some of the practices on how to work with Python in a Windows environment, but I could not stop there. I went ahead and built a complete CI/CD pipeline for the package, showing how easy it is and how well Python projects integrate with Azure DevOps.
Alerts based on Analytics query using Custom log search
One feature was removed in Application Insights called Scheduled Analytics, and now it is replaced with Custom Log Search which allows us to create an Alerts based on data analytics queries.
Recommendations API is retired! Here is what you can do.
On February 15, 2018, “Recommendations API is no longer under active development” – as stated in the Recommendations API documentation. Our product team came up with an alternative new open-source solution called Recommendations Solution Template, which will let you host the recommendation engine within your Azure subscription. In this blog, will guide you through the steps of creating Recommendations engine, deploy and train your model. But first before doing that, let’s get to know the new additional components.
DevOps and Culture, part 2
This article is part 2 of DevOps and Culture. See part 1 here. In this entry I’ll discuss how we can think of culture in a systematic way and how we can change it.
DevOps and Culture, part 1
Peter Drucker famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This is a great introduction to how we think about DevOps and in this article, I’m going to unpack this statement so that we have a bit more context. This is the first part of multiple articles on culture as it relates to DevOps.
Moving your ASP.NET applications to the Microsoft Cloud
There are a few key scenarios that you will want to consider as you plan your migration strategy. Unless you have unlimited time, resources and money, it is likely that you will have to consider implementing one or more of the following options…
Resolve to be a “learn it all” with new Azure Certifications!
The path for earning the Azure Developer Associate certification has recently changed, based on AZ-200 and AZ-201 beta exam feedback and lessons learned. The new exam, AZ-203: Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure, will be the only exam necessary. Candidates for the Azure Developer Associate certification will be tested on developing Azure infrastructures and platform as Service Compute Solutions, developing for Azure storage, implementing Azure security, connecting to and consuming Azure Services and third-party services, and monitoring, troubleshooting, and optimizing Azure solutions.
Devenez un « j’apprends tout » avec les nouvelles certifications Azure!
Le parcours pour obtenir la certification Azure Developer Associate a récemment changé, basé sur les commentaires et les leçons apprises des examens AZ-200 et AZ-201 en préversion. Le nouvel examen, AZ-203 : Solutions Microsoft Azure Developer, sera le seul examen nécessaire. Les candidats de la certification Azure Developer Associate seront évalués sur le développement de solutions basées sur les services d’infrastructure et de plateforme en tant que service Azure, le développement pour le stockage Azure, la mise en place de la sécurité Azure, la connectivité et la consommation des services Azure et tierces part...
¡Resuelve ser un "aprende todo" con las nuevas certificaciones de Azure!
La ruta para obtener la certificación de Desarrollador Asociado en Azure ha cambiado recientemente, según las opiniones recibidas de los exámenes beta de AZ-200 y AZ-201 y las lecciones aprendidas. El nuevo examen, AZ-203: Desarrollo de soluciones para Microsoft Azure, será el único examen necesario. Los candidatos para la certificación Desarrollador Asociado en Azure se probarán en el desarrollo de infraestructuras y plataformas en Azure como soluciones de servicios de computo, desarrollar para el almacenamiento en la nube, implementar seguridad en Azure, conectar y consumir los servicios de Azure y servicios de...
Tutorial: Run Spring Boot web service in Windows Docker container
Build a Boot web project, create a Dockerfile, build a Docker image, then run it in Docker.
Why you should consider VS Code for your Kubernetes/Docker work
VS Code can really be the platform of choice to benefit from the best features. Furthermore, its cross platform support allow users to have the same customer experience on multiple platforms (Windows, Linux and Mac OS).
Build an interactive assistant using QnA Maker
I was recently engaged in a customer proof of concept scenario where they needed to turn their knowledgebase articles, FAQ’s and other company data into an interactive bot. For our scenario, we created a QnA Maker service that pulled HR information from a backend database so users can ask common questions in a conversational way instead of wasting time searching and scrolling through content.
Six Opinionated Tips to be a Better .NET Developer
I have been a developer for over 10 years, and I am always looking at new ways to be more productive. May I present you with 6 tips that I have started to adopt that I think have increased my developer skills 1000% (YMMV).
SonarQube Hosted On Azure App Service
This project simplifies the setup of a SonarQube server to one step. Simply click the Deploy to Azure link on the project homepage and follow the simple walkthrough to have resources deployed out and configured.
People First – The Frequently Overlooked Importance of Culture Change in DevOps Journeys
Why is it that some organizations, though they may invest great expense in tools, process development, and rigor, fail to obtain the transformation and benefits other organizations have so greatly experienced?
Remote Monitoring of IoT Devices Using Azure and HoloLens
This is going to be an IoT solution, which receives data from connected devices, stores the data and makes it available for consumption by a holographic or mobile application. So, you will first learn to set up the backend infrastructure--where you will have a device--which connects with a Cloud Gateway. Data received by the Cloud Gateway is stored within persistent storage, and finally, this data will be made available to a Holographic or Mobile app through Web APIs.
Interacting With Push Notifications Under Angular 7 Applications
Until recently Angular supported SwPush class which allowed PWA capable applications to subscribe and listen to push notifications from the Service Worker. Here is an example where I am subscribing to clicking on the notification card which will redirect the user to my blog. Also notice that you also have access to the action that triggered the click. So you can wire your code to react differently to different actions.
Building a Simple Contact Form with Azure Functions
I write about Azure Functions over and over again because they are the perfect solution for what I am trying to do, small little things that I don’t want to spin up a larger unnecessary app to do it. Then I had a thought, why not have an Azure Function that I could http post to and sent an email from there...
Preventing Single Sign On (SSO) Redirects From Opening a New Window Inside a Progressive Web Application (PWA)
I was recently working on a PWA application that utilizes SSO and one odd behavior that I noticed right off the bat was the fact that the SSO redirects forces the application to open a new window inside the browser instead of carrying the redirect inside the application shell. This is problematic as it defies the whole purpose of a PWA which attempts to make a web application feel native.
How to Encrypt SQL communication on the wire
While on-premises, most applications did not take advantage of securing communications to the database on the wire just because of the inherent isolation advantages of having the application ONLY on the internal LAN. However, as more and more of these applications start moving to the cloud, the security of data over the wire is rightfully starting to gain increased importance.
Beyond “Lift-and-Shift”: Application Modernization with Microsoft Azure
The "lift-and-shift" approach with Azure IaaS can only deliver on small measure of the promise of agility and innovation in the Cloud when compared to modernized application (i.e., Cloud-optimized). Modernizing application with Azure PaaS, on the other hand, can deliver on the promise of agility and innovation to a great extent. It reduces the time required to manage the application and the time required to deploy a new release, and optimizes the speed to market.
Synchronizing Azure Cosmos DB Collections for Blazing Fast Queries
While Cosmos DB offloads many of the hard NoSQL scaling problems, shaping your data and choosing a logical partition key are left to you. The partition key choice is arguably the most important decision you’ll need to make – it cannot be changed and must be determined upon creation of a collection.
Angular How-to: Implement Feature Flags
In an agile development environment, there may be partially completed features or features with external dependencies that are not ready. Instead of relying on multiple code branches, instead you may opt for deploying code with a feature turned off. Later, that feature should be turned on via a configuration or database change. This post provides sample code that you can use to implement feature flags in your Angular app.
Completing the Redundancy Story of API Manager
In a previous post I discussed an approach to handling backend redundancy using Azure API Manager (APIM). In this post I want to discuss the various options for providing a high-availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) to your services exposed by API Manager.
Azure Cosmos DB Pricing Overview
My customers have spent some time working with Azure Cosmos DB and had questions around pricing. I thought I would share a bit of what I have learned when it comes to pricing for Cosmos DB for this BLOG article.
Easy as Pi IoT on Windows 10 and Azure IoT Central!
Have you ever tried building an IoT solution on an embedded device like a Raspberry Pi with an ARM processor? What languages did you have to use? What if that device had to send data to the cloud for dashboarding and alerting? How would you build the dashboard and manage alerts for authorized users?
Tracking Cross-team Projects in Azure DevOps Boards
If part of this transition requires that aspects from the legacy process be kept, it’s a great opportunity to demonstrate that through the use of agile process and agile tools, we can have an even better control of the value (beyond just software) that the development team is creating for the company.
Using ADAL.js with Angular4+
This is an update post to a previous article published in April 2017 explaining how to wrap ADAL.js with Angular2+. The previous article is no longer relevant given the changes to the Angular framework. This new post explains a reimplementation which uses the PathLocationStrategy and Angular features such as HttpInterceptor and InjectionToken.
Pragmatic TDD
I have been working on a small project in my free time in which I’m the only developer. When I started the project, I wanted to write the entire application in a test driven, test first, manner. I wrote my failing test, then made the test pass and as I saw opportunities to refactor, I took the time to reduce complexity, separate concerns and reorganize as needed. I was in a red-green-refactor rhythm and it was enjoyable to see the test count go up and my code coverage for tests at 100%… but then reality set in.
Understanding CIDR Notation when designing Azure Virtual Networks and Subnets
When creating a Virtual Network, specifying the address space is the most critical configuration. This is the IP range for the entire network that will be divided into subnets. This post is to help explain CIDR Notation for your subnet configuration.
Automating the creation of Azure Service Principals with PowerShell
Recently had to give a chalk talk on a Azure Service Bus (ASB). Creating and recreating the various topics and subscriptions is a bit of a pain since there are so many options and parameters to consider. The way I go about it is to create a utility that simply creates and destroys all the infrastructure I need for the chalk talk.
Microsoft’s Developer Blogs are Getting an Update
Update: The Premier Developer blog transition is now scheduled for early 2019 to ensure you have the best blog experience. In the coming days, we’ll be moving our developer blogs to a new platform with a modern, clean design and powerful features that will make it easy for you to discover and share great content. This week, you’ll see the Visual Studio, IoTDev, and Premier Developer blogs move to a new URL while additional developer blogs will transition over the coming weeks. You’ll continue to receive all the information and news from our teams, including access to all past posts. Your RSS feeds will contin...
Federation patterns using Azure AD
In this post, Premier Dev Consultant Marius Rochon considers scenarios where an application needs to be accessed by users from many sources of authentication (Office 365, owned and operated by Microsoft but whose use is managed separately by many independent organizations is an example of such a resource). It proposes a framework for determining an optimal solution for the application using Azure AD.
Microsoft Flow and PowerApps monitoring strategy
Both Flow and PowerApps are great tools that can be in the hands of business and power users to accelerate the building of automated workflows and business apps across on-premise and the cloud services. It’s easy to see how there could be many such Flows and Apps built, deployed and running within your tenant. It’s a best practice for the IT administrators to devise a monitoring strategy in place that could proactively keep a watch on these Flows, Apps and other related resources and alert and perform remediation actions as necessary.
Azure AD App Tracking with Logic Apps
Recently, I was asked by a customer with a very large internal Azure user base to help them find a way to keep track of Azure AD (AAD) application registrations in their directory. This customer has been on Azure for years, and the number of AAD application registrations has steadily grown during that time. There are so many applications now that it is hard for them to know which ones are still being used, and which are not. Furthermore, it’s common for application teams to create a secret key for their application and then forget that the key will eventually expire. How does the operations team know whom to cont...
Solving What’s Off About Monolithic Applications
It's all about the people. The resistance to change is human nature. Leaders and team members alike. Assessing the team is simple. If they can demonstrate an openness to changing how they do things you are on track. If team conversations consist of why things must continue to be done the way they are being done success will be a challenge. But leadership is the real key. Effective change is a collaborative process and management's primary team facing role is keeping the team within the agreed upon boundaries. But of equal importance is securing and managing executive sponsorship. The team is pushing hard against ...
The danger of TaskCompletionSource<T> class
... when used with async/await. TaskCompletionSource<T> class is a very useful facility if you want to control the lifetime of a task manually. I share a canonical example when TaskCompletionSource is used for converting the event-based asynchronous code to the Task-based pattern.
Uncovering The Details Of Hosting a Node Application On Azure
I was recently working on a Node JS application and I decided that Azure was the right place for me to host my application as it made it extremely easy to deploy it to production. But shortly after deploying the application I started to have questions about some of the magic that Azure was doing to make everything “just work”. This post summarizes my journey in attempting to uncover some of the magic involved in hosting a Node application on Azure.
Cosmos DB Emulators can also run in the Cloud
Dev Consultant Julien Oudot demonstrates how to automate the testing of a data layer in ASP.NET Core WEB API with Cosmos DB.
DevOps and Waste
One of the great things we’ve learned from applying Lean to software development and operations is the notion of eliminating waste is our processes. In this article I’ll provide some background on why this is important and how to find and eliminate waste in your daily activities.
Client-Side Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) Developers Support Options
Support Escalation Engineer Dan Bagley and App Dev Manager David Huang break down the support options for client-side Exchange ActiveSync development.
DevOps and Business Strategy
When I engage with customers I often work with developers, business analysts, managers, Operations, etc. and the discussions are invariably about tools whether they are Microsoft’s or Open Source tools. These are great topics and open up conversations around many other topics. However, most folks aren’t really talking about the reason we are trying to use these tools. All too often the tools become the shiny objects in the room which divert us from even more important topics.
DevOps Stories – An Interview with Brian Blackman of Microsoft Premier
App Dev Manager Dave Harrison talks with Brian Blackman, a Senior Consultant for Microsoft Premier. As an Azure development and DevOps consultant, he works with Independent Software Vendors (ISV), Enterprises, and Partners where his specialty is DevOps. Brian’s focus is assisting customers in establishing a vision for DevOps, assessing where they currently stand, and then working with them to develop a roadmap to attain their vision. MCTP, MCSD-C++, CSM, CSP, SAFe Agilist.
Open Source Virtual Conference
Join us in the morning for a keynote featuring John Gossman and Gabe Monroy providing insights into how Microsoft has embraced Open Source both with its own technology and our commitment to the Open Source Community. Following the keynote, we will be focused on ensuring you are set up on Azure for the remainder of the day to be able to follow along with demos throughout the 14 sessions available.
Kanban Board Tools Extension for VSTS
The Kanban Tools extension for VSTS is now available on the marketplace. This is our first public release of the extension and includes the ability to copy to and from a team’s Kanban board.
Raw threads and async lambdas
Using async methods/lambdas where they are not expected causes unexpected problems. The typical example I discuss with people is TaskFactory.StartNew() because its an easy way to create Tasks and some people reach for that instead of Task.Run(), but I recently came across some code hitting the same problem while creating threads the traditional way.
Combining iterator blocks and async methods in C#
One of the best traits of a well-designed system is composability. Large systems are complex and hierarchical and one of the best ways to fight accidental complexity is to compose a system from smaller components. You write and test each component independently then you glue them together to achieve a higher-level behavior. Programming languages usually designed to have "composable" features as well. You should be able to use multiple features together and the entire thing should just work. In C# you can compose different features together, and everything works. Unless it isn't. Recently I stumbled across a...
AI Discovery Days at a Microsoft Location Near You
Microsoft’s vision is to democratize AI and make it accessible and valuable to everyone. Join us to learn how to start building intelligence into your solutions with the Microsoft AI platform, including pre-trained AI services like Cognitive Services and Bot Framework, as well as deep learning tools like Azure Machine Learning.
Driving industry transformation with Azure
This monthly blog aggregates a series of the newest resources focused on how Azure can address common challenges and drive new opportunities in a variety of industries.
Azure Maps Simplified
Azure Maps are fascinating to me and also very useful in an ever increasing IoT world to track/transport goods, monitor traffic patterns for delivery routes and many other applications. What I want to display is the absolute minimum one would need to create their very first Azure Map.
Back-end API redundancy with Azure API Manager
App Dev Manager Mike Barker walks you through how to build out API redundancy using Azure API Manager. Azure API Manager (APIM) helps organizations publish APIs to external, partner, and internal developers to unlock the potential of their data and services. API Manager provides a single point to present, manage, secure, and publish your APIs.
Continuous Integration, Deployment and Test Automation for Dynamics CRM
Through this series I will be able to share my journey on implementing CICD process for Dynamics CRM with process workflow, POC, and tools. I am sure this will assist developers and architects in having confidence in implementing a successful CICD process for CRM.
Part II – Kubernetes DevOps : Introduction to Helm
This is the second post in a multi-part blog series on Kubernetes DevOps using Azure. I am co-authoring this series with the help of my colleague at Microsoft, Daniel Selman. We recently worked on K8s project together and thought to share out learnings. In the last post, you get to know the application that going to be deployed in the Kubernetes cluster. In this post, you will learn about the tool called “Helm”.
Social Media – Benefits as a developer
I was only using Social Media as a place to hang out, relax, and kill time with friends. Then I had an epiphany. I could use social media for personal development, to enrich and advance my career.
How to stop misbehaving programs
GFlags (or the Global Flags Editor) enables and disables advanced debugging and troubleshooting features in Windows. You may be familiar with Gflags if you have had to isolate heap corruption issues or spent time developing Windows drivers. It’s also pretty handy to block the start of an application through debugging if it won’t respond any other way.
Kubernetes DevOps I – Introduction to the Historic Events
This is the first post in a multi part blog series on Kubernetes DevOps using Azure. I am co-authoring this series with the help of my colleague at Microsoft, Daniel Selman. We recently worked on K8s project together and thought to share out learnings.
Azure CLI Aliases Are Awesome!
App Dev Manager Isaac Levin spotlights extensibility in the Azure CLI allowing developers to do some pretty amazing things when it comes to mastering long and complex commands.
Digital Signatures and Certificate Expiration Dates
Why should you sign your code binaries and documents? Read this post to learn why, as Premier Developer Lizet Pena De Sola explains reasons and best practices.
Software-as-a-Service Part 1 (Identity-as-a-Service)
App Dev Manager, Keith Anderson explores aspects and patterns of building solutions under a Software-as-a-Service model.
The Importance of Limiting Your WIP
Senior Consultant, Assaf Stone follows up on his previous post – why it’s important to limit WIP (Work In Progress).
Managing VC++ legacy within your Enterprise
Senior App Dev Manager Sanket Bakshi shares some ideas on how to manage legacy VC++ within your Enterprise.
Accessing Certificates in Service Fabric Hosted Windows Containers
In this post, senior consultant Megan Meyer demonstrates how you can utilize SetupEntryPoint scripts to manage acquiring certificates and making them available to your Service Fabric hosted container. This blog covers an approach that allows greater control and flexibility at the time of service setup so that you can have runtime access to certificate files within your container.
DevOps Stories – Interview with John-Daniel Trask of Raygun
App Dev Manager Dave Harrison talks with John-Daniel Trask, co-founder and CEO of Raygun, about the adoption of DevOps. "Human beings are the center of the universe. But you wouldn’t know that by the way we’re treated by most of the software we write. Great engineers and great executives grasp that. They know that to humans, the interface is the system – everything else simply does not matter in the end. So they never let anything get in the way of improving that human, end user experience."
Late night Blockchain thoughts
The reason why I've decided to write a blog post about Blockchain is not because I want to add a(nother) quick-start or easy explanation of the technology into the internet archive… I’ve had the chance to study, work and learn from the field what this technology may offer (a lot of potential opportunities) but of course also when it would be better to invest in something different. So my goal is to give you some food for thought and to feed your curiosity sharing my honest feedback and thoughts.
Performance implications of default struct equality in C#
If you're familiar with C#, then you most likely heard that you should always override and for custom structs for performance reasons. To better understand the importance and the rationale behind this advice we're going to look at the default behavior to see why and where the performance hit comes from. Then we'll look at a performance bug that occurred in my project and at the end we'll discuss some tools that can help to avoid the issue altogether. How important the issue is? Not every potential performance issue affects an end-to-end time of your application. is not very efficient (*), but unless it is us...
What is your Agile?
In this post, Senior Application Manager, AJ Weaver talks about the many interpretations of Agile.First, let me start by saying that when I am talking about Scrum, I am not necessarily talking about Agile. All Scrum is Agile but not all Agile is Scrum. As you can see below, Scrum is just one cornerstone of Agile. The term is misused and abused across by pretty much all organizations, but I believe it is very important for organizations to clarify what they mean by “Agile”. I have heard many people define Agile over the past 20+ years of my software development life. Sometimes people like to define Agile as “not d...
WIP Your Product into Shape
In his latest post, Senior Consultant, Assaf Stone shares some useful suggestions on tracking Work In Progress (WIP) in VSTS.What is WIP?WIP simply means work in process (also sometimes, Work In Progress). This metric simply measures how many items (features, stories, backlog items, tasks) your team have started to develop, but have yet to complete. In other words, how many items are currently being developed. This simple metric is extremely important, and a useful number to track and control. In this post we will discuss the reasons for limiting your WIP, how to do so, and how to track your work in process using...
Angular How-to: Share Server-side Validation
Laurie Atkinson, Senior Consultant, avoid duplication of field-level validation by dynamically applying server-side validation rules on Angular controls. Validation attributes are simple to apply to an Angular control within an HTML template, but that validation logic must be duplicated on the server. Instead, you can build an Angular validation service that parses server-generated rules and dynamically applies those rules using Reactive Forms. Settle on a schema that your API will provide Your server-side API will need to return validation rules in some format that can be consumed by the Angular applica...
How to fetch a user’s profile from Azure Active Directory using PowerShell
In this post, App Dev Manager Chev Bryan demonstrates how to fetch a user’s profile from AAD using PowerShell.On my recent journeys helping customers migrate from TFS to VSTS; one of the most common obstacle is verifying that users marked for active import to VSTS have matching AAD records. Thankfully there is a fairly streamlined way to do this using PowerShell and the Azure Graph API.Continue on Chev’s blogPremier Support for Developers provides strategic technology guidance, critical support coverage, and a range of essential services to help teams optimize development lifecycles and improve software quality.&...
DevOps Stories –Jon Cwiak, Humana
App Dev Manager Dave Harrison talks with Jon Cwiak, Enterprise Cloud Platform Architect at Humana, about the adoption of DevOps.The following content is shared from an interview with Jon Cwiak, Enterprise Cloud Platform Architect at Humana. What we loved about talking with Jon was his candor – he’s very honest and upfront that the story of Humana’s adoption of DevOps has not always been smooth, and the struggles and challenges they’re facing. Along the way we learned some eye-opening insights:Read the full post on Dave’s blogPremier Support for Developers provides strategic technology guidance, critical support c...
SQL Server Objects as Software Artifacts
This post is provided by Premier Field Engineer JJ Jacob who takes a look at the benefits of SQL Server Objects as software artifacts.A recent customer engagement revealed several pain-points. One of them is the issue of not being able to pinpoint the exact database schema the development team delivered to the production team. The issue is about pointing to the one version of truth with regard to SQL deliveries into production.What compounds this issue is that software delivery is made through updates to a file share, which is prone to the following risks:We started thinking as to what technology could addr...
Legacy monolithic application – not a nightmare anymore!
This post is provided by App Dev Manager Srividya Annapantula who explores how emerging technical trends are changing the way we approach monolithic application.Dealing with a legacy monolithic mission critical application with millions of lines of code is a nightmare. This is especially true if you are an ISV (Independent Software Vendor) with an application installed in various client environments, dealing with different hardware, and a configuration drifting from recommended settings you may not control. If you cannot mandate a specific version, you probably end up supporting multiple versions of t...
Fast Start: Infrastructure as Code Using Azure DevTestLabs
In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Derrick Cawthon teaches you how to get started with Infrastructure as Code quickly and easily using Azure DevTestLabs and VSTS. He shows how simple it is to use these two technologies to be able to deploy on-demand.A lot of folks understand that Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a great idea and an advanced concept of DevOps. What a lot of folks don’t realize though when they begin their journey is that there are numerous tools and different ways to start.Using Microsoft tools, one of the easiest ways to get started with IaC is to take advantage of Azure’s DevTestLabs and ...
Setting up a Spectator View Rig for the HoloLens
This post is provided by App Dev Manager Richard Newell who shares his experience building a spectator view rig for HoloLens. We have been developing holographic apps for several clients and needed a way to allow participants to see what I was viewing using my HoloLens. Microsoft created a hack a few years ago and created a spectators view, the problem is that it covers different types of hardware and multiple setups. The other roadblock being that it was not maintained by the community. What I am doing is to simply the process and to have you up and running with your own spectator view in a couple of days.He...
Remote debugging Azure App Services
This post is provided by App Dev Managers Chris Westbrook and Susan Leighton who walk us through remote debugging a web application deployed as an Azure App Service. In this post, we're going to look at debugging web apps deployed to an Azure App Service. Customers are sometimes apprehensive about using cloud PaaS services, based upon their prior experience working with on-premises IIS or IIS in IaaS. They are concerned about losing control and visibility or insight into the running of their site and feel this may lead to their inability to properly support the web site. They worry they will have to revert...
.NET Core 2.1 Update strategy
This post is provided by App Dev Manager Anant Dimri who shares some helpful Q/A around .NET Core patching strategy.We know that we can create two types of deployments for .NET Core applications:In a package, you can have .NET core runtime dlls as well as your or 3rd party dlls that you have referenced. When planning for a patching strategy for your .NET core apps, there are certain nuances and questions that come up.Question: When you publish ASP.NET Core web application that use CodeGen applications, it creates a runtimes folder. Can you help me understand what causes the runtimes directory to be created?Answer...
Angular How-to: Simplify Components with TypeScript Inheritance
Laurie Atkinson, Senior Consultant, By moving shared functionality to a base component and assigning dependencies inside the body of the constructor, you can simplify child components.If your Angular components contain identical or similar functionality and you find yourself copying and pasting that code, it makes sense to implement some class inheritance, which is available with TypeScript. And, you can simplify the child components even further by removing the dependencies from the parent constructor arguments and manually assigning them inside the constructor.Create the base componentIn this example, we have 2...
TFS 2018–XAML is back?!
In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Derrick Cawthon weighs in on one of the latest announcements that TFS 2018 will include XAML builds. Starting in TFS 2017 it was announced that XAML builds were being deprecated. No big surprise to anyone paying attention as they are an older build system which had to go at some point. However this was a HUGE blocker for alot of customers who want to upgrade but don’t/can’t invest the time to switch hundreds of build definitions from XAML to Task based. Now (due to customer feedback) it’s been decided to deprecate XAML builds but leave the functionality in there. I think...
Proactively Plan for your Critical Event in Azure with Enhanced Support and Engineering Services
In this post, Principal Consultant Jon Guerin lays out the benefits of Azure Event Management (AEM) and how to get started with the program.Deploying an application to Azure in support of a high-profile business event can have many advantages. But failing to assess up front potential gaps that could negatively affect performance and availability during the event and can result in an undesirable impact to the company’s topline. Consider having an elevated support experience from Microsoft before, during and after the event orchestrated by your Application Development Manager.Microsoft Unified and Premier customers...
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Container? Why not App Services?
In this post, Senior Premier Developer Consultant Casey Kriutzfield gives a walkthrough of deploying Linux Containers in Azure App Services.Containers have been popular lately, and Microsoft Azure has several products that are ready and able to serve your containers. Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Container Instances, and Service Fabric are all great places to run enterprise containers and many organizations are spinning those services up. There is another place to run your containers, and it can be forgotten among the popular ones I mentioned.A standard App Service.Specifically, the Web App for Containers. With...
Sharing Deployment Groups Across Team Projects in VSTS
Premier Developer Consultant Derrick Cawthon walks through how to share deployment groups across team projects in VSTS, so you can take full advantage of your infrastructure and maximize investment in cloud services.One of the many recent enhancements to VSTS (Visual Studio Team Services) is the adding of Deployment Groups back in 2017. However ever since they were added the next obvious question was: How do I share these across my Team Projects (similar to how Agents work across Team Projects). This scenario is useful in order to allow organizations to take full advantage of their infrastructure and maximize the...
Monitoring Python Applications with Azure App Insights
In this blog post, Premier Developer Consultant Najib Zarrari walks through how to use Azure Application Insights to monitor web applications written in Python using the Flask framework.Read Najib’s blog post here to learn how to set up Application Insights, download and instrument a Python web application, create custom events and metrics in Azure, and report exceptions.
Dissecting new generic constraints in C# 7.3
During the last Build conference, Microsoft has announced the next version of Visual Studio with C# 7.3 support. This is yet another minor language update with some quite interesting features. The main change was related to generics, starting from C# 7.3 there 3 more constraints: , and . The constraint The constraint on generic type enforces the type to be an 'unmanaged' struct that does not recursively contain reference type fields. The concept of 'unmanaged types' existed in the C# language for a long time and you can find this term in the C# language specification and in the official documentation, but n...
Safe On-Premises Releases Using VSTS
Read on to learn how Premier Developer Consultant Ilias Jennane addresses the idea of safe releases and incremental feature rollout for on-premises releases using Visual Studio Team Services.I have recently interacted with many customers that were clearly under the impression that they should only consider DevOps practices if they are doing Cloud development. So, I decided to break this myth. The concept that I want to address in this blog post is the idea of Safe releases and incremental feature rollout. Read the blog post here.
Create Your First CI Pipeline in 10 Minutes or Less
In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Derrick Cawthon shares how to quickly create a continuous integration pipeline in VSTS, so teams can start pursuing their DevOps journeys.During your DevOps journey typically the first item you will want to do (after establishing a good process for the team) is setup a Continuous Integration (CI) build. What does this mean in practical terms? Basically TFS/VSTS has the built-in capability of running a build anytime code changes in a certain repository (or repositories). This is a great practice to institute as it helps minimize the possibility of having “broken” code in ...
Continuous Delivery – Is it right for you?
This post is provided by App Dev Manager John Tran who explores the question: Is continuous delivery right for you?Coming from the operations world, I can't count the number of times someone has come to me asking for a production deployment on a Friday afternoon. This would always give me chills, thinking of all the late nights that I've been up fixing production issues, thinking of all the news articles about someone making a change over the long weekend and causing a nationwide outage, dreading the day after when I had to explain what went wrong…Taking a step back and looking at the situation from the business ...
DevOps for VMs with VSTS and Octopus Deploy
In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Jafar Jaffery shares insight into how to deploy web applications to virtual machines using Visual Studio Team Services and Octopus Deploy. You can use Octopus Deploy in conjunction with VSTS to deploy both on-premises or in the cloud in a repeatable and reliable way. Problem Statement The Development team just finished work on its new feature and now needs that feature deployed to the Testing environment so that the Product team can validate the changes. Enter the Operations team. They are going to remote into the individual web servers and download the package w...
Microsoft Enhanced Application Support: Supporting Custom Applications
This post is provided by App Dev Manager Francis Lacroix who spotlights Microsoft Enhanced Application Support.Custom solutions provided by consultants can sometimes challenge the development groups inheriting them. Perhaps they do not have the skillset to support them and enhance them, or they do not have experience with the platforms the solution was built on. In some cases, they will look to Premier Support for Developer to ramp up on these technologies and provide guidance. When the solution is provided by Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS), another option is available: Microsoft Enhanced Application Support...
Microsoft Disaster Response: Another great reason to work for Microsoft
This post is provided by App Dev Manager Rich Maines who shares his experience volunteering with Microsoft Services Disaster Response.“When a disaster occurs, you’ve entered a “new reality,” says Lewis Curtis, director of Microsoft Services Disaster Response. It won’t be enough to simply restore your systems and applications to where they were before – disasters change everything, irrevocably and permanently.” Catastrophic events like the San Jose Floods, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma & Maria, Mexico Earthquake, California Wildfires, Cape Town Water Crisis are recent examples that illustrate the need for r...
Automating Releases to Separate Azure Resource Groups using both TFS and VSTS
This post is written collaboratively by Premier Developer Consultants Ilias Jennane and Daisy Chaussee along with App Dev Manager Wyn Lewis-Bevan. Read on to learn how to build a solution in TFS, release it in VSTS, and automate the deployments to separate Azure Resource Groups. Business Case: One of our customers recently challenged us with a use case that is not very common. They wanted to keep using TFS 2015 for work item management, git source control, and build management. However, they also wanted to use VSTS for release management into Azure. In addition, their deployment process is quite advanced. They...
Enterprise Deployment of an Internal Load Balancer with an App Service Environment v2
App Dev Manager Mariusz Kolodziej kicks off this multi-part series covering the deployment of an Internal Load Balancer with an App Services Environment via ARM templates and PowerShell.Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is becoming the norm for deploying all resources (IaaS and PaaS) in the Cloud. This post is part 1 of 7 of a miniseries which will take us though the process of deploying an Internal Load Balancer (ILB) with an App Service Environment (ASE) v2, all via Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Templates and PowerShell. The miniseries will cover the following 7 topics:Read the full post and track this series o...
How Azure IoT helped me buy a new house – Part 4 – Azure IoT Hub
In the fourth post of his series, Premier Developer Consultant Steve St Jean expands on how Azure IoT helped him buy a new home. He goes into detail about how to configure within the Azure IoT Hub. In the first part of this series, I described the problem I was having, my hypothesis as to the source of the issue, and the steps I would take to test my hypothesis. In the second post, I described the electronics that I built to start capturing environmental sensor data. The third post describes the code for the IoT sensor rig to send telemetry data to Azure IoT Hub. This post will address the configuration within...
How Azure IoT helped me buy a new house – Part 3 – ESP8266 Code
In the third post of his series, Premier Developer Consultant Steve St Jean expands on how Azure IoT helped him buy a new home. He goes into detail about writing the code for the sensor rig to send telemetry data to Azure IoT Hub. In the first part of this series, I described the problem I was having, my hypothesis as to the source of the issue, and the steps I would take to test my hypothesis. In the second post, I described the electronics that I built to start capturing environmental sensor data. This post describes the next step needed to begin testing: writing the code for the IoT sensor rig to send telem...
How Azure IoT helped me buy a new house – Part 2 – Electronics
In the second post of his series, Premier Developer Consultant Steve St Jean expands on how Azure IoT helped him buy a new home. He goes into detail about developing the IoT sensor rig. In the first part of this series, I described the problem I was having, my hypothesis as to the source of the issue, and the steps I would take to test my hypothesis. This post describes the first step needed to begin testing: developing the IoT sensor rig. The Sensor Rig The first step is to design and code the sensor rig. This rig has 4 important parts/circuits and a couple of non-essential LEDs. See the diagrams and story u...
Integrating Angular Unit Tests With Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) Using Headless Chrome and Puppeteer
In the following post, Premier Developer Consultant Wael Kdouh expands on a previous post and demonstrates how you can run unit tests using headless Chrome and utilize Puppeteer to install Chrome on your CI server. In a previous post, I showed you how to Integrate Angular Unit Tests with Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS). Whereas it worked flawlessly it did have dependency on PhantomJS which is a headless browser. The only issue with PhantomJS is that it tends to have some random issues which makes it challenging to integrate within your CI server. Fortunately, Chrome added support for running in headless...
Cloud Simplified: A practical webcast to demystify Azure features
This post is provided by Ryan Berry, a Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) at Microsoft. In many of our strategic accounts, CSAs play a key role in the success of customers making a transition to the cloud and work closely with your Microsoft account team and App Dev Manager.The cloud is becoming increasingly important to business-critical workloads our customers run as evidenced by Azure’s explosive growth. Add to this analysts predicting continued growth over $200 billion through 2020 and it’s clear the market is speaking on the importance of cloud computing. Computing in the cloud is different when you’re not...
Running .NET Core 2.0 applications in a Linux Service Fabric Cluster on Azure
In this post, Senior App. Dev. Managers Guru Satish Piduru and Mahendar Madhavaram explain how to deploy .NET Core 2.0 applications to a Linux Service Fabric Cluster.The support for running .NET Core 2.0 applications in Service Fabric Cluster (SFC) environment on Linux is in preview mode today and general availability in the coming months. Today, stateless Service Fabric applications are supported in .NET Core 2.0 without any issues. If you are using Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 to develop Service Fabric applications, you can publish the applications directly to Azure SFC running on Windows but if you want to pub...
Spotlight on Industry Experiences
This post is provided by Marty Donovan, Senior Program Manager for Industry Experiences. The Industry Experiences team (as part of Scott Guthrie’s organization) delivers industry technical documentation and experiences to customers including use cases, solutions guides and hands-on architectural design reviews. Our goal is to help customers accelerate their journey to the cloud with clear and actionable guidance. Today we have seasoned experts and architects across retail, banking, insurance, health, and manufacturing and we expect to grow with further industries in the coming year. Read the following artic...
Using AI and Bots as an underpinning for modern UI
In this post, Consultant/App. Dev. Manager Timothy Baillis explains how AI and Bots can improve modern UI designs.It has been said that every great developer is inherently lazy- or at least inspired by boring or repetitive tasks. The idea that you can code a program to automate a task or overcome an obstacle is a powerful incentive to create. In the past, developers could rely on device and services to remain more constant or at least be easily updatable to continue to function. Now with the proliferation of services, devices, and applications it has become increasingly difficult to code once. There has been a gr...
Did you plan for accidental deletion of your critical data in Azure?
In his post, Principal App. Dev. Manager Rick Caudle lays out a strategy for dealing with business-critical data in Azure.So, you moved to the Cloud and you fully understand Azure Storage and all the greatness that comes with the various replication options i.e. Locally redundant storage (LRS), Zone-redundant storage (ZRS), Geo-redundant storage (GRS). All these replication features are designed for transient hardware failures, network or power outages, massive natural disasters, and so on. But, none of these are intended to help with mass or accidental delete operations. Continue reading more on Rick’s blog post...
Visualize Code with Visual Studio
In this post, App Dev Manager Ed Tovsen spotlight the features and benefits of Code Maps in Visual Studio.Systems architects have long used modeling to design the structure, behavior, and interaction of systems within an organization. Modeling helps to ensure that requirements are clearly defined between users and IT. Models are created with varying levels of detail throughout the application lifecycle and used as part of the development process. Typically, modeling tools assist architects in the initial stages of application conceptualize and construction. However, there are also visualization tools to comprehen...
My Volunteer Experience with TEALS
In this post, App Dev Manager Ruth Ferland shares her experience volunteering through TEALS to promote Computer Science and the education of kids in her community.For School Year 2017-18, I decided to volunteer for TEALS (https://www.tealsk12.org/). TEALS stands for Technology Education and Literacy in Schools. It’s a non-profit organization in the United States that recruit, train and deploy technical volunteers to co-teach Computer Science in high schools.The Recruiting ProcessTEALS starts recruiting for volunteers for the next school year in the prior spring season, so that there is a full list by the summer f...
Securing Azure Storage for the Software Architect
In this post, App Dev Manager Keith Anderson explores how Azure Key Vault can be used to secure access to Azure storage operations. In the beginning... As I began to learn about Microsoft’s cloud a couple of years ago, I began to realize that some services had been around since its inception and were fundamental to the way things worked, with other services built on top. Azure Storage is certainly one of those fundamental services that can be used as building blocks in your own applications. To any organization leveraging Azure Storage, it seems to me that, like with any tool or construction material, you...
Getting Started with DevOps and Continuous Delivery of Value
In this post, Application Development Manager Wesam Darwish highlights some important information to help customers learn and adopt DevOps. DevOps: a buzz word, or an exciting transformation journey? As organizations strive to deliver value to their end users faster, improve quality and availability, optimize costs, and deliver innovation with digital-era velocity; they face numerous challenges. These challenges prevent flexible and agile creation of business value. With multiple industry definitions of DevOps, the definition we adopt at Microsoft is the following: DevOps is the union of people, pro...
Assigning Work Items to a Group in Visual Studio Team Services
In this post, Sr. Application Development Managers Mark Meadows and Everett Yang demonstrate how to extend VSTS Project Templates to allow Group assignments to Work Items.ISSUERecently a customer asked about whether they can assign work items to a group of users, instead of a single user. By default, Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) allows a Work Item to be assigned to an individual user, not a group of users. In most cases, we would break Work Items down, so it can be assigned to single user. For this customer, however, they wanted the option to assign certain User Stories to a group and build queries and not...
Debugging Beyond Visual Studio – WinDbg
In this post, Sr. App Dev Managers Al Mata, Candice Lai, and Syed Mehdi gives a walkthrough of WinDbg. You’re likely a developer and have used a code editor to debug and analyze your application failures. Few developers know or understand the “old school” way of troubleshooting to uncover additional details; enter the WinDbg debugger. WinDbg is a general-purpose debugger for Windows operating system applications and code. It helps Developers find and resolve errors in their application, memory, system and drivers to name a few. This article introduces you to the WinDbg debugging concept and tool. Getti...
DevOps and Appification
In the following post, Premier Developer Consultant Ron Vincent explains how adopting DevOps principles can help organizations be more productive and aid in maintaining many apps.These days the typical enterprise organization has dozens and even hundreds of apps that it creates and maintains. In this article we’ll discuss how we can apply DevOps principles and practices to such a large portfolio of apps.The typical enterprise organization has a number of apps to aid employees, customers, suppliers, etc. There are apps for executives, middle management, and everyone else to do their every day jobs as shown here.Yo...
How Azure IoT helped me buy a new house – Part 1
Premier Developer Consultant, Steve St Jean, shares a personal story on how he used Azure IoT to figure out a solution to a problem that many of us face – high electric bills. In the series, Steve shares the process and code that he used to implement this solution.Telemetry data is an important component of any good DevOps process. Being able to observe and capture the data from a running system opens up a lot of opportunity to improve the system. I had a simple problem at home that telemetry could help me solve. With this in mind, I over-engineered a solution to the question, "Why is my office always so hot?".Th...
The “P” in “PM”
In the following post, Premier Developer Consultant Ilias Jennane sheds more light on the PM role and how it fits into the bigger picture of DevOps. In recent discussions with customers and colleagues about why large I.T. shops often struggle in adhering to Agile principles or becoming DevOps organizations, I couldn’t help but notice something extremely simple, however tremendously important. Large I.T. shops manage Projects, while software shops build Products. One would think that it is the same thing, but the gap starts to happen there. On one hand, you will have product owners (or product managers) and the ot...
Improved Privacy using Homomorphic Encryption
In the following post, Premier Developer Consultant Razi Rais gives more insight into how to use homomorphic encryption in the field of healthcare to improve privacy and secure data. Modern encryption schemes like homomorphic encryption (HE) provide higher privacy guarantees compared to the existing schemes. Basically, you don't need to reveal your data in plaintext to third parties (e.g. social media, insurance, healthcare providers, etc.). Instead, they can perform computation on your data which is encrypted. Even in active development stages, HE does provide many interesting opportunities to secure our data. I...
Utilizing VSTS for Wholistic Organization Management – Should It Be Done?
In this post, App Dev Manager Kristofer Olin explores limits and intentions of a tool like VSTS to go beyond traditional ALM scenarios. You've probably heard stories of people who utilize Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) for non-Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) related purposes. For instance, I know someone that uses it to help manage his honey-do list and home projects. The most interesting use of VSTS I've encountered, though, was a desire to use it to track and maintain everything in the organization-- and I mean everything. This customer had justifications for doing so: some were in response t...
Running Django on Azure Web Apps for Containers with Docker
In this post, App Dev Manager Drew Lewis walks us through how to host a simple Python/Django application in Azure App Services. In this post I will walk you through a very simple approach to developing and hosting a simple Python/Django application in Azure App Service. For this demo we will target Azure Web Apps for Containers which gives us the flexibility to customize our application dependencies by wrapping those needed libraries in a Docker container. Currently, App Service on Linux doesn't support Python, but we will be able to containerize our web app and include any dependencies as needed. If you...
Exam Prep for 70-533, Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions
In this post, App Dev Manager Omer Amin spotlights the skills measured by 70-533, Implementing Microsoft Infrastructure Solutions, and where to go to build your skills.I recently took the 70-533, Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions exam. Each Microsoft exam page has a Skills Measured section. This section clearly outlines the knowledge that will be measured on the exam. i.e. the exam questions are going to be about the following topics only. Continue reading on Omer’s blog.Premier Support for Developers provides strategic technology guidance, critical support coverage, and a range of essen...
Part 2 – Deploying Your Dockerized Angular Application to Azure Using VSTS
In part 2 of a series of posts, Premier Developer Consultant Wael Kdouh demonstrates how to eliminate daunting requirements and instead install Angular build tools and utilize Docker to more easily and efficiently deploy an application to Azure using VSTS. From Wael: In part 1 I demonstrated building a VSTS build pipeline which built an Angular Docker image and deployed it to an Azure Web App for Containers. Whereas it helped me achieve consistency across development and production environments, it required the build server to have all the necessary tools to build the application (Typescript, npm depend...
Deploying Linked ARM Templates with VSTS
In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Najib Zarrari walks through how to deploy linked ARM templates with Visual Studio Team Services. When dealing with deploying a large number of components in Azure, a single ARM template might be challenging to manage and maintain. ARM linked templates allow you to make your deployment more modular making the templates easier to manage. When dealing with large deployments, it is highly recommended to consider breaking down your deployment into a main template and multiple linked templates representing different components of your deployment.Deploying ARM templates c...
Multi-Tenant Applications and Azure AD
Following up on a previous blog post, Premier Developer Consultant Marius Rochon describes recent changes and compares the use of Azure AD multi-tenant features with the custom features in B2C.Read Marius’s first post here.Since then, there have been some changes to the demo application regarding new modes and new features. In his follow-up post, Marius describes these changes in more detail, comparing the classic Azure AD multi-tenant features with supporting multi-tenancy using custom features in B2C. Learn more here.
DevOps and Leadership
In this post, App Dev Manager Ron Vincent explorers the role of leadership in an industry driven by DevOps.DevOps requires a different approach to leadership. In this article I'll explain where "management" came from and how we can change it for the age of rapid innovation.For decades now, the American corporation has been modeled after the concepts of Frederick Winslow Taylor who back in 1910 studied how workers did their work at a steel company. “In Taylor’s view, the task of factory management was to determine the best way for the worker to do the job, to provide the proper tools and training, and to provide i...
Focus on your code, Let Microsoft Teams worry about the UI
In this post, App Dev Manager Kyle Kapphahn spotlights the conversational UI framework of Microsoft Teams to simplify UI development for enterprise apps.When I first began commercial software development in the mid-90's (yes, I know I'm dating myself), we used the classic 3-tier model: Presentation, Business Logic, and Data Layers. If you were lucky, each development had experts in each area. If you weren't lucky (like me) you were responsible for all tiers - front to back. I tended to love the BL and Data layers, with the Presentation layer being an afterthought. Most of my colleagues (myself included) always ha...
Opening a Premier Developer support request using Premier Online
This post walks through the process of setting up a new support case using Premier Online. Credits to App Dev Managers, Al Mata, Dave Harrison, Charles Ofori, Bharat Suneja, Joseph Flanigen, Sheldon Ledbetter and Bill Bevan. Opening a Premier developer support request on Premier Online Microsoft Premier Online (MPO) is an online portal exclusively available for Premier Support customers. It is one method to create Premier support requests - others include dialing into a Premier phone number (discussed below) and using the Azure Portal. Customers often ask what type of selections I should m...
Avoiding struct and readonly reference performance pitfalls with ErrorProne.NET
As you may know from my previous posts "The 'in'-modifier and the readonly structs in C#" and "Performance traps of ref locals and ref returns in C#", structs are trickier then you might think. Mutability aside, the behavior of readonly and non-readonly structs in "readonly" contexts is very different. Structs are meant for high-performance scenarios and to use them efficiently you should know quite a bit about different hidden operations that the compiler emits to enforce struct immutability. Here is a short overview of the caveats you should remember: The same rules are applied wh...
Enterprise Integration made easy in Azure
In this post, App Dev Manager Deepa Chandramouli explores how Azure Logic Apps and API Management can help with Enterprise Integration scenarios.Being in the services role and helping customers in their digital transformation journey with Azure, this is a topic that comes up time and again. How do we talk to apps in Azure from our on-premises systems or vice versa. There are really some neat PaaS services in Azure that makes these integrations easy. The most popular ones which customers have been taking advantage of are Azure Logic Apps and API Management. Here is an overview of these Azure services at a high lev...
Three questions that could improve your Agile team
This post is contributed by App Dev Manager Justin Scott who asks three very important Agile questions.Agile has been adopted by many successful companies who value quality, incremental change on a more frequent basis compared to a team that uses a waterfall development methodology. Teams that embark on the journey of introducing Agile often hear about all the good that comes from Agile, but rarely are informed about all the challenges they will face putting Agile into place. Below are three questions to ask about your Agile team that might help take your team to the next level:Is your development team too siloed...
Azure Storage Encryption and Azure Disk Encryption – Demystified?
In this post, Sr. App Dev Manager Mark Pazicni lays out the capabilities of Azure Storage Service Encryption (SSE) and Azure Disk Encryption (ADE) to help clarify their applications. With Azure Storage Service Encryption (SSE), your data is just encrypted. New and existing Azure Storage Account are now 256-bit AES encrypted to storage data encrypted while it is at rest. Azure Disk Encryption (ADE) encrypts both your OS and Data disks for IaaS VMs. Azure Disk Encryption is supported on the following Linux server distributions and versions: ...
Docker Blog Series Part 7– Deploy Azure Web App On Containers
In the following post, Premier Developer Consultant Monu Bambroo shows how to deploy a Container to Azure Web Apps directly from Azure Container Registry. Container services are encapsulated, individually deployable components that run as isolated instances on the same kernel to take advantage of virtualization that an operating system provides. Thus, each application and its runtime, dependencies, and system libraries run inside a container with full, private access to the container's own isolated view of operating system constructs. Azure has various services to orchestrate containers like Azure Servi...
Application Insights in Disconnection Mode
In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Adel Ghabboun gives insight on connectivity issues in Azure and how they may effect Application Insights. He gives details about a special disconnection mode that App Insights can run on when such issues arise. Wondering what happens to Application Insights when applications lose connectivity with Azure? Is telemetry still going to be captured and sent to Application Insights? Will you lose any important performance data about your application? The short answer is NO! In many cases, your app might lose connectivity to Microsoft Azure. It could have a firewall that pr...
Blockchain in the Enterprise
In this post, Sr. Consultants Farah Deendar and Chike Okor introduce blockchain concepts and enterprise adoption constraints. So, what is Blockchain exactly? Blockchain, also called distributed ledger technology (DLT), is a cryptographically safe, secure, decentralized and immutable database. Blockchain is used to create a digital transaction ledger that is shared among a distributed network of computers. Blockchain’s foundation is based on cryptography which provides powerful properties of being decenftralized and immutable with the use of Cryptographic Hash Functions, Public Key Cryptography and Digital...
Why Developers Should Install WSL Today
In this post, App Dev Managers Matt Hyon and August Banks spotlights the developer benefits of WSL. You've just finished installing the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on your Windows 10 computer and feel pleased to see your favorite Linux distro icon pinned to your taskbar. You click to open a shell session and think, "OK, what can I do with it?". It's a common thought for those kicking the tires more out of curiosity than with a specific purpose in mind, especially since there are many tools available natively on Windows to accomplish similar tasks, PuTTY for instance. So, we reached out to the extended WSL ...
Setting up .NET Core Configuration Providers
ASP Core uses the convenient Provider Pattern to load configuration key/value pairs from various sources and expose those to you as a single Configuration object. This allows you to grab a configuration key like ConnectionString with one line of code regardless of where it was sourced from. However, the configuration API is not available by default in .NET Core Console applications.
Azure Load Balancing Solutions: A guide to help you choose the correct option
In this post, Sr. App Dev Manager Fidelis Ekezue explain Azure Load Balancing options and highlight considerations for choosing a solution.Azure Load Balancing Solutions: When to choose which one?Microsoft Azure provides customers with many ways to load balance traffic requests to their environments. Customers have the options to choose Traffic Manager, Azure Load Balancer, Azure Application Gateway or the combination of all three in their Azure solutions. With the rate of web traffic increasing at a faster rate, no distributed solution is complete without the use of a load balancer to direct traffic and distribu...
Blockchain in a nutshell
In this post, Sr. App Dev Managers Bernard Apolinario and Ajay Tanikella gives a thorough explanation of Blockchain concepts.What is Blockchain?Blockchain is a Secured, Shared, Distributed ledger. It’s a concept with the following key aspects: Reference: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/accelerating-the-adoption-of-enterprise-blockchain/ Benefits of Blockchain Blockchain DiagramDifferent BlockchainsThere are 3 different blockchains. Blockchain Consensus ProtocolsSome of popular Blockchain consensus algorithms are listed below. VersionsEnterprise WorldBlockchain is disruptive technology that will impact seve...
Is Your Development Staff Ready for Artificial Intelligence?
In this post, Principal Consultant/ADM Larry Duff discuss some ethical challenges in Artificial Intelligence. Artificial intelligence has been a dream of computer scientists for many years. I remember my early days of programming I had a Commodore Pet. I was excited that I had a book of programs, I typed them in and saved to my tape drive. One of those programs was ELIZA. I could type in questions and "she" would answer me, I had my own Hal 9000! If I understood the code I typed in (I was only 10) I would have seen it was a rudimentary natural language processor with canned responses. It was just a cheap knock of...
Using VSTS API with PowerShell to scaffold Team Projects
In this post, Senior Application Development Managers Art Garcia demonstrates how to navigate the VSTS REST APIs. Visual Studio Team Services or VSTS has matured into one of the leading Application Lifecycle management tools available. It allows you to not only manage your work and team velocity, but it also is a great tool to use in building and deployment as well. If you have several projects both current and future, the setup and administration can sometimes be a challenge. You want to make sure all projects have certain team’s setup and some basic build and release artifacts. This will make transitioni...
Running Docker Windows and Linux Containers Simultaneously
Many of you with familiarity with Docker for Windows know how you currently have to switch between running either Windows or Linux Containers. In the following post, Premier Developer Consultant Randy Patterson teaches us how to combat this limitation and run Docker Windows and Linux Containers simultaneously on the same host. Starting with Docker for Windows version 18.03.0-ce-win59 the Linux Containers on Windows (LCOW) is available as an experimental feature. Previously, you could get LCOW only on the Edge or Nightly Build Channels. For people like me who need a stable version of Docker for Windows, thi...
Role of Web Based Technologies In Maximizing Code Sharing In Your Applications
In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Wael Kdouh shares ideas of the alternatives to reduce web complexity and increase code sharing. He does a side-by-side comparison of Cordova/Iconic, NativeScript, and React Native to help you explore some of your options to reduce complexity. I was recently approached by a colleague of mine with the following question: "What are the available alternatives to reduce the current complexity of developing for multiple channels?". In a nutshell he was looking for ways to maximize the amount of client code shared among iOS, Android and Web channels while still being abl...
Docker Blog Series Part 6 – How to use Service Fabric Reverse Proxy for container services
Learn about the container orchestrator, Service Fabric, and how to use Service Fabric Reverse Proxy for container services in Monu’s latest post. Monu Bambroo is a Consultant on the Premier Developer team. Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices and containers. Service Fabric also addresses the significant challenges in developing and managing cloud native applications. It is also an orchestrator of services across a cluster of machines and it is continuing to invest heavily in container orchestration and managem...
Real-time Code Quality with SonarLint in Visual Studio
In the second part of her SonarQube series, Premier Developer Consultant Sana Noorani builds on top of SonarQube technology and explains how SonarLint can be added in Visual Studio to track real time code quality. What is SonarLint? SonarLint an extension you can add to an IDE such as Visual Studio that can provide developers real-time feedback on the quality of the code. It can detect issues in seconds, which can improve productivity. SonarSource describes SonarLint as a capability that can work like a spell checker for text since it detects issues in your code as you go. In a previous post, I showed how you ca...
Agile UX: Incorporating User Experience into Agile Processes
Premier Developer Consultant Daisy Chaussee writes how to integrate user experience and design into agile processes. In combining Agile and UX, teams can attain greater collaboration, continuous improvement, and efficiency in development. The goal of this blog post is to provide guidance on how to integrate User Experience into Agile processes. In doing this, you can remove waste from the design process, harmonize the system of designers, developers, engineers, and others in cross-functional collaboration, and adopt a culture based on experimentation and continuous improvement. To incorporate UX into agile sp...
Order of Precedence when Configuring ASP.NET Core
In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Randy Patterson introduces the new configuration API for ASP.NET Core and its order of precedence. In previous version of ASP.NET, configuration was primarily handled by the ConfigurationManager class. This class typically obtained the user configurable settings from the AppSettings section located in the XML file web.config. While these limited configuration options have worked well in the past, it poses some challenges in cloud and container environments. The New Configuration API With the introduction of ASP.NET Core, a new Configuration API was introduced that p...
ARR and benefits for Premier customers
Senior Application Development Managers Sanjeev Gogna and Charles Ofori explain Azure Rapid Response (ARR) program, and explain how it benefits Premier customers. Overview With today's technology, availability, reliability, and uptime are fundamental to success. To overcome incidents and interruptions, Microsoft offers Azure Rapid Response, an expedited response framework with prioritized access to Microsoft's most knowledgeable experts. A designated Azure support team works to help you respond and recover quickly from critical issues. To begin, the team seeks to understand the basics of your deploymen...
Integrating Selenium tests in a release pipeline
Senior Application Development Manager Marcelo Silva recently posted this article demonstrating how to implement UI test automation using VSTS and Selenium.Today, I'd like to show you a proof-of-concept I created for one of my customers where we implement User Interface (UI) test automation into a Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline in Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS).First, a little background on the problem we're trying to solve: my customer wanted to introduce automated testing into their CI/CD pipeline. The conversation when in the direction of integrating Unit Tests and doing automa...
Part 2: Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set and Windows Containers–Networking Tips
In part 2 of 2 blog posts, Premier Developer Consultant Julien Oudot continues his networking tips about Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS) and Windows Containers. Building on the first post about VMSS set-up, Julien walks through how to communicate with containers running on nodes deployed as part of VMSS. If you haven’t read it yet, do not hesitate to look at the part 1 of the article which describe the 2-node VM Scale Set (VMSS) set up in Azure as well as some tips to make sure the two nodes are up. In this second part, we are going to talk about how to communicate with containers running on the nod...
SonarQube Integration with VSTS
In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Sana Noorani details how to integrate SonarQube with VSTS, so you can detect issues in code and trigger builds only when code checks pass. Introduction to SonarQubeSonarQube is an open source tool used for continuously checking code quality. Many developers will add it to their DevOps pipelines with continuous integration builds to be able to inspect code regularly. It monitors the overall health of an application by tracking bugs, vulnerabilities, code smells, and code coverage. By connecting SonarQube with VSTS, you can use the tool to detect issues in code every time ...
Performance traps of ref locals and ref returns in C#
The C# language from the very first version supported passing arguments by value or by reference. But before C# 7 the C# compiler supported only one way of returning a value from a method (or a property) - returning by value. This has been changed in C# 7 with two new features: ref returns and ref locals. But unlike other features that were recently added to the C# language I've found these two a bit more controversial than the others. The motivation There are many differences between the arrays and other collections from the CLR perspectives. The arrays were added to the CLR from the very beginning and you ...
Experiments with HoloLens, Mixed Reality Toolkit and two-handed manipulations
Senior Consultant/ADM Davide Zordan recently posted this article on his HoloLens experiment. In this post, he explains how to get started with HoloLens and Mixed Reality Toolkit. I’ve always been a big fan of manipulations, as in the past I worked on some multi-touch XAML Behaviors implementing rotate, translate and scale on 2D objects. As I progress with my learning about HoloLens and Windows Mixed Reality, I had on my to-do list the task of exploring how to recreate this scenario in the 3D Mixed Reality context. Finally, during the weekend, I started some research while preparing a demo for some speaking e...
Physical Data Center Security
Senior Consultant Omar Amin recently posted this article on securing a physical data center. In this post, he highlights roles and responsibility on security across various hosting options.I don't spend a lot of time talking to customers about physical data center security.As a developer using mostly PaaS or IaaS compute platforms, I just assumed that that cloud provider had taken care of it. Helping customers with Data Security (Data at Rest, Data in Transit, Secure Compute), and Application Code security takes up most of my time.In this post, I wanted to step back a bit and look at the bigger picture. Let...
Ramping up on Powershell & CLI
In this post, Senior Application Development Manager, Danny Kolke, gives a practical guide on getting started with PowerShell and Azure CLI."For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." AristotleIn working with my customers I often run into those who want to get started with Azure but just haven't done anything yet. My encouragement with them is pretty much summed up by Aristotle's famous words, or Yoda; whichever comes first to mind. With as much foresight as Aristotle had I still doubt that he was talking about Azure; of course Yoda was. Regardless, this wisdom sure holds true...
Microsoft Immersion Program: Bringing Microsoft Product Engineers to your Team
App Dev Manager Katie Konow spotlights the Microsoft Immersion Program and the value it brings to both Microsoft and our valued customers. immerse verb im·merse \ i-ˈmərs \ ENGROSS. to take or engage the whole attention of : occupy completely As a developer or development lead using a Microsoft technology, you may find yourself wondering: does Microsoft take feedback? How do I make an impact on SQL Server, Typescript or Visual Studio (to name a few)? Can anyone hear me? We can! The Microsoft Immersion Program was created so that our engineers can come to where their users are. What is the Immersion Pr...
Part 1: Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set and Windows Containers–Networking Tips
In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Julien Oudot teaches you how to ensure network connectivity when working with Windows Containers and Virtual Machine Scale Set in Azure.When working with Windows Containers and Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS) in Azure, some steps need to be performed to make sure the networking connectivity works as expected.Coming from on-premises and VM oriented background, these platform specific operations are not always as obvious as a Ping. The intent of this 2-part article is to summarize a few things to know to test the connectivity in different configurations:The first part of ...
Hosting an Angular Progressive Web Application (PWA) with Azure
Progressive Web Applications might just be the future of web development. In this post, Wael Kdouh shows how to deploy an Angular PWA to Azure, including some potential pitfalls to watch out for. In his blog post, Wael introduces the popularity of Progressive Web Applications and how to deploy them to Azure. He writes “In this post I will show you how you can deploy an Angular PWA application to Azure. I won't show you the detailed steps to build the CI/CD pipeline on VSTS which in turn deploys to Azure as I have already discussed it in a previous post which can be found here. Instead I will focus on so...
IntelliTrace and the ‘Magic’ of Historical Debugging
Premier Developer Consultant Lizet Pena De Sola discusses the Visual Studio Debugging and Diagnostic Tools Workshop, in which she discovered IntelliTrace and its magical debugging capabilities.Lizet recently visited a development team in Nevada that was eager to learn more about Visual Studio debugging tools and the C# compiler Open Source project in GitHub, named ‘Roslyn’. The highlight of the sessions was the ‘discovery’ of IntelliTrace and how they could use this feature in improving the communication between the development team in Nevada and the QA team at another location. A few hard to reproduce bugs had b...
Nullable types arithmetic and null-coalescing operator precedence
Here is a simple question for you: which version of a GetHashCode() is correct and what performance impact does the incorrect version have?
Accessing a .NET Bot’s State via Dependency Injection
The .NET BotBuilder SDK has deprecated the StateClient class, leaving some to wonder how they should access their bot’s state. Premier Developer Consultant Ben Williams shares an example of using dependency injection in your BotFramework projects.When using the .NET BotBuilder SDK’s dialog system, you can access the bot state using the dialog context. However, what if you don’t have the dialog context handy?You have two optionsWith v3 of the Microsoft Bot Builder SDK, the documentation describes how to configure your bot to store its bot state data in either Azure Table storage or in a Cosmos DB. Notice that in t...
Unit Testing Your JavaScript Code
In a recent post from his blog, Premier Developer Consultant Jim Blizzard discusses how to set up Visual Studio 2017 to run JavaScript-based unit tests.This week, I demonstrated to a client how they could write unit tests in JavaScript to test their JavaScript code by leveraging Karma, Jasmine, and Chutzpah. The unit tests show up in Test Explorer just like unit tests written in C# do. Setting things up isn’t very difficult and can be completed in just a few minutes.Let’s take a look at how you can do it in your environment while we start to create a JavaScript library that calculates the score of a bowling game....
Audit SQL Server stop, start, restart
In this article, Application Development Manager Steve Keeler outlines an approach for determining the domain identity of a user who has initiated a stop, start, or restart request on SQL Server services. Although SQL Server contains server and database auditing functionality as part of the product, this cannot be used to determine the identity of a user changing the service state of a SQL Server instance since that operation is occurring at the system rather than database level.I recently worked with a customer to help resolve an issue with Team Foundation Server where collection databases were not coming online...
With cloud applications, performance is money
This post is provided by App Dev Manager Reed Robison who examines the opportunity and impact of cloud application performance. If you are moving apps to the cloud, it has never been more important think about performance and as a developer, the business impact you can have may be profound.Early in my career, developers were always talking about performance. Efficient code was something that established credibility, but it was also an integral responsibility of every dev since resources were limited. Thanks to Moore’s law, most developers don’t lose a lot of sleep over performance these days.&nb...
Getting started with Azure App Services Development
In this post, Application Development Manager, Vijetha Marinagammanavar, demonstrates how to get started with Azure App Services.To get started with Azure development we need to have Visual Studio 2013 or later, Azure SDK, and an active Azure subscription. We are using Visual Studio 2017 with our demo. If using VS2013 then download the SDK from https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/Figure 1 Download Azure SDKFollow instructions below to deploy web application to Azure by creating App Service PlanAzure App Service is a fully managed "Platform as a Service" (PaaS) that integrates Microsoft Azure Websites, Mob...
Running .NET applications client-side in the browser
In this post, App Dev Managers Robert Schumann and Ben Hlaban, introduce us to Blazor – an experimental web UI framework based on C#, Razor, and HTML that runs in the browser via WebAssembly. This journey started from a blog by Daniel Roth. Other than the YouTube of Steve Sanderson’s prototype demo at NDC Oslo, this wasn’t much information to draw from. A few days later I mention Blazor to my colleague Ben, and he starts asking a bunch of rapid-fire questions. Whoa! Time-out. With coffee top-offs, we start a Skype call, launch Visual Studio, git clone repo, and intrigue quickly ensued. This blog is a...
Accelerate Your GDPR compliance with Microsoft Cloud
This post is provided by App Dev Managers Latha Natarajan and Sujith Nair who explore the critical aspect of protecting personal information and the impact of data security failures. This post also discusses the rich set Azure services that Microsoft customers and organizations can use to protect personal data in compliance with GDPR and other regulations for various parts of the world. Personal Data Protection and GDPR Although the information economy has existed for some time, the real value of personal data has only become more recently evident. Cyber theft of personal data exposes citizens around the world...
Use Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) to host your private package server
In this post, App Dev Manager Keith Beller demonstrates how to use VSTS to host a private package server.Before you go through the trouble of setting up a private package server to host your Nuget, NPM, Maven or Gradle feeds, consider using Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS). The Microsoft Package Management plugin found in the VSTS Marketplace is easy to use and only takes a couple of minutes to set up. I’ll walk you through the configuration process using a NuGet with Visual Studio scenario to guide you step-by-step. I’ll assume you already have a VSTS account, but if not click here for our quickstart sign up g...
How to Engage Your Audience during Online Deliveries
Interested in upping your online presentation game? Looking for some tips to engage your audience on Skype calls? Read this post by Premier Developer Consultant Daisy Chaussee to learn how. Today’s modern, virtual world relies on the ability to deliver content remotely. Whether it’s a simple standup call, an executive presentation, or an elaborate customer training, engaging your audience during online deliveries is crucial to business success. Follow along below for tips on how to use your voice, captivate attention, and design content to maximize engagement during online deliveries. Use Your Voice In onli...
End-to-end from Code Project, to VSTS CI/CD, to Azure
In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Crystal Tenn shares how to set up and deploy a full stack application using Azure App Services. The proof of concept will help you better understand the interactions between an Azure Web App, Azure API App, and Azure SQL Server resource with a step-by-step tutorial. In addition, we will show you how to setup automated builds and deployments using Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS). This is a simple proof of concept to display an Azure App Service website communicating with an Azure API project, which communicates to an Azure SQL back-end. The app is a To-Do applica...
Tips for enterprises migrating or adopting Git
This post is provided by App Dev Manager Tina Saulsberry who shares a few tips and resources to streamline enterprise migration to Git.Microsoft has moved its largest code repository to Git. We migrated our 20+ year old Windows repository, with over 4 million files and 300GB of data. This isn’t the only repository that we have on Git, in fact we are bringing all of our source code and teams over to VSTS & Git. During this migration we picked up a few lessons and built tools to scale Git. Below are some considerations when migrating to Git:I encourage you to check out the Channel9 videos by Edward Thomson, Pro...
How Microsoft Does DevOps – an Interview with Aaron Bjork, Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS)
This post is provided by App Dev Manager Dave Harrison based on an interview with Aaron Bjork, Principal Group Program Manager for VSTS (Visual Studio Team Services) at Microsoft. The following content is shared from an interview conducted in January with Aaron Bjork, Principal Group Program Manager for the VSTS (Visual Studio Team Services) product at Microsoft. Many people ask us how Microsoft accomplished our transformation with DevOps. Our interview with him opened up some valuable lessons that could be applied to any large enterprise trying to transform the way they deliver value and get feedback faster. ...
PowerShell Profiling
In the following post, Premier Developer Consultant Lizet Pena De Sola shows us how to analyze the performance of PowerShell scripts to pinpoint code with high CPU consumption and optimize resource usage.As part of my job I help developers take a closer look at the source code and analyze it under the “microscope”. Part of this analysis is profiling the performance of different components of a solution for CPU usage, network usage, IO, and memory usage. I try to pinpoint areas of the code that consume the resources and see if there can be optimizations. This is what is known as profiling an application or a solut...
Deploying Your Dockerized Angular Application To Azure Using VSTS (Part II)
Premier Developer Consultant Wael Kdouh demonstrates how to maintain consistency across development and production environments by utilizing Docker containers. He will show you how this is possible while concurrently automating the process with VSTS. In my previous post, I showed you how to deploy your Angular application to Azure using Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS). Whereas VSTS made it extremely easy to build a CI/CD pipeline, there is one aspect which always proves to be challenging. This aspect is the consistency across the development environment and the production environment. For example, when ...
Something is Odd About the Monolithic Application Discussion
In this post, App Dev Manager Mark Eisenberg takes a look back at the origin of monolithic applications and sets up a discussion about what needs to change.A few weeks ago I recorded a podcast which was a free-flowing discussion about monolithic applications, the problems therewith and why they are still with us some 50+ years after their arrival on the scene. For those that have the time and prefer something less structured you can head over to my friend Bryan Hogan's site at Breaking the Monolith and check it out. This post is meant to be a more structured discussion on the same topic.Monolithic applications ar...
Analysing visual content using HoloLens, Computer Vision APIs, Unity and the Windows Mixed Reality Toolkit
In this post, Senior App Dev Manager, Davide Zordan explores visual content using HoloLens, Computer Vision APIs, Unity and the Windows Mixed Reality Toolkit.In these days, I’m exploring the combination of HoloLens/Windows Mixed Reality and the capabilities offered by Cognitive Services to analyse and extract information from images captured via the device camera and processed using the Computer Vision APIs and the intelligent cloud.In this article, we’ll explore the steps I followed for creating a Unity application running on HoloLens and communicating with the Microsoft AI platform.Continue reading on Davide’s ...
Client Directed Authentication with Azure Mobile Apps
App Dev Manager Nicholas McCollum walks through creating an Azure Mobile App that uses client directed authentication via Azure AD. Azure Mobile Apps are built on Azure App Services. Through the Azure portal you can configure your Azure Mobile App to provide sign in, push notifications, and data synchronization. When you configure sign in through the Azure portal for your Azure Mobile App by default you are leveraging the “server directed” or “server managed” authentication flow. While this approach will suffice for simple application scenarios “client directed” or “client managed” authentication is the pr...
Considerations for load balancing your web applications
In this blog post, App Dev Managers Anand Shukla and Sash Kavalaparambil share some tips on configuring a load balancer for web applications.Sometimes the way a web application needs to manage state can have a profound impact on scalability and the load balancing configuration. There are many different options (both software and hardware) to provide load balancing solutions, but they all share some core concepts. Generally, you start by considering the application requirements for session persistence:Load Balancers can be configured primarily in the following ways for SSL scenariosIdeally, you want to...
Extensions to Application Insights Telemetry Collection
Application Development Manage Isaac Levin recently posted this article on building extensions for Application Insights. In this post, he demonstrates how to capture additional HTTP metadata using custom telemetry Initializers for Application Insights.I will start off by saying I love Application Insights. I have been using it for a long time, and am delighted at the new roll-out of features for it. I have even been giving a talk on Application Insights and how easy it is to instrument your application, so check that out if you are interested. One thing that is great about Application Insights is how extend...
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Developers
If you are looking to maximize your productivity and impact as a modern developer, consider these seven habits shared by App Dev Manager Ketuan Baldwin. Reaching your full potential as a developer requires you to be highly effective. In this blog, I will discuss some principles that are important for modern developers to be successful. The ideas generated from these principles are based on Steve Covey best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. As developers, our primary goals is to make things easier and/or to create more engaging experiences for users. These seven principles look at a modern ...
Setting up CI/CD targeting Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Using VSTS
In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Najib Zarrari demonstrates how to deploy a containerized ASP.NET Core Web API app into an OpenShift Kubernetes cluster.The first part of this blog will go over how to create a sample ASP.NET Core web application with Docker support. We will use this as our demo app to deploy to the Kubernetes cluster. Then we will go over how VSTS can be used to create a CI build that will build the application, package the build output into a Docker image, and push the image to Docker Hub. After that, we will point you to resources that will show how you can create a test OpenShif...
AdalException : authentication_ui_failed with ADAL and Xamarin Forms Android
In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Joe Healy identifies a possible error you may get when working with an Android project on Xamarin Forms. Read about his discovery and eventual solution to fix the SSL/TLS implementation issue.Recently, I was helping a client with an Azure Active Directory integrated project (ADAL not MSAL for some various reasons). All was going well as I plugged away with the various integration pieces. We were targeting Xamarin Forms on this project. Luckily, there was a great blog post by Mayur here for us to follow. Typically, I will start with UWP as a 'sanity check' to make sure th...
Supporting Micro-frontends with ASP.NET Core MVC
In this post, App Dev Manager John Abele explores micro-frontend design with ASP.NET Core and MVC. Many development teams have spent the last few years organizing and empowering cross-functional teams, building independently managed microservices, and implementing DevOps pipelines to go faster than ever! These industry shifts, critical for organizations to plan less and react more, solved old problems while creating new ones. As we focused on designing domain-aligned microservices, we also engineered JSON-hungry responsive UIs, Single Page Apps, and portals to consume them. A ton of client-side code has...
Integrating Logic Apps and Azure Monitor
In this post, App Dev Manager Jason Venema walks us through a practical example using Logic Apps and Azure Monitor to track down who created a Virtual Machine. Have you ever needed to quickly find out who created a specific virtual machine in one of your Azure subscriptions? If it hasn’t happened yet, it probably will someday. Maybe your Cloud Ops team received an alert that the VM was low on disk space, or maybe it was flagged as being non-compliant. If that happens, you would probably want to contact the person who created the VM so you could inform them of the problem. “No problem,” you think to your...
Angular How-to: Implement Role-based security
Laurie Atkinson, Premier Developer Consultant, shows us how to customize the behavior of an Angular app based on the user’s permissions. This includes page navigation, hiding and disabling of UI elements, and generation of menus. Applications often include requirements to customize their appearance and behavior based on the user’s role or permission. Users should only be presented with certain choices based on their role or a set of actions they have permission to perform. This is not a replacement for securing the data at the API level, but improves the usability on the client. This post provides sample c...
The ‘in’-modifier and the readonly structs in C#
C# 7.2 got two very important features for high-performance scenarios -- the readonly structs and the parameters. But to understand why this additions are so important and how they're related to each other we should look back in history. As you probably know, the .NET ecosystem has two family of types -- the value types (a.k.a. structs) and the reference types (a.k.a. classes) (*). There are a plenty of differences between them but the main one is the semantics. The value types follow the value semantics: (1) two instances of a value type are equal if all the data members are equal and (2) the value type inst...
Self-Hosting a Bot in Service Fabric with Katana
Read on to learn how to use the Katana-based OWIN stack within Service Fabric. In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Megan Meyer walks through how to host the Bot Builder SDK Echo Bot in Service Fabric. I recently participated in a small hackathon with some Microsoft ninjas where we were presented with the problem, How do you host a bot in Service Fabric? It seemed like an easy problem that had probably already been solved, but it wasn't as straightforward as we thought it might be. At its core from a technology perspective, a bot is really just a Web API. We didn't want to actually host IIS on Service F...
Notes from the Field: Migrating to Visual Studio Team Services
Premier Developer consultant Brian Blackman shares two major insights regarding migrating on-premises databases to the cloud. This post does not cover all the details of migration to Visual Studio Team Services. You can find that information at Migrate to Visual Studio Team Services. And your options for migration can be found at Migration options. What this post does cover are two considerations regarding migrating your on-premises database to the cloud. 1. Apply standard administrative tasks before you migrate. 2. Minimize process quagmire and bifurcation. In a ...
Freeing Disk Space on a Developer Machine
In this post, Senior Application Development Manager, Patrick King, shares some tips for freeing up disk space on a development machine.As a developer, I see my free disk space diminish over time. It usually isn’t an issue if I have ample disk and get to change hardware out every few years, but that isn’t the case for everyone. This post lists a set of strategies I have used to help customers free up hard drive space on developer machines.The BasicsThis Microsoft Support article covers the most common ways to free disk space: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17421/windows-free-up-drive-spaceOnce you...
Using JOIN with MAX to write efficient queries
In this post, Senior Application Development Manager, Alexei Govorine, demonstrates how to use SQL JOIN and MAX in a query.How to join two SQL tables and display the latest results.Recently a customer has asked me to help them with a query design. The question was how to join two tables and display the latest results from one of them in a single query.The answer is to use JOIN and MAX statements in a query. To demonstrate the correct syntax, let consider: We need to display the latest student GPA records from the data that is contained in two tables: Student and StudentGrades. Not all students may have gra...
Monitoring a Java App Service Web App
In the following article by Premier Developer consultant Kurt Schenk, he explains how to monitor a Java app using Tomcat running on Windows. When deploying a Java Azure App Service Web App, there are some great tools you can use for monitoring. Before describing these tools, I will first share some background about operating systems and languages that the Azure App Service supports. App Service Web Apps has out of the box support for ASP.NET and Java Apps (using Tomcat) running on Windows. Other languages (Node, PHP, .NET Core, Ruby) are supported with pre-configured Docker containers that run on Linux. You c...
Angular How-to: Editable Config Files
This post provides the steps and code samples for using a JSON configuration file, which can be customized for multiple environments.
Microsoft Flow: Expose Public APIs via Custom Connector
In this post we’d like to highlight an article from Premier Developer consultant Megan Meyer’s blog where she walks us through setting up a Custom Connector in Microsoft Flow in order to access data from her FitBit device.I love fitness trackers. I was excited to get the new Fitbit Alta HR, but some of my eagerness waned when I remembered why I hadn't used a Fitbit since my old Fitbit One -- I hated how it didn't integrate with any of my other applications I used to track my information. Fitbit does support some integration with partner apps, but just not with any apps that I happen to prefer and use. […]Here's t...
5 Ways to Reduce the Impact of Failure
In the second post in his series on risk management in modern software development, Premier Developer consultant Assaf Stone further explores the concept of mitigating risk by reducing the impact of failures. In the previous post we discussed risk management, how many of us manage it today by attempting to control the likelihood of failure, and why we should instead focus on reducing the impact of failures, as a way to manage the risks involved with software development. Below are 5 techniques that software development teams can use to reduce the impact of failures in production: Continue reading on Assaf’s ...
Git in Education
In this post, Premier Developer consultant Brian Blackman introduces one of our training offerings – the Microsoft Git Solutions workshop.With Premier Support for Developers, our customers have access to many resources including education. Case in point is our Microsoft Git Solutions workshop. This educational opportunity is a two-day instructor-led training course that provides participants with the fundamental knowledge that is required to use Git. Participants will learn to use Git with Visual Studio for the client side and using Team Foundation Server, Visual Studio Team Services, and other 3rd party h...
Using VSTS Service Hooks in Release Management to add resource cleanup resilience
In this post, Principal Consultant/App Dev Manager Lou Sawyer describes how to integrate webhooks and runbooks to cleanup failed Azure deployments. Release Management capabilities in Visual Studio Team Service are fantastic and offers extensibility points to make everyone's life easier. In this post, we'll be discussing the Service Hooks feature along with a potential use case integrating with a Runbook. As detailed in Integrate with service hooks, Service Hooks allow you to perform tasks in other services in response to events in VSTS. This capability can be used to start a runbook from a webhook (runb...
Risk: You’re Managing it Wrong!
The following post about managing risks in modern software development is from Premier Developer consultant, Assaf Stone.No offense, but despite your best intentions, you might not be handling risk properly. In this day and age, everything is software-dependent; even if you do not consider yourself a “software-firm” per-se, even if you are just running a small development team that develops in-house software, your business still depends on said software to run smoothly, and any outages cost money. The bigger the problem, the greater the cost. If you, like many other modern software-based organizations, try to red...
Enabling ALM Tooling in the Cloud for PubSec Customers
In this post, Senior App Dev Manager Doug Owens explores cloud hosted TFS options for government organizations.In sharing notes with peers within Microsoft, it becomes clear that many of our PubSec customers can benefit from improved Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and DevOps practices. The world-class features, low barriers to entry, scalability, reliability, and ease of management offered by Microsoft’s Visual Studio Team Service (VSTS) would seem made-to-order for PubSec entities looking for an on-ramp to the modern ALM/DevOps world. However, VSTS currently cannot be used by many of these customers (ex....
Docker Blog Series Part 5 – Understanding new container management features in Service Fabric
In the latest post in his Docker series, Premier Developer consultant Monu Bambroo talks about some of the new features in Service Fabric regarding container management. Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices and containers. Service Fabric also addresses the significant challenges in developing and managing cloud native applications. It is also an orchestrator of services across a cluster of machines and it is continuing to invest heavily in container orchestration and management. In this blog post, we will chec...
Walk-through of using SSH to connect Azure VM Jump Servers
In this post, Premier Developer consultant Kurt Schenk walks us through setting up an SSH connection to Azure using a jumpbox. Using SSH to access resources is becoming increasingly common for Windows users. Some typical scenarios are connecting to Linux VMs from Windows development computers; another common one is using SSH to connect to VMs in Azure through a jumpbox. These VMs behind the jumpbox could be any OS such as Linux or Windows, but the jumpbox is the secure entry point, deployed to a management subnet, requiring secure SSH (ideally with a private key vs. username and password) with ingress and ...
DevOps and Finance
Premier Developer consultant Ron Vincent recently posted this article on the relationship between Finance and modern software development practices such as Agile and DevOps. It’s an interesting discussion of how you can bring finance and planning along on your DevOps journey.I know, who wants to talk about finance when it comes to software development? Well, I do. Here’s why: It turns out that this has a huge impact on software development. In this article I’ll explain why finance is important and what steps we can use to change our organization so that we can develop software and more importantly innovate ...
One user scenario to rule them all
The async series Almost every non-trivial behavior of the async methods in C# can be explained based on one user scenario: migration of the existing synchronous code to asynchronous should be as simple as possible. You should be able to add keyword before a method's return type, add suffix to its name, add keyword here and there in the method body to get a fully functional asynchronous method. This "simple" scenario drastically affects the behavior of asynchronous methods in many different ways: from scheduling task's continuations to exception handling. The scenario sounds plausibl...
LUIS & Speech API Integration
Ever wondered how to integrate speech and AI into your application? It’s easy with this tutorial from Premier Developer consultants Adel Ghabboun and Kunal Sinha! Have you ever wondered what are some of the technologies behind personal home assistants such as Cortana, Alexa and Home? Whether you want to tell your personal AI to open Spotify and play a song for you or schedule a meeting on your calendar, Microsoft’s Cognitive Services along with LUIS (Language Understanding Intelligent Service) AI can provide you with exactly this functionality. In this blog, we’ll be talking about how to integrate the ...
Building and Running an Auditing Solution on Blockchain
If you are in the NYC area on Feb 21, Premier Developer consultant Razi Rais will be hosting an event to demonstrate how to build and run a fully functional blockchain based audit trail application. The first half is a good fit for both business and technical audiences, as it covers auditing scenarios using blockchain. The latter half will showcase an open source project that provides tracking of Wikipedia change logs using blockchain. I will do a deep dive into the running solution that leverages the Ethereum Rinkeby Network. I will showcasing open source project “Wikipedia logs change tracking” that I am curren...
PolyBase – How SQL Server does Big data!
In this post, Senior App Dev Manager Nayan Patel introduces SQL Server PolyBase and shares some insights from a recent engagement using the technology.I was recently involved in helping my customer complete a successful PoC around SQL Server 2016’s PolyBase feature. They have invested a signification amount of budget and resources standing up their Hadoop environment to house massive amounts of unstructured/semi-structured data. However, they have been unable to retrieve meaningful insights and value from it, especially due to the required ETL processes and complex MapReduce actions. As part of ...
Microsoft Professional Program for Data Science – Sharpen Your Data Science Skills
In this post, Senior App Dev Manager Pete Fuenfhausen breaks down the concept of Data Sciences and provides a walk through of free training track to get oriented with the technologies Microsoft offers in this space. These days it’s pretty hard to be an application developer without running into concepts like big data, data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning. We’re seeing more and more requirements for our applications to include “smart”, “intelligent”, and “predictive” features. And we are seeing a lot more people with titles like “data scientist” appearing on our project teams or in the...
Partner Center API’s
In this post, Senior App Dev Manager Deepak Malik, explains how Partner Center API’s provide extensive management functionalities and enable partner to extend their existing systems.The Partner Center REST API helps Cloud Solution Provider partners (CSP's) integrate their existing CRM or billing systems with the Microsoft systems to manage multiple entities. This might include managing customer accounts, subscriptions, placing orders, and handling support requests to enable partners to sell Microsoft Commercial Cloud software. The Partner Center SDK provides a superset of the earlier CREST API functionality...
Designing a Cosmos DB database
Premier Developer consultant Julien Oudot brings us this blog with some considerations when designing a Cosmos DB database. The intent of this article is to summarize some of the key aspects to keep in mind while designing a database using Cosmos DB. Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft's globally distributed, multi-model database. Sometimes referred to as a server-less database, the promise is the ability to transparently and indefinitely scale your data with high throughput, low latency and high reliability. To achieve this goal, a few best practices need to be applied. There is no need to have advanced DBA skills...
Microsoft’s Geospatial Capabilities
In a recent article published on LinkedIn, Premier Developer consultant Ron Vincent highlights some of Microsoft’s geospatial capabilities, both past and present.Microsoft has for some time now had some level of geospatial capabilities but since Azure has come along there has been many developments on this front. In this article, I think it’s time that we take a brief look across Microsoft’s services and offerings to see where we are at the end of 2017. This article will highlight the past and present capabilities that are available now and some new capabilities coming that were recently released.Continue reading...
Integrate Power BI Dashboards, Reports and Tiles into a WPF Application
In this post, Senior ADM Rob Reilly shows us how to integrate Power BI dashboards, reports, and tiles into a WPF application. Use the Power BI Embedded WPF Sample to learn how to integrate Power BI Dashboards, Reports and Tiles into a Windows Presentation Foundation application. The sample covers the "User Owns the Data" scenario. "App Owns the Data" scenarios can be accomplished but there are serious security considerations with native applications and the risk of the secret\password for the application credential being compromised. Therefore the "App Owns the Data" scenario will be out of scope. Also cov...
Amazon Alexa Skills authenticated by Azure Active Directory and backed by an Azure Function
This post is provided by Premier Field Engineer, Nathan Vanderby, who walks us through how to write an Alexa skill using Azure Functions. Last updated June 2018. Most people have heard of the Amazon Echo and the skills that provide it functions. Amazon makes it really easy to create these skills using an AWS Lambda function. These can also be backed using a REST API app or even an Azure Function. Below we will give some instructions for how to leverage Azure Functions. The steps below are almost identical to how you would configure a generic backend API with authentication except that the Azure Function n...
The performance characteristics of async methods in C#
The async series In the last two blog posts we've covered the internals of async methods in C# and then we looked at the extensibility points the C# compiler provides to adjust the behavior of async methods. Today we're going to explore the performance characteristics of async methods. As you should already know from the first post of the series, the compiler does a lot of transformations to make asynchronous programming experience very similar to a synchronous one. But to do that the compiler creates a state machine instance, pass it around to an async method builder, that calls task awai...
Getting Started with Ethereum using Azure Blockchain
In this post, Senior ADM Mike Finley discusses how to get started with Ethereum and Azure Blockchain.What is Blockchain? At the most basic level of understanding, blockchains are a simple approach to a distributed database. A blockchain is a peer-to-peer system with no central authority managing data flow. One of the key ways to removing central control while maintaining data integrity is to have a large distributed network of independent users. You can think of blockchains as distributed databases that a group of individuals controls and that store and share information. The most popular form of a blockchain imp...
The Food Truck Paradigm : Why should I trust open source software?
In this post, App Dev Manager Daniel Setlock reflects on the trust of open source software using the Food Truck Paradigm.IntroductionIt is somewhat shocking that in 2017 I still receive questions about how open source software, libraries, plug-ins, packages, etc. can be trusted, and the pushback that such things receive from cyber security personnel at organizations. While everyone has their own job to do, and their own criteria for success, limiting the availability of a robust and organized code base or tools due to a lack of understanding in regards to what Open Source actually means only hinders and never hel...
Firebase 101: NoSql Database Management
In this post, Premier Developer Consultant, Kunal Sinha outlines steps to integrate Firebase Database into custom web applications as a NoSql alternative for quick POC demos. I was recently working on building out a Node JS web application POC for one of my projects and wanted to try out a new database service. As this was just a POC, I wasn’t looking for anything full-blown like Azure Data Storage, but rather something simple for demo purposes. Firebase is a cloud-hosted NoSql DB that lets you store and sync data between your users in realtime. As I was building out a POC, I wanted to use something that w...
Innovation at your fingertips
In this post, App Dev Manager Adlène Sifi demonstrates innovation at your fingertips by building a real-time earthquake reporting system using Power BI and without writing any code. You can view a French version of this article on LinkedIn. Innovation usually involves ideation, rapid prototyping, validation with users, measurement (feedback) and finally adaptation. A multitude of ideas can be generated by involving a multidisciplinary team with diverse experiences, roles, skills or backgrounds. The more diverse your group, the higher the quality of ideas generated. Once the ideation phase is comple...
Optimize your Azure spend
In this post, App Dev Manager Priti Kalani shares insight toward optimizing the services you deploy and manage in the Microsoft cloud.Azure tools to optimize and manage your cloud spendingAzure has made deploying cloud infrastructure and applications convenient and productive for organizations. Azure also provides tools to help you with managing the spend in the Microsoft Cloud. In this post, I would like to discuss a couple of Azure tools that can help you optimize cloud resources and get the most out of your Azure spend.Azure Advisor Cost RecommendationsThe Azure Advisor tool works as your personal advisor to h...
Extending the async methods in C#
The async series In the previous blog post we discussed how the C# compiler transforms asynchronous methods. In this post, we'll focus on extensibility points the C# compiler provides for customizing the behavior of async methods. There are 3 ways how you can control the async method's machinery: Custom types fromm namespace As we know from the previous post, the C# compiler transforms async methods into a generated state machine that relies on some predefined types. But the C# compiler does not expect that these well-known types come from a specific assembly. For instan...
Converting PCL (Portable Class Libraries) to .NET Standard Class Libraries – Part 3
In Part 3 of this 3 part series, App Dev Manager, Herald Gjura describes how to incorporate these libraries into an existing .NET application.In Part 1 and 2 of this blog series I described how to migrate your old PCL libraries into the .NET Standard ones, and how to change you build and release pipeline for a successful NuGet deployment. In this 3rd part I will describe how to incorporate these libraries into an existing .NET application.In normal circumstances this should not be a topic of a discussion, as you should be able to simply pull the .NET Standard libraries into your application and get going. However...
Async Main() is available, but hidden
Check out this quick tip on unlocking the new features of C# 7.1 from Premier Developer consultant Ben Williams.Ever try to use async/await in your Main method of a .NET app? You couldn’t before, but now you can. I just posted a quick tip about enabling this by turning on C# 7.1 features in Visual Studio (they are not enabled by default). https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/benwilli/2017/12/08/async-main-is-available-but-hidden/
[Service Fabric] How to troubleshoot deployment errors in Service Fabric Windows cluster
Having issues deploying your service to your Service Fabric cluster? Check out this post from Premier Developer consultant Julien Oudot on troubleshooting deployment issues in Service Fabric. The Service Fabric explorer is a great interface to control the cluster health and configuration. However, I recently worked with customers who did not find obvious to debug issues occurring while deploying services in an Service Fabric Windows cluster. The fact that they could not find this information prevented them from experimenting the great features part of Service Fabric. In addition to the usual debugging ...
Visual Studio App Center
This overview of Visual Studio App Center comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Sana Noorani. One of Microsoft’s newest offerings, the Visual Studio App Center, is a tool for streamlining the DevOps pipeline for mobile development. The product is an updated version of its previous product, Mobile Center, and has many more features than its predecessor that allows developers go to this singular platform to take care of all their mobile application needs. App Center allows for continuous everything – continuous build, test, deploy, monitor, and repeat. The platforms that are offered currently include An...
Get Excited About Microsoft Flow
Need to set up a workflow between applications or services but don’t know where to start? Check out this post about Microsoft Flow from Premier Developer consultant Daisy Chaussee to learn how to make services talk to each other without even writing one line of code!Microsoft Flow creates automated workflows between apps and services. You can get notifications when you receive an email from your boss or save email attachments to OneDrive. Even more exciting, a flow can be integrated into a PowerApps application or SharePoint site. All of this is immensely powerful, but what really caught my attention was th...
[Service Fabric] Auto-scaling your Service Fabric cluster–Part II
In the second post in his series on Auto-scaling a Service Fabric cluster, Premier Developer consultant Larry Wall highlights a new feature that allows you to tie auto-scaling to an Application Insights metric. In Part I of this article, I demonstrated how to set up auto-scaling on the Service Fabric clusters scale set based on a metric that is part of a VM scale set (Percentage CPU). This setting doesn't have much to do at all with the applications that are running in your cluster, it's just a pure hardware scaling that may take place because of your services CPU consumption or some other thing consuming ...
Application Insights Debug Snapshot issue “Unexpected error has occurred”
This post on the Debug Snapshot feature of Application Insights comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Adel Ghabboun. A couple of days ago, I encountered an ambiguous issue while trying to open the debug snapshot feature in Application Insights following Debug snapshots on exceptions in .NET apps. The error was “Unexpected error has occurred. We are currently having issues with this request. Please open this page again and try again, if problem persists please file a support ticket or contact us directly” as shown below: I was working on a test application to try out the Remote debug feat...
Code Reviews and fishing
In a recent post from his blog, Premier Developer Consultant Jim Blizzard discussed the human side of code reviews…Years ago, before I joined Microsoft, a team at one of the companies I worked for decided to start doing code reviews. This was back before modern IDEs that would show you side by side code comparisons with color highlighting of the proposed changes. And before VSTS which allows you to annotate the code that you’re looking at — add questions, notes, or recommendations about the code you’re reviewing — which is kept as metadata for the code. All good stuff.Continue reading on Jim’s blog…
PowerAppsPuzzle: @ vs # == Cryptic Error
In today’s post, Premier Developer consultant Brian Gregor is back with another installment in his PowerAppsPuzzle series!Hey folks! We are back with another PowerAppsPuzzle this week. This time we are trying to track down the source of a very cryptic error message. I am working on a solution for a PowerApp that integrates with SharePoint Online and for this particular solution I cannot rely on the built in form functionality that we get when using the wizard -- "App from data". So this time I had to manually create the form by adding controls to a screen and then using the Patch() formula.Continue reading ...
Alternative way to protect your Application Insights “Instrumentation Key” in JavaScript
This post on Application Insights and protecting your instrumentation key comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Adel Ghabboun. Application Insights instrumentation key can be used in both Server and client side. Using the instrumentation key in the server side is secured and no one can see it. The opposite happens on the client side “JavaScript” where the instrumentation key is exposed, and anyone could see the key whenever they use fiddler to trace the calls. Knowing that, the instrumentation key doesn’t allow anyone to read anything from anywhere, it can only be used to write data to a resource. ...
First Look Into Blockchain
There’s been a ton of buzz about Blockchain lately (Bitcoin anyone?) so what better time to highlight this video from Premier Developer consultant Razi Rais on understanding Blockchain technology. Since last year, I have been spending time with customers understanding how blockchain can help them improve/replace existing processes. It’s relatively a new technology but evolving very fast. Anyways, recorded an hour long video session First Look Into Blockchain for Channel9. It’s predominately focused on blockchain from developers perspective. https://sec.ch9.ms/ch9/1f57/913ef57a-5f08-44c1-8648-01f6638d1f57/ToP...
Amazon Alexa Skills authenticated by Azure Active Directory and backed by ASP.NET Core 2.0 Web API hosted on Azure
This post is provided by Premier Field Engineer, Nathan Vanderby, who walks us through how to write an Alexa skill using .NET core and AAD. Lasted updated, June 2018. Amazon's Echo devices and Alexa assistant need no introduction. In this post I lay out how you can write an Alexa skill and use a .NET core 2.0 API backend service to handle the requests. We will also show how to leverage Azure Active Directory (AAD) so these calls can be authenticated and your users can get a personalized experience. Rob Reilly has a great write up on how to accomplish this using .NET Core 1.0. Here we'll update the tutoria...
TFS 2017 – Sometimes we must look back before we can move forward! – Part 1
This is the first of a series of posts is provided by Senior Application Development Manager (ADM), Chuck Goodspeed, focusing on the challenges encountered in migrating/evolving TFS 2005/2008/2010 installations a full decade forward into TFS 2017 and/or VSTS. Experiences and situations encountered at multiple customer installations provide real-life NOT “out-of-the-box experiences”, [! OOB} which can be built upon to avoid common pitfalls.BackgroundMy primary goal as an ADM is to provide value to my customers and help them succeed with our technologies. I continually seek new ways to meet more development manager...
Azure Application Insights Best Practices
In this post, Premier Developer consultant Adel Ghabboun outlines some best practices when using Application Insights. Here are some Azure Application Insights best practices you should consider when monitoring your application:
Creating Developer’s Docker Linux Virtual Machine on Azure
This post on creating Linux virtual machines with Docker in Azure comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Razi Rais.For an upcoming developer event on Docker I had to create handful of Linux Ubuntu virtual machines on Azure with Docker and few additional software installed on it.I looked into couple of ways to to do that on Azure in a consistent fashion. The first option was to use DevTest labs and use artifacts. Another option is to use Custom Extensions. There are other options including creating your own base virtual machine image with all the software installed and then upload it on Azure. I picked cust...
Getting Started with Node.js, Angular, and Visual Studio Code
This step-by-step guide on getting started with Node.js and Angular comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Crystal Tenn. Here is a simple step by step guide to getting your Angular application setup with Visual Studio Code and Node. This guide will simply help you know what to install, the commands to run in PowerShell, and some basics about where to start building your app using Visual Studio Code. (Link to Portuguese version of this article)
A branching strategy for CI/CD using Git in VSTS
In this post from his blog, Premier Developer consultant Ilias Jennane discusses a strategy that can be used for branching and merging using Git in VSTS in a continuous integration/continuous deployment environment.When it comes to Branching and Merging strategies, the internet is full of examples and “best practices”. I personally don’t believe in a best practice, because that’s usually subjective. I’d rather talk about a proven practice. Continue reading on Ilias’ blog here.
How to setup live streaming server using Azure Media Service in less than 30 mins
In this post, Senior App Dev Manager Randy Park walks us through Azure Media Services to setup a live streaming PoC. Background: A customer recently launched a global intranet portal with an audience distributed across the globe. They expected an increase of the audience on a daily basis and leadership team requested one more interesting feature-- live video streaming. Microsoft Premier was asked to help with the live video streaming PoC to assess feasibility and performance. An additional requirement was that first, the live content should stream in real time and the be available after the event for late...
API Management: Quota versus Rate Limits
In this post, Senior App Dev Manager, Sanket Bakshi spotlights Azure API Management and how it can help with usage throttling.Azure API Management provides really good capabilities for usage throttling. This is useful in scenarios such as defending against a denial of service attack and protecting back-end services against a huge influx of requests to your API management layer. It can also be used to provide tier based access restrictions to your customers as a feature.Continue reading on Sanket’s blogPremier Support for Developers provides strategic technology guidance, critical support coverage, and...
Dissecting the async methods in C#
The async series The C# language is great for developer's productivity and I'm glad for the recent push towards making it more suitable for high-performance applications. Here is an example: C# 5 introduced 'async' methods. The feature is very useful from a user's point of view because it helps combining several task-based operations into one. But this abstraction comes at a cost. Tasks are reference types causing heap allocations everywhere they're created, even in cases where the 'async' method completes synchronously. With C# 7, async methods can return task-like types such as to reduc...
Blog of Blogging
In this post, Senior App Dev Manager Marcus Fernandez sets up a blog using Miniblog.Core and Azure in just a few simple steps.Miniblog.Core a project by Mads, on the VS \ .NET team at MS, thank you. I have been exploring dotnet core since it was released and I really like the idea of a more micro-architecture. You control more of the code, or not if you wish, depending on third party developers of packages that integrate right alongside your code through dependency injection. This post is about my initial experience with setting up this blog. Continue reading on the blogPremier Support for...
Cloud Computing + Modern DevOps == Productivity Gains
In this post, App Dev Manager, Omer Amin reminds us that thinking about old problems in new ways is critically important for maximizing the benefits of the cloud. The Productivity Paradox...When new tools promise higher productivity, but fail to deliver.I came across this concept last weekend when I was reading Tim Harford's "Fifty Inventions that shaped the Modern Economy". He was talking about the Dynamo's, and how their invention was supposed to revolutionize the industrial era. When the Dynamo was invented, factories still ran on steam generators. Most factories were had huge steam engines that de...
Homomorphic Encryption 101
In this article from his blog, Premier Developer consultant Razi Rais covers some of the basics of a powerful security & privacy tool – homomorphic encryption.I was recently exploring methods for improved privacy using various encryption schemes and stumbled upon Homomorphic Encryption that has a huge potential in that area. I do feel that it has higher barrier to entry considering the complexity and level of maturity it has today. If you’re looking for learning resources/libraries to get started on it take a look at Git repo that I have created for the purpose of sharing resources around Homomorphic En...
Visual Studio Shortcuts and Add on Tools
This post from Premier Developer consultant Crystal Tenn walks you through customizing Visual Studio to work better for you and your organization. I like tools that make my development faster and more organized. The small amount of time it takes to invest in installing and learning these tools pays off in the long run! I have listed out the shortcuts that I use in my Visual Studio and how to change your settings if you want to adopt some of my shortcuts or make up your own easy to remember ones. You can share settings across a team so that everyone is more productive and in sync. I like to change my new cl...
Debugging ASP Core on Linux with Visual Studio 2017
NET Core and specifically ASP Core is an Open Source, High Performance implementation of .NET that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. After you deploy your web application to a Linux server it can be difficult to troubleshoot when issues arise. In this article, I’ll show you how to configure your Linux test server and Development environment to allow remote debugging giving you all the greatness of debugging in Visual Studio while your code is running on a Linux server.
[Service Fabric] Auto-scaling your Service Fabric cluster–Part I
In this article from his blog, Premier Developer consultant Larry Wall discusses building an ARM template that configures auto-scaling on a virtual machine scale set (VMSS). Like most people, whenever I need to build an ARM template to do something with Service Fabric, I'm browsing around Github or where ever else I can find the bits and pieces of JSON that I need. I was recently working on a project where they needed 3 things: Continue reading on Larry’s blog here.
PowerAppsPuzzle: Sorting SelectedItems
Premier Developer consultant Brian Gregor has launched a new series on his blog called PowerAppsPuzzle where he shows examples of issues and solutions in PowerApps. Here’s an excerpt of the first puzzle in the series:Let’s take the scenario where you have a ListBox in a PowerApp that contains sorted information – either alphabetically or numerically, doesn’t matter – similar to the following:The user selects 1, then 2, then 4, and all is good, however you may notice that sometimes the values are not sorted. You may receive the values out of order like: 4,2,1 or 2,4,1.Check out Brian’s blog here for the solu...
Converting PCL (Portable Class Libraries) to .NET Standard Class Libraries – Part 2
In Part 2 of this 3 part series, App Dev Manager, Herald Gjura covers upgrading the continuous delivery and Build/Release pipeline in VSTS. In order for the new .NET Standard Packages to build and release, we will need modify the build definitions. Here is a step by step guide on all the changes using an existing build definition, and highlighting all the important changes along the way. VSTS Build Definition Setting the build variables The only custom build variables I use for these packages is the $(ProjectName) variable, set at the name of the project of the package. In the c...
DevOps is not for sale
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Robert Shanks who reminds us to put away the checkbooks and instead: engage, empower and encourage your people!I'm an Application Development Manager (ADM) on Microsoft's Modern Applications, Premier Developer team. In my role, I have the opportunity to work with a variety of clients across multiple industries. Like many organizations, the clients I work with have objectives of achieving a better DevOps environment. Some have established DevOps Centers of Excellence to set the foundation of processes, governance, and tools "necessary" to achieve their DevOps object...
Choosing the right tooling for Azure and side by side Azure CLI and PowerShell commands
This article on the various tools available to perform tasks in Azure comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Crystal Tenn.There are a lot of tools out there for managing your Azure subscriptions! We have the Portal web page, Visual Studio integration (with the Azure SDK), PowerShell commands, and the Azure CLI. Sometimes it’s hard to know which one to use. In all honesty, sometimes the answer is that you choose the one you like the most and use a mixture of other tools for specific tasks because the other tools make it much simpler to accomplish what you are trying to do. As someone who came from a develop...
[Service Fabric] Full/Incremental backup and restore sample
Premier Developer consultant Larry Wall created this sample application to demonstrate how to do full and incremental backups of your Service Fabric services to Azure blob storage. I recently worked with a client who said that they had had trouble implementing incremental backup and restore for their stateful services, so I was set to the task to build a sample that would do both a full and incremental backups to Azure blob storage. I fully expect great improvements to happen in Service Fabric in the coming months regarding backup and restore, but for now, the customer needed to get moving. Read the ...
Dissecting the tuples in C# 7
types were introduced in .NET 4.0 with two significant drawbacks: (1) tuple types are classes and (2) there was no language support for constructing/deconstructing them. To solve these issues, C# 7 introduces new language feature as well as a new family of types (*). Today, if you need to glue together two values to return them from a function or put two values in a hash set you can use types and construct them using a handy syntax: (*) types are introduced in .NET Framework 4.7. But you still can use the feature and target lower framework versions, in this case, you have to reference a special nuget pac...
Deploying Your Angular Application To Azure Using Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS)
This tutorial on using VSTS to deploy your Angular application to Azure comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Wael Kdouh. Introduction It is no secret by now that the Angular CLI is the preferred method to develop an Angular application due to its simplicity and power at the same time. One of the main advantages of using Angular CLI is that it hides a lot of the ceremony involved in creating an Angular application (deciding on a style guide, setting up the package.json file, setting up the client side build system, setting up unit testing, preparing your code for production, etc.). This is all ...
My experiment and observation on Service Fabric Communication Stacks
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Vishal Saroopchand who asks the question, “How do you decide what Communications Stack to use in your Service Fabric applications?” How do you decide what Communication Stack (Remoting, WCF, Custom Implementation) to use in your Service Fabric applications? Do you know how each communication stack performs? This post is to help shed some light on the performance characteristics that I observed with my recent experiment. The questions I was attempting to answer Which communication stack should I choose for inter-service communication on a low latency wo...
Converting PCL (Portable Class Libraries) to .NET Standard Class Libraries
In Part 1 of this 3 part series, App Dev Manager, Herald Gjura discusses converting PCL (Portable Class Libraries) to .NET Standard Class Libraries. Overview I have been working for this client for quite a few years and had advised them to break down some of their key business functionality and features and distribute them as NuGet packages. With the introduction of the mobile apps, most of these packages were re-packaged again as PCLs to be used in Xamarin cross platform applications. During this process of continuous refactoring, things evolved again. There was a migration from TFS to VSTS and rewriting of...
EF 2.0 I am a believer
This post is provided by App Dev Manager, Marcus Fernandez who shares first impressions of EF Core 2.0. I am not much of a database guy. I enjoy code but not a big fan of learning tools like SQL Management Studio, SSIS, etc. Not my forte. So I am working on a project and exploring database evolution. The original project started with EF 6. The team struggled as there were no EF experts and we found that there were some limitations around relationships getting lost in the code. They migrated the EF 6 code to a database project and at some point people started updating the database directly and doing sc...
Exploring Windows Mixed Reality, switching between 2D / 3D and embedding Web Views
In this post, Senior App Dev Manager, Davide Zordan explores switching between Unity 3D and XAML 2D views and integrating the access to UWP APIs for content hosted on Web Views. This scenario could be particularly useful if an app needs to reuse existing code, perhaps available in a website, with the requirement to access the Windows Runtime when executed in Windows Mixed Reality devices and activated from a Unity 3D scene. Continue reading on Davide’s blog Premier Support for Developers provides strategic technology guidance, critical support coverage, and a range of essential services to help t...
Docker Blog Series Part 4 – Managing Secrets inside Kubernetes Cluster in Azure Container Service
This post is the next in a series of Docker posts from Premier Developer consultant Monu Bambroo. In this post, Monu walks through setting up a Web API to leverage Kubernetes for managing secrets. One of the common tasks in application development is to manage configurations. Some of the configurations can be sensitive information. One of the features of Kubernetes is secret management. There are many approaches to retrieve secrets from the secret management store. In this blog post, I will show you how to manage a sample secret using environment variables in a Web Api. We will do this in two steps. First...
Should I Use Visual Studio 2017 or VS Code For My Next Angular Application?
This post on using Visual Studio to develop Angular applications comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Wael Kdouh. I engage with a lot of our customers that work on Angular applications and I frequently get asked the following question: Should we use Visual Studio 2017 or VS Code for our next application? The short answer is doesn't matter because both provide similar capabilities for the most part. In this blog post I will show you how to setup both environments to allow you to be productive when building your next Angular application. Read the rest on Wael’s blog here.
SQL Server 2016 Express SP1 – Always Encrypted
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Chris Tjoumas who provides an overview of Always Encrypted with SQL Server 2016. Introduction In this post, I want to focus on the Always Encrypted security feature of SQL Server 2016 SP1, specifically with the Express edition. This post is motivated by a customer who was hoping to understand a bit more about the different encryption options, specifically column-level encryption, and whether or not the data remains encrypted when exported or backed up. Which Encryption Options are Available for SQL Server 2016 SP1 Express? As shown in the list of security...
Jump Start ASP.NET Core Application on Nano Server
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Linkai Yu who shares some tips to speed up ASP.NET Core Application dev on Nano Server.With the Nano server release from Windows 2016 Server, I’m excited to see the new application deployment practice to work with the thin and fast OS.If you are new to ASP.NET Core application deployment on Nano server, I hope this blog will help you get up and running quickly while avoiding wasting time on the old documentation.If you search “asp.net core app on nano server”, you will find some older documentation such as:ASP.NET Core on Nano Server | Microsoft DocsRunning Asp.Net...
Modernizing a Monolithic Application using Microservices and Azure
This post on modernizing your application for the cloud comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Najib Zarrari.ContextAs companies embark on their digital transformation journeys, pressure on IT organizations have been mounting to levels that have never been experienced before. Businesses have the following expectations, among others, from their IT organizations:To meet those expectations, not only do companies need to have the capabilities to build these kind of solutions, but also they have to build them faster than ever before. This is why many organizations are rethinking how they are archite...
Dissecting the pattern matching in C# 7
C# 7 finally introduced a long-awaited feature called "pattern matching". If you're familiar with functional languages like F# you may be slightly disappointed with this feature in its current state, but even today it can simplify your code in a variety of different scenarios. Every new feature is fraught with danger for a developer working on a performance critical application. New levels of abstractions are good but in order to use them effectively, you should know what is happening under the hood. Today we're going to explore pattern matching and look under the covers to understand how it is implemented. ...
TFVC Source Code Control in Visual Studio Code
In this post, Premier Developer consultant Wael Kdouh demonstrates how to integrate Visual Studio Code with your source control environment using Team Foundation Version Control. In this post I will be walking you through the Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) support within Visual Studio Code. I will assume that you are running on a windows machine and thus I will be using the TF executable that comes with Visual Studio 2017 (there is also a free, standalone "Visual Studio Team Explorer 2017" version that contains TF.exe). If you are running on a Mac OS or Linux you can use the Team Explorer Everywhe...
The Forgotten Roles in an Agile Transformation
This post is provided by App Dev Manager Tuan Nguyen who spotlights the importance of Agile roles and contributions across the business.Most of the organizations I have been involved with that adopted Agile tend to treat non-developers as an afterthought. This is not surprising as Agile is usually driven by the IT department but it can be detriment to the transformation. Organizational changes are hard enough, so you don’t want people feeling alienated. Make sure you don’t forget the people filling these titles and that they understand how they fit into the Scrum framework:Project ManagersScrum does not have a PM...
Developing an Azure AD B2C multi-tenant application
In this post from his blog, Premier Developer consultant Marius Rochon provides a demo application that illustrates how to use Azure Active Directory B2C for authentication in a multi-tenant application.The 'regular' Azure AD has build-in support for multi-tenant applications. In that case, a user from any Azure AD tenant can sign in to an application registered in another tenant. The application can then use the user's security context to give the user a view of data that is specific to that tenant.The goal of this article is to explore providing similar support using Azure AD B2C with one major difference: inst...
Using ADAL with Angular2–Part 2
In this post, Senior Application Development Manager, Vishal Saroopchand who follows up his first post to demonstrate how to pass and revalidate the JWT token. In my last blog posting, I explained how to use Adaj.js with Angular2 and demonstrated how to retrieve the JWT token from AAD. I also stated you can supply the JWT to your back end WebAPI services. This blank statement caused several inquiries on how to pass the JWT from client’s HTTP requests and revalidating on the WebAPI service. In this post, I have updated both the original source and added two WebAPI implementation that shows how to pass a...
Getting the most from your Premier Contract
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Mark Meadows who shares some tips on getting the most from your Premier Support for Developers contract.A Microsoft premier contract can be a very valuable asset to you and your company. You not only get access to a wealth of reactive and proactive engineers and services, but an advocate and partner within Microsoft working on your behalf. As an Application Development Manager (ADM) I work to build relationships with my customers, and genuinely help them maximize the value of our products and services. Having been in this role for many years, and ...
SharePoint portal on O365
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Michael Mano who walks through the basics of setting up SharePoint Online Portal. For a successful migration you need to have a good understanding of business needs and goals. The SharePoint / Office 365 platform delivered by Microsoft will enable customers to successfully manage information for the purposes of enhanced knowledge sharing, increased enterprise collaboration, streamlined communication, and improved operational effectiveness. Here is a quick summary on the process of setting up a SharePoint Online Portal Details ...
Surviving Hurricane Irma: Microsoft is a great place to work!
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Paul King who shares a personal story about what it means to be part of the Microsoft team and Premier Support for Developers. I have a fun hobby outside of work where my wife and I work on a Christmas light display at our home. You can see a sample video here, or check out our Facebook page for more information. Each year, we add something new like a different prop, or add songs so that the display is fresh each year. Anytime we make a change, there is quite a bit of programming that needs to be done to bring it all to life so the visitors that stop by can ...
Publishing and Managing your NPM Packages with VSTS
This post is provided by App Dev Manager, Andrew Kanieski who walks us though publishing and managing NPM packages with VSTS.Writing packages in the javascript world historically has been troublesome. The javascript community has been challenged with shifting and numerous standards for package development. In recent years the introduction of NodeJS has breathed life into the javascript community and provided the community with the Node Package Manager, NPM.Anyone who has been doing any work with front end development (or Node for that matter) knows full well the benefits of having a repository of packages that a ...
Dissecting the local functions in C# 7
The Local functions is a new feature in C# 7 that allows defining a function inside another function. When to use a local function? The main idea of local functions is very similar to anonymous methods: in some cases creating a named function is too expensive in terms of cognitive load on a reader. Sometimes the functionality is inherently local to another function and it makes no sense to pollute the "outer" scope with a separate named entity. You may think that this feature is redundant because the same behavior can be achieved with anonymous delegates or lambda expressions. But this is not always the case...
Getting Started with the Azure AD B2B Invite API
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager Nick McCollum, who introduces us to Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration. Azure Active Directory Business to Business (B2B) Collaboration enables your business partners to selectively access your corporate applications. In the original release of the product the invitation experience required a user to craft a comma-separated value (.csv) file containing the email addresses of the business partner users to be invited to use an application. This file was uploaded to Azure Active Directory via the Azure management portal and email invitations were sent to t...
Windows 10 and HIPAA compliance
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager Srividya Annapantula, who spotlights Windows policies and considerations for HIPAA compliance.Windows 10 is the best Windows OS so far. With all the shiny features, there has also been concerns raised in the Healthcare industry about any personally identifiable information (PII) saved on Windows 10 devices. Some of the settings that are turned on by default in Windows 10 could potentially have an impact on HIPAA regulations.Healthcare ISVs who provide software applications for healthcare providers need to oblige HIPAA regulations. When a medical practitioner is ente...
Looking back at Build 2017–Going “All In” on Microsoft Azure
In this post, Senior App Dev Managers, Latha Natarajan and Sujith Nair reflect on some of the improvements and announcements from Build 2017 that made it even easier to enable your cloud transformation. If you have been meaning to review the buzz from build, this post is a good place to start! Microsoft Azure is one of the fastest growing Cloud platform today and is used by many big, medium, and small customers. One of the many reasons that customers are choosing to adopt Microsoft Azure as a cloud platform is the business benefits that it offers. As enterprises adopt Cloud platforms,...
Maximize productivity with a large UHD 4K display (40” or more)
This post is provided by Senior ADM, August Banks who highlights the many benefits of having a large display area to increase developer productivity.If you are considering a dual monitor setup for your desktop using 24” or smaller displays, or if your think that more screen real estate would help you to be more effective and efficient then now is the time to go BIG. With recent advances in 4K technology and the latest Windows 10 Creators Update, the days of higher productivity with expansive screens and ultra-high resolutions are here. 40” and larger desktop displays in crystal clear, flicker free, UHD 4K are ava...
Leveraging Windows Hardware Dev Center and Microsoft Premier for Hardware Development Support and Submissions
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Managers, David Huang, Charles Ofori, and Sheldon Ledbetter who outline important process changes for partners building Windows drivers.For many years, IHVs (Independent Hardware Vendors), ISVs (Independent Software Vendors), and OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) who are writing driver software to communicate with Windows operating systems have leveraged a process of submitting their drivers to Microsoft for certification and signing. Basically, partners ran a set of pre-defined test cases and the results along with the driver were submitted via the Sysdev Portal (ht...
So What Is WebAssembly All About?
This post on the new WebAssembly technology comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Wael Kdouh. Every now and then people get excited about a new feature that is being developed as a web standard. One such technology that has been garnering excitement lately is called WebAssembly. It's a new way of running code on the web. Think about it as a new sort of application runtime that is available in the browser. It's a subset of normal JavaScript that can be optimized to run extremely quickly (smaller download, much faster parsing in browsers). The browser can also verify that it's safe extremely quickly....
Yes or No Classification: Practical Logistic Regression
In this post, App Dev Managers Edward Fry and Sheldon Ledbetter explorer the practical implications of Logical Regression and how we’re using to solve problems in systems via Machine Learning. Logistic Regression. The very phrase is a mouthful. It's easy to imagine it being used by actors to improve elocution or by math professors to punish wayward students. What exactly is it, and why should you care? This article will explore exactly those questions but with a twist: we'll limit the hardcore math and just talk about how the idea of logistic regression works and some practical applications. We'll also ...
Managed object internals, Part 4. Fields layout
In the recent blog posts we've discussed invisible part of the object layout in the CLR: This time we're going to focus on the layout of an instance itself, specifically, how instance fields are laid out in memory. There is no official documentation about fields layout because the CLR authors reserved the right to change it in the future. But knowledge about the layout can be helpful if you're curious or if you're working on a performance critical application. How can we inspect the layout? We can look at a raw memory in Visual Studio or use !dumpobj command in SOS Debugging Extension. ...
Cloud Design Patterns – Availability
In this post, App Dev Manager John Tran explores some important availability concepts you need to consider when moving applications to the cloud.Moving to the cloud forces us to change the way we design and deploy applications. The traditional way of application development for on premises infrastructure is not the same as development for the cloud. The cloud has its own unique set of challenges and when developing an application to be cloud first, you must design your applications with several cloud Design Patterns in mind. In this article, we explore the design patterns used to maximize an app...
DevOps with Containers
This post from Premier Developer consultant Razi Rais talks about his recent Channel9 video series on using Containers for DevOps.Recently I did a video series for Microsoft Channel9 on DevOps with Containers (thanks to Lex Thomas and Chris Caldwell for recording these). The idea was simple- show and tell how container technology can help in improving the DevOps experience.Its a ~2-hour long recording (divided into three parts for easy viewing) covers topics including containerization of applications, continuous integration and deployment of containerized applications using Visual Studio Team System, Azure Contai...
Differentiating between Azure Virtual Network (VNet) and AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
In this post, Senior ADM Fidelis Ekezue shares insights into similarities and differences between Azure VNets and AWS VPC.It’s important to note that in the cloud, features and capabilities are in a state of constant change to improve services and adapt to industry demands. To the best of our knowledge, the information in this article is accurate at the time of the publication (September 2017). This is not a marketing blog nor is it intended to be a competitive analysis, rather, to help end-users better understand similarities and differences in these services to make informed decisions based on our e...
Software Application Architecture, JUST DO IT!
In this post, Senior Application Development Manager, Alphonsus Pillai, spotlights the importance of a good architecture as the foundation of application quality and ROI. I am amazed at the amount of application development, without proper footings and foundations. We could never imagine building a house without proper design, construction, and meeting up-to-date building codes based on the climate and location. However, developers frequently forget to vet out an appropriate architecture and invest the time to apply best practices when building new applications. Everything is not rocket science accordin...
Jump-Start: Swaggerizing ASP.NET Core
In his latest blog post, Premier Developer consultant Rob Vettor gives an overview of how to use Swagger with your ASP.NET Core application.As a consumer of an API service, how do you know what functionality the service exposes?Easy answer: Swagger supportSwagger is a framework that enables you to visually discover an API service. With it, you can inspect…You can even invoke any of the service operations to “try it out.”Continue reading on Rob’s blog here.
Managed object internals, Part 3. The layout of a managed array
Arrays are one of the basic building blocks of every applications. Even if you do not use arrays directly every day you definitely use them indirectly as part of almost any library. C# has arrays from the very beginning and back in the day that was the only "generic"-like and type safe data structure available. Today you may use them less frequently directly but every time you need to squeeze the performance, there is a chance you'll switch to them from some higher-level data structure like List<T>. Array and the CLR has a very special relationship but today we're going to explore them from the user's...
Managed object internals, Part 2. Object header layout and the cost of locking
Working on my current project I’ve faced a very interesting situation. For each object of a given type, I had to create a monotonically growing identifier with few caveats: 1) the solution should work in multithreaded environment 2) the number of objects is fairly large, up to 10 million instances and 3) identity should be created lazily because not every object needs it. During my original implementation, I haven’t realized the amount of instance the application will deal with, so I came up with a very simple solution: double-checked locking pattern that allows initializing an identity field lazily in mult...
Role Based Access Control in ASP.NET MVC
In this post, Premier Developer consultant Lizet Pena De Sola explains Role Based Access Control in ASP.NET MVC. Role Based Access Control in MVC is pretty straight forward. There is also a way to do claims access control, but the most common way is based on roles. To show or hide action links in a view depending on the user role we can use the following Razor syntax on your Views: Read the rest on Lizet Pena De Sola's blog here.
Agile work in progress tracking: Are we there yet?
In this post, Premier Developer consultant Ilias Jennane explains Agile Work in Progress Tracking. In almost every engagement I have with customers seeking guidance on how to effectively run an Agile development shop, the question of work in progress tracking comes up. However, the question comes in different “flavors”, often signaling where in its Agile journey the organization is. Read the rest on Ilias Jennane blog here.
HTTP Secure, Part II. Is Diffie-Hellman always used in the HTTPS key exchange?
In this post, Premier Developer consultant Lizet Pena De Sola explains Diffie-Hellman in the HTTPS key exchange. I got a question right after I had spent a week in training classes for the COMPTIA Security+ exam: to describe how HTTP Secure (HTTPS) modifies the HTTP traffic between a client browser and the server. At the end of my explanation, this person also asked me what was the role of Diffie-Hellman algorithm in the whole process. Read the rest on Lizet Pena De Sola's blog here.
Docker Blog Series Part 3– Deploy IIS based applications to Service Fabric using Docker Containers
In the third post in his blog series on Docker, Premier Developer consultant Monu Bambroo illustrates how to deploy IIS based applications to Service Fabric using containers. One of the value propositions of using containers with Service Fabric is that you can now deploy IIS based applications to the SF cluster. In this blog post, we will see how to leverage Docker containers to deploy IIS apps to Service Fabric. I will skip the image creation and publish to the Docker hub in this blog. For this blog, I will be using an already pushed IIS image to the Docker Hub. The application image uses microsoft/ii...
Nailing it: Making Sense of Vague PowerShell Errors
This post on troubleshooting PowerShell errors comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Rob Vettor.PowerShell is a “must-know” for Azure cloud development. Yes, it’s a scripting language, but moreover, it’s an automation engine that can execute complex tasks with minimal effort. The vast majority of Azure administrative functionality is available in PowerShell. Many of the GUI consoles are simply executing PowerShell commands behind the scene.That said, what do you do when a PowerShell cmdlet presents a vague error message to you?Read the rest of the post on Rob’s blog here.
Claims augmentation with OWIN but outside of Startup code
This post on authentication and authorization is from Premier Developer consultant Marius Rochon.Claims list included in the ClaimsPrincipal usually originate from the security token received by the application as part of user authentication (SAML, OpenIDConnect id token) or access authorization (OAuth2 bearer access token). However, sometimes there is a need to modify that list with claims derived from other sources:Read the rest of the post on Marius’ blog here.
How Not to Use Service Fabric Default Services
This post on avoiding the use of Default Services in your Service Fabric application comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Larry Wall and Application Development Manager Danny Kolke. Service Fabric is an ideal platform for microservices making it easy to package, deploy, and scale. As a developer, there are a lot of solutions that you don't have to code – Service Fabric just does them for you. Plus, Service Fabric is also pretty easy to try out considering its complexity. Using the Web Platform installer to get Service Fabric, reboot and open up Visual Studio and within minutes you can create and deplo...
Monitor your Xamarin Forms application with Mobile Center
This article on using Mobile Center to monitor your Xamarin Forms application comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Gustavo Varo. More and more customers are asking about Mobile Center and how it can help them to monitor and analyze the customer experience. A lot of customers mentioned that they know about Mobile Center, they know how Mobile Center can help them, but when they try to implement the Mobile Center SDK into their apps they find issues and are not able to retrieve any logs or crashes even though they know the app is crashing on their user’s devices. In this blog post, we will go over...
Microsoft Best Places to Work – Chicago
This post is provided by David S. Lipien, Director Premier Support for Developers with a spotlight on Microsoft Chicago.Microsoft was awarded Crain’s Chicago Business Best Places to Work 2017 in April. This was a great external recognition for the Microsoft team in Chicago. As a leader of people at Microsoft and part of the team locally, it is something that I am proud of. Our mission at Microsoft is to “Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more” and that starts with each person at the company, whether they are in Redmond, Hyderabad, Chicago or across the globe.Continue reading Dav...
HoloLens – How to Create Mixed Reality Part 2
Rick McGuire, Senior ADM, provides the second post in this series -- an introduction to mixed reality development with a test drive using HoloLens, Unity, and Visual Studio 2015.With the invention of HoloLens, it is now possible to superimpose a virtual 3D world onto our exiting reality. HoloLens lets you create holograms, virtual objects that appear in the in the same space as our real world, and they seem like real objects!This is part two of my blog post on HoloLens, we left off creating a simple HoloLens application called Origami and ran it on the HoloLens emulator. If you missed my first post on this topic ...
How to estimate the size of your TFS database backup files
This post is from Senior App Dev Manager, Chev Bryan who shares how to estimate the size of your TFS database backup files.The most likely way to do this in my experience is to take a look at the most recent backup job. This can be done quite easily from a T-SQL script. Feel free to refine the bellow to suite your needs, but it should get you the basic information you require.Read the original post on Chev’s blog.Premier Support for Developers provides strategic technology guidance, critical support coverage, and a range of essential services to help teams optimize development lifecycles and improve software qual...
mySQL, POSTgreSQL DBs as a Service
This post is from App Dev Manager, Omer Amin who spotlights mySQL and POSTgreSQL, both announced at BUILD this year.If you missed the announcement at BUILD earlier this year, Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL provide fully-managed MySQL and PostgreSQL database as-a-service for easy development and deployment using tools and languages customers prefer, on the cloud they trust. Capable of deploying in minutes and scaling on-the-fly, the services offer automatic backups, 35-day point-in-time restores, automatic patching, and 30 days of historical monitoring data. Both offer pricing models (A...
Migrating TFS to a new data center
This post is provided by App Dev Manager, Steve Keeler who outlines an approach for performing TFS migrations to a new data center in a different domain and where there is limited or no connectivity between the current and target environments. Applies to: TFS 2013 | TFS 2015 | TFS 2017 - This article outlines an approach for performing TFS migrations to a new data center (in a different domain) where there is limited or no connectivity between the current and target environments. In this context, migrating the TFS deployment includes restoring backups of the TFS (config & collections), SharePoint (cont...
Updating Windows Form UI elements from another thread
This post is from App Dev Manager, Omer Amin who covers how to update Windows Form UI elements using worker threads.In a typical Windows Forms .NET application, the UI elements are created and updated by the main thread. This thread is also responsible for processing Windows messages. For this reason, it is recommended to keep message processing short and simple. Long running operations performed on this thread will cause incoming Windows messages to queue up. If messages don't get processed in a timely manner, the application will appear hung to the user and provide a poor user experience.Continue on Omer’s pers...
How to Set Up Multi-Level Hierarchies in VSTS
In another awesome post about Visual Studio Team Services, Premier Developer consultant Assaf Stone talks about customizing VSTS by creating a multi-level hierarchy.BackgroundBoth VSTS (Team Services) and TFS (Team Foundation Server) have a set organizational hierarchy. An individual developer belongs to a team. A project (also called Team Project, or TP) has multiple teams, and a VSTS account – as well as a TFS collection – contain multiple projects.While it is possible to run queries that return data from multiple projects, and in TFS, reports can bring data from multiple data sources (i.e. multiple collections...
Cross-Account Package Management for NuGet in VSTS
Here is yet another awesome post from Premier Developer consultant Assaf Stone!In the following post, we will look at the difficulties in consuming packages from a different VSTS account, as part of a build process in our own account.BackgroundVisual Studio Team Services (VSTS) offers package management services. As per the documentation, this is “an extension that makes it easy to discover, install and publish packages”. Team Services enables teams to collaborate with other teams through versioned, cohesive libraries and APIs, in the same way that many 3rd party vendors offer their libraries and frameworks today...
Scaling Scrum with Nexus in VSTS
This post is from Premier Developer consultant Assaf Stone.In this post, I will cover what Scrum Nexus is, where, when, and why you would want to use it, and how to set up VSTS best to accommodate your Scrum practices. As VSTS’s tooling is not yet perfect for some of Nexus’s practices, I will discuss some viable fallbacks and workarounds.Background – Why Scale?Scrum.org’s official Scrum guide defines Scrum as “A process framework used to manage complex product development”. Scrum’s events, artifacts and rules revolve around a Scrum team, which consists of a Scrum Master, Product owner, and 3-9 development team me...
Resolving Azure ARM REST API Versions Conflict In ARM Templates
This post is from Premier Developer consultant Adel Ghabboun. Usually if you use the Azure Portal Automation Script feature to generate an ARM template and copy that to a new Visual Studio Azure Resource Group project, Visual Studio editor will complain about the API version that is used in the template and suggest a new version. It looks like this: If you click Ctrl + Space, Visual Studio will show you all the possible values: Now, if you change the value and try to deploy this template to your Azure resource group, the result will come back failed with a deployment error: Now, which one ...
How to Track Impediments in VSTS
This post is from Premier Developer consultant Assaf Stone.Note: While this post discusses impediments in VSTS, everything mentioned can be applied to TFS as well.Visual Studio Team Services (or VSTS) has great tools to support Scrum teams. The product owner can use the backlog and board to track the progress of individual teams or the entire product, at the Product Backlog Item (PBI) level, at the Feature level or even the Epic level, throughout the entire lifetime of the product. The developers can track the progress that they are making within the sprint, and see how their work (tasks) fit into the larger pict...
Use of AOP in Cross Cutting Aspect of Error Handling
This post comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Crystal Tenn.Cross Cutting Concerns are global concerns that span across methods, classes, applications—and can be concerns widely affecting a whole company or industry. Think of patient records or a financial history, and things always needed in those industries and how it affects each method of code! There are all kinds of required security for each step and any errors need to be carefully logged. In other words, integral parts of an application that have to be performed across the layers. Examples are Logging, Exception/Error Handling, Data Validation, Bu...
Debugging Windows Applications with DebugDiag Workshop
This post is provided by Senior ADM, Jason Giordano, who spotlights our DebugDiag workshop available to Premier Support customers. If you have ever engaged Microsoft to assist with an application hang or crash, chances are, DebugDiag was used at some point. While there are many tools out there to capture exceptions, crash dumps, and memory information of problematic apps, few are more powerful or automated than DebugDiag. Not only does it make collecting data simple, but it provides powerful analyzers that can frequently identify the root cause of a problem in seconds. It’s a great (free) tool for both ...
Inspiration from the Microsoft Ability Summit 2017
This post is from Senior ADMs, Bill Bevan and Joseph Flanigen, who discuss incorporating accessibility into the product lifecycle in a sustainable way, including business and design requirements, leadership roles and responsibilities, design vs. remediation projects, and assessing legal risk.For the seventh year, Microsoft has hosted an internal Ability Summit featuring inspirational talks from a diverse set of individuals who’ve contributed to society in tremendous ways. By the way, they’ve managed to succeed despite personal challenges. We heard from Satya Nadella, how Microsoft is striving to feature Accessibi...
Getting Started with Java on Azure
This post is provided by App Dev Managers, Derrick Sharpe and Andrea Martini, who spotlight the use of Java on Windows Azure.Many people are surprised to hear that running Java on Microsoft Azure is even possible, but there are many large, Java-based production applications running in the Microsoft Cloud. Azure provides numerous resources just for Java developers who want to work with cloud-native applications, or just use cloud services from your on-premises applications.Java developer tools on AzureLooking for Cloud APIs? Build out Java apps or microservices using the Azure SDK for Java for accessing Azure Clou...
Microsoft .NET Architecture Guidance
This post is provided by Senior ADM, Brian Swiger, who shares several helpful .NET Architectural Guidance e-books and samples.Four application architecture guidance drafts are available from Microsoft's Developer Division and the Visual Studio product teams. These drafts cover four areas: Microservices and Docker, ASP.NET Web Applications, Azure Cloud Deployment, and Xamarin Mobile Applications. Each guidance consists of a set of documents appropriate for the topic. Continue on Brian’s blog.Premier Support for Developers provides strategic technology guidance, critical support coverage, and a range of essen...
Computer Vision Made Easy with Cognitive Services
This post is provide by App Dev Manager, Andrew Kanieski, who takes K9 obedience training to a new level with computer vision and Cognitive Services. Computer vision is truly amazing technology! It can be used to distill rich information from images that can help you breathe life into your applications. Microsoft's Cognitive Services - Computer Vision API gives developers the power to develop their software with the ability to truly see and comprehend the world around it. When I come upon a new technology I try to make application in my life. I ask myself how could I see myself using this? There are man...
Using PerfView with Azure Service Fabric Event Source Messages
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Mark Eisenberg, who spotlights the use of PerfView as a handy tool for debugging Azure Service Fabric applications. The Service Fabric tooling provides a Diagnostic Events viewer for Visual Studio that displays Event Trace for Windows (ETW) messages generated by the event sources provided with the SDK, ServiceEventSource and ActorEventSource. When working on a project with eight actors, two of which had hundreds of instantiations, it did not take long to swamp the built-in view. It topped out at 5000 messages and then began dropping the oldest messages. In a...
Closing the gap between TFS and Scrum
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Alexei Govorine who covers the use of scrum with TFS and spotlights TFS Version Control, Dashboards, and Markdown.IntroductionScrum is one of the most used agile frameworks that helps people address complex problems while delivering products of the highest possible value. For additional information on what Scrum is all about, see the Scrum Guide.Team Foundation Server (TFS) or its online version, Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), are ALM tools created by Microsoft. TFS provides source code management, reporting, requirements management, project management, build ...
An overview of SSDT
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Fadi Andari who provides some history around Data Tools and a practical walk-through of SSDT.I am the first to admit that the SQL Server/Visual Studio relation has been very confusing for the past few years especially when it comes to Data Tools and Source Control. In this post, I will focus on the tools while leaving Source Control, Continues Integration, and deployment to future posts.The first emergence of SQL Server Data Tools was during the release of Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. The tool was called "Business Intelligence Developer Studio” (BIDS), w...
Delighting students with Microsoft Hour of Code and Minecraft
This post is provided by Senior ADM, Cissy Ho, who spotlights an “Hour of Code” to inspire others through technology and shares information on how you can too.As a part of working in Premier Developers and Microsoft Canada, I am honored to share my technology expertise with Enterprise developers, and even broader communities with students and young in-college settings.Last November I taught an "Hour of Code" in two schools and coded Minecraft tutorials in 3 classes.My goals were to bring awareness that "Coding can be a part of Everything we do". I have related to the students how coding is all about s...
What can I do in .NET Core that I can’t in the full .NET Framework?
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Managers, Keith Beller and John Abele who ask the question, “What can I do in .NET Core that I can’t do in the full .NET Framework?” Microsoft’s mission to empower every individual and organization is manifested in .NET Core, the most transformative .NET framework ever. Rebuilt from the ground up, .NET Core is tailor-made for modern development workloads such as cloud apps, microservices and containers. The philosophy behind the framework is also to extend the reach of Microsoft development technologies beyond traditional boundaries and offer an unprecedented level o...
HoloLens Animations
This post is provided by App Dev Manager, Robert Schumann who explores the process of creating and animating avatars with HoloLens. HoloLens Ambitious Beginnings My first application on HoloLens involved animating a Marine Corps squad to do PT. Using voice commands, avatars would do sit-ups, push-ups, burpees, jumping jacks, etc. That was a year ago and a brutally naïve, overly ambitious learning curve to overcome. Since then HoloLens has its first “birthday”, seen huge interest and growth, and countless tutorials created. But few tutorials exist that provide straight-forward guidance about building anima...
Premier ITSM Testing Services: Anatomy of a Lab Engagement (Part 2)
Sanjeev Gogna and Charles Ofori, Senior Application Development Managers, discuss the importance of testing and spotlight the resources available to our customers as part of a testing engagement. This is the second of a three part series to discuss the importance of testing and spotlight the resources available through Premier Support and our IT Support Management (ITSM) team. In the first blog post we introduced the features of Premier testing services. In this blog, we will focus on the stages of such a lab engagement – planning, execution and post lab activities. PlanningThis phase will typically last a month ...
Enabling Drive Sharing with Docker for Windows
In this blog post, Premier Developer consultant Wael Kdouh shows how to enable drive sharing with Docker for Windows. During Build 2017 the Asp.Net team shared with the world some cool features that Visual Studio 2017 has to offer in terms of Docker support. Naturally I was excited to start coding and trying some of these new features. Like any sane developer I decided to start with a hello world application as from humble beginnings come great things. I started by creating an Asp.Net Core application targeting .Net Core as I wanted to target a Linux container to try the cross-platform capabilities of Asp....
New Innovations for SharePoint Developers
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Ed Tovsen who highlights some of the new innovations available for SharePoint developers. SharePoint development has evolved over the years since its initial release in 2001. Customization options have varied from fully trusted code, to sand-boxed solutions, to add-ins. With each new option, Microsoft has intended to simplify and control how customers customize their SharePoint environments. This past year Microsoft has continued innovating and introduced some new services and frameworks to expedite the customization of SharePoint environments. Two of the ne...
Getting the most out of your Premier Support for Developers Contract
In this post, Application Development Manager, Deepa Chandramouli shared some tips on getting the most of your Premier Support for Developers contract. Microsoft Premier Support manages the highest tier support programs from Microsoft. Premier Support for Developers (PSfD) empowers developers and enterprises to plan, build, deploy and maintain high quality solutions. When you purchase a Premier Support for Developers contract from Microsoft, an Application Development Manager(ADM) is assigned. He or she will guide you to use the contract in an efficient way that will benefit your developers and the business. ...
VSTS Private Agents with ARM
This post is provided by App Dev Managers, Mariusz Kolodziej and Francis Lacroix who discuss how to automagically deploy a VSTS Private Agent with Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and some PowerShell.My customers love to use VSTS to enable their DevOps capabilities, but in some cases they are not able to use the Hosted Agents due to security restrictions. In that case, the alternative is to use Private Agents. For detailed description on differences between the two configurations checkout this article. In this blog we’ll discuss how to automagically deploy a VSTS Private Agent with Azure Resource Manager (ARM) ...
Riding the Azure Stack opportunity
In this blog post, Premier Developer consultant Rob Vettor talks about Azure Stack opportunities. You are hearing more and more about Azure Stack. As a developer, the release of this long-awaited platform will present new opportunities and place a premium on Azure development skills. A highly ambitious project from Microsoft, Azure Stack brings many features of the Azure cloud platform right into your data center. Read the rest on Rob's blog here.
Docker Blog Series Part 2 – Build & Deploy ASP.NET Core based Docker Container on Service Fabric
This post is the second in a series of posts on Docker that Premier Developer consultant Monu Bambroo has posted on his blog. Azure Service Fabric in addition to offering a Service Fabric programming model is also able to orchestrate container based services across a cluster of machines. Service Fabric can deploy services in container images. In this blog post, we will see how to use Service Fabric as an orchestrator for Windows based Docker images. The images will be published to Docker Hub and consumed by the Service Fabric orchestrator. We will build an ASPNET Core Web application, Dockerize it and publ...
Setting up CI/CD for Docker Container Running in Kubernetes using VSTS
This post is provided by Senior Consultant, Najib Zarrari to explain setting up CI/CD for Docker Container running in Kubernetes using VSTS. In my last post, I covered how you can create a simple Web API, run the Web API in a Docker container and then deploy the container to a Kubernetes cluster provisioned using Azure Container Service (ACS) in Azure. You can find the full post here. In this blog, I will cover how CI/CD can be implemented so that the sample Web API can be deployed automatically as soon as a change is made to the Web API code. To create the Web API code with Docker support, follow the secti...
Running Web API using Docker and Kubernetes
This post is provided by Senior Consultant, Najib Zarrari to explain running Web API using Docker and Kubernetes. As companies are continuously seeking ways to become more Agile and embracing DevOps culture and practices, new designs principles have emerged that are more closely aligned with those aspirations. One such a design principle that had gained more popularity and adoption lately is Microservices. By decomposing applications to smaller independent components, companies are able to achieve the following benefits: Read the rest on Najib's blog here.
Tips for Running an Angular app in IIS
Laurie Atkinson, Premier Developer Senior Consultant, A few tweaks are necessary to take an Angular app and move it to IIS. Here is a list of changes required to get everything running smoothly. Using the Angular-CLI to generate an Angular SPA is an excellent way to scaffold out a well-organized application. This tool also includes a production build step that should allow you to xcopy your application to the web server of your choice. We’ll start here and discuss the necessary modifications to successfully run your application in IIS. Use the Angular-CLI to create a production package First decide whet...
Azure Stack Getting started resources
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Guru Satish Piduru with helpful getting started information for Azure Stack.Azure Stack brings the power of Azure, to your datacenter, transforming your datacenter resources into cloud services for maximum agility, all under the control of IT. For developers, Azure Stack provides a unified app development experience, consistent with Microsoft Azure.The purpose of the blog is to provide a list of resources for those of you looking to learn more about Azure Stack!Azure Stack Documentation: Learn how to use Azure Stack technical preview to deliver Azure services from ...
Azure Enterprise Agreement changes, transfers, and consolidation
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Bryan Towne to provide insight into to consolidation options for Azure deployments as you grow into or out of your current Enterprise Agreement.Within the time that you consume Azure services there will come a point in which you will probably need to transition from your Enterprise Agreement (EA) and start using for a new one. One of the reasons is that Microsoft has been adopting a new type of agreement for to handle Azure consumption called the “Server and Cloud Enrollment” (SCE). Other ways that an EA change will be necessary is through attrition – either throug...
Creating Azure IoT Edge Custom Modules in C# – send and receive data from IoT Hub
This post is from Premier Developer consultant Mark Taylor. This article assumes a basic understanding of the functionality of Azure IoT Edge. If you don’t have this, start with the official documentation: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/campaigns/iot-edge/. The current Azure IoT Edge samples for .Net are great, but they do not (as of the time of this writing) demonstrate how to hook up and send data to IoTHub. Here we will set out step-by-step instructions for doing this using the existing samples as a starting point. The instructions below show how to send messages to IoTHub using Azure IoT Edge ...