Connect SharePoint Online and SQL Server On-Premises with BCS/SharePoint Apps using Hybrid Connection and WCF Services

13th of November, 2017 / / 2 Comments

SharePoint Online cannot directly connect to on-premises data sources such as SQL Server. A recommended approach is to use Hybrid with SharePoint 2013/2016 but adds an overhead of infrastructure and maintenance costs. Hence to overcome it, I am going to describe in this blog how to use the Azure PaaS workloads and connect to on-premises data sources using BCS.
Using Azure Hybrid Connection (refer this post) and BCS with Azure Web App hosting WCF endpoint, we can now expose on-premises SQL data to SharePoint Online and Cloud by external content types (ECTs) or SharePoint Hosted Apps.… [Keep reading] “Connect SharePoint Online and SQL Server On-Premises with BCS/SharePoint Apps using Hybrid Connection and WCF Services”

Resolving unable to access App published with Barracuda WAF over Azure Express Route

9th of November, 2017 / / No Comments

Recently, one of the customers reported they can’t access to all UAT apps from their Melbourne office, but it worked fine for other offices. When they tried to access the UAT app domains, they were getting below errors: “The request service is temporarily unavailable. It is either overloaded or under maintenance. Please try later.”
WAF error
Due to the UAT environment IP restrictions on the WAF, it is normal behaviour for me to get the error messages due to the fact our Kloud office’s public IPs are not in the WAFs’ whitelist.… [Keep reading] “Resolving unable to access App published with Barracuda WAF over Azure Express Route”

MIM configuration version control with Git

8th of November, 2017 / / No Comments

The first question usually asked when something goes wrong: What changed?
Some areas of FIM/MIM make it easy to answer that question, some more difficult. If the Reporting Services components haven’t been installed (pretty common), history within the Portal/Service is only retained for 30 days by default, but also contains all data changes not just configuration changes. So, how do we track configuration change?
I was inspired by colleague Darren Robinson’s post “Automate the nightly backup of your Development FIM/MIM Sync and Portal Servers Configuration“, but wanted more detail, automatic differences, and handy visualisation.… [Keep reading] “MIM configuration version control with Git”

Building my first PowerApp, a basic roster, pulling data from SharePoint Online

7th of November, 2017 / / No Comments

What is PowerApps?

PowerApps is a set of services and apps, that enable power users to build line of business application rapidly. It can connect to the cloud services and data sources that we may be already using.

Why PowerApps?

PowerApps gives power user ability to quickly build apps that suit specific needs. They can share apps instantly with Team across the web, tablets, and mobile devices. To list down, few of the advantages of PowerApps are:

  • Simple and fast – capable of producing an app in minutes that pulls in data from Excel or a cloud service.

… [Keep reading] “Building my first PowerApp, a basic roster, pulling data from SharePoint Online”

Resolving “User not found” issue while assigning permissions using SharePoint CSOM

7th of November, 2017 / / No Comments

I was recently working on a SharePoint Online project where we were trying to automate library creation and provide required permissions on those libraries. We had an issue while modifying permissions with CSOM code on SharePoint libraries when the Created By user had left the company.
In this post I will outline the cause and the resolution as there was no online reference for resolving this error.
Issue: The CSOM code was throwing an error “User not found” even when creating a User object from web.EnsureUser()… [Keep reading] “Resolving “User not found” issue while assigning permissions using SharePoint CSOM”

A quick start guide for Deploying and Configuring Node-RED as an Azure WebApp

7th of November, 2017 / / No Comments

Introduction

I’ve been experimenting and messing around with IoT devices for well over 10 years. Back then it wasn’t called IoT, and it was very much a build it and write it yourself approach.
Fast forward to 2017 and you can buy a microprocessor for a couple of dollars that includes WiFi. Environmental sensors are available for another couple of dollars and we can start to publish environmental telemetry without having to build circuitry and develop code.… [Keep reading] “A quick start guide for Deploying and Configuring Node-RED as an Azure WebApp”

How I prepared for the 70-533 Azure Exam

6th of November, 2017 / / No Comments

I have been IT professional for over 7 years now. During this time, I have seen and experienced many critical changes in the IT Infrastructure field. Personally, I started as a network engineer at a software company and then moved to a MSP as infrastructure engineer and looked after servers, firewalls, network, application deploy, etc. for medium and large finance institutions before I join Kloud Solutions and started to evolve by learning the Microsoft Azure. Obviously, Cloud technology is the most significant shift that the IT industry is experiencing today.… [Keep reading] “How I prepared for the 70-533 Azure Exam”

A tool to find mailbox permission dependencies

5th of November, 2017 / / 30 Comments

First published at https://nivleshc.wordpress.com
When planning to migrate mailboxes to Office 365, a lot of care must be taken around which mailboxes are moved together. The rule of the thumb is “those that work together, move together”. The reason for taking this approach is due to the fact that there are some permissions that do not work cross-premises and can cause issues. For instance, if a mailbox has delegate permissions to another mailbox (these are permissions that have been assigned using Outlook email client) and if one is migrated to Office 365 while the other remains on-premises, the delegate permissions capability is broken as it does not work cross-premises.… [Keep reading] “A tool to find mailbox permission dependencies”

Azure Functions Cold Start Workaround

4th of November, 2017 / / No Comments

Intro

I love Azure Functions. So much power for so little effort or cost. The only downside is that the consumption model that keeps the cost so dirt-cheap means that unless you are using your Function constantly (in which case, you might be better off with the non-consumption options anyway), you will often be hit with a long delay as your Function wakes up from hibernation.

So very cold…

This isn’t a big deal if you are dealing with a fire and forget queue trigger scenario, but if you have web app that is calling the HTTP trigger and you need to wait for the Function to do it’s job before responding with a 200 OK… that’s a long wait (well over 15 seconds in my experience with a PowerShell function that loads a bunch of modules).… [Keep reading] “Azure Functions Cold Start Workaround”

'Generic' LDAP Connector for Azure AD Connect

3rd of November, 2017 / / 7 Comments

I’m working for a large corporate who has a large user account store in Oracle Unified Directory (LDAP).   They want to use these existing accounts and synchronise them to Azure Active Directory for Azure application services (such as future Office 365 services).
Microsoft state here that Azure Active Directory Connect (AAD Connect) will, in a ‘Future Release’ version, provide native LDAP support (“Connect to single on-premises LDAP directory”), so timing wise I’m in a tricky position – do I guide my customer to attempt to use the current version? … [Keep reading] “'Generic' LDAP Connector for Azure AD Connect”