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 “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”

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”

Using Visual Studio with Github to Test New Azure CLI Features

27th of October, 2017 / / No Comments

Following the Azure Managed Kubernetes announcement yesterday, I immediately upgraded my Azure CLI on Windows 10 so I could try it out.
Unfortunately I discovered there was a bug with retrieving credentials for your newly created Kubernetes cluster – the command bombs with the following error:

C:\Users\rafb> az aks get-credentials --resource-group myK8Group --name myCluster
[Errno 13] Permission denied: 'C:\\Users\\rafb\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\tmpn4goit44'
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\CLI2\lib\site-packages\azure\cli\main.py", line 36, in main
 cmd_result = APPLICATION.execute(args)
… [Keep reading] “Using Visual Studio with Github to Test New Azure CLI Features”

Use Azure Hybrid Connections to get on-premises data from SQL to SharePoint Online

18th of October, 2017 / / No Comments

Azure Hybrid Connections are an easier and less complicated way to connect cloud applications with on-premises SQL data. This provides great extensibility options for SharePoint Online such as,

  1. Provider Hosted Apps hosted in Azure
  2. Business Data Connectivity using WCF services hosted in Azure
  3. SharePoint Hosted Apps using BCS external sources.

In this blog, I will illustrate the steps to configure Azure Hybrid Connections. In a nutshell, the diagram below outlines the data flow in Hybrid connections.… [Keep reading] “Use Azure Hybrid Connections to get on-premises data from SQL to SharePoint Online”

Azure Logic App – Evaluating IF condition with the help of JSON expression by passing null

17th of October, 2017 / / 3 Comments

Introduction

Yes, you read the title right, this blog is about evaluating IF condition. You might be wondering what about IF, even novice developer with no experience knows about it.
Allow me to explain a specific scenario that helps us understand it’s behavior in Logic Apps, it might blow your mind.
Some of us come from years of development experience, and at times we like to skill up ourselves to various other technologies, which leaves us with a mindset based on our past development experience and programming habits, which we gained over the years.… [Keep reading] “Azure Logic App – Evaluating IF condition with the help of JSON expression by passing null”

Adding Bot to Microsoft Teams

11th of October, 2017 / / No Comments

If you are following up on my previous blog posts about Bots and integrating LUIS with them, you are almost done with building bots and already had some fun with it. Now it’s time to bring them to life and let internal or external users interact with Bot via some sort of front end channel accessible by them. If you haven’t read my previous posts on the subject yet, please give them a read at Creating a Bot and Creating a LUIS app before reading further.… [Keep reading] “Adding Bot to Microsoft Teams”

Using a Bot Framework to build LUIS enabled Bots

23rd of September, 2017 / / No Comments

History

In this post, we are going to build a bot using Microsoft Bot framework and add intelligence to it to extract meanings from the conversation with users utilising Microsoft cognitive service named LUIS. The last post discussed details about LUIS, give it a read before you continue on reading. This post assumes you have a basic understanding of Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS) and Bot Framework, further details can be read about them at LUIS and Bot Framework.… [Keep reading] “Using a Bot Framework to build LUIS enabled Bots”