'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”

Recursive Lambda

1st of November, 2017 / / No Comments

In this blog post we explore a recursive pattern for AWS Lambda. This pattern allows us to tackle potentially long running tasks such as ones requiring processing multiple items in the input or tracking the progress of a long running task.
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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”

Be SOLID: uncle Bob

12th of October, 2017 / / 3 Comments

We have discussed STUPID issues in programming. The shared modules and tight coupling leads to dependency issues in design. The SOLID principles address those dependency issues in OOP.
SOLID acronym was popularized by Robert Martin as generic design principles dictated by common sense in OOP. They mainly address dependencies and tight coupling. We will discuss SOLID one by one and try to relate each of them with the underline problems and how they try to solve them.… [Keep reading] “Be SOLID: uncle Bob”

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”

Enabling and using Managed Service Identity to access an Azure Key Vault with Azure PowerShell Functions

19th of September, 2017 / / 4 Comments

Introduction

At the end of last week (14 Sept 2017) Microsoft announced a new Azure Active Directory feature – Managed Service Identity. Managed Service Identity helps solve the chicken and egg bootstrap problem of needing credentials to connect to the Azure Key Vault to retrieve credentials. When used in conjunction with Virtual Machines, Web Apps and Azure Functions that meant having to implement methods to obfuscate credentials that were stored within them. I touched on one method that I’ve used a lot in this post here whereby I encrypt the credential and store it in the Application Settings, but it still required a keyfile to allow reversing of the encryption as part of the automation process.… [Keep reading] “Enabling and using Managed Service Identity to access an Azure Key Vault with Azure PowerShell Functions”