WebHook your WebJob – With Visual Studio Team Services integration example

26th of April, 2016 / / No Comments

WebHooks, also known as ‘HTTP(S) call backs’ are becoming very popular for reporting asynchronous events to trigger business workflows. The latest release of Microsoft Azure WebJobs can now be triggered using WebHooks. In this post I will cover the configuration of a WebJob to use a WebHook as a trigger using a sample scenario of integrating a WebJob with Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) to explain the workflow.

Support for WebHooks is packaged as an extension to WebJobs and is currently in a pre-release state.… [Keep reading] “WebHook your WebJob – With Visual Studio Team Services integration example”

Moving SharePoint Online workflow task metadata into the data warehouse using Nintex Flows and custom Web API

23rd of April, 2016 / / No Comments

This post suggests the idea of automatic copying of SharePoint Online(SPO) workflow tasks’ metadata into the external data warehouse.  In this scenario, workflow tasks are becoming a subject of another workflow that performs automatic copying of task’s data into the external database using a custom Web API endpoint as the interface to that database. Commonly, the requirement to move workflow tasks data elsewhere arises from limitations of SPO. In particular, SPO throttles requests for access to workflow data making it virtually impossible to create a meaningful workflow reporting system with large amounts of workflow tasks.… [Keep reading] “Moving SharePoint Online workflow task metadata into the data warehouse using Nintex Flows and custom Web API”

Using saved credentials securely in PowerShell scripts

21st of April, 2016 / / 30 Comments

One of the most common tasks out in the field is the need to run PowerShell scripts that require credentials to be saved in some form of another so that they can be fed into scripts to be executed autonomously.  This is particularly common in cloud environments where the current user context in which the scripts are run (e.g. within a scheduled task) are insufficient or not appropriate for the remote execution.   Office 365 management is a perfect example of this, where often a credential object must be passed in order to connect and execute the cmdlets.… [Keep reading] “Using saved credentials securely in PowerShell scripts”

Programmatically read email from an Exchange Sever Mailbox

19th of April, 2016 / / 21 Comments

I can’t recall how many times I have come across a requirement to programmatically read emails from an Exchange Server mailbox and take some action based on the presence of new messages. The component reading the emails can read the mail content, parse its contents and transmit the data to other downstream systems. In this blog I’m going to take a look at one way we can do this.

Objective

In my scenario there was a requirement to develop a program to retrieve mails from an Exchange mailbox and, based on a specific criteria, send the email to multiple users based on an distribution list identifier.… [Keep reading] “Programmatically read email from an Exchange Sever Mailbox”

Entity Framework 7 Data Migration through KUDU

16th of April, 2016 / / 1 Comment

From DevOps perspective, everything needs to be automated in regards to application setup and deployment. There’s no exception for database migration. If database schema change occurs, it should be automatically applied before/after the application deployment. Unlike Entity Framework 6.x using PowerShell cmdlets for database migration, Entity Framework 7 (EF7) uses DNX for it.

Applying Database Migration with EF7

In EF7, updating database change can be done by running the following command:

… [Keep reading] “Entity Framework 7 Data Migration through KUDU”

Break down your templates with Linked Templates (Part 1)

16th of April, 2016 / / 3 Comments

Templated deployment is one of the key value propositions of moving from the Azure classic to Resource Manager (ARM) deployment model.  This is probably one key feature that made a big stride towards Infrastructure as a Code (IAC).  Personally, I have been looking forward to this feature since it’s a prominent feature on the other competing platform.

Now that this feature is live for a while, one aspect which I found interesting is the ability to link templates in Azure Resource Manager. … [Keep reading] “Break down your templates with Linked Templates (Part 1)”

Long Path Error While Publishing ASP.NET Core Applications

15th of April, 2016 / / 3 Comments

If you are writing an ASP.NET Core application, there are chances to publish your app to either a Azure Website or another place, by right-mouse clicking in Visual Studio.

In most cases, it should be alright. However, if your app has a NuGet package with a long name, it would be an issue. You might be seeing an error like this:

DNU(0,0): Error : The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters.

… [Keep reading] “Long Path Error While Publishing ASP.NET Core Applications”

Creating Accounts on Azure SQL Database through PowerShell Automation

12th of April, 2016 / / 6 Comments

In the previous post, Azure SQL Pro Tip – Creating Login Account and User, we have briefly walked through how to create login accounts on Azure SQL Database through SSMS. Using SSMS is of course the very convenient way. However, as a DevOps engineer, I want to automate this process through PowerShell. In this post, we’re going to walk through how to achieve this goal.

Step #1: Create Azure SQL Database

First of all, we need an Azure SQL Database.… [Keep reading] “Creating Accounts on Azure SQL Database through PowerShell Automation”

Azure SQL Pro Tip – Creating Login Account and User

8th of April, 2016 / / 3 Comments

With Azure Resource Manager (ARM), while creating an Azure SQL Database instance, we can only set up an admin account. As we all know, using this admin account is not safe in most cases. Therefore, we need to create another accounts with fewer privileges.

However, unlike MS SQL Server, Azure SQL Database has some restrictions. Those restrictions also apply to create login accounts and users. In this post, we are going to create login accounts with limited permissions on Azure SQL Database.… [Keep reading] “Azure SQL Pro Tip – Creating Login Account and User”

When to use an Azure App Service Environment?

5th of April, 2016 / / 44 Comments

Introduction

An Azure App Service Environment (ASE) is a premium Azure App Service hosting environment which is dedicated, fully isolated, and highly scalable. It clearly brings advanced features for hosting Azure App Services which might be required in different enterprise scenarios. But being this a premium service, it comes with a premium price tag. Due to its cost, a proper business case and justification are to be prepared before architecting a solution based on this interesting PaaS offering on Azure.… [Keep reading] “When to use an Azure App Service Environment?”