Consuming CSV files from an Exchange Mailbox via Exchange Web Services and FIM/MIM 2016 using the Granfeldt PowerShell MA

30th of March, 2016 / / No Comments

This solution on first look is quite random. A management agent that consumes a flat file (comma separated file) isn’t ground breaking, but when the twist is that the CSV file is in an email in an Exchange Inbox, it’s quite a different scenario.

Background

My customer uses a Cloud Service for their recruitment processes. The cloud service does have a SOAP API that I could potentially develop a FIM/MIM solution for using the Microsoft Web Services Management Agent, however my customer does not have API access to their tenant, the vendor isn’t overly responsive and I need a solution in days not weeks.… [Keep reading] “Consuming CSV files from an Exchange Mailbox via Exchange Web Services and FIM/MIM 2016 using the Granfeldt PowerShell MA”

ASP.NET Core Tips & Tricks – Global Exception Handling

23rd of March, 2016 / / 10 Comments

Exception handling is one of most important but irritating jobs for developers. There are tons of articles about the importance of exception handling. Fortunately, ASP.NET Core application has got a lot of improvement for exception handling through the request/response pipeline. In this article, we’re going to have a brief look how we can handle exceptions.

Sample application can be found here: https://github.com/devkimchi/ASP.NET-Core-Tips-and-Tricks-Sample

Global Exception Filter – OWIN Pipeline

Unlike ASP.NET MVC applications, ASP.NET Core applications only use OWIN pipelines to handle requests and responses.… [Keep reading] “ASP.NET Core Tips & Tricks – Global Exception Handling”

Managing SharePoint Online (SPO) User Profiles with FIM/MIM 2016 and the Granfeldt PowerShell MA

22nd of March, 2016 / / 5 Comments

Forefront / Microsoft Identity Manager does not come with an out-of-the-box management agent for managing SharePoint Online.

Whilst the DirSync/AADConnect solution will allow you to synchronise attributes from your On Premise Active Directory to AzureAD, SharePoint only leverages a handful of them. It then has its own set of attributes that it leverages. Many are similarly named to the standard Azure AD attributes but with the SPS- prefix.

For example, here is a list of SPO attributes and a couple of references to associated Azure AD attributes;

  • UserProfile_GUID
  • SID
  • SPS-PhoneticFirstName
  • SPS-PhoneticLastName
  • SPS-PhoneticDisplayName
  • SPS-JobTitle
  • SPS-Department
  • AboutMe
  • PersonalSpace
  • PictureURL
  • UserName
  • QuickLinks
  • WebSite
  • PublicSiteRedirect
  • SPS-Dotted-line
  • SPS-Peers
  • SPS-Responsibility
  • SPS-SipAddress
  • SPS-MySiteUpgrade
  • SPS-ProxyAddresses
  • SPS-HireDate
  • SPS-DisplayOrder
  • SPS-ClaimID
  • SPS-ClaimProviderID
  • SPS-ClaimProviderType
  • SPS-SavedAccountName
  • SPS-SavedSID
  • SPS-ResourceSID
  • SPS-ResourceAccountName
  • SPS-ObjectExists
  • SPS-MasterAccountName
  • SPS-PersonalSiteCapabilities
  • SPS-UserPrincipalName
  • SPS-O15FirstRunExperience
  • SPS-PersonalSiteInstantiationState
  • SPS-PersonalSiteFirstCreationTime
  • SPS-PersonalSiteLastCreationTime
  • SPS-PersonalSiteNumberOfRetries
  • SPS-PersonalSiteFirstCreationError
  • SPS-DistinguishedName
  • SPS-SourceObjectDN
  • SPS-FeedIdentifier
  • SPS-Location
  • Certifications
  • SPS-Skills
  • SPS-PastProjects
  • SPS-School
  • SPS-Birthday
  • SPS-Interests
  • SPS-StatusNotes
  • SPS-HashTags
  • SPS-PictureTimestamp
  • SPS-PicturePlaceholderState
  • SPS-PrivacyPeople
  • SPS-PrivacyActivity
  • SPS-PictureExchangeSyncState
  • SPS-TimeZone
  • SPS-EmailOptin
  • OfficeGraphEnabled
  • SPS-UserType
  • SPS-HideFromAddressLists
  • SPS-RecipientTypeDetails
  • DelveFlags
  • msOnline-ObjectId
  • SPS-PointPublishingUrl
  • SPS-TenantInstanceId

My customer has AADConnect in place that is synchronising their On Premise AD to Office 365.… [Keep reading] “Managing SharePoint Online (SPO) User Profiles with FIM/MIM 2016 and the Granfeldt PowerShell MA”

Add workdays and public holidays to your Azure Automation runbooks

16th of March, 2016 / / 1 Comment

Azure Automation runbooks are a great way to automate various aspects of your Azure environment. Probably the task it is used for the most (at least at the moment) is starting and stopping a virtual machine or a bunch of vms on a schedule. The runbook scripts take care of the “powering on” or “shutting down”. Adding a schedule to these scripts is a great way to save cost by only running virtual machines when they are required.… [Keep reading] “Add workdays and public holidays to your Azure Automation runbooks”

Creating Microsoft Identity Manger (MIM) Run Profiles using PowerShell (post MIM rollup build 4.3.2124.0)

15th of March, 2016 / / 2 Comments

A new hotfix rollup was released on the 11th of March for Microsoft Identity Manager that contains a number of fixes and some new functionality.

One new feature according to the release notes is a new cmdlet Add-MIISADMARunProfileStep

This cmdlet allows the creation of MIM Synchronisation Management Agent Run Profiles using PowerShell.

From the MS Documentation

Add-MIISADMARunProfileStep -MAName ‘AD_MA’ -Partition ‘DC=CONTOSO,DC=COM’ -StepType ‘FI’ -ProfileName ‘ADMA_FULLIMPORT’

Possible values of the StepType parameter (short form or long one can be used):
“FI”, “FULL IMPORT”
“FS”, “FULL SYNCHRONIZATION”
“FIFS”, “FULL IMPORT AND FULL SYNCHRONIZATION”
“FIDS”, “FULL IMPORT AND DELTA SYNCHRONIZATION”
“DI”, “DELTA IMPORT”
“DS”, “DELTA SYNCHRONIZATION”
“DIDS”, “DELTA IMPORT AND DELTA SYNCHRONIZATION”
“EXP”,”EXPORT”

The neat feature of this cmdlet is that it will create the Run Profile if it doesn’t exist.… [Keep reading] “Creating Microsoft Identity Manger (MIM) Run Profiles using PowerShell (post MIM rollup build 4.3.2124.0)”

Implement a SharePoint Timer job using Azure WebJob

15th of March, 2016 / / 1 Comment

The SharePoint Timer service runs in background to do long running tasks. The Timer service does some important SharePoint clean up tasks in the background but can also be used to provide useful functional tasks. For instance, there may be  a situation when you want to send newsletters to your users on regular basis or want to keep your customer up to date with  some regular timed information.

I will be using SharePoint Timer Service to send an email to newly registered customers/users for this demo.… [Keep reading] “Implement a SharePoint Timer job using Azure WebJob”

Azure WebJob logs demystified

14th of March, 2016 / / 4 Comments

Asynchronous jobs are usually hard to troubleshoot due to the very nature of its execution. This post talks about how we can monitor and trouble shoot Azure WebJobs both during development and when it is deployed on an Azure Web App. The key is to understand the layout of the logs the WebJob runtime creates during its execution.

WebJob storage accounts

To enable logging, WebJob needs two Azure storage account connection strings to be configured:

  • AzureWebJobsDashboard
  • AzureWebJobsStorage

AzureWebJobsDashboard

This storage account is primarily used by Azure WebJob SDK to store logs from the WebJobs Dashboard.… [Keep reading] “Azure WebJob logs demystified”

Inter-App Communications in Xamarin.iOS and Why OpenUrl Freezes for 10+ sec

9th of March, 2016 / / No Comments

Inter-App Communications

Mobile apps are meant to communicate using multiple channels, but the most popular, recommended, and widely used is using Scheme Uri. If you have not used Scheme URI then you should consider adding them to your app, it takes less than a minute to add support to your app, and it provides you a great way to get users to your app.

Setting the Stage

One scenario that I had was App A was launching App B and querying data, App B was in turn looking up the request, and returning data to App A.… [Keep reading] “Inter-App Communications in Xamarin.iOS and Why OpenUrl Freezes for 10+ sec”

A Journey of Hunting Memory Leaks in Xamarin

8th of March, 2016 / / 2 Comments

My client was reporting performance issues with an existing app that was developed internally, and I had to find the problems. So, here is my journey on finding the issues and resolving them. The resolution was a reduction of the memory usage to 1/4 of what it was and usage was stabilised to this level (1/4). I am hopeful that this blog post can help you too in refining your app and pro-actively resolving any performance issues.… [Keep reading] “A Journey of Hunting Memory Leaks in Xamarin”

Why you should use Git over TFS

8th of March, 2016 / / 3 Comments

I have been an advocate of git for long time now and I might be biased a little bit, but take a moment to read this and judge for yourself whether git is the way to go or not.

If you are starting a new greenfield project, then you should consider putting your code on a git repository instead of TFS. There are many reasons why git is better suited, but the two main ones in my perspective are:

Cross-Platform Support
Git tools are available for all platforms and there are many great (and FREE) GUI tools like GitExtensions or SourceTree.… [Keep reading] “Why you should use Git over TFS”