How to fix 403 errors when managing Azure SQL Database from Visual Studio

8th of September, 2014 / / No Comments

I was recently trying to manage Azure SQL Databases via Visual Studio in a new Azure subscription and was unable to open the SQL Databases node at all and received the following error message.

Screenshot of Visual Studio error dialog.

The text reads:

Error 0: Failed to retrieve all server data for subscription ‘GUID’ due to error ‘Error code: 403 Message: The server failed to authenticate the request. Verify that the certificate is valid and is associated with this subscription.’.

and my Server Explorer window looked like this:

How Server Explorer Looked

I must admit that I don’t often manage my Azure assets via Visual Studio so it had been a while since I’d used this tooling.… [Keep reading] “How to fix 403 errors when managing Azure SQL Database from Visual Studio”

Kloud Solutions — MAPA 2014 Winner

6th of September, 2014 / / No Comments

Kloud is thrilled to announce we will take home 2 gongs as part of the 2014 MAPA Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. We were named both Microsoft’s Cloud Solutions Partner of the Year as well as Collaboration and Content Partner of the Year. The awards, won in the face of tough competition, were awarded for a range of customer solutions, including the Coles intranet portal, mycoles and the Spotless mobility app, MyWork. Both innovative solutions empower workforces by enabling anytime, anywhere access and closely align to Microsoft’s mobile-first, cloud-first strategy.… [Keep reading] “Kloud Solutions — MAPA 2014 Winner”

Forget about the Internet and Sync Locally

4th of September, 2014 / / 2 Comments

If you have missed our talk in Melbourne Mobile, now you have the chance to flip through the slides and have a look at the code/demo.

Talk Details

Cloud technologies have changed the way users interact with their devices and the way they keep their data. Users now expect their data to be synced always to all devices in real-time. This has been facilitated through many cloud providers such as iCloud, Google services, and Azure.… [Keep reading] “Forget about the Internet and Sync Locally”

Mobile platform increases productivity for integrated services company

25th of August, 2014 / / No Comments

Customer Overview
Spotless Group is an Australian owned, managed and operated provider of integrated facility management services. With operations across Australia and New Zealand, the Group’s 33,000 employees deliver millions of service hours a year across hundreds of specialist services to industry sectors including:

  • Health
  • Education
  • Leisure, Sport and Entertainment
  • Defence
  • Government
  • Resources
  • Business and Industry (AU) (NZ)
  • Laundries

Business Situation
Spotless service workers and supervisors (employees and sub-contractors) generally work at customer locations rather than offices.… [Keep reading] “Mobile platform increases productivity for integrated services company”

Mobile Test-Driven Development Part (3) – Running your unit tests from your IDE

15th of August, 2014 / / 2 Comments

TDD in Mobile Development – Part 3
1. Unit Testing of Platform-Specific Code in Mobile Development.
2. Portable IoC (Portable.TinyIoC) for Mobile Development
3. Mobile Test-Driven Development – Running your unit tests from your IDE

This is the third post in my TDD for Mobile Development series. This post shows how we can have test driven development for mobile. We will look at options for running our tests from within our IDE and finding the right test runner for our development env without the need to launch an emulator or deploy to a device every time we want to run the tests.… [Keep reading] “Mobile Test-Driven Development Part (3) – Running your unit tests from your IDE”

PowerShell Detection Method for SCCM 2012 Application Compliance management

12th of August, 2014 / / 8 Comments

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2012 has a very powerful Application Detection and Delivery model, separate from the existing ‘package and program delivery model’ of previous versions of SCCM & SMS.

The power of this new model is not having to ‘daisy chain’ packages and executables together to achieve a desired outcome.  Using SCCM’s Detection Model reduces the burden in managing a Windows client base in terms of keeping its baseline configuration the same across every client in the Organisation.… [Keep reading] “PowerShell Detection Method for SCCM 2012 Application Compliance management”

HOW I REDUCED THE WORKER ROLE TIME FROM ABOVE 5 HRS TO LESS THAN 1 HOUR

10th of August, 2014 / / No Comments

This post talks about my experience in reducing the execution time of the Worker Role from above 5 hours to under 1 hour. This Worker Role is set up to call some external APIs to get a list of items with their promotions and store them locally. A typical batch update process that you would see in many apps. Our client was only interested in quick fixes that would help them reduce the time it is taking the Worker Role to run.… [Keep reading] “HOW I REDUCED THE WORKER ROLE TIME FROM ABOVE 5 HRS TO LESS THAN 1 HOUR”

Securing Emails Outside of Your Organization With Office 365 Message Encryption

3rd of August, 2014 / / 1 Comment

​For those of you who have been concerned about email security for a number of years, you may remember a solution from Microsoft called Exchange Hosted Encryption (EHE).  This was a cloud based service which allowed organizations to encrypt emails according to certain defined rules.  For example, you could encrypt emails where the intended recipient was outside of your organization and certain keywords or regular expressions where detected such as a credit card number.  This was a very useful service for protecting emails sent to ANY user, regardless of the relationship with the user’s company. … [Keep reading] “Securing Emails Outside of Your Organization With Office 365 Message Encryption”

Azure Mobile Services and the Internet of Things

30th of July, 2014 / / 11 Comments

The IT industry is full of buzzwords and “The Internet of Things” (IoT) is one that’s getting thrown about a lot lately. The IoT promises to connect billions of devices and sensors to the internet. How this data is stored, sorted, analysed and surfaced will determine the amount of value it is to your business. With this in mind I thought it’s time to start playing around with some bits and pieces to see if I could create my very own IoT connected array of sensors.… [Keep reading] “Azure Mobile Services and the Internet of Things”

What Is The Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite?

13th of July, 2014 / / No Comments

Microsoft released the Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) back in April 2014. This was a major announcement for Microsoft which has typically focused on traditional information workers (IWs) who sit at a desk for most of the day. The EMS is a license designed for a mobile worker who uses a range of different devices including a PC, tablet, and mobile phone. The EMS assumes that the mobile worker will take advantage of BYOD and choose to use a non-corporate device for accessing corporate data.… [Keep reading] “What Is The Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite?”