Leveraging the Microsoft Graph API with PowerShell and OAuth 2.0

13th of September, 2016 / / 4 Comments 
Update Oct 2019: See this post for simplifying oAuth Authentication to Microsoft Graph using PowerShell and the MSAL (Microsoft Authentication Libraries)

Background

Microsoft Graph is the evolvement of API’s into Microsoft Cloud Services. For me not being a developer, a key difference is interacting with with Graph API using OAuth 2.0 via PowerShell. Through a number of my previous posts I’ve interacted with the Graph API using client libraries such as the Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory library. This post details using PowerShell to talk directly to Graph API and managing Authentication and Authorization using OAuth 2.0 and Azure WebApp.… [Keep reading] “Leveraging the Microsoft Graph API with PowerShell and OAuth 2.0”

Azure API Management Step by Step

9th of September, 2016 / / 3 Comments

jorge-fotoIntroduction

As a speaker and cloud consultant, I have learned and received a lot of feedback about Azure API management platform from customers and community members. I will share some of my learnings in this series of blog posts. Let’s get started!

apim-image

APIs – Application programming interfaces are everywhere! They are already part of many companies’ strategies. But how could we consolidate internal and external APIs? How could you productize and monetize them for your company?… [Keep reading] “Azure API Management Step by Step”

Applying Business Rules to Profile Photos Using Microsoft Cognitive Services

7th of September, 2016 / / No Comments

A customer I am working with at the moment is in the (very) early stages of discussion around the gathering and application of profile photos across their internal systems. In this particular case, we are considering that the photos themselves do not exist. Sure, there are ID card photos of startled staff taken on day one of their employment, but people being people, they would rather not be forever digitally represented by their former selves – particularly not the version of themselves which had an ID photo taken in a poorly lit un-used meeting room 7 years ago before they got that gym membership.… [Keep reading] “Applying Business Rules to Profile Photos Using Microsoft Cognitive Services”

Leveraging the PowerBI Beta API for creating PowerBI Tables with Relationships via PowerShell

31st of August, 2016 / / No Comments

If anyone actually reads my posts you will have noticed that I’ve been on a bit of a deep dive into PowerBI and how I can use it to provide visualisation of data from Microsoft Identity Manager (here via CSV, and here via API). One point I noticed going direct to PowerBI via the API (v1.0) though was how it is not possible to provide relationships (joins) between tables within datasets (you can via PowerBI Desktop).… [Keep reading] “Leveraging the PowerBI Beta API for creating PowerBI Tables with Relationships via PowerShell”

Connecting Azure Mobile Apps and Web Apps to existing on-premises infrastructure using Azure Hybrid Connections

31st of August, 2016 / / 2 Comments

This article describes a very easy and secure way of connecting your Azure Mobile Apps and Azure Web Apps to your existing on-premises infrastructure. The option is called Hybrid Connections and is a feature of Azure BizTalk Services. The feature does not require any VPN configuration or opening Inbound ports on the Firewall. After completion of a few simple configuration steps in the Azure Portal and installation of so-called Hybrid Connection Manager(HCM) program on your on-premises servers, you are ready to consume your on-premises services from your Cloud App right away.… [Keep reading] “Connecting Azure Mobile Apps and Web Apps to existing on-premises infrastructure using Azure Hybrid Connections”

Office365 Licensing Management Agent for Microsoft Identity Manager

26th of August, 2016 / / 5 Comments

Licensing for Office365 has always been a moving target for enterprise customers. Over the years I’ve implemented a plethora of solutions to keep licensing consistent with entitlement logic. For some customers this is as simple as everyone gets say, an E3 license. For other institutions there are often a mix of ‘E’ and ‘K’ licenses depending on EmployeeType.

Using the Granfeldt PowerShell Management Agent to import Office365 Licensing info

In this blog post I detail how I’m using Søren Granfeldt’s extremely versatile PowerShell Management Agent yet again.… [Keep reading] “Office365 Licensing Management Agent for Microsoft Identity Manager”

Connecting to and Using the Azure MFA Web Service SDK Server SOAP API with Powershell

16th of August, 2016 / / 10 Comments

Background

A colleague and I are validating a number of scenarios for a customer who is looking to deploy Azure MFA Server. One of the requirements from an Identity Management perspective is the ability to interact with the MFA Server for user information. That led us on the exploration of what was possible and how best to approach it.

The title of this post has pretty much given it away as to how. But why ?… [Keep reading] “Connecting to and Using the Azure MFA Web Service SDK Server SOAP API with Powershell”

Enterprise Application platform with Microservices – A Service Fabric perspective

21st of June, 2016 / / No Comments

An enterprise application platform can be defined as a suite of products and services that enables development and management of enterprise applications. This platform should be responsible of abstracting complexities related to application development such as diversity of hosting environments, network connectivity, deployment workflows, etc. In a traditional world, applications are monolithic by nature. A monolithic application is composed of many components grouped into multiple tiers bundled together into a single deployable unit. Each tier here can be developed using a specific technology and will have the ability to scale independently.… [Keep reading] “Enterprise Application platform with Microservices – A Service Fabric perspective”

Using Microsoft Azure Table Service REST API to collect data samples

9th of June, 2016 / / No Comments

Sometimes we need a simple solution that requires collecting data from multiple sources. The sources of data can be IoT devices or systems working on different platforms and in different places. Traditionally, integrators start thinking about implementation of a custom centralised REST API with some database repository. This solution can take days to implement and test, it is very expensive and requires hosting, maintenance, and support. However, in many cases, it is not needed at all.… [Keep reading] “Using Microsoft Azure Table Service REST API to collect data samples”

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”