Microsoft Azure Consumption Insights with Power BI

4th of September, 2018 / / No Comments

In a recent engagement I was tasked to assess the Azure consumption for a customer, they have been exceeding their forecasted budget for last several months. In a short timeframe I had to make sense out of the recon files provided via the Azure Enterprise Portal and present that in a decision-making format that is business understandable and easy to consume. To understand and optimise the cost, it is important to identify and understand where the cost originated, i.e.… [Keep reading] “Microsoft Azure Consumption Insights with Power BI”

A Voice Assistant for Microsoft Identity Manager

2nd of August, 2018 / / No Comments

This is the third and final post in my series around using your voice to query/search Microsoft Identity Manager or as I’m now calling it, the Voice Assistant for Microsoft Identity Manager.
The two previous posts in this series detail some of my steps and processes in developing and fleshing out this concept. The first post detailed the majority of the base functionality whilst the second post detailed the auditing and reporting aspects into Table Storage and Power BI.… [Keep reading] “A Voice Assistant for Microsoft Identity Manager”

Power BI: Using anonymous authentication on Web data sources with a API key in URL

23rd of July, 2018 / / No Comments

Currently, there are some challenges on Power BI service when trying to Schedule Refresh from a Web API data source that uses an API key for authentication. On this post, I will talk about a way to work around this problem by using an Azure Functions Proxy. The proxy will be used the override the request to the Web API and successfully use anonymous authentication.

Scenario overview

I have some reports on Power BI that get the data from WorkflowMax API, they have been published on Power BI service and embedded on SharePoint Online.… [Keep reading] “Power BI: Using anonymous authentication on Web data sources with a API key in URL”

Using your Voice to Search Microsoft Identity Manager – Part 2

5th of July, 2018 / / No Comments

Introduction

Last month I wrote this post that detailed using your voice to search/query Microsoft Identity Manager. That post demonstrated a working solution (GitHub repository coming next month) but was still incomplete if it was to be used in production within an Enterprise. I hinted then that there were additional enhancements I was looking to make. One is an Auditing/Reporting aspect and that is what I cover in this post.

Overview

The one element of the solution that has visibility of each search scenario is the IoT Device.… [Keep reading] “Using your Voice to Search Microsoft Identity Manager – Part 2”

Building a Breakfast Ordering Skill for Amazon Alexa – Part 1

25th of June, 2018 / / No Comments

First published at https://nivleshc.wordpress.com

Introduction

At the AWS Summit Sydney this year, Telstra decided to host a breakfast session for some of their VIP clients. This was more of a networking session, to get to know the clients much better. However, instead of having a “normal” breakfast session, we decided to take it up one level 😉
Breakfast ordering is quite “boring” if you ask me 😉 The waitress comes to the table, gives you a menu and asks what you would like to order.… [Keep reading] “Building a Breakfast Ordering Skill for Amazon Alexa – Part 1”

Geographically Visualizing your workforce using Microsoft Identity Manager, xMatters and Power BI

30th of November, 2017 / / No Comments

Introduction

In the last couple of weeks I’ve posted about visualizing relationships of data from Microsoft Identity Manager using Power BI. Earlier this week I posted about building a Management Agent for Microsoft Identity Manger to integrate with xMatters.
In this post I combine data from the last two in order to allow us to visualise the geographic office locations for an organisation and then summary data about it (how many employees are located there, and what departments).… [Keep reading] “Geographically Visualizing your workforce using Microsoft Identity Manager, xMatters and Power BI”

Graphically Visualizing Identity Hierarchy and Relationships

24th of November, 2017 / / 1 Comment

Almost 15 years ago Microsoft released Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS) 2003. Microsoft also released a couple of Resource Toolkits for MIIS to assist customers and IT Integrators’ implement the product as up to that time it’s predecessor (Microsoft Metadirectory Services) was only available as part of a Microsoft Consulting engagement.
At the same time Microsoft provided a Beta product – Microsoft PolyArchy Server. For someone who’s brain is wired in highly visually way, this was a wow moment.… [Keep reading] “Graphically Visualizing Identity Hierarchy and Relationships”

A modern way to track FIM/MIM Attribute Value History utilizing Power BI

20th of November, 2017 / / No Comments

Introduction

Microsoft Identity Manager is fantastic for keeping data consistent between connected systems. Often however you want to know what a previous value of an attribute was. FIM/MIM however can only tell you the current value and the Management Agent it was received on and when.
In the past where I’ve had to provide a solution to either make sure an attribute has a unique value forever (e.g email address or loginID (don’t reuse email addresses or loginID)) or just attribute value history I’ve used two different approaches;

  • Store previous values in an SQL Table and have an SQL MA that flows out the values
  • Store historical values in a Multi-Valued attribute on the user object in the Metaverse

Both are valid approaches but often fall down when you want to quickly get a report on that metadata.… [Keep reading] “A modern way to track FIM/MIM Attribute Value History utilizing Power BI”

SharePoint Online forecast storage requirements

10th of August, 2017 / / No Comments

Background

Office 365 users get quite a bit of storage on SharePoint Online for content, be it files, metadata, etc. But still to manage the storage and forecast as to when additional storage has to be added becomes a challenge with very limited analytics available in SharePoint Online. Since adding more storage cost money so adding before you actually require or a bit too late would not be ideal.
SharePoint Online provides two ways to track the storage one from the admin center and other one from within the site collection using Storage metrics.… [Keep reading] “SharePoint Online forecast storage requirements”

Sharing a report using a Power BI app

2nd of August, 2017 / / 1 Comment

History

You have created reports and built dashboards in Power BI desktop to surface your data from multiple data sources, it is a time for you to share dashboards to a wider audience in your organisation and looking for how to do it. Power BI service came up with a powerful feature of Power BI apps to cater such scenarios.
If you have not yet created reports or did not setup a gateway for leveraging our on-premises data, please follow my earlier posts Setup a Power BI Gateway and Create reports using a Power BI Gateway to do so.… [Keep reading] “Sharing a report using a Power BI app”