Evaluating the migration of Azure Functions to Microsoft Flow – Twitter IoT Integration

5th of April, 2018 / / No Comments

Introduction

Almost 18 months ago I wrote this post on integrating Twitter with Azure Functions to Tweet IoT data. A derivative of that solution has been successfully running for about the same period. Azure Functions have been bullet proof for me.
After recently implementing Microsoft Flow as detailed in my Teenager Notification Device post here I started looking at a number of the Azure Functions I have running and looked at what would be better suited to being implemented with Flow.… [Keep reading] “Evaluating the migration of Azure Functions to Microsoft Flow – Twitter IoT Integration”

Create Modern Pages and update metadata using SPFx Extensions, SP PnP JS and Azure Functions

13th of March, 2018 / / 3 Comments

Modern Site Pages (Site Page content type) have a constraint to associate custom metadata with it. In other words, the “Site Page” content type cannot have other site columns added to it as can be seen below.
SitePageContentTypeMissing
On another note, even though we can create a child content types from Site Page content type, the New Site page creation (screenshot below) process doesn’t associate the new content type when the Page is created. So, the fields from the child content type couldn’t be associated.… [Keep reading] “Create Modern Pages and update metadata using SPFx Extensions, SP PnP JS and Azure Functions”

Automate SharePoint Document Libraries Management using Flow, Azure Functions and SharePoint CSOM

30th of January, 2018 / / 1 Comment

I’ve been working on a client requirement to automate SharePoint library management via scripts to implement a document lifecycle with many document libraries that have custom content types and requires regular housekeeping for ownership and permissions.
Solution overview
To provide a seamless user experience, we decided to do the following:

1. Create a document library template (.stp) with all the prerequisite folders and content types applied.

2. Create a list to store the data about entries for said libraries.… [Keep reading] “Automate SharePoint Document Libraries Management using Flow, Azure Functions and SharePoint CSOM”

Automating the generation of Microsoft Identity Manager Configuration Documentation

10th of January, 2018 / / No Comments

Introduction

Last year Microsoft released the Microsoft Identity Manager Configuration Documenter which is available here. It is a fantastic little tool from Microsoft that supersedes its predecessor from the Microsoft Identity Manager 2003 Resource Toolkit (which only documented the Sync Server Configuration).
Running the tool (a PowerShell Module) against a base out-of-the-box reference configuration for FIM/MIM Servers reconciled against an exported configuration from the MIM Sync and Service Servers from an implementation, generates an HTML Report document that details the existing configuration of the MIM Service and MIM Sync.… [Keep reading] “Automating the generation of Microsoft Identity Manager Configuration Documentation”

Azure Functions Cold Start Workaround

4th of November, 2017 / / No Comments

Intro

I love Azure Functions. So much power for so little effort or cost. The only downside is that the consumption model that keeps the cost so dirt-cheap means that unless you are using your Function constantly (in which case, you might be better off with the non-consumption options anyway), you will often be hit with a long delay as your Function wakes up from hibernation.

So very cold…

This isn’t a big deal if you are dealing with a fire and forget queue trigger scenario, but if you have web app that is calling the HTTP trigger and you need to wait for the Function to do it’s job before responding with a 200 OK… that’s a long wait (well over 15 seconds in my experience with a PowerShell function that loads a bunch of modules).… [Keep reading] “Azure Functions Cold Start Workaround”

Azure Function Proxies for API Mocking

18th of September, 2017 / / No Comments

In my previous posts, Is Your Serverless Application Testable? – Azure Logic Apps and API Mocking for Developers, we have looked how to mock APIs with various approaches including Azure API Management, AWS API Gateway, MuleSoft and Azure Functions. Quite recently, Azure Functions Team released a new mocking feature in Azure Function Proxies. With this feature, API mocking can’t be even easier. In this post, I’m going to show how to use this mocking feature in several ways.… [Keep reading] “Azure Function Proxies for API Mocking”

Monitoring Azure Storage Queues with Application Insights and Azure Monitor

7th of September, 2017 / / 9 Comments

Azure Queues provides an easy queuing system for cloud-based applications. Queues allow for loose coupling between application components, and applications that use queues can take advantage of features like peek-locking and multiple retry attempts to enable application resiliency and high availability. Additionally, when Azure Queues are used with Azure Functions or Azure WebJobs, the built-in poison queue support allows for messages that repeatedly fail processing attempts to be moved to a dedicated queue for later inspection.… [Keep reading] “Monitoring Azure Storage Queues with Application Insights and Azure Monitor”

Receive Push Notifications from Microsoft Identity Manager on your Mobile/Tablet/Computer

5th of September, 2017 / / No Comments

Background

Recently in a FIM/MIM environment a daily automated process was executing but the task it was performing was dependent on an upstream process that generates a feed, and the schedule for that feed had changed (without notice to me). Needless to say FIM/MIM wasn’t getting the information it needed to process. This got me thinking about notifications.
If you’re anything like me you probably have numerous email accounts and your subconscious has all but programmed itself to ignore “new email” notifications.… [Keep reading] “Receive Push Notifications from Microsoft Identity Manager on your Mobile/Tablet/Computer”

Is Your Serverless Application Testable? – Azure Logic Apps

24th of July, 2017 / / 4 Comments

I’ve talked about testable Azure Functions in my previous post. In this post, I’m going to introduce building a testable Azure Logic Apps.

Sample codes used in this post can be found here.

User Story

  • As a DevOps engineer,
  • I want to search ARM templates using Azure Logic Apps
  • So that I can browse the search result.
… [Keep reading] “Is Your Serverless Application Testable? – Azure Logic Apps”

Is Your Serverless Application Testable? – Azure Functions

22nd of July, 2017 / / 3 Comments

In this post, I’m going to introduce several design patterns when we write Azure Functions codes in C#, by considering full testabilities.

Sample codes used in this post can be found here.

User Story

  • As a DevOps engineer,
  • I want to search ARM templates using Azure Functions
  • So that I can browse the search result.

Basic Function Code

We assume that we have a basic structure that Azure Functions can use.… [Keep reading] “Is Your Serverless Application Testable? – Azure Functions”