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Summary of Microsoft Ignite Spring 2021

MohamedLeave a comment

Microsoft Ignite Spring 2021 took place last week from the 2nd to the 4th of March. As usual, many announcements happened that include new products and updates. So, I summarized them for you in this blog post.

Microsoft Mesh

Microsoft Mesh is the next thing in the Mixed Reality World. A new platform to deliver collaborative mixed reality experiences. It enables users to work together, connect  and collaborate regardless of the physical location. In other words, Holograms may become a reality sooner than what we (maybe just me) expected.  I will let you enjoy this video (duration: 2min27s), because words cannot give it enough credits.

Source: Microsoft YouTube Channel

You can learn more by reading the technical overview Microsoft Mesh.

Microsoft Viva

Microsoft Viva is an employee experience platform. It is the latest product of the Microsoft 365 Enterprise family. It was announced month ago, but already new announcements has been made during Ignite mainly availability and pricing. Microsoft Viva has 4 modules:

Microsoft  Viva Connections

  • Viva Connections focus on connecting employees across the organization
  • License and pricing: If you have M365 and SharePoint license, you will get it for free. In other words, free to Microsoft 365 Enterprise

Microsoft Viva Insights

  • The needed module for the Home Office Era where employers need some Workplace Analytics and take care of their employees work habits.
  • License and pricing: part of workplace and analytics

Microsoft Viva Learning

  • A central hub for learning and up-skilling courses
  • License and pricing: not announced yet

Microsoft Viva Topics

  • The smart module; it transforms content to knowledge using AI

You can get more information in the following links

How IT is transforming the employee experience at Microsoft – Microsoft 365 Blog

Introducing Microsoft Viva, the Employee Experience Platform in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Tech Community

Microsoft Viva: Empowering every employee for the new digital age – Microsoft 365 Blog

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Power Platform

Power Automate Desktop

It is an RPA tool that has been available for a while on Power Automate. Now it comes with Windows 10 without extra cost

Integration with Teams

The Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents studios are available on Teams. You can design on Teams without the need to open browser anymore.

Administration

Governance Controls
  • Endpoint filtering: you can restrict the access to connectors. It provides a granular access control.  
  • Tenant Isolation: it allows you to choose which tenants you can allow to communicate with your tenant (inbound isolation).
  • Tenant Wide Analytics: reporting capabilities across the tenant.
Data Loss Prevention
  • Connector Action Controls: you can filter connector actions. You can choose which actions can be used by your company from a given connector

Microsoft Information Protection Support (Later this year)

You will be able to label your data with sensitivities level. It will be synchronized with M365, and Azure.

Azure Networking Connectivity (Later this year)

It allows the creation of private endpoints to connect to Azure Virtual Network. That will leverage the use of Express Route, gateways and other networking features that you have on your Azure tenant. You will be able manage networking security from Azure without any compromise.

Customer Managed Keys (Later this year)

First class user interface experience to use your keys from Azure Vault Keys inside Power Platform apps.

Microsoft Power Fx

Open-source language for low-code programming. Basically, the same syntax that was used before in Power Apps (canvas apps). It is possible to write it in YAML files from now on. More new features will be delivered on June 2021 and by the end of the year.

For more details check Introducing Microsoft Power Fx: the low-code programming language for everyone | Microsoft Power Apps

Moreover, there is something for integration with Power BI too. Direct Query support for Dataverse in Power BI is generally available. For more details check Microsoft Dataverse support for Power BI Direct Query reaches general availability | Microsoft Power Apps

— — — —

Microsoft Teams

I have to say it is the star of the Microsoft Ignite 2021. Almost all other products announcements are related to Teams.  In addition to that, Microsoft Teams has tons of new features and enhancements (although not all of them are available yet).

Here is a selected features that I found interesting:

Presenter mode(not available yet)

This feature allows you to share your content and alongside your video stream. It has 3 modes called Standout, Reporter and Side-by-side.

PowerPoint Live

Microsoft Teams made use of the whole screen. Presenter can see the slides, the notes, meeting chat and participants at the same time. Also, attendees can go through slides at their own pace.

Live Reactions in Microsoft Teams meetings (like those of Microsoft Ignite Stream)

Webinars (not available yet)

Organizers can add a custom registration page to the webinars. Attendees will receive an email confirmation after registration.

As for attendees numbers, Microsoft Teams supports up to 1000  attendees in interactive meetings and webinars. For view only, Teams can accommodate 10,000 attendees in general and up to 20,000 attendees until the end of this year. Both features are available this month.

Microsoft Teams Connect (not available yet)

The struggle with collaboration between different organizations is “gone” (not sure, I didn’t try yet). It enables the interaction and collaboration on documents as an external user. Also, you won’t have to disconnect from your tenant and connect to the other one as a guest, the shared channel will appear as a team in your primary tenant.

And more..

The features list goes on and it covers Chat and Collaboration, Security and Compliance, Calling (operator connect), Device, and Management. You can find them in the announcement blog What’s New in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Ignite 2021 – Microsoft Tech Community

— — — —

Windows Server 2022

Windows Server 2022 is now available in preview.  The new release “includes advanced multi-layer security, hybrid capabilities with Azure, and a flexible platform to modernize applications with containers.”(source: Announcing Windows Server 2022—now in preview – Windows Server Blog (microsoft.com) )

— — — —

Windows 10

Windows Hello Multi-camera support

You can choose which camera to use for authentication with Windows Hello.

Universal Print (generally available)

IT Pros now have one hub to set printers in an enterprise environment. The feature was announced back in July 2020. For more details, check ) Announcing Universal Print: a cloud-based print solution – Microsoft Tech Community

Rest of the announcements are on this link Windows & Devices at Microsoft Ignite 2021: March edition – Microsoft Tech Community

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Azure

Azure Percept

The newest product in Azure. Azure Percept allows you to use Azure AI technologies on the edge by a combination of hardware and services. The hardware consists of Azure Percept Audio, Azure Percept Vision and a Trusted Platform Module. The platform offers also Azure Percept Studio to enable customers with less technical skills to use the product. You can read more about in the AI blog With Azure Percept, Microsoft adds new ways for customers to bring AI to the edge – The AI Blog.

Azure Migrate

Azure Migrate was released last year as a one-stop hub to ease migration to Azure. The recent update is new unified tools for discovering and assessing databases, .NET apps and VMs. It allows the discovery of SQL Server instances and databases in the VMware environment. In the new feature, it will cover IIS too.

Passwordless (Azure AD)

Microsoft has been working for a while on changing the authentication system by eliminating passwords. Azure AD support for FIDO2 security keys in hybrid environment is now available on public preview. FIDO2 security keys is supported as authentication method for signing into operating system and applications/services. You can find more details on Public preview of Azure AD support for FIDO2 security keys in hybrid environments – Microsoft Tech Community

I recommend watching the session Inside Azure Datacenter Architecture presented by , Microsoft Azure CTO, Mark Russinovich Inside Azure Datacenter Architecture with Mark Russinovich | OD343 – YouTube .

— — — —

Dynamics 365

Finally, Microsoft Dynamics 365 has something to offer too. It is offering a new application called Intelligent Order Management, and it is integrating Microsoft Teams to offer better experience for users of both products. You can read more about those capabilities in the official announcement Announcing new Dynamics 365 capabilities at Microsoft Ignite – Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog .

Custom Object Comparison in C#

MohamedLeave a comment

A while ago, I needed to compare complex objects in C#. I forget to mention the real reason when I wrote the article and thanks to the feedback that I got, here is the main reason: Not only a Boolean result is needed from the comparison but also I need to have as output the properties with different values and the possibility to exclude properties from the comparison, . I looked for such function that would provide the same functionality of string.Compare() but for complex objects of the same type. Object.Equals() Method alone did not satisfy my need and it needed an implementation and overriding of the method which was not convenient. My next stop was stackoverflow and I found quite interesting approach in this discussion. That did not satisfy my need to the fullest so I took it as a start point and I had to implement my own comparison class (the implementation is available on GitHub with a running sample).

I created a static class Comparer with a constraint on the generic parameter to a class which satisfies my need. If you do not know what do constraints on type parameters mean, go to Microsoft docs (I recommend reading it and understanding what it is and why it is used because you will need it for sure). Then, reflection was the choice to get things done. PropertyInfo class which belongs to System.Reflection namespace was enough to do the work. This class allows us to get the different attributes of a property of an object and its metadata which I use to compare the properties of the 2 objects.

The created class offers different methods that you may find helpful :

GenerateAuditLog() method literally generates log. It returns an object of type ComparisonResult which can be inserted into logHistory table in your database. This method is overloaded so that you can exclude some properties from the comparison.

GenerateAuditLogMessages() method returns a list of messages that contains only changes. There is no overload for this method.

HasChanged() method simply returns Boolean result. You can eventually exclude some properties from the comparison. I found this method useful for updating records in the database.

That is all!! I hope you find it useful. Feel free to use the code or improve it.

Note: The code is not optimized (no DRY approach) because I take in consideration people who wants to use one method so they can copy the code simply (I personally recopy my code, improve it and adopt it to the case that I have).

Open Sourcing of Windows Calculator is great news for many developers

MohamedLeave a comment

Microsoft announced on Wednesday 6th of March 2019 that it made Windows Calculator an open source software (you can find it on GitHub). Suddenly, the internet went crazy with memes and posts mocking the last announcement judging it as a small piece of code, it’s not worth it and blah blah blah.

Figure 1: Windows Calculator. source: me

I understand why some people are frustrated and see it as a small project and it is not worth it when comparing the project size with .NET or VS Code, but these people are narrow-minded. They did not look at it from a different angle. Well, let me explain the real value of the Windows Calculator in the open source world.

The calculator is a simple project that new developers and students make as one of their first projects, and they feel proud of it (at least I was proud of my Calculator project). You start with simple operations, but you find out that Parsing is needed and some conditions are a must so that the app does not crash.

Figure 2: young boys on computers. source: pixabay

Later on, complex operations can be added and the real dev problems appear, such as different results using different types (Float vs Double vs Decimal), or saving the last operations. And it keeps getting bigger and bigger. At this moment, beginners don’t know how to choose the right project structure or how to improve their code and write clean code. Imagine you have the source code of the most used calculator in the world made by the biggest Software Company worldwide! That’s insane.  Wait! Microsoft offered more than source code, it included the project Architecture, unit tests, and the build system.

The Application Architecture is useful even for junior developers and students. Solid use of the MVVM design pattern in a real application is helpful to plan their first applications.

Moreover, the Calculator application is written in Visual C++ (C++/CX), a set of extensions to the C++ language using for Win Apps and Win Runtime components, which is a solid programming language and it most students in universities have C++ classes. Microsoft offered them the semestral project to have great grades 😀 This is just joke, do not do it if you are a new learner, do it yourself and then you can compare your work. That way, you improve your skills and it is great to learn from your own mistakes 😉

 Windows calculator is built for the Universal Windows Platform using XAML UI framework. Developers can learn more about making their own custom controls and VisualStates, and that comes in handy for creating and publishing apps in Microsoft Store.

Finally, they won’t stop in the development phase, but they will learn Azure Pipelines for the build, deployment and release phases. This is so important because it can be hard to apply CI/CD in the first projects.

Figure 3: thumbs up. source: pixabay

To conclude, the Windows Calculator is the best example to learn Microsoft’s full development lifecycle.

Boost your productivity: Azure Data Studio

MohamedLeave a comment

“I am suffering from these tools, they consume a lot of memory and they need a lot of space” or ” I am overwhelmed with the features of this tool, somehow I find myself lost and I can’t figure out how to do simple tasks”.. Does this sound familiar to you? Many tools nowadays offer great features but we need terabytes of storage to have them locally and a powerful device is needed too. Well, today is your lucky day if you are dealing with databases. Have you heard about Azure Data Studio? In this post, I will give you some tips to improve your work performance with Azure Data Studio. Here is the structure of this blog post.

Source: @AzureDataStudio

Table of contents

Introduction

Overview

UI

Export User Settings

Change Terminal Shell

Subscriptions Filter

Connect to multiple Azure accounts

Run script from file

Introduction:

Azure Data Studio was firstly introduced in Pass Summit 2017 (it was called SQL Operations Studio). It is a cross-platform tool for database design and operations. If you are friendly with Visual Code, you will love Azure Data Studio. It is a lightweight version, with the necessary tools and you won’t be overwhelmed with many features such as the case with SSMS (Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio).

Overview:

Azure Data Studio is a light-weight cross-platform database management tool for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. It is free (no license needed) and it is an open source project. Azure Data Studio is based on VS Code and MSSQL extension in VS Code, written in ElectronJS. You can report bugs, request new features and contribute to the project. Extensions are an amazing feature of Visual Code, so does the Azure Data Studio, you can add extensions but they are not that much (for the moment 😉 ).

It supports Azure SQL Database, Azure Data Warehouse, MSSQL Server whether running in cloud or on-premises. T-SQL Query is mainly supported by autosuggestions, formatting and advanced coding features. Meanwhile, it still supports other languages such as JSON, XML, Python, SQL, yaml, dockerfile… In addition, you can work with workspaces, folders. Source Control (GIT) is integrated, so no problem with managing your files. This is an amazing feature especially for those who opt for CI/DI pipeline using Azure DevOps. Speaking of Azure, Azure Resource Explorer is a panel in Azure Data Studio that allows you to connect to your Azure account(s) and work with your different subscriptions. If you work with PowerShell or different shells, you can do it also in Azure Data Studio thanks to the internal terminal as it is the case with Visual Code. It has another bunch of features.

The Queen of Vermont and Entity Framework @Julie Lerman, a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP, wrote two blog posts in MSDN magazine about Azure Data Studio: Data Points – Visual Studio Code: Create a Database IDE with MSSQL Extension(June 2017) and Data Points – Manage Data Across Multiple Sources with Azure Data Studio(December 2018). So, I advise you to read them because I am not repeating what she has already written (I don’t have her level of knowledge and skills so I won’t make it perfect the way she does). Meanwhile, I will give you some tips that will help you.

UI :

The User Interface of Azure Data Studio is similar to the one of Visual Code. It is simpler and not overwhelmed with menus. It has the classic left sidebar as it is the case in VS Code. You can split the window the way you want (literally limitless splitting). Figure 1 shows you how to change theme color.

Figure 1: change theme color

Export User Settings:

Most of us have at least 2 devices: a business laptop, and personal laptop/tablet. Let’s say you tested Azure Data Studio in your personal device and customized it. Then, you decided to install it in the second device with the same customized settings. I got you covered! It is easier than you think. I will recreate the two first steps in the Figure 2. (1) Open user settings by clicking on the Settings logo in the bottom left corner and then settings, you can open it from command palette: open it using the keyboard shortcut CTRL+comma. (2) Now, move the cursor over the tab and give it a right click, then “Reveal in Explorer”. (3) Copy the file settings.json and send it to your work device. (4) Repeat the same first steps in your work device and finish it by replacing the current settings.json file with the other file. Done.

Figure 2: export user settings

Change Terminal Shell:

The first time you install Azure Data Studio, you will have to choose default terminal shell. Later on, when you click on the add new terminal icon, you will get the same terminal shell, but what if I want to use Powershell and Cmd at the same time. To do so, you need to change the default terminal shell by opening the Command Palette (CTRL+Shift+P), then type “Select Default Shell” and hit the enter key. You can change the shell type by selecting one from the given list. There is another way to do it: Open User Settings (the first step in the previous Tip), then search for : 

"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": “Shell path”

You have to change the path and you are ready to go.

For example, my default terminal shell is CMD so it looks like this

"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\cmd.exe"

In order to change it to PowerShell, I only replace the Shell path string

    "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\powershell.exe"

*You have to repeat these steps every time you want to change the shell.

Subscriptions Filter:

It is a simple tip, but it is worth it in case you have many subscriptions. Azure Data Studio allows multiple linked accounts, that means you can connect to different Azure accounts and use all the resources at the same time, which is really COOL. However, you may have many subscriptions and you will not use all of them. To get rid of the unnecessary ones, you use the subscription filter by hovering over the account as it is demonstrated in Figure 3.

Figure 3: subscriptions filter

Connect to multiple Azure accounts:

I just discovered it while writing the Subscriptions Filter tip that it may be tricky to connect to a second or third Azure account. You need to click on the person icon (bottom left corner of the window). Figure 4 shows you the way.

Figure 4: connect to multiple Azure accounts

Run a script from file:

Internal terminals, an amazing feature that Azure Data Studio has. It makes the life of DB Admins easier, you don’t need to open many apps and windows, just all in one tool is needed. We all know that we can open a folder or a workspace in Explorer (Explorer panel of Azure Data Studio, not Windows Explorer), you have some file scripts and you want to run it. There is command provided for this task to run the active file or just the selected text in the active terminal. In Figure 5, you can see how it works. This command doesn’t have a keyboard shortcut by default (you can add one by editing the keyboard shortcuts 😉). To make it work, open the command palette and type: 

Terminal: Run Active File in Active Terminal

Or

Terminal: Run Selected Text in Active Terminal
Figure 5: Run script from file

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There are other features you will enjoy in Azure Data Studio and they will improve your work such as Auto Save (you don’t have to save changes with Ctrl+S every time), the process Explorer or peek a definition, etc.

The purpose of this blog post was showing some cool features of this great tool. You may notice that I did not mention anything related to working with databases, queries, or extensions; they need another blog post. For now, you can start with the Quickstarts Tutorials and the official documentation. If you don’t have it yet, you download it here.

Contribute

Please help the community by giving your feedback and contributing on GitHub.

— — — —

References

To write this blog post, I used the official documentation of Azure Data Studio, Julie Lerman blog posts in MSDN Magazine and two blogs from VisualStudioMagazine (here and here).

Why a blog

MohamedLeave a comment
Source: pixabay.com

Why a blog?

Writing articles is so important for self-development for different reasons. First of all, it helps me with improving my writing skills, learning new words, and learning new stuff. Actually, I am my first reader, so I write about things that I find interesting, or I did struggle to learn it/use it since no useful information were available in the internet and I wanted to save people’s time. Also, I may write articles that is recommended or requested by the community.

Moreover, it encourages me to read more books (different genres) and read articles in order to get inspired by other writers and improve my vocabulary. Meanwhile, I found out that it let me decrease the amount of time that I used to spend in social media.

What kind of content?

The content of this blog will be mainly technical; it can be general engineering hacks or algorithms, and it can be also about a specific tool/software or programming language with its specifications which my not be transferrable as it is due to the details.

Meanwhile, I will be writing in Medium all the life style hacks, city guides for travelers and personal activities.

When

To keep up with what’s going on in the world and motivate myself to write more often, I will make my best to post twice a month (maybe more when I have free time). 1 article for 15 day because I write them when I commute to work and finish them during the weekend.

Free resources to Kickstart your journey with Microsoft technologies

Mohamed1 Comment

In this article, you will gain access to many resources that you may didn’t know about it before. It is useful for students or anyone who wants to learn MS technologies. 

I have heard this sentence many times: 

I would like to learn new technologies, but I don’t have money to pay for a private courses or online education platforms.  

Well..  That is not true. Nowadays you can learn everything for free with only access to the Internet. There are many platforms sponsored by NGOs, Universities or Companies like Microsoft. 

Let’s go through the resources provided by Microsoft and its partners that will help you learn mainly .NET technology :

MVA will be deprecated by April 30, 2019 (update march 2019)

Microsoft virtual academy or MVA has been around for years. Basically, it is a free online school that provides different courses covering .NET and topics related to Microsoft products. Whether you are a beginner or intermediate level or advanced, MVA has something to offer. Moreover, if you have a problem learning in English, you can search for courses in your native language. 

To help you choose the right courses, MVA offers different Learning Paths and suggests some starting points for students, developers, etc.

To conclude, this platform is helpful for anyone interested in .NET Technologies.

— — — —

Microsoft AI school, launched in 2017, is one of the latest learning platforms offered by Microsoft. It is designed to help those who are interested in Data science and Artificial Intelligence to improve their skills. AI School has different courses with various levels. You can also find AI demos with code source in github. If you don’t know where to start, the platform will help you choose the learning path using the path builder, which is a real example of the implementation of Machine Learning to create magic tools. 

— — — —

Microsoft Learn is the newest learning platform added to the Microsoft family. According to the article that introduced Microsoft Learn, 
all content is organized by a learning path. For the moment, there are different paths to learn Azure, Windows development, and Business applications such as Power apps, Power BI, etc.

Microsoft Learn is replacing Microsoft Virtual Academy starting from January 2019.

If you are interested in other products rather than Azure and Business Applications, this is not the right place, but it will 
have for sure others learning paths in the future.

— — — —

Microsoft Tech Academy  is another learning platform by Microsoft where you can follow different pathways and customize it thanks to 4 filters : Product, Audience, Level and Partner.

The Tech Academy is part of the Tech Community  platform , which is a great place to find blogs, communities and community events around the world. You can also join a community and talk to many experts. 

— — — —

source: twitter.com/ch9

If you love shows and videos, then this was made for you. Channel9 offers amazing content in a format of shows / podcasts / discussions and videos from different Microsoft events. In fact, Channel 9 is behind all the live streaming of Microsoft events such as MS Build, Ignite, etc.  It has content in 41 languages. Moreover, you can download the videos in different formats (MP4 different qualities or audio MP3)  and most of them have captions in different languages. They also provide links to download the code samples from github. 

— — — —

Microsoft has also many channels on YouTube. Whether you want to have just an idea about the product, learn some ad-hoc or go through demos and workshops.  Here is a list of some channels :

Microsoft mechanics  youtube.com/OfficeGarageSeries

Microsoft Ignite  youtube.com/MicrosoftIgnite

Microsoft Azure youtube.com/windowsazure

Xamarin youtube.com/user/XamarinVideos

Power BI youtube.com/mspowerbi

Microsoft Visual Studio youtube.com/VisualStudio

Linkedin Engineering youtube.com/LIEngineering, check also their website engineering.linkedin.com

And the list goes on.

 

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Now let’s see what Microsoft partners offer for free.

A great online school called edx.org offers many courses related to anything you can think about (I guess so :D).
According to their website, they have more than 19000 courses from 100+ Universities, companies and NGOs. You can attend all the courses for free. You only pay for the certification if you want to have it. 

Microsoft has different courses in edx.org. To check it, go to edx.org/school/microsoft

— — — —

source: www.datacamp.com/brand

Datacamp is an awesome platform to learn data science. They have different plans including a  free plan that offers 7 courses monthly and 100+ of practice challenges. Moreover, Microsoft offers different courses in partnership with Datacamp where you can practice for free.

— — — —

source: www.pluralsight.com

Pluralsight offers yearly subscription with “35-course limited library benefit” for students with Azure student subscription. To learn about this benefit, please read the dedicated help post here.

~*~*~*~*~*~

eBooks

If you are book fan, check out the free eBooks from Microsoft. Another free eBook provider is goalkicker.com : they have many eBooks covering different technologies. Many experts volunteered to create good content that you can learn and share it at no cost. 

~*~*~*~*~*~

We went through the different websites and platforms that are providing content, but what about the tools ?!well, I did not forget about it 😉 

 Microsoft Imagine

Formerly known as DreamSpark, Microsoft Imagine provides students with a set of software and tools for free. To obtain them, you need to create an account with your student email or verify your account using a Code provided by Microsoft (Contact Microsoft Student Partners in your University/Country or the regional Microsoft office to help you with it).

The same platform may offer you more if your school has a web store subscription, you can search it here, if it is not the case, try to convince your school to join the program. For more details, please check this link.

Github student pack 

Github gives you the opportunity to shine with 25 premium tools for 0$. You only need to verify your account with a student email. If you already have an account on github, just add your student email in your account settings. 

Azure for students 

You can claim 100$ credit in azure without a credit card. There are also many features for free such as Machine Learning Studio.

.

 

The list may not be complete, I will try to update it and provide you with interesting resources to build your career 🙂 

Feel free to reach me by email or on twitter @Sahbi_Mohamed