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Merge App Settings With Bicep

Introduction ARM templates follow the Desired State Configuration (DSC) pattern. This means that the ARM template describes what the desired Azure infrastructure should look like. When an ARM template is applied to an Azure environment, the differences between the template and the current state are calculated and applied. The end result is an environment that conforms to the ARM template. While this is true for many of the Azure resources, it may not always be true for properties of ARM resources.

Monday, April 19, 2021 Read

Difference between Apply to each and For each actions

Microsoft Flow and Azure Logic Apps are based on the same platform and therefor very similar. There are, however, cases where they’re a little different. Take for example the Apply to each (Flow) action and the For each (Logic Apps) action. They’re very similar in that they execute the actions for each of the items in the array. There’s one caveat though and that is the default concurrency setting. Apply to each action

Tuesday, October 1, 2019 Read

Intelligent chatbots for Microsoft Teams

We’re living in the decade of the rise of conversational platforms like chatbots. Gartner predicts that by 2022 over 70% of modern workers use conversational platforms on a daily basis. Chatbots are around for many years, even dating back to 1966, with fluctuating interest over time. The last few years we see a big increase of excitement for chatbots with artificial intelligence (AI) becoming mainstream. The use of AI enables chatbots to better understand natural language and be able to more intelligently respond to users.

Wednesday, September 25, 2019 Read

Custom profile images in Edge

Ever since Microsoft announced the next version of Edge will be based on Chromium and provided the Edge Insider program I’ve been happily running the Dev channel of Edge. If you haven’t tried yet, you should. It’s that good. One of the benefits of the Chromium based Edge is that it brings profiles to Edge. Profiles are great, because they allow you to have separate profiles for different purposes, e.g. a work profile and a personal profile.

Monday, August 12, 2019 Read

Connect to Azure AD secured SignalR Hub from your SPFx code

SignalR is a great technology to provide users with real-time UI updates of events happening in the back-end. It’s a perfect match with SPFX to build some amazing web parts for SharePoint. With the recent release of ASPNET SignalR Core (now incorporated in the ASP.NET Core GitHub project) SignalR is easier to use than before. So you’ve gone and created a web part that connects to a SignalR hub and the experience makes a real impact for your users.

Tuesday, December 11, 2018 Read

Logic Apps improvement suggestions

I must say that Logic Apps has come a long way in its brief lifetime. It’s surprisingly easy to get up and go with Logic Apps and the number of available connectors is crazy. However there are still a couple of things that could be improved to make it friendlier for the more serious applications. Here’s my list. The last few weeks I had the chance to spend a lot of time with Azure Logic Apps.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018 Read

Move your development VM to Azure

During my day job I regularly had to use virtual machines to do my work on. It just simply isn’t convenient to run BizTalk Server or SharePoint on you laptop. I’ve used many types and brands of virtualisation software like Virtual PC, Virtual Server and VMWare. More recently I started using Hyper-V, which, because baked into Windows 8, sounds like a very natural thing to do. Unfortunately, whatever software I used, the performance I get just doesn’t provide a good user experience.

Friday, June 21, 2013 Read

Preparing for 70-485: Advanced Metro style App Development using C#

A few weeks ago I posted learning material for preparing for exam 70-484. In the meanwhile I also took the 70-485: Advanced Metro style App Development using C# exam and used the information below for my preparation. As the exam was still in beta I don’t know yet whether I passed the exam, but I doubt it. You really need to make sure you’ve got hands-on experience with each of the topics.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012 Read

Preparing for 70-484: Essentials of Developing Windows Metro style Apps using C#

Last week I took the 70-484: Essentials of Developing Windows Metro style Apps using C# exam. In preparation for the exam I used the resources below. Hopefully they can help you too preparing for the exam. Design Metro style Apps (19%) Design the UI layout and structure. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms750613.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.style.aspx Design for separation of concerns (SOC). http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechDays/TechDays-2012-Belgium/282 Apply the MVVM pattern to your app design. http://dotnetspeak.com/index.php/2012/07/working-with-gridview-control-in-winrt-app/ http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/apps/BR209833 Design and implement Process Lifetime Management (PLM).

Thursday, September 6, 2012 Read

Lightswitch: custom ribbon button

Two weeks ago, on July 26th, Visual Studio Lightswitch 2011 was released. I ‘d seen a couple of videos what you can do with Lightswitch so I though I’d put it to the test by developing a replacement for a tool I use at one of my clients. Lightswitch is really easy to use and I believe I can actually teach my wife to create data-centric application using it. Until you reach the limits though, because than it becomes more difficult really fast.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011 Read

Windows Phone 7 Mango features

A lot has been said and written about Windows Phone 7 Mango. The eagerly awaited update to Microsoft’s new Windows Phone platform is said to sport 500 new features, bringing it up to par with its competition. While 500 features sound a lot, it may well be achieved if you count every little detail. Many of the bigger features can be found all over the web, especially in the much detailed Engadget in-depth preview.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011 Read

MIX11: Day 3

It’s a wrap, MIX11 is over. Yesterday was the last day of MIX and many people have already returned to their homes. There was not much news to be shared, but here are my findings anyway. Designer and Developer: A Case for the Hybrid (Jeff Croft) In this talk Jeff Croft talks about what makes good designers and developers. His statement is that designers should know how to program and developers should know how to design.

Friday, April 15, 2011 Read