Azure Cloud Shell is Awesome!

At Build 2017 Microsoft announced the Azure Cloud Shell. This is actually really cool! Check out how easy it is to use Azure CLI 2.0 to create a new storage account and get its Connection String.

Designing a Conversation

We converse everyday, but do we really know what makes a conversation good or bad? And, do we know how to improve them?

How do we start meaningful conversations? And how do we structure them? I find these questions difficult to answer… my background is geared at building software, and communicating with a human isn’t as straight forward as I expected. I mean, we’ve been talking for most of our lives. We learn and interact with others every day. So why is designing a conversation proving to be a challenge?

Bots are the new Apps – Part 2

We communicate through images, movement, sounds, text, symbols, objects…

Bots are evolving so fast! Last October I wrote about how bots are the new apps and shared my thoughts about why bots and about the opportunities they create. Over the past few months, interest has grown and we as a community have iterated on our approaches to build bots. For some, the hype has gotten to a point where everyone wants one, but do we really understand them or the efforts that are required to build them.

So far, my initial thoughts have stood the test of time. 

The following are observations, experiences and thoughts, about what we need to consider when we set out to build a successful bot. 

Bots are defined by an exceptional user experience! And not by the amount of Artificial Intelligence (AI) or by Natural Language Processing (NLP) that is used to build them.

A bot is successful if users actually use it! This is important, because we must build our bots with meaningful telemetry, logging and data collection mechanisms that empower us to measure, validate and iterate. This data forms a foundation that we can use to hypothesize and prioritize our efforts. Then through A/B testing we confirm that we solve the user’s need in the quickest and easiest way possible. This in itself directly impacts our business model and pushes us to grow the end-user consumption and shift our business model to selling through microtransactions. In other words, a bot helps users be successful.

Getting Around Blocked Ports

Regularly, I find myself in a location that blocks ports to the outside world. In many of those moments, I can’t use Remote Desktop (RDP) sessions to connect to Virtual Machines hosted on Azure. The strategy expressed in this post is one of many possible solutions that also applies to Linux and SSH sessions.

The Strategy

• Using a Load Balancer and NAT rules to map port 443 to the RDP (3389) port for a Jumpbox Virtual Machine (VM)
• Using the Jumpbox to RDP into VMs deployed to the Azure Virtual Network.
  

Migrate a Storage Account to ARM

If you’ve been working with Azure for a while, you may have some of your Azure Storage Accounts deployed on the Classic deployment model (ASM). To simplify the deployment and management of resources, Microsoft recommends that we use Azure Resource Manager (ARM) for new resources. If possible, it’s also recommended that we redeploy existing resources through Azure Resource Manager (ARM), because the two models are not completely compatible with each other.

Fortunately, moving resources like Azure Storage is possible through PowerShell. Use
the Move-AzureStorageAccount cmdlet to prepare, migrate and to validate that the migrated Azure Storage Account is moved successfully to a resource group in the Azure Resource Manager (ARM).

Validates the Azure Storage Account for migration.

Move-AzureStorageAccount -Validate `
                         -StorageAccountName "ContosoStorageName"

Prepare the Azure Storage Account for migration.

Move-AzureStorageAccount -Prepare `
                         -StorageAccountName "ContosoStorageName"

Kick-off the migration.

Move-AzureStorageAccount -Commit `
                         -StorageAccountName "ContosoStorageName"

Source: Move-AzureStorageAccount

Getting to Know Containers

Containers have sparked genuine interest over the last few years. As a developer, I’ve had my fair share of “It Works on My Machine” days, where I spent an interesting amount of my time trying to identify why my code doesn’t run in a given environment. Did I make a mistake? Did someone else make a mistake? Uncertainty, risk and the Human Factor definitely make for adrenaline packed all-nighters.

Using PS to Add a Key to the Registry

In a recent experiment, I had to disable User Account Control (UAC) on a remote Virtual Machine through WinRM.

Note

To better protect those users who are members of the local Administrators group, we implemented UAC restrictions on the network. This mechanism helps prevent against “loopback” attacks. This mechanism also helps prevent local malicious software from running remotely with administrative rights.

Whenever I deal with the registry, I always feel like the guy in the picture above. You never know if you’re going to regret making changes…

Anyway, this was an experiment, so please, use this wisely.

$registryPath = "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System"
$Name = "LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy"
$value = "1"

New-ItemProperty -Path $registryPath `
                 -Name $name `
                 -Value $value `
                 -PropertyType DWORD `
                 -Force | Out-Null

# Restart the VM to apply the changes
Restart-Computer -Force

Unzip a file in PowerShell

Automating configurations on remote machines can sometimes make simple things interesting. In this specific scenario, I needed to use WinRm to Upload a file to a Virtual Machine (VM) on Microsoft Azure. Then I needed to unzip the file and finally go ahead with the configuration of the said software.

Searching the web gave me an appreciable amount of creative ways to go about unzipping files. This was by far the simplest approach I found. Keep in mind that it requires .NET 4.5.

$sourceFile = 'C:\assets\Microsoft.Azure.ServiceFabric.WindowsServer.5.3.204.9494.zip'
$targetFolder = 'C:\Microsoft.Azure.ServiceFabric.WindowsServer'

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('System.IO.Compression.FileSystem')
[System.IO.Compression.ZipFile]::ExtractToDirectory($sourceFile, $targetFolder)

Bots are the new Apps

What if you could increase the accessibility of your App? While we’re at it, what if you reached a greater audience, reduced deployment complexity and reduced training costs?

In 2016, companies are facing unique challenges in their efforts to transform themselves. In their quest for diversity and inclusion, companies are challenged to step away from their comfort zones and to unlock new opportunities. Imagine for a moment that you are tasked with hiring a niche candidate. The company you work for is primarily English-speaking and the best candidate for the job speaks Spanish, is blind and deaf. Would you pass up this opportunity because of accessibility?

Download All Sessions in SD Quality

Ignite has been over for a little while, and I finally have some time on my hands to dive deep. This is the script I use to bring the videos offline for further filtering and to be able to watch the sessions on my own terms.

$feedUrl = 'https://s.ch9.ms/Events/Ignite/2016/RSS'
 
[Environment]::CurrentDirectory=(Get-Location -PSProvider FileSystem).ProviderPath
function Get-Media
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param
    (
        [Object]
        $url,
        [Object]
        $title
    )
       
    $u = New-Object System.Uri($url)
    $name = $title
    $extension = [System.IO.Path]::GetExtension($u.Segments[-1])
    $fileName = $name + $extension
  
    $fileName = $fileName -replace "’", ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace "\?", ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace ":", ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace '/', ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace ",", ''
    $fileName = $fileName -replace '"', ''
  
    $fileName
              
    if (Test-Path($fileName)) {
        Write-Host 'Skipping file, already downloaded' -ForegroundColor Yellow
    }
    else
    {
        Invoke-WebRequest $url -OutFile $fileName
    }
}
    
$feed=[xml](New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString($feedUrl)
   
foreach($i in $feed.rss.channel.item) {
    foreach($m in $i.group){
        foreach($u in $m.content `
                | Where-Object { `
                        $_.url -like '*mid.mp4' `
                     } | Select-Object -Property @{Name='url'; Expression = {$_.url}}, `
                                                 @{Name='title'; Expression = {$i.title}})
        {
            Get-Media -url $u.url -title $u.title
        }             
    }
}
  
# Find and Download Keynotes
  
foreach($i in $feed.rss.channel.item) {
    foreach($m in $i.group){
        foreach($u in $m.content `
                | Where-Object { `
                        $_.url -like '*KEY0*' `
                        -and $_.type -eq 'video/mp4' `                       
                     } `
                     | Select-Object -Unique `
                     | Select-Object -Property @{Name='url'; Expression = {$_.url}}, `
                                                 @{Name='title'; Expression = {$i.title}})
        {
            Get-Media -url $u.url -title $u.title
        }             
    }
}