You should use .NET Core, with Linux or Windows Containers, for your containerized Docker server application when:

•  You have cross-platform needs. For example, you want to use both Linux and Windows Containers.
•  Your application architecture is based on microservices.
• You need to start containers fast and want a small footprint per container to achieve better density or more containers per hardware unit in order to lower your costs.
  

In short, when you create new containerized .NET applications, you should consider.NET Core as the default choice. It has many benefits and fits best with the containers philosophy and style of working. An additional benefit of using .NET Core is that you can run side by side .NET versions for applications within the same machine. This benefit is more important for servers or VMs that do not use containers, because containers isolate the versions of .NET that the app needs. (As long as they are compatible with the underlying OS.)

You should use .NET Framework for your containerized Docker server application when:

•  Your application currently uses .NET Framework and has strong dependencies on Windows.
•  You need to use Windows APIs that are not supported by .NET Core.
• You need to use third-party .NET libraries or NuGet packages that are not available for .NET Core.

Using .NET Framework on Docker can improve your deployment experiences by minimizing deployment issues. This “lift and shift” scenario is important for containerizing legacy applications that were originally developed with the traditional .NET Framework, like ASP.NET WebForms, MVC web apps or WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) services.

Plenty of people have written on this topic and  i'll try to clear out some misconceptions about how you should go about it. Moreover one needs to draw a very clear line about Migration and Upgrading since they are both different which a lot of people seem to mix up. On a lot of forums i see people asking questions like how do we migrate from SP 2007 to SP 2013 and then to 2016?  Another question which is quiet frequent relates to SharePoint 2010 license and if its possible to do a direct migration from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2013.

The issues can be resolved easily and it is not that difficult as it looks like. You only need to go through the post with full attention. So, let us get started.

Oftentimes, it happens with the users that they are currently using SharePoint 2007. But, as the advent of new features and technology, they think of SharePoint to SharePoint migration. Although, it is believed by many users that it mandatory to switch from 2007 to SharePoint 2010 and then, further proceed towards SharePoint 2013 migration. However, it is not true. This post deals with the best possible solution for moving from SharePoint 2007 to 2013 and also gives a chart to show the benefits of SharePoint 2016 and why you should consider it.

I have written very extensively on the topic of Migration to SharePoint Online, in case you are looking for it. 

On a number of occasions i have come across the issue with Agile Story Points and how the final software output is measured. Though there is no best way to measure a software delivery but a lot of experimentation has been done in the recent years. In this post i will be sharing some of my personal experiences and will try to highlight the Agile Metrics and ISO Standard Measures. I personally feel, both of them can be mixed together to a certain level to measure the output. 

Without a doubt Agile processes and procedures have brought advantages for speedier delivery of software  that  meets developing client needs. Be that as it may, the opportunity given to individual teams to manage their own processes has made it difficult to manage the activities across Agile teams – what we call managing ‘Agile-at-scale’.

​To be specific, Agile metrics such as Story Points, may be used by individual teams to manage their own affairs but are very little help for the tasks of planning and monitoring progress across teams, for understanding performance and whether it is improving or not, and for estimating future investments.

Senior management is responsible for setting budgets and allocating resources optimally so as to deliver the greatest value to the organization, and for tracking progress against budgets across the organization. This cannot be done properly for a software group using only typical Agile processes where there are no common performance data across all the teams. These management tasks become even more difficult for an organization that has contracted out its software development to external suppliers that use Agile processes, but that do not use any standard performance measures. I have come across a number of organizations who lack in defining individual, team and product level KPIs to achieve a target - though they do achieve something but not precisely hitting the nail with the hammer.
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In this post i'll try to explain the challenges that management faces when confronted with the limitations of Agile metrics. I'll try to show some of the stuff which has been experimented, how simple but effective and long-established ISO standard software measures can fit seamlessly into Agile processes to enable managers to estimate and control Agile delivery at scale. This can be achieved without needing to change any of the underlying Agile processes, and whilst continuing to obtain the benefits that Agile teams can bring in the speed and flexibility of delivering business value.

Migrating to a new version of SharePoint is like moving to a new home.

Before you make that move, there are critical issues to consider. Will the furniture, appliances, and decorative pieces from your previous home fit and work in your new home? What about the custom furniture in your current home that you may not be able to move? For example, it is difficult to move built- in closets that you had a contractor build for you. On a similar note, when was the last time you looked through all your drawers and found just how much useless junk you’ve got hiding in there?

Similarly, a SharePoint migration requires careful planning to identify the critical issues and mitigate the risks of the migration. Whether you’re moving your environment to SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016, or SharePoint Online (SPO), it is essential to understand the limits of your new environment, and whether all your content meets these limits. It is also important to consider whether content that is outdated, no longer in use, or forgotten, is worth moving.

It is also important to understand that SharePoint customizations such as custom web parts, custom features and solutions, and custom Master Pages and Page Layouts, do not work in newer versions of SharePoint. Some custom work will be required to move those customizations, especially when the destination is an SPO server, which supports SharePoint Apps and sandboxed solutions.
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Which is why an analysis of your current environment and careful migration planning can save you time and money, and aid in the optimization of your new SharePoint environment.

​Custom Master Pages, and their associated page layouts, cannot simply be migrated over from SharePoint 2007 or 2010 to SharePoint 2013. While the formatting of Master Pages is similar between these versions, it is not the same, and Master Pages written for one version do not work in any of the other versions.

It is vital to know how many custom master pages you have and what they are, before migration, so that you know which of these you either have to discard, or rebuild to work with Office 365. Once these pages have been rebuilt, you can easily migrate the content directly from the old version of the page to the new version using both the OOTB Upgrade and 3rd party migration tools.

Its best to work with SharePoint UI implementation experts to implement new versions of Master Pages and Page Layouts, and not assigning this task to SharePoint developers, who specialize in a completely different skill set (Visual Studio development vs. HTML and XML) and tool sets (Visual Studio and SharePoint Designer respectively).
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In addition, i would recommend working with graphic designers to create the look and feel of the Master Pages (usually using Adobe Photoshop® or similar tools), and have the content generated by those tools given to the SharePoint UI implementation experts. Most SharePoint UI experts are not graphic designers, and won’t necessarily create good designs even if they know how to implement designs created by others. Similarly, most graphic designers know how to design beautiful web pages, but are not familiar with UI implementation in SharePoint.

I​n the past, solution delivery was oriented around the waterfall model. Development and delivery of applications was typically divided into many separate steps, such as gathering requirements, writing code, packaging, performing tests, installing the software, etc. Each step was typically owned by one team, which was responsible for only that part of the process, ignoring others.

In other words, developers were focusing only on code development, a process that could last months or even years, leaving solution delivery to the operations teams. New solutions and changes were implemented as one-off revolutions, which required heavy planning and change management processes. This approach had many drawbacks. It didn’t scale well, nor was it immune to quickly changing requirements. It didn’t promote cooperation in solution delivery but promoted competition and blaming others. Any mistake made at the beginning of analysis was stuck with a project until its conclusion, and in most cases entire solutions were
becoming obsolete even before they started yielding any benefits.

The DevOps methodology addresses organizational issues related to the software production process. Since it comes directly from the agile movement, it promotes incremental, iterative solution delivery. DevOps is not about a dedicated team nor is it governed by a well-defned set of rules or tools. 

After being in preview for quite some time, Azure Storage Explorer is now available in general availability (GA).

You can get it from:

• For Windows https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=708343&clcid=0x409
• For MacOs https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=708342&clcid=0x409
• For Linux https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=722418&clcid=0x409

With Azure Storage Explorer you can directly access your Azure Storage from your preferred client to download/upload content, manage you blobs, files, queues, tables or even your Cosmos DB Entities.

To connect to your Azure tenant (covering all public, government or China) you can use either your credentials, a connection string or shared access URL or the storage account key.

​You can add multiple accounts to connect to your Azure Storage using the View\Account Management menu.

Purpose of this post is to describe the Software Project Audit Process which is capable of capturing different  activities which take place throughout a Software Project life-cycle. The main purpose of this process is to audit the quality of the deliverables at the client site. After the auditing, the quality level of the audited activity will be presented using a measurement called Metric.

The process will be used by both the Development team and the Software Project Audit team to derive their own metrics to measure the quality status of a software product in its life cycle. Eventually, the trends of such metrics will be used to predict or change the Projects' way forward by identifying any potential failures which can happen in the future.

Also in this post i will explain the several guidelines used by the Software Project Audit Process for Project Progress calculation, mapping Payment Milestones with Project deliverables and Project Artifact reviewing.

Further, it will explain the way how the process differ from typical software development life cycle and how it has been automated by integrating several testing tools and testing methodologies as well as embedding best industry standards.

Scope of this post is to provide an insight about ;
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• Software Project Audit Process
• Importance of Metrics
• Analysis of Metrics
• Automated Process of Metric Generation
• Skills required to generate certain Metrics
• Guideline for Project Progress Calculation
• Guideline for Mapping Payment Milestones with Deliverables
• Guideline for Review of Project Artifacts.

​Last night was a long one and i was up and about till 2 AM in the morning looking at my laptop screen with amazement and some skeptical approach to the new features been presented at SharePoint Conference 2018 at Las Vegas.

​So here is my post on what was shared and whats coming in future when it comes to Digital Workplace through Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365.

I wrote the Sitecore Personalization guide for Niteco a couple of weeks back and thought about sharing it here. I personally feel that this is the most extensive e-guide on Sitecore Personalization on the internet and i have tried to cover everything related to it. 

Inside the e-guide you  will find the following topics covered in detail.
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• How to get the most out of Sitecore’s Personalization tools
• How Does Personalization Work (with a simple example)
• Identifying User Behavior
• Context Marketing
• How to check your Digital Maturity Level
• Challenges of Personalization
• Why Sitecore?
• What Sitecore offers OOTB
• Sitecore Personalization Rules
• Approaches to Personalization
• Sitecore Personalization Pre-Requisites
• Tools for Personalization
• Content Architecture – Habitat / Helix
• A Personalized World

​Yes the heading says it all and i literally mean it. I am actually getting more and more concerned where we are blindly heading with SharePoint Framework without any strategy and common sense. Since its availability it has been released with a number of new versions and i am not sure for how long the developers can keep up with new features and new scenarios. Can we really always use the latest version of SharePoint Framework and keep on changing stuff we have developed? Well this post is all about what needs to be considered, analyzed and thoroughly digested before jumping to new releases.

​Both versions, SharePoint On Premise and Online can be used with SharePoint Framework but with on premise the story is very different. SharePoint On Premise currently has only one version of framework which makes it easy to control through patch updates at farm level. I am not sure if Microsoft will release more versions for On Premise also - i hope they release them with some intervals rather then frequent monthly updates. On the other side SharePoint Online continously recieves updates and though they are compatable with older versions still you do get some nasty surprises. 

Since the framework uses a toolchain with dependency tree and also third party inherent using Node based development stack - if you update one package then it could trigger updates on other packages. This can be a pain if it turns out uncompatible with other packages in your solution. I haven't come across much people who have given me a valid reason for updating the solution to latest framework and in most cases i have seen people try to fix messed projects.

​SharePoint Framework solution only contains JavaScript code which runs on the browser and they are deployed through the app catalog just like SharePoint Add-ins but we must always remember that they run unrestricted. This means, SharePoint framework solutions have unrestricted access to the information and APIs in your tenant - wherever the user has access so does the solution. Make sure all the documentation and details you have received with the solution are up to date and take the liberty of verifying it as i am sure you will find some stuff missing from it. Depending on the nature of your solution and organizational requirements you might have to adjust or change the deployment of the solution on certain sites. There are so many JavaScripts libraries available on the internet, that developers can use in their solutions. While using an existing library enhances developer productivity, it comes with issues and risks for the organization using the solution. Another aspect is to know if anyone else in your company is familiar with the specific Java Script library and if so then how long do you think this library will exists?