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FIXED - Not a valid Base-64 string error by Azure CLI on a storage queue

10/13/2019

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​Using Azure CLI a lot recently, it has made interactions with Azure so much easier using PowerShell.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/install-azure-cli?view=azure-cli-latest

I had to write a simple PowerShell script that added items to a Storage queue. Once the items were added to a queue an Azure function picked up the items and processed them.
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According to the documentation of Azure CLI you need to use az storage message put.

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The Dilemma of Choosing the right CMS

10/4/2019

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Sadly choosing a CMS platform is a dilemma and even the very best in the industry end up arguing with each other on the pros and cons. This post is for those who are going through this phase and are finding it difficult to make up their mind on which platform would be best suitable for them.

What the hell is a CMS

Instead of getting in to historical facts and figures, lets just put this in simple words.

​A content management system (CMS) is an interface that allows users to create and manage the content of their websites. Whereas CMS’s started out as simple software to publish content online, they have grown to become core technology platforms that support cross-organisational goals and objectives, from marketing to sales.

Choosing a CMS

The CMS you choose is closely linked to your business goals and the success of your organisation. Your website is your digital estate: the online representation of your brand, your benchmark against competitors and a key driver of sales.  Additionally, your website will be the destination for your marketing efforts, and a core hub of your operations.

When it comes to CMS platforms, paying more doesn’t necessarily mean better. To pick a CMS that you can rely on and is right for your business needs, a considered evaluation of features and functionality requirements is crucial.

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Concept of Agile Leadership & Transformation

9/6/2019

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​I don't claim that i am an expert on this subject and still there is a long curve of learning involved as my career grows in to new roles. What i am sharing here are some of my observations, notes references etc related to agile leadership and how well an organization should adopt them for survival.  Let’s examine some favorite ideas and concepts around agile leadership. 
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Success Criteria

In my experience, there are at least five criteria for successful agile transformations. Lasting organizational change happens:
  1. When there are leadership and guidance, not command & control.
  2. When there is alignment across the organization instead of the pursuit of local optimization efforts or personal agendas.
  3. When the collaboration of all participants beyond hierarchies is the norm, not an exception.
  4. When we acknowledge that management principles of the 19th century are unsuited to solve complex problems of the 21st century.
  5. When managers become servant leaders.
​
The following  focus on the main concepts related to agile leadership: from servant leadership to the agile mindset to creating a learning organization. The lists are not supposed to be comprehensive but provide the interested reader with a starting point for further research.

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Maximum attachment and upload sizes for lists and libraries - SharePoint Online

8/1/2019

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The Issue

This is one of the most controversial topics of SharePoint Online and everyone seems to have a theory. For some it works like a charm and they never get to experience the pain while others even open up tickets with Microsoft Premium Support and still the issue remain unresolved.

Yes i am referring to the great file attachment and upload sizes. When you go online to look for the right answer, all you get is confusion with out dated information. For example old articles, new ones, One Drive for Business sync tools, classic vs modern and you will get unsure exactly what sizes to recommend to a client. So, I decided to do some testing with various large dummy file sizes around what I was reading the limitations to be. The results were close to Microsoft’s article, but with a very interesting caveat .

Test Setup

There are a few factors when you want to know max file sizes:
  • Classic interface
  • Modern interface
  • List Attachments
  • Document Libraries
  • Drag and Drop
  • Upload Multiple

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Migrating your Server to Azure

5/19/2019

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Lets admit that migration of any sort is a pain and migrating something to the cloud for the first time is always challenging. I have been going through this for quite some time and finally had the chance to play with Azure Migrate and it has been a good experience overall.

​If you plan to go to Azure you will have 2 choices for your current environment:
  • Recreate you infrastructure from scratch
  • Use Azure Site Recovery to “move” your on-premise VMs to Azure
The goal of this post is to explain you what is Server Migration and how it can help you for your migration to Azure.

Azure Migrate

​The Azure Migrate service assesses on-premises workloads for migration to Azure. The service assesses the migration suitability of on-premises machines, performs performance-based sizing, and provides cost estimations for running on-premises machines in Azure. If you’re contemplating lift-and-shift migrations, or are in the early assessment stages of migration, this service is for you. After the assessment, you can use services such as Azure Site Recovery and Azure Database Migration Service, to migrate the machines to Azure.

Why use Azure Migrate?

Azure Migrate helps you to:
  • Assess Azure Readiness: Assess whether your on-premises machines are suitable for running in Azure.
  • Get Size Recommendations: Get size recommendations for Azure VMs based on the performance history of on-premises VMs.
  • Estimate Monthly Costs: Get estimated costs for running on-premises machines in Azure.
  • Migrate with High Confidence: Visualize dependencies of on-premises machines to create groups of machines that you will assess and migrate together.

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SharePoint Online - Issue with Classic vs Modern Look

4/8/2019

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​I recently created a Microsoft Office 365 development environment via https://aka.ms/offdp

I was creating an environment to do some SharePoint Modern theming (I created a new Communication Site via the modern Admin interface on my new tenant), but noticed the classic (rather the older) Change the Look interface:
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Connecting Team Sites to Office 365 Groups

3/30/2019

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When you create a new Office 365 group, there will be an associated SharePoint Team site is created automatically. In this case, we need a new Group with an existing team site. To start with, make sure connect to Office Group is enabled at tenant level.

Login to SharePoint Online Admin Center >> Click on Settings from left navigation. In settings page, under "Connections from sites to Office 365 groups", Set "Allow site collection administrators to connect sites to new Office 365 groups".
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Now, you can connect your SharePoint Online sites to Office 365 groups. To connect an existing SharePoint Online site to new a Office 365 group, follow these steps: 

Login to SharePoint Online site collection with Site collection administrator rights >> Click on the Settings gear icon >> Select "Connect to new Office 365 group". You are now presented with overview page about a quick explanation of what will be created by Office 365 for your site collection what's going to happen by connecting your site to an O365 group. Click on "Let's get started"

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Get-SPOSite Issue and Work Around

2/9/2019

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We all know that Get-SpoSite cmdlet contains more than one parameter set and you may only use parameters from one parameter set and you may not combine parameters from different parameter sets. Moreover, it retrieves and returns properties of all site collections that match the given criteria.

But sometimes you run into weird issues when you are doing the most common things. In this case, one of my friend was cleaning up his demo Office 365 tenant.  To make an overview of all site collections, he ran the following cmdlet:
Cmdlet

    
​This would make a list of all site collections that are available in  Office 365 tenant and export it to a CSV file. When going through it, he noticed that none of the site collections were flagged as a hubsite. This couldn’t possibly be true as  he created many hub sites for testing purposes.

I decided to check this in my own tenant to see if it was a local problem. So let’s see what happens.

Issue

​Running the following PowerShell returns all site collections that contain the word intranet.

    
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ASP.NET Core Process Hosting and Configuration Issue

1/10/2019

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​Since ASP.NET Core 2.2 was released I have been working on getting all my different applications updated and using in-process hosting. I pretty quickly hit an issue with an application that uses SQLite. As soon as the application tried to access the database I ended up with the following error.
SqliteException: SQLite Error 14: ‘unable to open database file’. Microsoft.Data.Sqlite.SqliteException.ThrowExceptionForRC(int rc, sqlite3 db) Microsoft.Data.Sqlite.SqliteConnection.Open() Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Storage.RelationalConnection.OpenDbConnection(bool errorsExpected)

Issue and Work Around

After some Googling, I found an issue on GitHub that details the problem. It turns out that when the application gets its current directory it is returning the path to the IIS process that is hosting the application instead of the directory when the application is.

On another GitHub issue, I found a link to a recommended workaround. Add the following class somewhere in your application. This code comes here.

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Basics of SCRUM - Part 3

12/27/2018

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Scrum Artifacts

​Scrum Artifacts – results/products of our management activities – are designed to increase transparency of information related to the delivery of the project, and provide opportunities for inspection and adaptation.

​There are six artifacts in Scrum:

  1. Product Backlog: An ordered list of everything (aka stories) that might be needed in the final product
  2. Sprint Backlog: Selected items (stories) from the Product Backlog to be delivered through a Sprint, along with the Sprint Goal and plans for delivering the items and realizing the Sprint Goal
  3. Increment: The set of all the Product Backlog items completed so far in the project (up to the end of a certain Sprint)
  4. Definition of “Done”: The shared understanding of what it means for a piece of work to be considered complete
  5. Monitoring Progress towards a Goal: The performance measurement and forecast for the whole project
  6. Monitoring Sprint Progress: The performance measurement and forecasts for a single Sprint

​Items 5 and 6 might look more like activities, but they are considered artifacts in the Scrum Guide, and therefore we will explain them as so. You can imagine their output (tracking information, burn-down charts, etc.) as the real artifacts and these two items as ongoing activities (like Product Backlog grooming) or part of the Scrum events (part of Sprint Review and Daily Scrum).

1. Product Backlog

​The Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything that might be needed in the final product of the project, in other words parts of the expected final product (a wishlist). All items are described in simple business language (non-technical) and all of them are presentable to every stakeholder. Every requirement and every change in the project will be reflected in the Product Backlog.

The Product Backlog is dynamically changing and improving; it is never complete. We do not wait until the Product Backlog is complete to start delivering the items; the first Sprint can be started as soon as the Product Backlog has a sufficient number of stories
defined.
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