Microsoft Azure / Cloud Computing – Introduction

Cloud Computing enables companies to consume a complete resource – such as virtual machine, storage, or an application as a utility – just like electricity – rather than having to build and maintain computing infrastructure in-house.

Cloud provider provides the cloud infrastructure which is shared across multiple clients. Clients can select which service to use and only need to pay for that service, which is billed on-demand.

Cloud provider takes care of high availability (disk failure, power supply) and disaster recovery (natural or human disaster like fire, flood, etc.)

Advantages of using cloud computing

Rapid elasticity, only pay for the services used, reliability, economics of scale, etc.

Azure Regions Interactive Map

https://build5nines.com/map-azure-regions/

Types of Cloud Computing Services.

IaaS – Infrastructure as a service – Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Storage.
PaaS – Platform as a service – Azure Functions, Logic Apps, Azure Automation.
SaaS – Software as a service – Dynamics 365, SharePoint, Power Platform.

Types of Cloud computing deployment models.

Hope it helps..

PowerAutomate: Self-reference is not supported when updating the value of variable

Ajit Patra

We often come across requirements in which we want to add certain value to the same variable e.g. for integer variable, x=x+5 or for string variable, test=test+”additional”.

We were trying to achieve the same thing using PowerAutomate. However, while doing this using Set Variable action, we got an error saying “Self-reference is not supported when updating the value of variable”.

Below is what we were trying to do inside Apply to each action and the expression is: add(variables(‘Service Delivery Type Total Amount’),items(‘Apply_to_each_Service_Delivery_Type’)?[‘dxc_amount’])

As this is not possible using PowerAutomate at the moment, we achieved it using another variable of same type in the middle as shown below:

And, inside Apply to each action, we added the following Set Variable actions:

Expression for the above action: **add(variables(‘Dummy Service Delivery Type Amount’), items(‘Apply_to_each_Service_Delivery_Type’)?[‘dxc_amount’])**

Hope it helps !!

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Use custom browser protocol to launch desktop applications from Dynamics 365

Recently we had a requirement to launch a .NET desktop application installed in the user’s machine from within Dynamics 365 and also pass parameters to it.

One of the ways of implementing is by using the Custom URL Protocol.

Modern browsers and operating systems allow us to implement a custom URL protocol and register an external application to handle it. So when a user clicks on the link that uses that custom URL Protocol, the browser will open the application that is registered.

Check a few examples here

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/launch-resume/launch-app-with-uri

So, let us start and register our Custom URL Protocol.

Below is the source code for creating a new key


var applicationPath = @"C:\MyParamApp\MyApp\bin\Debug\MyApp.exe";
var KeyTest = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey("Software", true).OpenSubKey("Classes", true);
RegistryKey key = KeyTest.CreateSubKey("OpenAppP");
key.SetValue("URL Protocol", "OpenAppP");
key.CreateSubKey(@"shell\open\command").SetValue("", "\"" + applicationPath + "\" \"%1\"");

Here OpenAppP is the protocol name and the application path that holds the path of application that we want to execute.

For key.CreateSubKey we have specified %1 for passing the parameter.

If we do not want to pass the parameter then we do not need to append it.

On running the above code, we can see the key added with the value specified

Below is the source code of our console application, basically it reads and writes the parameter in the output window.

Below is our Html page that we will call from within a button on a form from Dynamics 365 and which will open the MyApp.exe in turn.

Here we have published the page in Azure.

The html page on onload will retrieve the id query parameter and append it to the link for the custom protocol

OpenAppP:id

Back in CRM, we have a custom ribbon button named Open Console App added with the following definition.

Url Command Action and Crm Parameter in it to pass the id.

Clicking on the button

as expected, opens the alert along with opening the console app with the parameter passed to it.

Get more details

https://www.vdoo.com/blog/exploiting-custom-protocol-handlers-in-windows

Hope it helps..

App Switcher, Back option and other changes in Dynamics 365 – 2020 Release Wave 2

Below are some of the updates in the product as part of 2020 Release Wave 2.

To switch between the Dynamics 365 Apps, we need to click on down arrow icon next to Dynamics 365.

With 2020 Release Wave 2, we can click on the app name i.e. which opens up the pop-up windows listing all the apps.

We can search, create a new app, assign roles, filter etc.

Earlier to access the same we had to navigate to Advanced Settings à Apps

Next is the change in the Breadcrumb navigation

Is now seems to be replaced with the back button functionality

Also the User Account menu has also been updated earlier,

and now in 2020 Release Wave 2

View account takes user to the My Account page in Office 365

MyAccount

Check other blog posts on Release 2020 Wave 2

Hope it helps..

Azure AD – How to create your own SAML-based application using new Azure Portal

tsmatz

With new Azure Portal (https://portal.azure.com/), Azure AD provides very flexible SAML-based configuration, but some folks ask me where to do that ?
In this post, I show you the answer for this question using some bit of SAML-based federation sample code of PHP and Node.js.

Note : For the settings using Azure Classic Portal (Azure Management Portal), see my previous posts “Azure AD Web SSO with PHP (Japanese)” and “Azure AD Web SSO with Node.js (Japanese)“.

Settings with Azure Portal

First of all, I’ll show you how the SAML settings page is improved by new Azure Portal.

When you want to register your own SAML-based application, select “Azure Active Directory” in Azure Portal, click “Enterprise applications” menu, and push “add” button.
You can select a lot of pre-defined (registered) applications (like Salesforce, Google, etc), but you click “Non-gallery application” link on top…

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