New Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices (PnP) team members – May 2021

by Contributed | May 7, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

We are excited to announce that we are again extending our virtual Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices (PnP) team with additional community members. PnP team is responsible of the different community activities in different community channels, including our open-source work in the GitHub. This team consist of Microsoft employees and community members (MVPs) focused on helping the community the best use of Microsoft products, like Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, OneDrive, SharePoint or API layer like Microsoft Graph.

We announced our new PnP team model in April 2020 with additional community members and are further extending this team with new community members. We believe that working together as a one unified team across the organization barriers, we can make even larger worldwide impact and helping other community member to succeed on adopting different practices within Microsoft 365 platform.

---

Gautam Sheth – Software Designer

 

Gautam is a Software Designer at Valo. Coming from a developer background, he builds products using the Microsoft 365 developer stack. He is also a maintainer of the PnP PowerShell repository and a contributor to PnP Framework and SPFx related repositories. He loves to contribute to the community and share his learnings. He is a firm believer in Sharing is Caring and helping others.

 

You can read his blogs at https://gautamdsheth.wordpress.com and tweets @gautamdsheth

 

Outside of work, you can find him reading books, listening to Bollywood songs or occasionally speaking at local community/user group events.

 

Patrick Lamber – Microsoft 365 Solutions Architect

Patrick is a Microsoft Developer MVP and Microsoft 365 solutions architect at Experts Inside AG. He builds business solutions in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem for his international customers and he is the main developer of EasyLife 365 a new governance solution for Microsoft 365.

Patrick actively contributes to various projects on GitHub. You can follow him on GitHub.

When Patrick isn’t coding or helping customers, you will find him walking his dog or dancing Salsa around the world.

If you are looking for more details on what Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices (PnP) is all about, see more details on the different activities and projects from https://aka.ms/m365pnp, including all community calls, open-source projects, samples and more.

There are also numerous exciting new projects under development which will be released as open-source solutions soon addressing Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Microsoft Graph and SharePoint areas. We want to thank also the countless of other community members who have been involved on this journey for past years. We still consider this as just a start and are looking your feedback and input to further improve the processes and model we use.

Got ideas, feedback, comments on our community work? – Don’t hesitate to let us know. We are here for you. Everyone is welcome!

Sharing is Caring!

Previous related announcements

• New Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices (PnP) team members – February 2021 – April Dunnam (Microsoft), Emily Mancini (Sympraxis Consulting) and Veronique Lengelle (CPS)


• New Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices (PnP) team members – December 2020 – Luise Freese and Sébastien Levert 


• New Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices (PnP) team members – August 2020 – Albert-Jan Schot (Portiva), Koen Zomers (Microsoft), Paul Bullock (CaPa Creative), Rabia Williams (Microsoft) and Yannick Plenevaux (PVX Solutions)

Friday 7th of May, 2021

New transactable offers from Archive360, BlockApps, and Drizti in Azure Marketplace

by Contributed | May 7, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Microsoft partners like Archive360, BlockApps, and Drizti deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Azure Marketplace. Learn about these offers below: Archive2Azure: Archive360’s Archive2Azure platform enables you to migrate, onboard, secure, validate, classify, search, analyze, and dispose of data from a variety of disparate sources, including email, Microsoft 365, social media, and more. Built for Microsoft Azure, Archive2Azure helps enterprises control costs, optimize storage, and address data management and compliance requirements. STRATO for Business Networks: BlockApps’ STRATO platform on Microsoft Azure enables you to create and manage programmable business networks. Transactions on STRATO networks leverage blockchain technology to satisfy requirements for speed, reliability, and security. Bring the reliability and efficiency of face-to-face interactions to digital transactions through secure and connected information. HPCBOX: HPC Cluster for OpenFOAM: HPCBOX by Drizti lets you plug cloud infrastructure into your application pipeline. This HPC Cluster for OpenFOAM provides distributed parallel and hardware-accelerated 3D support. Read the blog post “More performance and choice with new Azure HBv3 virtual machines for HPC”  to learn about Drizti’s involvement in the launch of HBv3 series VMs on Azure.

Set up your own end-to-end package delivery monitoring AI application on the edge with Azure Percept

by Contributed | May 7, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Through my bedroom window, I can see the street in a typical suburban residential neighborhood.  It is a relatively quiet street with mostly cars passing by occasionally, but due to increase in package deliveries, there have been more trucks and delivery folks seen on the street recently.

I want to put a camera on my bedroom window overlooking the street below and build a package delivery monitoring AI application that will detect when a person or a truck is seen by the camera. I want the package delivery monitoring AI application to show me these event detections in a video analytics dashboard that is updated in real-time. I also want to be able to view a short video clip of the detected event.

Here are some details about the project using an Azure Percept DevKit.

You can adapt the project and choose other object classes to build your own AI application for your environment and scenario.

Here’s what you will need to get started

Subscription and Hardware

• Azure subscription (with full access to Azure services)


• Azure Percept DK (Edge Vision/AI device with Azure IoT Edge)

Azure Percept ($349 in Microsoft store)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/build/azure-percept/8v2qxmzbz9vc

Host: NXP iMX8m processor

Vision AI: Intel Movidius Myriad X (MA2085) vision processing unit (VPU)

• Inseego 5G MiFi ® M2000 mobile hotspot (fast and reliable cloud connection for uploading videos)

Radio: Qualcomm ® Snapdragon ™ X55 modem

Carrier/plan: T-Mobile 5G Magenta plan

https://www.t-mobile.com/tablet/inseego-5g-mifi-m2000

Key Azure Services/Technologies used

• Azure IoT edge (edgeAgent, edgeHub docker containers)


• Azure Live Video Analytics (LVA) on the edge


• Azure IoT Central LVA Edge Gateway


• Azure IoT Hub


• Azure IoT Central


• Azure Media Services (AMS)


• ACR

4.    Overall setup and description

Step 1: Unbox and setup the Azure Percept

This step should take about 5-10 minutes if all goes well. Follow the setup instructions here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-percept/quickstart-percept-dk-set-up

Here are some screenshots that I captured as I went through my Azure Percept device setup process.

Key points to remember during the device setup are to make sure you note down the IP address of the Azure Percept and setup your ssh username and password so you can ssh into the Azure Percept from your host machine. During the setup, you can create a new Azure IoT hub on the cloud or you can use an existing Azure IoT hub that you may already have in your Azure subscription.

Step 2: Ensure good cloud connectivity (uplink/downlink speed for videos)

For the package delivery monitoring AI application I am building, the Azure percept will be connecting to the cloud to upload several video clips depending on the number of detected events. Ensure that the video uplink speeds are very good. Here is a screenshot of the speed test for the Inseego 5G MiFi ® M2000 mobile hotspot from T-Mobile that I am using for my setup.

Step 3: Build an Azure IoT Central application

Now that the Azure Percept is fully setup and connected to the cloud, we will create a new Azure IoT Central app. Visit https://apps.azureiotcentral.com/ to start building a new Azure IoT Central application. Navigate to retail and then select the Video analytics – object and motion detection application template and create your application. When you are finished creating the application, navigate to the Administration section of the app (in the left menu) to:

1. API Tokens menu item -> Generate a new API token and make a note of it (this will begin with SharedAccessSignature sr=)


2. Your application menu item -> Note the App URL and APP ID


3. Device connection menu item -> Select SAS-IoT-Devices and make a note of the Scope ID and Primary key for the device

The above information will be needed in later steps to configure the Azure Percept so that Azure Percept can securely talk to our newly created IoT central app.

Step 4: Download a baseline reference app from github

Download a reference app from github that we will use as a baseline for building our own package delivery monitoring AI application on Azure Percept. On your host machine, clone the following repo

git clone https://github.com/Azure/live-video-analytics.git

and then navigate to the ref-appslva-edge-iot-central-gateway folder. We will be modifying a few files in this folder.

Step 5: Porting reference app to Azure Percept

The downloaded reference app is a generic LVA application and was not purpose-built for Azure Percept ARM-64 device. Hence, we need to make a few changes, such as building docker containers for ARM-64, updating the AMS graph topology file and updating deployment manifest before we can run the reference application on the Azure Percept which is an ARM-64 device running Mariner OS (based upon the Fedora Linux distribution

5A. Update objectGraphInstance.json

First, navigate to setup/mediaGraphs/objectGraphInstance.json file and update the rtspUrl and inferencingUrl as follows:

"parameters": [
   {
      "name": "rtspUrl",
      "value": "rtsp://AzurePerceptModule:8554/h264"
   },
   {
      "name": "inferencingUrl",
      "value": "http://yolov3tiny/score"
   }

This will allow the AzurePerceptModule to send the RTSP stream from the Azure Percept’s camera to the http extension module in the Azure media graph running on Azure Percept (via the LVA Edge Gateway docker container).  We will also be building a yolov3tiny object detection docker container that will provide the inference when the http extension node in the media graph calls the inferencing URL http://yolov3tiny/score

You can learn more about Azure Media Graphs here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/media-services/live-video-analytics-edge/media-graph-concept

5B. Update state.json

Navigate to setup/state.json file and update the appKeys section with the IoT Central app information you noted down from Step 3.

"appKeys": {
   "iotCentralAppHost": "<IOT_CENTRAL_HOST>",
   "iotCentralAppApiToken": "<IOT_CENTRAL_API_ACCESS_TOKEN>",
   "iotCentralDeviceProvisioningKey": "<IOT_CENTRAL_DEVICE_PROVISIONING_KEY>",
   "iotCentralScopeId": "<SCOPE_ID>"

5C. Update arm64v8.dockerfile

Navigate to dockerarm64v8.dockerfile and add the following line:

ADD ./setup/state.json /data/storage/state.json

This will allow the LVA Edge Gateway container running on Azure Percept to connect directly and securely to IoT Central app

5D. Build LVA Edge Gateway docker container for the Azure Percept

Use the following commands to build the LVA Edge Gateway docker container for ARM64v8 and push it to your Azure Container Registry

docker build -f docker/arm64v8.Dockerfile –no-cache . -t lvaedgegateway:2.0-arm64v8
docker login -u <your_acr_name>  -p <your_acr_password> <your_acr_name>.azurecr.io
docker push <your_acr_name>.azurecr.io/lvaedgegateway:2.0-arm64v8

5E. Build YOLOv3 tiny docker container for the Azure Percept

Navigate to live-video-analyticsutilitiesvideo-analysisyolov3-onnx folder and use the following commands to build the Yolov3tiny docker container for ARM64v8 and push it to your Azure Container Registry

docker build -f yolov3-tiny.dockerfile . –no-cache -t lvaextension:http-yolov3-tiny-onnx-v1.0
docker login -u <your_acr_name>  -p <your_acr_password> <your_acr_name>.azurecr.io
docker push <your_acr_name>.azurecr.io/lvaextension:http-yolov3-tiny-onnx-v1.0

5F. Update deployment manifest with Yolov3tiny and AzurePerceptModule and update AMS account name and the LVAEdge section

Navigate to setup/deploymentManifests/deployment.arm64v8.json to add Yolov3tiny and AzurePerceptModule and update the AMS account name and the LVAEdge section as follows:

Note that the App id, App secret and tenant id in the LVA Edge section should come from your AMS account and not IoT Central.

"yolov3tiny": {
   "version": "1.0",
   "type": "docker",
   "status": "running",
   "restartPolicy": "always",
   "settings": {
      "image": "<your_acr_name>.azurecr.io/lvaextension:http-yolov3-tiny-onnx-v1.0",
      "createOptions": "{"HostConfig":{"Privileged":true,"PortBindings":{"80/tcp":[{"HostPort":"8080"}]}}}"
   }
},
"AzurePerceptModule": {
   "version": "1.0",
   "type": "docker",
   "status": "running",
   "restartPolicy": "always",
   "settings": {
      "image": "unifiededgescenarios.azurecr.io/azureeyemodule:0.0.2-arm64v8",
      "createOptions": "{"Cmd":["/bin/bash","-c","./app/inference -s=720p"],"ExposedPorts":{"8554/tcp":{}},"Name":"/rtspserver","HostConfig":{"Binds":["/dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb"],"Privileged":true,"PortBindings":{"8554/tcp":[{"HostPort":"8554"}]}}}"
   }
},
"LvaEdgeGatewayModule": {
   "settings": {
      "image": "<your_acr_name>.azurecr.io/lvaedgegateway:2.6-arm64v8",
      "createOptions": "{"HostConfig":{"PortBindings":{"9070/tcp":[{"HostPort":"9070"}]},"Binds":["/data/storage:/data/storage","/data/media:/data/media/"]}}"
   },
   "type": "docker",
   "env": {
      "lvaEdgeModuleId": {
      "value": "lvaEdge"
   },
   "amsAccountName": {
      "value": "<your_ams_account_name>"
   },
   "lvaEdge": {
   "properties.desired": {
      "applicationDataDirectory": "/var/lib/azuremediaservices",
      "azureMediaServicesArmId": "/subscriptions/<your_Azure_sub_id>/resourceGroups/<your_resource_group_name>/providers/microsoft.media/mediaservices/<your_ams_account_name",
      "aadEndpoint": "https://login.microsoftonline.com",
      "aadTenantId": "<your_tenant_id>",
      "aadServicePrincipalAppId": "<your_APP_ID>",
      "aadServicePrincipalSecret": "<your_app_secret>”
      "aadResourceId": "https://management.core.windows.net/",
      "armEndpoint": "https://management.azure.com/"
   }
}

Step 6: Create device template in IoT central and upload deployment manifest

In your IoT Central application, navigate to Device Templates, and select the LVA Edge Gateway device template. Select Version to create a new template called LVA Edge Gateway v2 and then select Create.  Click on “replace manifest” and upload the deployment manifest file setup/deploymentManifests/deployment.arm64v8.json that we updated in the previous step.  Finally, publish the device template.

Step 7: Create new IoT device using the device template

Navigate to the devices page on the IoT Central app and create a new IoT edge gateway device using the LVA Edge Gateway template we just created in the previous step.

To obtain the device credentials, on the Devices page, select your device. Select Connect.  On the Device connection page, make a note of the ID Scope, the Device ID, and the device Primary Key. You will use these values later for provisioning the Azure Percept (Note: make sure the connection method is set to Shared access signature).

Step 8: Provision the Azure Percept

SSH into Azure Percept and update the provisioning script.

sudo yum install nano
sudo nano /etc/iotedge/config.yaml

Add the following section to config.yaml

# DPS symmetric key provisioning configuration provisioning:
  source: "dps"
  global_endpoint: "https://global.azure-devices-provisioning.net"
  scope_id: "{scope_id}"
  attestation:
    method: "symmetric_key"
    registration_id: "{registration_id}"
    symmetric_key: "{symmetric_key}"

Update scope_id, registration_id (this is the device id) and symmetric_key with the IoT Central app information you noted down in the previous step.

Finally, reboot the Azure Percept and then ssh into it to make sure the following six docker containers are running:

Step 9: Add camera, manage camera settings and start LVA processing

Now that we have created the IoT edge gateway device, we need to add camera as a downstream device. In IoT central, go to your device page and select “Commands” and add camera by providing a camera name, camera id and the RTSP URL and select Run.

On your Azure Percept, you can confirm that the LVA Edge Gateway module received the request to add camera by checking the docker logs:

sudo docker logs -f LvaEdgeGatewayModule 

Navigate to the newly created camera device and select the “manage” tab to modify the camera settings as shown below:

You can see that I have added “person” and “truck” as detection classes with a minimum confidence threshold of 50%.  You can select your own object classes here (object class can be any of the 91 object classes that are supported by the COCO dataset on which our YOLOv3 model was trained).

Finally, navigate to the commands tab of the camera page and click on Run to Start LVA Processing. 

This will start the AMS graph instance on the Azure Percept.  Azure Percept will now start sending AI inference events (in our case a person or a truck detection event) to IoT central (via IoT hub message sink) and the video clips (capturing the person or truck event detections) to your AMS account (AMS sink).

Step 10: View charts and event videos on the camera device dashboard

Navigate to the camera device and select the dashboard tab.  Whenever the camera sees a truck or a person, the YOLOv3 detection model will send the corresponding AI inference events with the detection class and confidence % to IoT central.  The charts on the IoT Central dashboard will update in real-time to reflect these detections.

If you scroll further down on the dashboard, you will see a tile that shows event detections and links to corresponding AMS video streaming URL

The IoT Central application stores the video in Azure Media Services from where you can stream it. You need a video player to play the video stored in Azure Media Services.

On your host machine, run the amp-viewer docker container that has the AMS video player.

docker run -it --rm -e amsAadClientId="<FROM_AZURE_PORTAL>" -e amsAadSecret="<FROM_AZURE_PORTAL>" -e amsAadTenantId="<FROM_AZURE_PORTAL>" -e amsArmAadAudience="https://management.core.windows.net" -e amsArmEndpoint="https://management.azure.com" -e amsAadEndpoint="https://login.microsoftonline.com" -e amsSubscriptionId="<FROM_AZURE_PORTAL>" -e amsResourceGroup="<FROM_AZURE_PORTAL>" -e amsAccountName="<FROM_AZURE_PORTAL>" -p 8094:8094 mcr.microsoft.com/lva-utilities/amp-viewer:1.0-amd64

Once the AMP viewer docker container is running on your host machine, clicking on any of the streaming video URLs will bring up a short clip of the video that was captured for the corresponding event.

Here are a couple of video clips that were captured by my Azure Percept and sent to AMS when it detected a person or a truck in the scene. The first video shows that the Azure Percept detected me as a person and the second video shows that the Azure Percept detected a FedEx truck as it zipped past the scene.  In just a few hours after unboxing the Azure Percept, I was able to set up a quick Proof of Concept of a package delivery monitoring AI application using Azure services and my Inseego 5G MiFi ® M2000 mobile hotspot!

Note: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect an official position of Inseego Corp.

Friday Five: Azure Defender, Xamarin Tips, More!

by Contributed | May 7, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

3 Ways to Pass Data Between Azure ML Pipeline Steps

Vlad Iliescu is an AI MVP, public speaker, storyteller, music lover and uke player. Hailing from Romania, Vlad is Partner and Head of AI at Strongbytes, a company with a strong focus on building software products around well-operationalized machine learning models, and the co-founder of the Romanian AI conference NDR. For more on Vlad, check out his blog and Twitter @vladiliescu

Download Files bytes by bytes in the Background with Xamarin iOS

Damien Doumer is a software developer and Microsoft MVP in development technologies, who from Cameroon and currently based in France. He plays most often with ASP.Net Core and Xamarin, and builds mobile apps and back-ends. He often blogs, and he likes sharing content on his blog at https://doumer.me. Though he’s had to deal with other programming languages and several frameworks, he prefers developing in C# with the .Net framework. Damien’s credo is “Learn, Build, Share and Innovate”. Follow him on Twitter @Damien_Doumer.

Security by Design with #Azure Security Center and Azure Defender

James van den Berg has been working in ICT with Microsoft Technology since 1987. He works for the largest educational institution in the Netherlands as an ICT Specialist, managing datacenters for students. He’s proud to have been a Cloud and Datacenter Management since 2011, and a Microsoft Azure Advisor for the community since February this year. In July 2013, James started his own ICT consultancy firm called HybridCloud4You, which is all about transforming datacenters with Microsoft Hybrid Cloud, Azure, AzureStack, Containers, and Analytics like Microsoft OMS Hybrid IT Management. Follow him on Twitter @JamesvandenBerg and on his blog here.

Creating Teams Meeting Connected Power Apps

Vesku Nopanen is a Principal Consultant in Office 365 and Modern Work and passionate about Microsoft Teams. He helps and coaches customers to find benefits and value when adopting new tools, methods, ways of working and practices into the daily work-life equation. He focuses especially on Microsoft Teams and how it can change organizations’ work. He lives in Turku, Finland. Follow him on Twitter: @Vesanopanen

Teams Real Simple with Pictures: Getting Hands on with Bulletins

Chris Hoard is a Microsoft Certified Trainer Regional Lead (MCT RL), Educator (MCEd) and Teams MVP. With over 10 years of cloud computing experience, he is currently building an education practice for Vuzion (Tier 2 UK CSP). His focus areas are Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 and entry-level Azure. Follow Chris on Twitter at @Microsoft365Pro and check out his blog here.

Final 2021 Cloud Security and Compliance Series (CS2) Virtual Conference

by Contributed | May 7, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Tuesday, May 11, 2021, 08:30 AM  – 03:00 PM  (CST) 

This fourth and final virtual installment of the Cloud Security and Compliance Series (CS2) in 2021 will cover best practices for CMMC, DFARS 7012, NIST 800-171 compliance, CUI and ITAR data management. However, as a unique offering, this CS2 Virtual contains several breakout sessions centered around universities and research institutions preparing to meet cloud security requirements associated with the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC). 

In an article recently published by Federal News Network, ”Federal cybersecurity requirements in higher education”,  it is noted that higher education institutions face slightly different challenges than industry, including a deficit of information about CMMC requirements in academic circles. This final virtual conference is timely because it will specifically provide insights on how higher education institutions are protecting CUI and FCI and include the following session highlights:  

• CMMC for Higher Education with Katie Arrington 

• Microsoft Program Updates for CMMC Compliance in Higher Education 

Speakers include leading experts and US Federal stakeholders – such as Katie Arrington, OUSD – multiple university CISOs and IT Directors, and representatives across Microsoft’s Education and Security teams.  Participants will garner insights on the roadmap for various cybersecurity regulations, address security threats, and glean best practices for their organization’s cloud investments (Microsoft GCC & GCC High / Azure Government ). Lastly, Matt Soseman returns to provide a highly focused session on “Meeting CMMC with Microsoft Information Protection (MIP)”. You can see his previous session here. 

See below for a complete list of speakers: 

Find the full agenda and register here: https://info.summit7systems.com/cs2-virtual-4 

Microsoft 365 PnP Community Spotlight: Stefan Bauer

by Contributed | May 7, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Which community project do you maintain? 

pnp/generator-spfx 

How does it help people?   

Allows people to create more advanced SPFx project with support for other frameworks VueJS, Handlebars and Angular Elements. 

What have you been working on lately? 

SPFx 1.12 integration 

What do you do at work? 

 Designer and Solution Architect. 

Why are you a part of the M365 community? 

Because of all the great people. 

What was you first community contribution? 

Make SharePoint 2010 responsive. 

One tip for someone who’d like to start contributing 

Just do it. 

AzUpdate: Azure Architecture Center updates, OneDrive Admin Reports, Hybrid for Linux and more

by Contributed | May 7, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Microsoft has been busy springing up new updates for both Azure Architecture Center and Azure Security Center. OneDrive Sync receives Admin Reports capabilities now in public preview. Azure Hybrid benefits are further being extended for Linux and a corresponding Linux on Azure Microsoft Learn Module of the week is ready to be reviewed on this week’s AzUpdate.

Azure Architecture Center Updates for April 2021

The Azure Architecture Center (AAC) helps you design, build, and operate solutions on Azure. The guidance is based on all aspects of building for the cloud, such as operations, security, reliability, performance, and cost optimization.
 

 
Microsoft has released three new documentation updates this week which would be of interest to IT Professionals:
 

• Azure Automation Update Management – A configuration component of Automation. Windows and Linux computers, both in Azure and on-premises, send assessment information about missing updates to the Log Analytics workspace. Azure Automation then uses that information to create a schedule for automatic deployment of the missing updates.
   


• Managing hybrid workloads using Windows Admin Center – This documentation shares how to design a hybrid Windows Admin Center solution to manage workloads that are hosted on-premises and in Microsoft Azure. The documentation covers both Windows Admin Center deployed to a virtual machine (VM) in Azure and Windows Admin Center deployed to a server (physical or virtual) on-premises.
   


• Azure Automation in a Hybrid environment – This documentation details how to extend automation to on-premises or other cloud providers. It describes the services that must be deployed in Azure to provide automated management and configuration across on-premises or other cloud providers. The same architecture can be applied on Azure virtual machines (VMs) that reside behind a firewall, with outbound connectivity over the 443 TCP port.

Azure Security Center: General Availability and Public Preview updates for April 2021

In April 2021, the following generally available updates and enhancements were made to Azure Security Center:

• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint integration with Azure Defender now supports Windows Server 2019 and Windows 10 Virtual Desktop (WVD)


• Container registry images that have been recently pulled are now rescanned weekly


• Three regulatory compliance standards added: Azure CIS 1.3.0, CMMC Level 3, and New Zealand ISM Restricted


• CMK recommendations moved to best practices security control


• 11 Azure Defender alerts deprecated


• Two recommendations from “Apply system updates” security control were deprecated


• Azure Defender for SQL on machine tile removed from Azure Defender dashboard


• 21 recommendations moved between security controls

The following public preview updates and enhancements made to Azure Security Center for April 2021 include:

• Refreshed resource health page


• Use Azure Defender for Kubernetes to protect hybrid and multi-cloud Kubernetes deployments


• Recommendations to enable Azure Defender for DNS and Resource Manager


• Four new recommendations related to guest configuration

Azure Hybrid Benefit for Linux with RI and VMSS Support now Generally Available

Microsoft recently announced Azure Hybrid Benefit for Linux, extending the ability to easily migrate RHEL and SLES servers to Azure beyond existing pay-as-you-go instances to include support for Azure Reserved Instance (RI) and virtual machine scale set (VMSS). While previous Bring-Your-Own-Subscription cloud migration options available to Red Hat and SUSE customers allowed them to use their pre-existing RHEL and SLES subscriptions in the cloud, Azure Hybrid Benefit for Linux improves upon this with several capabilities unique to Azure making enterprise Linux cloud migration even easier than before.

More informations surrounding the announcement can be found here: Azure Hybrid Benefit for Linux

OneDrive Sync Admin Reports now in Public Preview

Quickly resolve sync issues to help people stay productive.

OneDrive Sync Admin Reports in Microsoft 365 Apps admin center provides more visibility into who in your organization is running the OneDrive Sync client and any errors they might be experiencing. Having insights into what’s happening with OneDrive Sync across your organization can help you proactively reach out to educate people to resolve common issues and improve user experience to help increase OneDrive adoption.

More information can be found here: OneDrive Sync Admin Reports

Community Events

• Microsoft Build – Explore what’s next in tech and the future of hybrid work. Join us May 25-27, 2021 at Microsoft Build.


• Testing in Production – Producer Pierre and Sound Guy Steve are back to share thier livestream learnings


• Hello World – Special guests, content challenges, upcoming events, and daily updates


• 
  

  Microsoft Australia Security Skills Bootcamp (free, online) 17-21 May  

  
  

MS Learn Module of the Week

Linux on Azure

This comprehensive learning path reviews deployment and management of Linux on Azure. Learn about cloud computing concepts, Linux IaaS and PaaS solutions and benefits and Azure cloud services. Discover how to migrate and extend your Linux-based workloads on Azure with improved scalability, security, and privacy. 

This learning path should be explored alongside the Azure Fundamentals part 1: Describe core Azure concepts learning path. If you’re new to cloud computing, consider taking the first learning path in the Azure Fundamentals 6-part learning path series first.
 

Modules include:

• Discuss Azure fundamental concepts


• Introduction to Linux on Azure


• Introduction to Azure virtual machines


• Create a Linux virtual machine in Azure


• Describe core Azure architectural components


• and more …

Learn more here: Linux on Azure
 

Let us know in the comments below if there are any news items you would like to see covered in the next show. Be sure to catch the next AzUpdate episode and join us in the live chat.

Let’s build a timer app for Teams meetings

by Contributed | May 7, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Introduction

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a timer at meetings, so that everybody can see how much time has passed and how much is remaining? A timer for everybody to see. To make this transparent and accessible to everyone, I wanted to build a timer app which you can use in Teams meetings.

And since we all get better at delivering and receiving virtual meetings, workshops and events, we all discover different techniques on delivering content. In a lot of agile techniques, time plays a relevant role. If you’re familiar with agile software development, Scrum in general or Stand-up meetings you know how effective timeboxing can be.

So I build a timer app and made it Microsoft Teams ready :beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes:

I’m gonna share, how I build it, so you can build something similar with the timer control, which caused the whole idea.

You can also just download my sample, I’ve published on M365 PnP Power Platform Samples. You get all the images and all the code to use and improve it (tag me if you did, I’d love to see if this thing can grow ;)). It’s all for free y’know?

I will split this blog into two parts:

1. Building the app


2. Make it available in Microsoft Teams meetings

Prerequisites

To build this app you just need access to the maker portal of PowerApps. You don’t need any data source or premium connectors.

When you want to make the app available in Microsoft Teams meetings you need the administrative rights to upload custom build apps in your Teams.

Any code editor will come in handy (I prefer Visual Studio Code), but don’t worry, you don’t need to know how to write code or anything.

About the app

Before we start, here’s a picture of the finished app.

I build this in the portrait orientation, since I want it to be used in Teams meetings. That means, it has to fit in the meeting side panel.

In the upper half you see a classic timer which shows the remaining time and three buttons: Start, Stop and Reset.

You also have four buttons to set the timer to a certain duration. In this case I went for 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 3 minutes and 5 minutes.

In the lower half you see two things:

1. A slider indicating the remaining time and a bar turning from blue to red as the time runs out.


2. A pie chart divided into quarters to visualize the remaining time

Accessibility Note:

I’d like to make it very clear in the beginning, that the colors are no coincidence. Initially I started with a classic color scheme: red and green. But then I realized that red-green colorblindness is one of the most common visual disorders. I switched the colors to make sure that everybody can see everything on the screen.

On all the Power App applications you can find the checker symbol in the upper right corner. It’s a very easy step to make sure that your product (app or flow or slide or whatever) reaches more people. We want to include everyone, correct? Correct! 

Building the app

We have three steps to set up this app:

1. Build the timer in the upper half of the app.


2. Build the visualization in the lower half of the app.


3. Make it look pretty.

Build the timer in the upper half of the app

At first you start with inserting four things:

• One timer input.


• Three buttons for controlling the timer.


• Four buttons to set the timer.

You will use the buttons to start, stop and reset the timer (think about renaming your controls in the tree view to remain an overview over all your components). Here is how to edit the parts:

Timer input

Start by changing the Duration into a variable. I called it “Dauer” (sorry for the german, but you can call it whatever you like). The timer shows now the duration we put into that variable.  

By default, the timer starts counting upwards, but since we want to show the remaining time, we have to customize the Text property:

Replace the default function

Text(Time(0, 0, Self.Value/1000), “hh:mm:ss”)

with this function

Text(Time(0, 0, (Timer4.Duration-Timer4.Value)/1000), “[$-en-US]mm:ss”) 

Now the timer shows only the minutes and seconds and starts on whatever is written in the variable “Dauer”. And it’s ticking downwards. Not bad.

Buttons to set the timer

Now we have to work further with that variable Dauer we set the timer on.

You add four buttons and change the text to “10 sec”, “30 sec”, “3 min” and “5 min” (remember to use the “”, because the text is just a string ;))

The magic happens on the OnSelect property. Set it for each button to the following function:

10 sec button:   UpdateContext({Dauer:10000})

30 sec button:   UpdateContext({Dauer:30000})

3 min button:    UpdateContext({Dauer:180000})

5 min button:    UpdateContext({Dauer:300000})

The timer control works with milliseconds, so you have to type your desired duration in milliseconds. When you click one of the buttons, you change the variable “Dauer” to the specific value and since the timer value show whatever the variable Dauer is set to, you can choose the duration.

Now let’s take a look at the three buttons we want to use to control the timer.

Start Button

We set the OnSelect property to this function:

 UpdateContext({ClockTicking: true})

We are initializing a variable named ClockTicking and set the value to true. When we’re already on it, we use the same variable for the Stop Button.

Stop Button

We set the OnSelect property to this function:

UpdateContext({ClockTicking: true})

This way we have buttons to control the variable here. Logically, we have to tell our Timer input that it has to use this variable to start and to stop.

Timer input

Change the Start property to ClockTicking 

Since we want the timer to not automatically reset at the end, but to control it with the button, we set the OnTimerEnd property with this function:

 UpdateContext({ResetIt:false}); UpdateContext({ResetIt: true})

Now we have a timer that can be set to the values of the four buttons on the right side AND we can control it with three buttons. Neat!

Next stop: the visualization.

Build the visualization in the lower half of the app

We have two parts here: the slider on the right side and the pie chart on the left. We’re going to start with the slider.

Slider Control

To build this, start to insert the slider control.

Now it’s time to flip it over.

Change the Layout property to  Vertical

Set the Max property to Dauer/1000. This way it shows, whatever  Dauer  is.

And to link the position of the handle to what your timer is showing set the Default property to  (Timer1.Duration-Timer1.Value)/1000 

Now you already have a slider whose handle slowly moves down while your timer counts down.

How cool is that?

Before we make it pretty, we set up the last element.

The pie chart

This chart consists of five icons, put on top of each other. You will need the following icons:

• Circle (2x)


• Quarter circle (1x)


• Half circle (1x)


• Three-quarter circle (1x)

You need to layer these in the following order:

Set the Fill property to of the top four elements to some blue, the full circle at the bottom is going to be red. The exact colors don’t matter at this point. We will beautify the app in the last part, don’t worry.

Don’t worry about the looks, we will change them in the last chapter.

As the timer and the slider count down, you will, step by step, let the single icons disappear by setting the Visible property to the following function:

Full circle on top:          If(Slider1.Value >=22.5,true,false) 

Three-quarter circle:     If(Slider1.Value >=15,true,false) 

Half circle:                     If(Slider1.Value >=7.5,true,false) 

Quarter circle:               If(Slider1.Value >0,true,false) 

When the timer reaches the value 22.5 the full circle on top will disappear, revealing the Three-quarter circle. That indicates that only three quarter of the time remains. It is important to place the circles on top of each other.

That is all you need to do. What’s left to do is, to make this whole thing pretty. Are you ready?

Make it look pretty

I will split this part, again, in three parts:

1. The timer in the upper part


2. The slider and the chart in the lower part


3. The background

The timer in the upper part

I added a picture of a timer I’ve made myself. You can download and use it with the whole sample from the PnP Power Apps samples github repository.

You click on Insert > Media > picture to use that picture in your app. Now place it in the middle of the screen (Power Apps helps you with snapping it to the middle if you drag it near the middle).

Now you can remove the border and background from your…

• Timer input


• The Start Button


• The Stop Button


• And the Reset Button

In the Timer properties, change these values to transparent:

I did the same for the Start, Stop and Reset Button and placed them in the middle of a circle icon, I’ve added (Insert > Icon > Circle). Place the button over the circle icon and align it in the middle and in the center. You do that by right-clicking on the button and use the align feature. With Reorder you can also place the icon under the button.

Now select the icon and the button and group them (Ctrl+G), so you can place them in the spare holes of the timer picture.

In the end I group the whole timer pictures and all controls and labels to place them easily.

The slider and the chart in the lower part

I set the size and position values of the circles like this, but you can place them wherever you like:

Now for the slider. Set the size and position values like this:

Set the Handle size value to 50.

Set the Rail value to 20.

The four-colored scale behind the timer are four rectangle icons that I placed over each other.

The colors

Now there is one last step, you have to set all the correct colors, And of course, I have another little trick, if you are lazy (like me).

I like to set all the colors I’m going to use in an app in a variable. Then I can set the Fill or color value for each element to the name of the variable and don’t have to remember the hexcode for every color over and over again.

You want to set those variables on the OnStart property of the app itself, so the colors will show when, you start the app.

Here is the function that I used:

Concurrent(
    Set(
        Background_color,
        ColorValue("#f4f4fc")
    ),
    Set(
        Font_color,
        ColorValue("#484644")
    ),
    Set(
        Element_background,
        ColorValue("#e2e2f6")
    ),
    Set(
        Element_color,
        ColorValue("#484644")
    ),
    Set(
        Button_hover_Fill,
        ColorValue("#464775")
    ),
    Set(
        TheRed,
        ColorValue("#cc4a31")
    ),
    Set(
        Blurple_lightish,
        ColorValue("#6264a7")
    ),
    Set(
        Blurple_light,
        ColorValue("#8b8cc7")
    ),
    Set(
        Blurple_medium,
        ColorValue("#6264a7")
    ),
    Set(
        Blurple_darkish,
        ColorValue("#464775")
    ),
    Set(
        Blurple_dark,
        ColorValue("#33344a")
    )
)

 Here is an overview on variables and their purposes. 

The result should look a lot like this:

As you can see, I added Fluent UI Icons on the buttons of the timer (if you don’t know how to use them, have a look at this awesome blog from Luise Freese), four lines around the circle to indicate quarters and halves and an arrow to make it look nice.

The lines around the circles are arrow icons.

The round arrow, is an image I uploaded. You can find it in my sample on PnP Power Platform Samples (you can also find the timer image and the icons. Everything’s included).

Next steps

Of course, I have a few more ideas in mind. I’m planning on adding two more steps next:

1. I would like to set the timer by just typing a duration into it. Or into a label somewhere around. I want to set the timer to any duration I like, instead of choosing from just four buttons. But I have no idea how to do that. Help! :beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes:


2. I would like to visualize the circle in the lower half differently. Currently it disappears at three quarters of the elapsed time, at half and at three quarters. I would like to see the circle count down a little bit smoother. But for this I still lack the idea for the implementation

I’d love to hear what you think about it. Dou you like it? Do you think it’s going to be helpful for yourself or your business? Do you think I should add a few more things?

SharePoint Framework Community Call Recording – 6th of May, 2021

by Contributed | May 7, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

SharePoint Framework Special Interest Group (SIG) bi-weekly community call recording from May 6th is now available from the Microsoft 365 Community YouTube channel at http://aka.ms/m365pnp-videos. You can use SharePoint Framework for building solutions for Microsoft Teams and for SharePoint Online.

Call summary:

Preview the new Microsoft 365 Extensibility look book gallery co-developed by Microsoft Teams and Sharepoint engineering.  Download showcase apps, samples, and documentation.   Register now for May trainings on Sharing-is-caring  New releases in this call – CLI for Microsoft 365 v3.9.0, Reusable SPFx React Controls v3.1.0 and Property Controls v3.1.0 and SharePoint Framework v1.12.1. Also, a look at what’s ahead for SPFx – Microsoft Viva Connections, Teams improvements, tooling updates, and Store modernization. 

There were six PnP SPFx samples delivered in last 2 weeks, details below.  Great work!    

Latest project updates include:  (Bold indicates update from previous report 2 weeks ago) 

The host of this call is Patrick Rodgers (Microsoft) @mediocrebowler.  Q&A takes place in chat throughout the call.

Thanks everybody for being part of the Community and helping making things happen. You are absolutely awesome!

Actions:

• Reserve date – SharePoint Monthly community call – 11^th of May 8 AM PDT | https://aka.ms/sp-call


• Register for Sharing is Caring Events:
  
  
  
  • First Time Contributor Session – May 24^th (EMEA, APAC & US friendly times available)
  
  
  • Community Docs Session – May
  
  
  • PnP – SPFx Developer Workstation Setup – May 13^th  
  
  
  • PnP SPFx Samples – Solving SPFx version differences using Node Version Manager – May 20^th
  
  
  • AMA (Ask Me Anything) – Tech Community – May 11^th
  
  
  • AMA (Ask Me Anything) – Microsoft Graph & MGT – June
  
  
  • First Time Presenter – May 25^th
  
  
  • More than Code with VSCode – May 27^th  
  
  
  • Maturity Model Practitioners – May 18^th
  
  
  • PnP Office Hours – 1:1 session – Register
  
  
  
  


• Download the recurrent invite for this call – https://aka.ms/spdev-spfx-call

Demos:

1. 
   

   Adding support to add video with a text to modern pages with this video banner web part – from the Properties Pane, select a video, add banner title text and color it, adjust video brightness and banner height.  This elegantly coded modern web part was built with SPFx using standard PnP property pane controls in less than 3 hours.   Add the web part to top of your pages.   The web part has only one functional component named: VideoBackground. 

   
   


2. 
   

   Building company stories web part for story experience – this web part allows you to add images to a SharePoint List, and renders (cycles) them with related text on page similar to Instagram Stories as a way to engage social media adept employees. Text, images, and author details stored in a SharePoint list.   Uses an existing open-source React component called “react-insta-stories” and several Microsoft Graph Toolkit components.  Sample on github.   

   
   


3. 
   

   Building react groups and teams web part for aggregating detailed information for end users – this web part helps logged-in user quickly find their Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups sites/content.  For selected site, options to go to site, mail, calendar, or Planner.  Match site color theme with one click.  Filter by public, private or all Groups/Teams.   The main React component is MirrosoftGroups.tsx.   A brilliant code walk-through by first time presenter Alison Collins. 

   
   

• 
  

  Print List Item Command View Set – Ari Gunawan | @arigunawan3023

  
  

SPFx web part samples:  (https://aka.ms/spfx-webparts)

• Teams Membership Updater – Nick Brown | @techienickb


• OneDrive Finder – André Lage | @aaclage


• Organization Chart – João Mendes | @joaojmendes


• Remote Event Receiver Manager – Dan Toft | @tanddant


• All Microsoft 365 Groups and Teams – Alison Collins and Sam Collins | @Samc148

Thank you for your great work.  Samples are often showcased in Demos.    

Agenda items:

• Latest updates on SharePoint Framework – Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft) | @vesajuvonen – 5:24


• PnPjs Client-Side Libraries – Julie Turner (Sympraxis Consulting) | @jfj1997 – 7:49


• CLI for Microsoft 365 – Patrick Rodgers (Microsoft) | @mediocrebowler – 9:22


• PnP SPFx Controls – Patrick Rodgers (Microsoft) | @mediocrebowler – 10:27


• PnP SPFx Generator – Patrick Rodgers (Microsoft) | @mediocrebowler – 11:57


• PnP SPFx Samples – Hugo Bernier (Tahoe Ninjas) | @bernierh – 12:18

Demos:

• 
  

  Demo:  Adding support to add video with a text to modern pages with this video banner web part – Mohamed Derhalli (BDO Canada) | @MohamedDerhalli | Deck – 13:13

  
  


• 
  

  Demo:  Building company stories web part for story experience – Luis Mañez (ClearPeople) | @luismanez | Deck – 18:39

  
  


• 
  

  Demo:  Building react groups and teams web part for aggregating detailed information for end users – Alison Collins & Sam Collins (Coupled Technology) | @samc148 | Deck – 29:39

  
  

Resources:

Additional resources around the covered topics and links from the slides.

• The presentation used for this community call


• 
  

  Blog post – Introducing React Video Banner Web Part 

  
  


• 
  

  Repo – Video Banner 

  
  


• 
  

  Blog post – Community sample: Engage your users with SharePoint stories/reels 

  
  


• 
  

  Repo – Company Stories Webpart 

  
  


• 
  

  Alison’s Blog:  Graphgod 

  
  


• 
  

  Repo – All Microsoft 365 Groups and Teams with SPFx 

  
  


• Framework – v1.12.1 npm install –g @microsoft/generator-sharepoint@next


• Gallery – Microsoft 365 Extensibility look book gallery   


• PnP Weekly – Episode 125 with Business Applications MVP guest Sandy Ussia (Lightning Tools ) | @SandyU | video | podcast


• Viva Connections https://aka.ms/VivaConnections 

General Resources:

• CLI for Microsoft 365 v3


• CodeTour


• Sharing is Caring | aka.ms/sharing-is-caring


• Tools – PnP Modern Search v4  | https://aka.ms/pnp-search


• M365 PnP site | aka.ms/m365pnp


• SharePoint Starter Kit v2


• Blog: “A Lap Around Microsoft Graph Toolkit” blog series


• New Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices (PnP) team model with new community leads


• Microsoft 365 Community Content (non-Dev docs)


• PnP SPFx web part samples


• PnP SPFx extension samples


• GitHub PnPjs


• Tutorials – Getting started with SharePoint Framework v1.10 Tutorials (12 videos)


• Tutorials – Getting started with SharePoint Framework v1.10 Extensions (6 videos)


• Docs – Tutorials and training material for SharePoint Development


• SPFX Training Package


• SPFx Web Parts


• SPFx Extensions


• SPFx Library Components


• Documentation – PnPjs v2 documentation


• Link – Microsoft 365 developer training


• Link – Office 365 Developer Program


• Latest documentation on SharePoint Framework


• Found an issue with SharePoint Dev? – please let us know at http://aka.ms/spdev-issues


• Reusable web part property controls


• Reusable react controls for SharePoint Framework solutions


• Reusable controls webcast


• Office 365 CLI


• PnP SPFx Yeoman Generator – Extends the out-of-the-box experience with open-source community capabilities


• SharePoint Dev UserVoice – for new feature requests

Other mentioned topics:

• SharePoint dev documentation


• SharePoint dev issue list

Upcoming calls | Recurrent invites:

• SharePoint monthly call – May 11^th at 8:00am PDT | https://aka.ms/sp-call


• Microsoft Graph call – June 1^st at 8:00 am PDT | https://aka.ms/microsoftgraphcall


• Office add-in monthly call – May 12^th at 8:00 am PDT | https://aka.ms/officeaddinscall


• M365 General Dev call – May 13^th at 7:00 am PDT | https://aka.ms/m365-dev-sig


• Adaptive Cards monthly call – May 13^th at 9:00 am PDT | https://aka.ms/adaptivecardscommunitycall


• Microsoft Teams monthly call – May 18^th at 8:00 am PDT | https://aka.ms/microsoftteamscommunitycall


• Power Apps monthly call – May 19^th at 8:00 am PDT | https://aka.ms/PowerAppsMonthlyCall


• SharePoint Framework call – May 20^th at 7:00 am PDT | https://aka.ms/spdev-spfx-call


• Microsoft Identity Platform – May 20^th at 9:00 am PDT | https://aka.ms/IDDevCommunityCalendar 


• Microsoft Graph call – June 1^st at 8:00 am PDT | https://aka.ms/microsoftgraphcall

PnP SharePoint Framework Special Interest Group bi-weekly calls are targeted at anyone who is interested in the JavaScript-based development towards Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, and also on-premises. SIG calls are used for the following objectives.

• SharePoint Framework engineering update from Microsoft


• Talk about PnP JavaScript Core libraries


• Office 365 CLI Updates


• SPFx reusable controls


• PnP SPFx Yeoman generator


• Share code samples and best practices


• Possible engineering asks for the field – input, feedback, and suggestions


• Cover any open questions on the client-side development


• Demonstrate SharePoint Framework in practice in Microsoft Teams or SharePoint context


• You can download a recurrent invite from https://aka.ms/spdev-spfx-call. Welcome and join the discussion!

“Sharing is caring”

Microsoft 365 PnP team, Microsoft – 7th of May 2021