New transactable offer from Dataiku in Azure Marketplace

by Contributed | Jun 1, 2021 | Technology

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

Microsoft partners like Dataiku deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Azure Marketplace. Learn about the offer below: Dataiku: Enterprise-Ready AI: Deploy a production-ready multi-node instance of Dataiku in your Microsoft Azure environment for enterprise use with a commercial license. Dataiku’s collaborative AI platform benefits data scientists and business analysts alike with its automation capabilities, smart data preparation, accessible machine learning, and built-in governance.

ARM Template Specs now GA!

by Contributed | Jun 1, 2021 | Technology

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

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Template Specs

Template Specs is a new resource type for storing ARM templates in your resource groups for faster sharing, deployment, and role-based access control (RBAC) on those Templates shared within an organization. Template Specs addresses today’s biggest challenges around ARM template management, storage, and access.

The Problem: Sharing ARM templates across an organization is challenging, requiring more management steps of the external or internal storage from which they are shared.

• Sharing: ensuring the right teams within your organization have access becomes very tedious as you cannot leverage Azure RBAC on the ARM templates you want to share.


• Management: providing teams with the latest ARM templates in a consistent and versioned way. 

Why Template Specs?

As a native solution, Template Specs will enable users to bring all their ARM templates to Azure as a resource and securely store and share them within an Azure tenant. 

The Solution: 1^st Party secure storage and management of ARM templates within Azure.

• Sharing: Who can access a Template Spec can be defined using Azure RBAC.


• Management: Template Specs can be versioned within the same resource, ensuring users can always access the latest iterations of an ARM template (or templates) stored in a Template Spec.

What’s New Since Public Preview?

New API version 2021-05-01. Thanks to all the customer feedback during our public preview, we were able to close 3 issues, fix 5 bugs, and make the decision to change the names of the ‘template’ and ‘artifacts’ properties:

What’s Coming Soon Post-GA?

• Bicep integration: ‘az ts create’ with bicep files.


• Built-in template specs support.


• Support for


• GA version of Azure CLI and PowerShell with breaking changes being released by end of May.
  
  
  
  • Due to the property renames highlighted above, you will see new property names when you GET a Template Spec version. This could be a breaking change if you are dependent on querying these properties in a script. This will not change how Template Specs are created or updated when using Azure Portal, Azure CLI, and PowerShell, but it will change how they are created via REST/ARM Templates/Bicep.
  
  
  • If you’d like to test the latest Az PowerShell cmdlets early, they are available in PowerShell Gallery
  
  
  
  

Template Spec Reference and Docs:

• Template specs overview – Azure Resource Manager | Microsoft Docs


• Create a template spec with linked templates – Azure Resource Manager | Microsoft Docs


• Deploy a template spec as a linked template – Azure Resource Manager | Microsoft Docs


• Link templates for deployment – Azure Resource Manager | Microsoft Docs


• Convert portal template to template spec – Azure Resource Manager | Microsoft Docs

Note:  Template Specs can be created with an ARM template, but we strongly recommend using Portal, PowerShell or CLI for creating Template Specs. Microsoft.Resources/templateSpecs/versions – ARM template reference | Microsoft Docs

Creating and Deploying a Template Spec Resource

A Template Spec is a resource that contains an array of Template Spec versions which consists of a root template and any number of linked templates. A Template Spec can be created using the Portal, PowerShell, Azure CLI, REST API, or ARM Template. To help visualize a Template Spec create, here are some examples of what it would look like in the Azure CLI:

Creating a Template Spec using Azure CLI

To create a Template Spec, use the az ts create command to package an ARM into the Template Spec resource.

Required properties:

• –name: The name for the Template Spec resource.


• –version: The version number or name of the version being created.


• –location: The Azure region for the Template Spec resource.


• –template-file: The ARM template to be packaged into a template spec.

Creating and Deploying a Template Spec with Linked Templates using Azure CLI

To create a Template Spec with linked templates inside it, we need the following:

1. Create main template (e.g. azuredeploy.json) that deploys linked templates, to be passed into the az ts create command as a template file.


2. Create N number of deployment resources with linked templates referenced using the relativePath property within the templateLink object.
   

    

   
   

In this example the linked templates are stored in a subfolder called linkedTemplates, which is in the same path as the main template file. The relativePath property is relative to the template file where relativePath is declared. The relativePath property can take any of the following values:

• ./linkedTemplates/storagelinkedTemplate.json


• /linkedTemplates/storagelinkedTemplate.json


• linkedTemplates/storagelinkedTemplate.json

Note: relativePath can also be used deploy remote linked templates given all template files are staged together and available via remote URI, such as GitHub or Azure storage. The main template is called by using URI and all linked templates referenced as relative to that main template will have a URI constructed using the main template URI and the relativePath specified. This feature requires api version 2020-10-01 or greater. To learn more about this feature, please refer to Link templates for deployment – Azure Resource Manager | Microsoft Docs.

3. Run the az ts create command to create or update a template spec version. This command packages the linked templates added via templateLink as linked templates in your Template Spec version.
   

    

   
   

This command packages the template file azuredeploy.json into the main template of the Template Spec version webAppSpec-1.0 and all linked templates specified into the linkedTemplates[] array of the Template Spec object.

4. Deploy the Template Spec by passing in its resource ID using the  az deployment group create command.

First, we need to get the ID of the Template Spec resource created, and this can be done easily in the Azure CLI by using the az ts show command.

Required properties:

• –name: The name for the Template Spec resource


• –version: The version number or name of the version being created.


• –resource-group: The name of the resource group to be used for deployment.


• –query: The property name to query for in the template spec object.

After storing the resource ID of the template spec into a variable, run the command az deployment group create and pass in the variable into the –template-spec parameter 

Required properties:

• –resource-group: The name of the resource group to be used for deployment.


• –template-spec: The ID of the template spec resource to be deployed.

This command deploys the Template Spec and its linked templates into the specified resource group.

5. Verify the contents of a Template Spec by running the az ts export command that downloads a specified Template Spec version into an –output-folder in your local file system.

This command exports the specified Template Spec’s main template (e.g. webAppSpec.JSON) and a linked templates folder with all its corresponding linked templates. The contents of a Template Spec version can also be seen using the Azure Portal.

Deploying a Template Spec as Linked Template using ARM Template with ID Reference

A Template Spec resource can also be referenced using the templateLink property and specifying the id of the template spec:

References

• Template Spec CLI reference


• Template Spec ARM reference


• Template Spec PowerShell reference


• Template Spec REST API reference


• Template Spec Quick Start Tutorial

Introducing Question Answering in Public Preview

by Contributed | May 31, 2021 | Technology

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

QnA Maker is an Azure Cognitive Service that allows you to create a conversational layer over your data in minutes. As part of our AI at Scale initiative across Microsoft, we are making the latest breakthroughs in natural language understanding available across our products and within our Azure Services portfolio. Powered by our Turing natural language model, we are excited to introduce the new Custom Question Answering feature (public preview) with Text Analytics. Alongside Custom question answering, we are also introducing a new Prebuilt Question answering capability that lets users extract relevant answers to questions from a given passage of text. 

Overview 

• Custom question answering supports all capabilities introduced with QnA Maker managed. 


• You can add unstructured files to your knowledge bases with Custom question answering. 


• We are also introducing Prebuilt question answering capability that lets users extract relevant answers to questions from a given passage of text. 

Enabling Custom question answering feature 

As Custom question answering is now a feature in Text Analytics, users should first visit the Text Analytics resource create blade on Azure portal. They will have the option to enable Custom question answering feature within the resource. Once the Custom question answering feature is selected, the user will update all details related to the feature in the create blade. On creation, a new Text Analytics resource with Custom question answering feature is deployed. 

If users don’t enable the feature on resource creation, they will have the option to enable the feature later through the Features tab of the Text Analytics resource blade. They will also be able to disable the Custom question answering feature via the Features tab. 

Support for unstructured documents 

With Custom question answering (preview), we are introducing the ability to add unstructured files to the knowledgebases. Now the content author can ingest entire documents in the knowledgebase and when a user query is passed, a response is returned on searching the documents ingested. The content authors don’t need to manage QnA pairs for unstructured documents.  

Take for instance the following unstructured document introducing Surface Products: SurfaceBlog. The user can ingest this document in the knowledge base and test for user queries from the text. We tested this with a few queries as shown below. 

Prebuilt Question Answering 

Prebuilt question answering provides users the capability to answer questions over a passage of text without having to create knowledge bases and manage additional storage. This functionality is provided as an API and can be used without having to learn the details about QnA Maker. Given a user query and a block of text/passage the API will return an answer and precise answer (if available). We currently support the ability to pass text from 5 documents. 

API Updates 

We have added a new preview release for v5.0 APIs: V5.0-preview.2. Users should access this version for unstructured documents support and pre–built question answering.  

Pricing 

Custom question answering feature is free in public preview. However, users will be charged for Azure cognitive search they add to the feature as per the tier selected. 

Note to existing QnA Maker managed users 

1. QnA Maker managed has been re-introduced as Custom question answering feature in Text Analytics. 


2. Going forward users will not be able to create a new QnA Maker managed resource. All new resources can be created by enabling Custom question answering feature with Text Analytics. 


3. All existing QnA Maker managed (preview) resources continue to work as before. The resource settings, portal, endpoints, keys, SDK, etc. pertaining to existing QnA Maker managed resources will work as is. There is no action required from the user at this point in time.  


4. We will continue to support v5.0-preview.1 for existing QnA Maker managed customers. 


5. If the users choose to migrate to Custom Question answering, they can do so. To migrate from QnA Maker managed to Custom question answering, users can create a Text Analytics resource with Custom question answering feature enabled and migrate the knowledge bases from QnA Maker managed to the Text Analytics resource. 


6. Custom question answering (preview) continues to be offered in free public preview. 


7. Custom question answering (preview) is available in the following regions: 
   
   
   
   • South Central US 
   
   
   • North Europe 
   
   
   • Australia East
   
   
   
   

References 

• Set up a QnA Maker service – QnA Maker – Azure Cognitive Services | Microsoft Docs 


• Configure QnA Maker service – QnA Maker – Azure Cognitive Services | Microsoft Docs 


• Manage knowledge bases – QnA Maker – Azure Cognitive Services | Microsoft Docs 


• Limits and boundaries – QnA Maker – Azure Cognitive Services | Microsoft Docs 


• Prebuilt API