Microsoft 365 PnP Community – May 2021 update

Microsoft 365 PnP Community – May 2021 update

by | May 11, 2021 | Technology

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

may-pnp-summary-available.png

 

Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices (PnP) Community April 2021 update is out with a summary of the latest guidance, samples, and solutions from Microsoft or from the community for the community. This article is a summary of all the different areas and topics around the community work we do around Microsoft 365 ecosystem during the past month. Thank you for being part of this success. Sharing is caring!

 

What is Microsoft 365 Community (PnP)

Microsoft 365 PnP is a nick-name for Microsoft 365 platform community activities coordinated by numerous teams inside of the Microsoft 365 engineering organizations. PnP is a community-driven open source initiative where Microsoft and external community members are sharing their learning’s around implementation practices for Microsoft 365.

 

Topics vary from Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint. Active development and contributions happen in GitHub by providing contributions to the samples, reusable components, and documentation for different areas. PnP is owned and coordinated by Microsoft engineering, but this is work done by the community for the community.

 

 

The initiative is facilitated by Microsoft, but we have multiple community members as part of the PnP team (see team details in end of the article) and we are always looking to extend the PnP team with more community members. Notice that since this is open source community initiative, so there’s no SLAs for the support for the samples provided through GitHub. Obviously, all officially released components and libraries are under official support from Microsoft.

 

Some key statistics around Microsoft 365 PnP initiative from April 2021:

 

 

Most viewed videos in the Microsoft 365 Community (PnP) YouTube channel during April 2021:

 

  1. Getting started on deploying Viva Connections for Microsoft Teams desktop | 10,040
  2. Microsoft Teams community call – April 2021 | 6,917
  3. Building a beautifully designed Intranet with SharePoint – latest design and branding capabilities | Cathy Dew (Microsoft) & Katie Swanson (Microsoft) | 3,235
  4. Getting started with Site Designs in SharePoint Online – Laura Kokkarinen (Sulava) | 3,085
  5. Working with Microsoft Lists (webinar) – Harini Saladi, Miceile Barrett, Chakkaradeep Chandran and Mark Kashman | 2,930
  6. Your intranet is now in Microsoft Teams with Microsoft Viva Connections | 2,195
  7. Introducing: New Employee Onboarding – a Microsoft Teams app template | Nidhi Sharma (Microsoft) | 2,109
  8. Architecting Your Intranet | Melissa Torres (Microsoft) | 2,104
  9. SharePoint Framework Tutorial 1 – HelloWorld WebPart | 1,856
  10. Microsoft Teams Meeting Questionnaire App with SharePoint Framework | Nanddeep Nachan | 1,717

 

Most viewed videos in the Microsoft 365 Developer YouTube channel during April 2021:

 

  1. Authenticate and connect with Microsoft Graph – June 2019 | 1,316
  2. Build Outlook Add-ins that integrate your solution seamlessly into your users’ Outlook experience​ | Juan Balmori, Hitesh Manwar – 1,197
  3. An introduction to Microsoft Graph for developers – Part I – Getting started – October 2019 | 1,175
  4. Demo: Getting started with Power Apps Portals | Brian Knight (Pragmatic Works) | 929
  5. Getting Started with Microsoft Graph and Application Registration | 926
  6. Build and Office add-in using modern JavaScript tools and technologies | 839
  7. Getting Started with Microsoft Graph | 817
  8. Create interactive conversational bots for Microsoft Teams | 803
  9. Accessing Files with Microsoft Graph | 754
  10. Develop multi-tenant applications with Microsoft Identity Platform – April 2020 | 725

 

Main resources around Microsoft 365 Community:

 

 

Latest Dev Blog posts

Here are the latest blog posts and announcements around Microsoft 365 development topics from https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blogs.

 

 

Latest community posts at https://aka.ms/m365pnp/community/blog

 

 

Community call recording blog posts:

 

 

PnP Weekly video blog / podcast shows:

 

 

We highly recommend also subscribing on the Microsoft 365 Developer Podcast show, which is a great show covering also latest development in the Microsoft 365 platform from developer and extensibility perspective.

 

Community Calls

There are numerous different community calls on different areas. All calls are being recorded and published either from Microsoft 365 Developer or Microsoft 365 Community (PnP) YouTube channels. Recordings are typically released within the following 24 hours after the call. You can find a detailed agenda and links to specific covered topics on blog post articles at the Microsoft 365 developer blog when the videos are published.

 

 

If you are interested in doing a live demo of your solution or sample in these calls, please do reach out to the PnP  Team members (contacts later in this post) and they are able to help with the right setup. These are great opportunities to gain visibility for example for existing MVPs, for community members who would like to be MVPs in the future or any community member who’d like to share some of their learnings.

 

Microsoft 365 Community (PnP) Ecosystem in GitHub

Most of the community driven repositories are in the PnP GitHub organization as samples are not product specifics as they can contain numerous different solutions or the solution works in multiple different applications.

 

  • PnPjs – PnPjs Framework repository
  • CLI Microsoft 365 – Cross-OS command line interface to manage Office 365 tenant settings
  • generator-spfx – Open-source Yeoman generator which extends the out-of-the-box Yeoman generator for SharePoint with additional capabilities
  • generator-teams – Open-source Microsoft Teams Yeoman generator – Bots, Messaging Extensions, Tabs, Connectors, Outgoing Web hooks and more
  • teams-dev-samples – Microsoft Teams targeted samples from community and Microsoft engineering
  • Sharing is Caring – Getting started on learning how to contribute and be active on the community from GitHub perspective.
  • pnpcore – The PnP Core SDK is an SDK designed to work against Microsoft 365 with Microsoft Graph API first approach
  • powershell –  PnP PowerShell module which is PowerShell Core module targeted for Microsoft 365
  • pnpframework – PnP Framework is a .Net Standard 2.0 library targeting Microsoft 365 containing the PnP Provisioning engine and a ton of other useful extensions
  • https://github.com/pnp/teams-dev-samples – Samples around the Microsoft Teams development models from Microsoft and from the community
  • sp-dev-fx-webparts – Client-side web part samples from community and Microsoft engineering
  • sp-dev-fx-extensions – Samples and tutorial code around SharePoint Framework Extensions
  • sp-dev-fx-library-components – Samples and tutorial code around the SharePoint Framework library components
  • sp-starter-kit – Starter kit solution for SharePoint modern experiences
  • sp-dev-fx-vs-extension – Open source Visual Studio IDE extension for creating SharePoint Framework solutions in the Visual Studio 2015 or 2017
  • sp-dev-build-extensions – Different build extensions like gulp tasks and gulp plugins from the community and engineering around SharePoint development
  • sp-dev-solutions – Repository for more polished and fine-tuned reusable solutions build with SharePoint Framework
  • sp-dev-samples – Repository for other samples related on the SharePoint development topics – WebHooks etc.
  • sp-dev-fx-controls-react – Reusable content controls for SharePoint Framework solutions build with React
  • sp-dev-fx-property-controls – Reusable property pane controls to be used in web parts
  • sp-dev-list-formatting – Open-source community-driven repository for the column and view formatting JSON definitions
  • sp-dev-site-scripts – Open-source community-driven repository for community Site Designs and Site Scripts
  • sp-dev-modernization – Tooling and guidance around modernizing SharePoint from classic to modern
  • sp-power-platform-solutions – Solution and sample code for SharePoint Power Platform solutions
  • powerfx-samples – Samples that demonstrate different usage patterns for the Power Fx low-code programming language
  • powerapps-samples – Samples that demonstrate different usage patterns for Power Apps
  • powerautomate-samples – Samples that demonstrate different usage patterns for Power Automate
  • powerva-samples – Samples that demonstrate different usage patterns for Power Virtual Agents

 

All SharePoint specific repositories or services supported directly by Microsoft are located in the SharePoint GitHub organization

 

PnP specific repositories – solution designs and tooling

 

  • PnP – Main repository for SP add-in, Microsoft Graph etc. samples
  • PnP-Sites-Core – Office Dev PnP Core component
  • PnP-PowerShell – Office Dev PnP PowerShell Cmdlets
  • PnP-Tools – Tools and scripts targeted more for IT Pro’s and for on-premises for SP2013 and SP2016
  • PnP-Provisioning-Schema – PnP Provisioning engine schema repository
  • PnP-IdentityModel – Open source replacement of Microsoft.IdentityModel.Extensions.dll

 

Repositories in the GitHub Microsoft Search organization controlled by the PnP initiative

 

 

Other related resources from GitHub

 

What’s supportability story around the community tooling and assets?

Following statements apply across all of the community lead and contributed samples and solutions, including samples, core component(s) and solutions, like SharePoint Starter Kit, yo teams or PnP PowerShell. All Microsoft released SDKs and tools are supported based on the specific tool policies.

 

  • PnP guidance and samples are created by Microsoft & by the Community
  • PnP guidance and samples are maintained by Microsoft & community
  • PnP uses supported and recommended techniques
  • PnP is an open-source initiative by the community – people who work on the initiative for the benefit of others, have their normal day job as well
  • PnP is NOT a product and therefore it’s not supported by Premier Support or other official support channels
  • PnP is supported in similar ways as other open source projects done by Microsoft with support from the community by the community
  • There are numerous partners that utilize PnP within their solutions for customers. Support for this is provided by the Partner. When PnP material is used in deployments, we recommend being clear with your customer/deployment owner on the support model

 

Please see the specifics on the supportability on the tool, SDK or  component repository or download page.

 

Microsoft 365 PnP team model

 

pnp-community-model.png

 

In April 2020 we announced our new Microsoft 365 PnP team model and grew the MVP team quite significantly. PnP model exists for having more efficient engagement between Microsoft engineering and community members. Let’s build things together. Your contributions and feedback is always welcome! During August, we also crew the team with 5 new members. PnP Team coordinates and leads the different open-source and community efforts we execute in the Microsoft 365 platform.

 

We welcome all community members to get involved on the community and open-source efforts. Your input do matter!

 

 

Got feedback, suggestions or ideas? – Please let us know. Everything we do in this program is for your benefit. Feedback and ideas are more than welcome so that we can adjust the process for benefitting you even more.

 

Area-specific updates

These are different areas which are closely involved on the community work across the PnP initiative. Some are lead and coordinated by engineering organizations, some are coordinated by the community and MVPs.

 

Microsoft Graph Toolkit

graph-toolkit.jpg

 

Microsoft Graph Toolkit is engineering lead initiative, which works closely with the community on the open-source areas. The Microsoft Graph Toolkit is a collection of reusable, framework-agnostic web components and helpers for accessing and working with Microsoft Graph. The components are fully functional right of out of the box, with built in providers that authenticate with and fetch data from Microsoft Graph.

 

 

All the latest updates on the Microsoft Graph Toolkit is being presented in our bi-weekly Microsoft 365 Generic Dev community call, including the latest community contributors.

 

Microsoft 365 Community docs

 

community-dcos.png

 

Community docs model was announced in the April 2020 and it’s great to see the interest for community to help each other by providing new guidance on the non-dev areas. See more on the announcement from the SharePoint blog – Announcing the Microsoft 365 Community Docs. We do welcome contributions from the community – our objective is to build a valuable location for articles from Microsoft and community together.

 

Latest updates on this area as follows:

 

 

Have ideas for articles or want to contribute yourself? – Get involved! Here are also some additional resources explaining the model more detailed.

 

 

SharePoint Framework development samples

 

spfx-gallery.png

These are the updated SharePoint Framework samples which are available from the the different repositories.

 

  • New sample react-teams-membership-updater by Nick Brown which can be used to update the membership of a team based on the contents of a CSV file, can be hosted in a SharePoint site where a list can be defined for logging purposes or run inside teams as a personal app.
  • New sample react-application-news-ticker by Ari Gunawan that displays news as a running text at the top of every modern page
  • Updates to react-staffdirectory by Tristian O’Brien which is a web part shows the current user’s colleagues, and allows the user to search AD directory.
  • Updates to react-datatable by Chandani Prajapati which provides easy way to render SharePoint custom list in datatable view with all the necessary features.
  • Other to numerous SPFx web part and extension samples by our awesome community members!

 

How to find what’s relevant for you? Take advantage of our SharePoint Framework web part and extension sample galleries – includes also solutions which work in Microsoft Teams

 

 

Microsoft Teams community samples

 

teams-samples-promo.jpg

 

These are samples which have been contributed on the community samples since last summary. We do welcome all Microsoft Teams samples to this gallery. They can be implemented using in any technology.

 

  • New sample msgext-bot-SPUploader by Sathya Raveendran and Varaprasad SSLN which is a document manager solution
  • New sample tab-activity-feed by Sébastien Levert (Microsoft) which shows on how to build a solution leveraging the Teams Activity Feed API to send notifications to other users
  • Updates to tab-sso by Shama which shows how to create a tab for Teams that uses the built-in Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities
  • Numerous updates on the existing samples provided by community and Microsoft

 

If you are interested on Microsoft Teams samples, we have just released also new Microsoft Teams sample gallery. Contributions to Microsoft Teams samples is also more than welcome. This gallery already surfaces all Microsoft samples, Microsoft Teams app templates and community samples.

 

Power Platform samples

 

power-platform-samples.png


These are the updated Power Platform samples which are available from the new Power Platform sample gallery.

 

 

How to find what’s relevant for you? Take advantage of our Power Platform sample gallery.

 

 

Sharing is Caring initiative

 

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The “Sharing Is Caring” imitative is targeted for learning the basics around making changes in Microsoft Docs, in GitHub, submitting pull requests to the PnP repositories and in GitHub in general. Take advantage of this instructor lead training for learning how to contribute to docs or to open-source solutions. Everyone is welcome to learn how to get started on contributing to open-source docs or code!

 

  • See more from the guidance documentation – including all upcoming instructor lead sessions which you can participate!

 

Different Microsoft 365 related open-source initiatives build together with the community

See exact details on the latest updates from the specific open-source project release notes. You can also follow up on the project updates from our community calls. There are numerous active projects which are releasing new versions with the community even on weekly basis. Get involved!

 

  • Microsoft Look Book – Discover the modern experiences you can build with SharePoint in Microsoft 365. Look book provides design examples for SharePoint Online which can be automatically provisioned to any tenant in the world. See more from https://lookbook.microsoft.com. This service is also provided as open-source solution sample from GitHub.
  • yo teams – Open-source Yeoman generator for Microsoft Teams extensibility. Supports creation of bots, messaging extensions, tabs (with SSO), connectors and outgoing Webhooks. See more from https://aka.ms/yoteams.
  • PnP Framework – .NET Standard 2.0 SDK containing the classic PnP Sites Core features for SharePoint Online. More around this package from GitHub.
  • PnP Core SDK – The PnP Core SDK is an SDK designed to work for Microsoft 365 with Graph API first approach. It provides a unified object model for working with SharePoint Online and Teams which is agnostic to the underlying API’s being called. See more around the SDK from documentation.
  • PnP PowerShell – PnP PowerShell is a .NET Core 3.1 / .NET Framework 4.6.1 based PowerShell Module providing over 400 cmdlets that work with Microsoft 365 environments and more specifically SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. See more details from documentation.
  • Reusable SharePoint Framework controls – Reusable controls for SharePoint Framework web part and extension development. Separate projects for React content controls and Property Pane controls for web parts. These controls are using Office UI Fabric React controls under the covers and they are SharePoint aware to increase the productivity of developers.
  • Office 365 CLI – Using the Office 365 CLI, you can manage your Microsoft Office 365 tenant and SharePoint Framework projects on any platform. See release notes for the latest updates.
  • PnPJs – PnPJs encapsulates SharePoint REST APIs and provides a fluent and easily usable interface for querying data from SharePoint sites. It’s a replacement of already deprecated pnp-js-core library. See changelog for the latest updates.
  • PnP Provisioning Engine and PnP CSOM Core – PnP provisioning engine is part of the PnP CSOM extension. They encapsulate complex business driven operations behind easily usable API surface, which extends out-of-the-box CSOM NuGet packages. See changelog for the latest updates.
  • PnP PowerShell – PnP PowerShell cmdlets are open-source complement for the SharePoint Online cmdlets. There are more than 300 different cmdlets to use and you can use them to manage tenant settings or to manipulate actual SharePoint sites. They See changelog for the latest updates.
  • PnP Modern Search solution – The PnP ‘Modern Search’ solution is a set of SharePoint Online modern Web Parts allowing SharePoint super users, webmasters and developers to create highly flexible and personalized search based experiences in minutes. See more details on the different supported capabilities from https://aka.ms/pnp-search.
  • Modernization tooling – All tools and guidance on helping you to transform you SharePoint to modern experiences from http://aka.ms/sppnp-modernize.
  • SharePoint Starter Kit v2 – Building modern experiences with Microsoft Teams flavors for SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2019 – reference solution in GitHub.
  • List formatting definitions – Community contributed samples around the column and view formatting in GitHub.
  • Site Designs and Site Scripts – Community contributed samples around SharePoint Site Designs and Site Scripts in GitHub.
  • DevOps tooling and scripts – Community contributed scripts and tooling automation around DevOps topics (CI/CD) in GitHub.
  • Teams provisioning solution – Set of open-source Azure Functions for Microsoft Teams provisioning. See more details from GitHub.

 

Documentation updates

Please see all the Microsoft 365 development documentation updates from the related documentation sets and repositories as listed below:

 

 

Microsoft 365 Dev and Microsoft 365 Community (PnP) YouTube video channels

You can find all Microsoft 365 related videos on our YouTube Channel at http://aka.ms/m365pnp-videos or at Microsoft 365 Dev. These channels contains already a significant amount of detailed training material, demo videos, and community call recordings.

 

Here are the new Microsoft demo or guidance videos released since the last monthly summary:

 

 

Community demos as following:

 

 

PnP Weekly sessions – Community visitors and latest articles from Microsoft and community on Microsoft 365 topics.

 

 

Key contributors to the May 2021 update

Here’s the list of active contributors (in alphabetical order) since last release details in GitHub repositories or community channels. PnP is really about building tooling and knowledge together with the community for the community, so your contributions are highly valued across the Microsoft 365 customers, partners and obviously also at Microsoft.

 

Thank you for your assistance and contributions on behalf of the community. You are truly making a difference! If we missed someone, please let us know.

 

 

Companies: Here’s the companies, which provided support the community initiative for this month by allowing their employees working for the benefit of others in the community. There were also people who contributed from other companies during last month, but we did not get their logos and approval to show them in time for these communications. If you still want your logo for this month’s release, please let us know and share the logo with us. Thx.

 

may-2021-compaies.png

 

Microsoft people: Here’s the list of Microsoft people who have been closely involved with the PnP work during last month.

 

 

PnP Team

PnP Team manages the PnP community work in the GitHub and also coordinates different open-source projects around Microsoft 365 topics. PnP Team members have a significant impact on driving adoption of Microsoft 365  topics. They have shown their commitment to the open-source and community-driven work by constantly contributing to the benefit of the others in the community.

 

Thank you for all that you do!

 

 

Here are the Microsoft Internal PnP Core team members:

 

Next steps

See all of the available community calls, tools, components and other assets from https://aka.ms/m365pnp. Get involved!

 

Got ideas or feedback on the topics to cover, additional partnerships, product feature capabilities? – let us know. Your input is important for us, so that we can support your journey in Microsoft 365.

 

“Sharing is caring”

 

Microsoft 365 Community (PnP) – May11th 2021

 

 

Transform Machine Learning Research into a Professional Product with Azure

Transform Machine Learning Research into a Professional Product with Azure

by | May 11, 2021 | Technology

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

Guest post by Lucas Liu Master’s student in Electrical & Computer Engineering at Duke University who specializes in Machine Learning & Federated Learning.


LUCAS.jpg 


Throughout my time at university, I have built any number of scikit-learn, Tensorflow, or PyTorch machine learning models. I have developed and trained deep neural networks for applications ranging from cheetah footprint image classification to content similarity matching for bug tracking.


 


Many of these research projects have wound up more or less as Python scripts sitting on my PC, only existing locally. If a colleague or client wanted to use the product for themselves, this would involve a complicated series of file downloads, installation steps, dependency management, and more – a painful process even for researchers who are intimately knowledgeable with the technologies being used.


How can we eliminate this barrier between our research and our users? Microsoft Azure can help us transform machine learning research into a refined & easy-to-use product.


 


Containerize


First, we containerize our research with Docker. We take our ML model and package it into a simple flask app that serves predictions from POST requests with json payloads routed to `/predict`.


 


Here is an example Flask setup which predicts the probability of stroke with a scikit-learn ML model:


 

from flask import Flask, request
from flask.logging import create_logger
import logging

import pandas as pd
import joblib

app = Flask(__name__)
LOG = create_logger(app)
LOG.setLevel(logging.INFO)

@app.route("/")
def home():
    html = "<h3>Stroke Prediction Home</h3>"
    return html.format(format)

@app.route("/predict", methods=['POST'])
def predict():
    """Performs an sklearn prediction for stroke likelihood"""
    json_payload = request.json
    LOG.info(f"JSON payload: {json_payload}")
    inference_payload = pd.DataFrame(json_payload)
    LOG.info(f"inference payload DataFrame: {inference_payload}")
    prediction = clf.predict_proba(inference_payload)[0][0]

    statement = f'Probability of patient stroke is {prediction: .4f}'
    return statement

if __name__ == "__main__":
    clf = joblib.load("stroke_prediction.joblib")
    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', port=8080, debug=True)

We then specify a Dockerfile configuration, which will handle requirements installation and run our Flask app. We will expose our container on port 80, and use Python slim, which is more lightweight.



A simple Docker configuration might look like this:


 

FROM python:3.8-slim

# Working Directory
WORKDIR /app
# Copy source code to working directory
COPY . app.py /app/

# Install packages from requirements.txt
RUN pip install --no-cache-dir --upgrade pip &&
    pip install --no-cache-dir --trusted-host pypi.python.org -r requirements.txt

# Expose port 80
EXPOSE 80

# Run app.py at container launch
CMD ["python", "app.py"]

 


 


Next, we will upload our container to the Azure Container Registry by using the Azure CLI. Let’s call our project ‘mlproject’.



  1. Create a resource group name ‘mlproject’ in the Azure Dashboard.

  2. Create an ACR repository with the command: 


 

az acr create --resource-group mlproject --name mlproject –sku Basic --admin-enabled true

 


 



  1. Build the container in ACR (let’s call our container image ‘stroke-predict’:


 

az acr build --registry mlproject --image stroke-predict .

 


 


Now, users can more easily access our ML model by quickly pulling, building, and running our image, without having to worry about dependencies or model running details. This helps us avoid the age old “But it runs on my machine!” problem.


 


ACR.png


Deploy & Operationalize


What if, instead of building a container image, users could simply hit a URL and perform inferences (no image setup required)? Let’s use Azure Kubernetes Service to serve our container at a ready-to-go endpoint:



  1. First, we can use an Azure Pipeline Template to help us define a k8s deployment and load balancer YAML.


 


Example deployment YAML:


 


 

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: stroke-predict
spec:
  selector:
      matchLabels:
        app: stroke-predict
  replicas: 3
  template:
      metadata:
        labels:
            app: stroke-predict
      spec:
        containers:
        - name: stroke-predict
          image: mlproject.azurecr.io/stroke-predict
          imagePullPolicy: Always
          readinessProbe:
            httpGet:
              port: 8080
              path: /
          livenessProbe:
            httpGet:
              port: 8080
              path: /
          resources:
            requests:
              memory: "128Mi"
              cpu: "100m"
            limits:
              memory: "256Mi"
              cpu: "500m"

 


 


Example loadbalancer YAML:


 


 

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: stroke-predict-loadbalancer
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  selector:
    app: stroke-predict
  ports:
  - protocol: TCP
    port: 80
    targetPort: 8080

 


 


 



  1. Now, we create an AKS cluster. This example cluster will have a load balancer, and the ability to autoscale between 1 and 5 nodes.


 

az aks create --resource-group mlproject --name mlproject 
--generate-ssh-keys 
--node-count 3 
--vm-set-type VirtualMachineScaleSets 
--load-balancer-sku standard 
--enable-cluster-autoscaler 
--min-count 1 
--max-count 5

 


 


 



  1. Next, Merge AKS credentials between kubectl and your AKS cluster


 

az aks get-credentials --resource-group mlproject --name mlproject

 


 


 



  1. Attach our repository to the cluster


 

az aks update --resource-group mlproject --name mlproject --attach-acr mlproject

 


 


 



  1. Deploy Application on Cluster


 

kubectl apply -f k8s/deployment.yaml

 


 


 



  1. Apply Load Balancer


 

kubectl apply -f k8s/loadbalancer.yaml

 


 


 



  1. Find IP for Endpoint


 

kubectl get services

 


 


 


Now our users can simply query our endpoint and receive predictions!


 


The power of Azure goes beyond just initial deployment. We can adopt Continuous Deployment practices with Github Actions for Azure to automatically trigger a new build each time a new version of the model is released, ensuring that the service endpoint is always providing the most up-to-date model.


 


Additionally, Azure’s autoscale feature allows our service to automatically scale up or down to meet real usage needs, activating additional resources during heavy usage time. We can even expand our AKS to reach users around the world. The Azure portal also allows us to monitor our AKS cluster metrics, and gain insights on the health and performance of the service.


 

AutoScale.png


 


Next Steps: MLOps


In this blog, we discuss how to transform your existing ML research models into a much more refined product with Azure’s Container Registry and Kubernetes Service, making it easy for users to access the fruits of your research.


 


However, if we start building with Azure from the very beginning, Azure’s MLOps offering provides an end-to-end solution for the ML life-cycle, from training and building the model initially, to continually retraining / redeploying an up-to-date service. Azure MLOps can even help us compare model performances & automatically detect data drift. This is just a small portion of what Azure’s MLOps can do –


Learn more about Azure MLOps here.


 

MLOPs.png


 


 

Azure Backup Center – Backups and Good Governance

Azure Backup Center – Backups and Good Governance

by | May 11, 2021 | Technology

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

Hello folks,


 


Today, there is increased scrutiny and demand for oversight on your data.  Furthermore, the requirements dictated by laws and regulations present a growing set of challenges to your organisation.


 


For example, the ISO/IEC 27001:2013(E) Information technology — Security techniques — Information security management systems — Requirements states in section A.12.3.1


 


“Backup copies of information, software and system images shall be taken and tested regularly in accordance with an agreed backup policy.”


 


abc govern 1.png


 


Therefore, if your enterprise is subject to that standard or is in the process of obtaining certification, you’ll need to prove to auditors that you have a process to validate compliance and remediate outliers.  Azure Backup Center (ABC) gives you those capabilities.


 


**Please consult your compliance officer for information on the requirements your enterprise is subject to.


 



 


ABC on top of providing you a way to see all the Protectable Datasources that remain unprotected, provides you with a single location to define, assign and track Azure policies for backup across all your supported resources in Azure. Bringing your organization to your desired backup goal state through seamless integration with Azure Policy. Azure Policy allows you to track compliance against policies and create remediations when resources get “Non-compliant”.


 


abc govern 2.png


 


Because ABC integrates so well with Azure Policy you can define and assign different policy to different scopes.  When going through the assignment process, you’ll be able to:


 



  • Select the scope.

  • pick a management group,

  • or select a specific subscription,

  • and optionally select a resource group.


 


abc govern 3.png


 


 


There are multiple built-in policies to cover backups, and multiple effects defined in these policies.  You need to decide what to do with your non-compliant resources.  Your compliance officer will help with this.  Each possible response to a non-compliant resource is called an effect. The effect controls if the non-compliant resource is logged, blocked, has data appended, or has a deployment associated to it for putting the resource back into a compliant state.  That way you have the control to verify compliance without making any changes.  At least you know where you stand.


 


The code for these policies are stored in Github, you can fork that repo and modify the policies to make your own as you please.


There you go.  The Azure Backup Center gives you the tools to protect your environment, to maintain and govern that protection across all your environments.


 


For more information, please see the documentation on docs.microsoft.com or using the links below.


 



 


And as always,


 



Cheers!

Microsoft Teams Community Update: April, 2021

by | May 11, 2021 | Technology

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

The Microsoft Teams Community has not been more exciting! In-person events and gatherings are close to being a reality and in some parts of the world have already begun. More and more user groups and community events are popping up, the activity in the Tech Community has never been stronger, and there’s all kinds of chatter around the many recent feature updates.  


 


Here’s a few updates I’d like to share from the last month.


 


We would like to congratulate Theresa Lubelski who has been named the April Microsoft Teams Community Start Award winner. As Women in Teams Community kicked off earlier this year, we knew it’d take a village to make things run smooth, to host a vibrant online community, and monthly gatherings. Theresa jumped in with both feet in getting the community off the ground and has worked to make sure those in the community can collaborate with one another and have the opportunity to participate. She has brought her depth of SharePoint and has been a vital member of the planning team. Follow Theresa on Twitter @SharePointMadam or find her on LinkedIn. If you are interested in being part of the Women in Teams Community, we invite you to join us! The next monthly gathering is June 8th.


Anyone can nominate an individual for the Microsoft Teams Community Star Award.


 


There are some fantastic Community Events happening in the coming months, both virtual and in-person. You can find a list of regional and worldwide User Group and Events in the Microsoft Technical Community Event Listings. If you have your own UG or Event to share, please add it! 


 


I hope you’ll join me May 12th at Teams Nation, a 100% free, 100% community based monthly meeting and community conference focused on Microsoft Teams, its underlying technologies and extensibility options. Its aim is to bring together Microsoft, Community Leaders and the Tech Community to share technical knowledge, provide opportunities for speaking and create a network of Teams enthusiasts the world over. @Allie Thompson and I will be speaking on ‘Solving the #MVPBuzz Mystery and how you can have a bigger impact on community’.  There’s a packed schedule covering just about everything Microsoft Teams – check it out!


 


If you’re up for sunshine and a bit of travel, you can join us at the M365 Conference in Orlando! If you prefer to stay in the comfort of your home, you can do that too. M365 Conference is a hybrid event which means you can travel or not – but you won’t miss out on the great content delivered across all M365 technologies. This event is a precursor to the main event taking place late this year in Las Vegas.


 


Originally there were some in-person events scheduled this summer which have since pushed out to fall and I can’t WAIT to be a part of them. You won’t want to miss: 


European SharePoint, O365 & Azure Conference – virtual in June, 2021


CommsVerse in UK – September, 2021 


TeamsFest / SharePointFest in Washington DC – September, 2021


Thrive Conference in Slovenia – October, 2021


European Collaboration Summit – November, 2021


M365 Conference – Las Vegas, NV – December 2021


 


Finally, we’re always looking for bloggers like YOU to contribute to this space! If you’d like to share your knowledge in blog format with this community, please submit your topic!


 


What community activities are you participating in? What community support do you need? Let us know!


Until next month – Be well!


#CommunityRocks!


 


Laurie Pottmeyer


Community Lead, Microsoft Teams Engineering


@lauriepottmeyer 

Cumulative Update #24 for SQL Server 2017 RTM

by | May 10, 2021 | Technology

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

The 24th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2017 RTM is now available for download at the Microsoft Downloads site. Please note that registration is no longer required to download Cumulative updates.
To learn more about the release or servicing model, please visit:



Starting with SQL Server 2017, we adopted a new modern servicing model. Please refer to our blog for more details on Modern Servicing Model for SQL Server