I have had a problem for a little while now – the problem is that on my personal laptop I want to use:

• Visual Studio with the Windows Phone Emulator
• The Hololens emulator
• Windows Containers
• Linux Containers (through Docker for Windows)
• My virtual machines

However, all of these solutions keep on tripping over each other.  Specifically, they keep on tripping over each other when it comes to networking configuration.  I have spent the last couple of months complaining to the various teams involved in this – and I finally have it all working!  Yay!

There were three key things that came together to make this all work:

1. Improved guidance around Container and VM networking
   
   The networking team has been doing a great job of updating the NAT and Container networking documentation.  If you read these documents a couple of months ago – I would highly recommend you revisit them as there is a ton of new information in there.
   
   
2. New installation experience for Windows Containers on Windows 10
   
   Another thing that has changed in the last couple months is the process for getting Windows Containers up and running on Windows 10.  Specifically – we now utilize Docker for Windows to get you up and running.  Not only does this make it much easier to get things setup – it means you get very clear error messages when things go wrong.  In my case – I received this handy error message:
   
   
   
   
3. Learning about XDECleanup
   
   It turns out that my problem was that I had a stale network configuration from the Windows Phone emulator.  Handily, the Windows Phone Emulator team ship a tool to help out here – XDECleanup.  If you open an administrative command prompt and run “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft XDE\\XdeCleanup.exe” – it will delete and recreate all networking associated with the Windows Phone Emulator.

For me – updating my container setup to use Docker for Windows combined with running XDECleanup finally got me to a world where all my virtualization based development tools happily work side by side.

Cheers,
Ben

John Marlin here again. I know it’s been a while, but it’s time to resurface.

In my dealings with a lot of Beta and TAP Customers, there are still some that still are on Windows Server 2016 TP5. I am here to say it is getting time to go ahead and upgrade to the released version. I say this as soon, you will not have an option.

Originally, the “timebomb” for every two-hour reboots were set for December 15, 2016. However, with the slip of release, this was moved back as well. As of February 28, 2017, TP5 servers have now “timebombed” and reboot every two hours. However, the expiration of Windows Server TP5 will be on Tuesday, April 18, 2017.

So if you are still running on TP5 and have plans in place of moving off of it, please ensure those plans occur before mid-April.

Thanks
John Marlin
Senior Support Escalation Engineer

Across the more than forty thousand customers that Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) serves today, theres a notable diversity in how they organize their IT resources to enable mobile productivity for their workforce. Each customer uniquely defines their mobile strategy and IT structure through a series of choices based on the strategic needs of their business. Customers may choose to manage their mobility solutions internally while others choose to work with a managed service provider to manage on their behalf. Regardless of the structure, our goal is to enable IT to easily design processes and workflows that allow them to be more empowered and efficient.

As the Microsoft Intune and Azure Active Directory admin experiences come together in Azure, were taking an important step forward in our ability to offer EMS customers more choices and capability. Built on the Microsoft Graph API, the new Intune and Azure AD experience on Azure opens a new set of possibilities for our customers and partners to simplify, automate, and integrate their workloads.

Microsoft Graph API connects developers to the data that drives productivity mail, calendar, contacts, documents, directory, devices, and more. It serves as a single interface where Microsoft services can be reached through a set of REST APIs. With our shift to Azure and the Microsoft Graph API, customers now have the choice to manage the administration and operation of Intune and Azure AD services in the new Azure console or through the Microsoft Graph API. The scenarios that the Microsoft Graph API enable are expansive we expect the value to you and all our customers to center on three core benefits:

Simplicity

Microsoft Graph API is accessible through several platforms and tools, including REST- based API endpoints, and most popular programming and automation platforms (.NET, JS, iOS, Android, PowerShell). Resources (user, group, device, application, file) and policies can be queried through this API, and formerly difficult or complex questions can be addressed via straightforward queries. For example, you can use the Graph APIs to check the compliance state of all your Intune- managed devices and feed this data into your existing reporting system, enabling a simple, yet powerful, reporting experience across your organization.

Automation

The Microsoft Graph API allows you to connect different services and automate workflows and processes between them. For example, you could connect your HR system with the Microsoft Graph APIs to automate the provisioning of mobile devices when youre onboarding a new employee, and set up automation to retire and wipe a device as employees leave the company. If you are a service provider managing the environment of multiple customers at once, you could use these capabilities to automate the onboarding of tenants, populating them with default policies and implementing industry-specific templates. All this can be set up to happen automatically without ever opening a management console.

Integration

The Microsoft Graph API can send detailed device and application information to other IT asset management or reporting systems. You could build custom experiences which call our APIs to configure Intune and Azure AD controls and policies and unify workflows across multiple services. For example, a help desk organization might build a custom solution that incorporates Intune functionality into their console, allowing them to manage device and application policies in a unified way alongside other helpdesk tasks. You can even connect with PowerBI and other analytics services to create custom dashboards and reports based on Office 365, Intune, and Azure AD data from the Microsoft Graph API.

The new Intune for Education experience and the OneDrive for Business console, where Intune app protection policies are now built in directly, are both great examples of new experiences that are made possible because of Intune and Azure AD being built on the Microsoft Graph API. Were also working directly with several partners who are starting to explore whats possible with our APIs in preview. Its exciting to see the ideas they come up with around how these capabilities will improve their processes and workflows, and the custom solutions they will enable.

The Intune and Azure AD APIs are available in preview now as part of the Microsoft Graph API beta and will be generally available later in 2017.*For a closer look, check out the documentation on how to use Intune and Azure Active Directory APIs.

*Use of a Microsoft online service requires a valid license. Therefore, accessing EMS, Microsoft Intune, or Azure Active Directory Premium features via Microsoft Graph API requires paid licenses of the applicable service and compliance with Microsoft Graph API Terms of Use.

We are happy to announce the availability of public folder migration from Exchange Server 2013/2016 on-premises to Exchange Online! Many of our customers asked us for this, and the full documentation is now here. To ensure that any version-specific instructions are addressed appropriately, we have two articles to point you to:

• Use batch migration to migrate Exchange 2013 public folders to Exchange Online
• Use batch migration to migrate Exchange 2016 public folders to Exchange Online

While all of the information is located in the documentation, the key requirements are:

• Exchange Server 2013 CU15 (or later), Exchange Server 2016 CU4 (or later)
• Exchange on-premises hybrid configured with Exchange Online

If you have any additional questions, let us know in comments below. Enjoy!

Public Folder Migration Team

The 2nd cumulative update release for SQL Server 2016 SP1 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:

• CU#2 KB Article: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4013106
• Understanding Incremental Servicing Model for SQL Server
• Microsoft® SQL Server® 2016 SP1 Latest Cumulative Update: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=54613
• Update Center for Microsoft SQL Server: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sqlserver/ff803383.aspx

Summary

APM feature in SCOM 2016 Agent may cause a crash for the IIS Application Pool running under .NET 2.0 runtime.

Cause

Several callbacks within APM code of SCOM 2016 Agent utilize memory allocation that’s incompatible with .NET 2.0 runtime and may cause an issue if this memory is later accessed in a certain way. Those particular modifications were added in SCOM 2016 Agent and are not present in SCOM 2012 R2 Agent.

Resolution

The fix for this issue is to be provided with SC 2016 OM Update Rollup 3. The aforementioned code paths will not be executed if the Application Pool is running under .NET 2.0 Runtime. We are also evaluating to release a hotfix for this issue.

Workaround

There are several workarounds for this issue:

• Application pool can be migrated to .NET 4.0 Runtime;
• SCOM 2016 Agent can be replaced with SCOM 2012 R2 Agent, it’s forward-compatible with SCOM 2016 Server and APM feature will continue to work with the older bits;
• SCOM 2016 Agent can be reinstalled with NOAPM=1 switch in msiexec.exe setup command line, APM feature will be excluded from setup;

Azure Data Factory is a cloud-based data integration service that orchestrates and automates the movement and transformation of data, which support copying data from 25+ data stores on-premises and in the cloud easily and performantly. Today, we are excited to announce that Azure Data Factory newly enable loading data from SAP HANA and SAP Business Warehouse (BW) into various Azure data stores for advanced analytics and reporting, including Azure Blob, Azure Data Lake, Azure SQL DW, etc.

What’s new

SAP is one of the most widely-used enterprise software in the world. We hear you that it’s crucial for Microsoft to empower customers to integrate their existing SAP system with Azure to unblock business insights. Azure Data Factory start the SAP data integration support with SAP HANA and SAP BW, which are the most popular ones in the SAP stack used by enterprise customers.

With this release, you can easily ingest data from the existing SAP HANA and SAP BW to Azure, so as to build your own intelligent solutions by leveraging Azure’s first-class information management services, big data stores, advanced analytics tools, and intelligence toolkits to transform data into intelligent action. More specifically:

• The SAP HANA connector supports copying data from HANA information models (such as Analytic and Calculation views) as well as Row and Column tables using SQL queries. To establish the connectivity, you need to install the latest Data Management Gateway (version 2.8) and the SAP HANA ODBC driver. Refer to SAP HANA supported versions and installation on more details.
• The SAP BW connector supports copying data from SAP Business Warehouse version 7.x InfoCubes and QueryCubes (including BEx queries) using MDX queries. To establish the connectivity, you need to install the latest Data Management Gateway (version 2.8) and the SAP NetWeaver library. Refer to SAP BW supported versions and installation on more details.

What’s next

Beyond SAP HANA and SAP BW support, we also want to learn from you what other services in SAP stack you are using and looking to integrate. Go vote and comment on Azure feedback site.

Get started

To try out the new capabilities, provision a Data Factory from the Azure portal if you don’t have one, then click Copy Data to launch the intuitive copy wizard which will guide you through the configurations. In the source data store gallery, you will find SAP HANA and SAP BW as follows:

SAP HANA

After selecting SAP HANA from the gallery, specify the connection info on Data Management Gateway name, HANA server, user name and password. 

Then you will see a page with navigator and query editor. Browse and pick the measures and dimensions, a base SQL query will be auto generated in the Query Editor as reference according to your selection, and you can review and further customize there. Click Validate Query to see the preview data and schema. 

SAP BW

After selecting SAP BW from the gallery, specify the connection info on Data Management Gateway name, BW server, system number, client ID, user name and password. 

Then you will see a page with navigator and query editor. Browse and pick the measures and dimensions, a base MDX query will be auto generated in the Query Editor as reference according to your selection, and you can review and further customize there. Click Validate Query to see the preview data and schema.

Once you finish your settings on SAP source, continue following the wizard to configure the destination.

Reference

• Learn more on Azure Data Factory from Introduction to Azure Data Factory and Move data by using Copy Activity
• Refer to SAP HANA support and SAP Business Warehouse support respectively on connector details

In the second half of my conversation with Simon Cheng (Manager of Corporate Technology at Lululemon) we talk about how often he gets requests for discounts on Lululemon gear, as well as how his IT organization has structured their infrastructure to support the companys culture and the needs of its workforce to operate in ways that suit their roles and working preferences. His team has developed some ingenious ways to use technology to extend Lululemons positive culture to offices all over the world.

Simon also talks about how he uses Shadow IT to learn about the needs of a workforce that is changing demographically and has expectations for new or evolving ways to work. I really recommend this section of our discussion (around 2:34).

He also shares a really valuable insight about designing technology with the end-user in mind. Clicking through countless screens is easy for engineers but not much fun for someone whos racing to get work done.

To Learn more about Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security, visit: http://www.microsoft.com/ems.

Next week I talk with the fascinating mobile security company Lookout.

You can subscribe to these videoshere, or watch past episodes here: www aka.ms/LunchBreak.

In an era of filtered perfection and disappearing selfies, Louis Scott has made a living by photographing the authentic, “raw” versions of his subjects. The mission of Scott Photography (located in San Antonio, TX) is to help individuals and businesses grow through the art of portraiture.

Since founding his business in 2012, Scott has depended on Microsoft Office for operating his business. Whether it’s a corporate client in need of headshots for the employees who make their product possible––or an aspiring actor, hoping to be the next big thing––Office helps Scott to always be ready.

Scott has also taken more time for personal projects as his business grows. He created the Human Uniqueness Project, which includes The Firefighter Initiative—portraitures of firefighters in day-to-day life, rather than in the acts of heroism that characterize their work. The Firefighter Initiative is meant to convey each firefighter’s individuality as essential to the work they do for their communities.

“I think overall, people have a good amount of respect for firefighters,” Scott says. “But they don’t see them for everything they do in the community and on a daily basis. They just see people who are riding around putting out fires, and that’s it.”

Scott is developing his art and his business––with Office continuously at his side.

Microsoft Word keeps Scott mobile

Scott uses Microsoft Word throughout his daily workflow: for forms, proposals, direct marketing and jotting down quick notes. Word also makes it convenient for Scott to upload information into the company’s CRM, and to access documents on the go. He loves Word’s Design tab, which allows him to create business proposals for clients from scratch and appreciates the Thesaurus for improving his vocabulary as a writer.

“Whenever I’m on the road, I need products and services that are as mobile as I am,” Scott explains. “Using Office 365, if I ever need anything, all I have to do is pick up the phone or go to online help. It’s very convenient… If I’m at a shoot, and if I need help with anything, it’s a good feeling to know that it’s [Microsoft] who has my back.”

In headshots and client relationships, alike, Office helps Scott keep his customers smiling.

“I recall a time in which I needed to send a very important proposal to one of my clients, and thought I’d have to return to my studio to reach a desktop,” Scott says. “But I was surprised at how simple it was to create and send a proposal right from my mobile device using Office 365. It was a huge plus in my book.”

For sole proprietors, entrepreneurs and small businesses, it makes a big difference to have a little extra help.

“I chose Word over other writing and editing apps because Word offers me the tools I need to get the job done.”

PowerPoint allows Scott to showcase his work

PowerPoint supports Scott’s growth by allowing him to build beautiful, shareable presentations that digitally showcase his vision in the best light. His favorite PowerPoint features include the ability to change themes, add voiceovers, customize transitions between slides, and add music, which he explains really brings each slide to life.

“It’s tough to encompass all we have to offer into a single presentation. PowerPoint does a phenomenal job by giving me control to customize the presentations as I see fit,” Scott says. “I can create a single PowerPoint that can be used over and over… It allows me to leverage my time and focus on things that need my attention on a day-to-day basis.”

To capture a subject’s personality on film, photographers must be flexible, trust their vision, and keep their finger on the button. Through his customized approach to presentation building through Office 365, Scott has the confidence to go into every meeting, ready to showcase his work.

Professional photographers must manage a unique balance of business and beauty, and Microsoft Office 365 was built to help.

What will you do with your next 365? Visit products.office.com to get started.

The post Scott Photography evolves with Office 365 appeared first on Office Blogs.

Howdy folks,

On March 9^th, the Azure AD team hosted its first “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) on Reddit. A bunch of us gathered in a big conference room, and even more of the team joined on a Skype call (sadly, the Skypers didn’t get any of the snacks or pizza).And so many of you asked such great questions that we learned a lot ourselves. Thank you for participating!

If you haven’t had a chance to go through the thread yet, I recommend you take a look.There’s a lot of interesting and valuable information there.

Just about to start!

Everyone hard at work AMAing

So how did it go? Pretty awesome! Some quick stats:

• More than 50 people from our team participated, and some of our wonderful MVPs and representatives from our Microsoft partner teams joined, as well
• We had 102 top-level questions (29 per hour) and 449 total comments (128 per hour)
• Our post was upvoted by 96% of people with a total of 72 points. This compares with:
  • 25– average number of points for of all other /r/Azure AMAs (a 284% increase!)
  • 89%– average upvote percentage for all other /r/Azure AMAs (a 7.8% increase!)
• We answered 99% of questions during the event
• The Azure AD AMA page had 2,586 hits in the five days surrounding the event, and is still getting 60-100 hits per day

For questions per hour, total comment count, and response rate, we’re the new AMA champions at Microsoft.The SQL team has us beat for total number of questions, though, so we’ll definitely host another AMA in the future and try to knock them off the top. We’re looking forward to it and hope you’ll join us!

Best regards,

Alex Simons (Twitter: @Alex_A_Simons)

Director of Program Management

Microsoft Identity Division

I am excited to announce the SharePoint Virtual Summit—a free, global online event—will be on May 16, 2017.

With more than 85 million active users, Office 365 empowers individuals, teams and entire organizations with the broadest and deepest toolkit for collaboration. Office 365 is designed to meet the unique workstyle of every group with purpose-built, integrated applications: Outlook for enterprise-grade email; Yammer for networking across the organization; Skype for Business as the backbone for enterprise voice and video; Microsoft Teams, the new chat-based workspace; and SharePoint for intelligent content management and intranets.

Last May, at the Future of SharePoint virtual event—viewed by over 50,000 people—we unveiled a new vision and roadmap for SharePoint and OneDrive. Over the last year, we have delivered on new innovations, including:

• The first ever SharePoint app across all mobile platforms and a new SharePoint home experience in Office 365.
• Modern SharePoint Team Sites seamlessly connected to Office 365 Groups and Microsoft Teams.
• A new OneDrive Sync client with support for SharePoint files and shared folders.
• PowerApps and Microsoft Flow integration to support rapid app and business process development.
• SharePoint Framework, a modern, client-side development model and toolchain to usher in the next generation of custom development on SharePoint.
• New security and compliance capabilities such as data loss prevention (DLP), Conditional Access and Mobile Device Management (MDM).

At this year’s SharePoint Virtual Summit you’ll learn how to take advantage of SharePoint, OneDrive and the rest of the Office 365 collaboration toolkit to create a connected workplace, empowering you to securely connect to the people and content you need, to transform business processes, to inform and engage your employees, and to harness the collective knowledge of your organization.

Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jeff Teper will unveil the latest product innovations and roadmap. You’ll also hear from industry-leading customers on how they are leveraging these technologies as part of their digital transformation. Jeff will be joined by Microsoft Corporate Vice Presidents James Phillips and Chuck Friedman to discuss how Office 365— connected with Windows and Azure—is reinventing productivity for you, your teams and your organization.

We hope you’ll join us at this year’s event so register now to save your space on May 16, 2017.

—Seth Patton, general manager for Office 365 product marketing

The post Announcing the SharePoint Virtual Summit appeared first on Office Blogs.

Architects have the unique challenge of balancing creativity and business needs to create something beautiful—and profitable. While the profession is known for vision and creativity, bringing a building to life also requires extensive planning and coordination. The assembly, tracking and accounting of nuts, bolts, beams and every other material needed—can make or break a project.

Tools that ease project planning and let architects and staff focus on the creative work are essential. Ian Butcher, owner of the small architectural firm Best Practice Architecture and Design, knows this well.

For Ian, becoming an architect was a near-lifelong dream. Naturally, it was the artistic side and not the business side of the profession that captivated him. “I grew up in the suburbs. All I knew were suburban houses and strip malls. But in 8th grade we went on a field trip to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Our group was so large that we entered through the freight elevator. When the elevator door opened, I saw the museum building in front of me and I thought, ‘Wow. I’ve never seen anything like this.’ That was the moment I decided I wanted to be an architect.”

From offices to art studios, Best Practice keeps busy creating unique design.

Ian went to design school, became an architect and now owns and manages his own firm. “My biggest concern is how to pull off awesome projects,” he says. “Each time we start a new project I wonder, ‘Can we really do this?’ Creating good design is not the hardest part. The hardest part is overcoming challenges like budget, agreement with the client and coordination with contractors and vendors.”

Tracking materials

Project planning has become increasingly important as Ian’s practice has grown. From kitchen remodels, to office design projects, to multi-family housing design—the pencils in his office are busily sketching. Just as important, budgets must pencil out and projects must stay on track.

Ian and his team rely on Microsoft Excel to plan and track costs for each project. They create materials and fixture schedules in Excel—lengthy, detailed lists of the items needed, and associated costs—for each building project. From drywall, to light fixtures, to flooring, windows, doors and much more—he tracks all of it in Excel. “Excel makes tracking materials, costs and income easy. It even gives me a nerdy rush when I get calculations to reconcile accurately,” Ian laughs.

One of Ian’s favorite Excel features is the IF function. “I use it to make window and door schedules. I create a column for ‘orientation’ in my list of doors so I can choose N, S, E or W. This lets me instantly calculate the number of doors at each orientation.” Using this feature, Ian can reconcile his materials list with the actual drawing, and minimize costly errors of purchasing the wrong type or amount of materials.

Comparing construction estimates

His firm also receives construction cost estimates from multiple contractors for each project. Ian uses Excel to manage and compare these estimates because, he explains, “Each estimate we receive is formatted and categorized differently. To create an apples-to-apples comparison, we import all of them into Excel.” Ian groups like items together—cabinets, bathroom fixtures, appliances and so on—to get an accurate cost comparison breakdown.

Materials and fixtures schedule in Excel.

Managing labor costs and projected income

Ian also uses Excel to track labor costs and determine a fee structure for each project. “It’s tough to know exactly how a project will go. There are stops and starts,” Ian says. “With Excel, we can create a fee schedule and link it to a monthly billing amount to gauge our expected income over the life of a project and plan accordingly.”

This insight helps immensely with the firm’s overall budget planning to keep the business running smoothly and staff focused on great design. “Excel is a good tool to formulate and analyze our projected income and then use it to make hiring decisions,” Ian says.

Using Excel to balance creativity and practicality in projects

The name of Ian’s firm, Best Practice Architecture and Design, reflects his belief in quality design and not taking shortcuts. The same holds true for the business end of things, and the need to make good decisions, daily. “In the end, the responsibility lies on me,” says Ian.

Tools like Excel, for planning and calculations, are critical. Ian thinks he’s only seen the tip of the iceberg of what Excel can do for the business. He’s intrigued by new features like Tell me…, which saves time by quickly getting him to the feature or action he wants to perform. He also sees value in the ability to view historical versions of files. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally saved over the original file.”

Excel helps Ian accomplish the architect’s balance of creativity and practical business acumen. This balance of vision and planning can be key to any project—whether in business or elsewhere. Tools like Excel that help automate and streamline organization and calculations make more room for success. And there’s one more concept Ian adds to the architect’s equation, which seems apt for any business endeavor or project: “Have no fear. You just have to go for it.”

The post Reducing complexity and boosting creativity with Excel appeared first on Office Blogs.

Previous posts:

• On .NET with Scott Hunter, On .NET with Matt Watson, MessagePack
• Visual Studio 2017, .NET Core SDK, F# 4.1, On .NET with Phillip Carter, Happy Birthday from John Shewchuk, FNA, Pyre
• On .NET with Eric Mellino, Happy Birthday from Scott Hunter, OzCode.

On .NET

This week, we’ll have Sidarth Gupta and Hong-Seok Kim from Samsung on the show to talk about their Tizen OS and its support for .NET Core. The show won’t be live this week, because of the time difference with Korea, but you may still send us your questions on Gitter’s dotnet/home channel and on Twitter. Please use the #onnet tag.

Happy birthday .NET!

Mads Torgersen is the Principal Program Manager for the C# Language. He maintains the language specification and runs the language design process for C# in the open at https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang. We caught up with Mads at the .NET 15th anniversary party where he shares his thoughts on the past, present and future of .NET.

Package of the week: Coypu

Coypu is a robust .NET wrapper for browser automation tools such as Selenium WebDriver, that eases automating ajax-heavy websites and reduces coupling to the HTML, CSS & JS. It implements an intuitive DSL for interacting with the browser in the way a human being would.

Meetups of the week: .NET Core Tour in Poland

Łukasz Pyrzyk and Piotr Gankiewicz are going on a three months tour across Poland to present live demos of ASP.NET Core and .NET Core. The tour begins today in Wrocław, and will end in June. Check out the planning on Łukasz’s blog and register!

.NET

• ComponentOne Studio sim-ships with Visual Studio 2017 by Jody Handley.
• What is the NETStandard.Library metapackage? by Andrew Lock.
• Referencing system assemblies in Roslyn compilations by Luís Gonçalves.
• Dogfooding .NET Standard 2.0 latest build by Yi Zhang.
• Domain Events with Convention-Based Registration and Deferred Execution Support by Arthur Minduca.
• Windows IoT Core: Logging to Syslog server by Gunnar Peipman.

ASP.NET

• Notes from the ASP.NET Community Standup by Maria Naggaga.
• ASP.NET Core Anatomy (Part 2) – AddMvc: Dissecting and understanding the internals of ASP.NET Core by Steve Gordon.
• Options for CSS and JS Bundling and Minification with ASP.NET Core by Scott Hanselman.
• Debug ASP.NET Core via lldb on Ubuntu by Wu Shuai.
• More on ASP.NET Core Running under IIS by Rick Strahl.
• ASP.NET Core Error Management with elmah.io by Damien Bowden.
• ASP.NET Core pipelines by Michał Dymel.
• Generate a change log from VSTS work items by Gérald Barré.
• Disposing resources at the end of an ASP.NET Core request by Filip W.
• ASP.NET Core: Building chat room using WebSocket by Gunnar Peipman.
• .NET Core 1.1 – Where to start?, .NET Core 1.1 – Creating an ASP.NET Core using the .NET CLI, .NET Core 1.1 – How to publish an ASP.NET Core using .NET CLI, and .NET Core 1.1 – How to publish a self-contained application by Luís Henrique Demetrio.
• Extending ASP.NET Core response compression with support for Brotli by Tomasz Pęczek.
• IIS Logs, Error Logs and More – 6 Ways to Find Failed ASP.NET Requests by Matt Watson.
• Environment based start-up classes by Gunnar Peipman.

C#

• C# value type boxing under the hood by Yi Zhang.
• Getting Started with Async / Await by Jon Goldberger.

F#

• Announcing Nightly Releases for the Visual F# Tools
• Azure Functions F# Support is now generally available
• Building a MUD with F# and Akka.NET – Part One, by Joe Clay
• Pure F# Web API and Team City Build, by Marnee Dearman
• Variable Arguments in F#, by David Raab
• Low-level PDF manipulation for F#, by Daniel Beer
• Some Gotchas Writing Unity Apps in F#, by Paul Blair

New F# Language Suggestions:

• Add new format flag to the %A specifier which escapes necessary string characters

Check out F# Weekly for more great content from the F# community.

Xamarin

• Service Release: Cycle 9 by Bri Brothers.
• Preview 5 – Visual Studio for Mac by Bri Brothers.
• Pre-release: Xamarin.Forms 2.3.4.211-pre3 by David Ortinau.
• Xamarin Podcast: What’s New in Xamarin Cycle 9, Visual Studio 2017, and More! by Pierce Boggan.
• Simplified Android Keystore Signature Discovery by James Montemagno.
• Intro to Xamarin for Visual Studio and Building Your First Xamarin.Forms App by Courtney Witmer.
• Episode 18: MFractor – Incredible Tools for Xamarin with Matthew Robbins by The Xamarin Show.
• Microsoft Azure Notification Hub with UWP and Xamarin by Daniel Krzyczkowski.
• Behind the Scenes: How Shelfie Built a Xamarin.Forms mobile app that connects charities with donors by DevRadio.
• Xamarin.Forms Layout Challenges – Social Network App and Xamarin.Forms Layout Challenges – Timeline by Kym Phillpotts.
• APK Tools by Jon Douglas.
• A history lesson on the Xamarin.Mac target frameworks and their new names by Chris Hamons.
• Validating User Input in Xamarin.Forms III by David Britch.
• The Definition of Done (DoD) for Xamarin Developers by Michael Ridland.
• Xamarin Forms Dependency Injection by Adam Pedley.
• Xamarin.Forms – MVVM BaseView and BaseViewModel by Daniel Hindrikes.
• Xamarin.Tips – iOS Shadow on Transparent UIView and Xamarin.Controls – BadgeView by Alex Dunn.
• Kill AXML – Programmatic ListViews in Xamarin Android by Lee Richardson.
• Forms Master Detail Template by David Yardy.

UWP

• Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 15052 Released By Clint Rutkas.
• Complete Anatomy: Award-Winning App Comes to Windows Store By Windows Apps Team.
• Visual Studio 2017 Update Preview and Windows 10 Creators Update SDK By Visual Studio Blog.
• Hololens – Detect user hand interactions using HoloToolkit By Bruno Capuano.

Azure

• Publishing a .NET class library as a Function App by Donna Malayeri.
• Planet scale aggregates with Azure DocumentDB by Aravind Ramachandran.
• Building a simple photo album using Azure Blob Storage with .NET Core by Chris Tjoumas.
• Using Azure Functions as a lightweight API Gateway by Andreas Helland.

Game development

• Inventory and Store System – Part 4.1 (Wiring up the UI) by Stacey Haffner.
• Update on Unity Multiplayer, Current and Future by Larus Olafsson.
• How to Create an RPG Game in Unity – Comprehensive Guide.
• Stack Overflow Documentation – Unity.
• Unity 5 : UFPS Pickup & Drop Weapons by Jay AnAm.
• Shaders Case Study – Dishonored 2: A Crack in the Slab by Makin’ Stuff Look Good.

And this is it for this week!

Contribute to the week in .NET

As always, this weekly post couldn’t exist without community contributions, and I’d like to thank all those who sent links and tips. The F# section is provided by Phillip Carter, the gaming section by Stacey Haffner, and the Xamarin section by Dan Rigby, and the UWP section by Michael Crump.

You can participate too. Did you write a great blog post, or just read one? Do you want everyone to know about an amazing new contribution or a useful library? Did you make or play a great game built on .NET?
We’d love to hear from you, and feature your contributions on future posts:

• Send an email to beleroy at Microsoft,
• comment on this gist
• Leave us a pointer in the comments section below.
• Send Stacey (@yecats131) tips on Twitter about .NET games.

This week’s post (and future posts) also contains news I first read on The ASP.NET Community Standup, on Weekly Xamarin, on F# weekly, and on Chris Alcock’s The Morning Brew.

With this month’s quarterly release, we bid a fond farewell to Exchange Server 2007. Support for Exchange Server 2007 expires on 4/11/2017. Update Rollup 23 for Service Pack 3 will be the last update rollup released for the Exchange Server 2007 product. Today we are also releasing the latest set of Cumulative Updates for Exchange Server 2016 and Exchange Server 2013. These releases include fixes to customer reported issues and updated functionality. Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Update 5 and Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 16 are available on the Microsoft Download Center. Update Rollup 17 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 3 is also now available.

Exchange Server 2013 and 2016 require .Net 4.6.2

As previously announced, Exchange Server 2013 and Exchange Server 2016 now require .Net 4.6.2 on all supported operating systems. Customers who previously updated their Exchange servers to .Net 4.6.1 can proceed with the upgrade to 4.6.2 before or after installing the updates released today. Customers who are still running .Net 4.5.2 should deploy Cumulative Update 4 or Cumulative Update 15, upgrade the server to .Net 4.6.2 and then deploy either Cumulative Update 5 or Cumulative Update 16.

Arbitration Mailbox Migration

Recently there have been reports of problems with customers migrating mailboxes to Exchange Server 2016. We wanted to take this opportunity to remind everyone that when multiple versions of Exchange co-exist within the organization, we require that all Arbitration Mailboxes be moved to a database mounted on a server running the latest version of Exchange. For more information, please consult the Exchange Server Deployment Assistance on TechNet.

Update on S/MIME Control

One year ago, we released an updated S/MIME Control for OWA. We have received questions from customers requesting clarification on what this release included. As stated previously, the control itself did not change. This was a packaging change necessary to prevent IE from throwing a certificate warning during installation due to SHA-1 deprecation. The Authenticode algorithm used to code sign the control uses a SHA-1 algorithm. SHA-1 ensures compatibility with Vista/Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7/Windows Server 2008R2 code signing. The Authenticode file hash and delivery package are signed with a SHA-2 certificate. Signing the package with a SHA-2 certificate prevents IE from throwing a certificate warning when the package is installed and provides the necessary protection for the entire package.

Latest time zone updates

All of the packages released today include support for time zone updates published by Microsoft through March 2017.

TLS 1.2 Exchange Support Update coming in Cumulative Update 6

We would like to raise awareness of changes planned for the next quarterly update release. We are working to provide updated guidance and capabilities related to Exchange Server’s use of TLS protocols. The June 2017 release will include improved support for TLS in general and TLS 1.2 specifically. These changes will apply to Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Update 6 and Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 17.

Late Breaking Issues not resolved in Cumulative Update 5

Cumulative Update 5 includes a couple of issues that could not be resolved prior to the product release. The unresolved items we are aware of include the following:

• When attempting to enable Birthday Calendars in Outlook for the Web, an error occurs and Birthday Calendars are not enabled.
• When failing over a public folder mailbox to a different server, public folder hierarchy replication may stop until the Microsoft Exchange Service Host is recycled on the new target server.

Fixes for both issues are planned for Cumulative Update 6.

Release Details

KB articles that describe the fixes in each release are available as follows:

• Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Update 5 (KB4012106), Download, UM Lang Packs
• Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 16 (KB4012112), Download, UM Lang Packs
• Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 3 Update Rollup 17 (KB4011326), Download
• Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3 Update Rollup 23 (KB4011325), Download

Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Update 5 does not include new updates to Active Directory Schema. If upgrading from an older Exchange version or installing a new server, Active Directory updates may still be required. These updates will apply automatically during setup if the logged on user has the required permissions. If the Exchange Administrator lacks permissions to update Active Directory Schema, a Schema Admin must execute SETUP /PrepareSchema prior to the first Exchange Server installation or upgrade. The Exchange Administrator should execute SETUP /PrepareAD to ensure RBAC roles are current.

Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 16 does not include updates to Active Directory, but may add additional RBAC definitions to your existing configuration. PrepareAD should be executed prior to upgrading any servers to Cumulative Update 16. PrepareAD will run automatically during the first server upgrade if Exchange Setup detects this is required and the logged on user has sufficient permission.

Additional Information

Microsoft recommends all customers test the deployment of any update in their lab environment to determine the proper installation process for your production environment. For information on extending the schema and configuring Active Directory, please review the appropriate TechNet documentation.

Also, to prevent installation issues you should ensure that the Windows PowerShell Script Execution Policy is set to “Unrestricted” on the server being upgraded or installed. To verify the policy settings, run the Get-ExecutionPolicy cmdlet from PowerShell on the machine being upgraded. If the policies are NOT set to Unrestricted you should use the resolution steps in KB981474 to adjust the settings.

Reminder: Customers in hybrid deployments where Exchange is deployed on-premises and in the cloud, or who are using Exchange Online Archiving (EOA) with their on-premises Exchange deployment are required to deploy the most current (e.g., 2013 CU16, 2016 CU5) or the prior (e.g., 2013 CU15, 2016 CU4) Cumulative Update release.

For the latest information on Exchange Server and product announcements please see What’s New in Exchange Server 2016 and Exchange Server 2016 Release Notes. You can also find updated information on Exchange Server 2013 in What’s New in Exchange Server 2013, Release Notes and product documentation available on TechNet.

Note: Documentation may not be fully available at the time this post is published.

The Exchange Team

There may be circumstances where creating SQL replica automatically over the network may not be possible due to network bandwidth constraint between DPM server and SQL server(situations where DPM and protected server are in different sites). In such situations we can rely on manual replica creation process. This lets us create a replica on the DPM server without transferring the data from the protected server. Data can be copied to a USB drive and then exported over to DPM server and then copied over to  the replica path.

 Here is a step by step procedure for creating manual replica for SQL protection in DPM.

 Note: This involves stopping SQL server Service to copy database and log file from the SQL server(These files are in use and cannot be copied unless SQL Server service is stopped).

 1.  On the DPM console click on New to create new protection group.

 2.  Select Servers and click Next.

3. Expand the SQL server listed under the domain and select the database to be backed up. In my lab it’s named TestDB.

4.  Name the protection group and hit Next.

5. Specify Retention range, Synchronization frequency, and backup schedule and click Next.

6. Leave the values to default and hit Next.

7. On the next page select “Manually” from under “Replica in DPM Server” and click Next.

8. Leave the options to default selection and click Next.

9. Next page will show summary of the settings and data selected. Click on “Create Group”.

The next page will show you the Allocate replica and protection group creation status. Close the page.

1o. Note that SQL protection shows Manual Replica Creation Pending state. Click on “Click to view details” next to Replica path.

11. You will see a pop window showing Replica path. Copy this path. This is path which you will use later to copy the database files to.

In my lab I have copied the following path. 

C:\ on rsql2012.Contoso.com               C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012 R2\DPM\DPM\Volumes\Replica\SqlServerWriter\Vol_ba644616-05c4-4f06-bc8e-05ed4bd8ef46\86740339-0e6f-4c7b-8bf3-28682d532fc9\Full\C-Vol\

12. Now we need to copy the database files from the SQL server to any USB disk. Log on to your SQL server and open SQL Server Management Studio. Right click on the database which needs to be protected and click on Properties. On the Database properties page click on “Files”. This will show you the path for your database files. Note down the path to files(from the screenshot we have Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA). Later we will need to add this directory structure to replica path and then copy files.

 Stop the SQL Server (MSSSQLSERVER) service and navigate to the path to copy the database and log file. In my lab its named TestDB.mdf and TestDB_log.ldf.

13. On the DPM server download PSExec (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx) and extract the files. Open command prompt and navigate to PSTools folder and run the following command.

 psexec -s -i cmd.exe

 Above command will open a new command prompt in System context. This will help in creating directory structure and navigating to replica path to copy  files.

 Now we need to add Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA directory structure to replica path. So replica path will look like  C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012 R2\DPM\DPM\Volumes\Replica\SqlServerWriter\Vol_ba644616-05c4-4f06-bc8e-05ed4bd8ef46\86740339-0e6f-4c7b-8bf3-28682d532fc9\Full\C-Vol\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA.

 Use Mkdir – p command to create desired directory structure.

Use Robocopy to copy the database file to replica path. I placed the copied over database and log file to C:\SQLfiles on DPM server and ran following command to copy the files to replica path.

 Robocopy “C:\SQLfiles” “C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012 R2\DPM\DPM\Volumes\Replica\SqlServerWriter\Vol_ba644616-05c4-4f06-bc8e-05ed4bd8ef46\86740339-0e6f-4c7b-8bf3-28682d532fc9\Full\C-Vol\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA” /Copyall

14. Once the copy is complete you can run consistency check on the datasource.

Once Consistency check completes it should show the Protection Status as ok.

I hope the above steps will help you create a manual replica in situations where you cannot transfer the data over the network due to a slow network.

Jitendra Mishra

Microsoft Support Escalation Engineer

This is a special guest blog from Squared Up

Since founding Squared Up in 2011, we’ve been on a mission to transform the way enterprises interact with their monitoring data and, in doing so, have enabled hundreds of clients worldwide to unlock the full potential of System Center Operations Manager (SCOM).

 “Together with SCOM, Squared Up is a key component in our strategy to deliver end-to-end monitoring for our entire set of enterprise applications – Shawn Williams, Systems Engineer, ITaP, Purdue University.”

We’ve always believed that no other enterprise-class monitoring tool offers the same power, flexibility and sheer breadth and depth of cross-platform monitoring capabilities as SCOM. Because of this, we believed that by building on top of SCOM we could take on the huge challenges of application monitoring in the enterprise environment.

“Blackboard is one of our key-line-of-business applications and SCOM, together with third party Management Packs, is able to provide us with detailed insights across the entire stack, from our F5s at the front-end, all the way through to the virtualization at the backend, and all of that data is then surfaced via Squared Up – Shawn Williams, Systems Engineer, ITaP, Purdue University.”

First up, we delivered a blazingly-fast, multi-platform HTML5 web console, which we then enhanced with powerful new features like interactive performance reporting from the Data Warehouse, export to Excel, seamless Visio integration and, above all, the ability to easily build and publish custom dashboards.

“One of the first things Squared Up allowed us to do was much more easily expose availability and uptime reporting to the wider business, both at a managerial level and for our Service Desk –  Shawn Williams, Systems Engineer, ITaP, Purdue University.”

With the simultaneous release of SCOM 2016 and Squared Up Version 3.1, we’ve now taken things to the next level.

Working in close conjunction with the SCOM Engineering Team and leveraging the significant performance enhancements introduced in SCOM 2016, Squared Up is now faster and more powerful than ever.

Taking full advantage of SCOM’s extremely powerful capabilities, Squared Up goes far beyond just enabling HTML5 access, allowing you to:

–  Dynamically map your applications and view live health states across the full stack, irrespective of the underlying technologies, all powered by your existing SCOM Agent.

“VADA is a tremendously powerful tool, allowing us to get a definitive handle on the exact topology and dependencies of all of our applications, of which there are several hundred – Shawn Williams, Systems Engineer, ITaP, Purdue University.”

– Integrate OMS and unify SCOM and OMS data behind a single-pane-of-glass User Interface

“As our monitoring strategy evolves, OMS is now starting to supplement our SCOM data with things like Security & Audit and Change Tracking, which will provide us with value-add insights on top of our existing SCOM data. The key to realizing that value is being able to deliver the data to our users in a single-pane-of-glass UI thanks to Squared Up – Shawn Williams, Systems Engineer, ITaP, Purdue University.”

– Provide top-to-bottom, full-stack visibility via technology-specific, customised drilldowns

“The speed, ease of use and vendor-neutral nature of Squared Up means we’ve been able to successfully bring non-Microsoft engineering teams – such as our Linux teams – into our SCOM-centric monitoring strategy, with a common portal through which all of our cross-platform monitoring data is consumed. That really helps in our efforts to break down siloed thinking and “Us versus Them” mentality within the organization – Shawn Williams, Systems Engineer, ITaP, Purdue University.”

We’re now five years into our mission to radically change the landscape of enterprise monitoring and, together with the release of SCOM 2016 & Squared Up Version 3.1, we believe this marks the perfect moment to unlock the potential of SCOM for literally every customer worldwide.

So, together with the support of Microsoft, we’re delighted to unveil our new, completely free, Community Edition license, which supports both SCOM 2012 and SCOM 2016, and allows you to deliver;

– Full HTML5 Web Console for SCOM

– Unlimited custom dashboards

– Interactive Performance Reporting from the Data Warehouse

– Visio Integration

– Data on Demand

– Total Dashboard Architecture

– Mobile & Tablet Access

– and lots, lots more

You can read more about our Community Edition license and request one for yourself via our website.

We’re looking forward to welcoming you into our Community and to helping you solve the challenges of Enterprise Application Monitoring.