“Let’s Encrypt” Azure Web Apps (and renew your certs through automation!)

We already ran into this twice, our @SDNCast website was down again as our SSL-certificates expired. The certificates are only valid for three months by default so every time after three months this would happen again.

Also, and Google actively started to ‘block’ so called ‘unsafe’ websites as of today, more and more browsers will refuse to open these ‘unsafe’ websites, so we had to find a solution for our beautiful website to keep our website containing our weekly SDN Cast recordings in the air.

If you think, as I did until today, that your website does not contains information that you need to protect by using HTTPS, think again! The point is, it is not that you are leaking information, but it allows others to inject information into -your- website that could be malicious or simply incorrect.

To convince you, watch this video from @TroyHunt :
https://www.troyhunt.com/heres-why-your-static-website-needs-https

I won’t go much into detail on what HTTPS (HTTP Secure) is or what SSL or TLS is. There has already been written enough on this that you can find on the Interwebs, but I’ll add some reference links below this article in order for you to look at if you want to know more about it. For now, it’s just about how to get it to work and make sure that it keeps working.

Our SDN Cast website runs in the ‘Cloud’, in Azure to be precise, and runs there as an App Service. It appears that there is an extension available that allows you to request for an SSL certificate and keeps it up to date even after three months so it automagically renews the certificate when needed.

This extension uses the services of Let’s Encrypt.

Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated and open Certificate Authority (CA) and was specifically created to support the public in providing free certificates. It’s a service provided by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). The idea is to get at as many places as possible with not too much effort and most and for all at no costs to provide the Internet with digital certificates to build a safer and privacy respecting Web.

What do you need to do?

· Get an SSL-certificate supporting App Service

· Create a Service Principal

· Allow the Service Principal access to your App Service

· Create a Storage Account

· Install the Let’s Encrypt Extension

· Configure the Extension

Supporting SSL and Custom Domains

Not all App Service levels allow you to use Custom Domains and/or SSL. So, make sure you are on the right level of your selected App Service and see if you can use it on your level. If not? Level Up! It’s still relatively cheap and the chance is that you already in the right level but just did not enable it. Well that changes today!

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In general, you can say that the Basic Tiers are offering the options already. The Free and Shared Tier are not supporting this at the time of writing so if you selected that one previously you will need to scale up and upgrade to a higher Tier to enable this.

Create a Service Principal

To allow you to request or renew certificates without the touch of a Human you will appoint a Contributor to your App Service that you create in your Azure Active Directory. So, what you are doing is creating a Service Principal (a set of credentials) that will allow you to do the work for you whenever a new certificate is needed through automation.

1. Open Azure Active Directory (make sure you work from the right tenant and select the tenant where the App Service is located if you have more than one tenant)

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2. Go to App registrations and create a New Application Registration

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Make sure you selected All apps in your List box, otherwise you won’t see the registration after creating the registration:

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In the process of creating the Application Registration you enter the Name for the Service Principal, select Web app/API at Application Type and think of a specific URL to enter at Sign-on URL.

This URL is not validated so it can be any sub domain for the site you are creating your SSL-certificates for. In my example I used https://letsencrypt.devworld.nl , a non-existing URL.

3. Create the Application Registration

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After creating your Registration it will appear in the list:

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The Service Principal is unique identified by the Application ID. Take a note, write it down, you’ll need it later.
Select the Application Registration and in the screen that opens select Settings:

4. Create a Key

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Under Settings select the option Keys. We now will add a Key that will be used to authenticate the Service Principal. 

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Enter the Description, think about the lifetime for expiring – how long do you want the Key to be valid and click Save. On saving the Key the Value will be generated. Again, make sure you write down this value as you will need it later in the process. If you don’t and/or forgot the Value, you will need to create another one as they can’t be handed to you after closing (and try to remember this time!). 

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That’s all, the Service Principal has been created and now we assign it to the Resource Group running the App Service to allow the Service Principal to access the Resources.

Providing access to the Service Principal

Now you created the Service Principal it should get access rights as a “Contributor” to the Resource Groups containing the App Service Plan and the App Service. If they are both in separate Resource Groups add the Service Principal to both Resource Groups.

1. Open Access Control at the Resource Group

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2. Click Add to add the Service Principal as ‘Contributor’ of the Resource Group:

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3. Enter the Role by selecting the Contributor role, providing access to Azure AD user, group, or application and select the Service Principal you just created by selecting it from the list under Select:

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4. Click Save to assign the permissions:
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Create a Storage Account

To keep track of the certificate state Let’s Encrypt extension uses a Storage Account. You need to create this if you haven’t already done so (you could use an existing Storage Account, but it needs to be one of the Generic types, Blob Storage alone is not enough).

1. Create the Storage Account.

Select from the list of Azure Resources the Storage Account Option and create it

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2. As said, make sure the Storage Account kind is created with Generic Purpose.

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3. Copy the Connection string from the first key key1, this value will provide access for the Let’s Encrypt extension to the Storage Account. Select and copy the Connection string (there is a lot to remember as you can see .

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4. Go to your App Service and select Application Settings:

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5. Now add two twee Connection strings with the names: AzureWebJobsDashboard en AzureWebJobsStorage
Each of these settings will be in the form of
DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=[myaccount];AccountKey=[mykey];

Make sure your connection strings don’t end with the part EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net. This -is- part of the Connection String you just created at the storage account, but you need to remove this to make it work otherwise it will fail.

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Add the Let’s Encrypt Extension

Now that we have done all the preparations, it all looks very complex but if you look back afterwards it will become a bit clearer to you and you’ll see why it was needed.

1. Select the option Extensions from your App Service options and click Add to select the extension:

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2. Select the Azure Let’s Encrypt extension. There used to be three, there are now only two, the one without and the one with Web job that takes care of renewing the certificate. At the time there where three where the story goes that the 64 bits version wasn’t all too stable. At that time, I selected the 32 bits version but today there is just the option to pick the extension with the Webjob:

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3. Accept the Legal Terms by clicking OK

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4. And another OK to finalize it

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The extension has now been added to the App Service but to properly initialize and run it you need to restart the App Service otherwise you’ll see some issues in the next few steps.

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5. Open the selected extension that you just added and click the Browse button to fill out the properties needed for it to run: 

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6. Entering all the authentication properties needed to run the WebJob properly is our next step. These will be added by the extension to the App Service.

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7. Tenant ID, this is the tenant ID that belongs to the Resource Group and looks like yourdomain.onmicrosoft.com.

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8. Subscription ID is the ID of the Azure Subscription, you can find this on the Subscriptions Blade:
https://portal.azure.com/#blade/Microsoft_Azure_Billing/SubscriptionsBlade

9. Client ID is the Application ID of the Service Principal that you wrote down earlier in one of the steps above.

10. Client Secret is the Service Principal Key that you kept for later use just like the Application ID.

11. Enter the Resource Group name of the App Service and the Service Plan. Usually they will be the same, if not enter them separately for each Resource Group.

12. The WebAppName is already there by default, the SiteSlotName can be kept empty and the Update Application Settings should be enabled by checking the checkbox to checked.

13. Make sure everything is entered properly and click Next:

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14. At this time the settings will be applied:

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15. An overview is shown with the settings that it found. At this time, you should see the Custom Domain names applicable. Right now, they are still not bound to SSL because the certificates need to be assigned. Click Next …

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At this time you will start to request and install the actual certificates for you App Service. Select the Hostnames where you want the certificates to be activated and enter the email address where you want to receive any notifications related to this registration when they expire so you can check if you don’t trust the process. Click
Request and Install Certificate

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If all went as it should go you should now get an overview where you can see the requested hostnames now provided with SSL bindings and the certificates!

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Results

It’s time to check the results to see if everything is the way we would expect. Let’s check the website and see if it now is ‘safe’:

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As we can see on my test-website that I used it is now provided with the “Safe” symbol, the green lock and it appears to have a Valid Certificate attached to the website. We reached our goal, we secured our website with a certificate. Let’s have a look at the certificate:

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We now see that the certificate is published by Let’s Encrypt Authority X3 and is about valid for three months (in fact, exactly three months but the image is from the date I initially created the image in my Dutch article that I published in our Dutch SDN Magazine).

Looking at the SSL-settings on the App Service we can also see that the certificate has been attached and the SSL-bindings are in place related to the certificate.

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Now if you look at Application Settings on the App Service you’ll see that many of the settings that you’ve seen earlier when creating the added extension now returned in a list of “Let’s Encrypt” variables. Inspecting them will show you that this information is also used at the certificate itself.

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Last check will be at the created Webjob to see if this one is also active. The Webjob should be running to be able to renew the certificate in three months.

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Here however we see a message on the page that indicates the App Service should be “Always on” for it to run properly. Therefore, click the link in the message to go the specific setting to enable the Always On option.

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As a real final step, you also need to check the HTTPS Only setting is enabled at the Custom Hostnames settings to make sure the website is always accessed over HTTPS:

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If you look at it from here we’ve been going over a lot of steps but if you do it properly it’s quite logical. Now all we can do is wait for three months to see if your certificates really are renewed. If all goes well we won’t need to create our certificates anymore, no manual tasks and no administration to keep track of the certificates (unless you set a time limitation on the Principal Key )

References:

HTTPS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPS

Let’s Encrypt: https://letsencrypt.org

Maarten van Stam

Manager at Deloitte Accountants and responsible for Software Development in the Professional Practice Department.
Also Software Engineer, Solution Architect, MVP, Technology Watcher, Member of Microsoft Office 14 Developer Advisory Council, Organizer in Software Development Network user group community, Web Caster and speaker at developer events and much, much more!

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aafvstam/

SDN Cast 60 – Dotnet demos and more

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The week where it was announced that the next version of the current HoloLens will be provided with an embedded AI processor. This important message was explained by Harry Shum, Executive Vice President Artificial Intelligence and Research Group Microsoft, on the CVPR 2017 Computer Vision conference. The already extremely powerful mobile augmented reality computer will become even more powerful and can provide even more realistic Augmented Reality solutions added with extra information about the objects the device will ‘see’ around itself.

Besides the other news (links below) Fanie did another couple (three) demos around the dotnet CLI with dotnet Core and a quick view at the new Azure Container Services. The show is in Dutch, so if you are able to handle that, dive in and see what is going on!

Where can you find our 60th episode of our Dutch SDN Cast?

https://youtu.be/sMir13ZTtwE

Did you subscribe our Dutch SDN Cast channel already?

Subscribe your YouTube channel if you don’t want to miss a single broadcast. Usually we will broadcast on Thursday evenings at 8 PM but there can be a change of plans where we need to move to another time or day. So to be sure Subscribe to our channel on YouTube or go to http://www.sdncast.nl to see when the next episode is due.

Other news:

Second version of HoloLens HPU will incorporate AI coprocessor for implementing DNNs
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/second-version-hololens-hpu-will-incorporate-ai-coprocessor-implementing-dnns/

What we’ve learned from .NET Core SDK Telemetry
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2017/07/21/what-weve-learned-from-net-core-sdk-telemetry

TFS 2017 Update 2 RTM
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/07/24/tfs-2017-update-2-rtm/

Profile-guided optimization in .NET Core 2.0
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2017/07/20/profile-guided-optimization-in-net-core-2-0/

Get Started with F# as a C# developer
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2017/07/24/get-started-with-f-as-a-c-developer/

.NET Framework July 2017 Preview of Quality Rollup
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2017/07/24/net-framework-july-2017-preview-of-quality-rollup/

.NET Application Architecture Guidance
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2017/07/26/the-new-net-application-architecture-guidance/

dotnet sdk list and dotnet sdk latest
https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dotnetSdkListAndDotnetSdkLatest.aspx

Events

This week’s events

CVPR 21-26 July – Honolulu
http://cvpr2017.thecvf.com

Xamarin Dev Days – 22 July – Hengelo
https://ti.to/xamarin/dev-days-hengelo-2017/en

Upcoming events

Agile 2017 – August 7-11 2017, Orlando FL
https://www.agilealliance.org/agile2017/

Wazug – September 7 2017, Hilversum

Microsoft Edge Web Summit 2017 – September 13, Online
https://summit.microsoftedge.com/

Xamarin Dev Days – 16 September – Amsterdam
https://ti.to/xamarin/dev-days-amsterdam-2017

.NET Conf – 19-21 September
http://www.dotnetconf.net/

Microsoft Envision – September 25-27 – Orlando
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/envision/default.aspx

Ignite 2017 – September 25-29 – Orlando
https://ignite.microsoft.com

Hybrid IT Event – September 26 – Maarssen, NL
http://www.fujitsu.com/nl/microsites/hybrid-it/event/index.html

SDN Event 3 – 6 October 6, Zeist, NL
https://www.sdn.nl/EVENTS/6-oktober-2017

TechDays October 12-13, 2017 RAI Amsterdam
http://www.techdays.nl/
https://techdays.msnlevents.net/content/eventselection.aspx?eventid=26152

SharePoint Saturday Belgium 2017, October 21, Brussels BE
http://www.spsevents.org/city/brussels/brussels2017

SharePoint Unite – October 24-26, 2017, Haarlem
https://sharepointunite.com/

Web Summit – 6-9 November 2017, Lisbon, Portugal
https://websummit.com/

Visual Studio Live! November 12-17 2017 Orlando, FL
https://live360events.com/events/orlando-2017/vslive.aspx

As usual we are always looking for presenters for our own events and Meetup’s so if you want to share something about hot technologies or just about something you implemented at work or in an App that could be interesting to our audience let us know so we can schedule you for one or our next SDN events or Dutch .NET Group Meetups.

This off course also goes for if you want to write a great article for us to publish in our SDN Magazines or at our SDN Website. The downside of publishing a magazine article is that there can be some time between writing the article and publishing the magazine. So, if it is time critical sometimes the best option is to publish it on the www.sdn.nl website to get more speedy attention to the article.

As you see, options enough to address your audience with top notch information. You can even, if you like, be our guest in our SDN Cast shows to discuss the projects you are working on or other topics you master. We will instruct you how to connect with us and what it is you need to join the show.

Hopefully we will see you at our weekly web cast, for the schedule go to www.sdncast.nl for next week’s announcement to find out the day and time of our next broadcast or go to www.sdncast.nl/youtube to watch old episodes and videos that we recorded at our events. Don’t forget to subscribe our YouTube channel www.sdncast.nl/subscribe or go directly to YouTube not to miss any of our shows!

SDN Event – Fanie Reynders – IOT and Build Server (Raspberry PI and VSTS)

SDN Event - Fanie Reynders -IOT

The last recording in our series of SDN Event recordings that we publish from our 23rd of June SDN Event. This is the session by Fanie Reynders. Interaction with VSTS and a Raspberry PI in this recording called “IOT and Build Server (Raspberry PI and VSTS)” will show you a sample of what you can do with IOT today.

Abstract

Tired of the endless alerts spamming your team channels (especially e-mail) about the status of failed and successful builds? In this session, we are going to make use of Azure Functions, your favorite source-code repo (like VSTS) and a Raspberry Pi to create a simple lamp indicating the status of your builds on each check-in. Learn about how you can connect events driven from the cloud to the physical world using awesome tools available right now.

Fanie builds an application, loads it on the Raspberry PI and all of this in a session packed with code, explaining how to interact with the small IOT devices in a real life working demo! Well wa’do you know!

SDN Event – Fanie Reynders – IOT and Build Server (Raspberry PI and VSTS)

Recordings previously released from the 23rd of June SDN Event.

If you missed the previous recording that we published the last couple of weeks you can still dive in and watch the sessions here online. Oh, and don’t forget to subscribe:

SDN Event – Brady Gaster – Developing for Azure on a Mac

SDN Event – Richard Campbell – Saving The World One App at a Time

SDN Event – Brady Gaster – Getting Started building Visual Studio Code Extensions

SDN Event – Richard Campbell – Keynote: The Development Platform Landscape in 2017

SDN Event – Brady Gaster – Developing for Azure on a Mac

SDN Event Brady Gaster II - 800

In our series of SDN Event session recordings we published last Sunday our fourth recording from our 23rd of June SDN Event. This recording is the second session by Brady Gaster: “Developing for Azure on a Mac”

Abstract

With the introduction of .NET Core, many developers who have previously been married to Windows to do their .NET development are now investigating other platforms. By the same token, many developers familiar to the Mac who have been unable to use .NET are now interested in trying it out but aren’t sure what tools they’ll need. This session will target both audiences and take an intermediate-level tour of how to get started developing .NET applications on a Mac using Visual Studio Code and a series of command-line utilities and extensions. We’ll also investigate how the Azure Tools Extension for Visual Studio Code can be useful when paired with the Azure Portal’s in-browser tools to make developing your Web, Mobile, and RESTful APIs on Azure easy, and how Azure Containers and Docker can bring true portability and flexibility to your DevOps story.

Brady takes you by the hand and shows you the tools you need to develop .NET Core and Azure solutions using a Mac. Using Visual Studio Code and the Azure Tools Extension for Visual Studio Code he goes through his ‘hands-on’ session packed with demos and only a few slides. A joy to watch!

SDN Event – Brady Gaster – Developing for Azure on a Mac

Recordings previously released from the 23rd of June SDN Event.

If you missed the previous recording that we published the last couple of weeks you can still dive in and watch the sessions here online. Oh, and don’t forget to subscribe:

SDN Event – Richard Campbell – Saving The World One App at a Time

SDN Event – Brady Gaster – Getting Started building Visual Studio Code Extensions

SDN Event – Richard Campbell – Keynote: The Development Platform Landscape in 2017

SDN Cast 58 – Inspire, API’s en Web Assembly

SDNCast 58-800

Last week it was the week of the Microsoft Partner Conference called Inspire, the conference where Microsoft invites all partners to come over to the special partner conference to get into the new fiscal year and to realign the partner plans for the upcoming year. It appears there is a slight change in policy where the Microsoft wants to include the partners more in their sales flow for selling their cloud products like Azure and Office 365. In previous years much of the sales was often done directly through Microsoft. The new strategy is to include the partners more in this process sharing the revenue processed by these sales initiatives. An important change is thinking in scenarios of specific industries.

Microsoft was always very much integrated at the level of the technology specialists, but when it came to selling the product at the board level there was an issue. The new strategy is to explain more how Microsoft fits in the process of the business itself. How can they extend their services in a way where the business improves by providing better quality and better services to their customers together with Microsoft.

New was the announcement to bring Microsoft 365 to the market for business and enterprise subscribers. An extension to the Office 365 program where Windows is now included next to several other services like security services. In our Dutch webcast we dive into this, this week.

This week we also bring the annual list of free e-books published by one of the Microsoft guys who made a hobby of collecting all the available free e-books and this is a huge list by now! Look at the links from the show-notes below for the URL to get the e-books. The link also contains a couple of links for instance to download the full list to your local machine. Not that this is advised, it really is a huge amount of data to pull in, but if you really want you can do it.

Also two AI APIs became available, one for General Availability (the Bing Entity Search API) and one in preview (Project Prague). The links are like all others in the list below. We discussed the APIs in depth, but in Dutch … sorry for that .

Fanie prepared another demo for us, and this week he is showing the Web Assembly and what you can do with it. If you want to explore by yourself here are some links:

WebAssembly Community Group

https://www.w3.org/community/webassembly/

Github:

https://github.com/webassembly

Where can you find our 58th episode of our Dutch SDN Cast?

https://youtu.be/TuNcLjT1RlA

Did you subscribe our Dutch SDN Cast channel already?

Subscribe your YouTube channel if you don’t want to miss a single broadcast. Usually we will broadcast on Thursday evenings at 8 PM but there can be a change of plans where we need to move to another time or day. So to be sure Subscribe to our channel on YouTube or go to http://www.sdncast.nl to see when the next episode is due.

Other news:

 

More layoffs
https://www.scribd.com/document/35351…

Community Leader Zone
http://clzinvite.kickoffpages.com/?ki…

Largest FREE Microsoft eBook Giveaway
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/mssm…

Introducing Microsoft 365
https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2017/0…
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/micro…
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/micro…

Announcing UWP Community Toolkit 1.5
https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapp…

Samsung Releases 4th Preview of Visual Studio Tools for Tizen including support for .NET Core 2.0 Preview
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visu…

The State of Developer Ecosystem in 2017
https://www.jetbrains.com/research/de…
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/su…

Calling all game devs: The Dream.Build.Play 2017 Challenge is Here!
https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapp…

Bring rich knowledge of people, places, things and local businesses to your apps
https://blogs.bing.com/search-quality…

Project Prague
https://labs.cognitive.microsoft.com/…

Events

This week’s events

Inspire July, 9-13 – Washington D.C.
https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/inspire/
https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/inspire/sessions

Next Week events

Faculty Summit 2017: The Edge of AI – July 17,18 Redmond, WA
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/event/faculty-summit-2017/

Upcoming events

Agile 2017 – August 7-11 2017, Orlando FL

https://www.agilealliance.org/agile2017/

Wazug – September 7 2017, Hilversum

Ignite 2017 – September 25-29 – Orlando
https://ignite.microsoft.com

Hybrid IT Event – September 26 – Maarssen, NL
https://events.global.fujitsu.com/r7/runtime/fujitsu/events/registration.php?event=raqvmqdf125d&l=en&s=login&ref_s=registration

SDN Event 3 – 6 October 6, Zeist, NL

https://www.sdn.nl/EVENTS/6-oktober-2017

TechDays October 12-13, 2017 RAI Amsterdam

http://www.techdays.nl/
https://techdays.msnlevents.net/content/eventselection.aspx?eventid=26152

SharePoint Unite – October 24-26 2017, Haarlem

https://sharepointunite.com/

Visual Studio Live! November 12-17 2017 Orlando, FL

https://live360events.com/events/orlando-2017/vslive.aspx

As usual we are always looking for presenters for our own events and Meetup’s so if you want to share something about hot technologies or just about something you implemented at work or in an App that could be interesting to our audience let us know so we can schedule you for one or our next SDN events or Dutch .NET Group Meetups.

This off course also goes for if you want to write a great article for us to publish in our SDN Magazines or at our SDN Website. The downside of publishing a magazine article is that there can be some time between writing the article and publishing the magazine. So, if it is time critical sometimes the best option is to publish it on the www.sdn.nl website to get more speedy attention to the article.

As you see, options enough to address your audience with top notch information. You can even, if you like, be our guest in our SDN Cast shows to discuss the projects you are working on or other topics you master. We will instruct you how to connect with us and what it is you need to join the show.

Hopefully we will see you at our weekly web cast, for the schedule go to www.sdncast.nl for next week’s announcement to find out the day and time of our next broadcast or go to www.sdncast.nl/youtube to watch old episodes and videos that we recorded at our events. Don’t forget to subscribe our YouTube channel www.sdncast.nl/subscribe or go directly to YouTube not to miss any of our shows!

Brady Gaster – Getting Started building Visual Studio Code Extensions

This Sunday our second recorded session went live that we recorded at our June SDN Event in Zeist (NL). Last week we had the keynote by Richard Campbell but this week is the first session of two by Brady Gaster:

https://youtu.be/3CryYLD8758

SDN Event Brady Gaster-800

Visual Studio Code has been getting a lot of positive attention in our industry since its introduction. The small install size and speed of the product make it an attractive option for developers who want a better coding tool, but where VS Code really shines is in its ability to allow developers to extend it. In this session, you’ll be introduced to the idea of developing extensions for Visual Studio Code, walk through a few demos and get a glimpse of the object model in the product so that when you have an idea that begins with "I wish Visual Studio Code could…" you’ll have the knowledge and information you need to dive in and make the best little coding tool around do whatever you want.

We had Brady in our SDN Cast show number 36 last year where he introduced us to the Azure Tools for Visual Studio Code for the first time. This was a great introduction and we asked him to join us at our SDN Event and were very happy that he agreed to jump in to fly over all the way from Microsoft’s Seattle Area to our little country.

So here it is, his first session at the event – the second will follow in two weeks so stay tuned! Click the link above to watch the session in its full length.

You can even go over to Brady’s GitHub account to get the PowerPoint and notes for the session:

https://github.com/bradygaster/extending-vscode-talk

And if you still have questions, just ping him at Twitter account @bradygaster

There was only one thing that disappointed me, and that was that we didn’t even found time to discuss the musician in him. I’m a bass player myself so I’m sad we didn’t bring this up … oh well, a good reason to invite him again some other time Winking smile. A very social friendly guy and a pleasure to work with!

Week 4 SDN Cast News with Pieter Fouché on ARM

SDNCast 37

The guest of our first SDN Cast has returned for SDN Cast 37. Well, not quite the first, we did a couple of dry runs to try things out before going live with or first live casts. But lets keep it at that this was the first public cast. Our guest on the first SDN Cast as well as this one is Pieter Fouché.

Today his subject are not the pooping cats using the restroom for humans but is showing how to use automation with the Azure Resource Manager. So, something completely different and more suitable to use on a wider scope (although you can imagine there could be a potential market to use your own toilet to service the cats instead of having to clean out the litter box on a regular interval). Pieter shows us what you can do with ARM (Azure Resource Manager) and how you can take repetitive work away by coding.

Pieter, a developer from origin coming from South Africa is English speaking but we can address him in Dutch as he has no problem understanding the Dutch language at all. Very useful for us (ok not for the English viewers – sorry …), asking the questions in Dutch and getting the answers in English.

Maybe there is something in this video you can use in your work or just watch this SDN Cast to develop yourself. Yeah, international readers probably don’t get it as most of it is in Dutch, but at least you have the news item links, I’m shure there is always something of use below.

Where can you find SDN Cast 37?
https://youtu.be/nKOxydd-94U

Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you won’t miss a single episode. Usually we are broadcasting live on Thursday evening 8PM GMT+1 in the winter but it might change depending on how things go that week. If you want to be sure you better subscribe to our channel on YouTube or go to http://www.sdncast.nl to discover when our next show will be planned. It will show you when the next show is starting.

News of the week

Windows developer virtual machines – December 2016 build
https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/12/22/just-released-windows-developer-virtual-machines-december-2016-build

TFS 2017 Update 1 RC available\
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/01/23/tfs-2017-update-1-rc-available/

Open sourcing the VS Test platform
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/01/20/open-sourcing-the-vs-test-platform/

Documentation available for the Setup Configuration API
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/heaths/2017/01/25/documentation-available-for-the-setup-configuration-api/

Visual Studio Setup PowerShell Module Available
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/heaths/2017/01/25/visual-studio-setup-powershell-module-available/

Announcing the SQL Server v.Next Early Adoption Program
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2017/01/20/announcing-the-sql-server-v-next-early-adoption-program/

SQL Server next version CTP 1.2 now available
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2017/01/20/sql-server-next-version-ctp-1-2-now-available/

Working with Multiple .NET Core SDKs – both project.json and msbuild/csproj
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WorkingWithMultipleNETCoreSDKsBothProjectjsonAndMsbuildcsproj.aspx

Three FREE Training Courses on ASP.NET Core from Microsoft Virtual Academy
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThreeFREETrainingCoursesOnASPNETCoreFromMicrosoftVirtualAcademy.aspx

Announcing the Newest Xamarin MVPs
https://blog.xamarin.com/announcing-the-newest-xamarin-mvps/

Calling Windows 10 APIs From a Desktop Application
https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2017/01/25/calling-windows-10-apis-desktop-application

Promote your App – Anywhere. Anytime
https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2017/01/24/promote-app-anywhere-anytime

Events

Events this week

Microsoft Dynamics 365 First Look: Amsterdam – January 24 – Amsterdam
https://www.microsoftevents.com/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x9417743c7a

dotNed Saturday – January 28 – Veenendaal
https://dotnedsaturday.nl/

Fanie and Maarten did a report on the DotNed Saturday event and did some interviews with the presenters. The event impression is already finished and you can see it here. No talking, so you international readers can also look at this here: https://youtu.be/YNqP36H4O_I


Events Next Week

Workshop – Building ASP.NET apps on Google Cloud Platform – February 1, Amsterdam
https://www.meetup.com/Software-Circus/events/236840180/

Upcoming events

Code & Comedy – February 8 – Nieuwegein
http://CodeAndComedy.nl

NAV Event, February 8, 2017, Nuland
http://www.dutchdynamics.net/events/nav-event-8-februari-2017

SDN Event 1 – Zeist – March 17, 2017
www.sdn.nl

Microsoft Tech Summit – Amsterdam, March 23-24, 2017
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/techsummit
https://www.microsoft.com/nl-nl/techsummit/amsterdam.aspx

Build – May 10-12, 2017 – Seattle
http://build.microsoft.com

Techorama – May 22-24, 2017 – Antwerpen, Belgium
http://techorama.be/

NDC Oslo – June 12-16 2017 – Oslo
http://ndcoslo.com

SDN Event 2 – Zeist – June 23, 2017
www.sdn.nl

Ignite 2017 – September 25-29 – Orlando
https://ignite.microsoft.com

SDN Event 3 – Zeist – October 6
www.sdn.nl

We hope you like to watch our SDN Casts. We try to keep up with the news in about an hour a week. You hear what is new and get fun demos on technology and Software Development that you can use in your daily job.

Don’t forget to Subscribe to our channel as we can get a better URL to remember our channel if we reach the number of subscribers needed to add this and make your and our lives a bit easier! And if you haven’t heard if you are the number 100 Subscriber you get something in return! Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3oE_YPB4AJVQSInC-yy3pw?sub_confirmation=1

Go to the website and check when our next broadcast will be!
http://www.sdncast.nl

Week 3 SDN Cast news with Brady Gaster from Microsoft

SDNCast 36

SDN Cast 36 is, to break a pattern, completely hosted in English. Not for no reason, but because we asked Brady Gaster to join us this week on our web cast. And, as we learned from our parents excluding someone from the discussion is ill-mannered by talking in a different language without translation we did not want to do the show half Dutch, half English and went for the English all the way option.

Already said it, we had a special guest this week, Brady Gaster in a live connection with Microsoft Campus in Redmond. Brady is working on some great tooling such as Downr, Azure Tools for Visual Studio Code, also DMC – docs.Microsoft.com is part of he daily playground, so we asked him to tell us all about it and even better to join us at one of our upcoming SDN Events.

Obviously we started with some news and events but the interesting part of this show is the part where Brady explained in a waterfall of information what they built (and deployed). We collected all the links from his presentation and added them to the list of links below.

Take some time to look at his presentation and see where you can use it in your daily job to be more productive, and think of it as a teaser or introduction of what you will see at our upcoming SDN Events later on this year!

Where can you find the 36th edition of our SDN Cast?
https://youtu.be/NsISi73TdBU

Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you won’t miss a single episode. Usually we are broadcasting live on Thursday evening 8PM GMT+1 in the winter but it might change depending on how things go that week. If you want to be sure you better subscribe to our channel on YouTube or go to http://www.sdncast.nl to discover when our next show will be planned. It will show you when the next show is starting.

News of the week

Introducing Electron to the Windows Runtime
https://slack.engineering/introducing-electron-to-the-windows-runtime-4fa789b93d90
https://www.npmjs.com/package/electron-windows-store

Announcing “UWPDesktop” NuGet Package Version 14393
https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2017/01/17/announcing-uwpdesktop-nuget-package-version-14393

New Year, New Dev: Developing your idea into a UWP app
https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2017/01/18/new-year-new-dev-developing-idea-uwp-app

VS Code in store?
https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/15820#issuecomment-273688385

Exploring Intermediate Language (IL) with ReSharper and dotPeek
https://blog.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2017/01/19/exploring-intermediate-language-il-with-resharper-and-dotpeek/

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15007 for PC and Mobile
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/01/12/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-15007-pc-mobile

.NET Core Image Processing
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2017/01/19/net-core-image-processing/

Essential .NET – Essential MSBuild: A Build Engine Overview for .NET Tooling
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/mt791801

What Xamarin Developers Ought to Know to Start 2017
http://motzcod.es/post/155770642197/what-xamarin-developers-ought-to-know-to-start-2017

Visual Studio Shortcuts Desktop
http://wndw.ms/FkkoWL

Brady Gaster Links

http://twitter.com/bradygaster
http://docs.microsoft.com/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/

http://dotnet.github.io/docfx

http://bradygaster.com
https://github.com/bradygaster/downr

https://www.twitter.com/avodovnik
https://twitter.com/tripdubroot
https://cmatskas.com/
https://twitter.com/stuartleeks

http://aka.ms/vscodeazuretools

Events

Events this week

NDC London – January 16-20 – London, UK
http://ndc-london.com/

Events Next Week

Microsoft Dynamics 365 First Look: Amsterdam – January 24 – Amsterdam
https://www.microsoftevents.com/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x9417743c7a

Fanie Reynders – iSense – January 26
https://www.isense.nl/evenementen/restfulAPI

dotNed Saturday – January 28 – Veenendaal
https://dotnedsaturday.nl/

Upcoming events

Code & Comedy – February 8 – Nieuwegein
http://CodeAndComedy.nl

SDN Event 1 – Zeist – March 17 2017
https://www.sdn.nl/EVENTS/17-maart-2017

Microsoft Tech Summit – Amsterdam, March 23-24 2017
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/techsummit
https://www.microsoft.com/nl-nl/techsummit/amsterdam.aspx

Build – May 10-12 2017 – Seattle
http://build.microsoft.com

SDN Event 2 – Zeist – June 23 2017
www.sdn.nl

Ignite 2017 – September 25-29 – Orlando
https://ignite.microsoft.com

SDN Event 3 – Zeist – October 6
www.sdn.nl

We hope you like to watch our special SDN Casts this week with Brady. We try to keep up with the news in about an hour a week. You hear what is new and get fun demos on technology and Software Development that you can use in your daily job.

Don’t forget to Subscribe to our channel as we can get a better URL to remember our channel if we reach the number of subscribers needed to add this and make your and our lives a bit easier! And if you haven’t heard if you are the number 100 Subscriber you get something in return! Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3oE_YPB4AJVQSInC-yy3pw?sub_confirmation=1

Go to the website and check when our next broadcast will be!
http://www.sdncast.nl

Software News and Events for Week 37 – Electron and more

SDN Cast

This week again a day early on Wednesday, Thursday wasn’t an option this week due to other obligations. We still found a number of interesting news facts to discuss and demos on Electron, .NET Core, WordPerfect, Azure Portal and more. A full episode this week, and a sneak preview at our new SDN Cast website: www.sdncast.nl filled with our mainly Dutch SDN Casts.

Where can you find the Dutch SDN Cast edition 19?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2FRS2OnnGg

Subscribe to our channel so you won’t miss our broadcast. Usually we broadcast live every Thursday evening 20:00 GMT+2, this week however a day early, if you want to be sure you better Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3oE_YPB4AJVQSInC-yy3pw !

News of the week

Dot.net Core 1.01
https://www.microsoft.com/net/core#windows

Service Fabric on Linux support available this month
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/service-fabric-on-linux-support-available-this-month/

Major Updates: iOS 10, Android Nougat, and Other Tasty Bits
https://blog.xamarin.com/major-updates-ios-10-android-nougat-and-other-tasty-bits/

Apps built using the Desktop Bridge now available in the Windows Store!
https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/09/14/apps-built-using-the-desktop-bridge-now-available-in-the-windows-store

Bring your existing apps and games to the Windows Store with the Desktop Bridge
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bridges/desktop

iOS10 Released yesterday
https://maartenvanstam.wordpress.com/2016/06/23/apple-wwdc-2016-overview-ios/
http://www.apple.com/ios/ios-10/

Microsoft is “dedicated to mobile,” Dona Sarkar says
http://www.winbeta.org/news/microsoft-is-dedicated-to-mobile-dona-sarkar-says
http://www.winbeta.org/news/here-comes-the-latest-windows-10-insider-build-get-ready

ActionGram now available in Store
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/actiongram/9nblggh5ftmt

Blocking out-of-date Flash ActiveX controls on IE11
https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2016/09/13/blocking-out-of-date-flash

Events

Last week’s events

IFA

http://b2b.ifa-berlin.com
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/09/01/innovative-devices-from-microsoft-partners-bring-windows-10-experiences-to-life

Centric Tech Event 2016 – September 7th – CineMec Ede
https://www.evensi.nl/centric-tech-event-2016-bezoek-de-microsoft-update-van-het/184045528

AmsterdamJS – The Comeback Edition – September 8- Amsterdam
https://www.meetup.com/AmsterdamJS/events/233107619/

This week’s events

TechDays Online—Starting September 12th!
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/mvpawardprogram/2016/08/24/techdays-online-starting-september-12/

Emerging Tech Virtual Summit – September 12th
https://t.co/QbiLdly8uN

Hands-on Azure Service Fabric
http://www.meetup.com/Dutch-Azure-Meetup/events/231591196/

Quintor TechDays Preview 1 – September 14th – Amersfoort
https://www.quintor.nl/event/techdays-preview1/

Node.js Interactive Europe – September 15-18 2016
http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/node-interactive-europe

Next week events

Quintor TechDays Preview 2 – September 20th – Amersfoort
https://www.quintor.nl/event/techdays-preview2

How to practice TDD without shooting yourself in the foot – Dennis Doomen – September 20th – Rotterdam
http://blaakselectie.nl/overige-berichten/dinsdag-20-september-how-to-practice-tdd-without-shooting-yourself-the-foot-dennis-doomen

Quintor Introductie App development voor de Hololens – September 21th – Amersfoort
https://www.quintor.nl/event/introductie-app-development-hololens/

Azure App Services en Azure Functions – September 21th – Eindhoven
http://www.dotnetzuid.nl/Meeting/8/azure-app-services-en-azure-functions

Fixxup – September 22th – Utrecht
http://fixxup.nl

LevelUp Mobile 2016 – September 22nd – Leusden
https://www.afas.events/portal-events/levelup2016?_anta_mlayout=Single

Upcoming events

Microsoft Ignite – September 26-30th Atlanta
https://ignite.microsoft.com

TechDays – October 4-5th – RAI Amsterdam
http://www.techdays.nl/

CodeUUR Worldrecord – October 14th
http://Codeuur.nl

.NET Developer Days – Central / East Europe – October 19-21 th
http://net.developerdays.pl/

Dutch .NET Group – October 18th – Utrecht
ASP.NET Core & Xamarin: Gotta app ’em all
http://www.meetup.com/dutchdotnet/events/233731810/

Demo time

Fanie Reynders this week demo’ed Azure Portal, showing many new options in Azure Portal. Maarten van Stam was updating .NET Core (www.dot.net) 1.0.1 live on the show and shows the new trend, developing JavaScript Desktop applications using Electron (http://electron.atom.io). It’s cross platform to build Desktop Applications. Many large applications already have been in the open already and a good example for that is Microsoft Visual Studio Code. This runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. In the meantime, Marcel Meijer surprised us with a WordPerfect demo. The underwater screen is back from where it came from. So watch the show for a great impression, but you need to speak Dutch ;-).

We hope you like watching our Dutch SDN Casts to catch up in a bit more than an hour on the topics that are hot for this week and hear the latest news and see the great demo’s on technology and software development that you can apply in your real world scenarios.

Don’t forget to subscribe our channel as with enough subscribers we get the option to create an easier to remember link instead of the complex URL we are forced in today for our channel! And if you haven’t heard, the 100th subscriber will get something in return!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3oE_YPB4AJVQSInC-yy3pw

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