Colby Code and Sorts

Some Lessons Learned with Azure Hybrid Connections

Reading Time: 3 minutes Hybrid Connections you say? Here’s some background… Recently I’ve been working with a client to deploy an Azure Hybrid Connection to create a tunnel between an Azure Function App and some on-premises devices. I would like to discuss some lessons from this experience to hopefully help anyone who gets stuck. A little bit about Hybrid…

Yay, Source Control for Power BI Reports!

Reading Time: 5 minutes Source Control for Power BI Background I follow an amazing person in the BI community, Eugene Meidinger. Eugene has a weekly newsletter called “The Weekly BI Five” that includes 5 links to blogs, software, communities and anything in-between that he came across recently that he though would interest us subscribers (if you’re interested in checking…

Azure Function App: How to Build a Weather API

Reading Time: 6 minutes Overview In my previous Function App article (How to Build a REST API with Azure Function Apps) I talked about how Microsoft provides sample code for building a Azure Function HTTP Trigger when you create a Function App in Visual Studio Code. With the provided code you can then go ahead and modify it to…

To Dataflow or not to Dataflow, that is the Question…

Reading Time: 2 minutes Overview If you are familiar working with Power BI you will definitely be familiar with datasets. Datasets are the base data layer of your Power BI report and store your data from a variety of data connections, which you can then use to build out your report visualizations. When to use them? So obviously using…

Power BI: How to Refresh Excel Datasets in a Published Report

Reading Time: 5 minutes Why not just use the built-in Excel connector? Excel spreadsheets are still quite widely used in industry and are a popular method of recording and tracking various forms of data. If you are familiar with Power BI Desktop you would be aware that there is a out-of-the-box Excel connector that allows you to easily connect…

Unpacking and Demystifying Azure Function Apps: An Overview

Reading Time: 4 minutes What is an Azure Function? Azure Function Apps are Azure cloud-based serverless event-driven applications. Generally Azure Functions are stateless, meaning that each trigger or run of the Function App has no context or reference to previous runs. This isn’t a hard rule however, as there is an extension for something called Durable Functions, which allow…

How to Build a REST API with Azure Function Apps

Reading Time: 7 minutes Lets talk cloud One of the beautiful things about the cloud, particularly Azure in this case, is that you can deploy app environments in a matter of minutes!! And better yet you don’t have to maintain physical hardware systems. So say “auf wiedersehen” to managing drive failures and say “hello there” to secure and reliable…

The Future of Power Apps is a YAML file?!

Reading Time: 5 minutes First off, before I even begin to dive into this topic, I should mention this project is currently EXPERIMENTAL. So, please, PLEASE, don’t use it in a production scenario. Unless of course you enjoy giving yourself headaches or just want to be this guy: Ok, now that I’ve provided my little warning if you will,…

Create a Temporary Windows Environment with Windows Sandbox

Reading Time: 4 minutes What is Windows Sandbox and how do I get it? Windows Sandbox was released in an update for Windows 10 in May of 2019 (version 1903) for Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions. Unfortunately if you have Windows 10 Home, you won’t be able to use Windows Sandbox (sad face). So what exactly is…

A Quick and Easy Way to Pin a Power App to the Microsoft Teams App Bar

Reading Time: < 1 minutes Overview Today we are going to explore how you can easily pin a Power App to the app bar in Microsoft Teams. One thing to note is that you will need Admin access to Microsoft Teams admin center. Let’s Get Started Export your Power App Navigate to https://make.powerapps.com. Right-click on the Power App that you…

FINALLY! Teams Breakout Rooms are HERE and are Easy to Implement!

Reading Time: 6 minutes It has been in the works for a while now, but finally Microsoft Teams breakout rooms are here! Lets take a quick look at how to use breakout rooms and how they can help you during a Teams meeting. Get to know breakout rooms Before this update, there wasn’t a nice way to be able…

Super Simple GET REST Call in SharePoint Designer and How to Retrieve its Data

Reading Time: 2 minutes In my previous article, 3 Simple Steps to Make a REST API Call in SharePoint Designer, I went over the basics of making an HTTP service call in SharePoint Designer. In this article I plan to show you how you can make a GET call and how to retrieve the data from it. In particular,…

3 Simple Steps to Make a REST API Call in SharePoint Designer

Reading Time: 3 minutes As you might know, SharePoint Designer can be quite clunky and cumbersome at times and a bit of a pain when trying to first figure out how to make a REST call. Below I’ve listed some steps that will help you make a REST call in your Designer workflow. Note: Before we get started, this…

How to Easily Bypass Microsoft Teams Policies

Reading Time: 4 minutes Overview of Policies I recently came across an interesting blog article from o365blog.com by Dr. Nestori Syynimaa. The premise of the article, and what I’ll be discussing today, show how you can easily bypass Microsoft Teams’ policies by sending an auto response post http call using an app like Fiddler. What this finding shows us…

Building an App with Power Apps is Just SO Easy!

Reading Time: 3 minutes What is Power Apps? Power Apps is suite of apps, services, connectors and data platform that make up a section of Microsoft’s Power Platform. Microsoft’s vision for Power Apps and the Power Platform in general is create a suite of apps that empower a wider spectrum of personnel in the enterprise field. To do this,…

5 Tips for Microsoft Teams

Reading Time: 5 minutes In light of the current circumstances we find ourselves in with COVID-19, many people are having to work remotely. Because of this, many companies are having to adapt their day-to-day lives with a remote mindset in mind. Microsoft Teams provides your organization a great suite of tools to easily collaborate with colleagues and clients and…

Introduction to Microsoft Teams

Reading Time: 10 minutes Overview This month marks the 3 year anniversary of Microsoft Teams. Teams is Microsoft’s team collaboration software that is part of the Office 365 service. Teams is a Slack competitor and is the evolution of Microsoft Skype for Business. Teams provides businesses a way for their employees to collaborate on projects and documents easily and…

Introduction to Colourization of Black and White Images Using Deep Learning

Reading Time: 6 minutes Introduction to Colourization As someone who loves photography and its many forms of artistic expression, the idea of taking an old and even sometimes beaten up image and adding colour to it has always intrigued me. Not sure if you’ve ever viewed a colourized black and white image, but by taking an old black and…

Azure AD Role-Based Access Control Automation Tool

Reading Time: 4 minutes Background This is an old piece of code I built well over 8-months ago. I had recently started at Softlanding at the time and was tasked to build an Azure AD RBAC automation tool. I thought it would be a good first blog article since I had already written it. GitHub link. Purpose The purpose…