Microsoft Developer Day NZ - 2016

Today we had the opportunity of meeting Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella who visited New Zealand for the first time and spoke at the Microsoft Developers Day. He inspired nearly 600 Developers including students. He walked us through the Microsoft Products and it changes and touches customers life. Each technology presentation today was supplemented with a Customer Case Study and I really liked this approach. 

Satya Nadella also emphasized on Microsoft’s mission:
“Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”

Technorati Tags: Developer,Satya Nadella,Microsoft

Connect() 2016 Day 1 - Announcements

• Microsoft joins Linux Foundation.
• Visual Studio is now available for Mac.
• Visual Studio Mobile Center supports the complete lifecycle of mobile development.
• Azure App Services supporting Docker Container support.
• The following table compares the list of features which were only available in Enterprise edition which are now enabled in Standard, Web, Express, and LocalDB editions with SQL Server 2016 SP1.

Reference - https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlreleaseservices/sql-server-2016-service-pack-1-sp1-released/

• SQL Server now available for Linux – Preview
• Azure Bot Services – Preview
• Azure Data Lake Service generally available.

Technorati Tags: Connect(),2016,Microsoft

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft launched Microsoft Teams in preview mode, a new work chat Application for Office 365 suite. Microsoft Teams is a direct competitor to Slack which also bring team communications in one single place.
Microsoft Teams allows users to create channel, integrates with the Office suite this will mainly to share documents, spread sheets etc. and automated systems and chat bots. It also enables voice and video chat through Skype integration. It includes a project planning tool to assign tasks directly to team members.
Microsoft Team clients are also available for Mac, Windows, Android and iPhone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAqAtI6K7NY
You can enable Microsoft Teams with your existing Office 365 subscription as shown in the below screenshots.
a) Login to your Office 365 portal and navigate to “Services and Add-ins” and you can see the “Microsoft Teams”

b) Turn on “Microsoft Teams” and you can see the following features.


c) Once enabled, navigate to the URL https://teams.microsoft.com and also you can download a desktop app of Microsoft Teams.

d) Also a bot is waiting to answer my questions already. Really cool….

e) It allows you to change Themes through Settings.

Technorati Tags: Office365,Bots,Teams,Microsoft

PowerApps – Turning Data into Apps

Microsoft PowerApps is a solution to build custom business applications that enables increased productivity with business apps that are easily created, shared and managed. PowerApps offers a modern, intuitive experience for LOB application development
Power Apps allows you to create applications automatically without writing any code and can be built over existing datasets stored in the form of Excel spreadsheets, SQL Databases, Custom SharePoint List, CRM Online, Salesforce or using Microsoft Common Data Model.
This may sound similar to the LightSwitch Application which Microsoft introduced back in 2011. But PowerApps are not only just used to create applications but also allows applications to integrate with other SaaS products in the market.

Note: Microsoft have released a blog post on LightSwitch update and advised that Visual Studio 2015 is the last release of Visual Studio that includes the LightSwitch tooling and we recommend users not begin new application development with LightSwitch.

Creating your first PowerApp

a) PowerApps are still in preview mode but you can sign in using an organisation email address. Register for PowerApps

b) Once logged in, click on “Create an app”

c) Select “PowerApps studio for Web”

d) Select One Drive for Business from the list of Datasets

e) Choose OneDrive and connect to your OneDrive with your credentials and provide PowerApps the necessary permissions.



f) Choose the sample Excel spreadsheet from your OneDrive folder.

g) Choose the table from the Spreadsheet and click Connect

h) PowerApp will be created for the selected dataset.

Technorati Tags: PowerApps,Microsoft

Microsoft acquires Datazen

Microsoft have acquired Datazen Software, an industry leader in mobile business intelligence and data visualization on Windows, iOS and Android devices.

In particular, SQL Server customers love Datazen, because it is optimized for SQL Server Analysis Services and the overall Microsoft platform, enabling rich, interactive data visualization and KPIs on all major mobile platforms: Windows, iOS and Android.

As of 14/04/2015, SQL Server Enterprise Edition customers with version 2008 or later and Software Assurance are entitled to download the Datazen Server software at no additional cost.

Download Datazen Server (only Enterprise Edition customers with active Software assurance coverage)

Technorati Tags: Datazen,Power BI,Microsoft

Microsoft TechEd 2013 - NZ

Attended TechEd this year (2013). It's been full of interesting sessions. It was so easy to pick my sessions as my prime focus was around Cloud, Database and Architecture sessions.

Missed the Keynote session as I didn't reach Auckland until 8pm on Tuesday (10/09/2013). Caught up with my HP friend for a Hot Chocolate and went to bed.

I was ready in the morning and caught up with Glassboy for breakfast and collected my Registration pack and was ready for Scott Guthrie's session on Cloud (of course Windows Azure)

It was a full on session went for 2 Parts.

I was playing with Windows Azure recently and I am impressed especially when Scott mentioned that they do numerous releases to production (for features) every day.

Then another important session I really enjoyed was "Largest SQL and Azure Projects in the World".

Glad to hear that SQL Server can handle Terabytes and Terabytes of data.....

There were other good sessions like "Benefits Dependency Network to bring business and IT changes together", "Panel discussion failure of DW projects", "Performance Tuning Analysis Services Cube" etc...

Food was ok but can cater better for Vegetarians and Vegans.

HUB was so crowded and not really keen on the stands this time.

Met my Swedish friend at the stands......

Next year TechEd.....Keen but need to see how the rest of year goes......

Pluralsight for MSDN Subscribers Worldwide

Back in June, Pluralsight announced special training benefits (Videos) for MSDN Subscribers. This was only for US MSDN subscribers.

Microsoft and Pluralsight were receiving feedback and comments from MSDN subscribers from other countries and now they have expanded the benefits to MSDN subscribers world wide.

So hurry up and get benefited by December 11, 2012 using your MSDN Subscriber ID. You can view this by logging on to your MSDN Site.

Courses that are included:

• Agile Team Practices with Scrum
• ALM for Developers with Visual Studio 2012
• ALM with Team Foundation Server 2010
• ALM with TFS 2012 Fundamentals
• Building Windows 8 Metro Apps with C# and XAML
• Building Windows 8 Metro Apps with C++ and XAML
• C# Fundamentals - Part 1
• C++ Fundamentals
• Continuous Integration
• Developing for Windows 7
• Intellitrace
• Introduction to .NET Debugging using Visual Studio 2010
• Introduction to Building Windows 8 Applications
• Introduction to Microsoft Fakes
• Introduction to Visual Studio 2010 - Part 1
• Introduction to Visual Studio 2010 - Part 2
• Introduction to Visual Studio 2012 - Part 1
• Introduction to Windows 7 Development
• Kanban Fundamentals
• Solution Modeling with UML in Visual Studio 2010
• Test First Development - Part 1
• Test First Development - Part 2
• Web Application Performance and Scalability Testing
• Windows Azure Diagnostics
• Windows Phone 7 Basics