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Innovation at Microsoft - Book Review

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Insiderâ€™s Guide to Innovation at Microsoft, written by Dean Carignan and JoAnn Garbin, and published by PostHillPress publishers, explores the innovation strategies and practices at Microsoft over the past 50 years.

When I heard about this book, I ordered myself a copy during pre-order, and got excited from the day I got it in the mail. This was honestly one of the few books I read cover to finish in just a weekend.

Here is my review.

Overview

The book is divided into two main sections: seven detailed case studies on different teams/products within Microsoft, and an analysis of four key innovation patterns, which were very inspiring to read.

The case studies cover various products and initiatives, including the Xbox, Visual Studio Code, Microsoft Office, Cognitive Services, Microsoft Research, Bing, and Responsible Innovation. Each case study provides insights into different aspects of innovation within Microsoft, highlighting both successes and failures.

The book aims to distill innovation practices that transcend specific technologies and time periods, making it a valuable resource for innovators across various industries. It emphasizes the importance of continuous improvement, collaboration, and adaptation in the innovation process.

Case Studies

Xbox Revolution: This case study explores how Microsoft entered the gaming industry and successfully launched the Xbox. It highlights the challenges faced, such as competition from established players like Sony and Nintendo, and the innovative strategies that led to Xbox’s success. For this case study specifically, it was interesting to read how the team lost the spark of innovation at some point, benefitting from the great name of the brand and the fact it was successful. Until it wasn’t anymore. Which lead to more innovation, with the Game Pass as one of the biggest successes within the team, and the whole Gaming industry.

Visual Studio Code: This section covers the development of Visual Studio Code, a free source-code editor. It emphasizes the importance of community feedback and open-source collaboration in creating a product that meets the needs of developers worldwide. What struck me for this case study, is the fact that it not only had to be innovative as a product and development tool, but also internal competition with the big sister, Visual Studio, which was the go-to development editor, and a big money machine for years. The goal was not being a competitor, but rather an enabler for the ‘born on the web’ developer generation. Who are not typically thinking about using Visual Studio. Knowing your target audience seemed to be the key factor for success for the team.

Microsoft Office: The evolution of Microsoft Office is examined, showcasing how continuous improvement and adaptation to user needs have kept it relevant and widely used over the decades. Apart from Windows, the Office brand and product suite, feels the best-known product that Microsoft released to business users, in my opinion. I honestly never thought about how innovation was key to the continuing success of the product. Also great to read that it was already integrating Artifical Intelligence in a lot of the product for years. Long before it became a hype at the end of 2023.

Cognitive Services: This case study focuses on Microsoft’s AI and machine learning initiatives, particularly Cognitive Services. It discusses the integration of AI into various products and the ethical considerations involved. Working with Azure AI Services myself more and more, by delivering training on it out of my role as Technical Trainer, but also as a fan-boy, by thinking about how to integrate AI in some of my demo apps, was interesting to understand more about the crucial steps the team had to take. I also loved hearing about the interaction across other teams within Microsoft to make this product successful.

Microsoft Research: The role of Microsoft Research in driving innovation is highlighted, showing how fundamental research can lead to groundbreaking products and technologies. Knowing only a little bit what this team is doing, I remember their overview from 2024, which shared a lot of detail about their global work and impact across almost anything that Microsoft is doing. Microsoft Research has made substantial contributions to AI and machine learning, including the development of large language models and smaller, task-specific models. These advancements have improved natural language processing, computer vision, and other AI capabilities. Microsoft Research has used AI to enable earlier detection and treatment of diseases like esophageal cancer, potentially improving survival rates. They have also accelerated drug discovery processes for infectious diseases. The creation of a large-scale atmospheric model has transformed weather forecasting and our ability to predict and mitigate the effects of extreme weather events. This innovation is crucial for addressing climate change and enhancing environmental sustainability.

And while not touched on in the book itself, as it was not announced publicly yet, is most probably the work they did and are doing around **Majorana 1 - The worlds first quantum processor

Bing: The unexpected rise of Bing in the AI space is explored, detailing the strategies that helped it become a significant player despite initial setbacks. This case study was so interesting to learn about, on different levels. First, the long and dedicated journey the team took, to grab market share, quarter by quarter, for (over) a decade. Second, that the competition actually lead to the start of innovation. As literally mentioned in the book: without Google, there wouldn’t be Bing, and it would still just be a internet search option within the Microsoft Network pages.

Responsible Innovation: This section addresses the importance of ethical considerations in innovation, particularly in areas like AI and data privacy. I never thought of linking innovation to responsible technology. To me, it feels more like an outcome, an aspect of product design and realization. Great to understand that responsibility is often the key driver of innovation, especially nowadays with AI, and the dangers it brings to the world when misusing it.

Innovation Patterns

The book identifies four key innovation patterns that have been crucial to Microsoft’s success:

Continuous Improvement: This pattern emphasizes the importance of ongoing refinement and enhancement of products and services. Microsoft has consistently focused on iterating and improving its offerings based on user feedback and technological advancements. This approach ensures that their products remain relevant and competitive over time. For example, the evolution of Microsoft Office showcases how continuous updates and feature enhancements have kept it a staple in productivity software.

Collaboration: Collaboration is highlighted as a critical factor in driving innovation at Microsoft. This involves teamwork within the company as well as partnerships with external organizations, developers, and the broader tech community. The development of Visual Studio Code is a prime example, where open-source collaboration and community feedback played a significant role in shaping the product to meet the needs of developers worldwide

Adaptation: The ability to pivot and adapt to changing market conditions and user needs is another key innovation pattern. Microsoft has demonstrated this through various initiatives, such as entering the gaming industry with the Xbox and adapting its strategies to compete with established players like Sony and Nintendo. This flexibility allows Microsoft to explore new opportunities and stay ahead in a rapidly evolving tech landscape

Persistence: Persistence is about the determination to overcome challenges and setbacks in the pursuit of innovation. Microsoftâ€™s journey with Bing is a testament to this pattern. Despite initial setbacks and strong competition from other search engines, Microsoft persisted and eventually found success by leveraging AI and machine learning to enhance Bingâ€™s capabilities.

This was one of the rare times where I took a lot of notes on the side, as I discovered several interesting ideas (which should not be the 1st phase of innovation - find more by reading the book yourself what I mean by this :-) ), how I could start incorporating some of these patterns in the work I do at Microsoft.

Conclusion

“The Insiderâ€™s Guide to Innovation at Microsoft” provides valuable insights into the company’s approach to innovation, offering lessons that can be applied across various industries. It emphasizes the importance of a structured yet flexible process of value creation through continuous improvement, collaboration, and adaptation.

While I think the title had the goal to draw attention to the innovative aspect of what Microsoft products are about, to me, it was also interesting to read about the history of how several of the key products I work with every day, got invented, developed, and are continuously being re-invented, using a customer-centric approach.

As mentioned at the start of the article, I truly enjoyed reading this book. It gave me insights into the history of Microsoft and several of its key products, as well as helped me understand how challenging it is to develop these products. And especially the 2nd part of the book, which detailed the innovation patterns, felt useful to me, as - apart from the Technical Trainer role - I am regularly brainstorming and thinking about other ways to keep the trainer role exciting. Not just for myself, but also for my learners. And if there is one other thing I will remember from reading this book, is that your ideas and realizations of them always have to be customer-focused, no matter if they are external customers, partners, other teams within Microsoft or colleagues within your own team.

I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I did!

Cheers!!

/Peter

Collecting Feedback in ADO work items from Office Forms

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hey folks,

I’m a fond user of Azure DevOps for testing application builds, running CI/CD pipelines to publish Azure demo scenarios and train our Microsoft global customers on it every few weeks out of AZ-400 training deliveries.

One of the lesser-known, yet AWESOMELY POWERFUL features besides ‘running pipelines’ is Azure Boards, providing an end-to-end project methodology platform using Scrum, Agile, CMMI or custom approach.

In this post, I mainly wanted to zoom in on the custom capabilities, capturing feedback from employees - which got entered through an Office Forms form, picked up by Azure Logic Apps, and stored in a customized Azure Boards Work Item.

In short, the following steps are needed:

Create custom Office Forms with questions and fields to complete
Create custom Azure DevOps Process Methodology containing the custom Work Item fields and form layout
Create new Azure DevOps Project, linked to the custom Project Methodology
Create Azure Logic Apps flow, mapping each custom field from Office Forms to the custom Work Item fields
See it in action :)

Here we go…

Create custom Office Forms with questions and fields to complete

The first step involves creating a custom Office Form, which is probably one of the easiest parts in the process. This is a free service within Microsoft Office Online, typically used for collecting user input, such as surveys, quizzes and polls, and all you need is a Microsoft Account such as Outlook.com, Hotmail.com or an organizational Office 365 account.

Browse to https://forms.office.com, and select New Form
Next, specify the different questions, together with the answer type (e.g. multiple choice, text field,…) I won’t cover the details on how to do this, as I think it’s self-explanatory.
A sample form I’ll be using in this post looks like this:

With the Office Form ready, we can move on to the next step, creating a new custom ADO Process Methodology.

Create custom Azure DevOps Process Methodology

Azure DevOps provides several Process Methodologies, such as Scrum, Agile, Basic, but also allows you to create customized versions of those. (More info on each process and how to choose is documented on Microsoft Learn).

Log on to Azure DevOps with an Organizational admin account
Select Azure DevOps (the logo in the upper left corner), and select Organization Settings
Within the Settings menu, select Process under the Boards section
This shows a list of default Azure Boards processes (Basic, Agile, Scrum, CMMI)
In this example, we will build a new custom deviation from the Scrum process, but you can choose any you want. Hover the mouse over the Scrum process, and select the ellipsis (the 3 dots). From the context menu, select Create inherited process
Provide a name and (optional) description for the process. I called mine Forms Test Process
Once created, select the new process. This opens a list of Work Item types such as Bug, Epic, Task and other. As the new Work Item we create is so custom, it doesn’t really matter which one to choose. If you have about 50% or more that’s identical to an existing Work Item, you can use that as a baseline.
Click New Work Item Type
Provide a Name, Description, Icon, Icon Color of choice. Confirm by pressing the Create button.
Once created, select the new work item type. This opens the Layout editor, where we will add custom fields, reflecting the different questions/items from the Office Form earlier.
A Work Item is based on Tabs. In my example, I only use a single tab, called Details. Know you can as many Tabs as needed. Within each Tab, the Work Item layout is built-up of 3 panes, a left, holding a Description field, the middle pane, holding Custom fields, and the right pane, which has Deployment, Development and Related Work as default items - at least in my setup.
Add the custom fields you want to have on the Work Item, specifying the field type (e.g. I added an open question, set as Text Multiple Lines, as well as adding the Geography and Category as Text Single Line items). These fields somewhat correspond with the different items on the Office Form.

Although there are a lot more customizations possible, I hope these basic steps are helping you building the baseline for what I want to guide you through in this post.

We now have the Azure DevOps Process created, as well as the customized version of the Work Item we want to use. Let’s hook this up to a new Azure DevOps Project.

Create new Azure DevOps Project, linked to the custom Process

Click the Azure DevOps logo (upper left corner), and press the + New Project button.
Provide a Project Name, (optional) Description, Visibility. Next, click Advanced to specify the Work Item Process. Click the Work Item Process field and select the custom process created earlier.
Once the project got created, navigate to Boards. Here, click New Work Item, notice the new Work Item type is available.
Select the new Work Item, which shows the detailed view. Notice the custom fields we added earlier are nicely showing up here.

The flexibility we now have, is that the Work Item can be created from both the Office Form, as well as still being available from within Azure DevOps. (Note: while we added custom fields, I didn’t add any field content to choose from, such as EMEA,APAC,USA in the Geography field - which would a viable option). In my use case, the only way to create a new Work Item is through the Office Form, as no typical users got access to Azure DevOps to do that (Permissions :)).

Awesome, we are now about 3/4 through the process, with the remaining part being the creation of the flow, using Azure Logic Apps.

Create an Azure Logic App flow to capture Office Forms data to ADO Work Item

Log on to Azure with administrative permissions to create an Azure Logic App resource.
When creating the Logic App, specify a unique name, Resource Group, Location and Plan (consumption would be OK).
Once the resource got created, it automatically opens Logic App Designer, which allows for the setup of the actual flow. From the list of sample scenarios, select Blank Logic App.
In the Search connectors and triggers field, search for Microsoft Forms.
Next, select When a new response is submitted as trigger.
In the Form Id field, select the Office Form name you used earlier.
Click + New Step to add the next step in the Logic App flow.
In the Search connectors and triggers field, search for Azure DevOps.
From the list of Actions, select Create a new work item.
Complete the fields, selecting your DevOps Organization, the DevOps Project and the Work Item Type as created earlier.
Now, we map the custom fields, by selecting Add new parameter, and selecting Other Fields.
Within the little table of Other Fields (the key/value), select the Key object; this opens the Logic Apps Dynamic Content. Here, click the See more option
This is where Logic Apps is awesome. It allows you to select (all) previous fields from all previous steps in the flow process.
Notice how the Forms information is returned as Body, which is not what we need. We want to reach out each answer to each Form’s question, instead of the full body. To make this possible, we have to add another step in-between the Forms step and the Azure DevOps step.
Click on the + sign in-between both steps, and select Add New Action. Search for Microsoft Forms again. This time, it will show an action called Get Response Details.
In the Forms Id field, select the name of the Office Forms; In the Response Id field, click See More and select List of Response notifcations Response id from the Dynamic Content list of options.
With that step added, return to the Create a work item step in the Logic App Flow, and navigate to the Other Fields section in the parameters. Select the Enter Key field, which opens the Dynamic Content blade again. This time, notice how the different response details (the Form’s questions) are visible.
From here, the idea is that you ‘map’ each custom field object from the ADO Work Item, with a corresponding value from the Office Forms. For example, the work item “geography” created earlier, maps with what is your geography question I have on the form.
Once done with all field mappings, Save the Logic App.

This completes the configuration of the Azure Logic Apps (Note: there is more work needed if you have more fields…)

Which brings us to the last step… seeing it in action…

Testing the Azure DevOps Work Item creation

Return to the Office Form, and click Collect Responses.
Complete the different questions and fields on the Form.
Wait for about a minute, and return to the Azure Logic Apps flow created earlier. From the Overview blade, navigate to Runs History.
The Forms completion resulted in a successful workflow trigger. Select the line, which opens a more detailed view. .
Last, return to the Azure DevOps Project, navigate to Boards and open Work Items. Notice the newly created Work Item.
Open the item, to see how the custom fields got completed.

That’s pretty much it!! Nice isn’t it…

Summary

In this post, I wanted to share more details on how you can allow end-users (or customers) to create Azure DevOps Work Items (of pretty much any type with any custom fields), using an integration of Microsoft Forms and Azure Logic Apps.

Don’t hesitate reaching out if you have any additional questions on this, or if you want to share how you used this in your own scenarios.

Cheers!!

/Peter

How OnyxBoox - with some help from a friend - got me back to reading more... books

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I have to admit, I am not a real book reader, and the bit of reading I am doing typically involves Azure-related tech books, or what my wife and family describes as “business books” (Biographies, Non-fiction company stories such as the start of Netflix, Uber, Silicon Valley,…). For several years, I relied on an Amazon Kindle app on my (cheap) Samsung A8 tablet, dating from the time I was traveling weekly and wanted to travel light. While it still runs fine, the 8" form factor is sometimes a bit small - especially when screenshots of development code are involved - and I was also missing the capability to take notes (apart from the basic notes in Kindle app).

Apart from reading e-books, I’m also a big fan of Moleskine writing pads and pens, especially their Smart Writing System Kit, which comes with a Bluetooth-enabled pen, yet is just like a regular ink-based pen, and allows for your writings to be stored electronically per page.

But for a long time, it felt like having 2 devices was too much, since I was taking notes using Moleskine, while reading from the Samsung. Often, I didn’t have both devices with me (reading books in the bedroom, where the Moleskine was in my office…)

I honestly had my eyes on e-reader devices for a while, specifically Remarkable. However, as I would mainly use that device for reading, I found them too expensive and couldn’t spend the money on it (other expenses too, you know…)

Until I spotted a Twitter post from Scott Hanselman, offering an Onyxboox Note Air 2 for sale. This was another device I had my eyes on for a while.

So when I saw this post, I DM-ed Scott and the nice gentleman he is, we easily closed the deal, for a price I was willing to pay (and I still owe him a lunch/dinner too).

As soon as it arrived in the mail a few days later, I started using it. What pulled me in, was the Onyx Boox Reader feature, which allowed me to read my traditional PDF-documents, but - more important - allowing me to take handwritten notes on the side, circling words or parts of a paragraph, to emphasize text parts that are important to remember.

Next to the Boox Reader app, one of the other convenient things about the device is BooxDrop, a built-in app which allows for copying files from your local machine onto the Boox device using just a wifi connection, which is super convenient.

Since the device is running on Android, it also allows for installing about any regular Android App, including Amazon Kindle Reader App. This was a big plus for me, since I’ve been using that platform for buying most of my e-books over the years. The only downside though, is that note-taking is still using the Kindle-way as before, which annoyed me at first (as fluent note-taking on books was one of the things that got me interested in the device since the beginning…); The solution I have in mind for newer books, is switching from buying Kindle format back to PDF, and reading them from the great Boox Reader app.

While I haven’t used it too much for other things than reading, the built-in Notes app almost feels like writing on paper. The complementary pen obviously is a big part of this. It allows for drawing, recognizing different grey-scales depending on how hard you push the pen on the screen, and it also provides handwriting to actual text transformation. I started using the Notes more and more during my day as well, where before I was writing on paper. Often during a training, I get questions from learners, which is a great source for blog post inspiration. Too often though, I threw away those pieces of paper at the end of the week. Now I have them on the device, and can cross them off once the blog post is published.

One last thing I want to highlight, is the great battery-life of the Onyx Boox. Even with an average reading-time of about an hour per day, the battery lasts for weeks. I can’t even remember when I charged the device for the last time… maybe not even since I got it to be honest.

I want to thank Scott for his kindness and convincing me about several features of the device in DMs before I deciced to buy it. I can say that Scott made me read more books; heck that would have been a hell of a blog post title :)

I have to go now, as I am just starting my next book, C#11 and .NET 7 development.

If you have been looking for a convenient E-reader with some additional note-taking features, I can definitely recommend the OnyxBoox Note Air 2 product. More info can be found on The Onyx website.

Cheers!!

/Peter

My 2 years as an Azure Technical Trainer at Microsoft

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hey,

April last year, I wrote a post in which I looked back at my 1st 6 months as an Azure Technical Trainer. Where I think it makes sense to update this post in the week I’m officially starting my 3rd year in the role :).

April 2020 was literally in the middle of the (first) pandemic lock-down, where we all thought it would clear out by May; little did we know it would last for another 18 months from there, facing another 2 or 3 lockdowns and still not seeing the end of it, although there is some tiny spark of light at the end of the tunnel.

From a job role perspective, the biggest challenge for me (and several others on the team) was shifting away from 100% in-person deliveries to 100% virtual deliveries. Even now 1,5 years later, I’m still not used to it. Is it going better, sure! For several reasons:

Honestly, Teams has improved dramatically! It’ more stable, brought it more features (GIFs in chat, hand gesture, background effects, live captions, participant views,… ) - more to be found on what got introduced and what the Teams team has on the roadmap:
Attendees have accepted the virtual life; This was a big shift noticeable for me after only a few weeks of VILT deliveries. Participants have their camera on, are building up more interaction by asking more questions, and also accepted the “work from home” noises. It’s actually joyful to hear a little baby crying, to hear a dog barking, to hear a doorbell ringing for another package delivery,… which was not always (not at all??) accepted before the pandemic. I honestly hope this mindset keeps hanging on after we switch back to a mixed world.
Whiteboard brings dynamics to the class; if you haven’t used the Microsoft WhiteBoard App yet, give it a spin! You won’t be disappointed. I’m using this for about 70% of my deliveries (the other 30% is live demos, I don’t use any single slide anymore the whole week…). Whiteboarding is something I started doing long time ago during in-person deliveries, and I kept using them in virtual deliveries. It helps building up the story, it helps attendees learning in a different way by seeing it visual and not just hearing about it from the trainer,… and it’s also more dynamic than a static image - which typically feels overwhelming and complex as it shows the end-state of a solution, but not how to get there.

The biggest joy in the last few weeks, basically when the new fiscal started, was the Open Hacks moving into our team as well. If you haven’t heard about Open Hacks, it’s one of the best learning offerings Microsoft currently has in my opinion. Instead of listening to a trainer, an attendee actually needs to figure out - in a team of 5-6 participants typically - how to complete challenges. Each Open Hack comes with a specific focus (e.g. Migrating workloads, Containers, Serverless, DevOps,…) and has 8 or 9 challenges to complete. Starting from real-life scenarios, your team’s task is to figure out how to do it, discuss on a strategy, read through Microsoft Docs and get on with it. Before moving on to the next challenge, a technical coach (that’s the Microsoft Technical Trainer Team) reviews the success criteria and allows you to move on to the next challenge. The key successfactor here is the mix of backgrounds and experiences in each team, the learning method itself, which has a heavy “do it” mindset, and overall the team collaboration.

I actually assisted in coaching Open Hacks in the early days of the program more than 3 years ago already before I joined Microsoft. Consider seeing 400-500 people in a large conference hall “Hacking”, getting frustrated, evesdropping on other teams to pick up what solution they have for a given challenge,… wonderful; quite impressive to see how that in-person model has nicely shifted to a virtual experience. Although, nothing beats that in-person experience!

Last, I had the amazing opportunity to join the DevOps Cloud Advocacy team as a v-member. This means you can contribute to the success of the team, without officially being in that job role. I personally enjoyed (and still am!!) this, because it not only forced me to learn much more about Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions and overall DevOps concepts (Scrum to name one), it also expanded my network of amazing technical folks within the larger Microsoft world. I presented multiple internal and public sessions on DevOps subjects, wrote several public blog posts and overall helped the team in what they are doing. I co-authored docs around Azure Static WebApps, reviewed Bicep Learning Path,… and so much more!!

Some links to my artifacts:

As you can see, there are quite some dynamics in the Microsoft employee world, with a lot of interesting opportunities, challenges (outside of the Open Hack ones :p) and every few weeks there is something coming up that allows you to grab it and contribute to the success of your team, or other teams. I love those dynamics a lot, and get the respect and recognition from my manager, my colleagues within my own team and outside. So I’m sure I’m going to keep on doing this for another while :).

Looking forward to my next “live as an ATT” post in about a year from now, who knows what this role is bringing to the table by then. I personally hope for traveling again, at first to meet several of my peers in-person for the first time, but also for being in front of a classroom again to really see what’s going on in an attendee’s mind during my deliveries, bringing those coffee-corner chat moments back, and the traditional Thursday-evening drinks with my learners.

I miss those moments… but I’m still extremely loving my role!

/Peter

I found me another challenge: The Conqueror

Sun, 16 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there,

If you wonder why it’s been a bit quite on the blog front, it’s because I enjoyed 2 weeks off from work, distracting a bit from Azure, technology and spending some needed family time. Bonus was that these 2 weeks probably had the nicest weather of the whole year (although my wife would argue on that, since she is more into snow and cold, not the humid hot sweaty weather we had).

I spent my days reading books (yes, tech related, more on that in future blog posts…), watching videos, catching up on archived Tweet posts,… so the relaxing life you could say. We managed to book a last-minute trip to Canary Wharf, London for a couple of days, so that helped in having a good time as well. And that’s where I actually found me another challenge, walking… yes, walking. You might think what’s the big deal about that, but knowing I’m delivering Azure workshops 4 or 5 days a week for the last few years, it means I sit at my desk about 10 hours a day. Next to that, I used to enjoy walking from my hotel room to the customer’s office to deliver training (where possible), but due to COVID19 and the whole work from home, the only walking I’m doing is going up and down the (22) stairs; so you can’t really say I’ve been exercising a lot.

The Conqueror

Back to my London walking… the process actually started earlier, where I discovered “The Conqueror”, out of a Facebook advertisement.

They offer a virtual journey, stimulating people to walk (or run, or bicycle,… doing distance activity basically), almost like hiking or taking a trail passage. Along the trip, you get virtual postcards by email, and when completing the journey, you receive a certificate to print and a metal medal with a cool design.

My Virtual Mission

So a few weeks, I already tried to push myself into walking a bit more as part of my Work from Home story, but I have to admit, although I activated my first “challenge”, I didn’t do much walking :(.

However, for some reason, and without “pushing” myself, we did of walking during the London stay; some days was only 2-3 miles, some other days were close to 8-9 miles. And again, this probably isn’t that much in reality, but it actually gave a good feeling to know I (and at the same time my family with me) could do this. So I started entering my achievements in the challenge tool.

In between each progress, they provide you some media gadgets to share on social media, showing how you are doing (I’m not that social media minded to share it though…or at least not yet, maybe in the future when I keep going…)

and eventually one that shows the completion certificate upon finishing

That’s how I managed to complete 2 challenges, “English Channel - 21 miles”

and “The Inca Trail - 26,2 miles”

What’s next

Personally, my biggest challenge now lies ahead of me, with the usual work stream starting again tomorrow for the next following weeks. I need to push myself and do a “daily walk”. Reaching my 1-3 miles as a start, maybe moving up to some longer walks before the training day starts, or when the training day is finished. Mixing this with enough family-time and other things to look after might be though in the beginning. Luckily I got my family to support me in this, as they know I want to succeed in this.

If my story inspired you to join a similar challenge, let me know when you signed up and we can influence each other from a virtual team. For now, I’m going to enjoy my little victory, dreaming of longer walks in the near future.

Cheers, Peter

is HTML parameter gone from Logic Apps Send Email Connector

Sun, 10 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

For almost 2 years, I have been using the “Office 365 Outlook Connector” as part of my Logic Apps flows, to send emails internally and externally. Mainly for external receivers, I used the “is HTML” parameter for the body of the email.

This weekend, I was building a new Logic Apps flow, and to my surprise, finding out that the “V2” of this same connector / action, doesn’t have that parameter anymore.

Even more surprisingly, the HTML code I was using before in the body of my email, doesn’t even get recognized as HTML (would have been nice if this was just magically built-in now… no?), but just sending the raw HTML code as body content. Weird…

More important though, is I found a way to fix this, relying on the “Variables” Connector I used in the past to read and pass on text during my flows from one step to another. Maybe this could work for HTML text as well?

Add a step before the “Send Email” step you already have in your workflow, and search for “Variables” as connector type.

Select “Initialize Variable” as action

providing the following parameters:

Name: emailbody or something similarly descriptive
Type: String
Value: leave empty

Next, add a new step, again selecting the “Variables” connector, but this time going for the “Set Variable” action

Providing the following parameters:

Name: emailbody or what you used as Name in the initialize step
Value: this is where you paste in the actual HTML code of your email content

Next, select the Send Email V2 action from the “Office 365 Outlook Connector”, defining the “set variable” variable, as body of the email

resulting in the following configuration:

When running your Logic App flow again, you will notice that the email you receive will again be in the expected nicely-looking HTML layout as we had before:

I have no idea why that “is HTML” setting has been removed from the Office 365 Outlook Connector, but glad to know we still have a work-around available to achieve the same result. On the other side, was I that wrong assuming the body layout should recognize HTML by default now? As in anybody still sending emails that are not in HTML layout?

Stay safe and healthy you all!

/Peter

Use Bing Desktop Wallpapers as background images in Teams calls

Sun, 10 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A few days ago, I blogged about Bing Desktop Wallpapers, a nice little tool you can install on your Windows Machine to enjoy some of the amazing views of the world.

Knowing these got stored on your local machine as JPEGs (C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\BingWallpaperApp\WPImages), got me the idea to reuse these as “Teams Backgrounds” during video calls.

As the Bing Wallpaper gets updated every day, it would be nice to have a different image in Teams… every day. So instead of trying to remember to copy a Bing Wallpaper image, why not using a Windows Scheduled Task for this, based on a little PowerShell script?

The script could look like this:

> $today = get-date -format "yyyyMMdd"
>
>$source = "C:\Users\petender\AppData\Local\Microsoft\BingWallpaperApp\WPImages" 
>
>$target = "C:\Users\petender\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\Backgrounds\Uploads"
>
>$targetfile = $today+".jpg" 
>
>copy-item -path "$source\$targetfile" -Destination $target -Force

Save this file with a PS1 (PowerShell Script) extension, e.g. “copybingtoteams.ps1”, and store it on your local machine (I used my Documents folder for this).

You could try and run this script manually to try it out, and see how nicely the “today’s” Bing Wallpaper gets copied to the Teams folder

So that works!

Next, to make this an automated step every morning when logging on to our machine, let’s use the Windows Task Scheduler as follows:

From the Start Menu, search for Task Scheduler

Once the console is open, Right click Task Scheduler Library, and select “Create Task”

From the “General” tab, provide a descriptive name for your task e.g. “Copy Bing Wallpaper to Teams”, and keep the default setting to only use this when user is logged on.

From the Triggers tab, create a new trigger, and specify the time you want to launch this script (e.g. 7am in the morning), and specify to run this every 1 day

Under the Actions tab, is where we define the actual script to run.Set “Run a Program” as Action, and browse to the location where you saved the PS1-file.

Nothing special to configure in the Conditions tab settings, although I did turn off the dependency to start this task only when connected to AC Power.

I didn’t make any changes to the Settings tab, so we are good to go to Save our settings.

If you want to validate the task is going to run fine, you can manually launch it from the Task Scheduler console.

That’s it. Enjoy your new daily Bing Wallpaper in your Teams video calls!

Have a great day you all! and stay healhty!

/Peter

Bing Desktop Wallpapers take you on a trip around the world

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Due to COVID19, my traveling rhythm went down from an avg 90% the last six years, to 0%. I have never been that much at home without travel than in these last 5 weeks (and a few more to come).

While the primary reason for my travel is business related, every now and then, I have the opportunity to enjoy the area, if even only for a short moment, or in-between delivering sessions. Some locations immediately coming to mind:

Johannesburg, South Africa (Lion & Rhino Park)
Kathmandu, Nepal (overall scenery and the top of the mountains)
Seattle, WA, USA (Harbor area, boat trip, Snoqualmie Falls)
Ischl, Austria (Closing of skiing season, hiking at the top of the mountains)
Bangalore, India (Shivoham Shiva Temple)
Bay St Louis, MI, USA (Airbnb stay for 80 days, loved everything)
… and probably another +100 locations at least.

What should be clear about those locations, is they are all beautiful, especially the scenery of nature, sometimes it’s extraordinary buildings and most often it’s both (outside of the great and awesome training experiences)

So no doubt about it, I’m missing traveling. Missing the walks, the drive-by’s, the “enjoying my trip” feeling.

And that’s where I discovered an interesting but yet little gem to install on my laptop: Bing Desktop Wallpaper “Exploring the world, one photo at the time”.

If you have been using Bing as your search engine, or you had the joys of owning a Windows Phone in the past, you pretty well know what I’m talking about: Beautiful, stunning pictures from anywhere in the world, changing every day.

By installing this tool on your Windows machine, it will show a different image on your desktop wallpaper every morning when starting your laptop. It also stores these images on your machine (C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\BingWallpaperApp\WPImages), so you can reuse them later on, if you don’t like the one from a given day :).

While it is no substitute for the real-life experiences out there, it takes me away every now and then, dreaming for a few seconds about so many unexplored destinations that still need Azure training workshops to be delivered there.

Stay safe and healthy you all!

/Peter

Updated Azure Exams Announced

Sat, 25 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Things are going fast in the Azure world, and apparently exams are more and more following that pace. Before you start screaming and worrying, as you might be preparing for a current exam, let me share a bit about several steps happening before an exam becomes available.

Exam Objectives (OD)

For a long time, Microsoft Learning has based exams on “exam objectives”, which is typically a list of “services, features, activities” anyone taking the exam, should master. An easy example from the Exchange Server 2007 time frame could have been:

Understanding that Exchange Server relies on several Windows OS components like Internet Information Server, .NET Framework,… (services examples);
Knowing the different Exchange Server Roles, and how they relate to each other;
How to enable Unified Messaging;
What PowerShell command to use to repair an Exchange database;

…

so basically more like a “stand-alone” approach of testing your knowledge, but less focused on testing your skill set.

The same approach was about valid for the initial Azure exams (70-532, 70-533, 70-534/535); each exam tested you on a lot of services in the platform, how to deploy them, manage them,… but not always related to how they are being used “in the field”.

Job Task Analysis (JTA)

All of that got changed with the new Azure exams, as announced during Ignite conference 2018. A few months before the announcement, I was invited by Microsoft Learning to participate in “JTA - Job Task Analysis” workshops, together with several other SMEs (Subject Matter Experts), to brainstorm about how Azure components relate to a certain job role.

Easy said, taking the “Azure Administrator AZ-103” exam, we discussed on what are the core services in Azure, and what would you need to know about them, in order to relate to your job. Because in the end, there are quite a lot of services in Azure, which you probably hardly (or never) touch on as a typical Azure Administrator. The same goes for all the other job roles we identified (Administrator, Data Scientist, Developer, DevOps Engineer, Security Engineer, Solutions Architect,…). Based on the outcome of these JTA discussions, new exam questions were created, most of them being more relevant (and harder) to - again - a job role, instead of just testing you on the service or feature. Several Azure exams also got updated with “Performance based testing”, which means you need to perform a series of actual tasks, in a live Azure Portal. (e.g. deploy a Virtual Network, configure an Azure Backup job based on certain criteria, configure diagnostics logs,…), so - once more - testing your skill set, in relation to what you are assumed to know, when having that specific job role.

I personally liked this approach much better than the old system, where now the credential actually proves you have both knowledgeable (theoretical questions) and skill set (practical tasks) experience.

What will change, and why changing again?

As already touched on in the first paragraph, the Azure world in all its glory and capabilities, is changing dramatically. New features are coming out on a regular basis, existing services are getting better, more complete, and overall, the different services are easier to get integrated with each other. To keep up with the ever-changing demand in job role on top, it makes total sense the exams are getting updated on a regular basis as well.

The following list of Azure exams will get an update, but the old ones will remain for another 90 days after the new ones are getting released, as a transition period:

AZ-103 becomes AZ-104 (this update will be published in March)
AZ-203 becomes AZ-204 (this update will be published in late February)
AZ-300 becomes AZ-303 (this update will be published in March)
AZ-301 becomes AZ-304 (this update will be published in March)

Important to mention is that the exam (certification) title will not change, nor will anyone having the current credential, loose this credential. If you have the AZ-300 certification for example, it will remain valid until its expiration date, even with the AZ-303 being available.

Does this mean I can forget about everything I already studied on, and need to start all over?

Technically, the newly announced exams, will test you on “newer” updates out of the Job Task Analysis. This doesn’t mean that you will be tested on “newer” services or features only. One example I could think of, is Azure Containers and Kubernetes Services; these were not part of the exam objective domains in the AZ-103 today, but given the growth and popularity of these services, they might get included in the objective domain for the AZ-104. Although the services and capabilities have been in Azure for a longer time already.

Where can we find additional information related to these announced updates?

As always, the Microsoft Learn website is the best resource related to Microsoft exams, certification, Microsoft Official Courseware content and more. When all details are ready, they will be exposed on that learn portal immediately.

http://www.microsoft.com/learn

These new announced exams will also require some updates to several of the trainings I am delivering out of my current role as Azure Technical Trainer (ATT) within Microsoft. Time to go check on some updates, work on my updated stories, and fine-tune some cool demos and lab guide steps for my attendees. The changes will arrive fast if you ask me!

As always, don’t hesitate reaching out when having any questions on this topic or another.

Kind regards, Peter

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/azure-strategy-and-implementation-guide-third-edition/

summarized as follows:

Get a step by step introduction to using Azure for your cloud infrastructure with this Packt e-book. Read the latest edition of the Azure Strategy and Implementation Guide for detailed information on how to start taking advantage of Azure cloud capabilities. Download this e-book to:

Get an overview of Azure benefits and best practices for planning your migration.
Make cloud architecture and design choices that best fit your organization.
Learn how to manage and optimize your new cloud environment.

As always, I hope this book maps with your interests and helps in your journey to Azure. Do not hesitate reaching out or sharing your feedback,

/Peter

Azure Learning Resources

Sun, 22 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

As I got asked so many times what Azure learning resources are available, I thought this could make up an excellent blog post :) - This is actually based on a summary slide I have added to my in-person and online Azure training workshops closing deck, but updated where needed. Below order is a random listing of resources, not forcing any priority or preference:

Microsoft Learn
Microsoft Hands-on Labs
Azure Docs
3rd party learning resources

Let me guide you through each and one of them:

1. Microsoft Learn

(http://www.microsoft.com/learn)

Microsoft Learn is “the” landing page for all learning resources Microsoft has to offer, not just Azure. Here, you find a listing of all current learning paths, pointers to hands-on lab exercises in a sand-boxed setup, an overview of Microsoft certifications and exams, and much more. It also points you to the official Microsoft Docs website (see below).

By selecting Browse all paths or Browse all learning options, you are redirected to the actual Learning Paths. A Learning Path is a collection of learning material, which can be documentation, a training video and/or an exercise. Most of the time, it is really a combination of all 3 flavors. This reflects to the different learning styles people have. Some learn better from reading (docs), some other like to hear and see (video), where other - including myself - mainly learn by doing (hands-on labs).

Using the filters on the side, you can find the specific Azure material, or even drill down on specific Azure services or features you want to focus on. (About 30% of all learning path material is related to Azure…)

Next, you can choose from the full Learning Path, giving you several hours of content to go through, or pick stand-alone modules, typically shorter (30-90 mins) and more focused.

In this example, I filtered on Azure / Functions, which brings up a list of 2 Learning Paths and 15 Modules (at the time of writing, it might change over time :)). Let me select the Create Serverless Applications Learning Path; this opens a list of stand-alone content, again nicely structured per topic. Each topic is again a collection of shorter snippets.

I hope this gets you going in your Azure-learning journey. But wait, there is more ;)

2. Microsoft Hands-on Labs

(http://www.microsoft.com/handsonlabs/selfpacedlabs)

Compared to the “watch or read” approach from the Microsoft Learn Learning Paths, the Microsoft Hands-on Labs offer you self-paced labs, focusing on a “learn by doing” concept.

Again, this source is not just offering Azure material, but covers most of the Microsoft product stack (Office 365, .NET development, Windows Server, Windows Client,…).

If you filter again on Azure content, it currently shows 30 different labs, from beginners to advanced learner level.

The most interesting aspect - besides learning by doing of course - is you don’t need an Azure subscription to perform the lab steps. While there is still a separate URL to get here, it actually redirects you back to the overall Microsoft Learn website. However, there is no easy way to retrieve the hands-on labs only (Microsoft, make this available as a learning type option please). So it requires some wondering around the website, browsing Learning Paths and Modules, to find any resource having “exercise” in the title.

As an example, I selected the “Create a Windows Virtual Machine”; as you can see from below screenshot, it offers you to activate sandbox. This creates a temporary Azure subscription, dedicated to this specific lab scenario. One can activate 10 such sandbox environments per day, which should be more than enough for most learners.

After giving consent using a Microsoft account (Outlook, Hotmail,…) (Office 365 doesn’t seem to work here?), it will add a temporary subscription to your Microsoft account credentials, in a dedicated Microsoft Learn Sandbox Azure Tenant.

From here, you can literally follow the instructions from the exercise description pages. Pretty sweet in my opinion!

3. Azure Docs

(https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure)

No better resource to learn about Azure than the official Azure Documentation! While it is obviously not built as a learning to per sÃ©, it actually does the job really well! Starting from a high-level overview of Azure services, one can easily drill down to the specific topic you want to learn about. For most services, this will list up a “tutorial” section. That’s where you find most useful “how-to” documentation and guides. If that’s what you are looking for.

Using a similar example as before, I made the following selections:

Get started with Azure / Deploy Infrastructure
Windows Virtual Machines

(Notice the link to the previously discussed self-paced training also shows up here)

Which brings me to the actual Azure doc pages, describing how to create an Windows Virtual Machine in Azure. From here, I can scroll down to the specific deployment approach I want to learn, being PowerShell, Azure CLI or using the Portal.

Besides reading through the different steps, you can also try them out live, assuming you have an Azure Free or Paid subscription already (in contrast to the sandbox scenario described earlier).

4. Third party learning resources

Aside from the above 3 Microsoft-owned resources, there is a huge amount of (free and paid) Azure learning material available on the internet. My recommendation is to try and filter on content which is less than 6 months old, as otherwise it might probably be too outdated (depending a bit on the Azure service).

Without trying to be complete, below is a list of learning partners offering some very good and up-to-date content on Azure. I have authored several videos for the first 3 listed here, but don’t exclusively check those. Several also provide a multi-day trial subscription, which could be just enough to learn about that one specific Azure service.

I hope this article gives you enough insights on different Microsoft and 3rd party Azure learning resources available today.

Don’t hesitate reaching out if you have any questions on the discussed content.

/Peter