The wonderful world of knowledge technologies

For all of you working in Visual Studio with the Azure Resource Management (ARM) templates: When you get the PowerShell exception that the cmdlet Switch-AzureMode cannot be found, please take note of the following: 23 November: Microsoft released Azure PowerShell 1.0 and deprecated / removed the former ARM Switch-AzureMode completely. Based on clear feedback this stateful model was absolutely not desired: https://azure.microsoft.com/nl-nl/blog/azps-1-0/ 30 November: Microsoft released Azure SDK 2.8. This incorporates new ARM templates for Visual Studio, based on the new ARM cmdlets. You can download the SDK over here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/archive-net-downloads/ 30 November: Microsoft released Visual Studio 2015 update 1. This does not update Azure SDK. You will need to update the SDK yourself. So bottom-line, don’t mix Azure PowerShell 1.0 with the former versions of Azure SDK pre 2.8. Enjoy working with the ARM toolset! If you are looking for a tutorial, I...

As all of you know SharePoint 2013 comes with a much improved search webpart infrastructure. One can even build search filters based on user profile properties in order to build personalized experiences (refer to the Technet article Query variables in SharePoint 2013 ). Strangely, it is currently not possible to filter search results based on the followed sites. Take the scenario where you have hundreds of sites that have stored documents, list items, etc. and you want to show a list of recently added items to the user for all his followed sites. (people that can't wait and want the ready-to-use solution: go straight to the ce_followedsites.html gist. Others, read along!) JavaScript-only solutions have their limitations Most examples in the blogosphere provide a JavaScript focused solution where you need to include the specific business rules into code for filtering and rendering. What I started to wondering whether it would be possible to extend the search webparts with a c...

A Dutch retailer published some interesting news: they were successful in integrating their CRM system with the WhatsApp channel. WhatsApp is currently the most often used app on mobile devices: 4 out of 10 users are using WhatsApp business-wise; in average people receive 65 new messages per day; People in the age range of 18 and 34 even receive 150 message per day, and send 60 messages per day on average. Deep integration between WhatsApp and CRM For me the catch in this news is the option that WhatsApp provides options to integrate the communication stream into one's backend system. When a customer sends a message, the CRM system provides full context information towards the employee: who, what, where. http://www.frankwatching.com/archive/2015/10/05/whatsapp-als-servicekanaal-suitsupply-pakt-het-innovatief-aan-case/

With the release of TypeScript 1.6 it is now possible to start using the async and await operators in your TypeScript code! You will need to enable this experimental feature, and you will need to target ES6, as TypeScript 1.6 is currently only emitting ES6 generator / yield code for your async / await code. Then when you apply for example Babel to take your JavaScript ES6 code to ES5 code, it suddenly became possible to run your async / await enabled TypeScript code in the browser! I have compiled a working sample project to show you the application. See the following GitHub repository: https://github.com/cveld/AsyncAwait-TypeScript-Example The following components have been used: Visual Studio 2015; not required, but you get perfect syntax highlighting; ASP.NET 5 beta7 web project template; TypeScript 1.6; starting from version 1.6 it supports the experimental async and await operators. You will need to set ES6 as the target. TypeScript 1.6 does not support transpiling into ES...

Most of you do probably know the Office Dev Center; the portal for (SharePoint) Office development. But who is familiar with the Office Dev Patterns & Practices initiative? This initiative lead by Microsoft has as main goal to provide a central repository for all code, solutions, patterns, examples with regards to (SharePoint) Office development. Their most important asset is their GIT repository of which the first delivery was done in May 2014. https://github.com/OfficeDev/PnP/wiki Office Patterns & Practices is also to be found on Channel9: http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/OfficeDevPnP New: remote provisioning framework A very interesting addition recently made is a first version of a remote provisioning framework  in order to provision sites based on templated configuration files. This requirement lives with lots of customers and using this framework we can provide faster solution to address the needs. Check the demo video on Channel9: http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/Of...