Archive
Office 365 – Integration with Office 365 APIs
As we continue to work more and more with Office 365, we are likely require some form of integration from our custom application or business system with Office 365. The Office 365 platform has some APIs available for integration, which will also allow our hybrid systems to integrate with the cloud.
The Office 365 APIs are exposed using the REST architecture. The following API areas (you could also say these a Office 365 data areas) are available now for you to interact or integrate with.
- Mail – read, compose and send messages and attachments, manage folders in a user’s mailbox in Office 365 or Exchange Online
- Calendar – provides access to a user’s contacts and contact folders in Office 365 or Exchange Online
- Contacts – provides access to events, calendars, and calendar groups in Exchange Online as part of Office 365
- Files – provides access to work with OneDrive for Business Files and Folders
- Discovery Service – to interact with the Discovery Service API you send HTTP and OData requests. Discovery Service supports discovering Calendar, Contacts, Mail, MyFiles (for OneDrive and OneDrive for Business service endpoints), and RootSite (for SharePoint).
So what can you do with these APIs? Head to this URL for detailed information on each, it’s quite useful. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/api/api-catalog
- I wanted to included this illustration (taken from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/howto/platform-development-overview), which clearly shows you must be authenticated first before accessing the Office 365 data layer.
The illustration also shows you can choose your desired application programming language along with your development environment toolset when working with non-Microsoft toolsets such as XCode or Eclipse/Android Studio.
Some Helpful Links
Below are some helpful links when working with the Office 365 APIs. These can also help you get started.
Office 365 APIs starter projects, code samples, and videos
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/howto/starter-projects-and-code-samples
Office 365 Starter Project for ASP.NET MVC
If you want to get a look at some starter code, have a look at this one:
https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-365-APIs-Starter-Project-for-ASPNETMVC
Authentication
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/howto/common-app-authentication-tasks
Enjoy!
Better Unit Testing with Microsoft Fakes – Free eBook!
Spotted a blog post mention on Twitter today, which I thought I would re-post to my blog for future reference as it had some good info on Unit Testing well worth giving a plug for. Since I am a BIG fan of Test Driven Development (even with Microsoft Dynamics CRM – don’t let anyone tell you it can’t be done with box products!) I wanted to keep a reference to this document and Microsoft blog post.
The free eBook covers the Microsoft Fakes Framework that shipped as part of Visual Studio 2012. Note: Microsoft Fakes is or will be available in the Premium edition of VS2012 with Update 2.
A few graphics taken from the eBook are shown below.
Greg Olsen
YellowDuckGuy
Visual Studio 2012 – Licensing Information & Whitepapers
Microsoft has recently released a whitepaper outlining information regarding the licensing of Visual Studio and how this relates to users and the Team Foundation Server (TFS) environment. Licensing can be mind blowing at the best of times, so hopefully this white paper helps you out.
Below is a section taken from the whitepaper to give you an overview before downloading the files located below.
Introduction
Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 provides a comprehensive, highly flexible set of application lifecycle management (ALM) tools. With the introduction of Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft made significant changes to simplify the product line and make improvements in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server licensing. Important new capabilities have been introduced,
including storyboarding, end user feedback, sprint planning and backlog management, production load testing, use of IntelliTrace in production, and more.The remainder of this paper provides an overview of the Visual Studio product line and the licensing requirements for those products in common deployment scenarios.
Visual Studio 2012 Licensing Overview
With Visual Studio 2012 there are essentially two things for which you purchase licenses:
1. Users.
2. The Visual Studio Team Foundation Server environment.(2012, http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13350)
Downloads
Note: Same file to download but in different file formats of .docx, .pdf & .xps
- Visual Studio 2012 and MSDN Licensing Whitepaper – October-2012.docx [453kb]
- Visual Studio 2012 and MSDN Licensing Whitepaper – October-2012.pdf [790kb]
- Visual Studio 2012 and MSDN Licensing Whitepaper – October-2012.xps [1.0MB]
Hope this helps!
Greg Olsen
Yellow Duck Guy
Connect Visual Studio 2008 to Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010
I have connected Visual Studio 2008 a number of times to Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 in the past and today I needed to do it again for some Visual Studio 2008 SSRS report development. I find I always need to search around for the settings to apply this connection and thought it was time I documented these. Hopefully this will help you to if needed
Issue
You will receive the error below when attempting to connect Visual Studio 2008 to TFS 2010.
Resolution
You need to set up your instance of visual studio using the instructions below in order to connect to TFS. Old days of Visual Studio development with TFS didn’t know about TFS collections either.
Check you have the following installations installed. These are required to connect Visual Studio 2008 to Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010:
- Visual Studio 2008
- Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 [831.3MB]
- Visual Studio 2008 Team Explorer [387.4MB]
- Visual Studio Team System 2008 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 interoperability [KB974558] 11.2MB Microsoft Download
- You will need to enter the TFS address in the format as shown below
If you still cannot connect, then close Visual Studio 2008 and create the following registry key entry. Note: To launch the registry, type regedit from the run command.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\Servers
Add a new String Value in this location. In the value field, add the full location of your TFS server including collection name i.e. http://tfs-server:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection
Open Visual Studio 2008 again and then open Team Explorer. You should now be able to open the TFS server you set. You may also find that you will be prompted for credentials, this is normal. Simply enter the credentials which are valid for the team project.
Greg Olsen
Yellow Duck Guy
ReSharper 6 – Beta Available for Download
Today I noticed that a beta version of ReSharper 6 has been made public on the JetBrains website here and thought I would give it a plug on my blog as it’s a brilliant development tool.
What is ReSharper?
ReSharper is a refactoring and productivity extension by JetBrains that extends native functionality of Microsoft Visual Studio 2003, 2005, 2008 and 2010.
ReSharper brings smart C# code analysis, editing, highlighting and refactoring features to .NET developers. ReSharper extends much of its support to VB.NET, build scripts, ASP.NET, XML, and XAML files. All ReSharper features are available in mixed solutions where different projects use .NET Framework, .NET Compact Framework, Silverlight, as well as other frameworks and tools from the Visual Studio ecosystem.
Latest changes or additions to ReSharper v6.0:
- JavaScript, CSS, and ASP.NET MVC 3 Razor support
- Bundled decompiler: home-grown technology that is now also available in dotPeek
- New navigation actions and valuable additions to existing navigation features
- Code inspections and quick-fixes for on-the-fly code quality control in VB.NET code
- Multiple new code inspections and quick-fixes for C#
- Color assistance (highlighting and color picker) in C#, VB.NET, XAML, and CSS
- In-place refactorings
- A pack of new context actions to manipulate strings
- JavaScript QUnit test runner support
- Bug fixes and new actions in XAML support
- ReSharper suggestions explained right from within quick-fix menus
- Performance Improvements in Solution Wide Analysis and other areas
Resharper Product Page can be found here.
CRM Developers – you can use it to!
ReSharper can be a great extension on top of the native functionality provided by Visual Studio which can also improve productivity and refactoring of code used by CRM Developers. CRM developers can refactor their Plug-in, Silverlight, JavaScript or XML code using this extension within Visual Studio.
Greg Olsen
Yellow Duck Guy
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 – Comparison Table
Today I was assessing the differences between the versions of Visual Studio 2010 and collated this information which I thought I would share for others and for my future reference. There are basically 3 different versions. Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Premium and Professional.
To keep things simple, I have categorised them into 2 sections. Overview Summary and Detailed Summary.
Overview Summary
Note: Take notice of the coloured areas in the diagram above. For example, the purple area is the Ultimate area, which surrounds both Premium and Professional coloured areas. This means the features within Professional and Premium are included. The diagram starts from the bottom and each level above includes the contents of the level below it.
Detailed Summary
To find out more about Visual Studio, see the Microsoft website at http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products
Greg Olsen
Yellow Duck Guy
Debug ASP Pages with Visual Studio 2005
1. View your ASP page within Visual Studio 2005. Open and existing file or view your file within Solution Explorer.
2. Set a breakpoint on the ASP code line where you wish the debugger to hit.
3. View the ASP page in the web browser (without debugging).
4. Download the file listdlls.exe from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896656.aspx
5. Run listdlls.exe with the command of listdlls -d asp.dll from command line and find which dllhost.exe loaded the asp.dll.
6. Within Visual Studio, from the toolbar menu select Debug | Attach to Process
a. Locate the process by its process ID and attach to this process.
7. Refresh the page (or F5) in the web browser. You should see the breakpoint get hit.
8. Use QuickWatch within Visual Studio to explore the objects.
Yellow Duck Guy
Visual Studio 2008 Presentation Slides
Yellow Duck Guy
Visual Studio 2008 Presentation in Palmerston North
What is the topic of the presentation?
"An overview of Visual Studio 2008"
What is it all about? i.e. Presentation Summary?
Daryl will go through the new and cool features of VS 2008.
"Explore all the new Visual Studio 2008 features, from language enhancements; improved designers; Web and smart-client development tools; to Visual Studio Team System, a suite of software lifecycle management tools poised to transform how you deliver software for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and the Web."
(2007, http://blogs.msdn.com/darrylburling/archive/2007/11/28/visual-studio-in-palmerston-north.aspx)
Where, When, What time?
-Novotel Palmerston North, 175-185 Cuba Street
-Registration and morning tea will be open from 8.30am
-Presentation will be from 9am-10.30am
Quick I want to register?
Goto here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032361457&Culture=en-NZ
Yellow Duck Guy
Greg Olsen
Visual Studio 2008 RTM Released
.NET Framework 3.5 Runtime (this is required for 3.5 applications to run when deployed)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=en
Yellow Duck Guy
Greg Olsen
NZ Dynamics 365 User Group
Leader: Greg OlsenMeetup Site URL: http://www.meetup.com/NZ-Dynamics-365-User-Group-Auckland/
Greg Olsen - Yellow Duck Guy - 