Jasper Siegmund

[Azure] WordPress and Azure Redis Cache

May 25, 2017 Jasper Siegmund Leave a comment

I a quest to optimize the performance of my WordPress powered site, I thought I’d give Redis Cache a go. Redis Cache has become the industry default when it comes to caching in a key-value style. Azure has a Redis Cache offering which you can use to enhance the performance of any app. If you’re not familiar with caching: it’s a mechanism to eliminate timely data retrieval actions. Caching can be implemented several different places: you web browser uses caching so that it does not have to retrieve all files on every load. Redis Cache is usually more targeted towards scenario’s like database connections. Instead of getting items from a database table, which usually is relatively slow, you can get them from the cache instead.

[O365] Adding your chatbot to Skype for Business

May 18, 2017May 29, 2017 Jasper Siegmund 8 Comments

Have you been coding your chat bot using the Microsoft Bot Framework? Good news! One of the long awaited features is finally here: the Skype for Business channel! Using this channel, you can now get your but to communicate with users using Skype for Business. This is especially good news for enterprises where S4B is often the primary communication tool. Bots were already available through Microsoft Teams, but not all companies are ready for that yet. Skype was in there as well, but is mostly used on the consumer side. So great to have Skype for Business joining the club!

[VS2017] Unable to login “failed to refresh access token”

April 10, 2017 Jasper Siegmund 2 Comments

I was running into this weird error today. For some reason (you know… it happens) Visual Studio lost it’s license. I was still logged in, but requested to re-enter my credentials. So I tried, but I kept getting errors. I then thought: let’s log out and log in again. So yeah, that didn’t happen…

[NL] Global Azure Bootcamp @ mStack!

March 16, 2017 Jasper Siegmund Leave a comment

Afgelopen jaar begon ik aan een nieuwe baan. Na 4 jaar werken voor Atos vond ik het tijd voor wat anders. Destijds verruilde ik een werkgever met ongeveer 75 collega’s voor eentje met 75.000 collega’s in 4 jaar tijd groeide dat bedrijf uit naar 100.000 man. Leuke tijd gehad, veel kunnen leren en de mogelijkheid gehad om te werken voor een aantal interessante (en vooral grote) bedrijven zoals DAF, Philips en het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken. Toch vond ik het tijd om wat meer focus aan te brengen op technologie die wat mij betreft nog jarenlang een zeer interessante markt zal zijn: Microsoft Azure. En rondom Azure organiseren wij op 22 april (zaterdag) het Global Azure Bootcamp. Gratis!

[Azure] Using Azure Functions Proxies

February 22, 2017 Jasper Siegmund Leave a comment

If you’ve started using Functions in Azure and you’ve got multiple set-up by now, you’ll start to find that managing them becomes a bit cumbersome, especially when you’ve spread them across multiple instances. All of the instances will have a different base URL and you might find it difficult to keep naming and versioning in line with what you planned. So now what? Let’s take a look at the newly released Proxies for Azure Functions! Read More

[Misc] Fixing annoying synchronization problem Outlook Android app

February 6, 2017February 9, 2017 Jasper Siegmund Leave a comment

Since my outlook.com instance was upgraded to the ‘new’ experience, I’m having all kinds of issues. Two of the most annoying ones: my rules (junk sweep for instance) are not working. Not at all. Also, the synchronization on my mobile phone was pretty crappy, especially for people / contacts. It would not sync certain contacts (again: not at all) and others it would sometimes sync and sometimes delete. Being a nerd I could not stand this, so I went on to find a fix.

I tried all the logical stuff first: reset the account (which is an option in the app). Switch on / off contact syncing. Remove and add the account. Remove the app and reinstall it. I really tried pretty much everything, nothing worked.

With the update, legacy outlook.com account were moved over to a new infrastructure which is built on Office365 bits and pieces. It’s still Outlook.com, but it looks an awful lot like Outlook Online from Office365 now. And if you know Office365, you also know it’s basically Exchange behind the scenes. Read More

[Azure] Using precompiled DLL’s for your Functions

January 6, 2017January 6, 2017 Jasper Siegmund Leave a comment

One of the cool things about Azure Functions is that they are very easy to get started. You create a new function, type some code and you’re off. This is very nice from a getting started point of view, but once you’re considering to use them for more than just playing around, other things come into play. For instance, you might want to actually test what you’re doing. You might want to reference projects, you might want to reuse some of the code you (or your company) already has. Now there’s all kinds of ways of doing this, but just recently the Function teams introduced another very interesting possibility: the use of precompiled DLL’s. Read More

[Azure] From Function to SharePoint List Item

January 2, 2017January 1, 2017 Jasper Siegmund 1 Comment

This article describes how to insert an item into a SharePoint list using an Azure Function written in C#. Might seem like a trivial task, but there are some caveats you might want to take notice of before you start.