Editor’s note: The following post was written by Developer Security MVP Troy Hunt

ASafaWeb is the Automated Security Analyser for ASP.NET Websites and it’s a free on-demand service located at asafaweb.com. The goal of ASafaWeb is to help ASP.NET website developers quickly identify security misconfiguration risks within their sites. The service simply takes a publicly facing URL then makes a number of non-malicious requests to the site to establish the security profile and provide guidance on how it can be further strengthened.

ASafaWeb goes beyond security analysis alone though, it also aims to educate and build further awareness around constructs such as HttpOnly cookies and XFO headers to prevent clickjacking attacks. Findings are accompanied by links to detailed explanations of the risk, possible attacks and required mitigation. There’s also a scheduling feature to regularly scan a site in case a misconfiguration should slip in during a release whereupon an automated notification can then be delivered.

I was inspired to create ASafaWeb as in my role as a Developer Security MVP, I often see fundamental security concepts misunderstood by developers. Security has to be made more consumable so I wanted to create the easiest possible means to assess websites and learn the basics in a fashion that’s clear and concise. Being a free on-demand service that literally takes seconds to run means the barriers to entry are non-existent and any ASP.NET developers – regardless of experience – can run it at the drop of the hat and get useful security information about their website back. It’s my community contribution to help build a safer web.

1. TFS 2013 Preview: Part 3 of X - Installing TFS 2013 Preview

By Visual Studio ALM MVP Mickey Gousset – @mickey_gousset

2. Creating a Database Project From a Database

By Visual Basic MVP Deborah Kurata– @DeborahKurata

3. Extending TFS Work Items Using a web page and the WebpageControl

By Visual Studio ALM MVP Mathias Olausson

4. How to consume wcf service using JavaScript Proxy

By ASP.NET/IIS MVP Brij Bhushan Mishra – @brij_bhushan

5. SharePoint Security State of the Union

By SharePoint MVP Thomas Balkeståhl – @blksthl

Editor’s note: The following post was written by SharePoint MVP Benjamin Niaulin

Something that does not get enough attention in SharePoint is the multilingual feature available. Through my work, I noticed that in the United States it is often not an issue, as most companies will install SharePoint in English only. However, in Canada and in most European countries it is a little more crucial. It’s important for us to understand what is available and how it works.

Available multilingual features in SharePoint

As mentioned by Microsoft’s Introduction to Multilingual Features, there are two main types of features available.

MUI or Multiple Language Interface: This is really just making the general interface available in different languages. So we’re talking about the menus, titles, columns, navigation, etc… Not so much a feature as it is a new interface.

Variations: As the name suggests, this essentially allows you to have different variations of a site in other languages. This is only available for Publishing Sites and creates copies of the entire site into each of these variations and published when it is translated.

The Introduction article written by Microsoft already does a great job explaining these.

These features are available by first installing the Language Pack for the languages needed in your organization.

“Do I really need to install the language pack? Even if I don’t plan to use any of these features?”

That is an excellent question, and though the answer may vary by company, I follow a basic set of rules. What most don’t realize is that the Language Packs are required for optimal Search Results for documents or content written in other languages.

Customers call me, with an English version of SharePoint installed, and ask me why the Search Results works great except when searching French words.

You may find this silly but here is an example. A search for the word “Run” gave back results with “Run, Ran, Running” and a search for “Dog” also returned “Dogs”. Essentially what is happening is that because the language is English, the Search understands the verb tenses and the plural of nouns. However, doing the same searches with the French word equivalent only searched for the exact matches, as it did not understand the word. That’s why I strongly recommend you install the Language Packs even if you do not plan on using the MUI or Variations but do have different working languages.

Installing Language Packs on your servers

To install the Language Pack of your preferred language, you must install it on every SharePoint Server both Web Front End and Application Servers and run the Configuration Wizard. Over the years with SharePoint, the installation order for patches have been confusing so I asked a fellow MVP, Brian Lalancette to help clarify this.

Your Language Pack, just like your SharePoint Server, needs to be patched. So if you install your Language Pack after having applied an eventual SP1 or Cumulative Updates, then you will have to re-install these updates. However, if the Language Pack was installed before any of these updates were installed then you do not have to worry about a thing, these Cumulative Updates have all languages included which is one of the reasons the downloads are so large.

What’s different in SharePoint 2013?

There is definitely a big visual change your users and definitely your administrators will feel. It makes sense when you think about it but the change will affect adoption if not properly explained. In SharePoint 2013, it is no longer possible to switch between languages at will from the user’s Welcome Menu.

This is now managed by the Regional Settings used by the Browser. This makes a lot of sense in the End Users perspective, especially with a growing BYOD policy at work. Connecting from your English tablet at home will not be the same as the French PC you are using at work. Does this mean I have to change my browsers’ regional settings every time I want to switch language? No. Anyone can override his or her language settings from their personal profile settings.

There is an option to override your Preferred Display Language and sort them.

However, this is global to every SharePoint Site in the farm associated with the My Profile Setting. So if the user sets a specific language then all the sites he visits that have that language enabled will automatically switch to it.

One way to make sure everyone starts with the same language despite their Regional Browser Settings is to set it via the Central Administration in the User Profile Service Application. Of course going through each individual profile could be long, you look into PowerShell

To set the Language Settings for a site, go to Site Settings and click on Language Settings.

There, you find the available Alternate Language for the sites. Simply check the ones you want for your site.

Managed Metadata and Multilingual Features

One of the great additions to SharePoint since 2010 is the Managed Metadata Column pulling information from the Term Store. In SharePoint 2013, the Term Store still exists with some new features like the Managed Metadata Navigation.

When creating Terms in a Term Set, we can specify the Labels associated to the different languages installed. In other words we can write the word equivalent in other available and installed languages.

This works great in a Document Library. I have documents tagged with the word Window and Chair and when I switched to French, it shows the correct Term to the visitor.

And in French:

Unfortunately, after a few tests I realized that the Search Results would only include the Default Label and not their synonyms in other languages. Using the example above, searching for Chair worked fine but searching for Chaise (Chair in French) did not yield any results.

As for the Managed Metadata Navigation, it completely ignored my Labels. After assigning my Term Set as Global Navigation, it didn’t matter if I visited the site in English, French or any other language… the navigation always stayed in English.

Translation Services with SharePoint 2013

With the arrival of SharePoint 2013 also came some new multilingual features that were not there before. A new Service Application called Machine Translation Services adds new capabilities to the mix. Bill Baer has done a good article introducing this service.

The idea behind the machine translation is for you to press a button and have your content or page translated by a cloud service. If your server cannot connect to the Internet without a proxy then you can configure these settings in Search Service Application itself.

Using the Machine Translate will still require someone to look at the translated page before publishing, as it cannot always maintain context. Manual translation involves creating a Translation Package in XLIFF format and have an external agency do the work. Fortunately, with SharePoint 2013 you have the choice between automatic machine translation and manual external translation.

About the author

Well known as the SharePoint Geek, Benjamin Niaulinhas from Montreal has been helping people all around the globe reach their goals by simplifying SharePoint solutions. You haven’t met Benjamin yet? Look for him at SharePoint conferences and events.  You can also follow him or Twitter, view his slideshare, or find additional articles on his SharePoint blog.

About MVP Mondays

The MVP Monday Series is created by Melissa Travers. In this series we work to provide readers with a guest post from an MVP every Monday. Melissa is a Community Program Manager, formerly known as MVP Lead, for Messaging and Collaboration (Exchange, Lync, Office 365 and SharePoint) and Microsoft Dynamics in the US. She began her career at Microsoft as an Exchange Support Engineer and has been working with the technical community in some capacity for almost a decade. In her spare time she enjoys going to the gym, shopping for handbags, watching period and fantasy dramas, and spending time with her children and miniature Dachshund. Melissa lives in North Carolina and works out of the Microsoft Charlotte office.

Windows Azure MVP Zia Khan, as part of a team of 11 developers, has created a free app titled Presentation Next.  Presentation Next™ enables you to create lifelike presentational visual experiences in Windows 8 and that are equally viewable on Windows, iPad, Android, Linux, and Mac.

It allows anyone to create presentations that run in a browser on any device and look nothing like traditional slides. Instead of moving through slides, the user flies over a large map of concepts, zooming and shifting between them.  It helps in creating movie like presentation shows using the latest leading edge and state of the art HTML5 based web technologies.

Presentation Next is a ‘tool’ that is meant to change the way people present their ideas in this web and mobile age.  A Presentation Next presentation consists of an extremely large canvas in which you draw your ideas spatially using a mouse, touch, keyboard or a pen.  It uses pan and zoom effects and animations to give the presentation a filmic look and feel:  a cinematic poster style presentation builder. 

For the last few year Zia's passion has been Windows 8 and HTML5 development.  He wanted to create a tool that will allow the end user to create HTML5 documents without any knowledge of software development.  Presentation Next is the manifestation of that dream.  

Zia Khan felt the MVP program was invaluable to his work on Presentation Next.  “My MVP status has allowed me to network with the best developers in my region.  All the top developers we hired I met in my MVP events.  It is a great networking and recruitment tool.  Furthermore, the information and software (MSDN) I got through the MVP program helped me a lot to get started.”

9^th to 13^th September, join the MVP community

in London for a ‘real world’ look at the Microsoft Cloud OS

Visual Studio ALM MVP Jeff Bramwell has released an app titled Kids Eat 4 Less!  Kids Eat 4 Less! shows you restaurants within a selected range (in miles) from your current location that offer free or discounted kids’ meals, relying on crowdsourcing to continuously add new restaurant deals.  Once you’ve found a restaurant, the app also links to your phone’s map application for driving directions, and lets you pin your favorite restaurant to your Start screen for easy access.  The non-expiring trial version is ad-supported or you can purchase a full version without ads. 

Jeff was inspired to create this app for anyone who wants to save money when taking their children out to eat.  He also built it as a learning experience, as he learned a lot about UI design, Azure websites, and geo-coordinate/distance comparisons in the coding process.

His MVP experience was invaluable in the creation of this app: “Over recent years I have learned that, more often than not, I get some of the best answers to some of my toughest questions from other MVPs. Although the Kids Eat 4 Less! app was inspired simply by the fact that I have four children (which can be quite costly when going out to eat) I have relied heavily on contacts that I have made through the MVP program to work through some of the challenges I faced when creating the app.”

1. Troubleshooting the Microsoft Dynamics GP Web Client Article

By Dynamics GP MVP Mariano Gomez – @dgpblogster

2. Custom Query Range Functions using SysQueryRangeUtil

By Dynamics AX MVP Joris de Gruyter – @jorisdg

3. Configuring Windows Azure Diagnostics in Eclipse

By Windows Azure MVP Neil Mackenzie – @mknz

4. C++ REST SDK in Visual Studio 2013

By Visual C++ MVP Marius Bancila – @mariusbancila

5. Lookup a contact's time zone

By Outlook MVP Diane Poremsky – @outlooktips

Editor’s note:  We’d like to pause and celebrate one of our most popular guest posts from the past year.  The following post is a re-post of a guest post by Dynamic CRM MVP Gus Gonzalez.

Scheduling Recurring Workflows in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online and On-Premise

If you have read some of my previous posts you will notice that I am a big fan of utilizing out of the box functionality within Microsoft Dynamics CRM before looking at custom or third party solutions. For example, I previously blogged about utilizing the Unique ID generation capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM with any entity instead of just the few out of the box entities for which this functionality was intended.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP Matt Wittemann came up with a solution to schedule recurring workflows within Microsoft Dynamics CRM without implementing any custom or third party solution. I knew I needed to share this with the entire community.

First, let’s ask: Why would you need recurring workflows?

There are many cases when you find yourself thinking: “I need ‘this’ to happen every X days” and you don’t know how to solve the problem. For example: You need to email a summary of resolved cases every month to a group of people within the organization. Or maybe send some of your contacts a monthly or quarterly email containing the link to your latest product catalog. How about a countdown of ‘days until launch’ on a custom Project entity? There is always something.

This solution requires you to create a custom entity, a couple of workflows and a recurring bulk deletion job. Five steps, that’s it.

1. Customize the ‘target entity’ if necessary, for example: if you want to countdown the days until a project must be completed, you could add a field to a “project entity” named “Days until completion” to be set when the project is created and that will be edited daily by the recurrent workflow. In this case, the custom “Project” entity is the ‘target entity’.

2. Create a custom entity; in this case I named my entity: “Workflow Assistant”. This entity will contain the name field, owner, an optionset (a.k.a. drop-down menu) field and a lookup to the “target entity”. The Target Entity is any entity that drives the process.

3. Create a workflow triggered by the Target Entity (I.E. A new project has been created). This workflow will create a ‘Workflow Assistant’ record to be deleted by the recurring bulk deletion job you will create on step number 5.

4. Create a workflow triggered by the deletion of the Workflow Assistant record, this workflow will perform the recurring task and create a new Workflow Assistant record to be deleted on the next cycle thus making it recurrent.

5. Create a Bulk Deletion job set to delete the Workflow Assistant records created by the two workflows from step 3 and 4 and configure the frequency (I.E. Every 1 day).

Here is a diagram describing the process detailed above:

Unfortunately, there were a lot of details involved on the configuration of this functionality so I have decided not to include all the screenshots and make this post too long and cumbersome, if you need more details please watch the video below; I have also included two additional examples to illustrate the capabilities of this simple solution; on the first example I will show you how to configure a recurring workflow to count the days a Lead has been neglected (I.E. Not contacted), on the second example I will show you how to configure a recurring workflow to send a weekly sales pipeline report to selected users:

http://youtu.be/EMDOb2Bl8JU

About the author

Gus Gonzalez is a Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP, Solution Architect and SMB Team Lead at Zero2Ten, Inc. He has over 10 years of consulting experience in the IT Industry, designing and implementing Microsoft Solutions ranging from enterprise to small environments. Worked as a full time Microsoft Certified Trainer from 2005 to 2009 teaching Microsoft Official Curriculum classes regarding Microsoft Windows, Exchange, ISA and SMS Servers along with Citrix, Cisco, EC-Council and CompTIA official curriculum. A Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community Guest Columnist passionate about User Adoption, he often talks about how Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu can be used to Increase User Adoption, a sport he has practiced since January 2010. Follow Gus on Twitter.

About MVP Monday

The MVP Monday Series is created by Melissa Travers. In this series we work to provide readers with a guest post from an MVP every Monday. Melissa is a Community Program Manager, formerly known as MVP Lead, for Messaging and Collaboration (Exchange, Lync, Office 365 and SharePoint) and Microsoft Dynamics in the US. She began her career at Microsoft as an Exchange Support Engineer and has been working with the technical community in some capacity for almost a decade. In her spare time she enjoys going to the gym, shopping for handbags, watching period and fantasy dramas, and spending time with her children and miniature Dachshund. Melissa lives in North Carolina and works out of the Microsoft Charlotte office.

Hardware Interaction Design and Development MVPs Nicolas Calvi and Johanna Rowe met in January 2010 during a Microsoft Surface 1.0 mission, where they had to work together on a bank application for the tactile device. It was the meeting of two worlds which had to communicate: Interaction Design and Development.

Johanna is an industrial and interaction designer, while Nicolas is a technical lead.  They are both geeks, passionate about their work and by the tactile possibilities of multi-user interface possibilities offered by the Microsoft Surface 1.0.  It was while working together for the creation of this multi-user banking application that their story began.

In January 2011, after having worked a lot, blogging and giving conferences on the Microsoft Surface device, that Nicolas became the first French-speaking Surface MVP. However, every project that Nicolas did on this device, or later on Kinect, Windows Phone, and Windows 8, was with Johanna. He called her his muse for all of the interaction design aspects. All of Johanna’s work is user-focused, always stating, “I don’t do client-centered design,” which was a dynamic shift for a developer like Nicolas.

During the MIX 11 in Las Vegas, Nicolas was invited by the Microsoft Surface product group to participate for a session about the tactile table, now named Samsung SUR 40, with Microsoft PixelSense.  He attended with Johanna, who had a discussion with different people in the product group about interaction designers also having the opportunity to become MVPs.

The product group asked Johanna to make a file for the title "Surface MVP," because they sincerely believed that the design is a significant part of touch applications, including Microsoft Surface and PixelSense. So in January 2012, Johanna became a Surface MVP and works within communities to bring the vision of the designer in the design of natural interfaces.

Nicolas and Johanna shared their thoughts on co-existing as MVPs.

“Our life as MVPs has been lively, and at the release of the Surface tablet, our product group was renamed "Hardware Interaction Design & Development."  The name wasn’t chosen at random, as the design is an important point for the group. Our life of MVPs also happens in tandem, because we care very much about spreading messages on both the technical design and the interaction design sides.”

Then, after a marriage proposal on Christmas Day, they got married on June 15 at La Bastide de Jaillans, near Valence, France. 

Johanna and Nicolas enthused about their wedding and their incorporation of MVP themes:

“It was a beautiful sunny holiday and a wedding to match our expectations. But we did not lose our geek roots during the wedding.

We took the time to take some pictures with MVP stuff and we brought to our guests an Xbox 360 with Kinect, just for more fun. We also placed, behind the table names, a QR code that would redirect to a Wikipedia page on the definition of the table name. The table names were names of well-known gardens in connection with our "secret garden" theme.

The most technophile part of our wedding was Windows 8:  we developed together for the wedding an application. The application was a quiz about us.   We passed around a Windows 8 tablet in the room, with each person having a written code behind the menu.  They selected their name and entered the code to complete the questionnaire, and at the end, they got a score. Whoever had the best score won a prize.”

Congratulations to Johanna and Nicolas on their wedding, and may they have a long life together as partners and as fellow MVPs! 

Editor’s note:  The following post is a guest post by Windows Entertainment and Connected Home MVP Barb Bowman.

I have authored two Forums Reader Windows Store Apps; one for the Windows and Surface Communities and a second for the TechNet Windows Forums.

The Microsoft Windows and Surface Community Reader App includes coverage for content from Questions and Answers, Discussions, and Wikis from Microsoft Communities.

The TechNet Windows Forum Reader includes content from the TechNet Windows Forums

I’m a MVP who tries to keep up with current issues and provide support in a few of the Community (formerly Answers Forums), specifically in the Windows and Surface Categories (where I’m also a Forum Moderator). I also regularly read a few of the TechNet Windows Forums. I was one of the users of a NNTP bridge developed to interface with standard NNTP newsreaders, and I had been using Forte Inc.’s Agent Newsreader to participate in these forums. Using a newsreader gave me the ability to quickly scan hundreds of topics/subjects and several views, including a side by side view of content and pick the threads in which to participate/answer questions.

When Microsoft recently made the decision that updating the back end services for the NNTP bridge (developed by a couple of very talented MVPs and not officially supported) going forward was not cost-effective for the number of users it determined to be using the bridge, I started looking at RSS feeds as a possible way to make efficient use of my time and started experimenting in Visual Studio.

I don’t classify myself as a “real” developer as my interests really are in the Connected Home, Photography, and other multimedia arenas, but I know a little JavaScript and thought that if I came up with something useful for me, it might be useful for others. Using JavaScript and JSON to pull the RSS feeds, I managed to duplicate some of the newsreader experience (but not all, of course).

I tackled the Communities Windows and Surface Forums first, and when Discussions and Wikis were launched, added them to the app. A couple of weeks after launching the Windows and Surface Community Reader, I started thinking that since I had most of the framework already done, I could produce a similar app for TechNet with a bit more work. In a few days’ time, I had built and tested a TechNet Windows Forum Reader and that app is available now as well.

What I ended up with was usable in Windows 8 RTM with snapped view running Modern IE side by side and even more usable for me in the Windows 8.1 Preview with split screen. JavaScript does not support Web View in VS 2012/Windows 8.0 so I needed to reply on IE.

Snapped view on Windows 8: On my Surface in particular I could scroll super-fast and pick content I was interested in reading and quickly participate in threads.

Full screen tile view: Note that images are supported.

Full screen article view with image support, each with a link to the thread/article online.

Subscriptions page

I hope these two apps are useful to others. I’ve already been asked if I’d consider making a similar app for MSDN Forums! I’ve been active in “communities” since the old CompuServe and BBS days, and can see that Microsoft is providing a richer experience than the old and flat text based forums, which is a better experience for those seeking help. It gives me great satisfaction to help others with issues where and when I can.

I also developed an app for my own blog as well.

Editor’s note:  This is the original French version of the MVP wedding story – you can also see an English translation.

Nous nous sommes rencontrés en janvier 2010 lors d’une mission qui portait sur la réalisation d’une application pour la table Microsoft Surface (V1). C’est la rencontre de deux mondes qui sont faits et surtout qui ont besoin de s’entendre : le Design et le développement.

Johanna occupe le poste de Designer Industriel et d’interactions, moi celui de Leader Technique. Nous sommes tous les deux des Geeks passionnés par notre travail et à cette époque, passionnés par la table Microsoft Surface et le tactile en général. C’est en travaillant ensemble sur ce projet que notre histoire est née.

Plus tard (en 2011), après avoir longuement travaillé, bloggé et parlé lors de conférence sur la table Microsoft Surface, j’ai déposé un dossier pour le titre « MVP Surface ». Je suis devenu le premier MVP Surface Francophone en janvier 2011. Cependant, tout ce que je faisais sur ce support, et par la suite autour de Kinect ou Windows Phone, je le faisais avec Johanna qui était ma muse en ce qui concerne le Design et les interactions.

Pendant le MIX 2011 à Las Vegas, j’ai été convié par le groupe produit pour participer à une session sur la prochaine table tactile Microsoft, la table PixelSense. Je m’y suis rendu avec Johanna et suite à rencontre avec le groupe produit, elle a soulevé le point qu’il n’y avait pas ou peu de Designers chez les MVP et qu’il était dommage que ce genre de profil ne soit pas retenu car non technique.

Le groupe produit lui a alors demandé de proposer un dossier pour le titre « MVP Surface » car il pensait sincèrement que le Design occupait une part important des applications tactiles, notamment sur Microsoft Surface et PixelSense. C’est donc en janvier 2012 que Johanna est devenue « MVP Surface » et intervient au sein des communautés pour apporter la vision du Designer dans la conception des interfaces naturelles.

Notre vie de MVP a été mouvementée et suite à la sortie de la tablette Surface, notre groupe produit a été renommé « Hardware Interaction Design & Développement ». Nom qui n’a pas été choisi au hasard, car l’aspect Design est très important pour le groupe. Notre vie de MVP se passe aussi à deux, car nous prenons à cœur de porter des messages à la fois sur la conception technique mais aussi sur le Design d’interface.

Puis, après une demande en mariage le jour de Noël, nous nous sommes mariés le 15 juin dernier à la Bastide de Jaillans (à côté de Valence en France). Une superbe fête ensoleillée et un mariage à la hauteur de nos espérances. Mais nous n’avons pas perdu nos racines Geek pendant le mariage.

Nous avons pris le temps de faire quelques photos aux couleurs MVP et nous avons mis à disposition de nos invités une console Xbox 360 avec une Kinect, histoire que ce mariage soit aussi très amusant. Nous avons aussi placé derrière les noms de table, des QR Code qui allaient sur la page Wikipédia de la définition du nom de la table. Les noms de table étaient des noms de jardin connu en rapport avec notre thème du « jardin secret ».

La partie la plus technophile de notre mariage est l’application Windows 8 que nous avons développé ensemble pour notre mariage. L’application était un Quizz sur nous deux, nous avons fait tourner une tablette Windows 8 dans la salle, chaque personne avait un code écrit derrière son menu, puis l’invité sélectionnait son nom et rentrait son code pour remplir le questionnaire et à la fin il obtienait un score. Celui qui a eu le meilleur score a gagné un prix.

1. An ASP.NET Single Page Application: The Fantasy Football Draft Manager

By ASP.NET/IIS MVP Jeff Fritz – @csharpfritz

2. Who’s On First?-Ranking Performance Using Excel

By Access MVP Glenn Lloyd

3. Getting started with Gallery Items in Windows Azure Pack (WAP)

By System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP Kristian Nese – @KristianNese

4. How to Build a RSS Feed Reader using Windows Phone App Studio?

By Silverlight MVP Kunal Chowdhury – @kunal2383

5. Semantic Logging Application Block (SLAB)

By Windows Azure MVP Neil Mackenzie – @mknz

Editor’s note: The following post was written by SQL Server MVP Rafael Salas

Creating Power Query Functions

You have seen or started using Power Query for Excel by now. If not you have been missing one of the greatest tools of the new Self-Service Business Intelligence offering Power BI.

Power Query has a wide range of options to discover, extract and manipulate data from internal and external sources via a very friendly user interface and you can go a long way with little to no programing. However, you are also given the choice of creating queries from scratch using M language in those situations where the requirements go beyond of the functionality provided by the user interface.

In this post, I want to show you how you can create parameterized functions that can be later be referenced and re-used by other Power Queries. This is something that can come handy when you want to wrap complex logic that end users may not be able to write themselves or when dealing with a piece of logic that is frequently used.

A Simple Scenario for a function: Formatting Dates

For this first example, let’s start with a simple scenario where we need to ensure that date values are formatted as MM/DD/YYYY and ensure that the month and day portions have leading zeros; so a value of 8/5/2010 should be represented as 08/05/2010 and so on.

We will use a dataset from and Excel table with a list of conferences along with their dates and location information. As you can see in the Figure 1, the date values does not have the required leading zeros in the month and day parts.

Creating a Baseline Query for Our Function

Since we are not familiar yet with M language we are going to format the dates by using the options provided by the user interface and then use the generated code as baseline for a function.

1. Click any cell within the table and create a new Power Query. Power Query –> From Table

2. When the Query Editor window opens, right-click in any of the columns and select: Insert Column –> Custom as shown in Figure 2

3. When the Insert Custom Column editor opens, enter the following M code and click OK

     Text.PadStart(Text.From(Date.Month([EventDate])),2,"0") & "/" &

     Text.PadStart(Text.From(Date.Day([EventDate])),2,"0") & "/" 

     &Text.From(Date.Year([EventDate]))

Note: We will use this snippet of M code later on to create our function. See Microsoft Power Query For Excel Formula Library Specification document for more information about the function used here and learn more about M language.

4. Back in the query editor, we should now have a new column called “custom” that displays the date values properly formatted as text. Click done to close the query editor and see the results of the query in a new Excel sheet.

Creating the Function

Now imagine users need to reformat date values as previously shown in a regular basis. We will create a function that takes a date value as input parameter (InDate) and returns a date as text with the appropriate format using the expression from step 3.

5. Create a new Power Query. Power Query –> From Other Sources –> Blank Query

6. When the query editor opens, click the Advanced Query editor button as shown in the figure below. Note: Advance query editor is disable by default, to enable it click options in the Power Query menu and check the Enable advanced query editing option.

7. Change the query as follows and click done (see Figure 6):

a. Replace the double quotes in the “source” expression with the expression from step 3 above. Then, parameterize the expression by replacing the “EventDate” field with “InDate” string.

b. Add an outer let…in expression with an input date parameter called “InDate”.

c. Rename the query to fFormatDate

The query should look like this:

let

     FormatDate = (InDate as date) =>

let

       Source = Text.PadStart(Text.From(Date.Month(InDate)),2,"0") &

       "/" & Text.PadStart(Text.From(Date.Day(InDate)),2,"0") & "/"

       &Text.From(Date.Year(InDate))

in

      Source

in

      FormatDate

Once you click Done, the query editor is able to recognize our query as a parameterized function as shown in the figure below. Click Done to exit the editor, and if you have not gotten any errors your function is ready to be used. Note: you should be able to test the function with a single input value by using the Invoke button, but you would need to delete the “Invoke<fnName>” step that is added to the query before exiting the query editor.

Calling a Function

Now that our function has been created, we should be able to call it from other queries within the workbook. We will use a copy of the query we built at the beginning with the list of events and dates.

8. Go to the worksheet that has the query we created in steps 1 through 4, click on any cell and click the Filter & Shape option in the Query Settings pane or under the Query menu in the ribbon.

9. One the query editor opens and if necessary, change the type of the EventDate column to Date so it matches the data type of the input parameter of our function. Select EventDate column->right-click->Change Type->Date

10. Now we will add a new column that use the function we just created to reformat the values in EventDate. Select any column->Right-click->Insert Column->Custom

11. Once the Insert Custom Column editor opens, paste the following code to invoke the function and pass the EventDate values as parameter. Click OK.

       fFormatDate([EventDate])

As you can see, the function is executed for every record in the record set.

Few notes about M and Power Query Functions

· M language is case sensitive, so make sure that both spelling and casing are correct when troubleshooting your code.

· The scope of a function is the workbook on which it is contained, so you would need to re-create functions on each workbook where they are needed.

· There is no easy way to discover or search for custom functions within an Excel file. This may pose a challenge when dealing with workbooks with many worksheets.

· There is no Intellisense for M which makes and you have to resort to the language and library specification documents.

Wrapping it up

As you can see, we have the ability to use functions as a way to encapsulate pieces of logic that can later be referenced from other power queries in the workbook giving us greater flexibility when creating more complex queries, or breaking a large query into smaller and more manageable pieces. You can also use function to abstract calls to external data sources such as APIs or to break complex queries into more manageable units of code.

Preview version warning – this information is current for Power Query preview (Version: 1.5.3296.1161). The information contained in this article may change prior to RTM.

About the author

Rafael is a speaker, published authored and blogger with +15 years of relevant IT experience across multiple industries.  He specializes in Business Intelligence and information architecture and is the recipient of multiple industry awards, including Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and The Data Warehouse Institute best practices.  Rafael is also an active member in the SQL Server technical community and maintains a blog at www.rafael-salas.com.  Follow him on Twitter.

About MVP Monday

The MVP Monday Series is created by Melissa Travers. In this series we work to provide readers with a guest post from an MVP every Monday. Melissa is a Community Program Manager, formerly known as MVP Lead, for Messaging and Collaboration (Exchange, Lync, Office 365 and SharePoint) and Microsoft Dynamics in the US. She began her career at Microsoft as an Exchange Support Engineer and has been working with the technical community in some capacity for almost a decade. In her spare time she enjoys going to the gym, shopping for handbags, watching period and fantasy dramas, and spending time with her children and miniature Dachshund. Melissa lives in North Carolina and works out of the Microsoft Charlotte office.

Visual Studio ALM MVP Mike Douglas has released a new app, TFS Agile Poker, to the Windows 8 Store.  TFS Agile Poker is a free cross platform tool for distributed and co-located teams to point your Team Foundation Server backlog. TFS Agile Poker can be used with Team Foundation Service or your On-Premises Team Foundation Server 2010 or 2012 installation using the TFS OData Services.   Features include estimate effort for product backlogs, communications with TF Service and on-premises TFS Server, support for multiple connections, the ability to use Agile and Scrum templates and to invite other users by email. 

He plans to create a mobile web version, as well as native versions for Windows Phone 8 and other mobile platforms, later this year.  

Mike explains his inspiration for creating TFS Agile Poker:

“The idea for my application came from the a need that I saw for distributed teams that were trying to point stories in a TFS backlog.  I was working with two teams.  One is co-located where it was easy to use card/fingers to point.  The other team is distributed across the country and there isn’t a good way to do this with a TFS backlog over the phone.   With a passion around extending TFS and helping others in ALM, I was excited to build TFS Agile Poker and improve my knowledge about mobile development in the process.”

“The MVP community was instrumental in the process.  I was able to demo it to the group of ALM MVPs at the last MVP summit and provide an early version to the ALM Rangers.  Both provided some valuable feedback.”

Visio MVP John Marshall has released the Banner app, which is a NFC (Near Field Communication) app.

The user enters a primary and possibly a secondary message, and the message is displayed using the largest possible font depending on orientation. Since the message will probably not fit, the message scrolls to the right and then repeats. The user can pin favorite messages to the Start Screen.  The user can pause the display and adjust the speed with a slider.  The app has been used in presentation to send messages to the presenter and the organizers.  It has also been used by the presenter to send messages to the audience.

The trial version limits the numbers of size of the message and the number of tiles that can be created.

John Marshall explains his inspiration for creating the app: 

“During one of the local user group’s presentations, I had to send several notes to the presenter and to some of the organizers.  At the time I wrote on a notepad, the old-fashioned type. Considering my terrible handwriting it was not a great success, so I decided to write a Windows Phone app for that. The idea was to write an app that would show a message in the largest possible font and since the message would probably be larger than the phone, I chose to make the message scroll. Through testing, it was found that even though it was a smaller font, it was easier to read the message in landscape than in portrait. The phone supports two landscape orientations so I used the inverted landscape to show a second message. Flip the phone and you can quickly display a second message. I found that I needed the first message to get the person’s attention, the right person.”

He also describes possible applications for the app: 

“In the past, I have used the app to communicate the length of a train car, send messages to people on the platform and next month I will be using it as a greeting board when we try to meet our contact at the airport in Amsterdam. I would be interested in hearing other applications. Though I did get kicked under the table when I used it to ask the waiter for the bill.”

Back in 1993, John started doing work with a business diagramming program called Visio. While waiting for answers in the online forum, he started to tackle the questions others were asking and the company asked him to continue on a voluntary basis. In 2000, Microsoft bought Visio, and John received an MVP Award for his efforts. Over the years he has been involved in most of the books on Visio and has become the unofficial Visio historian.

The MVP Award gave him the opportunity to expand from the online communities to the real world.  Since the Windows Phone has appeared, John has seen a few opportunities to use the phone to enhance the user group experience.  One of them was to find a way to quickly communicate to people in a large venue from a distance. This was the basis of the Banner app.

1. Mastering everyday XML tasks in PowerShell

By PowerShell MVP Tobias Weltner – @TobiasPSP

2. Getting Started With Mobility, Part 4: Windows Phone

By Windows Azure MVP David Pallmann – @davidpallmann

3. Windows Phone App Studio – My First App

By Visual Studio ALM MVP Jeff Bramwell – @jbramwell

4. Awesome Libraries For C# Developers #1 - Interactive Extensions

By Visual C# MVP Anoop Madhusudanan – @amazedsaint 

5. Hyper-V Over SMB: SMB Direct (RDMA)

By Virtual Machine MVP Thomas Maurer – @ThomasMaurer

Editor’s Note: In partnership with Microsoft Press, MVPs have been contributing to an ongoing guest series on their official team blog. Today’s article is from Microsoft Integration MVP Chris Givens which is the 29th in the series.

So what have I been working on for the past two weeks?  Well, other than consulting clients, books and working on my garden, I have also been involved with the Microsoft Learning SharePoint 2013 Advanced Development Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) course 20489 that will be available later in the year (sorry no link just yet but it will be here when it is released).  I was able to finish up two chapters on Search quickly as that is one of my main fortes, but then decided to take what I though was the middle of two Business Connectivity Services (BCS) chapters.  For those of you not familiar with BCS, you can find a great overview here. It turns out, the module was the hardest one!  Why?  Because it covers things that no one has ever done before (outside of the product team that is). 

So what is the big deal about what I worked on?  You are probably saying to yourself...BCS has been around for a while right?  Well, yes this is very true, and there are several great posts about how to expose external data using SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio using the various BDC model types (Database, WCF, .NET Connectivity and Custom).  You can also find how to implement stereotyped methods that support CRUD methods and search indexing (link here).  Given all that content, there were a game changing set of features that were added to BCS in SharePoint 2013 that add a whole new level of complexity.  These features include:

• A new OData model type
• A new subscriber model (which in turn now provides support for alerts and event receivers in external lists)

There are plenty of posts on OData in general (this one from MSDN is pretty awesome if you are just getting started) and a few posts on how to setup a BDC OData model.  And although my fellow SharePoint MVP Scot Hillier did a presentation on the subscriber model at the last SharePoint Conference it was only in context of a database model.  When it comes to integrating the two features (OData and the subscriber methods) together, that is where a massive black hole exists and is the focus of this blog post. 

Read full article here.

About the author

Chris Givens, SharePoint MVP, MCT, CISSP, CCNP is a SharePoint architect, trainer and consultant. He is the CEO of Architecting Connected Systems a top Microsoft courseware provider with several popular courseware titles in SharePoint with customers in over 40 countries around the world. His blog is at http://blogs.architectingconnectedsystems.com and is co-author of the MSPress title Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Inside Out due out in November 2013.  Follow him on Twitter.

About MVP Monday

The MVP Monday Series is created by Melissa Travers. In this series we work to provide readers with a guest post from an MVP every Monday. Melissa is a Community Program Manager, formerly known as MVP Lead, for Messaging and Collaboration (Exchange, Lync, Office 365 and SharePoint) and Microsoft Dynamics in the US. She began her career at Microsoft as an Exchange Support Engineer and has been working with the technical community in some capacity for almost a decade. In her spare time she enjoys going to the gym, shopping for handbags, watching period and fantasy dramas, and spending time with her children and miniature Dachshund. Melissa lives in North Carolina and works out of the Microsoft Charlotte office.

SharePoint Server MVP Jeremy Thake has released a new app titled Meetings, a real-time business collaboration app. 

Meetings allows business users to collaborate with one another in real-time before, during, and after meetings by:

Creating single or reoccurring meetings with “roll call” capabilities for automatic creation of attendee lists based on previous or reoccurring meeting instances

Allowing meeting attendees to adjust and update meeting agendas as well as discussion topics

Audit meeting attendance for greater organizational tracking and visibility

Capturing meeting information and notes with multi-user support

Tracking meeting minutes with full auditing, allowing for historical search capabilities

Assigning, aggregating, and synchronizing tasks and actions

Jeremy explains his app creation experience: 

“I’ve been a SharePoint Developer since SharePoint 2007 when ASP.NET was introduced as I was already an ASP.NET developer. When I found out about the new App Model I was super excited to know that I could start leveraging my Application Lifecycle Management experience more around automated unit/web testing and also leverage technologies like ASP.NET MVC4. I am the Product Manager and Architect on this product and the initial inspiration from this app was really around how I could personally become more productive with my team on tracking meetings. This became even more valuable an app once Microsoft announced they were deprecating Meeting Workspaces in SharePoint 2013 as this is now a potential replacement solution for customers.”

Jeremy felt his status as an MVP was helpful in the process of creating the Meetings app. 

“Being an MVP really helped me to get feedback from the SharePoint Product Group when I had questions in the early beta days that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. But the “MVP” badge is earned through all the blogging and public speaking I do around SharePoint, and Microsoft people respect that, which means they take the time to help.”

ASP.NET/IIS MVP Damir Tomicic has worked on two new applications. With his company, Axinom, he supported Lufthansa Systems to build a new inflight entertainment system called, BoardConnect

BoardConnect is unique in that it doesn’t require wiring for each site, but works with a WLAN based on WiFi.  So only a few access points are needed to provide content to passengers.  Many airlines have already expressed interest in this new technology. 

He also worked on a cloud-based solution for video providers titled SilverHD, with a DRM solution for content protection and VoD for video on demand providers. 

He’s excited for the future of the new technologies he’s working on, explaining, “This is the most exciting time I experienced in my business life to date. New Cloud based technologies open a door to a tremendous potential for new application approaches and business models we never thought about in the past. And we’re just at the beginning of it.. The only issue with this opportunity is - we’re are all new in this space it is essential for me to understand the possibilities and to explore new technologies even before they are brought to the market.”

Damir explains how the MVP program helped him with building these apps:

“As a member of the MVP program I was able to get in touch directly with the Microsoft product groups in Redmond, ask my questions, learn about their plans for the future and discuss it with other MVPs. Furthermore they provided me with access to early adopter programs and guided me through the initial development issues. Based on my comprehensive experiences and discussions with the product groups we selected Windows Azure Cloud and worked closely with Microsoft to create a set of Media Services on top of it – for DRM, asset management and content delivery – based on ASP.NET. This experience also helped our customers to build great projects on top of this portfolio.”

“I feel being really privileged to be a part of the MVP program. The benefits provided with the program helped me and my company in a significant way to become much more competitive and innovative in our industry segment.”

“I’m more than happy to share my knowledge and experience with the developer community and help others get on track in the same way we did.”

Editor’s note: The following post was originally published on March 18, 2013 and was written by Exchange Server MVP Manu Philip

Virtual Directories: Exchange 2013

A virtual directory is used by Internet Information Services (IIS) to allow access to a web applications in Exchange 2013

Autodiscover Service, ECP, EWS, ActiveSync, OWA, OAB, Powershellare the available virtual directories through EAC.

You can manage a variety of virtual directory settings on Exchange 2013 including authentication, security, and reporting settings. I am explaining here, how you can manage the Virtual Directories through Exchange Admin Center. I have also included some example PowerShell cmdltes to show how to manage those resources:

How to invoke Virtual Directories in Exchange 2013:

Go to Exchange Admin Center->servers->virtual directoriesto open virtual directories structure as shown in the following screen shot:

In the following sections, I will show you how you can see/edit each al directory settings:

1. Autodiscover (Default Website)

Select Autodiscover (Default Website) and click Edit to go through the following windows:

General Settings:

There is no editable fields here. If you need to set the internal/external url value of Autodiscover service you have to set it through Exchange Management Shell. An example shown below can be used to set the external url of Autodiscover service:

Set-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory -Identity 'autodiscover (default Web Site)' -ExternalUrl 'http://www.exchangeonline.in'

Note: Please remember to set the corresponding changes in IIS virtual Directory for autodiscover also

Authentication:

The authentication settings can be viewed by clicking authentication as shown below:

Here you can change the various authentication methods of Autodiscover service of Exchange 2013: Integrated, Digest, Basic (requires SSL certificate to encrypt the password)

The following cmdlet can be used to set 'Integrated Windows Authentication' for Autodiscover Service of Exchange 2013

Set-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory -Identity 'autodiscover (default Web Site)' -WindowsAuthentication $true

2. ecp (Default Website)

Select ecp (Default Website) and click Edit to go through the following windows:

General Settings:

You may set 'Internal URL' or 'External URL' corresponding to ecp from this window.

The following PowerShell cmdlet can also be used to set the ecp External URL:

Set-ecpVirtualDirectory -Identity 'ecp (default Web Site)' -ExternalUrl 'http://www.exchangeonline.in'

Note: Please remember to set the corresponding changes in IIS virtual Directory for ecp also

Authentication:

You can select Standard Authentications (Basic, Integrated, Digest) and also Forms-Based Authentication

Note: Please remember to set the corresponding authentication changes in IIS virtual Directory for ecp also if you plan to change the authentication settings for ecp.

3. EWS (Default Website)

Select ews (Default Website) and click Edit to go through the following windows:

General Settings

You may have a chance here to edit the External/Internal url associated with EWS.

Authentication

Integrated, Digest, Basic authentications are available to set with EWS.

Use the Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectorycmdlet to modify an existing Exchange Web Services virtual directory on a server running Microsoft Exchange Server 2013. For example, the following cmdlet can set the EWS authentication method as DigestAuthenticationand also it sets the external and internal EWS virtual directories of EWS

Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -Identity exchangeonline.in\EWS(Default Web Site)-ExternalUrl https://www.exchangeonline.in/EWS/exchange.asmx -BasicAuthentication $true -InternalUrl https://exchangeonline.internal.in/EWS/exchange.asmx

Note: Please remember to set the corresponding changes in IIS virtual Directory for ews also.

4. EAS (Default WebSite)

Select eas (Default Website) and click Edit to go through the following windows:

General Settings

ActiveSync associated External and Internal URL values can be set through this window.

Authentication

The authentication available is 'Basic Authentication' and which uses an SSL certificate for password authentication. The client certificate can be have any one of the value from: Ignore/Accept/Require

Use the Set-ActiveSyncVirtualDirectory cmdlet to configure the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync settings on a specified virtual directory. The following cmdlet set the ActiveSync external URL value.

Set-ActiveSyncVirtualDirectory -Identity "ExchangeOnline.in\Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync" -ExternalUrl http://exchangeonline.in/mail

5. oab (Default WebSite)

Select oab (Default Website) and click Edit to go through the following windows:

General Settings

You may set a new value for 'Poliing interval' of Offline Address Book fetch in this window. Thus the new oab will be checked in this interval set here. You may also set the Internal, External URL values here.

6. powershell (Default WebSite)

Powershell virtual directory is the connecting point when we connect the Exchange system through remote PowerShell.

Select powershell (Default Website) and click Edit to go through the following windows:

General Settings

Here, you shall be able to set the internal, external URL values associated with the PowerShell.

Use the Set-PowerShellVirtualDirectory cmdlet to change an existing Windows PowerShell virtual directory in Internet Information Services (IIS).

Authentication

Integrated and/or Basic Authentication can be set using this window.

7. owa (Default WebSite)

Various owa settings can be managed through this window.

Select owa (Default Website) and click Edit to go through the following windows:

General Settings

The window allows to change/add the internal, External URL values associated with owa.

Authentication

The available authentication methods are Standard authentication methods (such as Integrated, Digest, Basic) and Forms Based Authentication (Domain/User, UPN, UserName only are the supported values here). We can also set the Login Domain Name as a permenant value here in this window.

Features

We  are able to set various features for users through this window as shows following. For example, we may allow or disallow instant messaging (Lync) via owa or disable the theme selection on owa etc.

When you click 'More Options' you will be able to see more features on each items as displayed below:

File Access

Various file access methods through owa can be controlled through this window as shown below:

We may set various file access restrictions selectively when accessing owa from Public/Private computers.

By running the Set-OwaVirtualDirectory cmdlet, you can enable or disable features and manage security of various owa items.

About the author

Manu is a "Microsoft MVP: Exchange server" for the last 3 years. He has been associated with companies Ernst & Young Global Ltd., UST-Global International, JDA Inc., RM PLC and Visionics Corporation to handle their IT infrastructure in key roles with Exchange Server Messaging domain as the specialization for the last 10+ years in his career.   
Manu is the "Moderator" of most of the Microsoft TechNet Community Exchange Server Forums and also actively participates in giving quick solutions to the Exchange Server and Outlook issues of world-wide Microsoft customers through these Forums (Visit his Profile here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/profile/manu%20philip/). He is also a MCC (Microsoft Community Contributor) of Microsoft TechNet Community Exchange Server Forums . Other than these notable contributions, he owns the Exchange Server Blog: www.exchangeonline.in and Microsoft Infrastructure forums: www.windowsadmin.in and delivering excellent articles and solutions through these portals.   
Manu also holds valuable certifications like Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate, Microsoft Certified IT Professional- MCITP (Enterprise Messaging Administrator on Exchange 2010, Server Administrator on Windows Server 2008), Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator: Messaging (Exchange Server 2000), Blackberry Certified System Administrator, ITIL apart from being a Bachelor Degree holder in Electronics & Communication Technology"

About MVP Monday

The MVP Monday Series is created by Melissa Travers. In this series we work to provide readers with a guest post from an MVP every Monday. Melissa is a Community Program Manager, formerly known as MVP Lead, for Messaging and Collaboration (Exchange, Lync, Office 365 and SharePoint) and Microsoft Dynamics in the US. She began her career at Microsoft as an Exchange Support Engineer and has been working with the technical community in some capacity for almost a decade. In her spare time she enjoys going to the gym, shopping for handbags, watching period and fantasy dramas, and spending time with her children and miniature Dachshund. Melissa lives in North Carolina and works out of the Microsoft Charlotte office.