And the most expected email arrived once again on July 6th. I’m delighted to share that I was renewed as a Microsoft Azure MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional). Thanks, Microsoft, for this amazing award. I’m always honored and humbled to receive it, and this is my 13th straight year in the MVP Program, an amazing journey and experience that started in 2011 back then as a BizTalk MVP. This program gave me the opportunity and still does, to travel the world for speaking engagements, share knowledge, and meet the most amazing and skilled people in our industry.
This longevity in the program currently makes me the “Godfather” of the Portuguese MVPs alongside my dear friend Rodrigo Pinto (but I am a few months older :)). And that could not be possible without the huge support of my beautiful wife Fernanda and my amazing 3 kids!
Jokes apart, I want to send a big thanks to Cristina González Herrero for all the fantastic work managing the program in my region. To Microsoft Portugal and to Microsoft for empowering us to support the technical communities. To my coworkers and team at DevScope, all my blog readers, friends, and Microsoft Enterprise Integration Community members, and in special to my beautiful family – THANKS! Thanks for your support during these years.
It’s a big honor to be in the program and be one of this fantastic worldwide group of technicians and community leaders who actively share their high-quality and real-world expertise with other users and Microsoft. I’m looking forward to another great year!
Author: Sandro Pereira
Sandro Pereira lives in Portugal and works as a consultant at DevScope. In the past years, he has been working on implementing Integration scenarios both on-premises and cloud for various clients, each with different scenarios from a technical point of view, size, and criticality, using Microsoft Azure, Microsoft BizTalk Server and different technologies like AS2, EDI, RosettaNet, SAP, TIBCO etc.
He is a regular blogger, international speaker, and technical reviewer of several BizTalk books all focused on Integration. He is also the author of the book “BizTalk Mapping Patterns & Best Practices”. He has been awarded MVP since 2011 for his contributions to the integration community.
View all posts by Sandro Pereira
And the most expected email arrived, this time on 5th July! Once again, I’m delighted to share that I was renewed as a Microsoft Azure MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional). I’m deeply humbled to have received this award for the 12th year in a row.
Thank you Microsoft for this outstanding award and for continuing this fantastic journey and experience in the MVP Program. For me, this journey started in 2011 as BizTalk MVP, and since then, it has given me the opportunity and still does, to travel the world for speaking engagement, sharing knowledge, and meeting the most impressive and skilled people in our industry.
This longevity in the program currently makes me the “Godfather” of the Portuguese MVPs alongside my dear friend Rodrigo Pinto (but I am a few months older :)).
Jokes apart, I want to send a big thanks to Cristina González Herrero for all the fantastic work managing the program in my region. To Microsoft Portugal and to Microsoft for empowering us to support the technical communities. To my coworkers and team at DevScope, all my blog readers, friends, and Microsoft Enterprise Integration Community members, and in special to my beautiful family – THANKS! Thanks for your support during these years.
It’s a big honor to be in the program and be one of this fantastic worldwide group of technicians and community leaders who actively share their high-quality and real-world expertise with other users and Microsoft. I’m looking forward to another great year!
Last week was Microsoft MVP renewal time – as you’ll probably have seen – and usually, I share this news firsthand, but this year my wife caught me off guard and in a week of hard work and was faster than me!
I’m delighted to share with you that on July 1st, I was renewed as a Microsoft Azure MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) for one more year. This is my 11th straight year on the MVP Program, a fantastic journey that started in 2011, back them as a BizTalk Server MVP. It looks like it was yesterday! And even though it’s already been 11 years, I still feel the same joy, excitement, and privilege of belonging to this group as on the first day!
It is an honor and privilege to be among great minds and community leaders! I want to send a big thanks to Cristina González Herrero, Irene Otero Perez for all the fantastic work managing the program in my region. And to all my fellow MVPs, my beautiful family, my coworkers, and to my team at DevScope, and in special all my blog readers, friends, members of Microsoft Enterprise Integration Community – THANKS! Thanks for your support during these years.
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And the most expected email arrived once again on 1st July, thank you Microsoft for this amazing award. Once again, I’m delighted to share that I was renewed as a Microsoft Azure MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional). This is my 10th straight year on the MVP Program, an amazing journey, and experience that started in 2011 as BizTalk MVP, which gave me the opportunity, and still does, to travel the world for speaking engagement, share the knowledge, and to meet the most amazing and skilled people in our industry.
I would like to thank the MVP Team, my MVP Lead Cristina Herrero, all my fellow MVPs, my beautiful family, my coworkers at DevScope, and in special all my blog readers, friends, members of Microsoft Enterprise Integration Community for their support during these years.
It’s a big honor to be in the program and be one of this amazing worldwide group of technicians and community leaders who actively share their high quality and real-world expertise with other users and Microsoft. I’m looking forward to another great year!
This blog is a transcript of the session “RPA in Enterprise Integration” presented by Kent Weare, Microsoft Power CAT PM Lead – RPA & BOTS at Integrate 2020.
In this session, Kent will introduce the new service and then demo many different scenarios where RPA can be used in the enterprise.
Agenda
What is a Bot?
Bots and the Power Platform
What is RPA and Why Should I care?
Demo
Call to Action
What is a Bot?
A bot is a software application that is programming to do certain tasks. Bots are automated, which means they run according to their instructions without a human user needing to start them up. Bots often imitate or replace a human user’s behaviour. Typically, they do repetitive takes, and they can do them much faster than human users could.
Next, Kent discussed about two kinds of Bots. They are Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Bot and another one is Conversational Chat Bots.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is typically used to perform time-consuming tasks on legacy platforms where integration is not possible or expensive. This tool help organisations accelerate their digital transformation projects without having to replace legacy systems or develop expensive integration solutions.
Conversational bots allow users to interact with your web service through text, interactive cards, and task modules. Example of Chat Bots like Facebook messenger, web chat, WeChat etc. Conversational bots can be scoped to handling a few simple commands or complex, artificial-intelligence-powered and natural-language-processing virtual assistants.
Microsoft Power Platform
The ‘Power Platform’ is a collective term for four Microsoft products: Power BI, PowerApps, Power Automate (previously known as Flow) and Power Virtual Agents.
Power BI
Make informed, confident business decisions by putting data-driven insights into everyone’s hands.
Power Apps
Turn ideas into organizational solutions by enabling everyone to build custom apps that solve business challenges.
Power Virtual Agents
Easily build chatbots to engage conversationally with your customers and employees—no coding required.
Power Automate
Microsoft recently released a new service in Power Automate (formerly known as Microsoft Flow) that provides makers with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) capabilities. RPA can be used to integrate legacy applications like web and desktop applications into modern automation solutions
Demo – Hello world Power Automate – UI Flow
Step 1: Log on to flow.microsoft.com
Step 2: Select My flows > UI flows > New.
Step 3: Select Web app > Next
Step 4: Enter a name for your UI flow into the Flow name field.
Step 5: Enter the URL for the Website you want to automate into the Base URL field, and then select Launch recorder. The Selenium IDE launches.
Step 6: In Selenium IDE, select the red REC button in the top right side of the screen to launch the recorder. The URL you chose in the previous step opens.
Step 7: Perform the actions that you want to record on the website.
Step 8: When you are finished recording, select on the red Stop button in the top right corner of the Selenium IDE.
Step 9: Select the Run current test button from the top left side of the screen to see the UI flow you just created run.
Step 10: Select the Save project button in the top right of the Selenium IDE. This close, and then uploads the project.
Time Sheet Scenario
In this scenario is that we have a legacy timesheet application that requires us to be on the corporate intranet in order to fill in our timesheet. But, since we have UI Flows available to us, we can just provide our time entry details to the bot and UI Flows will take care of inputting that information into our timesheet application.
Our architecture includes creating a flow that exposes an HTTP Trigger. We will then retrieve details about the person submitting the timesheet by looking up their details in Graph based upon the Authorization token that is provided from Power Virtual Agents. We will subsequently call a UI Flow where our data will be inputted into the timesheet application. From there we will return our status back to the bot conversation so that our user knows that their timesheet has been successfully saved.
Summary
The use of RPA will help with routine, mundane and repetitive task. This blog covers various scenarios covered on topic “RPA in Enterprise Integration”. The key parts of discussion focus on the RPA, Chat Bot, Power Automate and Power Virtual Agents. The discussion extended with Demo of Time Sheet applications using Power Automate and Power Virtual Agents.
On 1st January 2011, I was awarded for the first time Microsoft Most Value Professional (MVP), back them as a BizTalk Server MVP, joining an amazing worldwide group of technicians and community leaders who actively share their high quality and real-world expertise with other users and Microsoft. And since then I was re-award in:
2012, again as BizTalk Server MVP;
From 2013 to 2015, I was rebranded as Microsoft Integration MVP;
In 2017, Integration become part of Azure category, so I was awarded for the first time as Azure MVP
And in the middle of 2017, I was Award in two categories, Azure and Visio MVP;
In 2018, I was rewarded Azure MVP
And today, still with all the same pride, honor and enthusiasm than the first time, I’m delighted to share with you that in July 1st I was renewed as a Microsoft Azure MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) for one more year.
It is with great pride we announce that Sandro Pereira has been awarded as a Microsoft® Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for 7/1/2019 – 7/1/2020. The Microsoft MVP Award is an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with users and Microsoft. All of us at Microsoft recognize and appreciate Sandro’s extraordinary contributions and want to take this opportunity to share our appreciation with you.
With just over 3,000 awardees worldwide, Microsoft MVPs represent a highly select group of experts. MVPs share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others. They represent the diversity of today’s technical communities. MVPs are present in over 90 countries, in more than 40 languages, and across numerous Microsoft technologies. MVPs share a passion for technology, a willingness to help others, and a commitment to community. These are the qualities that make MVPs exceptional community leaders. MVPs’ efforts enhance people’s lives and contribute to our industry’s success in many ways. By sharing their knowledge and experiences, and providing objective feedback, they help people solve problems and discover new capabilities every day. MVPs are technology’s best and brightest, and we are honored to welcome Sandro as one of them.
This is my 9th straight year on the MVP Program, an amazing journey, and experience that, again, started in 2011, and that gave me the opportunity, and still does, to travel the world for speaking engagement, share the knowledge, and to meet the most amazing and skilled people in our industry.
As usual, I would like to thank all of you! And special to my wife Fernanda and my three kids: Leonor, Laura, and José. And to all members of my beautiful family. THANKS for all the support during these last years! You guys are my inspiration!
And a special thanks to my MVP Lead Cristina Herrero for all the support, to Microsoft Integration Team and Azure Teams, to all my fellow Microsoft Azure (Integration) MVP’s and to DevScope (my company) and all my coworkers (no names here because all of them are amazing professionals)
It’s a big honor to be in the program and I’m looking forward to another great year!
Do you feel difficult to keep up to date on all the frequent updates and announcements in the Microsoft Integration platform?
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If you want to receive these updates weekly, then don’t forget to Subscribe!
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A new year has just began and at BizTalk360 we are excited to find out what 2018 will bring us as a company. We are delighted that we will release more versions of our flagship product BizTalk360, further evolve ServiceBus360 and bring new products like Atomic Scope and Document360.
Year in review
In this article however, we want to look back at what 2017 brought from a Microsoft Integration space perspective. Although we did not see a new version of BizTalk Server, we did see new features arrive for BizTalk Server 2016, by means of the two feature packs which have been released. Of course, we have also seen new CU’s appear for the currently supported BizTalk Server versions, which are 2013, 2013R2 and 2016.
Note however, that in case you are on BizTalk Server 2013 or 2013 R2, mainstream support will end July 10th, this year! So you should consider upgrading to BizTalk Server 2016. As migrating to another BizTalk platform is not something to take lightly, Microsoft offers the BizTalk Migration tool. Read more about this tool later in this article.
An important move Microsoft made last year, was embracing the Open Source community. Of course, also in the Logic Apps and related technologies a lot has happened. Keep on reading, when you want to read about most important developments in Microsoft Integration space.
BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Packs
The concept of Feature Packs is new to BizTalk Server. The idea of bringing Feature Packs is to bring new features once they are ready, instead of having to wait until the next major release.
For BizTalk Server, these packs can be installed on top of (only) BizTalk Server 2016 and bring new functionality, without breaking existing functionality. As far as we know, there are no plans to bring Feature Packs for other BizTalk version than 2016.
Last year Microsoft brought 2 Feature Packs for BizTalk Server 2016. Let’s have a look at both.
Feature Pack 1
This first Feature pack was released on April 26th. It could only be installed on top of the base version of BizTalk Server 2016 (3.12.774.0), so you could not install it after you have applied any CU’s for BizTalk Server 2016. This issue his been fixed on September 21st, when Microsoft released a version of FP1 which was compatible with Cumulative Update 3 (KB4039664), the most recent CU at that time.
Feature Pack 1 added the following features to BizTalk Server 2016:
Deployment
Deploy with VSTS – Enable Continuous Integration to automatically deploy and update applications using Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS)
New management APIs – Manage your environment remotely using the new REST APIs with full Swagger support
Analytics
Application Insights – Tap into the power of Azure for tracking valuable application performance and to better understand your workflow
Leverage operational data – View operational data from anywhere and with any device using Power BI
Runtime
Support for Always Encrypted – Use the WCF-SQL adapter to connect to SQL Server secure Always Encrypted columns
Advanced Scheduling – Set up advanced schedules for Receive Locations using the new capabilities with Feature Pack 1
This pack was released on November 21st and can be installed immediately on top of the BizTalk Server 2016 Cumulative Updates 1, 2 and 3 and Feature Pack 1.
In this Feature Pack, the following features were brought:
Deployment and Administration
Application Lifecycle Management with VSTS – Using Visual Studio Team Services, you can define multi-server deployments of BizTalk Server 2016, and then maintain those systems throughout the application lifecycle.
Backup to Azure Blob Storage – When deploying BizTalk Server to Azure VMs, you can backup BizTalk Server databases to Azure blob storage.
Server Runtime
Adapter for Service Bus v2 – When using the Service Bus Adapter, you can utilize Azure Service Bus Premium for enterprise-scale workloads.
Transport Layer Security 1.2 – Securely deploy BizTalk Server using industry-standard TLS 1.2 authentication and encryption.
API Management – Publish Orchestration endpoints using Azure API Management, enabling organizations to publish APIs to external, partner and internal developers to unlock the potential of their data and services.
Event Hubs – Using the new Event Hub Adapter, BizTalk Server can send and receive messages with Azure Event Hubs, where BizTalk Server can function as both an event publisher and subscriber, as part of a new Azure cloud-based event-driven application.
Analytics and Reporting
Event Hubs – Send BizTalk Server tracking data to Azure Event Hubs, a hyper-scale telemetry ingestion service that collects, transforms, and stores millions of events.
Application Insights – When preparing BizTalk Server to send tracking data to Application Insights, released in FP1, you can use the new Azure sign-in dialog to simplify configuration and named instances of SQL Server.
In 2017, Microsoft also brought a number of Cumulative Updates for the different versions of BizTalk Server. See below for an overview which contains links to the download pages:
BizTalk Server 2013
NOTE: this version is going out of mainstream support July 10th, 2018
In September Microsoft announced that BizTalk Server has joined the Open Source community. This is motivated by the increased commitment that Microsoft wants to provide a better product to their customers.
So far, Microsoft has open sourced the following:
all schemas which are shipped with the product. These are over 3500 files, which are divided over the following standards:
EANCOM
EDIFACT
HIPAA
HIX
X12
the BizTalk Migration tool. This tool is developed to simplify the following migrations:
BizTalk Server 2010 to BizTalk 2013R2
BizTalk Server 2013R2 to BizTalk 2016For Host Integration Server
For Host Integration Server (HIS), Microsoft has provided a PowerShell script that helps creating .hidx files, which are used by the HIS runtime to communicate with the backend systems.
The repository which contains above mentioned stuff, can be found at GitHub:
Microsoft’s intention is to continue their open source commitment. Community contributions are more than welcome and can contain artifacts like Schemas, Samples, Adapters, pipeline components or anything else you feel the community can take advantage of.
Azure Integration updates
It is amazing to see what’s all happening on Azure Integration! The Logic Apps team regularly post their updates on YouTube. At our blog, we publish recaps of these updates. Below is a picture of the entire Microsoft Pro Integration team on a bright, sunny Friday morning at Gold Coast, Australia, during #MSAUIgnite.
See below, just a couple of all the developments which have taken place:
Logic App-adapter – this adapter enables you to receive or send messages from BizTalk Server 2016 to your Logic Apps, via the On-Premise Data Gateway
Numerous improvements to the Logic Apps Designer – just a few which are worth to mention: editing Azure Functions directly from Logic Apps, generating JSON schema from sample payload, Parallel creation in the designer, use of Webhooks in Foreach loops, use of variables, batch processing, advanced scheduling of Logic App execution
Cognitive Vision APIs – to be able to use the OCR capability to understand the characters and text within an image
Azure Event Grid – The newest and hottest kid in town; technical preview version was released by Microsoft on August 16th
Azure Event Grid Connectors for Logic Apps – Of course the Event Grid offering is accompanied with a connector
More than 80 new SaaS adapters – few of the added connectors are: Azure Table Storage, Cognitive Services, Outlook – webhook trigger, SQL – dynamic schema for stored procedures, Azure Container Instances , Pitney Bowes Data Validation, Log Analytics Data Collector, ServiceNow, Skype for Business, LinkedIn, Azure Security Center Trigger, MySQL (R/W)
Of course Microsoft will keep on bringing new and exciting features and improvements. What we currently know is that we can expect a new feature pack for BizTalk Server 2016, being Feature Pack 3. But also on the Azure side we can expect new stuff and enhancements of existing features.
BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 3
During the first half year, we can expect the release of BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 3. What we currently know, is that we can expect multiple Office 365 adapters, with the following capabilities:
Send and receive messages using Office 365 e-mail
Set and update appointments using Office 365 schedules
Define people and groups using Office 365 contacts
Further, we can expect:
Web authentication – authenticate with Azure Active Directory and OAuth using Microsoft Enterprise Single Sign-On
Advanced Scheduling – Set up recurrence on BizTalk Server receive locations with greater precision using hours, minutes, second
Besides that, Microsoft will keep on bringing CU’s for the supported BizTalk Server versions, including the final CU’s for BizTalk 2013 and 2013R2.
Further, Microsoft is also working on BizTalk Server vNext, so we can also expect CTP’s (Community Technology Previews), which will lead to a new release of BizTalk Server and more Feature Packs. However, a timeline towards a new release of BizTalk Server is not yet made public.
Azure Integration
In Azure, we can expect of course more adapters. The Logic Apps team has already mentioned amongst others: SOAP Passthrough, Office365 Excel, K2, Kronos, Citrix ShareFile and PostgreSQL.
We’ll also see more improvements in the designer. Features like Complex Conditions within the designer, Configurable lifetime and Degrees of parallelism for split-on and request triggers have already been mentioned by the team.
All in all, we can conclude that 2017 has been an awesome year for Microsoft Integration and we can expect that 2018 will be a fantastic year as well!
INTEGRATE 2018
You can get to know more about these updates directly from the Microsoft Product Group at INTEGRATE 2018. The dates and the venue for the event has been finalized. The website will be going live by this week. Stay tuned!
Author: Lex Hegt
Lex Hegt works in the IT sector for more than 25 years, mainly in roles as developer and administrator. He works with BizTalk since BizTalk Server 2004. Currently he is a Technical Lead at BizTalk360.
Do you feel difficult to keep up to date on all the frequent updates and announcements in the Microsoft Integration platform?
Integration weekly update can be your solution. It’s a weekly update on the topics related to Integration – enterprise integration, robust & scalable messaging capabilities and Citizen Integration capabilities empowered by Microsoft platform to deliver value to the business.
If you want to receive these updates weekly, then don’t forget to Subscribe!
On-Premise Integration:
Cloud and Hybrid Integration:
Microsoft Ignite 2017
Feedback
Hope this would be helpful. Please feel free to let me know your feedback on the Integration weekly series.
