Active Directory Script Highlight: Identify User Not Logged in in 180 days

Domain migrations are in full swing so I thought I would start to share some of the scripts used in the process.  This one identifies users that have not logged on in over 180 days.  The thought behind this is to find the target population to be migrated.  We all have old accounts in our Active Directories.  There is no reason to migrate all of those stale accounts so this will help you find them early in your identification stages.  This will allow you to disable them and allow for any re-enabling if necessary before the user migration process.

Search-ADAccount -UsersOnly -AccountInactive -TimeSpan 180.00:00:00 | ?{$_.enabled -eq $True} | sort lastlogondate | select-object samaccountname, lastlogondate, name, distinguishedname, enabled | Export-Csv c:\temp\Users180.csv

* Looks at Users older than 180 days within the whole domain,  that are not already disabled and outputting samaccountname, lastlogondate, name, distinguishedname, enabled to a CSV file

Hyper-V/RHEL7.4: Hang When Thaw on Microsoft Hyper-V

I came across this bug report from RedHat when researching and issue where our newly deployed RHEL 7.4 VMs on Hyper-V would go into a hang state at times during the host backup process.  Lots to good work done here to find a potential solution by upgrading to the latest kernel 3.10.0-843.el7.

 

See the full bug report (Bug 1502601) and process here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1502601

Latest Article – Preserve Hyper-V security from Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities

A complementary article to my last blog post here, but this time focusing on how to protect Hyper-V VMs from the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities.

The Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities have admins scrambling for safety, and virtualization presents a particular challenge — one that requires host and VM protection in order to maintain Hyper-V security.

These vulnerabilities are inherent to the hardware architecture of processors in modern CPUs, which forces vendors to search for fixes through software patches. Microsoft Hyper-V admins can start the process of applying these patches by using the following steps to protect their VMs.

…. Read the rest of the article at SearchServerVirtualization.com

Hyper-V and Spectre/Meltdown: Protecting Your Hosts – Do This!

There is a lot of information swirling around out there on what to do with the latest Spectre/Meltdown vulnerabilities. Whereas I can’t tell you how to solve the vulnerabilities for for every Hardware and Operating System combination, I can tell you how to get your Hyper-V environments protected.  You might be interested in every fine detail of what is happening or you may want to just find out how to get protected as quick as possible.  If you are interested in the latter, then this is the blog to start with.    Here are the no nonsense steps that will protect your Hyper-V hosts.  I will be making a second post for the VMs running on these hosts.

Windows 2012 R2 and Windows 2016 Hosts

All Associated Files for Fixing and Testing for Spectre/Meltdown can be found HERE:

• Make 3 Registry Entries and Reboot
  • Manually through the following reg.exe add entries: See Batch File In (https://1drv.ms/f/s!AkBgjSJPQpxUnLQwzcraOFu8i5CsuA)

reg add “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management” /v FeatureSettingsOverride /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

reg add “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management” /v FeatureSettingsOverrideMask /t REG_DWORD /d 3 /f

reg add “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Virtualization” /v MinVmVersionForCpuBasedMitigations /t REG_SZ /d “1.0” /f

• • OR through Group Policy Registry Preference if you want to get to a baseline throughout your environment across all your hosts.

 

• Install Patch for your Operating system and Reboot:
  • Windows Update Catalogue:
    • 2016:  http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB4056890
    • 2012 R2: http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=4056898
    • 2008 R2: http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=4056897

 

• Install firmware from your Vendor:  Common ones in my Environment.* As of the writing of this article, the initial BIOS updates have all been recalled due to instability.  You can however keep monitoring the below links for HP and Dell, or find your particular vendors update, to see when then next “stable” release of your Host BIOS will be available. 
  • DL380 Gen9
    • https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?sp4ts.oid=null&swItemId=MTX_7ea1ecfbee824e0ba345c6c69e&swEnvOid=4184#tab1
  • BL460 Gen9
    • https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?sp4ts.oid=7271228&swItemId=MTX_1bf40b6bd56e44f6af0b081b73&swEnvOid=4184#

* Other Firmware Modules that I use can be found here:  Removed Due to Issues with first version of release firmware.  I will include more here once the final revisions have been released.

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AkBgjSJPQpxUnLQwzcraOFu8i5CsuA

For links to your HP or Dell hosts updated firmware for the Spectre/Meltdown Vulnerability, you can check the links below

HP: https://h22208.www2.hpe.com/eginfolib/securityalerts/SCAM/Side_Channel_Analysis_Method.html

Dell: http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/sln308588/microprocessor-side-channel-vulnerabilities-cve-2017-5715-cve-2017-5753-cve-2017-5754-impact-on-dell-emc-products-dell-enterprise-servers-storage-and-networking-?lang=en

 

Testing:

• Download the Following Test Scripts from HERE and place them on a folder on your Hyper-V host.
  • SpeculationControl.psd1
  • SpeculationControl.psm1
  • SpeculationControl-runme.ps1
• Open PowerShell and Change your Directory to the location of your scripts i.e. CD \Spectre_Meltdown
• Run Import-Module .\SpeculationControl.psd1
• Run Get-SpeculationControlSettings
• If patched correctly, your results should look like the screenshot below.

If it looks like this, with lots of green, you are on the right track.  Check back to see if there are any other additions that come out in the next few days/weeks.

 

Sources for More Information:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/CVE-2017-5715-and-hyper-v-vms

Support Guidance:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4072698/windows-server-guidance-to-protect-against-the-speculative-execution

 

 

 

 

Computer Account Domain Migration Oddities – No Access to ADMIN$ share

When attempting to run the Security Translation Wizard to ensure resources like Local Profiles, Printers, Mapped Drives, Desktop, etc… are migrated over when users start to logon with their migrated user accounts, I ran into an odd error within ADMT.

Unable to access ADMIN$ share on the machine ‘COMPUTERNAME.DOMAIN.COM’. Make sure the share exists and the account running ADMT is a member of local administrators group on the machine ‘COMPUTERNAME.DOMAIN.COM’. hr=0x80070005. Access is denied.

The migration server, with ADMT installed, that was joined to the Target Domain was unable to access some PCs by name using UNC path name i.e. \\ComputerName\admin$, but I  could access this location using IP Address and could resolve the name with NSLookup have it respond to PING by name, and remotely connect by name to a RDP to the remote computer. Another anomaly I noticed was that when I went to Computer Management and try to access this machine remotely, the Local Users and Groups section is inaccessible from this server.

Solution:

Turns out, the reason for this was that the Source computer object was still enabled.  Once I disabled or deleted the Source computer object, I was immediately able to access the ADMIN$ shares and remote computer managment of the migrated PCs.

Enable or disable modern authentication in Exchange Online

Recently when working with a domain migration I experienced and issue with Outlook autodiscover working incorrectly for accounts that have been migrated to the target domain.  The newly migrated users were keeping their same email addresses and their mailboxes were still hosted on O365 and all the appropriate object identifiers and directory synchronization (different article to follow on how this was done), but Outlook clients were failing authentication since is was trying to use basic authentication.  Using the PowerShell command in the Link below to modify the tenant setting in O365, Outlook 2016 clients work pretty much immediately and Outlook 2013 can work with a registry modification.  (Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007 can not use Modern Authentication)

Enable or disable modern authentication in Exchange Online

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Enable-or-disable-modern-authentication-in-Exchange-Online-58018196-f918-49cd-8238-56f57f38d662

Faster Active Directory Replication – Decrease Intersite Replication Interval to Seconds

Delving back into all things Active Directory recently with domain migrations and came across this helpful tip of decreasing Intersite replication.  No need to wait these days with the speed of the connections between sites.

Source: PC Tech Go: Faster Active Directory Replication – Decrease Intersite Replication Interval to Seconds

What are the Files and Folders Behind Hyper-V 2016 VMs (Part 1)

The next few blogs posts come from a recent article that I wrote for SearchServerVirtualization.com.  Here are some of the excerpts from that article that focus on the files and folders of Hyper-V in 2016

There are plenty of articles about how to use many of the features of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2016, but this articles will give you a deeper look at what is behind some of these features. What is really going on? How does it all work? Sometimes it is something very simple, other times it is a chain of complex steps that give you a view into some of the brilliance of the developers that make it all work. In this article, we are going to look at the Files and Folders that make up a VM, knowing how to locate them, and what function they perform, which will give you a great start at troubleshooting problems if they arise.

Where do these files live?

For standalone hosts, the default files are found in two different locations.

Configuration files: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V

Virtual Hard Disk Files: C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks

For clustered hosts, VM files are located in a different default location. Whereas you can separate VM files into different directories or even volumes, usually these are all stored in the same VM directory with subdirectories under that. In most cases, clusters use a type of shared storage called Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) volumes where VMs live and all nodes of the cluster have access to. Two common methods of creating this type of storage is to have some sort of SAN storage connected by Fiber, ISCSI, SMB etc… or using Storage Spaces Direct (S2D).

When using CSVs for your shared cluster storage, a mount point off of the C:\ drive is created on each node of the cluster that links to each of the CSV volumes. These will be located at:

C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1

C:\ClusterStorage\Volume2

Virtual Hard Disk folder: VHD, VHDX, AVHD, AVHDX, RTC, and MRT files

• Virtual hard disk files: These come in to different varieties .VHD or .VHDX. VHD is the older version of Microsoft’s virtual hard disk and has been around since the Virtual Server 2005 days. VHDX files have been around since Windows Server 2012 timeframe and provide better performance and fault tolerance. These are your hard drives of you VMs and contain all of the individual files, Operating system etc… You can also mount these files directly with Disk Management in Windows 7 and above and browse or change the content.
• Automatic virtual hard disk: .AVHD or .AVHDX are differencing files where all newly written data is stored after a Checkpoint is created either by the administrator or as a result of backup procedure.
• Resilient Change Tracking: .RCT files are a new addition to Windows Sever 2016 Hyper-V. That allows the tracking of changes between backup operations. Instead of having to backup the entire VHD(X) file or traverse the whole file, the .RCT file tracks changes and directs backup software to only the blocks that have changed. This provides much quicker backups that previous version of Hyper-V and puts the technology on par with VMware’s Change Block Tracking (CBT)
• Modifiable Region Table: .MRT Like the .RCT file, the .MRT file aids in tracking changes between backup operations, but its function is to provide resiliency in the event of a host crash, BSOD or even a power failure. These make sure data is not missed in the case of something catastrophic happening to one of your hosts during a backup procedure.

2015 Microsoft Virtual MVP Conference–Consumer Track

There are even a Consumer Track sessions at the MVP Virtual Conference coming on May 14th and May 15th.  These sessions are just fun and practical given by some of the most influential MVPs in the technical community.  Over 5000 people have already registered for the event with content driven by Microsoft MVPs in three main tracks, IT Pro, Developer, and Consumer.  I have been highlighting some of my favorite sessions all week.  To register for free online conference, just go to this link:  http://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualconference-sessions.aspx

 

Consumer Track

How to present with your audience’s needs in mind, all within PowerPoint!

Speaker: Chantal Bossé

Moderator: Sandra Johnson

We hear about Death by PowerPoint almost every day. One of the complaints is that the tool is only linear. Well, there is a way to build a flexible or interactive presentation to tailor your message, and meet your audiences’ expectations, all within PowerPoint. In this session, you will learn how to use hyperlinks, custom shows, and triggers to help you build valuable and flexible presentations. A great way to stand out, and stay away from Death by PowerPoint!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things – The OneNote Edition

Speaker: Kelly Marshall

Moderator: Douglas Spindler

Kelly will share a high level overview of fifteen of her favorite things about the 2013 desktop version of OneNote – including linking, OCR Search, Send to OneNote Tool, Tags, Templates and more. This presentation is a good fit for consumers who are new to OneNote or just getting started and looking to learn more about what tools OneNote can offer them to improve their business productivity.

Delve & the Office Graph – A crash course

Speaker: Paul Olenick

Moderator: Susan Hanley

In this dynamic, demo-rich session Paul Olenick, SharePoint MVP, will provide a crash course on Delve and the Office Graph covering what they are, how they work from a mechanical level, their business impact and pitfalls to be aware of. He will also discuss how to extend the experience to create custom solutions based on the Office Graph. Attendees will leave with a solid understanding of what Delve and the Office Graph are, how they work, how they could fit in their organizations, as well as pitfalls to watch out for. Don’t miss this chance to opportunity to learn everything you need to know about Delve and the Office Graph!

Migrating from an iOS mobile device to a Windows mobile device and how to keep your Outlook data, emails, and contacts intact

Speaker: Jeff Shirley

Moderator: Kelsey Epps

In this session I will show you how to migrate your domain email to hosted Office 365 (no more POP3, and now you get Out of Office replies and OWA!), and then move away from an iOS device (iPhone 4 in my case) which was synced with Outlook 2010. This session steps you through setting up a Windows phone (a Nokia 930 Limited edition that I ordered in from overseas) and connecting it to iTunes for your music. I will then show you the various tricks and tools you need to use to make the migration painless and to keep your existing emails and contacts currently located in Outlook 2010.  Finally it’s an adventure syncing everything up so all your devices are on the same page – the IMAP settings for Office 365 were not as simple as one would expect sometimes, and there are lots of little glitches and requirements related to getting your contacts moved.

I’m an uber chic hipster that runs my business on only Apple products; Why would I want Office365?

Speaker: Kelsey Epps & Kanwal Khipple

Moderator: Sean McNeill

The presentation will be a case study form detailing how Office365, Azure and Office can help the client defeat all their technical issues and run their business with help from Azure and Office365. It will detail the products, how to configure services and install applications on Apple devices.

Pivot Table Data Crunching

Speaker: Bill Jelen

Moderator: Chris Smith & Zack Barresse

Pivot tables are one of the most powerful features in Excel. With a pivot table, you can transform hundreds of thousands of rows of detailed data into a one-page summary report in just six clicks. In this session, you will learn the ins and outs of Excel pivot tables. Take a deep dive into features that let you create a true top 10 report, a year-over-year analysis, a dashboard of multiple pivot tables using slicers. Get an introduction to Power Pivot.

Using Access and SharePoint for Travel Expenses and Pulling up Maps

Speaker: Crystal Long

Moderator: Brent Spaulding & Julian Kirkness

Learn how to build a tool with Access to manage information on the road. Track mileage and meals. Use Bing to map your route and show maps for areas you visit. Calculate distance and get expense reports. Access is for anyone who has data to organize. Office 365 lets you get data when you are at home, in the office, and on the road. No matter where you are, your web database can be there too.

Windows 10:  Productivity Tips

Speaker: Andrei Marukovich

Moderator: Tom Walker

Do you want to be equally productive in your office  using a desktop PC and working with your tablet on a plane? With the enhanced user interface, Continuum feature and Cortana, Windows take makes this goal possible. Join us to learn about Windows enhancements for mobile users, new ways of managing workspace, about Cortana and new features for power users.

Windows 10:  Making School Life easier with Windows 10 & Cortana

Speaker: Mark Schramm

Moderator: Jan Hannemann

This presentation will be about Windows 10 making a student’s life more productive and easier. From Cortana’s help with homework to a student being able to easily organize their “stuff” with the new features of Windows 10 from the Start Menu to the Action Center.

Windows Phone 8.1:  “Hey Cortana” you make my life easier

Speaker: Mark Schramm

Moderator: Jan Hannemann

This presentation will consist of how Windows Phone 8.1 increases my business productivity in my roles as a small business owner, consultant and Microsoft MVP. It will involve how Cortana makes scheduling so much easier and immediate, also how many of the built in features of Windows Phone are used in my day-to-day business life.

Use your Windows Phone to tap into the Contacts, Calendar (and shared Calendars) and OneDrive

Speaker: Julie DeJong

Moderator: David Scammell

This presentation will discuss how to use Windows Phone to tap into all of the functionality of an Outlook.com account. We will focus on using a Windows Phone to tap into the Contacts, Calendar (and shared Calendars) and OneDrive (and shared files on OneDrive). We will include the mechanics of sharing Outlook.com calendars, OneDrive folders and files, and then how to view and work with those shared items on a Windows Phone.

It’s Not A Windows Phone, It’s MY Windows Phone

Speaker: Atley Hunter

Moderator: Sumeeth Evans

You will find out how Windows Phone fits into your life and allows you to do more faster and be as connected as you want to be.

Windows 10: New Features & New Directions

Speaker: Richard Hay

Moderator: Shawn Keene

By using the latest public build of Windows 10 you’ll learn about the major changes to the user interface compared to Windows 8.1 and how the changes bring back a familiar, yet different, interface which we had in Windows 7. You’ll also learn about the cross platform/device capabilities that Windows 10 will enhance for users to include universal apps, gaming, cloud sync for files and settings and touch first Office apps.

Create Custom Icons in PowerPoint

Speaker: Sandra Johnson

Moderator: Chantal Bossé

Icons are the hottest communications design trend since cave drawings. These effective visual clues can play a strong role in helping your audience understand your story and ultimately influence the success of your presentation. Creating icons using PowerPoint’s built-in Merge Shapes tool can help ensure graphic consistency in your presentation, avoid potentially expensive photography costs, and create universal designs that are easy to recognize and have a high image quality.  This session will focus on how to create icons for PowerPoint using native PowerPoint tools.

Ransomware – Key tools for prevention and recovery

Speaker: Susan Bradley

Moderator: Amy Babinchak

Learn how to quickly recover from and prevent the latest threat on the web – ransomware. From CryptoLocker, CryptoWall, it’s estimated that it’s cost it’s victims over $30 million dollars. Learn how to better protect yourself and prevent yourself from becoming its next victim.

Understanding Windows Updating

Speaker: Susan Bradley

Moderator: Amy Babinchak

Every month the largest cloud service in the world updates and services the largest number of systems. Find out how Windows Update works, how to understand its cryptic error messages, how to prevent failures and learn about upcoming changes in Windows 10 and how it handles Windows Updates.

Using Office Mix from Boardroom to Classroom

Speaker: Brian Friedlander

Moderator: Sumeeth Evans

Learn how you take your PowerPoint presentations to the next level with Office Mix- an easy to use free plug-in for PowerPoint 2013. Using Office Mix you will learn how to make your presentations more interactive and is an ideal tool for delivering content over the web. Office Mix is an authoring tool for the flipped classroom and provides new ways for embedding video, simulations, digital ink, and quizzes. Want to know who has accessed and viewed your Office Mix? Not a problem-Office Mix provides you with a complete dashboard with comprehensive analytics. So come learn how you can benefit from using Office Mix in your boardroom or classroom.

Xbox Music, the cloud and your Bieber collection

Speaker: Marques Lyons

Moderator: Sumeeth Evans

This is a session that offers tips, tricks, and insight about the Xbox Music service. Learn how OneDrive and Xbox Music let you take all of your favorite music with you on any Windows device, running Windows 8.1 or later, for free. Plus, get information about Xbox Music Pass (aka expanding your horizons) and ways you can help influence future versions of the service.

Virtual Tour of Microsoft’s Security Response Center

Speaker: Douglas Spindler

Moderator: Susan Bradley

Last November MVPs were invited to tour Microsoft’s Security Response Center, (MSRC). The MSRC works with security researchers, tech and non-tech companies and law enforcement agencies from around the world to investigate security incidents, to advance Microsoft product security and protect the public from Internet crimes. I will take you on a virtual tour of the MSRC and share the vital work that’s being done at the MSRC and tell you about some the crimes the MSRC has investigated. Microsoft and the MSRC are working to create a safer society for us by not only investigating the well-publicized types of cybercrime, identity theft, financial fraud, etc., but the MSRC also works on counterfeiting, human and drug trafficking and technology crimes which harm society and quality of life. See how Microsoft and its partners are fighting on a global scale and you will walk away as I did saying, “Thank you Microsoft!”

2015 Microsoft Virtual MVP Conference–Developer Track

My expertise falls more in to the IT Pro Track, but there is a whole lineup of Developer Track sessions in the MVP Virtual Conference coming on May 14th and May 15th.  Over 5000 people have already registered for the event with content driven by Microsoft MVPs in three main tracks, IT Pro, Developer, and Consumer.  I have been highlighting some of my favorite sessions all week.  If you are a developer, come learn about what passionate MVPs are doing. To register for free online conference, just go to this link:  http://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualconference-sessions.aspx

Developer Track

10 New Things for Developers on Windows 10

Speaker: Colin Melia

Moderator: Mark Schramm

It’s in the title. If you didn’t have time for Build or you just want to get a summary of 10 new features for developers from the new and/or updates APIs, tools SKUs and/or languages, from devices to the cloud, this is your chance to get on board.

A Brief History of OWIN

Speaker: Ryan Riley

Moderator: Cameron Taggart

You may have noticed some strange changes in your ASP.NET project templates, especially with respect to security. You may have noticed some similar changes in the presentations about ASP.NET vNext. Those changes are related to a specification for building composable .NET web applications, and its name is OWIN. There’s a lot of confusion surrounding the Open Web Interface for .NET, or OWIN, and how it relates to Microsoft’s web platform. How and why did OWIN come about? Why should you care? How can you help? Find answers to all your questions, and learn some of the more curious twists and turns of the OWIN story straight from the source.

A Lap around ASP.NET vNext!

Speaker: Samidip Basu

Moderator: Shayne Boyer

Change is in the air for ASP.NET developers as vNext ushers in a new era. Let’s talk – ASP.NET 5 | Open Source | .NET Frameworks Changes| ASP.NET Runtimes | WebForms | MVC 6 | C# 6.0 | VS Tooling | Omnisharp.NET | Homebrew | Yeoman | CLI & Sublime Text | Docker.

Cross-Platform Localization for Mobile Apps Using .NET

Speaker: Chris Miller

Moderator: James Montemagno

When doing a native application, of course you want to hit the major platforms: Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. By using the .NET Framework on each platform, you can share much of the code and get the globalization and localization functionality that comes with .NET. By building the application for Windows Phone first or concurrently with iOS and Android, you will be able to leverage some powerful tools from the .NET stack to make localization much easier to code.

Detecting Facial Expressions with Azure Machine Learning and Kinect for Windows

Speaker: Dwight Goins

Moderator: Gian Paolo Santopaolo

This session is about learning how to use Microsoft Azure Machine Learning with the Kinect for Windows in order to detect facial expressions. This session will cover an introduction to Machine Learning, and different algorithms used to detect data patterns. The algorithms discussed will be nearest neighbor, probabilistic learning, decision trees, and neural networks. It will also cover an introduction to the Kinect for Windows device, explaining the features and capabilities of the device and SDK. The session will show basic demos and data coming from the device. The session will then drill down into HD Face and describe the data which is generated from Face and HD Face tracking. Lastly the session will show a demo and provide steps on how to incorporate Azure Machine Learning features into a Windows 8.1 Kinect enabled application to detect facial expressions in real time.

DevOps: What Is This Puppet You Speak Of?

Speaker: Rob Reynolds

Moderator: Keith Dahlby

You keep hearing about DevOps and how awesome it is. And you’ve heard of Puppet, but wonder if it has something to do with Jim Henson. Puppetizing? What is this Puppet you speak of? Come find out…

Fireside: Cooking with Open Source

Speaker: Jeff Paries

Moderator: Morten Nielsen

Arduino is an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board. C# is a simple, modern, general-purpose, object-oriented programming language. The Fireside project blends the two technologies into a remote temperature monitoring system for grilling/cooking, using XAML to present a clean, intuitive user interface.

How To Create A Global Leaderboard For Unity 3D Using Azure Mobile Services

Speaker: Chad Carter

Moderator: Kevin Griffin

Want to learn how to create your own global leaderboard using Azure Mobile Services? Then don’t miss this session where Chad Carter, lover and maker of games, will dig into what is needed to create services using Azure Mobile Services that can be utilized in many game frameworks. For this talk, Unity 3D will be used to consume the leaderboard and display the high scores.

Introduction to AngularJS in an Office 365 context

Speaker: Sebastien Levert

Moderator: Vincent Biret

Every developer hears about AngularJS and all the magic it does for you applications. In order to kickstart you AngularJS journey, this session is an introduction to the AngularJS concepts applied to any Office 365 development. Different workloads will be targeted (Mail, Calendar, Files) and the Office 365 API will be our main datasource. We will also cover SharePoint Online specific data access (Office 365 API, REST, CSOM and Search) to meet your current development needs.

Microsoft Band: Project Online Task Updates from your Wrist

Speaker: Christine Flora

Moderator: Chris Miller

In this session, we will create an app that will send Project Online task assignment notifications to a Team Member’s Microsoft Band. Additionally, I will demonstrate how to submit Task Updates via the new Microsoft Band keyboard functionality.

Mongo Baseball.NET

Speaker: David Hoerster

Moderator: Sam Nasr

You like baseball, you like Mongo and you like .NET.  Why not put them all together and achieve a zen-like state of being completely in touch with your data!  This session will walk through some familiar and not-so-familiar baseball statistics and how you can crunch them using Mongo’s aggregation pipeline.  We’ll talk about Mongo’s aggregation pipeline, the different components of the pipeline, and how they can be used together to calculate some SABR metric statistics. This talk will be mostly code and will alternate between the Mongo shell and code using the C# driver.

Native iOS Apps using Swift for Office365

Speaker: Sahil Malik

Moderator: Michael Crump

That thing in your pocket is a 64 bit super computer that can talk, sing, help you communicate, close your garage door, spy on your dog, or you for that matter, provide location based information, take pictures, video, and so much more. No wonder teenagers around the world are hitting app lotteries. And if you thought iOS with a billion devices on the market was a big deal, the other big deal is Office 365. With numbers equally, if not more impressive, and with inroads into every enterprise that matters, what happens when these two waves collide? Bigger than fusion. You can ride this wave, but you need the right skills. The skills to write native iOS apps using Swift for Office 365. This session will cover what you need from scratch to finish, including Azure AD, basics of Office 365, and end with writing a fully functional app. Expect to see some code.

Node.js for .NET Developers

Speaker: David Neal

Moderator: Alvin Ashcraft

Node.js is a compelling platform that is quickly spreading from startups to the enterprise. As a .NET developer, why should you learn Node.js and where do you start? You will come away from this talk with the evidence and tools you need to be a productive Node.js developer. We’ll walk through creating, debugging, and deploying a Node.js project to Microsoft Azure using the Node.js Tools for Visual Studio. We’ll also look at popular frameworks and modules, and other learning resources.

One XAML UI to Rule them All with Universal Apps and Xamarin.Forms!

Speaker: Greg Levenhagen

Moderator: Lwin Maung

Mobile apps are here to stay! We’ve seen a lot of technologies come and go that promised a write-once, run-everywhere scenario. Xamarin has been around for a while and allowing developers to use C# with native UI, but they’ve added XAML support for the UI with Xamarin Forms. This allows a single codebase for mobile apps to target iOS, Android & Microsoft Universal Apps.

Resolving Conflicts in Collaborative Occasionally Connected Mobile Apps

Speaker: Michael Perry

Moderator: Bryan Hunter

In collaborative apps, a change made on one device appears on another. Data flows seamlessly across devices. But those devices aren’t always connected. And even when they are, users don’t want to wait for a network connection before they can see or work with their data. So data needs to be stored locally, and synchronized in the background.

Roslyn for Normal Developers: It’s Not Just for Compiler Geeks!

Speaker: John Robbins

Moderator: Jamie Dixon

You have no doubt heard about Roslyn, the new C# and VB.NET compilers in Visual Studio 2015, and you are probably wondering what they mean to you as a normal developer especially since you don’t have a PhD in Compilerology. In this demo only session you’ll see that no matter the type of .NET development you are doing, Roslyn will quickly become one of your favorite tools. You’ll learn how to leverage Roslyn analyzers and code fixers to fix problems in your team’s code as its being written. You’ve dreamed about having super smart editors that find the bugs before you check in and Roslyn is the answer!

Supercharge your Development with Azure Websites

Speaker: Steve Michelotti

Moderator: Niraj Bhatt

Azure Web Sites brings a whole new level of power and simplicity to cloud computing. This demo-heavy session will show numerous features that allow you to deploy your site in a matter of seconds. Whether you are building a completely custom app or deploying from one of the numerous templates provided (such as WordPress), you’ll be up and running in no time. Want to use Node.js or PHP and deploy from Git? No problem! Azure Web Sites gives you the power of elastic scaling while still providing streamlined development and an effortless deployment experience. This presentation will also cover features including monitoring, custom domains, working with SQL databases or more!

Surviving in an Async-First Development World

Speaker: Stephen Cleary

Moderator: Vidya Vrat Agarwal

Cloud-first? Mobile-first? You know what that means: Async-first! Is the world of async/await passing you by? No need to worry with this catchup session! Join async guru Stephen Cleary for a down-to-earth introduction to the new async and await keywords. No previous expertise required! We’ll cover just what you need to know as a developer: where async helps (and where it doesn’t), how it works (without unnecessary details), and best practices to get you started on your async adventure!

Windows 10 and Spartan

Speaker: Chris Love

Moderator: Ryan Hayes

Learn about development opportunities with Windows 10 and Spartan!