Azure Developer Immersion Getting Started In this walkthrough, you will get connected to Microsoft Azure and Visual Studio Team Services. You will also get the code and supporting files you need onto your machine so that you may complete the walkthroughs. If you are working on this Immersion at a Microsoft hosted event, you will have access to a virtual machine with all the necessary software installed. However, if you choose to do it on your own machine, you will need the following: Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 with the SQL Server Data Tools SQL LocalDB instance called (localdb)\mssqllocaldb (the Visual Studio 2015 installer creates this automatically by default) SQL Server 2016 Management Studio Azure SDK 2.9.5 for Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 Regardless of whether you do this at a Microsoft event or on your own, you will need some online accounts described later. The documents in the Immersion will let you know when you need an account, and will provide you with an opportunity to create those accounts if necessary. The following is for future reference. You do NOT need to do anything now. The required accounts are as follows: An Azure subscription (details provided later in this document) Two Microsoft accounts (you can create them for free at http://www.outlook.com) A Windows developer account (you can get one at https://msdn.microsoft.com/enus/library/windows/apps/hh868184.aspx (this is only required for one of the later walkthroughs; specifically Notification Hubs)
There are six exercises in this walkthrough: 1. Get Microsoft accounts 2. Get a Visual Studio Dev Essentials Subscription 3. Configure Visual Studio 2015 4. Load Sample Work Items into VSTS 5. Create and configure a directory in Azure Active Directory (AAD) 6. Download Sample Source Code Expected duration: 60 minutes Exercise 1: Get Microsoft accounts In order to complete these labs, you need to have two Microsoft accounts (more information at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/sign-in-what-is-microsoft-account). If you have an existing Microsoft account that you want to use, you can use that. If you already happen to have two, then you re all set. If you have no Microsoft accounts, or you have just one, please visit http://www.outlook.com to create the necessary Microsoft accounts. Do this now if you do not have at least one Microsoft account. If you already have a Microsoft account that you want to use, just continue. (You will need the second account by the time you get to Exercise 5.)
Exercise 2: Get a Visual Studio Dev Essentials Subscription In order to do these exercises, you will need a Visual Studio Team Services account. In addition, you can get a free Visual Studio Dev Essentials subscription that provides many benefits including free monthly credits to work with Microsoft Azure. Visual Studio Team Services accounts are free and have extended benefits if you also have an MSDN subscription. Creating or using a VSTS account during the lab will allow you to use and retrieve all of your work later. Visual Studio Team Services is your home base for all of your development efforts. It allows you to host your code privately in the cloud, manage your work in one place, build your applications in the cloud or on premise, and gain insight into your applications. It keeps your code safe and helps you quickly get great solutions out the door. Depending upon whether or not you have an MSDN subscription or whether you have tried Visual Studio Team Services before, the getting started process you see may vary. In any case, you will need a valid Microsoft account or already linked Organizational Account to move forward. 1. Start a web browser. 2. Navigate to http://www.visualstudio.com. 3. In the upper right-hand corner, click the Sign In link.
4. Depending upon whether you ve still got a browser open that has you logged into a Microsoft account, you could see a couple of different screens. Regardless follow the prompts to enter your user name and password if required.
5. Once you ve logged in, you may be greeted with a page like the following (if not, jump to the next step). It will ask you to confirm your name, where you re from (country/region), and contact e-mail. You can change the contact to something other than your Microsoft account s e- mail if you never check that account. Click Continue when ready. You should now be at the My Information page. Before you go further, you need to have an Azure subscription. There are a number of ways you could already have access to an Azure subscription. You could have access to a paid account. You could also have a subscription already created as part of your MSDN benefit. Regardless, for now, please continue reading and following the steps.
6. On the left-hand side of the page, find the Use your benefits link under Visual Studio Dev Essentials. Click the link. Your browser will open a new tab. The exact layout and items shown might vary. As you can see, there are a lot of great benefits (even if you have a paid MSDN subscription). If you don t have an Azure subscription, you can get one with a year s worth of credit. If you have an existing Azure subscription that you can and want to use, you can skip the next few steps and jump to step 10 in this exercise. Otherwise, continue reading to acquire an Azure subscription. You re going to activate the Azure monthly credit.
7. Click the Activate link in the Azure tile (the currency should be localized to your region). Your browser will open a new tab. Your browser will open a confirmation page that requires you accept the terms by clicking Confirm.
8. After you click Confirm, you ll need to click the Activate link in the Azure tile again. In the new tab your browser opens, you ll get a Sign up page to fill out. Do this and click Sign up. Please note, you will either need a mobile phone or be at a location where the automated verification system can call you. In addition, you will need a valid credit or debit card to complete the sign up process. Microsoft will not charge you. This is primarily a security measure. In order for Microsoft to charge you once you create your subscription, you will have to explicitly enable them to do so. By default you can only spend up to your free credit amount. After you click Sign Up, you ll see a message. Read it and wait for Azure to finish creating your subscription.
Once ready, you ll see a message like the following (it takes as little as 30 seconds to a few minutes to complete). Wait until it s done before continuing. It s critical to the labs to have an Azure subscription. It s quite possible you might get a video or a slightly different looking screen. 9. Click Start managing my service. You will end up a screen similar to the one below. At this point, you re ready to go. 10. Return to the My Information tab in your browser. The next section describes creating a new VSTS Account. Please read it. You ll find more steps at the end of the prose.
Please continue reading before making choices. It s important that you follow the steps carefully so your VSTS Account and Team Project get configured correctly. When you are creating an account, there are two pieces of data Microsoft generally wants. However, from time to time, they experiment with different ways to onboard new customers. It is possible what you see will vary. In general, the following data is required. The first piece of data is the Account URL. Currently, all Visual Studio Team Services accounts live within the top-level visualstudio.com domain. The account name you choose could be something personal, like your name, or something more work-related, like your company name. If you do intend to set up your account to share with others at your organization, you might want to coordinate this with those in your organization that manage your servers and infrastructure. Regardless, your biggest complication might be finding a good short name. The good news is that you can change your account name later if needed. The second field that affects your account is where Microsoft hosts your account. Visual Studio Team Services is a purpose-built cloud service hosted in Microsoft Azure. As of August 2016, Microsoft has four regions that can be used to host your account: India South, South Central US, West Europe, Australia East and Brazil South. You should pick the one that is closest to you and the majority of users of your account. Microsoft is continuing to work to make the service available in more regions Microsoft Azure currently has 20 regions worldwide, so there are plenty of future possibilities. Once your account is created, changing your region will require a special request to Microsoft Customer Support Services. Once you have an account, you need at least one Team Project to track you work, store your code, test, and run builds. This lab gives you specific instructions so you can use some tools and complete the lab. Understand that Visual Studio Team Services is very flexible and that you should explore it after the event. The next section describes the Visual Studio Team Services onboarding experience. What you see can vary from the instructions presented throughout this Immersion.
11. On your My Information screen, find the Create new account button and click it. 12. On the following screen, click the Change details link. 13. Enter a value in the text field that says Pick a memorable name field. It is possible you might have to try a couple different names.
14. Select Git for Version Control. This is required. 15. Enter rgroup in the Project name field for your Team Project. If you use rgroup while you are doing this lab, your screen will better match the screenshots and instructions here. 16. Select the Scrum process template. This is also required. 17. Select the appropriate region in the drop-down box. 18. Click the Continue button. If you have picked an account name in use, you will receive a warning. Pick a different name and try again. Creating a new account is fast and can take as little as a few seconds to complete. Visual Studio Team Services queues up a job to build your Team Project and, once again, in as little as a few seconds, you will have a new Team Project.
19. You might be greeted with a dialog offering congratulations and an offer to help you get started. 20. If you see the above screen, click the Add Code button. If not, click the CODE hub link. You can now continue to the next exercise.
Exercise 3: Configure Visual Studio 2015 At this point, you should have an Azure Subscription you can use and your own Visual Studio Team Services account. In this exercise, you are going to clone the empty repository created by VSTS and configure Visual Studio to work with Git. 1. Your web browser should be open with you still logged into Visual Studio Team Services. 2. You should be at your Team Project s CODE hub. Note: The Visual Studio Team Services team updates the service about every three weeks. Based on new features and customer feedback, your page may be slightly different. In addition, the features available on Visual Studio Team Services can be affected by the level of your MSDN subscription if you have one (more on this below).
3. Scroll down the page until you can see the Create a ReadMe file button. 4. Click the Create a ReadMe file button and wait for the file to be created. Feel free to take a quick look. The read me file is a Markdown file that you use to describe the purpose of your Team Project and more or even just the code that you will put in this repo. You can come back here later if you have time. Visit https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vs/alm/overview/reference/markdownguidance for more information. 5. Click the rgroup link for your repo. 6. At the far right, opposite of where you clicked for the rgroup link, click the Clone button.
7. Click the Clone in Visual Studio button. 8. Your browser prompts you to allow it to launch Visual Studio. Click Allow if using Internet Explorer. Click Launch Application if you re using Chrome.
Click Yes if you re using Edge 9. Once Visual Studio loads, you will be prompted to log in. Do so using the same account and password you just used for Visual Studio Team Services. Note If you re using a virtual machine provided to you at an event, DO NOT Sign In to Visual Studio in the upper right corner of the IDE. If you re not sure, ask for help. 10. In the Team Explorer tool window on the right, change the local path to C:\VSTS\Repos\rGroup\. 11. Click the Clone button. At this point, you have created a Team Project and cloned the repo which at this point only has a readme.md file. However, there are a couple more things to do. 12. Go ahead and leave Visual Studio 2015 and your browser running. Minimize them and any other running applications so you can see your Windows desktop and continue to the next exercise in this walkthrough.
Exercise 4: Load Sample Work Items into VSTS In this exercise, you will generate some sample work items in your Visual Studio Team Services Team Project to track your work as you work on the rest of the labs. Note In order to complete this exercise, you need a small.net application we ve created. If you re using a Microsoft provided virtual machine, the application is already installed and you can jump to step 1. If however, you re using your own computer, you ll need to access the rgroup site at http://rgroup.us and download VSTS Sample Data Loader app. 1. Locate the icon for the Load VSTS Sample Data app. 2. Open the Load VSTS Sample Data application.
3. Once started, click the Connect to VSTS button. The app will open the Connect to Team Foundation Server dialog. 4. Check for your account in the Select a Team Foundation Server combo-box. If it is there, select it and jump down to step 10. If the combo-box is empty or you do not see your account, continue on. 5. If your newly created account is not selected and it is not in the dropdown list, click the Servers button. 6. In the Add/Remove Team Foundation Server dialog, click the Add button. 7. In the Add Team Foundation Server dialog, type your Visual Studio Team Services account name, including the visualstudio.com domain name, (for example alm2015.visualstudio.com) and click OK. You can find your name in your browser Window. DO NOT use ALM2015.
8. You will be prompted to sign in. Do that and continue. 9. Click Close in the Add/Remove Team Foundation Server dialog. 10. At this point, select the new Team Project (rgroup) you created earlier in this walkthrough and click Connect. 11. Once you have picked your Team Project, verify that the correct Team Project is shown.
12. Once you have verified everything, click Load Data to create the sample data. Once it is done, click the OK button. 13. Close the application. 14. Continue on to the next exercise.
Exercise 5: Configure Azure Active Directory (AAD) The application you will work on in these labs relies on Azure Active Directory (AAD) to authenticate users. To be able to control who can use your application, you will need to create your own AAD Directory (AD). Within your AD you will need to create an application, which is a set of configuration settings that tell AAD about your web app. 1. Open a web browser window (or switch back to your existing running copy and open a new tab) and navigate to https://manage.windowsazure.com/. Note This is the old Azure management site. At the time of writing these lab instructions, the newer Azure portal does not yet fully support configuring AAD. 2. If prompted to log in, do so using the Microsoft Account you used when setting up your Azure subscription. 3. Close any welcome messages, etc. and ignore prompts encouraging you to use the new Azure portal. 4. At the bottom left of the browser window, click the + NEW button if the drawer doesn t automatically open (see the next step and figure). 5. In the list that appears, select APP SERVICES, and then in the next list select ACTIVE DIRECTORY (you may have to scroll down to find that). In the next list that opens, select DIRECTORY.
6. Next, select CUSTOM CREATE. You will see a dialog asking for details. 7. Enter rgroup as the NAME. In DOMAIN NAME enter a short name, which will need to be globally unique you could try rgroup followed by your name, and if that turns out to be unavailable, try adding numbers on the end until you see a green tick indicating that the name you ve entered is available. Under COUNTRY OR REGION select the entry appropriate for wherever you re working. Click the tick at the bottom right of the dialog. 8. Azure will show a message indicating that it is creating your directory. 9. It might remove this message before it has finished. You can click the icon at the bottom right of the browser window to show it again:
10. Once finished, the message is replaced with one showing that the directory was created: 11. To find your newly created directory, you ll need to scroll down through the icons and labels on the left until you find the ACTIVE DIRECORY entry: 12. Select this and the middle of the web page will show a list of directories you control. Unless you ve created other directories before now, or someone has made you administrator of another directory, you will see two in the list. One is the directory set up as part of the management of your Azure subscription and the other is the one you just created. You might be prompted by Azure to talk about Azure via an e-mail subscription ignore. Click the arrow for your new directory s entry: 13. Next we need to add a user. Near the top of the page for your directory, you will see a USERS link. Click it. 14. This page shows a list of all the users in the directory. Currently this will just be you. This list will determine who will have access to your application. (That s why we re setting up this directory.) At the bottom of the web page, you ll see an ADD USER button. Click it.
15. In the ADD USER dialog that appears, in the TYPE OF USER dropdown select User with an existing Microsoft account. 16. Enter the email account of your second Microsoft account (not the one you signed into this Azure portal). 17. Click the arrow at the bottom right of the dialog to move to the user profile section of the ADD USER dialog. 18. Enter a name. You ll need this to be visibly different from the name of your first Microsoft account, so either use a made up name or add some text to the end of the DISPLAY NAME that will differentiate this account from the first. 19. Click the tick at the bottom right. The dialog will close and after a few seconds a new entry should appear in the USERS list.
20. Near the top of the web page, click the APPLICATIONS link. 21. Click the ADD button at the bottom of the web page. A dialog will open asking what you want to do. 22. Select Add an application my organization is developing. The ADD APPLICATION dialog s Tell us about your application page appears. 23. Enter rgroup as the NAME.
24. Under Type select WEB APPLICATION AND/OR WEB API. 25. Click the arrow at the bottom right to move to the App properties section. 26. Enter http://localhost:31893/ as both the SIGN-ON URL and the APP ID URI. (If you want, you can change these later to reflect the real address of your web app once you publish it to Azure.) 27. Click the tick at the bottom right corner. After a few seconds, you will see a web page for your new AAD application. 28. Near the top of the page, click the CONFIGURE link. 29. Scroll down until you find the Client ID you will need this later, so make a copy of it (perhaps put text into a copy of a Notepad file and save it to your Documents folder as labnotes.txt). 30. Scroll down further to the single sign-on section. 31. In the REPLY URL list, Azure normally adds an entry with the value http://localhost:31893/, but if it hasn t, add one now. If you had to add a reply URL entry, near the bottom of the web page, click the SAVE button. (This button won t appear if you didn t need to change anything.) Later, you will come back and add the address of your website once it is hosted in Azure.
32. At the bottom of the web page click the View Endpoints button. 33. A list of App Endpoints appears. Copy the URL under the FEDERATION METADATA DOCUMENT heading. 34. Open a new browser tab, and paste the URL you just copied into the address bar. This will show an XML document. Near the top, you should see an EntityDescriptor element with an entityid attribute. That attribute will have a value of the form: https://sts.windows.net/long-string-of-hexadecimal-and-dashes/ Take a copy of this URL. It is your directory s Issuer URL and you will need it later. Save it in your notes. Also, make note of the string of hexadecimal digits and dashes in that URL. This part is your directory s Tenant ID and you will also need that later. (When you come to need the ID, you want to exclude everything except the hex and dashes. Do not include the / characters these are part of the Issuer URL but they are not part of the Tenant ID.) You are now done with configuring AAD. You can close the browser tab you used to open the XML document. Back in previous tab, you can close the App Endpoints dialog also.
Exercise 6: Download Sample Source Code In order to work through the labs, you will need to download the source code contained in a zip file. 1. Open Internet Explorer (or switch back to your existing running copy and open a new tab) and navigate to http://rgroup.us. 2. On the main page, there will be a link to download the before.zip file. 3. Click the link. Internet Explorer will ask what you want to do with before.zip. Click Save as. 4. Accept the default location (your logged user account s Downloads folder by default) and click Save. 5. Start Windows Explorer by clicking the Open folder button in Internet Explorer to navigate to the location where you downloaded the ZIP file.
6. Right-click on the before.zip file and select Properties. 7. Click the Unblock button and then click OK. NOTE If you do not do this, Windows will add annotations to all of the files you extract from the ZIP to indicate that they were downloaded from the Internet. Visual Studio detects these annotations, and will show warnings when you open the project. Unblocking the ZIP avoids this. 8. Right-click on the ZIP file and select Extract All. 9. In the Extract Compressed (Zipped) Folders dialog, browse to C:\VSTS\Repos\rGroup\ to set the extraction path. 10. Click Extract. When complete, you will now have a folder named Before with all the source files in it. You should see your README.md file also. 11. Switch back to your running copy Visual Studio 2015. 12. Select the File Open File menu item, find the Before folder you just created, and inside that open the Rg.Web folder, and then open the Web.config file. 13. On lines 19 and 20 of this file, you will find the following lines: <add key="aadtenantid" value="c763c88d-e021-486e-9abf-8c1ec6439468" /> <add key="aadappid" value="9cf614df-3d66-4783-a511-3ed90c24385b" />
Replace the highlighted value in the first line with the Tenant ID of the AAD directory you created earlier. Replace the highlighted value in the second line with the ID of the AAD application you created earlier (also called the Client ID). 14. Save your changes. 15. In the Team Explorer, click the Manage Connections button. 16. Double-click on rgroup under Local Git Repositories (NOT your Visual Studio Team Services account). 17. In the Team Explorer window, click the Changes tile. If you see a message telling you to configure your user name and e-mail, fill them in and then move to the next step. If not, do not worry; you will verify that in a moment.
18. Near the bottom, you will see a Changes (xxx) (where xxx is a number) section. 19. Click the Home button on the Team Explorer window. 20. Click the Settings tile. 21. Under the Git item, choose Global Settings.
22. Verify your User Name and Email Address and click Update if necessary. 23. Click the Home button again. 24. Click the Settings tile again. 25. Under the Git item, choose Repository Settings. 26. Click the Add link (once for each item) for the Ignore and Attributes files. 27. Click the Home button one more time. 28. Click the Changes tile. 29. To the right-hand side of the Changes (xxx) title, you will see a plus (+) symbol. Click this. You will now see a section entitled Staged Changes (xxx) (most likely 1470) and the Changes section will be empty. 30. In the Commit message field, type Add sample code for Immersion.
31. Click the dropdown arrow to the right of the Commit Staged button and select Commit Staged and Push. This sends your changes up to Visual Studio Team Services. It first checks to make sure that your local copy isn t out of date. If someone else has already pushed new code to the server and you haven t picked that up, the Push will be blocked. At this point, you are ready to start building your app.
Appendix: Using an Azure Pass You only need to do this if you are at a Microsoft event and your instructor tells you to do so. 1. Launch Internet Explorer. 2. Navigate to https://www.microsoftazurepass.com/. 3. Select your country. 4. Enter the code provided. 5. Click Submit and complete the sign up process. 6. When you are done, resume where you left off. Last Updated: September 23, 2016.