Knowing the formulaSHAREPOINT SOLUTIONS USING SERVERLESS FUNCTIONS

background

Software (Services) Artificial Intelligence Databases Workflow Business Intelligence Mobile

Infrastructure Scalability Business continuity High availability Reliability

Business Fail fast with minimal

collateral damage Faster time to market Expanded capabilities

Explosion of the Cloud Ecosystem Cloud computing has enabled a huge ecosystem of services and providers. Cloud can/has/will easily enable some of the main pillars of delivering IT services

Serverless Functions?

A service that wakes up on events, loads and executes a block of code then gradual decommission itself.

Listen for

EventReact to Event

Provision

Function

De-provisio

n Function

Serverless Functions Once the service is provisioned* it will load the code

associated with the service, execute, and return a result to the caller

Load Code

Execute Code

Return Result

Provision Function

So why is this cool? Reason for cool factor:

We are using Azure -> (software, infrastructure & business)

Discoverability Reusable Fast development, ramp up time And we pay (¢) just for execution time !!!!!!

Languages*

DevOps (CD)*

Leveraging Azure Functions with SharePoint

Formula 0 - (SPO + AzFn = Solution) Azure Functions can be triggered based on:

Timer Events

Azure Storage (Blobs, Queues, External File, External Table, Azure Table Storage, Azure DocumentDB, Azure Moble Table Record, Bot Framework, etc)

Web (Web Hooks, Web Services, & Rest APIs)

Scenarios of Usage

Auto Image Tagger (InstaTag)Currency Conversion

Auto Image Tagger = SP + AzFn + AI“A.I. what is that a picture of?”Mountain on tatooine

Mountain24.2 km

!@#!@#

Usage: Auto Image Tagger

Formula –> Image Auto Tagging = SPO + AzFn + AI Use Case: Tag images with keywords Goal: Improve the findability images and pictures. Business Issues and pain points:

To much work tagging/updating attributes I can’t find anything! SP is just a big file share Tagging is not my job ! Utilization is down because we have required field on upload

Auto Image Tagger

A.I. to the rescue – Once again thanks to the diverse ecosystem of hosted and cloud services A.I. platforms are easily accessible.

Formula Components SP = SharePoint Image Library AzFn = Azure Function (the new Timer Job) AI = Azure Cognitive Services

DEMO

Auto Image Tagger

What’s Happening?

SP - Currency Converter

Of course we can do currency conversion in SharePoint …There’s a currency field right ????

Over promising Oliver

Usage: Currency Conversion

Formula –> Currency Conversion = SPO + AzFn + Flow Use Case: Users want to enter their sales in their local currency.

Management wants all numbers reported in USD. Issues and pain points:

Yes a workflow can be used, but logic becomes difficult Decouples the dependency on SP workflows Off load processing from your SP environment to another resource Custom business rules can be supported in AzFn. AzFn can be reused by other services Data is maintained in a Storage table (might be some performance gains) …

Currency Conversion - Architecture

Currency Conversion – MS Flow IFTTT/Connector/Workflow service A plug and play service that connects to MS applications to other

3rd services WITHOUT CODING (SORT OF)!

MS Flow – Custom APIs

Can reference other services with Custom APIs

But you need a little swagger!!!

MS Flow – Custom APIsCustom API form BTW don’t forget about the name at the top!!!

MS Flow – Flow Currency Conversion

Hook into a SharePoint list eventStart flow when list item is created

DEMO

Azure Functions - Getting Started…

Needed - Azure Subscription https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/functions/ Free Account (60 days) https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/ From Azure Portal …

AzFn - Creating One (Deployment)

App Name Resource Group

Try using an existing plan or group by product/project billing

Hosting Plan Consumption App Service Plan

Location * Try keeping your resources together

Storage Account Can use existing storage accounts

AzFn – Create the Function

Can use premade function

Choose language

Or Create your own custom function

Create!

AzFn - IDE

Save / Run Test Logs Keys

AzFn – Keys & Logs

Keys – AuthenticationLogs – Debugging & Troubleshooting

AzFn - Integrations

Integrations with Storage accounts, database, other Azure services

AzFn – Management (Light)

Enable/Disable Function Key Management Delete Function

AzFn - Monitoring

Run logs and execution details

AzFn – Management (Advanced)

Config Settings Continous

Integration Kudu (metrics) CORS Authentication

AzFn – API Management

Public out your API Create a mock web API project

in VS 2015 using Swashbuckle (latest version)

Generate the json file Upload the json file here

Need to know - to make life easier

#r to include external libraries Use ASE to do advanced functionality Can deploy your own libraries

Use ASE or FTP to deploy files to a bin directory Might need to create the bin directory

Pricing

Pricing https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/functions/ Resource Consumption and Executions Consumption Plan

Free Monthly grant of 1 Million requests and 400k resource consumption

Functions can use – Customer App Service Plan @ regular plan rates Note: Storage account is created and charge at regular rates

Total requested executions each month for all functions – (first million are free)

Resource Consumption Observed resource consumption measured in Gigabyte Seconds Average Memory size (GB) * Function Exe (s) Free grant of 400k GBs monthly

Pricing – Resource Consumption

Pricing – Execution Billing

Pricing – Total Consumption

Total Monthly = Monthly Resource Consumption + Monthly Executions Cost

$41.60 + $0.20 = $ 41.80

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/?service=functions

Resources

Introducing Azure Functions https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-azure-functions/

Free Azure Function Account https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/

Azure Function Pricing Calculator https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/?

service=functions Subscription for Cognitive Services

https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-US/subscriptions