https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nzdev/feed.xml News from the MSDN New Zealand Team Tue, 16 Apr 2019 05:47:51 GMT en-US hourly 1 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nzdev/definitely-one-not-to-miss-difinity-is-coming-in-2017 Mon, 19 Dec 2016 02:46:16 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nzdev/?p=2655 Difinity Conference, a developer event focusing on Microsoft's Data Platform, Business Intelligence, and Advanced Analytics capabilities. This three day event has attracted high calibre speakers from around the world who will be delivering more than 30 sessions between them. Join your fellow developers as well as IT Decision Makers, Analysts, IT Professionals, BI Managers and Professionals, Database Administrators, Architects, and Consultants. If you want to go technically deeper on Microsoft's Data Platform, have a look at the conference website at www.difinity.co.nz. Early bird registration discounts of up to 30% are available until Christmas. The content is created by the users, for the users. Sessions range from 100 - 400 level on a range of topics. Get your discounted ticket now before Christmas. See you in February for the largest Microsoft Data Platform, Business Intelligence, and Analytics Conference in New Zealand. Until then, happy holiday season! - The MSDN NZ Team. ]]> https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nzdev/be-in-to-win-a-surface-pro-4 Sun, 21 Aug 2016 22:58:45 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nzdev/?p=2625 "How do I enter"? Simple. Share the promo code 'IGNITENEWBIE' with someone who hasn't been to the conference for at least 2 years - maybe never! If your powers of persuasion have them buying a ticket to this year's conference using the promo code 'IGNITENEWBIE' then you are both in the draw to win! Convince an Ignite Newbie to join you and you could both walk out of the conference clued-up, connected, and the proud owners of the tablet that can replace your laptop. You and your Ignite Newbie must both have a full conference pass to be eligible to win. Only tickets purchased using the 'IGNITENEWBIE' promo code will be entered into the draw to win. Full Terms and Conditions.

]]> https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nzdev/the-next-platform-conversation Tue, 26 Jul 2016 03:33:06 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nzdev/?p=2595 The big (data) picture This next wave of intelligent tech feeds on data, so, naturally the tools you need to build modern experiences are in the Cortana Intelligence Suite: a monthly subscription to big data, machine learning, and advanced analytics tools. The Microsoft Bot Framework is one of these intelligent services. It’s a toolkit that provides developers with what they need to build and connect clever bots. Also under the Cortana Intelligence Suite sits a bevy of 20+ Cognitive Services that can be integrated with bots to give them special abilities to recognize human interactions and intent in vision, speech, language, and more. Begin building brilliant, boast-worthy bots with these Bot Framework features

• Get access to everything you need to build bots that are based on .NET / C#, Node.js or REST API via the open source Bot Builder SDK in GitHub which includes automatic translation to 30+ languages, user and conversation state tracking, and pre-built models to recognize common entities and requests.
• Move beyond a command line style UI with rich interactions such as images, Skype calling, cards, and buttons. Where not supported natively these features are text-rendered.
• Determine a user’s likely intent based on a model created and trained by you via integration of the LUIS (Language Understanding Intelligence Service) API.
• Debug and test your bots locally in the emulator with easy to use JSON.
• Configure your bot to supported channels including SMS, Office 365 mail, Slack, GroupMe, Telegram, Messenger, and Kik.
• Use your Microsoft account to register and create a profile for your bot in the Bot Framework Developer Portal. All bots registered are auto-configured to work with Skype and the Web.
• Have your bot discovered and used by others by submitting it for review to be registered in the public Bot Directory.

Cool, huh. Lost for words? The Murphy Bot will help you find an image when a picture will say it better. Interested in reading more on bots? There’s a bot for that too: Summarize gives a quick overview of any web page. And if you’re still a little unclear, there’s even a bot to explains bots! Join the 30,000 developers using the Microsoft Bot Framework. We’ll keep an eye out for your Loebner prize entry! - Anna (@anna_christo), and The NZ MSDN Team (@msdevnz). ]]> https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nzdev/the-net-core-rtm Sun, 17 Jul 2016 21:37:46 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nzdev/?p=2576 DevNation conference we announced the release of .NET Core 1.0 and our partnership with Red Hat. You can Watch the on-demand stream via Channel 9 where Scott Hanselman demonstrated .NET Core 1.0. We are excited to announce the release of .NET Core 1.0, ASP.NET Core 1.0 and Entity Framework Core 1.0, available on Windows, OS X and Linux! .NET Core is a cross-platform, open source, and modular .NET platform for creating modern web apps, microservices, libraries and console applications. This release includes the .NET Core runtime, libraries and tools and the ASP.NET Core libraries. We also released the Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code extensions that will enable you to create .NET Core projects. You can get started at https://dot.net/ (its way more fun saying it - dot dot net?!?). Read the release notes for detailed release information. We also released a new set of .NET documentation at docs.microsoft.com, the new documentation service for Microsoft. The documentation you see there is just a start. You can follow the engineering progress at core-docs on GitHub. ASP.NET Core documentation is also available and open source. In addition, .NET Core is now available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift via certified containers. In addition, .NET Core is fully supported by Red Hat and extended via the integrated hybrid support partnership between Microsoft and Red Hat. See the Red Hat Blog for more details. There has been a lot of community engagement pre and post RTM, you can find top articles and blogs at the ASP.NET Community Page. - @ovishesh and the @msdevnz Team ]]> https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nzdev/meet-the-net-core-early-adapters Fri, 15 Jul 2016 02:14:09 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nzdev/?p=2575 ASP.NET Core! Here's Tim's summary. "Black Market, NZ's largest online retailer of wine, has been running on Microsoft technology since its inception in 1999. First built on Classic ASP, rebuilt on .NET in 2010 and now rebuilt May 2016 on .NET Core." "We began the rebuild in August 2015, the foundation and technology for the new site would need to last the next 5-8 years. With .NET Core being just around the corner we didn't want to build on .NET MVC 5, and have to rebuild, refactor and retest when .NET Core was released." "The team at NetPotential weighed up the pros, cons, and risks of being early adopters of Microsoft's new cross-platform development toolset and decided to take the plunge. The new site was started on the beta 6 version of Core. Development was expected to take 6-9 months, and the roadmap would put it on RC2 before launch." "With such new technology, the biggest risk and challenge was that there was no documentation, code samples, and little community support for Core. The fact that it was open-source, and we could debug the framework really helped get us through. We were constantly looking at the source code to see how things worked. We found and reported several bugs in the framework during development. The Microsoft .NET Core team were very helpful and quick to respond to our questions and bug reports, which was awesome." "With hundreds of orders being placed on Black Market every day, downtime during the upgrade was not an option. Black Market was successfully re-launched on 10 May on RC1, and will be soon upgraded to run on 1.0, once it's released." "The team learnt so much during this project and are proud to launch what is probably the largest site in NZ running on the latest MS technology stack. Check out the site in action at www.blackmarket.co.nz". ]]> https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nzdev/xamarin-evolve-and-build-melbourne Sun, 03 Jul 2016 23:10:53 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nzdev/?p=2555
Xamarin Evolve With the announcements from //build/ of the Xamarin acquisition by Microsoft and the new pricing as part of MSDN, it was clear that this was a conference that you wouldn't want to miss! Some exciting times ahead for .NET, C# and mobile developers. Here's 5 highlights from Evolve 2016: 1. Xamarin is now Open-Source Xamarin CTO, Miguel de Icaza announced that Xamarin has now been released to public as open source. This is perfect timing to unlock innovation, as there's a thriving community of global members. A vision that the Microsoft family welcomes, with open arms. You can find the source code via open.xamarin.com 2. Xamarin Forms, ready for wider adoption Once familiar with Xamarin forms, developers get above 70% code sharing, by creating cross-platform native views with Xamarin Forms, reducing time to market and ongoing support. However, until now there's been a lack of a UI designer and the inability to inject native views, making it harder to adopt the platform. This changed with the announcement of Xamarin Forms XAML Previewer (Live designer), ability to inject native views and introduction of data pages - significantly reducing the barrier to entry and development time. 3. New tools for ideation and interactive documentation All modern organisations are trying to be agile and adopt the start-up style of working. Why? To be ahead of the curve, and be as fast as the market. The announcement of a new tool, Xamarin WorkBook, enables developers to work closer with the business. Its great for experimentation and learning certain features on the fly while creating an interactive code documentation which can be shared amongst developers. 4. New tools for ideation and interactive documentation Quality has always been a huge push for Xamarin, especially when spanning across multiple platforms and devices. The crowd was totally blown away at the keynote after seeing an Android app was being remotely debugged over the cloud. This means, that you can now debug crashes and bugs on a wide variety of devices without owning them. Furthermore, a new test recorder was introduced, which speeds up the process of writing UI test cases. Both these new features are as part of the Test Cloud offering. 5. A better story together, Microsoft and Xamarin Xamarin CEO, Nat Friedman announced at the Keynote, a 300% growth in uptake since the acquisition in February. An acquisition which is not only a good cultural fit, but also an economic one. It opens the ecosystem for a whole lot more for organisations and developers, enabling a full enterprise grade mobile DevOps life cycle. • Development with Xamarin Studio 6 & visual studio • Source control & Continuous integration with TFS • Test automation with Xamarin Test Cloud • Deployment and analytics with Hockey app There were over 350 Xamarin (Now Microsoft) employees, and over 1600 attendees at the conference from all parts of the world, a great buzz and a lot of enthusiasm. Head over to the Xamarin Evolve site now to kick back and enjoy the topics you find most interesting or join me on ground in Auckland at the next Auckland Xamarin Meetup that I help run, we have just over 270 thriving members and sessions once every two months. See you there!


//build/ Melbourne It was great to see the best of //build/ 2016 (San Francisco) from the people that actually work on the products. Yes! Folks from the Windows Engineering and Product Management teams were on ground and fully accessible to attendees! Over 200 attendees sat through the engaging presentations and got a chance to experience new technologies through practical hands-on labs with support from Microsoft MVP's and Microsoft Tech Evangelists. Here our 5 takeaways: • Windows IoT Core has made great headway since the last //build/. Last year the conversation was about telemetry scenarios, however with advancements in the platform, the conversation has now moved to command and control with two new options available, for both PoC development and commercialisation. • Perfect time to start exploring the Microsoft Bot Framework, Microsoft Cognitive Services and Azure Machine Learning. The next wave of apps will use artificial intelligence and there's a whole bunch of content available on Channel9 to get started with. • Now that the HoloLens has started shipping, new tools have recently been released! Be sure to check out the HoloLens Emulator and start exploring the future of computing. • Attendees showed great love for the Xamarin demos. And why wouldn't they?! Xamarin has been gathering great momentum, with a 300% growth rate since it's acquisition by Microsoft. Xamarin helps developers build cross-platform apps, whilst sharing code between Windows UWP, iOS, Android and Mac. • And lastly - Auckland weather is very similar to Melbourne weather! You too can try out the hands on labs in the comfort of your own home. Happy coding! ]]> https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nzdev/ticket-now-on-sale-for-microsoft-ignite-nz-2016 Wed, 01 Jun 2016 00:28:54 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nzdev/?p=2535 now available. This is the time and place to see the latest technologies from Microsoft and to hear first-hand where the company is heading. Discover how you can use Microsoft technologies to do things smarter, cheaper, and faster for your organisation. Get your ticket to meet the minds that make it happen. Microsoft Ignite NZ gives you unprecedented access to hundreds of Microsoft technology and business leaders.

• 25-28 October, 2016
• Keynote and technical sessions at SKYCITY
• Party on the Thursday night at Shed 10

This event is for smart techies. Be smart about how you purchase your tickets too. Early bird tickets will sell out fast. There are also group discounts available. All tickets include access to our Women in Technology event (for men and women) and the Thursday night party. Be one of the minds that make it happen. Speaker submissions are now open. Some top names will be there, you could be standing alongside them. Tickets are now available online from msignite.nz MS Ignite NZ is for sharing knowledge, problems, and Twitter handles. When you're not there in person, talk tech tirelessly online with #MSIgniteNZ and @MSIgniteNZ ]]> https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nzdev/developing-for-office Tue, 03 May 2016 21:33:55 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nzdev/?p=2526 Office Dev Centre to learn how to integrate their apps with Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint and OneDrive. Developers can take advantage of the functionality of Office 365 APIs, or create Office Add-ins that live within the Office apps themselves. Recently at Build 2016, three new Office-specific opportunities for developers were announced: enhancements to the Microsoft Graph that can be used to build smarter solutions; improvements to the add-in model, including support for Office for Mac 2016; and new extensibility features for Skype and Office 365 Groups. One great example of a Microsoft partner creating value for their customers by integrating with Office is Xero. The team at Xero has developed an Outlook add-in that lets Xero users access information about their Xero contacts from within Outlook. Xero has also developed an Outlook API integration that allows a Xero user to see email messages to or from a contact, alongside their financial transactions, seamlessly from inside the Xero app. Craig Walker, Xero's Chief Technology Officer, says the Office 365 integration will enable small businesses to be more agile, and help them better manage customer relationships. "Xero's longstanding relationship with Microsoft gives our small businesses better tools to make smart up-to-the minute business decisions," says Craig. "This latest integration gives our 600,000+ users real-time information, so they can keep track of their business relationships and help make sure nothing slips through the cracks." To find out more about how Xero and Microsoft are working together to integrate Xero and Office to make businesses more productive, check out this episode of Xero Developer TV. ]]> https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nzdev/celebrating-student-innovation-with-msa Mon, 02 May 2016 21:23:14 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nzdev/?p=2515 Microsoft Student Accelerator (MSA) programme has three core pillars - Inspire, Develop and Innovate. As part of Inspire, we talked about school students being the core driver for the next generation of technology-generated innovation and how important it is for them to consider a career in tech. The MSA Crew trained over 350 students across Auckland schools on Game Development using Construct 2 teaching them logical programming fundamentals in a fun way! With Develop, we worked with over 2000 Tertiary students from all over NZ to help them skill up in various Web and Mobile technologies and help them achieve a 10-week work placement with top NZ IT companies. Under Innovate, we talked about our annual Imagine Cup competition. Over the last 8 weeks I had the privilege to work with super smart student innovators who participated in the Imagine Cup Competition. Over 45 teams registered for the competition, only 8 teams progressed through after the preliminary round and only the top 4 teams got a chance to present at the National Finals. The Imagine Cup New Zealand winning team, Clove, aims to revolutionise the way consumers interact with food, by enabling thriving, diverse and healthy food ecosystems across all communities. You can read more about them and the other competitors on this NZ Herald article. Clove will now compete in an Asia-Pacific wide semi-final, before the world-wide finals that will be held at Microsoft Head Quarters in Redmond. For more information visit https://msa.ms, and view our success in this infographic.]]> https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nzdev/build-on Mon, 18 Apr 2016 01:47:32 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nzdev/?p=2485 in 15 minutes. The full keynotes and others sessions, including the popular 'The Future of C#' and 'Running Bash on Ubuntu on Windows' are available at Channel9. In short - bots stole the show. The future is bots. Using AI to respond to your words and interpret your needs in the basis for Microsoft's next platform - conversation. With this also comes a new bot framework for you, the developers. This runs off the Cortana Intelligence Suite, which runs off the Microsoft bot framework. There are currently 22 APIs available today to start playing around with. Cortana also got some air time to herself - namely around her entry onto Xbox where she can help you find new titles and share tips. She's also gained strength working with third party apps - she can make food orders through delivery apps for example. Back to bots again, the next generation of Skype's relationship with bots was talked about. Simply put Skype will become smarter as it integrates with Cortana who will 'broker' conversations with a third party bot. Cortana will take the initiative in suggesting meetings and actions for you, using information in your inbox or calendar and combining it with context from your conversations and travel/location patterns. Of course, there were updates on Windows 10 too with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, which will bring a bunch of new features such as biometric authentication aka logging into your computer using your fingerprint. New developer tools such as a Linux command line were shared too. And there's 'Ink': Microsoft's stylus capabilities and pen-powered apps which sit under the 'Ink Workspace' umbrella. A great demo showed how Ink can work to interpret a squiggly line overlaid on a map to travel plans and times. Check out the videos from //build/ to see the code you can add to your apps to include Ink abilities. New Universal Apps were announced too with more to come; from Facebook to Starbucks and Uber. Finally, HoloLens is shipping to developers in the US. The HoloLens app, Galaxy Explorer took the audience through the planets using gestures. Continuing on the galactic theme, NASA also shared Destination Mars where viewers can see the red planet from the same perspective as a NASA scientist. There's lots to get through, and some of it good enough to have a second look! - @ovishesh]]>