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Installing .NET Tools on Air Gapped Systems

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In today’s digital age, the vast majority of our tasks rely heavily on internet connectivity. However, there are scenarios, more common than one might think, where systems are intentionally kept offline for security or other reasons. These air-gapped or isolated systems, like Azure VMs in a restricted VNET, pose unique challenges, especially when it comes to software installation. One such challenge is installing .NET tools, a task that’s straightforward with an internet connection but can become a complex endeavor without one. In this blog, we’ll delve deep into the intricacies of using the dotnet command line reference to seamlessly install .NET tools on machines that don’t have the luxury of internet access. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting out, this guide aims to simplify the seemingly daunting process and equip you with the knowledge to conquer the offline world of .NET installations. Before diving into the nitty-gritty of offline installations, it’s essentia
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Capture User’s Last Successful Login with Portal Web API

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Hey Power Pages developers! Are you sitting there scratching your head wondering why the Authentication/LoginTrackingEanbled site setting isn’t working? Unfortunately it has been deprecated 😭😭😭😭. This saddened me a lot because I utilize the Last Successful Login date field on the Contact table for a lot of reporting and automation using Power Automate. In this article I will demonstrate how you can use the Portal WebAPI with a little Javascript/Liquid to populate that field. Before we dive in, here are a few other options you might consider: Power Automate: Use a Flow to capture the data, a good example of how to implement can be found here: Last Successful Login on Contact record by Prasad Motupalli . The one thing this was missing for me though was security which could be a concern with the http trigger not requiring authentication. I want to be sure that the person updating the data is an authenticated user. Application Insights: You can track additional details su
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How to Create SharePoint Items with Power Automate Desktop

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Overview Power Automate Desktop is a great way to automate many of your daily task so you can focus on real work. A prime example of this is getting data from one place to another, especially when those data sources do not have an API such as a legacy desktop application or a file. In this example I demonstrate several ways in which an Excel sheet containing fictitious customer data could be loaded into a SharePoint list. In order to do this I first generated some fake data for my customers using Mockaroo . I then created a new SharePoint list and added some columns to match my spreadsheet. Methods My original plan was to just use the PAD recorder , which I did, but after creating that Flow I decided to find other possible ways to accomplish the task. The list below is not a complete list but should provide some ideas. The flexibility of PAD allows for an even wider range of possibilities for carrying out tasks such as these. At the end of each section I have placed the s
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Power Apps Portal - Configure Azure AD Provider in Azure B2C

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It is recommended that you no longer use Local Login authentication for Power Apps Portal but instead utilize Azure Active Directory B2C to provide this type of authentication. See Migrate identity providers to Azure AD B2C Configuring the B2C providers is fairly straightforward utilizing the new preview interface Configure the Azure Active Directory B2C provider . Make sure you navigate to the preview version of the Maker portal for now to access this, https://make.preview.powerapps.com/ . For this article my goals were the following. Set the existing Azure AD and Local Login configuration as deprecated authentication mechanisms within the portal to migrate the users to B2C. Allow user to authenticate to B2C using Azure AD, Google or create local B2C account. Deprecate Old Providers Once I had run through the instructions for configuring the Azure B2C authentication I then had to mark the Local Login and Azure AD authentication methods as deprecated. This ensures that whe
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Issue Connecting Through Remote Desktop Gateway

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While attempting to connect to a remote desktop though a Remote Desktop Gateway (RDG) the connection would ask for credentials but then just drop. After some searching I found the answer to the issue. First open open the regedit utility. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client If there is a DWORD key called RDGClientTransport set it’s value to 1. If that key is not there right click and select **New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value" from the context menu. Set the name of the key to RDGClientTransport and it’s value to 1 .
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Power Automate Desktop Example - Downloading Image From Email To Network Drive

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After watching the RPA (Robotic Process Automation) demo from Steve Winward Real-Life Use case using AI Builder Form Processing with Power Automate Desktop I have been looking for ways to utilize Power Automate Desktop Flows in order to make my life a little easier. Yesterday like every day I started clicking through the emails that I receive from my kids schools. I open each email, download the image, then move the image to a network drive on my computer. This takes me a few minutes every day but my kids are worth it :) This scenario was a perfect one for me to automate using Desktop Flows since they can access the network drive on my desktop. The basic flow of the solution will be as follows: A Power Automate Cloud Flow will be triggered to run whenever a new email comes into my Gmail account with a specific tag. The Cloud Flow will gather up all the information needed to run the Desktop Flow The Cloud Flow call the Desktop Flow by connecting through an On-Premise Data Gate
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