Upgrading Two web applications and verifying using Playwright - super fast

Overview: A couple of my internal recent projects all clipped together to allow my to upgrade two websites to .NET 8. And verify the upgrade and commit to source control in a regulated controlled manor and it took less than 30 minutes.

I download the latest version of Visual Studio 2022 Enterprise edition and noticed an option to upgrade my .NET projects, so I clicked it. The .NET Upgrade Assistant downloaded and installed upgrade in Visual Studio.  The upgrade is done using a vsix template import: Microsoft.NET.UpgradeAssistant.vsix

I thought I may as well upgrade my two current .NET projects:

1. App Service on Azure running Blazor .NET 6, using TFS for source control and published using my Visual Studio profile.

Once the upgrade was applied took 10 seconds and i chose LTS  .net8, I published.  Code is still not checked in.  I has a quick look and the  app loos to be running correctly in a browser. 

2. Static Web App hosting a Blazor .NET 6 connected to Github and published as a gated checkin using git Actions. Upgrades, and when I checked into the main github branch, the action fired and upgraded the static web app.

Verify Build:

So I had checked both apps where running using the good old open in a browser and look around.  A few days ago I was playing with Playwright and my testing covered validating the App Service website can send email, is running and text is visible, it also checks a Mendix low code website and lastly it looks at the Static Web App to validate it is service pages.  I did this is Visual Studio Code. 

The tests tell me both applications are running, verifies WAG compliance on 1 app and also checks a Mendix website is running.

Summary:  By re-using the test project I could quickly verify the project upgrades and the first project still requires a commit to complete but it is way safer than my direct to production gated checking done on the static web app.

Microsoft Teams Power Apps Integration

Overview: Teams are amazing, I was a complete Slack fan, but I'm 100% now a teams supporter.  It's part of O365, replaces Skype (which was great but only a chat app like zoom), you get your email, and can add all your apps and websites to your Team.

Adding your custom Power Apps to Teams:

Adding A Power App to MS Teams:

Notes:

1. MS Teams uses the Chrome engine (Chromium) as it's browser.
2. A feature I don't like about Teams is that when i switch focus to say a chat window and come back to my Power app within MS Teams, I loose my place in my power app and the app is loaded from scratch.
3. I believe the problem of apps maintaining session state will be solved shortly with pop out Windows in Teams around July/Aug 2020.

High-Level Flow to Build a native MS Team application:

Some Teams Dev Options: Power Apps, Blazor SPFx, React, Flutter

Blazer Intro

Blazor intro - Pretty much a SPA written in C#.  Deployed on server and client side using SignalR.  Server-side option is available today.

Learn about Blazer on 14 Jan 2020 Online Conference

More to come...