Onboarding staff and New Starters for SaaS

Overview:  With large SaaS projects, various stakeholders tend to start at different times.  For me it takes a while to get all team members up to speed with: domain knowledge, technical knowledge, our design and big picture, company specifics. 

Thoughts:

In person and Teams/Skype meetings are great for building relationships and getting the most information to the new starter.

Record presentations, then shorten and annotate the presentation to make focused high impact onboarding material that can be reused across various roles.

For each starter, ensure they have an introduction/onboarding plan:  Book meetings, get the people the background, have resources e.g. websites, mp4. glossary of terms ready:

Resources:

List out useful resource specific to the role.  I tend to keep these in SharePoint but as long as content if searchable and consistent and of value, I am in the right place.

Possible Technical Roadmap and thoughts on a startup

Overview:  A friend of mine's son has recently built a web site, and it looks impressive, and we started discussing his project, this turned into a detailed technical conversation to everyone's horror at a BBQ.  This chap is 14, and all I can say is wow.  All hosted and built without spending any money.  I interview many developers, and his knowledge is outstanding.  

I've drawn his architectural explanation below, added a few items to check and what my next piece would be.

Clarification of High Level Design

Thoughts:

1. Build the Native mobile apps, getting users buy-in with a Native App will be considerably higher.  As you have used React, use React Native (React is separate to React Native, a completely new codebase).
2. Cordova/PhoneGap is a wrapper that would allow you to keep a single code base and merely inject the existing code into Native wrappers for iPhone and Android.  As your app is HTML 5, and already looks like a modern mobile app, I'd use PhoneGap.  At least try it out and see if it fits.  You'd then only have to deal with a single code base to update all the platforms.  You could always use Google's Flutter if you wanted a single code base for the web site and Mobile native apps. 
3. Ensure your API's are OpenAPI/Swagger
4. Security - the API already has some protection.  Ensure the database is protected/secured.

Revenue model:  Ads (Gambling Ads pay well). Make a premium-paid for service (keep end-user usage/sign-up free).  Sign-up and collection of money while not directly applicable to this venture, can be done and kept dead simple using Shopify.

Shopify - Add optional installation on the cart for shoppers

Problem:  On my Shopify shopping cart, if a buyer is checking out and they have plants/flowers in their cart, I need to offer them the ability to have someone plant for them.

This could have various options such as in furniture, you could offer an assembly service.

Initial Hypothesis: Shopify use Liquid as it's scripting language.  Liquid allows us to combine Liquid with HTML, CSS and JavaScript to get the desired page behavior.  Below is my User Story:

As a shopper I want to be able to add labor to allow me to have my flowers/plants installed/planted so that I know an expert has got my flowers in correctly.

I also need to add the appropriate amount of labor, so if less than 3 plants charge for 1 hr  otherwise charge for 2 hrs.  Shopify has variants allowing me to have a labor product for 1 or 2 hrs.

Resolution:  Amend the cart.liquid cart summary page to allow for Labor to plant for the Shopper to easily be added.

Desired Behavior: 

Add a button to add installation

The optional installation cost for 1 hr is added to the store

Steps to Implement: 
1. Create a new Product in Shopify "Plant for me please".  Add it to a unique collection, mine was "Last Minute Checkout Items".  Add a couple of variants for time/cost as shown below:

2. Go to the Product page and append .xml to the end of the page e.g., https://nurserynearby.co.za/collections/last-minute-checkout-items/products/would-you-like-someone-to-plant-your-plants.xml and get the Variant_Id's, we need these to add the correct amount of labor cost later.
3. Open the cart.liquid file and add the  following logic:

Shopify thoughts

Overview:  Recently, I had two requests for some work around shopping carts/auctions.  I dismissed the first request as it is not what I specialize in.  On the second request, I decided to take the project on at a hugely discounted rate as I felt I did not have expertise in the field.

Shopify: Shopify is an amazing product and eco system, and I have build a great shop on the SaaS Shopify platform in record time.  There are great plug-ins to add functionality such as gift registry's, and Mobile add integration.  I have now been playing with the product, deliver solutions, worked with app vendors, reviewed competitor's, had help from Shopify support and I can honestly say that it is awesome.

Program-ability:

• There are simple API's that are well documents.  
• The internal language is Liquid which is basically a UI scripting language.
• Shopify SaaS has add ins and templates, so look before developing

Liquid:

In the code snippet above I am building custom functionality int he cart checkout to add specific products to allow more sales on the store depending on custom rules provided by the customer.

Mobile:
The templates OOTB or that shop admins can purchase follow responsive design as one would expect.  There are add-ons for iOS and Droid to make native apps, very well priced with good functionality changed on a monthly reoccurring basis (circ $40-100/month).  I need a custom mobile app for both platforms so I'm between choosing to build with Flutter or Blazor.

Power Apps Tracing to App Insights Not Working in edit mode

Overview: Power Apps integrates to directly log to App insights.  This post looks at the issues around Tracing in App insights.

Setup & Verify:

App Insights instance Instrument Key Required, Config you Power App to Trace to App Insights, and create a button to test.

The Monitor Tool is fantastic for tracing all outbound traffic, you no longer need to go to the service and check if Power Apps is reaching.  For example I use to have to look at the APIM Azure App logs for custom Connectors.

I can see all my interactions in Power Apps and travelling out.  This is a massive win for Power Apps so giving Tracing from the front end.

Greg Lindhorst, wrote a post on using the Power Apps Monitor Tool for debugging and performance improvement.

Note: Traces written to App Insights don't work in preview.  Verify, see below.

Problem: It normally takes a few minutes (like 2 minutes) to show up in App Insights, it is not showing up after 15 minutes.  Let's see, I've drop the Power Apps team a message and i think it's a bug that has crept in recently.  Today is 10 July 2020.  I've also notice that none of my Session page tracing is showing up in App Insights.

Update: 11 July 2020, the Power Apps behaviour has been on my mind.  I'm in edit mode, and when I publish the app and use it, App Insights logs perfectly.  When in edit mode running the app, even direct traces, no logging into Power Apps.  I did not realise this, but it kind of makes sense.

Resolution: Publish & Run the app, and the Tracing and Power App session tracing shows up in App Insights.

Only when I Run the Published App to my Page Views and Custom Traces get logged in App Insights.

Multi-Geo for MS Teams

O365 offers multi-geo tenants to meet data residency rules for 13 countries and regions (as of 30 June 2020):

1. Australia
2. Asia Pacific 
3. Canada
4. European Union
5. France
6. India
7. Japan
8. Korea
9. United Kingdom
10. United States
11. United Arab Emirates
12. South Africa
13. Switzerland.

Teams data resides in SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Exchange Online.  With Multi-Geo enabled, a company can specify where data will reside.  There are 2 parts to multi-geo:

• User specific data.  This data is stored in various satellite Geo for each user e.g. email, OneDrive
• Company/Project/division specific data e.g. file shares, Document libraries

For more info on Multi-Geo on O365

Microsoft "Multi-Geo is currently available to Enterprise Agreement customers with a minimum of 250 Microsoft 365 Services subscriptions."

The UK South Azure Region has 3 data centres/zones, and it's geo-paired paired with UK West there is over 150 mile between the regions. 

MS Teams Background Info:
https://www.pbeck.co.uk/2019/12/microsoft-teams-governance.html
https://www.pbeck.co.uk/2020/05/microsoft-teams-overview.html

Note: Microsoft since 2022 I think have Microsoft Priva to help manage country privacy & compliance laws 

Postman API Builder Intro

Overview: Tools for building and mocking API's.  Swagger has good tooling and my original preferred choice.  APIM - Great tooling, part of Azure and easy to replace mocks as you go along with the live implementation.  Postman is offering a great set of functionality to rival Swagger and APIM.  This post looks at Postman's new functionality around building API's.

Postman API Builder:
Not only a test rig, it now offers the ability to build API's and mock:

• Mock - so you can test supports key and OAuth authentication
• Assert Tests - You can specify asserts in postman

• Test suite - generate collections/Collection Runner - Allows a set of related tests to run sequentially.

]

• Document the API
• Monitor
• Version control for changes e.g. GITHub
• API Versions supported
• Note: Free plan has all of this, limited on the number of API's but all the features are on the free plan.  The main notation formats are support including:  Open API specification (OAS) & GraphQL

Summary:
I like Swagger tooling, I have done a few projects find APIM fantastic for building API's quickly.  Postman historically was merely my test rig but looking at the functionality, Postman API Builder is a great option for designing and building API's.  Postman is a good tool for building into CI/CD pipelines to validate API's.

Few more assert examples:

Postman offers a service to monitor API's using your postman collections, these can be triggered using Curl so can build into DevOps, Power Automated scheduled flows,....

sentry.io looks good as an alternative option

PB APIM Series:

APIM Notes

APIM Testing with Postman (this post)

APIM Mocking

APIM Mocking part 2

APIM Mocking part 2

Secure APIM with AAD B2C

APIM debugging, tracing, monitoring tricks and tips

Developer Portal - Example documenting your API within YAML

More Examples:

Retrieving JSON values