Dealing with JSON strings in Power Apps

Overview: I get a JSON string representing an object into Power Apps.  I want to extract the values so i can use them in PowerApps.  Since this post, the ParseJson function was release in Power Apps, use that instead.

Tip: The is a great website for looking at JSON.  Otherwise I tend to use VS code.

Possible Solutions:  

1. In Power Automate, split up the JSON (using ParseJSON) and return multiple Power Apps variables - only useful is you need a small specific subset of the JSON data.
2. In Power Apps, use string manipulations to extract data as shown here:

Thoughts: I feel this is a big challenge for NoCode/LowCode solutions like Power Platform, it can be overcome with a little jiggery-pokery but I feel the PowerFx language should have an ability to cast JSON into an object and in turn allow object arrays in collections.  A lot of people have been asking for this on UserVoice.

Update: Sept 2022

The ParseJSON function is now in Power Canvas Apps, a huge improvement.  There is still an issue, the ParseJSON in not strongly typed, so it's still hard to deal with complex objects containing arrays in Canvas Apps.  Ideally I'd like to be able to add a schema to run against the untyped object to have a strongly type object to work with.

What is technical debt? and how to handle it

Overview: Technical Debt generally refers to a buildup of deficiencies that makes changing code or optimizing systems difficult.  The key is to identify what in you organisation/program/project makes up technical debt.  

Technical Debt generally refers to poor or missing NFRs such as Performance, Security, Maintainability, Reliability, Scalability,  Testability, or Resiliency.  But it also can go further into future architecture, so if this part of our system is popular can we easily adjust and keep releasing features.  So as you can see, technical debt can be very wide and it's far better to focus a subset otherwise PO and PM's tend to scope everything under technical debt and wit gets nasty telling them about "additional technical debt".

I find the easier way to go about defining what is technical debt to avoid long discussions to to list out what cannot be considered technical debt.  This would be my minimum starting point:

1. Bugs (Functional defects);
2. Technical Skill Debt;
3. Process Defects (Lack of process or poor process, such as Configuration Management);
4. Feature Debt (Wrong or delayed features or missing functionality (recent favorite example is "how can a system not have customer off boarding it's obviously technical debt", this is feature debt, make sure stakeholders know or it falls into the old IT/Dev are weak and missed things description.); and
5. UI/UX Defects (Inconsistent or poor or changing user experience).

Another items is spaghetti code that falls under the NFR of code maintainability, with old systems you have to be pragmatic, if the product brings in $100k per year it's not a good idea to spend $120k a year making the code more readable but not improving the technology as a general rule.  On old systems, I try to keep code maintainability out of the technical debt,.  You should put it to another more detailed section, just don't lump everything especially when it is huge changes all under technical debt.  Dev teams loose focus and it causes problems don the line.  All too often, over exercised bundling debt pushed into technical debt results in "even more interest to pay later".

Azure Application Gateway Basics

Azure Application Gateway is a http traffic load balancer that allows me to manage my web traffic.  So based on urls, paths, the traffic can be pushed on accordingly.  It also provides for sticky sessions.  In my head I see Azure Application Gateway as a layer 7 HTTP Load Balancer and a Web Application Firewall (WAF).  There are 3 core concepts: Front-ends, rules and backends that are used to route traffic from the front-end to the back-ends.

Azure Load Balancer works at level 4 where Azure application gateway is for web traffic at layer 7 of the OSI model.

Azure Front Door is basically for world wide Application gateway functionality.

Checklist on the Application Gateway: 

• You should enable the WAF unless you already use another WAF like Imperva enterprise wide, do this under the "Web application firewall" option, setup OWASP rules.  
• Config session affinity, and HTTPS termination using the "HTTP settings".  
• "Listeners"  are what listens for incoming http requests.
• "Rules" bind the listeners to the backend pools.
• "Backend pools" are used to point traffic to the end points.  Also remember to setup "Health Probes", this allows the App pool to verify the backends are working.
•  Ensure you set the diagnostics logging to send logs to "Log Analytics" so you can examine the logs.

Features: 

1. SSL/TLS termination - Terminate SSL using certificate
2. Autoscaling - increase the size or instance count based on traffic requirements
3. Can be setup to be zone redundant
4. Static IP address that doesn't change
5. WAF and DDoS (pretty new 2022, applied using Azure DDoS Sentinel service) capabilities - The WAF allows you to apply OWASP rules and add additional custom rules.  Bot protection is also built in, rules need to be applied to get it to work.  
6. URL-based routing
7. Multiple domains/site hosting
8. Redirection
9. Sticky sessions/session affinity
10. HTTP/2 support
11. Custom error pages (so useful)
12. Rewrite headers and URL

References:

How an application gateway works | Microsoft Docs

WAF options

Personal Access Tokens (PAT)

Personal Access Token (PAT) are used a lot for automation in DevOps, once again need to lookup the informal on PATs.  I use Postman and I use PATs to automate connecting to Azure resources.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/organizations/accounts/use-personal-access-tokens-to-authenticate?view=azure-devops&tabs=Windows

Store the PAT as it won't be retrievable again.

Microsoft Sentinel - Introduction

Overview: Microsoft Sentinel is Microsoft's cloud hosted SIEM solution.  It can take data from Azure, on-prem., and other cloud infrastructure such as AWS.  Sentinel gathers data from various sources, and evaluates to generate alerts.  

SIEM allows software products and services to bring security information/events into a management tool to provide real-time analysis of security from all applications and networks across the enterprise.  SIEM stands for security, information, and event management and is commonly used by the COS (Security Operations Teams of a business), the SOC is often outsourced or partially outsourced to Service companies e.g. Avanade are good at this.  Other SIEM products are: SolarWinds security and monitoring (great product), McAfee ESM, Rapid7, Splunk, and Datadog.  There on installable and SaaS solutions but I prefer SaaS solution like Microsoft Sentinel.  AWS and Google also provide SIEM services.

Microsoft Sentinel (previously called Azure Sentinel) is cloud-native and collects SIEM data from systems, applications and networking to provide an overview of the organizations security alerts, and allows identification for remediation.  It accepts several common formats for capturing events and offers a REST - API.  Sentinel also has a ton of native connectors.

"Microsoft Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information and event management (SIEM) and security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) solution." Microsoft Docs

Simple Password protection got GTM - Starting Page

Overview:  I am use the AuthPro service to check a user has a code to access the website.  This is useful for Go to Market (GTM) where you only want a subset of customers to work on your software.  Think of a beta where a user can sign up, you give people with an NDA a code to be able to go thru the sign-up process.

Simple solution:  

To get to the sign-up/register page, use an external service e.g. AuthPro to manage a passcode.  AuthPro injects JS and allows the admin to configure the behavior.  It was pretty simple to setup so only specified users could go thru our sign up process.

Demo:  This page allows the user to login, if, successful the user can proceed and use the website.

Type in the username "password" and the password "password" for access to the hidden page.  

Another Option: Imperva has a lot of features including "Login protection" that can easily achieve the same outcome.

NIST/RMF - Cyber risk control

Overview: NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology - Provides Risk Management Framework (RMF) - Is a framework to reduces security risk to systems and data.

Goals of NIST RMF:

• Consistent and cost effective set of security controls
• Repeatable assessment approach
• Technology neutral
• Implement an efficient risk-based security and privacy program.

Notes:

• Each of these six steps have Special Publications (SP) that are applicable to the area.
• The core document to for RMF is NIST SP 800-37 Revision 2. 
• Used to identify security/pricacy risks at both the operation and system level