Create a Web App Bot Using Azure Bot Services

In my last post, we create a QnA Maker knowledge base that our Azure Web App Bot will use as it’s repository of questions & answers. Now, we are going to create our bot using Azure’s Bot Services.

First thing is that we should go ahead and log into the Azure Portal. In the top left-hand corner click the Create a resource button. You will then need to Search the marketplace in the New blade for Web App Bot.

Using Qnamaker to Create Chatbot

The first thing we need to do is login to QnAMaker. QnA Maker is a Microsoft service that allows you to easily generate a bot using either existing documentation for a product (or service) or you can create your own questions and answers – hence the name QnA Maker.

Login to QnAMaker and navigate to the Create a knowledge base tab. You will need to walkthrough 5 steps to create your knowledge base. Luckily, Microsoft has provided clear instructions to make this as simple as possible.

Create a Question and Answer Chatbot for Slack in Azure

Chatbots are all the rage right now, and they have proven to be extremely useful for organizations around the globe. You can have simple bots that take lunch orders or tell you the weather in your location. You can also bots tht act as part of an advanced distributed security alerting system. Whatever the reason, bots are not going anywhere anytime soon.

To create our chatbot we are going to use a few different services. Please make sure that you have all the necessary access setup and ready to go before proceeding. Here is the list of services we will be using:

Adding a Dlls Certificate to a Trusted Store

Yesterday I was asked to help with streamling a manual process that some QA folks were running into. They had a debug release of an applicaiton that was signed with a test code signing certificate. Part of the process was that they needed to select a DLL, view the certificate, and then install the certificate into the machines trusted certificate store.

This is a extremely simple task, but it was just an annoyance, so I wrote a few lines of code to autoamte this for them.

Butcher Block Iron Pipe Desk

Recently I built a butcher block and iron pipe desk for my home office. Within this post i’ll try and list out how I approached it as best as possible:

I purchased 2 8ft butcher block countertops from Lumber Liquidators while they were on sale. I paid $150 for each. Next, I researched quite a bit about how to finish them. Here’s what I did:

• Sanded using 80 grit sandpaper
• Sanded using 120 grit sandpaper
• Sanded using 200 grit sandpaper
• Sanded using 320 grit sandpaper
• Sanded using 400 grit sandpaper

Once that was done, I used cheese cloth to wipe away all the debris. After that I did some more research and found a really cool product tha tturned out amazing (highly recommend). This product is unique, mostly because it is a finisher, sealer, and protector all in one. I was skeptical but I can not recommend this enough. Another point is that if you use typical stain and then polyurethe you are not actually touching the wood - it’s more of a coating. This stuff you are actually touching the wood cause the tung oil and sealer penetrates the actual wood; no rings from glasses, no oily residue, nothing. Its seriously great.

Using Docker Compose on Windows

Docker Compose “is a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications. With Compose, you use a YAML file to configure your application’s services.” In this post, I will show how you can work with Docker Compose.

Docker on Windows is now commonplace, and it comes with additional features you may not be familiar with. In my previous posts Install Docker and run containers on Windowsand Create a Docker container on Windows with a Dockerfile, I showed you how to create a single container. In this article, I will walk you through how to use docker-compose to create and run multiple containers at once.

Verifying a Datetime Format String Is Valid or Not With Confirm Datetimeformatpattern

Early this evening I sent this tweet out regarding a #PowerShell Function I wrote called Confirm-DateTimeFormatPattern and Dan Franciscus (@dan_franciscus) recommend that I should blog about it, so here it goes!

To elaborate on that tweet, this Function spawned from a larger initiative that I am working on for a presentation I’m giving at PowerShell Summit 2018 in April.  That presentation will be about a PowerShell Module I have built called PSLogging, which is a logging framework built using PowerShell Classes.