Tag Archives: Development

Setting up a O365 Dev Tenant – Part 6 – Set up SharePoint Tenant

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Introduction

In this series of posts, I will explain how you can set up a Development O365 Tenant quickly. Using PowerShell scripts, at the end of this process, you will have:

  • A O365 Development Tenant with 25 “DEVELOPERPACK” Licenses.
  • 25 Users assigned with license
  • A total of 274 Users added to the Tenant
    • Set up for multiple offices
    • Organisational structured
  • All users will be MFA enabled
  • All users will have photos added to their accounts
  • Enabling Office 365 Auditing
  • Setting up the SharePoint Tenant Settings and enabling Public CDN for SPFX

Unfortunately, I have found it impossible to do the following via PowerShell scripts, and these would need to be done manually. I haven’t included this information within these blog post.

  • Create a Tenant App Catalog
  • Set Organisation Details
  • Set Login Branding
  • Set Tenant Branding

Obtaining the code

I have stored my code on GitHub at the following URL for cloning. https://github.com/pmatthews05/SetupDevTenant.git

Setting up the SharePoint Tenant

SharePoint Tenant has many different settings. Here my script is just calling the PNP powershell command Set-PnPTenant. More information about each setting can be found here. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/sharepoint-pnp/set-pnptenant?view=sharepoint-ps

If you already have a SharePoint tenant that you want to have exact same settings on your environment, you just need to go to that tenant, sign into the SharePoint admin URL with PNP, and then run

Get-PnPTenant | ConvertTo-Json > .\othertenant.json

This will output a json file that will read in with my script, but you will need to add the following to “PublicCdnOrigins” and sets PublicCdnEnabled to True. as it never reads this in with this command.

“PublicCdnEnabled”: true,
“PublicCdnOrigins”: [
   “*/MASTERPAGE”,
   “*/STYLE LIBRARY”,
   “*/CLIENTSIDEASSETS”
 ]

Inside the Settings folder, you will find a pre-configured SPTenantSettings.json file. I have put all the parameters in alphabetical order to make it easier to read. This is a typical setup I use, but it probably isn’t what you want. Especially around Sharing. I don’t allow sharing to anonymous users (SharingCapability). I also set Direct default sharing link (DefaultSharingLinkType).

To run this script you first need to connect to the admin site, using Connect-PnPOnline.

Connect-PnPOnline -url:https://[tenant]-admin.sharepoint.com -useweblogin

Now you are connected, you can call the Set-SharePointTenant.ps1 file.

.\Set-SharePointTenant.ps1 -SettingsPath:'.\settings\SPTenantSettings.json'

There are two settings that will require a confirmation that for some reason cannot be pre applied in PowerShell. These settings are OneDriveForGuestsEnabled and OrphanedPersonalSitesRetentionPeriod.



If you are running the template I provided, once the script has finished running your Public CDN will also be turned on.

Using PowerShell, type the following and you will see that the configuration is pending. This takes up to 15 minutes before it is fully enabled. You can keep calling the below command until it no longer says Configuration Pending.

Get-PnPTenantCdnOrigin –CdnType Public

Intune and Azure Directory Premium

In lines 84-86 of Set-SharePointTenant.ps1 there are 3 settings that I have commented out (ConditionalAccessPolicy, AllowDownloadingNonWebViewableFiles and AllowEditing). These settings require Intune and Azure Active Directory Premium subscription. As this is a development tenant, there is no need to set these settings.

I hope you have found this series useful and are able to setup within a couple of days due to Microsoft back end processes a SharePoint Development tenant that you can work with. I am more than happy for anyone to help expand/improve on my GitHub project.

Setting up a O365 Dev Tenant – Part 5 – Turning on O365 Auditing

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Introduction

In this series of posts, I will explain how you can set up a Development O365 Tenant quickly. Using PowerShell scripts, at the end of this process, you will have:

  • A O365 Development Tenant with 25 “DEVELOPERPACK” Licenses.
  • 25 Users assigned with license
  • A total of 274 Users added to the Tenant
    • Set up for multiple offices
    • Organisational structured
  • All users will be MFA enabled
  • All users will have photos added to their accounts
  • Enabling Office 365 Auditing
  • Setting up the SharePoint Tenant Settings and enabling Public CDN for SPFX

Unfortunately, I have found it impossible to do the following via PowerShell scripts, and these would need to be done manually. I haven’t included this information within these blog post.

  • Create a Tenant App Catalog
  • Set Organisation Details
  • Set Login Branding
  • Set Tenant Branding

Obtaining the code

I have stored my code on GitHub at the following URL for cloning. https://github.com/pmatthews05/SetupDevTenant.git

Turning on and setting permissions for Office 365 Auditing

At the URL https://protection.office.com you have access to the Security & Compliance Center. There is lots you can do in this area of O365, but I am just going to talk about Auditing in this post.

In the left hand navigation of Office 365 Security & Compliance, expand Search and select Audit Log Search. Yours should be like the screen shot above and has a yellow banner that states you need to turn auditing on. There is a button at the end, and this allows you to turn it on.

My script, Set-Office365Auditing.ps1 not only turns on the Auditing, but it assigns a group of users to have view-only access to the Audit logs.

Enable-OrganizationCustomization

Before you can run my script, the above command needs to be run first, and you need to wait a while before you can run my script below. Due to the time I was working on this blog, I ended up waiting 24 hours before I ran my next script. I’m not sure how long you have to wait.

You need to use the Microsoft Exchange Online PowerShell Module. If you haven’t already downloaded this from part 3 of this series, please follow my previous blog about how to do this correctly. https://cann0nf0dder.wordpress.com/2019/04/14/unable-to-download-the-exchange-online-powershell-module-deployment-and-application-do-not-have-matching-security-zones/

Open Microsoft Exchange Online PowerShell Module. You will need to connect first, before running the script. It allows you to control the signing in.

Connect-EXOPSSession -userPrincipalName [user.name]@[tenant].onmicrosoft.com

Now you can run

Enable-OrganizationCustomization

Running Set-UserAccountsOnline.ps1

This script uses the Microsoft Exchange Online Powershell Module, and ViewAuditUsers.csv file. It will:

  • Create a new RoleGroup called “View Audits Only“
  • Add Users from the CSV file to the RoleGroup
  • Lastly it will turn on Auditing for O365.

Before you run any code, you will need to replace [User.Name] on line 2 of the ViewAuditUsers.csv to your User Name.

Open Microsoft Exchange Online PowerShell Module. You will need to connect first, before running the script. It allows you to control the signing in.

Connect-EXOPSSession -userPrincipalName [user.name]@[tenant].onmicrosoft.com

Now you are connected, you can call the Set-Office365Auditing.ps1 file.

.\Set-Office365Auditing.ps1 -Path:'.\data\ViewAuditUsers.csv' -TenantDomain:'[mytenant].onmicrosoft.com'

Replace [mytenant] with your tenant name.

If you now head to the Exchange admin center.

Viewing Audit Logs

At the URL https://protection.office.com you have access to the Security & Compliance Center. In the left hand navigation of Office 365 Security & Compliance, expand Search and select Audit Log Search. As you have just turned on Auditing, you might see the yellow/orange message that I have on my screen shot below.

“Because you started recording user and admin activities within the last 24 hours, some activities might not show up in search results yet.”

After a little while, (at least an hour) you will start receiving results when you click Search.

For a user that doesn’t have access, as you haven’t given them View Audits permission, they will get an error message when going directly to the URL.

In this blog post we have turned on the Office 365 Auditing and assigned a few users to have access. In my next and last blog post in this series, I will be setting up my SharePoint tenant admin properties and ensuring public CDN is turned on for SPFX.

Setting up a O365 Dev Tenant – Part 4 – Upload User Photos to SharePoint

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Introduction

In this series of posts, I will explain how you can set up a Development O365 Tenant quickly. Using PowerShell scripts, at the end of this process, you will have:

  • A O365 Development Tenant with 25 “DEVELOPERPACK” Licenses.
  • 25 Users assigned with license
  • A total of 274 Users added to the Tenant
    • Set up for multiple offices
    • Organisational structured
  • All users will be MFA enabled
  • All users will have photos added to their accounts
  • Enabling Office 365 Auditing
  • Setting up the SharePoint Tenant Settings and enabling Public CDN for SPFX

Unfortunately, I have found it impossible to do the following via PowerShell scripts, and these would need to be done manually. I haven’t included this information within these blog post.

  • Create a Tenant App Catalog
  • Set Organisation Details
  • Set Login Branding
  • Set Tenant Branding

In my previous post, I showed you how to import user photos into exchange. As we could only add 25 user pictures due to licensing constraints, this post will show you how to upload all the pictures into SharePoint.

Obtaining the code

I have stored my code on GitHub at the following URL for cloning. https://github.com/pmatthews05/SetupDevTenant.git

Running Set-UserPhotosInSharePoint.ps1

Before running this code, I wish to give a shout out to Christopher Walker, who had a PowerShell function for resizing images in a Gist. Thank you. https://gist.github.com/someshinyobject/617bf00556bc43af87cd

This script uses the AzureADUser.csv file and the UserImages profile pictures. It will:

  • Loop through the CSV
  • Create 3 different sized images for the user
  • Upload the 3 images to Root MySite.

To run the script, you need to install PNP PowerShell. Follow the instruction here how to install if you encounter issues. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/sharepoint/sharepoint-pnp/sharepoint-pnp-cmdlets?view=sharepoint-ps

Basically, if you haven’t done this previously, run PowerShell as Administrator. Then type:

Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline -SkipPublisherCheck -AllowClobber

You will need to connect first to your root MySite, before running the script. It allows you to control the signing in, for example if you didn’t make your account MFA, then you don’t need to use the command UseWebLogin and just sign in with your credentials.

Connect-PnPOnline -url:https://[tenant]-my.sharepoint.com -useweblogin

Now you are connected, you can call the Set-UserPhotosInSharePoint.ps1 file.

.\Set-UserPhotosInSharePoint.ps1 -Path:'.\data\AzureADUsers.csv' -TenantDomain:'[tenant].onmicrosoft.com'

Replace [tenant] with your tenant name.

This script is idempotent, so you can run it again at any point if there was an issue.

Once the script is complete, if you go to the following URL you will find pictures imported into the library at the root of the mysites.

https://[tenant]-my.sharepoint.com/User%20Photos

When the code is running, you might have noticed, in the UserImages folder, there is a new subfolder called Resize. This is where all the images are copied and resized to before being uploaded to SharePoint.

Running Set-UserProfilePhotosInSharePoint.ps1

At this point, all you really have done is uploaded pictures to SharePoint, they are not tied to the user at all. The following script will update the SharePoint user profile to point to the correct image.

Firstly, before you can run this script, we need to ensure that SharePoint online has already found your users and added them to the user profile.

  • Navigate to https://[tenant]-admin.sharepoint.com
  • Click the link to the Classic SharePoint admin centre which can be found in the left-hand navigation
  • Click User Profiles from the left-hand navigation
  • Here you should be able to see the number of User Profiles registered.

As you can see from my screen shot above my SharePoint has only registered 3 user profile so far. As we have no control over this, I will need to wait until SharePoint Online has done is syncing. This can take up to 24 hours.

After checking back later I can now see that I have user profiles for all users within Azure AD.

This code sets the UserProfile property PictureURL to [tenant]-my.sharepoint.com/user photos/profile pictures/[firstname_lastname_tenant]onmicrosoft_com_LThumb.jpg and sets the UserProfile property SPS-PicturePlaceholderState
 to 0. By setting the value to 0, it indicate that SharePoint online should show the uploaded picture for the user.

First you need to connect to the admin site.

Connect-PnPOnline -url:https://[tenant]-admin.sharepoint.com -useweblogin

Now you are connected, you can call the Set-UserProfilePhotosInSharePoint.ps1 file.

.\Set-UserProfilePhotosInSharePoint.ps1 -Path:'.\data\AzureADUsers.csv' -TenantDomain:'[tenant].onmicrosoft.com'

Replace [tenant] with your tenant name.

Once the script has completed, and search has picked up your changes, you will find your people showing up in Search / Delve etc.

In this blog post we have imported user photos into SharePoint mysites, and updated the user profiles for these users. In the next post I will be showing you how to turn on 365 Auditing, and assigning only a couple of users to view these audit logs.

Setting up a O365 Dev Tenant – Part 3 – Set User Photos in Exchange Online

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Introduction

In this series of posts, I will explain how you can set up a Development O365 Tenant quickly. Using PowerShell scripts, at the end of this process, you will have:

  • A O365 Development Tenant with 25 “DEVELOPERPACK” Licenses.
  • 25 Users assigned with license
  • A total of 274 Users added to the Tenant
    • Set up for multiple offices
    • Organisational structured
  • All users will be MFA enabled
  • All users will have photos added to their accounts
  • Enabling Office 365 Auditing
  • Setting up the SharePoint Tenant Settings and enabling Public CDN for SPFX

Unfortunately, I have found it impossible to do the following via PowerShell scripts, and these would need to be done manually. I haven’t included this information within these blog post.

  • Create a Tenant App Catalog
  • Set Organisation Details
  • Set Login Branding
  • Set Tenant Branding

In my previous post, I walked you through creating users in AzureAD from a CSV file, set them up with MFA and a default password. Assigned the first 25 users a license, and uploaded their pictures into Azure AD

In this post I will be running you through the PowerShell script to import Pictures into Exchange. You might ask why we are doing this if we have previously uploaded the pictures into Azure AD, the reason is because your profile picture will sometimes show up in some places and not in others. E.g. Delve might show a picture, where SharePoint doesn’t. So, the next few posts are about uploading pictures to the tenant. These scripts upload to every possible location that have a separate place.

Obtaining the code

I have stored my code on GitHub at the following URL for cloning. https://github.com/pmatthews05/SetupDevTenant.git

Running Set-UserPhotosInExchange.ps1

This script uses the AzureADUser.csv file and the UserImages profile pictures. It will:

  • Find the user in Exchange
  • Check the photo exists in the script location for the user.
  • Uploads the picture.

To run the script, you need to use the Microsoft Exchange Online PowerShell Module. Please follow my previous blog about how to do this correctly. https://cann0nf0dder.wordpress.com/2019/04/14/unable-to-download-the-exchange-online-powershell-module-deployment-and-application-do-not-have-matching-security-zones/

Open Microsoft Exchange Online PowerShell Module. You will need to connect first, before running the script. It allows you to control the signing in.



Connect-EXOPSSession -userPrincipalName [user.name]@[tenant].onmicrosoft.com

Now you are connected, you can call the Set-UserPhotosInExchange.ps1 file.



.\Set-UserPhotosInExchange.ps1 -Path:'.\data\AzureADUsers.csv' -TenantDomain:'[mytenant].onmicrosoft.com'

Replace [mytenant] with your tenant name.

This script is idempotent, so you can run it again at any point if there was an issue. NOTE: It will only work for the first 25 users that were assigned a license, as the others will not have an email account. (You can cancel the script after the first 25 user – Ctrl+ C)

The only part of this code that does the uploading is on line 46. Its coverts the jpg to bytes and then uploads it for the user.



Set-UserPhoto -Identity $UserCSV.UserPrincipalName -PictureData ([System.IO.File]::ReadAllBytes($pathtoPicture)) -Confirm:$false

Photos appearing in Delve

You will notice now that if you use Delve, the first 25 users in your CSV file will have pictures showing for them.

In this blog post we have imported user photos into exchange. As we could only add 25 user pictures in the next blog post I will be importing the pictures into SharePoint, so they can be used there.

Setting up a O365 Dev Tenant – Part 2 – Create Users from CSV file

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Introduction

In this series of posts, I will explain how you can set up a Development O365 Tenant quickly. Using PowerShell scripts, at the end of this process, you will have:

  • A O365 Development Tenant with 25 “DEVELOPERPACK” Licenses.
  • 25 Users assigned with license
  • A total of 274 Users added to the Tenant
    • Set up for multiple offices
    • Organisational structured
  • All users will be MFA enabled
  • All users will have photos added to their accounts
  • Enabling Office 365 Auditing
  • Setting up the SharePoint Tenant Settings and enabling Public CDN for SPFX

Unfortunately, I have found it impossible to do the following via PowerShell scripts, and these would need to be done manually. I haven’t included this information within these blog post.

  • Create a Tenant App Catalog
  • Set Organisation Details
  • Set Login Branding
  • Set Tenant Branding

In my previous post, I walked you through the step of joining the Office 365 Development program, and set yourself up with a Office 365 Development Tenant with 25 Developerpack Licenses. In this post we are going to add users to the tenant from a CSV file.

Obtaining the code

I have stored my code on GitHub at the following URL for cloning. https://github.com/pmatthews05/SetupDevTenant.git

Folders

  • Data – Contains the CSV files used within the scripts
  • Settings – Contains the JSON settings for the Set-SharePointTenant.ps1 script.
  • UserImages – Contains all the photos to all the users being added to the tenant.

Scripts

  • Set-Office365Auditing.ps1 – Turns on the Audit logs, and assign people to view them.
  • Set-SharePointTenant.ps1 – Update Tenant Parameters and enabling Public CDN
  • Set-UserAccountsOnline.ps1 – Add users and assign licenses and import pictures
  • Set-UserPhotosInExchange.ps1 – Add User photos to Exchange
  • Set-UserPhotosInSharePoint.ps1 – Add user photos to SharePoint.
  • Set-UserProfilePhotosInSharePoint.ps1 – Assigns the user picture to their SharePoint profile.

Creating the users from a CSV file.

In the Data folder there is a csv called AzureADUsers.csv. It is best to open this file in Excel.

Before you run any code, you will need to fix up a couple of columns in lines 2 & 3 of the csv file.

  • On line 2, replace UserPrincipleName, GivenName, Surname, MailNickName (Columns B, C, E, F, G) with the account details you gave yourself when creating the Subscription in part 1.
  • One line 3, add your name to the manager of Dan Jump.
  • Save the CSV file.
  • (optional) Put your profile picture in the UserImages folder, with the filename [firstname lastname].jpg

All the names/address/telephone numbers are all made up, converted by me. The names might seem familiar to you, as they are the “Microsoft Users” Microsoft uses in their demos.

We are going to use the powershell script Set-UserAcountsOnline.ps1. Note: None of my scripts will connect you to a service. This will need to be done first before running.

I’m not going to go through the code as the script is quite easy to follow and to understand. If there is anything you are unsure about that is in the script, please leave a comment at the bottom of the post.

Running Set-UserAccountsOnline.ps1

This script uses the AzureADUser.csv file and the UserImages profile pictures. It will:

  • Create/Update all users in Azure AD.
  • Assign them a license (If any are left)
  • If new user assigns them a password, to be changed at next login
  • Enable their account for Multi Factor Authentication. (This can be disabled in the CSV file, by changing the MFAEnabled to false for the user)
  • Upload their picture to Azure AD

To run the script your PowerShell environment will need to have the following modules installed.

  • AzureAD
  • MSOnline

If you haven’t done this previously, run Powershell as Administrator. Then type:

Install-Module -Name AzureAD
Install-Module -Name MSOnline

Unfortunately, the only way I could enable MFA for users was to use the MSOnline module. There doesn’t seem to be a way of doing it purely using AzureAD.

As stated previously, you will need to connect first, before running the script. It allows you to control the signing in.

Connect-AzureAD
Connect-MsolService

Now you are connected, you can call the Set-UserAccountOnline.ps1 file.

.\Set-UserAccountsOnline.ps1 -Path:'.\data\AzureADUsers.csv' -tenantDomain:'[mytenant].onmicrosoft.com' -tempPassword:'[Give A Password]'

Replace [mytenant] with your tenant name. You can either put a password in -tempPassword parameter, or you can remove this parameter. By removing this parameter, you will be setting all your users to have the password P@55w0rd.

This script is idempotent, so you can run it again at any point if there was an issue. When you run out of licenses, the script continues creating the accounts, they just don’t get a license assigned to them.

MFA Setup

After the script has run, and you go to your tenant, you will be asked to re-authenticate again, and provide details for MFA.

  • Click Next
  • I recommend using the Mobile App, and Receive notifications for verification. Click Set up
  • Follow the instructions to install the Microsoft authenticator app for your mobile.
  • Once set up, you need to provide a mobile number. Fill this in and click Next.
  • On the next page, you will be given an app password. Take note of this somewhere. These are useful if you need to run a script on this account, but want to skip MFA, you can just put this password in instead. Click Finished.

View Users in Admin portal

In the Admin portal https://admin.microsoft.com under users, you will see the users have been imported. Some with licenses and some without.

  • Any user you select, will give you their details and picture.

In this blog post we have created users from a CSV file, set them up with MFA and a default password. Assigned the first 25 users a license. In the next blog post I will be showing you the PowerShell script to import Pictures into Exchange.

Setting up a O365 Dev Tenant – Part 1 – Getting the Tenant

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Introduction

In this series of posts, I will explain how you can set up a Development O365 Tenant quickly. Using PowerShell scripts, at the end of this process, you will have:

  • A O365 Development Tenant with 25 “DEVELOPERPACK” Licenses.
  • 25 Users assigned with license
  • A total of 274 Users added to the Tenant
    • Set up for multiple offices
    • Organisational structured
  • All users will be MFA enabled
  • All users will have photos added to their accounts
  • Enabling Office 365 Auditing
  • Setting up the SharePoint Tenant Settings and enabling Public CDN for SPFX

Unfortunately, I have found it impossible to do the following via PowerShell scripts, and these would need to be done manually. I haven’t included this information within these blog post.

  • Create a Tenant App Catalog
  • Set Organisation Details
  • Set Login Branding
  • Set Tenant Branding

Join Office 365 Development Program.

Microsoft allows anyone with a Microsoft account to get a development Office 365 Subscription by joining the Office 365 developer program.

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev-program

  • Click Join Now
  • Sign in with your Microsoft Account. (Hotmail, live, outlook etc)
  • Select your Country/Region and enter your Company name. Tick the terms and conditions and then click Next
  • Fill out the next page and then click JOIN.

Get an Office 365 Subscription

After you have joined the Development program, you will be present with a screen to allow you to set up a subscription.

  • Click Set Up Subscription
  • Fill out the form and click Continue:
    • Country/Region
    • Create UserName
    • Create Domain
    • Password
    • ConfirmPassword
  • Add your phone number on the next screen, then click Set-up
  • Once created, you can then click Go to Subscription
  • After you have signed in the link takes you to https://www.office.com.

  • Click on Admin takes you to the admin centre. Expanding … Show all in the left hand navigation and then expanding Admin Centers you can see you have a full E3 license tenant.

Assign yourself a license.

This is going to be a manual step, and can skip this if you wish, as my next blog will show you how to do this via code.

  • Expand Users, and select Active Users. You will see one user in the tenant. You. Currently this account doesn’t have a license. Select the user.
  • The panel that appears on the right, click the link Edit for Product licenses.
  • Select the Location and turn On the Office 365 E3 Developer Licenses. Click Save.
  • Your user now has a production assigned to them. Click Close.

How long is my Office 365 Subscription valid for?

You may have noticed when you created your subscription it states there are 91/92 days left. Microsoft use to give their members a subscription for 1 year. They have now reduced this to 90 days, however, there is a new clause that states:

‘As a program member, you can get a free Office 365 developer subscription with 25 user licenses to use to build your solutions. This subscription will remain active for as long as you’re actively developing and deploying solutions.’

I’m not sure how often you need to be deploying and developing on the subscription to keep it open. All the FAQ are found in the link below.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/developer-program/office-365-developer-program-faq

In this blog post we have set up an O365 Development Tenant with 25 “DEVELOPERPACK” Licenses and assigned one license to ourselves. In the next blog post I will be showing you the PowerShell scripts I have written to help quickly set up my tenant.

 

SPFX obtaining the URL Query Parameters

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This is a very quick blog post, but I needed to obtain the URL parameters of the page for an SPFX webpart.

There is a built in method for obtaining URL parameters.

import { UrlQueryParameterCollection } from '@microsoft/sp-core-library';

...

var queryParms = new UrlQueryParameterCollection(window.location.href);
var myParm = queryParms.getValue("myParam");

I have found this very useful with Console Logs. I have a method called “logMessageToConsole” passing in the message. If I find a parameter called debug in my query string, then all the console logs are written out.

private logMessageToConsole(message:string)
{
var queryParms=new UrlQueryParameterCollection(window.location.href);
  if(queryParms.getValue("debug")){
    console.log(message);
 }
}

That way I only need to add ?debug=1 to the end of my URL or &debug=1 if there are already querystring parameters, and then I can see all my console messages. This is useful to quickly debug on production environments.

Visual Studio debugging and the Avast pop-up

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Whenever I do programming on my own laptop, because I have Avast installed, every time I try to debug a program I get the above pop-up appear in the bottom right of my screen. The debugger doesn’t attach, and the program attempts to run for up to 15 seconds, before Avast decides it’s actually OK to run, cancels the program, and then restarts it attaching the debugger. This is very annoying.

How to fix

(Update: Thanks to @AlecOstrander for pointing out that Avast has updated the location of the settings, I haven’t updated my pictures here)

Open Avast and click Menu then Settings found at the top right of the screen.

In the settings menu, under General, there is an Exclusions section.

Click browse and navigate to the folder where you store your Visual Studio Projects and select the tiny tick box next to the folder. Then click OK.


Now click OK on the Avast Settings.

When you debug your Visual Studio projects now, you will not get that pop-up that is scanning the .exe file, and the debugger will attach without any issues.

TypeScript error in Visual Studio – Cannot find module, problem with the tsconfig.json file

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As much as I like to write blogs, I also like to follow and work through other people’s blogs, especially if they are step by step instructions similar to the way I think. This one particular blog was showing how to create a simple Angular Hello World app. I followed the blog to the letter and when I tried to build the app I kept getting the following error messages

  • Experimental support for decorators is a feature that is subject to change in a future release. Set the ‘experimentalDecorators’ option to remove this warning.
  • Cannot find module ‘@angular/core’
  • Cannot compile module unless the ‘—module’ flag is provided with a valid module type. Consider setting the ‘module’ compiler option in a ‘tsconfig.json’ file.

typescripterrormessage

This makes no sense, as in my tsconfig.json file I had everything setup correctly. I had set experimentalDecorators to true, so I shouldn’t have received the first error message. Couldn’t work out why it couldn’t find @angular/core as I had used the npm package manager to install it, and in my tsconfig.json file I had set the module to ‘commonjs’. I checked on other websites that I had set up my tsconfig.json file correctly.

{
compilerOptions: {
declaration: true,
emitDecoratorMetadata: true,
experimentalDecorators: true,
lib: [
"es2015",
"dom"
],
module: "commonjs",
moduleResolution: "node",
noImplicitAny: true,
removeComments: false,
sourceMap: true,
suppressImplicitAnyIndexErrors: true,
target: "es5",
typeRoots: [
"../../node_modules/@types/"
]
},
compileOnSave: true,
exclude: [
"node_modules/*",
"**/*-aot.ts"
]
}

It seems if you download TypeScript 2.0 for Visual Studio 2015 you will not be able to use a tsconfig.json file. If you are working with CommonJS module system, Visual Studio will ignore the tsconfig.json file, even though putting the tsconfig.json file within the project, Visual Studio prevents the use of the TypeScript build section of the project properties.

typescriptdisabled

 

The tsconfig.json file is required in Visual Studio Code, but it doesn’t seem to be required for Visual Studio. To fix your error messages, first, remove the tsconfig.json file from your project. This then makes the Typescript build on the properties page enabled. I switched the Module system to CommonJS and ECMAScript version to ECMAScript 6. This got rid of my bottom two errors, however I was still getting the message:

“Experimental support for decorators is a feature that is subject to change in future release. Set the ‘experimentalDecorators’ option to remove this warning.”

To fix this error:

  • Unload the project from your solution – right click the project and select Unload Project
  • Once you have unloaded the project, you can right click it again, and then edit the project file.
  • Add the following to both PropertyGroup where the condition is for debug or Release. (<PropertyGroup Condition=” ‘$(Configuration)|$(Platform)’ == ‘Debug|AnyCPU’ “> or  <PropertyGroup Condition=” ‘$(Configuration)|$(Platform)’ == ‘Release|AnyCPU’ “> )
        <TypeScriptExperimentalDecorators>True</TypeScriptExperimentalDecorators>
    <TypeScriptEmitDecoratorMetadata>True</TypeScriptEmitDecoratorMetadata>

  • Save your changes, then right click the project and Reload Project

Your errors should now be gone, and you can continue to build your project.

Reference

https://www.infopulse.com/blog/using-angular-2-in-visual-studio-2015-tutorial/ – The blog post that helped me!

Ensuring Visual Studio 2015 is using the latest NodeJS and NPM version

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When Visual Studio 2015 uses NodeJS and NPM it uses the version local to itself, which as I discovered is annoying if:

  1. You didn’t know this
  2. Thought your PC was up to date after installing the latest NodeJS and NPM globally.

First lets ensure you have installed the latest nodejs and npm globally.

Install / Update NodeJS globally.

  • Using your browser, navigate to https://nodejs.org and download the current version of NodeJs.
  • Once you have downloaded NodeJs, ou can run the installer and work your way through the wizard.
  • Once installed, you can open up a command prompt. Node.js command prompt is also available.

  • Open up the node.js command prompt and type node -v to get the node version. Should match the version you downloaded from the website.

Installing / Update NPM globally.

  • Open the Node.js command prompt
  • Type the following
npm install npm@latest -g
  • Then type npm -v to get the npm version number.

Extensions for Visual Studio 2015

I recommend getting the following extensions for Visual Studio

Click download in both links and install the extensions into Visual Studio.

After you have installed the “NPM Task Runner”, you might need to make it visible in your Visual Studio. To do this, select View > Other Windows > Task Runner Explorer or press Ctrl + Alt + Bkspace



After you have installed the “Package Installer”, when you right click on your project you will see a new link under Add
called Quick Install Package…

When clicked, you can select and install a package from the following package managers


We will use these extensions in a moment.

Checking Visual Studio Version and Updating.

We are going to create a project, and add a package using the Quick Install Package, this will create us a package.json file. We add some commands to the Scripts section, and run them in the task runner.

  • Create yourself a blank web project.
  • Right click
    the project and select Quick Install Package…
  • Select NPM and type TypeScript in the next box, can leave Latest Version and click Install.

  • After you have clicked install you should see a package.json file, which doesn’t have much in it.
{
  "name": "myproject",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "devDependencies": {
    "typescript": "^2.1.5"
  }
}
  • Update the json file to include two scripts, getNPMVersion, getNodeVersion and updateNPMVersion.
{
  "name": "myproject",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "devDependencies": {
    "typescript": "^2.1.5"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "getNpmVersion": "npm -v",
    "getNodeVersion": "node -v",
    "updateNPM": "npm install npm@latest"
  }
}
  • After you have saved the json file, in the Task Runner Explorer window, click the refresh button. You should see your three scripts available to you.

  • Right click on getNpmVersion
    and click Run. The result will display in the Task Runner Explorer console window. You will note that this version is different to the version number you got at the start of this blog post through the Node.js command prompt window.
  • To Update NPM, right click on updateNPM and click Run. After it has completed, run getNpmVersion again. You should find that the version now matches the version you got earlier.
  • Right click on getNodeVersion and click Run. My version is v5.4.1
  • There doesn’t seem to be a command to update the Nodejs in visual studio. However, we can make it use the global version of Nodejs.
  • In Visual Studio click on Tools > Options. Inside Options, select Projects and Solutions > External Web Tools.
  • Add the NodeJS path. Mine is “C:\Program Files\nodejs”. Then move this to the top.

  • Go back to the Task Runner and run the command getNodeVersion you should now see the version matches the version you got earlier in the Node.js command window.

You should now be up to date.