Let’s set up Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fetch Extension in VS2015!

Let’s install Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fetch extension in Visual Studio 2015 for SQL Server Reporting Services, on Windows 10, out here in the year of 2020!

This is also known as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Report Authoring Extension, which is used for building data sources, for Reporting Projects, where it helps you establish the connection to the Dynamics 365 instance you require.

Backstory…

So recently I found myself working on a Dynamics 365 Reporting project module, where I had to pull data from the Dynamics 365 cloud, using a FetchXML query, process it through a set of business logic and then display to the user in a nice looking Report Layout.

This can nicely be done in a Report Server project in Visual Studio, but you need to have both the SQL Server Data Tools and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Report Authoring Extension (Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fetch Extension) set up installed in your Visual Studio.

But this whole environment set up is very much tricky these days, due to incompatibilities with latest versions of Visual Studio. So I had to go through a long roller coaster ride to figure this out, trying out different versions of the extensions and Visual Studio to get it to work.

So to save others from this painful roller coaster ride in a year like 2020, I’m documenting this process step by step for my fellow devs… 😉

Dynamics 365 Fetch Extension!

As I mentioned before, this also known as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Report Authoring Extension, is required for creating Data Sources in Report Server Projects, which is absolutely required for building Report Layout (RDL layout report). Since you need to define a valid data source before hand creating any Reports in your project.

Only for Visual Studio 2015!

The unfortunate situation is that this extension is only supported in Visual Studio 2015, quite surprisingly also there’s no support for this extension in any VS version beyond that.

Although there are some indirect hack ways to install this on VS 2017, it still doesn’t justify having to downgrade your whole Visual Studio Setup. So we might as well do a clean installation of Visual Studio 2015, and install this extension on top of it.

The Set up?!

So assuming you’re currently on latest Visual Studio version probably VS 2019 or beyond, the best choice would be to create a Virtual Machine on your Windows, and do a clean VS 2015 installation there and proceed with the extension set up.

If you don’t have resources to create a separate VM on your Windows, you could also resort to doing a fresh installation of VS 2015 in your dev environment, side by side with VS 2019. I’ve personally tried this method, since I was running Windows on Parallels in an Apple iMac.

So either choice is up to you, then let me get into the step by step walk through of this installation set up…

Let’s begin with VS 2015!

So let’s first go ahead with downloading VS 2015 from Microsoft Visual Studio older versions archive from the following link: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/older-downloads/

Here you’ll probably be asked to login, and directed to VS Subscriptions page, where you should be able to search for “Visual Studio 2015”

Select “Visual Studio 2015 Update 3” option, and web installer download will begin. Once the download completes, run the set up…

Once the installer loads up, select the “Custom” option,

This is to select only the “Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools” option only, since that’s our primary requirement here…

Once you’re done with selection, proceed with the installation…

Once the installation finishes, we need to next download the SQL Server Data Tools version that we require for this set up…

Setting up SSDT 17.4!

So let’s go to this link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssdt/previous-releases-of-sql-server-data-tools-ssdt-and-ssdt-bi?view=sql-server-ver15 and download SSDT for VS2015 17.4

Launch the installer and make sure to select the following options…

And let the installation process complete…

Now the SSDT for VS2015 installation finishes, next we need to download the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fetch Extension…

Setting up Dynamics 365 Report Authoring Extension – Version 9.0!

In this step we go to this link, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=56973 and download Dynamics 365, version 9.0 Report Authoring Extension (with SQL Server Data Tools support)

This will download the CRM9.0-Bids-ENU-i386.exe file, up on running it will ask you to choose a folder to extract itself. So select the current folder path and create a new folder for the set up. Once the extraction completes, the set up will begin itself.

Select the recommended option and click Next…

The next step will check for the required components and prompt you to automatically install them as follows…

Click the “Install” button and wait for it to complete.

Then click next, which will run a quick system check.

Once that’s done, click Next, which will begin the installation as follows…

Let it complete, and you should see the following up on success! 😀

Now the final step is done, let’s try this out!

Let’s try it out!

So to begin, open up your Visual Studio 2015, and select Business Intelligence -> Reporting Services -> Report Server Project, create a new project here. Or if you already had a Reporting Project created before, then open that up…

Let’s add a new Report to our project…

The new Report will be added and it will open up the Data Source window as follows, where you can see the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fetch option is now listed up.

So go ahead, add your Dynamics 365 source and set up your Report as you wish!

Yay Success! Well that wasn’t so bad was it eh! 😉

Conclusion!

Well I’m not sure this actually requires a conclusion though lol 😀 Although I still can’t figure out why Microsoft Dynamics 365 Report Authoring Extension, is not supported in any VS version beyond VS 2015.

So keep in mind the extension for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fetch option in your Data Sources list, which added by Dynamics 365 Report Authoring Extension – Version 9.0 is only available via the set up of SQL Server Data Tools version 17.4 with Visual Studio 2015.

Anyhow I hope this step by step guide saved someone the time required to figure out this set up, by trial and error. 😉

Share the love! 😀 Cheers!

Using SMS Retriever API in Xamarin Android!

Let’s use the SMS Retriever API in Xamarin Android, and possibly avoid the troubles of new Google Play Store SMS/Call Log access restrictions! 😉 Is your Android App ready for the new Google Play Store permission policy?

SMS Retriever API, in a nutshell…

Android SMS Retriever API allows you to access the SMS Messages in the phone without having to request SMS read access permission, thus giving a complete peace of mind for the user. 🙂 Allowing specific SMS messages to be read from the Inbox, which are specifically targeted to be delivered for the  app we’re requesting from. This is the perfect solution for One Time Password (OTP) mobile number verification implementation in our Android apps.

Furthermore from Google Docs: https://developers.google.com/identity/sms-retriever/

Now that the introduction is out of the way… Let’s get started!

How it works, in short…

NO! I’m not gonna get into detailed explanation, but in simplest terms we are going to have an object called SmsRetrieverClient that’s going to wait for an incoming SMS message with the matching hash key to the app we are using. This active waiting is going to execute for 5 minutes and automatically dispose itself.

When the certain SMS arrived at the inbox during the 5 minute waiting , the SmsRetrieverClient then sends a broadcast to the app with the captured message content, for any listening broadcast receivers registered in the app.  From there we pick up the message inside our broadcast receiver and we process it or do whatever the heck we want with it. 😛

But in case if the SMS wasn’t received by the phone it would still execute the broadcast but with a time out failure code, so that we know the 5 minutes waiting exceeded and the SMS wasn’t received or read.

So there’s mainly 2 components to it, SmsRetrieverClient object, and the Broadcast Receiver object. Not to mention the App Hash key, which is also very crucial element here, you need to make sure the SMS that’s sent to the device has the App hash key that’s derived from the signing keystore of the app’s running instance.

In Xamarin…

Yes this is completely available in Xamarin Android as well, right out of the box! Just a matter of figuring out the right namespaces and method calls comparing to the official Google Android Docs! 🙂

Although I’m quite surprised I could not find any official Documentation from Xamarin regarding this important API. Thus here I am filling that void! 😀

Let’s get started!

Add em Nuget!

To use SMS Retriever API in Xamarin we need to install Xamarin.GooglePlayServices.Auth nuget package to our Android project.

Just pick the latest version as you prefer and hit install.

Activate the SMSRetrieverClient…

Then we need to implement the executing of the activation of SMSRetrieverClient that is the client object that’s going to actively watch out for any incoming SMS messages with the hash key that is similar to the app we are requesting it from.

You could initiate the SMSRetrieverClient inside a button click event or invoke it from a Service instance method, choice is up to you. 🙂

private void btnStartSMSRetreiver_OnClick(object sender, EventArgs eventArgs)
{
	// Get an instance of SmsRetrieverClient, used to start listening for a matching SMS message.
	SmsRetrieverClient _client = SmsRetriever.GetClient(this.ApplicationContext);
	// Starts SmsRetriever, which waits for ONE matching SMS message until timeout
	// (5 minutes). The matching SMS message will be sent via a Broadcast Intent with
	// action SmsRetriever#SMS_RETRIEVED_ACTION.
	_client.StartSmsRetriever();
}

As you can see we’re instantiating the SmsRetrieverClient using the Application Context, and calling the StartSmsRetriever() method to activate listening to the incoming SMS messages with matching app hash key included.

A little cherry on top…

Here are some extra bits you could adopt if needed regarding the SmsRetrieverClient. You could get the return result of the SmsRetrieverClient initiation as follows…

...

	var task = _client.StartSmsRetriever();

	// You could also Listen for success/failure of StartSmsRetriever initiation
	task.AddOnSuccessListener(new SuccessListener());
	task.AddOnFailureListener(new FailureListener());
}

...

internal class SuccessListener : Java.Lang.Object, IOnSuccessListener
{
	public void OnSuccess(Object result)
	{
		// do as you wish on Success init
	}
}

internal class FailureListener : Java.Lang.Throwable, IOnFailureListener
{
	public void OnFailure(Exception e)
	{
		// do as you wish on Failure init
	}
}

And even await for the init result asynchronously as follows…

...
var task = await _client.StartSmsRetriever();
...

But don’t forget to switch the caller method to an async method! 😉

Well that’s just some cherry on top features if you ever wanted to try!

Next the BroadcastReceiver…

So here’s the other piece of the puzzle, the BroadcastReceiver that will be listening to the broadcasts of the above SmsRetreieverClient.

SMS Retriever API has provided us with an intent filter SmsRetriever.SmsRetrievedAction which we will use to register our BroadcastReceiver, which we’re going name as SMSBroadcastReceiver, and implement as following…

[BroadcastReceiver(Enabled = true)]
[IntentFilter(new[] { SmsRetriever.SmsRetrievedAction })]
public class SMSBroadcastReceiver : BroadcastReceiver
{
	public override void OnReceive(Context context, Intent intent)
	{
		if (intent.Action != SmsRetriever.SmsRetrievedAction)
			return;

		var extrasBundleundle = intent.Extras;
		if (extrasBundleundle == null) return;
		var status = (Statuses)extrasBundleundle.Get(SmsRetriever.ExtraStatus);
		switch (status.StatusCode)
		{
			case CommonStatusCodes.Success:
				// Get SMS message contents
				var messageContent = (string)extrasBundleundle.Get(SmsRetriever.ExtraSmsMessage);
				// Extract one-time code from the message and complete verification
				// by sending the code back to your server.
				ShowResultOnUI("SMS retrieved: " + messageContent);
				break;

			case CommonStatusCodes.Timeout:
				// Waiting for SMS timed out (5 minutes)
				// Handle the error ...
				ShowResultOnUI("Timed Out Error! SMS retrieval failed!");
				break;
		}
	}
}

So once the SmsRetrieverClient does its job, either success or failure it will hit our Broadcast Receiver above and pass in the results, with Status code and Content of the Message if success, which will be included in the Extra Bundle as you can see above.

Once we receive the results, its up to you to do whatever you want with it, as you can see in the code itself! 😉

That’s pretty much it! simple and straightforward eh! 😀 But I wouldn’t end there without mentioning some important other bits that you need to make sure to get it right!

Other important bits…

Here are some helpful tips for you to troubleshoot any issues you’re having with getting the SMS Retriever API to function as it should.

SMS format..

You need to make sure you’re sending the correct SMS format as mentioned in the Google Android Documentation.

<#> Your ExampleApp code is: 123ABC78
FA+9qCX9VSu

It should be same format as above, although you could make some alterations to the message content, but the structure should be same. Start with “<#>” followed by the content of the SMS and ending with the App Hash key. You can learn more about it from their documentation: SMS Retriever API: Construct a verification message

Please, get your App Hash Key right!

I’ve seen people get this wrong all the time. It is such an easy simple process but a delicate one. So if you can’t get your implementation of SMS Retriever API to function properly, you should definitely take a look at your app hash key, whether you’ve generated the correct key and using the properly in the SMS content.

Given Xamarin Android development, there’s no official documentation provided by Xamarin yet, that’s why I have written a step by step blog article to how to easily generate the accurate App hash key, give it a try if it could be of any help…

You can check it out here: App Hash Key Helper extension for Xamarin Android apps!

Let’s see it in action! 😀

Let’s fire it up and see the beauty of Android SMS Retriever API in Xamarin!

• 

• 

Look at the beauty eh! 😀 No SMS Read permission required 😉 way to give some peace of mind for your users for a simple functionalities such as OTP or Phone number verification!

You can try out my full blown demo in my github repo:

https://github.com/UdaraAlwis/XAndroidSMSRetrieverAPIDemo

It’s got all the bits I talked about above fully functional 🙂

in Xamarin.Forms Android?

Even if you’re using Xamarin.Forms the same implementation above can be applied easily. Just simply create a platform specific service to invoke the SMSRetrieverAPIClient on Android and call it from Xamarin.Forms at run time, then from the BroadcastReceiver just return back the results by using Xamarin.Forms MessagingCenter… 😉

Simple eh! 😀

There you have it fellas!

Cheers! Share the love! 😀 ❤

App Hash Key Helper extension for Xamarin Android apps!

Remember my last post “Generating App Hash key for SMS Retriever API for (Xamarin incl.)…” where I shared with you guys how to successfully  generating the App hash key in both MacOs and Windows environments without any hassle?

Now this is the improved alternative of it! making the whole process much easier specially for Xamarin Android development!

Previously…

So earlier we looked at how we could generate the App Hash key straight away from MacOS Terminal or on Windows with the keystore hex generation followed by the Xamarin Android helper method execution to retrieve the app hash key!

That specific helper method I had extracted partially from the Google’s official documentation sample regarding the SMS Retriever API, which I couldn’t completely port to Xamarin Android at that time while I was working on my private project.

But later I took a proper look at it and figured out how to completely port it to Xamarin Android, with a few minutes of back and forth between the Java code and C# Xamarin namespaces! 😀

Easier and Faster method!

Now with the fully ported code, as an extension helper class, we could easily generate the Hash key for our Xamarin Android app either on Windows or Mac using Visual Studio, without having to use any external Terminal or Command prompt.

but you need to follow some pre-requisites to get it to properly work..

Let’s get started!

Get your pre-requisites right!

You need to make sure you’re using the correct Keystore file to sign your APK during build, therefore navigate to your Xamarin Android project properties and set the correct Keystore file path and configuration.

In Visual Studio on Windows:

In Visual Studio on Mac:

That’s done!

Finally make sure you have given the proper app package name or app id to your app in the same project properties. ex: com.testapp.xyz

Why you ask? Since we’re directly generating the app hash code from the project itself, we need to make sure during the compilation the app, the final APK is signed using the keystore we are hoping to use in production. So we can retrieved the signed hash hex from the app Context at run time and the app id to generate the app hash code. 🙂

Then let’s begin the AppHashKeyHelper implementation… 😉

Let the implementation begin…

Let the implementation begin! lol 😀 So here is the complete ported helper class for generating the app hash key for your Xamarin Android app!

Simply copy the whole code to anywhere in your Xamarin Android project, and you could straight away call it from anywhere in the app to generate the app hash key!

	using System;
	using System.Linq;
	using System.Text;
	using Android.Content;
	using Android.Content.PM;
	using Android.Util;
	using Java.Security;
	using Java.Util;
	namespace WhateverNameSpace.Droid.Util
	{
	/// <summary>
	/// This is a helper class to generate your message hash to be included in your SMS message.
	///
	/// Without the correct hash, your app won't recieve the message callback. This only needs to be
	/// generated once per app and stored.Then you can remove this helper class from your code.
	///
	/// Ported to Xamarin C# from the AppSignatureHelper.java offcial Android sample
	/// – Udara Alwis
	/// </summary>
	public class AppHashKeyHelper
	{
	private static string HASH_TYPE = "SHA-256";
	private static int NUM_HASHED_BYTES = 9;
	private static int NUM_BASE64_CHAR = 11;
	/// <summary>
	/// Retrieve the app signed package signature
	/// known as signed keystore file hex string
	/// </summary>
	/// <param name="context"></param>
	/// <returns></returns>
	private static string GetPackageSignature(Context context)
	{
	PackageManager packageManager = context.PackageManager;
	var signatures = packageManager.GetPackageInfo(context.PackageName, PackageInfoFlags.Signatures).Signatures;
	return signatures.First().ToCharsString();
	}
	/// <summary>
	/// Gets the app hash key.
	/// </summary>
	/// <returns>The app hash key.</returns>
	/// <param name="context">Android app Context.</param>
	public static string GetAppHashKey(Context context)
	{
	string keystoreHexSignature = GetPackageSignature(context);
	String appInfo = context.PackageName + " " + keystoreHexSignature;
	try
	{
	MessageDigest messageDigest = MessageDigest.GetInstance(HASH_TYPE);
	messageDigest.Update(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(appInfo));
	byte[] hashSignature = messageDigest.Digest();
	hashSignature = Arrays.CopyOfRange(hashSignature, 0, NUM_HASHED_BYTES);
	String base64Hash = Android.Util.Base64.EncodeToString(hashSignature, Base64Flags.NoPadding | Base64Flags.NoWrap);
	base64Hash = base64Hash.Substring(0, NUM_BASE64_CHAR);
	return base64Hash;
	}
	catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e)
	{
	return null;
	}
	}
	}
	}

view raw

AppHashKeyHelper.cs

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

We’re simply passing in the Android App Context, which will then first retrieve the signed kestore hash string from the Package Manager.

Then we retrieve the app package name from the Context itself, and move ahead with the usual encrypted key generation.

I would recommend calling this from your MainActivity itself, since this is just a one time execution in your local debug environment.

There you go! Simple as that! 😀

Now once again, keeping in mind to make sure to remove the above helper class call from your project code, before you submit your final APK to the Play Store, since google does not recommend generating the App’s hash key during user run time. Just simply retrive your hash key and remove the code, and then set it up in your SMS API gateway execution.

Thats it! 😀

Cheers!

Share the love! 😀 ❤

Generating App Hash key for SMS Retriever API for (Xamarin incl.)…

Trying to generate your app’s Hash Key for the implementation of new Android SMS Retriever API? Still couldn’t get it to work? Well the problem could be in the actual generation process of the has string!

And here are some ways you could actually make sure to generate the valid hash string to get the functionality working.

Specially if you’re developing on Windows, or better working on a Xamarin Android app? I’ve got some goodies to make it work as well! 😉

App Hash string for SMS Retriever API

Anyhow, to use the SMS Retriever API we need generate our App’s unique Hash string which is a combination of app’s package name and your app’s public key certificate. Once the SMS is received into the Inbox the SMS Retriever API looks for any matching hash key in the message corresponding to the app that requested to read the SMS, if it finds a perfect match it will kick in the execution of retrieving the SMS string, otherwise it will time out. So without the accurate app hash key the SMS Retriever API will not kick in at all. That is why it is very crucial we generate the correct app hash key for our app using the App package name and keystore hash.

Troublesome!

Although according to the official Google Documentation, it should be easy and straight forward, but it is not, specially if you’re using a Windows Dev Environment, which could be troublesome at times. To add some topping on to that, if you’re working on a Xamarin Android project in Windows, you’re in deep troublesome waters, since even Google Docs only provides samples for the Android Java implementation.

Then the sample command that Google Docs provide doesn’t really throw any error if anything goes wrong during, wrong parameter, or a wrong keyword, during hash string generation, it simply returns a false hash string, which makes things worse!

This is actually something I experienced while I was developing one of our Xamarin Android applications. Oh yes! that’s even more annoying since there’s no official documentation or Xamarin sample of the implementation code regarding that API. 😦

Hence Google’s doc command failed me I had to play around with the parameters we’re passing in to the command, re-arrange and modify to get it to work. But anyhow with a walk in the midst of the dark forest of troubleshooting, I figured out how to properly generate the App Hash key!

Get your pre-requisites right!

First of all prepare your keystore file path, keystore alias name and keystore password, and double check those values are being properly set. This is where most of them goes wrong. Then the obvious requirement, make sure you have Androd

Method 1: On MacOS Terminal

So this is the easiest and most straight forward way to generate the hash string, by simply executing the below command on a MacOS Terminal.

keytool -exportcert -alias <keystore alias name> -keystore <keystore file with extension> | xxd -p | tr -d "[:space:]" | echo -n <your app id> `cat` | sha256sum | tr -d "[:space:]-" | xxd -r -p | base64 | cut -c1-11

• Replace the <keystore alias name> with your keystore alias name, ex: mykeystorename
• Replace the <keystore file with extension> with the full path to your keystore file, ex: /Users/username/Desktop/mykeystorefile.keystore
• Replace the <your app id> with your app id: com.mytest.app

If everything went well, next line Terminal will immediately prompt you to enter the keystore password, which will generate the accurate app hash key!

Yep simple as that! 😀

Now you might wonder how I shared the above screenshot so bravely without worrying about the security, oh well its just using the default Xamarin Android keystore generated by VS for Mac with its default settings and a fake app id! 😛

Troublesome? Get Utils installed!

Unless you got some missing utils in your mac developer machine, such as the following error: sha256sum: command not found, which indicates missing coreutils in your Mac. Therefore you need to fist install Homebrew if you don’t have already.

Install Homebrew: https://brew.sh/

Restart Terminal and run the below command!

brew install coreutils

Restart Terminal and re-run the has generation command! 🙂

Method 2: On Windows CMD Prompt

Now on Windows its going to be a little bit of more work specially most of the command parameters which are used in unix cannot be executed straight up in Windows Command Prompt.

So in hope of avoiding at least a little bit of pain I would recommend using the Visual Studio Command Prompt or the Android ADB Command Prompt in your Windows PC. Specially since the java keytool path should already be configured in the Path property there.

Step 1: Generate the hex string from keystore file

keytool -alias <keystore alias name> -exportcert -keystore "<keystore file with extension>" -storepass "<keystore password>" | xxd -p

Now the parameters that you need to replace are the same as we did on MacOS command, but as you can see keystore file path and password are provided within brackets or quotations. So make sure to add that detail.

If everything went well, it will return you the hex string from your keystore file!

Now that’s me trying out the default debug keystore file in Windows. If everything executes properly, it should return a super long hex string as shown above, actually even much longer than that lol, I just cropped it out 😛

Copy that hex string and keep it, we are gonna use it in the next step.

Step 2: Implement the Hash key generate code script

Next we’re going to port the Google Doc’s Android Java implementation of the Hash key generation execution to Xamarin Android C# code snippet, thanks to my few minutes of trail and error efforts 😛

	// move to the class global level
	using Android.Util;
	using Java.Security;
	using Java.Util;
	using System.Text;
	// move to the class global level
	private static string HASH_TYPE = "SHA-256";
	private static int NUM_HASHED_BYTES = 9;
	private static int NUM_BASE64_CHAR = 11;
	/// <summary>
	/// Generate App hash key using package
	/// name and keystore hex signature
	/// </summary>
	/// <param name="packageName"></param>
	/// <param name="keystoreHexSignature"></param>
	/// <returns></returns>
	public static string GetAppHashKey
	(String packageName, String keystoreHexSignature)
	{
	string appInfo = packageName + " " + keystoreHexSignature;
	try
	{
	MessageDigest messageDigest = MessageDigest.GetInstance(HASH_TYPE);
	messageDigest.Update(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(appInfo));
	byte[] hashSignature = messageDigest.Digest();
	hashSignature = Arrays.CopyOfRange (hashSignature, 0, NUM_HASHED_BYTES);
	string base64Hash = Android.Util.Base64.EncodeToString
	(hashSignature, Base64Flags.NoPadding | Base64Flags.NoWrap);
	base64Hash = base64Hash.Substring(0, NUM_BASE64_CHAR);
	return base64Hash;
	}
	catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e)
	{
	return null;
	}
	}

view raw

AppHashKeyGenerator.cs

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Simply copy that snippet into a Xamarin Android project with the specific imports mentioned at the top of the snippet. You could use this as a little helper extension method to generate the app hash key by passing in the app package name and keystore hash value that we generated in the step 1, as mentioned in the parameters.

That should work like a charm! 😀

Although keep in mind once you generate the app hash string, you should remove the keystore hex and package name hex from the code before you submit it to the app store. Google does not recommend those sensitive information inside the code as magic strings due to obvious security reasons.

Now the above code snippet can be used in either Visual Studio on Windows or Mac as long as you got the keystore hex string. 😉

TADAAA! 😀 That’s it!

You’re welcome!

Share the love! 😉 ❤

I am a Developer and I Code with ‪#‎VisualStudio‬ ! ;)

I am a Developer and I Code with #VisualStudio. 😀 Build your own Visual Studio profile today at aka.ms/myVisualStudio!

Yep that’s me, that hyper-active kid in the photo lol 😛

Kudos to whoever created this simply awesome tool. 😀

– Udara Alwis

[ÇøŋfuzëРSøurcëÇødë]

Tried Installing Windows 8.1 Update, being a Windows Phone Developer? ;)

I recently updated my PC to the latest upgrade given by Microsoft, the Windows 8.1 Update ! So after happily installing the Update I tried working on my Windows Phone dev projects on my good awesome Visual Studio 2012. Then when I tried to run one of my apps from the emulator, Unfortunately it kept on popping an error saying “0x80131500”, only showing up a code without even a description. And Visual Studio 2012 wasn’t able to run any of my apps in the emulator. So after going through couple of web searches I found out that your Windows Phone SDK would not work on Windows 8.1 Update, unless you have installed the latest Update for Visual Studio 2012, the VS 2012 Update 4 ! So after downloading and installing the latest update for VS2012 I was able to run my apps in Emulator as usual.

So if you are hoping to upgrade to Windows 8.1 Update, and if you are using VS2012 then make sure you have the latest version of VS2012 update 4 installed on your PC or you have a ready setup to install if something goes wrong after the System update.

Cheers folks ! 🙂