2020 COVID 19 Pandemic Edition - Why should you send your work Offshore/Outsource?

Companies expected to outsource more work due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Outsourcing and/or offshoring is one of the important and key strategic approaches in complex, dynamic, and competitive global supply chains. 

What is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is a business agreement, either domestic and/or international (known as offshoring), and strategic management initiative for gaining competitive advantage of a firm by contracting out their existing internal and/or external non-value added functions, and/or value-added functions, and/or core competencies to the competent supplier(s) to produce products and/or services efficiently and effectively for the outsourcing firm.

A critical review of some empirical research articles published between 2010 and 2019 suggests that ‘outsourcing can produce positive, negative, mixed, moderated or no significant impact on the firm’. Cost-saving, improved management effectiveness and flexibility, access to market, and better product/service quality are some of the benefits of outsourcing and offshoring.

Sending work overseas has become very popular, and many companies are well aware of the benefits. All kinds of services, such as customer service, transcription, accounting, web hosting, software development, and web design, are sent offshore every year. Offshoring often offers a fast turnaround and the ability to ramp certain functions up or down and it can allow in-house staff to focus on more critical tasks. 

As businesses work towards operating in a changing environment following the Covid-19 pandemic, many of them are expected to outsource more work, according to a report by technology firm NTT.

The ‘2020 Global Managed Services Report’, based on a survey of 1,250 executives in 29 countries including India, said that 45% of organizations will outsource more than insourcing in the next 18 months, with 57% citing security risks as a key challenge of managing IT in-house.

Demand for expertise in cloud infrastructure outsourced to service providers is set to increase in 18 months to 77% while new product development will be the most common impact on IT decision making in the next 12 months, said Skendrovic.

Other findings of the survey include:

- Reducing security risks is not only the biggest challenge faced by IT teams globally, it’s the top reason for service provider consideration

- 48% of business leaders already acknowledge a need to optimize the workplace environment

- Technical expertise is the number one driver for the selection of a service provider, with cloud infrastructure and security leading the demands

Pros

There are reasons many companies are sending more work offshore than ever before. 

• It’s often cheaper: Sending work overseas can be substantially cheaper. Educated and experienced people in Asia, parts of Latin America, and Europe can be hired on contract for much less than people in the U.S.

• You can pay back investors faster: Businesses often must do what’s best for their investors and stakeholders. Paying less gives you more flexibility to return the profit to investors.

• Help improve developing economies: Outsourcing work can create many jobs in other countries. Developing countries in Asia and Latin America are common places that businesses from the U.S. outsource work to.

• Faster turnaround times: While you are asleep, your offshore company can work on getting your project done. Time zone differences can help when you need your work done as fast as possible.

Cons

Data security: You don’t want company or client data getting into the wrong hands, but overseas vendors may not adhere to the same data security standards as your company. Anytime companies in the medical field outsource work, for instance, they must choose vendors that comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

• Communication: When speaking with nonnative English speakers, faulty communication may occur at some point. Maybe they interpret something in another way, or you agree to something assuming an entirely different intention. 

If sending work offshore seems like the right move for you, there are a few questions to consider to make the best decision: Do you need fast turnaround times that you can only get by offshoring? Are you sending confidential files? Will having more room in your budget help your business pay investors sooner? Are you willing to put in the time to overcome any communication barriers? Do you have time to check every document for errors? 

Being the #1 Go to Offshore Partner for every Microsoft Technology such as SharePoint, MS Teams, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Azure, and Dynamics 365, Binary Republik is just 1 step away from handling all your needs.

You can contact our Team here: Connect with SharePoint Experts - Contact US | Binary Republik

Show values based on Lookup List Conditions for Lookup Column in Power Apps

Overview:

In this article, we will learn how we can show only specific values as Lookup value based on some conditions in Power Apps.

Real-Life Business Use Case:

We have come across a scenario where we have two SharePoint lists.

Domains List:

Request List:

 - Domain is a Lookup column from Domains List in the Request List.

 - We are implementing a Power Apps Form for Requests List.

 - We only want to show those Domains which are active, so how can we achieve this?

Let’s get started!

Step 1: Open Power Apps Form. By default, all values appear in the Lookup Dropdown.

Below is the code for the Default event which is available for the lookup dropdown.

Step 2: Now, we need to change the code with the following code.

 Filter(  
   RenameColumns(  
     AddColumns(  
       RenameColumns(  
         Choices([@Requests].Domain),  
         "Id",  
         "MID"  
       ),  
       "Status",  
       LookUp(  
         Choices([@Requests].'Domain:Status'),  
         Id = MID  
       ).Value  
     ),  
     "MID",  
     "Id"  
   ),  
   Status = "Active"  
 )  

Understanding the code:

 - By default, Lookup has two columns, ID and Value. With the above formula, we added one additional column –“Status” by using AddColumns() function.

 - To achieve this, we need to use the "RenameColumns" function to make the exact final structure that the lookup value expects.

 

- Now, let’s test the result. We can see only Active records in the dropdown.

 

- Now, let’s fill the form and save the value. 

 - The values are stored successfully in the SharePoint list.

Conclusion:

This is how we can apply a lookup list condition to show only active requests in the Lookup column. Hope this is clear now! Stay connected for amazing Power Apps Articles! Happy Power Apping!

If you have any questions you can reach out to our SharePoint Consulting team here.

How to perform Azure App Only Authentication with SharePoint in .Net Core (Azure Function)

Introduction:

In the .NET Framework, there were native classes like  "SharePointCredentials" and "AuthenticatinoManager" which were used for SharePoint Authentication, but now they are removed.

The major difference compared to the .NET Framework CSOM is that the authentication is completely independent of the CSOM library now.

Resolution:

.NET standard CSOM now uses the OAuth for authentication. So we need to get an access token and pass it along with the call to SharePoint Online.

So in this blog, we will learn how to perform Azure App-Only Authentication with SharePoint in new .NET Standard CSOM to get data from SharePoint Online.

When we are using App-Only Authentication, we will have two options:

1. Azure Active Directory App Registration with the client certificate.

2. Create SharePoint App using AppRegNew.aspx and AppInv.aspx.

Here we will discuss the Azure AD App Registration approach.

Step 1:

• First, we need to register a new app in the Azure Active Directory.
• Go to http://portal.azure.com/ and select "Azure Active Directory". Now from the "App registrations" option in the left panel, register a new app.

Step 2:

Now we will grant the required permission to the app we created in Step 1. Open the newly created app and click on "API permissions" and click on "Add a permission".

Now select "SharePoint permission" as per your requirement and grant the admin consent. Here we needed "Full Control" permission for SharePoint so we have added "Sites.FullControl.All" and "Sites.Manage.All" permissions.

Step 3:

• Now we need to generate a certificate. We can generate certificates using PowerShell.
• Refer to the below blog to get the PowerShell to generate the certificate:
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/solution-guidance/security-apponly-azuread#setting-up-an-azure-ad-app-for-app-only-access
• Once you execute PowerShell, it will generate two files:

1. CertificateName.cert
2. CertificateName.pfx

• Consideration: Keep note of the password which you have used to generate a certificate.

Step 4:

• Now we will configure this certificate with our Azure AD App. 
• Go to your Azure AD App. Now click on "Certificates and client" from the left panel and click on the "Upload certificate" button.

• On clicking the "Upload certificate", it will open a panel at the top and allows you to upload the file. Here you need to upload the ".cert" file.

Step 5:

• Make sure you have selected all required permissions in API Permissions and admin consent has been granted for all required permissions.

Step 6:

• Now we will create an Azure Function solution using Visual Studio 2019.

Step 7:

• As we will be using the ".pfx" file which was generated while creating a certificate, we need to upload this .pfx file somewhere.
• We can either upload this file in our solution or we can use the Azure Key Vault.
• Here in this example, we have uploaded the ".pfx" file in our solution. You can refer to the below article to manage the ".pfx" file on the Azure Key Vault:
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/solution-guidance/security-apponly-azuread#using-this-principal-in-your-application-and-make-use-of-the-azure-keyvault-to-store-the-certificate-and-retrieve-it-using-an-azure-function

Step 8:

• Now in the Azure Function solution, we need to read the ".pfx" file which is uploaded in our solution. To read the file from the Azure Function solution we need execution context.
• We can get the execution context using the below parameter in the Azure Function:

          

 ExecutionContext executionContext  

• Below is the code snippet for how to use execution context:

 [FunctionName("Function1")]  
 public static async Task<IActionResult> Run([HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Anonymous, "get", "post", Route = null)] HttpRequest req, ILogger log, ExecutionContext executionContext)  

• Now using this execution context, we can get the ".pfx" file as below:

 var Sfilepath = $"{ System.IO.Directory.GetParent(executionContext.FunctionDirectory).FullName}\\Certificate\\CertificateFilename.pfx";  

• Here we have uploaded the file in the Certificate folder. So the Sfilepath variable we are reading a file from the Certificate folder.

Step 9:

• Now we will get ClientContext using this Certificate File and Application ID.
• To get the context, first, we need an access token.
• To get the access token we need Application ID, Certificate File Path, Certificate File Password, Tenant ID, and Permission Scope.
• Permission scope will be as below:

  public static string[] permissionscopes = { "https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/.default" };  

• We will use the below method to get the access token:

 internal static async Task<string> GetApplicationAuthenticatedClient(string clientId, string Sfilepath, string certificatePassword, string[] scopes, string tenantId)  
     {  
       X509Certificate2 certificate = new X509Certificate2(certThumprint, certificatePassword", X509KeyStorageFlags.MachineKeySet | X509KeyStorageFlags.PersistKeySet);  
       IConfidentialClientApplication clientApp;  
       clientApp = ConfidentialClientApplicationBuilder  
       .Create(clientId)  
       .WithCertificate(certificate)  
       .WithTenantId(tenantId)  
       .Build();  
       AuthenticationResult authResult = await clientApp.AcquireTokenForClient(scopes).ExecuteAsync();  
       string accessToken = authResult.AccessToken;  
       return accessToken;  
     }  

• We can call the above method as below:

 var accessToken = await GetApplicationAuthenticatedClient(clientId, Sfilepath, certificatePassword, permissionscopes, tenantId);  

• Now the "accessToken" variable will contain the access token.

Step 10:

• Now using the access token which we get in Step 8, we will generate client context.
• We can use the below method, which will return the client context. We will need the Site URL for which we want the client context and the access token.

 public static ClientContext GetClientContextWithAccessToken(string targetUrl, string accessToken)  
     {  
       ClientContext clientContext = new ClientContext(targetUrl);  
       clientContext.ExecutingWebRequest +=  
       delegate (object oSender, WebRequestEventArgs webRequestEventArgs)  
       {  
         webRequestEventArgs.WebRequestExecutor.RequestHeaders["Authorization"] =  
   "Bearer " + accessToken;  
       };  
       return clientContext;  
     }  

• We can call the above method as below:

 var clientCtx = GetClientContextWithAccessToken(siteUrl, accessToken);  

Step 11:

• Now we have the client context of the Site URL which you have used in step 9.
• So we can now use the client context for any operations we want to perform programmatically with CSOM.

 Web web = clientCtx.Web;  
 clientCtx.Load(web);  
 clientCtx.ExecuteQuery();  

Conclusion:

This is how we can authenticate to SharePoint from .Net Core with the use of Azure App-Only Authentication. 

If you have any questions you can reach out our SharePoint Consulting team here.