Tech Tips

I recently came across an interesting side effect with the Azure DevOps cache task if its settings are not correctly configured. One that caused me to get somewhat confused before I realised what had occurred. The Problem I had a working pipeline that as part of its build process ran the OWASP Dependency Checker task. This can be slow to run as it has to download the current vulnerability database. To try to speed my builds I have been using the cache task to cache the current pipeline run’s downloaded vulnerability database, so on the next run the vast majority of the database is already downloaded. ...

Updated 30-Oct-2025 Added more details on Screen Refresh Rate and Teams Room App The Problem We have owned a Surface Hub v1 for a number of years, and it has served us well. However, with Microsoft ending support for Windows 10 it was in danger of becoming a large piece of sculpture in the office. This is not just because we did not want to run a Windows 10 device when security patches were not available, but that the embedded version of Teams would not even load. ...

The Problem I recently rebuild my trusty Lenovo X1 Carbon laptop. As you usually find, a fresh install of Windows 11 meant a leap in performance. All was good for a couple of weeks, until I started to get problems. It still was working to supply power and the HDMI connection to my external monitor worked, but the USB devices could not be seen. I also checked with the Lenovo Dock Manager and it could now no longer see the dock. ...

The Problem The GitHub ‘Azure Pipelines’ App enables some really interesting ‘better together’ scenarios mixing the usage of Azure DevOps Pipelines for CI/CD processes while your source is stored on GitHub. It is particularly useful if an enterprise is migrating towards GitHub Enterprise over a period of time, maybe using GitHub Enterprise Importer (GEI) to do the migration. I was recently working on such a migration for a client that involved numerous Azure DevOps organisations. In the past someone had setup the GitHub ‘Azure Pipelines’ App on their GitHub organisation and got it working with one of their Azure DevOps organisation. ...

Introduction Over the years, I have been involved in numerous migrations of TFS/Azure DevOps Server from on-premises servers to the cloud hosted Azure DevOps Services using the Microsoft Azure DevOps Data Migration Tool. As long as you carefully followed the instructions, the process was relatively straightforward. I was recently involved in a cloud migration of a set of non-English Azure DevOps Servers i.e. the Azure DevOps Servers had been installed in French not English. Migrating these servers to Azure DevOps Services proved a challenge. ...

Introduction I got asked today by a client if there was a way to automate the exporting Azure DevOps Test Plans to Excel files. They knew they could do it manually via the Azure DevOps UI, but had a lot of Test Plans to export and wanted to automate the process. The Options I considered a few options: TCM CLI - This is a command line tool that can be used to interact with Azure DevOps Test Plans. It can be used to import or clone Test Plans, but not to export them. AZ DEVOPS CLI - This is a command line tool that can be used to interact with Azure DevOps. Unfortunately, it does not have any commands to export Test Plans. Azure DevOps REST API - This is a powerful API that can be used to interact with Azure DevOps, but the documentation makes no mention of a call to export Test Plans. But….. ...

Introduction I have recently been swapping some Azure DevOps Pipelines to GitHub Actions as part of a large GitHub Enterprise migration. The primary tool I have been using for this is GitHub Copilot in the new Agent Mode Frankly, Copilot is like magic, it is amazing how close it gets to a valid solution. I say this after suffering years of undelivered marketing promises of no-code “we won’t need developers in the future”. ...

I have been doing some work one a Logic Apps that routes its traffic out via a vNet and accesses its underlying Storage Account via private endpoints. ‘Nothing that special in that configuration’ I hear you saying, but I did manage to confuse myself whilst testing. After changing my configuration of the vNet, I restarted the Logic App to make sure everything was working as expected on startup. The Logic App appeared to start within a few seconds, the Overview pane in the Azure Portal showing the correct values. ...

The Problem I recently was debugging an Execute PowerShell Code Logic App action, so wanted to see it’s output. However, when I reviewed the run history, the output for my code action was empty. The Cause (and Solution) The problem turned out to be that the Logic App’s Inbound traffic configuration. You can replicate this issue easily Create a new Logic App Workflow, use any trigger and then add an Execute PowerShell Code action, you don’t need to edit the default code sample. Save the new Action and then run it. Review the run history and you’ll see that the output as expected. Next, change the Logic App’s ‘Inbound traffic configuration > Public Network Access’ to ‘Disabled’ and run the Logic App again, and the output now cannot be seen, as shown above. You are actually warned about this in the Azure Portal the first time you view a run history the settings that block it ...

The Problem I recently had the need in an Azure Logic App to read a CSV file from an Azure Storage account, parse the file, and then process the data row by row. Unfortunately, there is no built-in action in Logic Apps to parse CSV files. So as to avoid having to write an Azure function, or use a number of slow, low level Logic App actions, I decided to use the PowershellCode action to parse the CSV file quickly inline with the rest of the Logic App. ...