General – Spikes Apps

You should always be SASSy!

Matthias De Cock — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 10:48:55 +0000

Everybody who ventured into the wondrous world of web development probably used CSS at least occasionally. Unfortunately they soon found out that sometimes it isn’t all that wondrous: CSS files tend to grow into a big ball of mud and become notoriously difficult to maintain. Luckily CSS pre-processors such as SASS, LESS and Stylus are able to alleviate some of the pain points by adding handy new features to help the developer while ultimately ‘compiling’ into plain old CSS.

Speaking of plain old CSS, a large portion of web developers have never used a CSS pre-processor, even though there is no real reason not to:

It’s 100% free
It’s incredibly easy to set-up and use
It’s worth it, even if you only use a single feature
But there are a lot of cool features

From here on forward all argumentation and examples will be referencing SASS, though the same arguments can be made for LESS, Stylus and other pre-processors as well.

It’s 100% free
Both writing and compiling SCSS (the CSS language of SASS) is free. And because it compiles to vanilla CSS using the compiled style sheets is just as free and compatible as using any other CSS style sheet.

It’s incredibly easy to set-up and use
In the early days of SASS you still had to download and extract a SASS compiler and compiling SCSS to CSS required a command line operation. Since then many tools and plugins were developed removing these hurdles so you can spend more time on the fun stuff and LESS time (pun intended) on setup and compiling.

One such tool is the Web Compiler extension for visual studio written by Mads Kristensen which allows you to compile and minify SCSS files with a single click. Once set-up the plugin will continuously monitor these files, recompiling each time you update the source SCSS files. No additional clicks or effort needed!

Performing this action for the first time will add a ‘compilerconfig.json’ file to your project where you can change the output file location, though this step is entirely optional.

[
{
“inputFile”: “SASS/Main.scss”,
“outputFile”: “CSS/Main.css”
},
{
“inputFile”: “SASS/Pages/NewsPage.scss”,
“outputFile”: “CSS/Pages/NewsPage.css”
}
]

It’s worth it, even if you only use a single feature
Probably the simplest yet most powerful feature of SASS is the ability to use variables, these work just like the variables we all know and love from scripting/programming languages, allowing you to declare a variable once and use it in different locations.

SCSS SYNTAX

When the Sass is processed, it takes the values we defined for the $blue and $margin variables and outputs normal CSS with our variable values placed in the CSS. This can be extremely powerful when working with brand colors and keeping them consistent throughout the site.

CSS SYNTAX

But there are a lot of cool features
Variables are very powerful however they are but one of many things SASS can do for you. Other features include rule inheritance/extension, importing ‘partial’ scss files and using mixins to automatically generate vendor specific prefixes. For a comprehensive overview of all capabilities please consult the SASS website.

So if you haven’t already: do yourself a favor and try out a CSS pre-processor, it is guaranteed to save you time, effort and the occasional headache!

–

Matthias De Cock

K2 Consultant @ Spikes

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First looks: OneDrive admin page

jveynde — Wed, 28 Dec 2016 18:53:57 +0000

The OneDrive admin page was announced during ignite 2016. There was no easy way to manage the usage and OneDrive options for the organisation: admin.onedrive.com! In this post, we’ll go over the options we can manage to increase security and manage data access.

We’ll cover these topics:

Sharing
Sync
Storage
Device access
Compliance

Sharing

In the sharing section, you control access for internal and external users. Both can be managed separately and sharing settings can be set to include or exclude anonymous links or external users.

A welcome change is to limit the domains that are accepted or blocked for sharing access.

Sync

The admin page allows admins to control what machines can sync company data or to block syncing of specific file types.

Multiple domains can be added as an Allowed domain to sync data. An admin can, together with the option to block syncing of specific file types create very simple rules with a high return on data management.

Microsoft also provides a link that provides solutions to the most common OneDrive problems.

Storage

Next on the options list: storage. By default, users get the full amount of storage. Since here are plans with 5Tb, this can be a bad idea.

The managers will receive a notice when a deleted user’s files will be deleted, the admin page lets you set the period after which data will be deleted.

Device access

Device access options allow a setup of a granular access to protect the user his data. IP whitelisting and modern authentication can be enforced. But the creation of a mobile application management policy is a welcome feature. Note: Intune policies will take precedence for the selected users and will not be enforced on personal accounts.

You even can manage the offline behaviour of the client.

Compliance

If the organisation has legal, regulatory or technical standards or if there is the need to identify or and protect sensitive information, this can be done in the Security and Compliance section.

Next to auditing, DLP policies can be created. Data loss prevention (DLP) policies help to identify and protect your organisation’s sensitive information. For example, you can set up policies to help make sure the information in email and docs isn’t shared with the wrong people.

In the alert section, a lot of OneDrive actions are added so notifications can be generated and sent out.

Final notes

Microsoft added some very nice features what makes OneDrive more business friendly by enabling admins to control the way OneDrive and the company data behave. Users were able to sync the data to almost any device and it would stay accessible even if the account is removed. I surely hope that this is only the first step towards central OneDrive management.

Jurgen Van Eynde

Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure Consultant @ Spikes

Your new SharePoint playground

Rob Lempens — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 10:21:27 +0000

A SharePoint developer is becoming more and more a web developer. This has some big advantages but it also means that our daily work is changing a lot.
Considering all these changes it’s hard to keep up with the latest technologies.

This blog will give you an overview of the technologies and tools you can no longer ignore.

Yeoman
The web’s scaffolding tool for modern web apps.
<http://yeoman.io/>

Visual studio code
Visual Studio Code is a code editor redefined and optimized for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications.
<https://code.visualstudio.com/>

Office UI Fabric
The official front-end framework for building experiences that fit seamlessly into Office and Office 365.
<https://dev.office.com/fabric>

SPFx
SharePoint Framework—a Page and Part model that enables fully supported client-side development, easy integration with the Microsoft Graph and support for open source tooling.
<https://blogs.office.com/>

TypeScript
TypeScript is a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript.
<https://www.typescriptlang.org/>

NPM
NPM is the package manager for JavaScript. Find, share, and reuse packages of code from hundreds of thousands of developers — and assemble them in powerful new ways.
<https://www.npmjs.com/>

NodeJs
Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment for developing a diverse variety of tools and applications.
<https://nodejs.org/>

React
A JavaScript library for building user interfaces
React (sometimes styled React.js or ReactJS) is an open-source JavaScript library providing a view for data rendered as HTML.
<https://facebook.github.io/react/>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/React_(JavaScript_library)>

NG2
Angular is a development platform for building mobile and desktop web applications.
<https://angular.io/>

Git
Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
<https://git-scm.com/>

Gulp.js
Gulp is a streaming build system, by using node’s streams file manipulation is all done in memory, and a file isn’t written until you tell it to do so.
Much like Grunt, Gulp is a javascript task runner. Gulp however prefers code over configuration. Being that your tasks are written in code, gulp feels more like a build framework, giving you the tools to create tasks that fit your specific needs.
<https://scotch.io/tutorials/automate-your-tasks-easily-with-gulp-js>

ADAL
The Active Directory Authentication Library enables client application developers to easily authenticate users to cloud or on-premises Active Directory (AD), and then obtain access tokens for securing API calls.
<>

Bower
Bower is a package manager for the web. It offers a generic, unopinionated solution to the problem of front-end package management.
<https://bower.io/>

Summary:

“Be curious, try things, fail fast!” – Sebastian Levert

–

Rob Lempens

Developer @ Spikes

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Your first audit… and now what?

Laurent Lamot — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 09:30:25 +0000

In this blog, I will try to give an overview of the steps to follow when you have to perform an audit. I immediately jump into the best practices and will not overwhelm you with theoretical definitions, conceptual ideas, methodologies, frameworks etc. If you want the theoretical stuff, just use Google or Bing to fulfil your needs.

Let’s get started!

1. First of all, the scope.

An important steps is to clarify the scope of the assessment. What is the audit about? What has to be assessed? What are the boundaries? What is in-scope? What is out-of-scope? If you get it SMART* you will avoid misinterpretations and keep your customer satisfied. To get things clear, do some intake meetings with the stakeholders, ask for extra documentation and information. An audit is all about asking, listing and reading (and – a bit of – writing at the end).

*Specific – Measurable – Achievable – Relevant – Timebound

2. How do you start?

Don’t reinvent the wheel. There’re several ways to audit an organization, department, (IT) project, process, engineered model etc. Use an existing worldwide accepted framework. You can follow your own thoughts, ideas and approach on how to perform and execute an assessment but your audit report will be susceptible to interpretation which could tackle the audit report.

Using such an accepted framework will not only guide you through the audit, it will also help you to identify what to assess and how to assess it:

What are the risk drivers and business benefits
What must be checked and verified.

When you google, you will find more than one framework:

CobiT – www.isaca.com
MOF – https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd320379.aspx
COSO – www.coso.org

In my humble opinion, CobiT is the best documented framework when you must audit IT processes. Lots and lots of information is available on the internet. The following steps in this blog are based on the usage of CobiT.

3. Identify

Choose the CobiT version (4.1, 5) and carefully read the documentation. Take your time to understand the processes and control objectives you want to investigate. Make sure they fit in the scope of the audit. Get clear which roles you want to speak and ask your primary contact person their names.

4. Compose a facts based list

Before you start the interviews, it is very handy to compose a facts based question list for each selected control objective. These questions will guide you through the interviews, make sure you ask the right questions and identify the strengths and weaknesses. The following example gives you an idea of some questions:

CobiT process DS11 Manage Data – control objective DS11.5 Backup and Restoration:

A procedure on how to backup ‘data’ is available and regularly reviewed/updated?
A procedure on how to restore backups is available and regularly reviewed/updated?
A (automatic) process is in place to backup ‘data’?
Monitoring of these backups is in place, issues are reported and actions are defined to solve problems?
Issues are logged and used for management, SLA … reporting purposes?
Responsibilities are clear, communicated and well understood?

5. Interviews, documents and interviews

Two words: ask and listen!

If you don’t understand the answer to your question, ask more detail (and keep asking until you’re satisfied). Keep in mind that the interviewee understands the assessed subject but you’re uninformed. Get to the bottom of the subject. Ask supporting documents – evidence – to verify what has been told.

6. Pre and post processing

Before the interview, make sure all questions are in place and you are well prepared. Afterwards, map the answers on your predefined list, add comment and give a ‘score’. CobiT provides a maturity level that allows you to determine which processes are under control and which processes represent (potential) pain points. Depending the CobiT version, the maturity level can have some differences.
The table below shows CobiT 4.1 maturity level:

Level	Description
0 Non-existent	Management processes are not applied at all
1 Initial/Ad hoc	Processes are ad hoc and disorganized
2 Repeatable	Processes follow a regular pattern
3 Defined	Processes are documented and communicated
4 Managed	Processes are monitored and measured
5 Optimised	Best practices are followed and automated

7. Ask for feedback

First of all, an audit is an independent (and official) examination (carried out by a neutral third party) to evaluate the internal control design and its effectiveness. Still, it is very useful and meaningful to regularly discuss the outcome with your primary stakeholder.

Ask feedback to be sure you’re on (the right) track and thoughts are aligned.

8. The audit report

Don’t lose time and start writing the report during the interview phase. With the interviews fresh in mind, it’s easier to write down the findings and recommendations. Afterwards you can always change certain chapters due to new insights.

Your audit report should contain the following chapters:

Introduction and background
- What is the background of the subject?
- Explain what the document is about
Executive summary
Write a short (maximum three A4 page’s) high-level executive/management summary. Either the higher management isn’t interested in the details or doesn’t have the time to struggle through the document, they’re still interested in the high-level outcome. Sum-up the most important recommendations (don’t get lost in details).
Assessment
- When took the assessment place; which period?
- Who were the interviewers and interviewees? Mention the role of the interviewees.
- How? Briefly explain the chosen framework and which processes where identified in the assessment.
Assessment details
Per assessed CobiT process and control objective write down the following
- Findings: What did the interviewees tell? Summarize this, stay objective and mention facts.
- Recommendations: If applicable: write down, bullet point wise, what can/must be improved.
Recommendations overview
- Some audit reports will add, at the end of report, an overview of all recommendations.
Inventory of all consulted documents
- Add a chapter where you sum-up all related documents. Mention the author, status, version, document name and document date.
Information about the chosen framework
- Add a bit of documentation about the used framework and where more information can be found.

9. Distribute final review

Before distributing your final report to all stakeholders, first send a copy to your primary contact person (and all interviewees) to be sure they all agree.

10. Presentation

Make a stunning presentation about the audit. Present this to the stakeholders/board.

At last, after completing all steps, the final audit report is ready for distribution to all stakeholders!

Good luck!

–

Laurent Lamot

Project Manager @ Spikes

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