Notes From The Road: 2022 Year In Review

2022… back to normality! Yes and no, nothing will be the same as it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic brought many bad things that we all know, but like everything, there are always two sides to the coin. The reality is that the pandemic forced us to change our existing living style, and with that also came good stuff like remote work (for good) and more freedom of working hours… but yes, it was a year that we recovered more and more our life normality and freedom.

It was a year that I returned to perform live events… especially at my favorite event: INTEGRATE 2022 London + Remote! (I say this without discrediting all the other events, I like them all, but this one I helped create from day one 11/12 years ago!)

and see so many friends I made during these years!

It was also the year I released my SECOND book! This time alongside my dear friends Tom Canter and Lex Hegt: Migrating to BizTalk Server 2020

And was a year, I decided to do more online training courses about Microsoft Enterprise Integration, which means:

• BizTalk Server on Administration or development topics
• and Azure Integrations Services (Logic Apps Standard and Consumption, API Management, Azure Service Bus, and Functions)

One of these examples is this short and intense BizTalk Server training course that I do alongside my friends Stephen W. Thomas and Lex Hegt.

My Blog has still solid numbers and growing every year…

The numbers of my blog kept solid in terms of visitors and new content, and 2022 was again a very productive year:

• Publish 70 new posts on my blog;
  • More than 364,107 visits to my blog.
  • Coming from 212 countries across the world in the past year (and more than 15,191 cities).
    • And the countries that most visited my blog are once again the top 3 maintains unchanged: the United States, followed by India, the United Kingdom, and, this time, Canada got the fourth position.
    • In terms of cities, Hyderabad got the first position followed closely by London and Bengaluru.

For me, this is amazing considering the fact I decided this year to do different things, so I dedicate 70% of my community time to doing other stuff them my blog, something that I never did on this scale during these 12 years. And if we compare it to the previous years… not bad indeed:

• 2021: 375,328 visits, 210 countries, 77 new posts
• 2020: 392,535 visits, 214 countries, 92 new posts
• 2019: 431,000 visits, 207countries, 43 new posts
• 2018: 246,381 visits, 194 countries, 70 new posts
• 2017: 210,000 visits, 167 countries, 63 new posts (migrate to a new blog)
• 2016: 318,576 visits, 190 countries, 50 new posts
• 2015: 350,000 visits, 184 countries, 79 new posts
• 2014: 310,000 visits, 183 countries, 52 new posts
• 2013: 200,000 visits, 176 countries, 79 new posts
• 2012: 170,000 visits, 171 countries, 102 new posts
• 2011: 91,000 visits, 61 new posts

I want to say thanks to all my readers. I appreciate all the visits to my blog, and thanks for your support.

Attractions in 2022

I’m always surprised by this analysis because my estimates never come out right to what the community consumes but I always like to do this. So, these are the top 10 posts that got the most views in 2022:

1. Microsoft Integration and Azure Stencils Pack for Visio: New Azure and Dataverse Logos with 14,482 views – note to myself to do more Dynamics 365-oriented posts!
2. A fish out of water: How to Add connector points on Visio Stencils with 12,621 views – this is for all my friends who make fun of me for writing from time to time about Visio (I’ve been a proud Visio MVP for a year)
3. SQL Server detected a logical consistency-based I/O error: incorrect pageid in BizTalkMsgBoxDb database with 11,574 views
4. Logic Apps: How to send a well-formatted HTML Email notification with Office 365 Outlook connector with 10,297 views – this is already a classic one, and I definitely need to come back to this topic!
5. A fish out of water: PowerShell – The term ‘Invoke-Sqlcmd’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. with 7,121 views
6. Azure Breakthroughs: Finding the Azure VM administrator username with 7,121 views – This is a timesaver tip!
7. The job failed. Unable to determine if the owner (domain\username) of job job-name has server access (reason: Could not obtain information about Windows NT group/user) with 6,890 views
8. Note to myself: How to perform a CTRL+ALT+DEL inside an Azure Virtual Machine? with 6,357 views
9. The source was not found, but some or all event logs could not be searched. Inaccessible logs: Security with 5,627 views
10. Power Automate Best practices, Tips and Tricks: #6 Error handling… configure run after settings with 5,425 views – The only blog from 2022 on the top 10!

And these are some of my 2022 favorite posts:

• How to get the Error Message with Logic App Try-Catch (Part I) and How to get the Error Message with Logic App Try-Catch (Part II) – Using an Azure Function – Because this is so critical and important and not simple to do in Logic Apps.
• Logic App Best practices, Tips and Tricks: #1 Logic App Naming Convention – It is in my nature, is the way I am, and for me, Naming conventions in Azure are critical to have.
• BizTalk Server Void Adapter – A classic that got another life!
• How to schedule PowerBI Reports on Microsoft Teams – It was amazing to write this blog alongside my fellow coworkers at DevScope

My 2022 Contributions

I mentioned before that I dedicate 70% of my community time doing other stuff than my blog, but in reality, I spend that amount of time doing different things than in previous years. That means I dedicate less time writing in my blog and doing online events, just to refresh a little… don’t get me wrong I love doing events, but after 21 virtual sessions last year, I was a little tired. So, I focus more on writing whitepapers and outside my blog and getting back to code and providing a lot of resources.

More Open Source Contributions…

Continue to improve the existing GitHub contributions and add new ones. Here are some samples:

• BizTalk Server:
  • BizTalk Server: Get Tracked Message tool: A classic BizTalk Server tool created by my friend Thiago Almeida that I got back to life!
  • BizTalk Server SSO Application Configuration Web Tool: This is a web version of my BizTalk Server SSO Application Configuration tool.
  • BizTalk Business Activity Monitoring Management Utility Tool: this is a Windows Application tool that works on top of the BM.exe to modernize and simplify its use. It is the equivalent of the BAM Management utility (BM.exe) tool with a GUI.
  • ODBC File Decoder Pipeline Component: This is, as the name mentioned, a decode component that you can use in a receive pipeline to process DBF or Excel files. Still, it can be possible to process other ODBC types (maybe requiring minor adjustments). The component uses basic ADO.NET to parse the incoming DBF or Excel files into an XML document.
  • BizTalk PDF2Xml Pipeline Component: This is, as the name mentioned, a decode component that transforms the content of a PDF document to an XML message that BizTalk can understand and process.
  • Receive Location Name Property Promotion Pipeline Component: This isis a simple pipeline component to promote the Receive Location Name (ReceiveLocationName) property to the context of the message. Several BizTalk Server context properties are not promoted by default with BizTalk Server, which means that they are not available for routing. 
  • Message Archive Pipeline Component: This is a pipeline component that can be used to arch incoming/outgoing messages from any adapters into a local or shared folder.
  • XML Complete Validator Pipeline Component for BizTalk Server: This is a component to be used on the Validate stage of a pipeline and to be used as a substitution for the out-of-the-box XML validator component.
  • Archive Pipeline Component for BizTalk Server: This is based on the initial work of Randy Paulo‘s BizTalk Archiving SQL and File component that my team and I adjusted and migrated to Microsoft BizTalk Server 2020.
  • PDF Decoder Pipeline Component for BizTalk Server: This is, as the name suggests, a decode component that transforms the content of a PDF document into an XML message that BizTalk can understand and process. The component uses the iTextSharp library to extract the PDF content. 
  • SQL Archive Pipeline Component: This was created initially by Johan Hedberg, and I decided to migrate to Microsoft BizTalk Server 2020.
  • Azure Blob Storage Archive Pipeline Component for BizTalk Server: This is, as the name suggests, a component that enables you to archive incoming/outgoing messages from any adapters to an Azure Blob Storage account. 
  • BizTalk Server Void Adapter: This is a simple way to easily discard all unwanted messages from your BizTalk Server environments instead of getting suspended or sent to a hard drive support folder.
  • BizTalk Schema Validation: DateTime Restrictions sample: This is a BizTalk Server Project that explains some samples on how to do Restrictions on Date and Time formats using RegEx patterns.
  • How to implement Property Demotion in BizTalk Server sample: This topic/sample provides step-by-step instructions for Property Demotion.
  • How to promote properties from the body of the messages sample: This topic/sample provides step-by-step instructions for promoting properties as Property Fields.
  • 8 BizTalk Server SQL Query
  • 8 BizTalk Server PowerShell scripts

• Azure:
  • How to get the Error Message with Logic App Try-Catch Using an Azure Function: This sample shows us how we can retrieve the proper Error Message using an Azure Function.
  • How to retrieve Azure Key Vault Secrets using Azure Functions: This sample shows us how we can retrieve a secret or a list of secrets using an Azure Function
  • Logic App (Standard) Schemas Validations – Handle Restrictions on Date sample: This is a Logic App (standard) Project that explains some samples on how to do Restrictions on Date and Time formats using RegEx patterns.

• Microsoft Integration, Azure, Power Platform, Office 365, and much more Stencils Pack continues to be updated with new releases and get some contributions from the community.

More whitepapers…

I was able to publish 10 whitepapers:

• How to Install and Configure Host Integration Server 2016
• How to Install and Configure Host Integration Server 2020
• How to Expose and Protect Logic App Using Azure API Management
• Logic App CI/CD from zero to hero
• BizTalk Server CI/CD from zero to hero
• Your Guide to BizTalk Message Context Properties
• BizTalk Server Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) classes
• BizTalk Server 2020: Step-by-Step WCF-ORACLE Adapter installation guide
• Azure Function App CI/CD from Zero to Hero
• Logic App Standard CI/CD from zero to hero

Don’t forget that I also publish a new book!

Posting outside my blog…

This year, was also the year that I start publishing more blogs and more constantly on other sites, and on that my major partner in crime is Saravana Kumar:

• Publish 19 guest blog posts on Serveless360 about Azure Integration Services on topics like Logic Apps, API Management, Azure App Configuration, and Power Automate.
• Publish 20 guest blog posts on BizTalk360 about BizTalk Server.

Speaking engagements…

However, that is not all! I was still able to deliver 11 sessions (on-prem and remote) in several conferences and User Groups worldwide on topics like BizTalk Server, Logic Apps, and Power Automate:

• M365 Below in Chicago! | January 14, 2022 | Power Automation: A new set of Best practices, tips and tricks
• Global Automation Bootcamp | February 4, 2022 | How to monitor your integrations solutions with Automation Account
• Azure Integration Bootcamp | February 5, 2022 | Logic Apps: New set of Best practices, Tips and Tricks
• Global Power Platform Bootcamp 2022 – Münsterland | February 19, 2022 | How to create robust monitor solutions PowerShell, Azure Functions & Power Automate
• aMS Lausanne 2022 | April 19, 2022 | LogicApps: New set of Best practices, Tips and Tricks
• Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon | May 4, 2022 | Power Automation: Best practices, tips and tricks
• Global Azure 2022 – Spain | May 6, 2022 | Logic Apps: New set of Best practices, Tips and Tricks
• Global Azure Bootcamp 2022 Lüdinghausen | May 7, 2022 | Logic Apps: New set of Best practices, Tips and Trick
• INTEGRATE 2022 | June 13-15, 2022 | Building Hybrid Integration Solutions with BizTalk Server
• CONNECTED Conference 2022 | November 11, 2022 | Logic Apps: The good, the bad and the ugly
• Porto.Data | December 20, 2022 | Logic Apps: Error Handling

For all of you…

Once again, thanks for following me, and for reading my blog, and I promise that I will continue to share my knowledge during 2023.