Working with Azure this week, I setup a few Azure Logic Apps to send messages from Twitter to Slack using Zapier, Very interesting use case for using up your Slack message limits. :) Similar functionality exists(ed) with Yahoo Pipes (RIP), ITTT and other web 2.0 integration tools, this one is great since it can live inside a protected Azure network, is relatively simple to setup with a visual designer, and lets you upsize to Biztalk functionality for BPM activities.
Slack seems to be the method of choice for many firms coming back to the '90s realm of IRC, with persisted chat windows, ChatOps continuous integration and automated deployments. Companies like Shopify use it for their deployments activities and for their customers feature stories.
The ability to do ChatOps activities, wire up deployment commands and notification messages in Slack is really cool.
Not to be late to the party, Microsoft introduced /skype integration with Slack in the new year.
https://www.skype.com/en/features/slack/ The motto of Microsoft in 2016 seems to be if you can't beat 'em... hang out with them.
Coming back to Azure with a _few_ resources, an enormous amount of Azure shortcuts here.
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/tangent_thoughts/2016/02/04/bookmark-this-aka-msazureshortcuts/
The Azure ML Learning Cheat Sheet
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/machine-learning-algorithm-cheat-sheet/
The Azure Web Sites (Web Apps?) Cheat Sheet
http://microsoftazurewebsitescheatsheet.info/
A Complete List of Microsoft Azure Tools
http://scottge.net/2015/08/03/a-complete-list-of-microsoft-azure-tools/
With Microsoft Canada adding its new data centres and ExpressRoute functionality, it's an exciting time to be a cloud developer above the 49th parallel north.
