Apple Business Manager API? - api

maybe a quick and easy one here but, does anyone know if ABM has an independent API or which API it utilizes? If so, would be a big help as I am trying to automate removing machines from ABM when we no longer need them.
Thanks!

Related

Can Dialogflow agents be created, updated and deleted (managed) 100% programmatically?

I am looking to wrap a bot service in order to enable business areas to create and manage them at will with minimal technical knowledge, but meeting our strict security controls. With this in mind I need to be able to create and manage them 100% programatically.
I have been working on a prototype with Microsoft's Bot Framework, Luis and QnA Maker. Sadly though joining these technologies requires a number of manual steps, specifically:
Creating a bot in Azure (Bot Framework)
Creating a Luis Account
Joining Luis bot with Azure(the subscription management part
of the API was recently deprecated)
Creating a QnA Account
Microsoft really don't feel very joined up at all...
With this in mind I am now looking for alternatives and thus looking to see what Google are up to. I am just a bit weary of heading off in a new direction to find similar issues.
Looking briefly at the API documentation it seems I should be able to import an agent in to a project and then manage it. I imagine I could use a template to create my bots from.
Thanks for your time
Mike
Thanks for your feedback.
The way I see it, Bot Framework is more modular than other options out there. First of all, creating a LUIS and QnA account are optional and not time consuming. The average use case can be solved with less than 50 lines of code with no need to throw LUIS or QnAMaker into the mix. Why should Microsoft force you to use LUIS if you might not need it? Google uses a different approach. In my opinion, they give you most of the tools from start, like the NLP agent, so you need to understand NLP concepts even if you don't really need to use them. Most developers tend to overthink their bots and make them more complex that hey need to be.
With that said. We don't provide a way to create agents programmatically. But the process of registering your bot is very straight forward and fast. Let me know if you have any problems on this regard.
Please, take a look at our samples here:
https://github.com/Microsoft/BotFramework-Samples
They can give you a very deep knowledge on what architecture to use for different scenarios. Many times there is a simpler way to achieve the same goal and Microsoft does not try to force you to use the most advanced techniques. Most of the time you can achieve your goal with very simple and easy to maintain code.
Francisco
A Quick Update, in the end we went with a solution based on this idea:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/creating-a-question-and-answer-bot-with-amazon-lex-and-amazon-alexa/
I can simply create a new bot by executing cloudformation.

What IoT project to develop modules connected by BLE was funded on Kickstarter?

I apologize in advance. I'm almost certain this question may not be appropriate here, but there doesn't seem to be a specific place on SO for such questions, so I've decided that as a last ditch effort, I'll ask on the main site. Please don't be (too) angry with me....
I'm looking for a specific IoT project, that was developing modules connected by BLE. They were independent modules, say just a speaker, on a coin-sized die connected to each other or a computer via BLE. The project seems to have been succesfully funded on Kickstarter, with an SDK and shipping to the backers, but I can't find them again. I've been searching for a day and a half, but I can't remember for the life of me what they're called. I've searched through my chrome bookmarks, but the computer I was using at the time was a lab system, so I most likely wasn't logged into Google, and those systems are wiped every week. The project was probably from 2014, and they kinda advertised themselves as an easy way to learn HW/SW, and the SDK might have had Code block drag and drop, like Scratch. No combination of search terms that I can think of on Google is bringing up the results I want. Please help, if you know this project, or a specific way to find it.
I'm fairly certain this question will get moved, but before it does, I hope SO's vast and vastly informed community will be able to help me or point me in the right direction....
After days of searching and going through possibly most of the IoT style projects out there, I finally found the one I was looking for: it's SAM Labs. If anyone wants to know, it's probably one of the cheaper options for creating a limited use remote application.

Bugtracker - agregation and automated workflow

Intro:
I'm working for a contractor company. We're making SW for different corporate clients, each with their own rules, SW standards etc.
Problem:
The result is, that we are using several bug-tracking systems. The amount of tickets flow is relatively big and the SLA are deadly sometimes. The main problem is, that we are keeping track of these tickets in our own BT (currently Mantis) but we're also communicating with clients in theirs BT. But as it is, two many channels of communication are making too much information noise.
Solution, progress:
Actual solution is an employee having responsibility for synchronizing the streams and keeping track of the SLA and many other things. It's consuming quite a large part of his time (cca 70%) that can be spend on something more valuable. The other thing is, that he is not fast enough and sometimes the sync is not really synced. Some parts of the comments are left only on one system, some are lost completely. (And don't start me at holidays or sickness, that's where the fun begins)
Question:
How to automate this process: aggregating tasks, watching SLA, notifying the right people etc. partially or all together?
Thank you, for your answers.
You need something like Zapier. It can map different applications and synchronize data between them. It works simply:
You create zap (for example between redmine and teamwork).
You configure mapping (how items/attributes in redmine maps to items/attributes in teamwork)
You generate access tokens in both systems and write them to zap.
Zapier makes regular synchronization between redmine and teamwork.
But mantis is not yet supported by Zapier. If all/most of your clients BT are in Zapier's apps list, you may move your own BT to another platform or make a request to Zapier for mantis support.
Another way is develop your own synchronization service that will connect to all client's BTs as each employee using login/password/token and download updates to your own BT. It is hard way and this solution requires continious development to support actual virsions of client's BTs.
You can have a look a Slack : https://slack.com/
It's a great tools for group conversations
Talk, share, and make decisions in open channels across your team, in
private groups for sensitive matters, or use direct messages
one-to-one.
you can have a lot of integrations tools, and you can use Zapier https://zapier.com/ with it to programm triggers.
With differents channels you can notifying the right people partially or all together in group conversation :)
The obvious answer is to create integrations between all of the various BT's. Without knowing what those are, it's hard to say if that's entirely possible. Most modern BTs have an API and support integrations. Some, especially more desktop based ones, don't. For those you probably have to monitor a database directly.
Zapier, as someone already suggested, is a great tool for creating integrations and may already have some of the ones yo need available. I love Slack and it has an API, but messages are basically just text and unless you want to do some kind of delimiting when you post messages to its API, it probably isn't going to work.
I'm not sure what budget is, but it will cost resources to create the integrations. I'd suggest that you hire someone to simply manage these. Someone who's sole responsibility is to cross-populate the internal and the external bug tracking system and track the progress in each. All you really need is someone with good attention to detail for this, they don't have to be a developer. This should be more cost effective than using developer resources on this.
The other alternative is simply to stop. If your requirements dictate that you use your clients' bug tracking software for projects you do for them, just use their software and stop duplicating the effort. If you need some kind of central repository or something for managing work maybe just a simple table somewhere or spreadsheet with the client, the project, the issue number, the status and if possible a link to the issue in the client's BT. I understand the need and desire for centralizing this, but if it's stifling productivity, then the opportunity costs are too high IMO.
If you create an integration tool foe this, you will indeed have a very viable product. This is actually a pretty common problem.

Distributed rendering in a CAVE system

I am currently working with CAVE systems and I'm looking into hooking up a pre-exisiting game engine in one. I know this is possible through Unity and the Unreal Engine as there is already research out there showcasing that it has been done.
Right now, I have not decided upon one game engine to use and I'm currently looking around and researching if it is possible with the likes of CryEngine and Valve's Source Engine. The one issue that I am going to face, however, is getting the image to correctly render across all four of the monitors / screens.
Thusly, as a result I have two questions:
1.Does anyone know of any good research / books on distrubuted rendering? It doesn't need to be specificly for games, just the topic in general would be very useful
2.Does anyone know if other developers have managed to get Source and the CryEngine to run in a CAVE system? Through all my research I haven't been able to find anything on this, but then my google skills aren't the greatest.
If anyone could spare the time to answer these questions, I'd be extremely greatful.
Thanks.
too late for an answer, but still, you might want to have a look at
Equalizer: http://www.equalizergraphics.com
IceT: http://icet.sandia.gov
Chromium
(and a few more referenced in related publications, websites)

Need to track unwanted file downloads

I'm looking to track how many people on the web have made my software program file available for download without my permission.
I've thought of searching for my product name and file size to catch possible thieves.
Do you think a web search API is the best way forward?
EDIT: I plan to use the detection data for survey purposes.
There are web analytics companies which could probably help you more than a roll-your-own solution. Consider the companies that big music and film vendors use, or check with the Business Software Alliance.
Ultimately, you are chasing your tail if you are looking to thwart piracy with the results of this kind of activity. However, if you are steadfast that you must try to understand what is going on, you need professional (web analytic) help. There are so many variations out there that you need someone experienced in tracking this kind of information, since you could easily get a false sense of security, or an inflated sense of activity.
No. This ultimately doesn't help you. What are you going to do? Send them emails tellings them to buy your software? Sounds like a spam filter will get it.
I would suggest in prevention rather than detection. A registration or activation process is pretty popular and reasonably successful, though if you have an amazing app it won't stop the really bad people from hacking it, however it will make it much more difficult.