Global Azure Auckland 2024 - Presentation April 20th

Great presentation available on Coding Night ANZ channel about Feature Flags with Azure App Configuration.

The Global Azure Auckland 2024 event was an absolute blast last Saturday, April 20th! We had an epic lineup of speakers and sessions that you won’t want to miss. As one of the organizers and presenters, I’m super excited to share that now you can catch all the action on the Coding Night ANZ YouTube channel.

Session Content Overview

In this session, I presented a comprehensive guide on Feature Flags with Azure App Configuration, covering practical implementation strategies for production environments.

Key Topics Covered

• Introduction to Feature Flags - Understanding feature flags (also known as feature toggles) and their importance in modern application development
• Azure App Configuration Service - How to centrally manage application settings and feature flags without code changes or redeployments
• 12 Factor App Methodology - How Azure App Configuration implements the External Configuration Store pattern and follows cloud-native principles
• Live Demo - Hands-on demonstration showing:
  • Real-time configuration updates without application restarts
  • Dynamic feature flag toggling
  • Custom feature filters (Query String, Targeting, Time Window)
  • Integration with Azure Key Vault for secrets management
  • ASP.NET Core 8 implementation

Architecture Highlights

The demo showcased a practical ASP.NET MVC application leveraging:

• Azure App Configuration for centralized settings and feature flags
• Azure Key Vault integration for secure secret management
• Custom Feature Filters for advanced scenarios like A/B testing
• Automatic refresh using Sentinel configuration pattern
• Multiple filter types including Boolean toggles, query string filters, and targeting filters

Benefits Demonstrated

• Deploy features to production and control activation separately
• Change application behavior dynamically without code changes or restarts
• Implement A/B testing and gradual rollout strategies
• Centralize configuration across multiple applications
• Cost-effective compared to third-party feature flag services