Publishing the retailer demo website using Visual Studio

In this section, you will deploy the ASP.NET website that simulates a retail music store which uses Azure services to make recommendations based on customer selections.

1.        Set up the trust relationship between the deployed Azure website and Visual Studio by downloading the Publisher profile settings file to your computer. Navigate to http://manage.windowsazure.com and click WEB APPS.

2.       Click the name of the web apps server to display the getting started page. Then click DASHBOARD.

3.       In the quick glance section of the dashboard, click Download the publish profile.

4.       Use the Save As command when prompted to save the file, and save it to the C:\HOLS\Cortona Analytics\ProductRecommendations directory using the default-generated file name. Then click Save.

5.       Using File Explorer, navigate to the C:\HOLS\Cortona Analytics\ProductRecommendations\website\Promotions directory. Double-click Recommendations.sln to start the process of opening the file in Visual Studio.

 

6.       Using the Windows application selector, scroll down and click Visual Studio 2013.

7.        Click OK to dismiss the security warnings for the Recommendations box. Visual Studio will then display the Solution Explorer with the website project.

Feel free to explore the website objects for this ASP.NET MVC-based website.

 

8.       To start the publish process, right-click the Recommendations project within the Solution Explorer and click Publish.

9.       In the Publish Web dialog box, click Profile.

 

10.    Click Import to specify the Publish Settings file.

11.     In the Import Publish Settings dialog box, browse to the C:\HOLS\Cortona Analytics\ProductRecommendations directory. Then select the .PublishSettings file you saved in step 4 and click OK.

 

12.    On the Connection page, click Validate Connection to make sure the connection works.

13.    After the green validation checkmark appears as shown, click Publish to deploy the website to Azure.

As part of the publish action, Visual Studio copies the solution to your Azure web application site and then launches the default page for the solution.

You are now ready to see how the application uses Azure data services to provide product recommendations to shoppers on the site.

Testing the product recommendation site

Once the Azure Data Factory (ADF) workflow has executed successfully, you will be able to see personalized product recommendations on the demo retailer website.

Verifying execution of the Azure Data Factory workflow

1.        Go to your ProductRecommendations data factory in http://portal.azure.com.

2.       Verify that all slices corresponding to the last produced dataset in the workflow (ProductsRecommendationSQLTable) have executed successfully. (The Ready checkmark will show next to the updated slice.)

Note: It can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour for all the slices in this output dataset to show as Ready. Keep monitoring the status during this time.

 

3.       View the personalized product recommendations on the demo retailer website. Here, it’s the Contoso Music Store (http://<azurewebsitename>.azurewebsites.net).

4.       Click Log in and enter the user name Gaurav Malhotra to see the generated personalized product recommendations for Gaurav.

You can also log on with the name Mike Flasko to see the personalized product recommendations generated for Mike.