Recall our objective is to get MS Teams to present a series of conversational prompts supporting various business processes. Recall, also that these prompts are assembled as “Adaptive Cards” which is an odd name for a new thing that seems a lot like a “form” for those of us that have programmed forms for as long as we have programmed forms.

So we ask Copilot:

What do I need to set up a development environment for presenting Adaptive Cards in MS Teams?

The answer was succinct:

• Install Required Tools.
• Open a Microsoft Developer Account.
• Create a Team App Project.

The required tools are simple enough. They include Node.js, VSCode, Microsoft Teams Toolkit for VS Code and ngrok.

We’ve already installed VS Code and Node.js. They’ll both Start | Run from our Windows Start menu. Node.js will give us a command line console and VS Code opens the IDE where we’ve created some introductory files in a folder.

When we get to the Microsoft Teams Toolkit, we’re talking about a VS Code extension but, alas, this one doesn’t exist. Copilot will admit that it’s been changed to the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit and we can install that extension just like we have added other previously. Once added, you’ll get a new icon in your VS Code activity bar:

Lastly, since Node.js is already installed, we can install ngrok from a command line using:

npm install -g ngrok

Note that’s an npm command as opposed to an rpm you may have remembered from your Linux days. That does what it does and looks like this:

Now, sure, we’ve all got MS365 accounts except mine hasn’t been touched in a couple of years since, I think, it was a VisualStudio.com account and it was attached to an Azure account and who knows where that leaves us but Copilot is undeterred. It tells us to go to:

https://developer.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/dev-program

Where we see this:

Obviously, Microsoft is disgusted at the fact that I’ve already joined and have an account but I don’t have an account and have to join. So let’s click Join Now.

Copilot is helpful and optimistic suggesting:

Sign in with your Microsoft account
Use the same account you used for Visual Studio Enterprise if possible. If that account is still active, your old subscription might be recoverable.

The join process is straightforward but requires a phone number, a Capcha and secret code sent via text.

Where you land is a big ol’ fork. You can build an instant sandbox or can build your own sandbox. This sandbox is a .onmicrosoft.com subdomain. If you choose the instant sandbox, it says it will give you sample users, some sample data, and a dopey subdomain name. If you chose the latter, it says it will take some time to provision, you’ll have to create your own sample data, and you can pick your own subdomain name. At this point, since you can later delete and restart your sandbox, let’s do the instant sandbox.

It’s going to want you to select an administrator user name and passwords for that ID and all your sample IDs.

Then it wants to connect to a Visual Studio subscription. I have two but they’re attached to an old ID and now this sandbox will be connected to a new ID so I select Do Not Connect to a Subscription.

I land on a welcome page:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/profile

And there’s a Setting page:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/profile/settings

Once you get here, you can go to your sandbox environment:

It looks like I get 90 days and I can Go to my E5 Sandbox. We’ll save that for next time.

I had one and lost it and now I have another and I don’t want to lose it.

The Microsoft VSCode Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-s71n0dHUk&t=21s

Install Node: Node.js — Run JavaScript Everywhere

This is Shontae: https://plainsitedata.replit.app/

We have some issues with our WordPress presentation but it’s okay for now. While we wait to figure out how that works, we want to get into something still more complex, Node.js on SharePoint.

Previously we mentioned that we’re a SharePoint shop. We get all the SharePoint we need for $5 per user per month. We have three users so that about $200/year and that gives us space to store all the content we expect to need.

But SharePoint is just a platform and why not throw a couple of rocks at it and see what breaks.

The first step in that process is Visual Studio Code, Microsoft’s free development platform. I’ve downloaded it from here:

https://code.visualstudio.com/download

During the install, it wanted me to connect to GitHub. Now I already had a GitHub login so I used that and now it looks like this:

I’m going to go ahead and watch this tutorial. The link takes yo uto this guys and he’s super-helpful. I’ve seen this once but I’ve forgotten it all… be right back.

That was a pretty time sink. I spent at least 45 minutes on it and all I got was this:

I created a folder in a folder to start in and called them \02_VSCode\01_251001\ so welcome to my head.

I also created a second sub-folder there and, together they look like this:

New\Select Folder

View | Command Pallet

View | Terminal

File | New File: name and save.

Run\F5

Using the above, I added some console.log commands and tried to run it. I get this error:

I confirm no Node by running node -v from the PowerShell prompt in my VSCode terminal.

Copilot says to install Node from here: Node.js — Run JavaScript Everywhere. The subtle reminder is to make sure it lands in your PATH so that the editor can find it at runtime. The install also wants to install some other native tools that sound delicious.

The installation take a little longer than you might expect. And then, this is less than convenient:

This thing drops into PowerShell and runs for quite some time. It gave me more than zero errors and ended up hanging. How long do you let something like this sit? I don’t know; it’s late Friday. I think I’ll just let it sit there.

So, while that hangs, I reopen VSCode and it lands back on my little .js file and I select Run | Without Debugging and it does, in fact, write my strings to my terminal. A win.

When it gets to the Python part, it shows you how to add the Python extension that support Python IntelliSense. IT’s not exactly like the guys says but I found it pretty easy:

That also takes longer than you might expect but I can go back to my first python page and the IntelliSense if working great. Another win.

While that was going on, the PowerShell session picked back up, sprayed some text on screen and then killed itself so that’s a third win.

Next it demonstrates how to drag an html file into your work folder and add Microsoft’s Live Preview extension so you can spawn web pages on the fly:

That takes just a moment. Then you can preview your .html pages in the VSCode workspace.

Overall, I’d give the video a solid C mostly because it seems to be outdated. The biggest hurdle is the Node.js binary. That’ll take a few minutes so I’m parking for now. More to follow.

We found CreateWPSite. They have a video we’ll follow to move us ahead in our WordPress operation.

It starts by clarifying the deployment the Twenty Twenty Five theme, which we’ve already done.

Then it points us to the “Edit Site” option. Then he wants us to delete the Sample Page but we’ve already changed that to Technologies where we started discussing some of the technologies we’ll be using. So we’ll keep that one.

We also readied out Privacy Policy page so we’ll keep that one too.

But we’ll go ahead with the four new pages just as he describes and you can see they land in the horizontal menu options at the top-right of the page. I also like that they are in alphabetical order but more on that later.

The video shows you how to select from a number of styles, palettes and type faces and we’ve done just that.

Then, it helps us without horizontal navigator which we changed just a bit.

Then it took us to the “Reading” settings. Here, we assign the new Home and Blog links to their appropriate targets.

It repaved our home page and we lost track. Let’s leave it here and pick up the pieces when we get done.

Welcome to the StratusFactory on WordPress. This is our first post. WordPress does pretty good getting us started. So far, we’ve

• Logged in as the creator, which is an administrator with full control.
• Created a second account which we’re using now.
• Manipulated some settings.
• Figured out how to change a few things including this sample post.

By default, it’s using WonderBlocks so we’ll have to figure out how those work. For now, we figured out the list settings I used for those bullets.

This is a post. Again, by default, the 2025 template inserts the first post inside the frame you see here, presuming we haven’t changed it, which we will soon enough because it’s fine; it’s just not ideal.

Our objectives are threefold:

• We want to figure out how the StratusFactory works. That starts here with WordPress but will move on to other technical solutions as opportunities arise.
• We want to store valuable content and optimize it for subsequent consumption. Of course, we’re working on the adjective, “valuable.”
• We want to help you succeed. That part starts with you. In fact, that whole process is all about you. We’ll dig into that as the Stratus Factory takes shape.

We’ll go from here.