Provide overview of various use-cases where Arcus helps

[tomkerkhove]

Provide overview of various use-cases where Arcus helps, what it uses and how to get started.

Idea was started on https://arcus-azure.net/usecases/ but never finished.

[stijnmoreels]

@Dirk-Luyckx , @fgheysels , @pim-simons , @ALaks96 , @gverstraete , @spasal ... adding use-cases would be a very good addition to our homepage. But, we need some inspiration. Do any of you have any client projects that we can use as baseline and talk about the used Arcus-components, and how it helps? Thanks in advance.

[pim-simons]

From my customer projects:

• Arcus Scripting
  I mostly use this script: https://scripting.arcus-azure.net/features/powershell/azure-devops/#setting-arm-outputs-to-azure-devops-variable-group. The use-case here being that I don't have to maintain the DevOps library by hand, this is all done automatically.

• Arcus Observability
  There are several use-cases here I think, for me the most important one is a unified easy way to log your information to Application Insights. With just a simple line of code I am able to log my dependencies, requests, events etc. which then also gives me insights in performance in Application. And the real added benefit is when you also log your telemetryContext, which allows you to search in Application for business values. For example I have an Article API at a customer where I log the id of the article being retrieved so we can search in Application on article id.
  In theory I could switch to a different sink without changing any of the logging code, but in practice I really only use Application Insights as this is something all of my customers use (Microsoft unless 😉).

• Arcus Security
  The use case here I think is to have a unified way of retrieving your secrets without having specific code for the store. Whether I am retrieving values from keyvault, configuration or some other store the code is still await _secretProvider.GetRawSecretAsync("secret").
  I always point to caching for Azure KeyVault as well when I get questions on why to use Arcus Security, this is probably something we can highlight as well.

• Arcus Templates
  Speeding up development is the main goal I use this 🚀. You get a lot out of the box and you can start developing actual business functionality in no-time.

[gverstraete]

But where do we lack that documentation? - What are the things you would add to the existing site? Many of the things can be found there already imo? - How would you format it?

PS: The script you are referring to in Arcus Scripting, is kind of one some of the architects want to attack differently, which makes this script obselete. But maybe we need to discuss that in another issue.

[stijnmoreels]

But where do we lack that documentation?

This is something we would like to add to the general Arcus site. https://arcus-azure.net/usecases/ A more clear and practical description of how Arcus can help in certain scenario's.

What are the things you would add to the existing site? Many of the things can be found there already imo? How would you format it?

How we would format or list this, is still pretty vague. We can first discuss what the possible places are and then we can maybe come up with a way to present this clearly. It seems a good thing if we come up with something that uses multiple Arcus libraries. Like, using Arcus security for accessing secrets to connect the Arcus messaging system while we use Arcus observability to track those secrets.

[MassimoC]

A couple of weeks ago I sent to Dirk a ppt with a list of the different Arcus use cases.
What about to start from there, build a ppt for the internal adoption and then derive from it for the public website?

[stijnmoreels]

A couple of weeks ago I sent to Dirk a ppt with a list of the different Arcus use cases. What about to start from there, build a ppt for the internal adoption and then derive from it for the public website?

Not sure if another ppt would help, here? You suggest create another ppt from an existing ppt? I'm interesting, though, in what those use-cases were you described! 😀

[MassimoC]

Create a ppt from a ppt is no sense.
My suggestion is to create the list of use cases (starting from an existing ppt - if u want -) to present to the internal community.
The output of this exercise can be the input for the website.
Killing two birds with one stone

[stijnmoreels]

My suggestion is to create the list of use cases (starting from an existing ppt - if u want -) to present to the internal community. The output of this exercise can be the input for the website.

Aha, yeah, we can see what our internal community says about those use-cases. Hopefully they're active enough 🤭😅. What we see is that it usually takes some practical examples or labs or ... our project templates for them to see this in action. Nonetheless, I'm curious about the results if we would do that.

[MassimoC]

Hopefully they're active enough 🤭😅

We are the internal community, Frederik, Gillian, Pim, ... are the internal community when they are adopting Arcus on their projects. You are the internal community.
So IMHO the internal community is alive and kicking. Sharing the use cases will help to increase the awareness therefore the adoption.
#amen

[Dirk-Luyckx]

Shared the presentation in our Arcus Code Owners Teams Chat now.