Microsoft Azure, often referred to as Azure, is a cloud computing service operated by Microsoft for application management via Microsoft-managed data centers.

Authenticating

Azure uses OAuth, a developer-friendly delegated access protocol. Quolum has already connected the necessary wires with Azure. Using a sequence of click-throughs, your organization's administrator allows Quolum to make API calls to Azure without getting access to passwords.

Step 1: Initiate a connection to Azure

Click the Connect button from the Connections card. If you are not an admin, you can invite your organization's Azure admin to make a connection to your Azure organization account. When you click on the Connect button, the web browser will navigate to the Azure login page.

Step 2: Log in to Microsoft

Log in to Microsoft using your organization's credentials. The exact login mechanism may depend on your Microsoft Azure plan, and the sign-in mechanism used. Once you have successfully logged-in, Microsoft is going to ask you to grant access to Quolum.

Step 3: Provide consent to Quolum

The next screen after login into Microsoft is the consent screen. On this screen, Microsoft confirms whether you authorize Quolum to access your organization's data.

Step 4: Back to Quolum

Once you have granted access to Quolum on Microsoft's website, Microsoft is going to send you back to Quolum's page in Step 1, where you started. The Connect button on the Connections card would now say Reconnect. Reconnect is used to reauthenticate under circumstances where the access has expired.

Under the hood

Using the OAuth protocol, Quolum now has delegated access to your Microsoft Azure Workspace. The Quolum server, running on Amazon AWS VPC, will be able to make API calls and retrieve feature-level utilization of projects, stories, and tasks. Later, this data is crunched and available for visualization on the Quolum dashboard.