Azure Sign-Up is Way Too Smart

I was playing with Azure Cognitive Services and figured that I would switch to my @epam.com account for the next prototype. I needed to re-sign-up. This is my story.

Login

Microsoft’s live.com OAuth can integrate with your ADFS for a single sign-on experience:

I opted in for my work account, authenticated, and went ahead to enable the services I needed.

Verification

To enable Cognitive Service APIs on this account I needed to activate my Azure subscription. Microsoft will challenge your identity twice.

First, it’s the code verification that you can do by sending yourself a text. My form was pre-populated with the Belarus country code (+375). I quickly dismissed it as probably an old attribute on my AD profile. You see, I lived in Minsk (Belarus) before I moved to the states a good while ago but not every enterprise system got the memo. No big deal. Typed in my cell phone and got the activation code.

Then it’s the identify verification by card:

My postal code is again pre-populated with the one from the past. This time, however, I wasn’t able to use my current address:

What do you do when an online form tries to outsmart you? I, personally, try to outsmart it back:

const rules = $('#PCSBodyForm').data('validator').settings.rules;

// -> Object {required: true, minlength: 6, maxlength: 6, pattern: "^[0-9]{6}$"}

rules.billingZipcode.minlength = 5;
rules.billingZipcode.pattern = '^[0-9]{5}$';

// -> Object {required: true, minlength: 5, maxlength: 6, pattern: "^[0-9]{5}$"}

Alright!

Way Too Smart

Guess what, Microsoft engineers are very diligent. The validation also runs server-side and the form comes back with an error:

Sigh… My US street address and the city of Marietta were gladly accepted. It’s the postal code format and length validation that failed. Why so serious? A better solution would probably be to ask for a country as part of the address form and validate against it. Or maybe trust the SSO challenge that I went through when logging in and just collect my card?

Anyway. I guess I will keep using my personal account with Azure for now and will wait for out IT to find the field in my profile that ties me to my home country.