Azure Charts Visualize your cloud learning journey

Guest Post by Alexey Polkovnikov Sr. Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft

Are you just starting your cloud journey or looking for ways to upgrade your knowledge in specific areas?Azure Charts is a web based application which allows you to see what the Azure consists of and how it evolves. Additionally, to help you learn Azure in a focused way and stay up-to-date in your knowledge, there is a suite of interactive charts introduced recently which you can find under the Learning menu in the navigation bar. The learning menus utilize the Microsoft Learn Catalog API 

Let me show how to use these charts and explain the differences between them.

1. Azure Learning Explorer. You can use this module to quickly discover the learning modules/paths available in official Azure body of knowledge. It helps to check for learning content where all services of your interest are covered together and also see alternatives while you make your way through the chart-guided discovery process. To learn more about working with Azure Charts Explorer modules see this post: Explorer's Guide to Azure Using Azure Charts.
   
   
2. Azure Learning Highlights. This chart surfaces all the latest learning modules by student role. There is tracking feature that helps to highlight the most recent changes over last week or a couple of days, you can also see those roles that received new/updated content lately.
   
   
3. Azure Learning Top. The chart looks pretty much like the Learning Highlights, except it tracks the highest-user-rated learning content by student role and level. Also you can check at one glance where the ratings are backed by significant number of votes.
   
   
4. Azure Study Map. This is the latest development in the area, the chart helps you seeing what Azure services other people in your role and at your level of knowledge study most. This can be useful to understand where to invest your time next based on votes stats that are collected regularly for each service.

Learning content insights are also being currently embedded into other charts to help you see the service relations which can be non-obvious. Azure Affinity Map is one of them, now you can use it to check for services that are frequently bundled in same learning modules/paths and are likely supposed to be studied and used together.

I really hope that the new charts will help you to be more productive leaning Azure no matter what your interested in studying 

Please let me know your feedback on the topic, Azure Charts is evolving fast and user feedback is very essential to keep it relevant.

You can always check Azure Charts Log to see the latest project's developments.