Support for Unicode on release annotations

We have had two customers call in to open support cases because the sample script on this page was choking when customers supplied unicode characters as part of the release name or release properties json body payload. This update adds support for unicode characters to allow those annotations to get created without failures.

Author: toddfoust

articles/azure-monitor/app/release-and-work-item-insights.md

@@ -183,6 +183,35 @@ You can use the `CreateReleaseAnnotation` PowerShell script to create annotation
         [parameter(Mandatory = $true)][string]$releaseName,
         [parameter(Mandatory = $false)]$releaseProperties = @()
     )
+
+    # Function to ensure all Unicode characters in a JSON string are properly escaped
+    function Convert-UnicodeToEscapeHex {
+      param (
+        [parameter(Mandatory = $true)][string]$JsonString
+      )
+      $JsonObject = ConvertFrom-Json -InputObject $JsonString
+      foreach ($property in $JsonObject.PSObject.Properties) {
+        $name = $property.Name
+        $value = $property.Value
+        if ($value -is [string]) {
+          $value = [regex]::Unescape($value)
+          $OutputString = ""
+          foreach ($char in $value.ToCharArray()) {
+            $dec = [int]$char
+            if ($dec -gt 127) {
+              $hex = [convert]::ToString($dec, 16)
+              $hex = $hex.PadLeft(4, '0')
+              $OutputString += "\u$hex"
+            }
+            else {
+              $OutputString += $char
+            }
+          }
+          $JsonObject.$name = $OutputString
+        }
+      }
+      return ConvertTo-Json -InputObject $JsonObject -Compress
+    }
     
     $annotation = @{
         Id = [GUID]::NewGuid();
@@ -192,7 +221,11 @@ You can use the `CreateReleaseAnnotation` PowerShell script to create annotation
         Properties = ConvertTo-Json $releaseProperties -Compress
     }
     
-    $body = (ConvertTo-Json $annotation -Compress) -replace '(\\+)"', '$1$1"' -replace "`"", "`"`""
+    $annotation = ConvertTo-Json $annotation -Compress
+    $annotation = Convert-UnicodeToEscapeHex -JsonString $annotation  
+ 
+    $body = $annotation -replace '(\\+)"', '$1$1"' -replace "`"", "`"`""
+
     az rest --method put --uri "$($aiResourceId)/Annotations?api-version=2015-05-01" --body "$($body) "
 
     # Use the following command for Linux Azure DevOps Hosts or other PowerShell scenarios