The Azure portal is feature-rich and the easiest way to manage the resources in your subscriptions. The main view of the portal is called the Dashboard and it contains customizable widgets that allow you to get a fast glimpse of the status of your environment.

The Azure portal is structured from three main areas: the navigation menu (left-hand side), the upper bar (top), and the main content area. The following screenshot explains some of the components that you'll be using throughout the rest of this book:

The following is an explanation the various of menus: 

• Navigation menu: Contains entries for different resource types that allow you to quickly explore the resources and create new instance of the resources in your account.
• Notifications: The bell-shaped icon will show an indicator if there's a notification you should be aware of. Clicking on it will show a pop-up screen with further details, for example, when a resource's creation has been completed.
• Azure Shell: Clicking on the button will show a shell window in the bottom of the screen. In the shell window, you can write commands or scripts in PowerShell or Bash.
• Dashboard: You can pin widgets and customize their look. Widgets can display resource status, graphs of metrics, links for fast access, and so on.