Microsoft Support & Discussions

t's gearing up to be an exciting week November 14th – 17th as we prepare for this year’s Microsoft Ignite and PASS Data Summit all happening at once! While across the way we’ll be sharing the latest from Microsoft all up, taking place at the Convention Center. We’re excited to be with our community digging into all things data. We’re back as premier sponsors together with our partners at Intel. With over 30+ sessions we’ll cover everything from ground to the cloud, with SQL Server, Azure SQL, all the way up to powering analytics for your data with Microsoft Fabric. This year, we’ll also bring in our developer community with sessions covering our solutions for open-source…

By Julie Sanford, Vice President, Partner GTM, Programs & Experiences Technology is continuously reshaping the boundaries of possibility, and we are excited to once again gather with customers and partners to discover what’s next in AI, collaboration tools, data, security, modern work, and development tools and platforms at Microsoft Ignite 2023, taking place in Seattle November 14–17. As the in-person event is sold out, virtual attendance is encouraged. All sessions can be viewed online November 15–16, and there is still time to register to attend virtually, so sign up today! Each session, discussion, and interaction at Ignite will be thoughtfully orchest…

The Intelligent App Chronicles for Healthcare is a webinar series designed to provide health and life sciences companies with a comprehensive guide to building intelligent healthcare applications. [ATTACH=full]55593[/ATTACH] The series will cover a wide range of topics including Azure Container Services, Azure AI Services, Azure Integration Services, and innovative solutions that can accelerate your Intelligent app journey. By attending these webinars, you will learn how to leverage the power of intelligent systems to build scalable and secure healthcare solutions that can transform the way you deliver care. Our hosts will be: (99+) Shelly (Finch) Avery |…

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses must navigate a complex web of applications, data sources, and systems. Seamless integration of these elements is a critical factor in staying competitive and responsive to market demands. Microsoft's enterprise integration offering, Azure Integration Services, is the answer to the challenges of modern integration. Thousands of the world’s largest enterprises are already realizing the impact and benefits provided by Azure Integration Services. To provide businesses with a clearer understanding of the potential return on investment (ROI) when implementing Azure Integration Services, Microsoft commissioned For…

[ATTACH=full]55591[/ATTACH] Hi there! Less than a week for a fantastic opportunity to learn more about .NET development and build amazing projects with C# and .NET. It's the .NET Conf 2023 Student Zone, a beginner-friendly, virtual event where experts from Microsoft and the community will teach you how to use .NET for AI, web development, mobile development, and more! The .NET Conf 2023 Student Zone will take place on November 13, 2023, at 7am PST | 10am EST | 3pm BST | 8:30pm IST. You can join us online for free and follow along with the live sessions, demos, and Q&A. You will also get access to additional resources and tutorials to help you ge…

[ATTACH=full]55588[/ATTACH] Back in February I posted an article “Using the Native Elgato StreamDeck Integration with Microsoft Teams.” In it I shared how the Microsoft Teams group had published a plugin that enabled integration between the Elgato Stream Deck and Microsoft Teams. That post was titled “Delivering new webinar experiences with Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Community Hub.” The idea of Stream Deck and Teams working together generated my most views of any of my other posts (more than 38 thousand and counting). However, with the advent of the new Teams the experience was broken and many of you let me know how disappointed you were. Well as of today it seems yo…

You can now get three additional years of Extended Security Updates (ESUs) if you need more time to upgrade and modernize your Windows Server 2012, Windows Server R2, or Windows Embedded Server 2012 R2 on Azure. This also applies to Azure Stack HCI, Azure Stack Hub, and other Azure products. Note: Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, and Windows Embedded Server 2012 R2 reached end of support on October 10th, 2023, per our 10-year lifecycle policy. After this date, no more security patches will be released for these versions of Windows Server. For ease of reference, we'll sometimes refer to these versions as Windows Server 2012/R2 version family. If …

When your Windows products reach the end of support, Extended Security Updates (ESUs) are there to protect your organization while you modernize your estate. To take advantage of this optional service, you’d purchase and download ESU product keys, install them, and finally activate the extended support. Note: People tend to refer to ESU keys interchangeably as multiple activation keys (MAK), ESU product keys, or ESU license keys. Ultimately, you can activate the ESU product key with or without internet connection. For online activation, you can use the elevated command prompt or Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT). To install and activate ESU for devic…

Azure Native Qumulo v2 reduces file system TCO & adds Global Namespace capabilities A few years ago we were introduced to the team at Qumulo and were impressed with their scalability and user experience. We then began a project to build a software-defined release of their scale-out filesystem on Azure and, with the help of the Azure Native ISV team, to integrate Qumulo-as-a-Service in the Azure Portal. We wanted to provide an experience and tooling that would be familiar to Azure customers and intuitive whether or not they had prior experience with Qumulo and the power of their multi-petabyte, multi-protocol, performant filesystem with file-level analytics. T…

Sysmon v15.1 This update to Sysmon improves file hash and delete performance, adds a summary message on events dropped due to high system load, fixes a crash during uninstall, and fixes a system hang. ZoomIt v7.2 This update to ZoomIt adds translucent highlighter and blur to draw mode, microphone selection for recording, and copies the recorded file to the clipboard. Continue reading...

Collaboration is a valuable feature of Forms that can significantly boost teaching and learning efficiency. Teachers can collaborate to create quizzes, while students can work together on team assignments. Whether you're a teacher or a student, the collaboration feature streamlines teamwork and simplifies the creation of forms and quizzes. In this blog, I will show you how to add collaborators to your form/quiz. You can also try to add collaborators from this template. Now let’s dive in! Share a form/quiz to collaborate To add a collaborator to your form/quiz, you need to first open a form/quiz. Next, click on the "..." icon located in the upper right corner. Fr…

We are excited for you to join us at Microsoft Ignite! This post is your one-stop for all the Microsoft Purview and Priva sessions and activities we have planned. About Microsoft Ignite Discover the best of what's next in technology, problem-solve with experts, and make global connections. Empower yourself to lead your organization by attending Microsoft Ignite. What: Visit Microsoft Ignite to learn more | Register today | Session Scheduler (now live - register, sign in, and build out your agenda) When: Online: November 15–16, 2023 | In Seattle: November 14–17, 2023 Presenters: Microsoft, MVPs, and community members Twitter & hashtag: @MS_Ignite | #…

There is a lot of great documentation on Exchange Online migrations. The issue can be knowing where to start. This blog post is a consolidation of information and aims to help you understand various types of Exchange Online migration options, how you would pick the right one, how to prevent issues and what to do if something goes wrong. In this post, we will focus on Exchange Online migrations using Microsoft tools only. We will not cover 3rd party, public folder, or PST import requests. Types of migrations Exchange Online migrations can be categorized in several ways. Considering directionality, we have 2 types: Onboarding (migration to Exchange Online)…

We continue to expand the Microsoft AppSource ecosystem. For this volume, 61 new offers successfully met the onboarding criteria and went live. See details of the new offers below: [ATTACH=full]55545[/ATTACH] Advent Calendar by Accelerator 365: Reply Ltd's Advent Calendar lets you count down to the Christmas holiday with a different surprise every day. Enjoy Christmas songs or videos, holiday recipes or craft ideas, and a personalized message from your organization. The app is part of Accelerator 365, a suite of apps and solutions that can be added to your Microsoft SharePoint environment. [ATTACH=full]55546[/ATTACH] Ask1up: 1up uses natural language processing …

Vendor-hosted conferences like the upcoming Microsoft Ignite announce the latest products and services, serving as an opportunity for users around the world to encounter new technologies. On the other hand, technical conferences where community leaders such as Microsoft MVPs and Regional Directors—experts in technology—come together to share technical knowledge and insights, are held in various places. These conferences offer a chance to hear firsthand experiences of those who have applied the knowledge they've learned, thus supporting business development through the learning of a wide range of participants from the same industry or those using the same technologies. …

The Microsoft Learn AI Cloud Skills Challenge wrapped up an incredible learning journey with the AI pitch Challenge; a showcase of innovation where passionate learners brought their visions to life through the power of AI. These creators shared how they would harness Microsoft's AI technology to craft solutions for the future in a 3-minute video pitch. Out of many, five outstanding winners emerged, each with a unique and compelling vision. This series of blog posts spotlights each creator sharing the transformative potential of their ideas. I’m Nischal Sharma, a computer science engineering student from India. During my summer break I joined the Microsoft A…

It’s an exciting time for Azure IoT and the digital transformation in physical operations! Join us at Ignite 2023 to learn what the teams have been up to lately (Hint: we think you’re gonna like it [ATTACH=full]55535[/ATTACH]). Don’t miss out, Ignite is the best place to get up to speed on the latest information and technologies from Azure IoT and Edge platforms and connect with product teams. We’ll have several breakout sessions to share announcements and updates, along with product roundtable discussions to provide feedback and share your needs and challenges with teams developing the next generation of Azure IoT services, platform, and tools. To h…

If you have used the new Azure Logic Apps Data Mapper public preview, you have likely discovered that there is a separate VS Code extension for the Data Mapper functionality. This was a temporary measure that allowed us to work on the Data Mapper independent of our designer enhancements. As we prepare for the upcoming General Availability of Data Mapper, we have merged the Data Mapper extension with the Logic Apps extension. The Logic Apps extension now includes the Data Mapper capabilities. This unified extension will streamline our publishing efforts and reduce friction for customers as they use the latest versions of our software. Note: The Logic Apps ext…

End-to-end (E2E) TLS encryption for intra-cluster traffic between App Service front-ends and workers is now in Preview for Linux resources on Standard App Service Plans and above. To better understand the importance of this feature, it would be helpful to understand the current set-up on App Service and how incoming traffic and intra-clusters traffic are handled. Incoming requests to App Service could always be secured with TLS encryption on both multi-tenant and App Service Environments (ASE). However, these incoming HTTPS requests would have TLS terminated on our front-ends and continue as HTTP to the workers running the application workloads. For a few years n…

The Azure family of visualization GPU VMs has gained a new member. Many customers have used the VMs in our existing portfolio for a variety of visualization workloads as well as gaming scenarios. The feedback we have received consistently is that workloads with intense graphic generation and streaming require a different type of VM configuration than what has been available. Secondly, as time has passed, customers want to take advantage of newer GPU architectures available from our GPU technology partners. Optimized for gaming scenarios With these clear guidelines in mind, we are excited to announce the general availability of our new NGads V620 series virtua…

Recently, I was involved in a conversation about a topic so many of our customers are facing: working to improve the performance and efficiency of their organization. In that conversation we discussed how my colleagues at Viva Glint and even at the highest levels of Microsoft are dealing with our customers’ (often unjustified) concern about the productivity of their employees – especially as hybrid and remote work is being refined and adjusted. But beyond flexible work schedules, we’re hearing more and more about needing to help ensure that work is getting done effectively, efficiently, and consistently – wherever and whenever it is completed. As part of the effort…

We’re excited to announce a new capability in Intune and the Windows Update for Business deployment service to simplify your Windows 11 upgrade experience. If determining eligibility for Windows 11 has been a challenge for your organization, and you want to help protect your devices with the latest Windows feature updates, this is a great solution for you. No longer will you need to worry about creating and maintaining eligibility groups. Let’s dive into the details. Deploy Windows 11 and Windows 10, version 22H2 feature updates together Previously, you had to consider eligibility when creating a Windows 11 feature update deployment in Intune or Windows Update for…

Due to the complexity of the Linux boot process, the number of active releases from different distributions with compatibility challenges, and the support and serviceability timelines of in-market products, a limited exception to the NX signing requirements has been granted. This limited exception is granted for shims serving in-market products.  This exception will be reviewed regularly, and once component versions are identified that meet the compatibility requirements, new shim signing requests for products targeting the identified components will no longer be exempt. Additionally, when shim functionality is developed to provide compatibility for older, non-com…

Azure Stack HCI (hyperconverged infrastructure) is a solution that hosts virtualized Windows and Linux workloads and their storage in a hybrid environment that combines on-premises infrastructure with Azure cloud services. AKS Hybrid is an on-premise implementation of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) orchestrator which automates running containerised applications at scale and runs on Windows Server with Hyper-V, and the Stack HCI platform. Together they provide a solution for hosting highly available workloads on-premise. Azure Arc is a cloud based control plane which can be used for managing on-premise AKS Hybrid instances. Flux is an open sourced set of continuous deliver…

[ATTACH=full]55519[/ATTACH] Optimizing your Azure cloud investments is crucial for your organization’s success, helping you minimize unnecessary expenses, and ultimately drive better ROI. At Microsoft, we’re committed to optimizing your Azure environments and teaching you how to do it with resources, tools, and guidance, supporting continuous improvement of your cloud architectures and workloads, in both new and existing projects. We want you to gain confidence to reach your cloud goals, to become more effective and efficient when you have a better grasp of how to work in the cloud most successfully. To do that, our wide range of optimization skilling opportunities hel…