Microsoft Support & Discussions

By the order of the government of Greenland, a new law has been passed on the determination of time in the country. The law stipulates that: Greenland's standard time will be UTC-2 from 25 March 2023, instead of UTC-3. Greenland will not switch to Daylight Saving Time this year, 2023, as the standard time for Greenland will change from UTC-3 to UTC-2. Greenland will change to Daylight Saving Time again in 2024 and onwards. How these time changes will be reflected, can also be understood from the table below: Year Standard time for Greenland Daylight Saving Time 2022 UTC-3 UTC-2 2023 UTC-3 (Jan – Mar) | UTC-2 …

Welcome to the September 2023 update. This month, we are thrilled to share that Python in Excel is now available to all Enterprise, Business, Education, and Family and Personal users running Beta Channel on Windows, starting with build 16.0.16818.20000 – and then to the other platforms at a later date. Also, we are excited to introduce the Python Editor from Excel Labs and Copilot support for Python in Excel. Tune into our upcoming Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Reddit, r/excel, for questions, answers, and more information on Python in Excel. Submit your questions when the AMA goes live on September 27 at 9 AM PT, and join us live for answers and discussions on S…

By Julie Sanford, Vice President, Partner GTM, Programs & Experiences Investments in Microsoft AI and the Microsoft Cloud are enabling businesses across all industries to enhance revenue and profitability, streamline processes, reduce costs, and improve delivery of their products and services. AI also is empowering employees with more effective decision-making and improved productivity. As a result, customer urgency to adopt AI is generating an unprecedented opportunity for Microsoft partners to create differentiated market value and drive customer success. Nine out of 10 leaders believe AI will give their organization a competitive edge as they apply th…

In this blog, we will walk through the process of creating a semantic function-based solution that can accept a string like "please share all sign-in locations?" and generate a KQL (Kusto Query Language) query. This query will be used to retrieve log analytics data from the signin table. The same logic can be used to generate data from other tables as well. Setting up environment Pre-requisite - Visual studio code Please install below extension - Jupyter (Publisher- Microsoft) - Python (Publisher- Microsoft) - Pylance (Publisher- Microsoft) - Semantic Kernel Tools (Publisher- Microsoft) - Python Please install below python packages …

Introduction Part 1 Architecture and Scenario Creating resources in Azure Create Azure Storage Containers Create Azure Key Vaults Create Azure Data Factory: With Key Vault Access Part 2 Configure Azure Data Factory Source Control Construct Azure Data Factory Data Pipeline Publishing Concept for Azure Data Factory Configure Deployed Azure Resources. Part 3 The YAML Pipeline Structure The Publish Process ARM Template Parameterization ADF ARM Template Deployment Part 4 How to use Azure DevOps Pipeline Templates This section will build on that and include how to build/deploy larger Data Factories which leverage Azure Resour…

As the new school year kicks off in the Northern Hemisphere, we are highlighting a few useful ways that schools, institutions, and educators can use the new wave of AI tools. You can easily try out some of the latest Azure OpenAI Service tools for education institutions, experiment with prompts, and learn tips for using AI for teaching and learning. In addition, we are sharing a new short “Getting Started with AI in Education” whitepaper written by Dr. Ethan Mollick, a professor at Wharton and Dr. Lilach Mollick, Director of Pedagogy for Wharton Interactive, two Professors that have been on the leading edge of AI in education. Let’s break down the 3 topics for today! …

With Windows 365 Boot, you can log directly into your Windows 365 Cloud PC as the primary Windows experience on the device. When you power on your device, Windows 365 Boot will take you to your Windows 11 login experience. After login, you will be directly connected to your Windows 365 Cloud PC with no additional steps. This is a great solution for shared devices, where logging in with a unique user identity can take you to your own personal and secure Cloud PC. Last week, we announced Microsoft Copilot, your everyday companion, including Copilot in Windows, and the coming general availability of Windows 365 Boot and Windows 365 Switch. Today, Windows 365 Boot is…

Windows 365 Switch is now available, enabling you to easily move between a Windows 365 Cloud PC and your local desktop using the same familiar keyboard commands, as well as a mouse-click or a swipe gesture. Windows 365 Switch enables a seamless experience from within Windows 11 via the Task view feature. A Windows 365 Cloud PC is required on the device, and from there, Windows 365 Switch will show up automatically inside the Task view feature. This new feature is especially helpful to use in conjunction with bring-your-own-PC (BYOPC) scenarios when you connect from your own Windows device to a secure company owned Cloud PC. Especially in times when business wants to do…

Today, new innovations for Windows 11 will start to become available. Most of these new features will be enabled by default in the October 2023 optional non-security preview release for all editions of Windows 11, version 22H2 while others may roll out gradually. If you'd like the IT-managed devices in your organization to receive the latest features right away, you can enable optional updates using policy. Now let's take a closer look at a few of these innovations and how they can benefit your organization. Security enhancements We're excited to announce enhanced management and capabilities for Windows Firewall! To help provide better overall protection, you c…

The enhancements to Test Base for Microsoft 365 continue! In this article, we share the new Test Base capabilities that make it even easier to test your applications against Windows client and server operating system updates. Let’s see what you can now do in a Microsoft-managed test environment. Test your applications on Windows 11, version 23H2 Test Base offers the capability to test Windows 11, version 23H2 by navigating to the Feature update section, then Insider Channel, and a dropdown to select the Feature On (with new features rolled out) option. Screenshot of selecting your Insider channel from a dropdown menu of different Windows 11 releases. An init…

Announcements have been a core part of Viva Engage for years but have recently become a critical way to keep employees informed and engaged with leaders. The broad delivery of announcements across Viva Engage, Viva Connections, Outlook, and Microsoft Teams means that employees can use rich engagement features like reactions, replies, and sharing from within the apps that they use every day. Analytics help track the reach of the announcements, meaning our customers have come to rely on announcements to help run their business and measure the impact their communications are having in your network. We’ve taken it one step further by enabling specific employees as lead…

Bring external data into your Microsoft 365 Copilot experience to ground generative AI results using connectors and plugins. Use Microsoft Graph connectors to integrate the data sources you want with Semantic Index for Copilot. This option pre-indexes defined read-only information used for retrieval with your prompts to drive the most relevant AI-generated responses. Use managed and trusted plugins, such as OpenAI plugins, Microsoft Teams message extensions, and Power Platform connectors. Instead of pre-indexing information, plugins optimize for real-time API based data retrieval, and they can optionally write-back data. Mary David Pasch, Microsoft 365 Cop…

Introduction We would like to inform you the upcoming default security type change to Trusted Launch that will affect new virtual machines (VMs), virtual machine scale sets (VMSS), and OS Disk resource deployment in Azure. The change will set OS image to Trusted Launch (TL) compatible image and set security type as Trusted Launch by default. This change is a result of our ongoing efforts to improve the foundational security of our cloud computing platform. This change will take effect in Azure PowerShell (PS) & command-line interface (CLI) with the November 2023 release, and will affect all new Azure VMs, VMSS and Managed OS Disks deployments. What …

As the new school year kicks off in the Northern Hemisphere, we are highlighting a few useful ways that schools, institutions, and educators can use the new wave of AI tools. You can easily try out some of the latest Azure OpenAI Service tools for education institutions, experiment with prompts, and learn tips for using AI for teaching and learning. In addition, we are sharing a new short “Getting Started with AI in Education” whitepaper written by Dr. Ethan Mollick, a professor at Wharton and Dr. Lilach Mollick, Director of Pedagogy for Wharton Interactive, two Professors that have been on the leading edge of AI in education. Let’s break down the 3 topics for today! …

Earlier this year, we announced the general availability of Azure Communications Gateway (ACG), a native Azure service designed for telecom operators to seamlessly connect their fixed and mobile networks to Microsoft Teams Phone. Since then, we have been working hard at developing product enhancements to better meet the needs of the operators and their business customers. We are excited to share some of the highlights of these enhancements with you. Our focus has been on delivering features that enable operators to offer a comprehensive and reliable solution for PSTN connectivity in Microsoft Teams, as well as expanding the range of Unified Communications as a Service …

Co-authors: Asaf Nakash (@Asaf_Nakash), Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Defender for Cloud @Catalin Esanu, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Defender for Cloud In recent years we’ve witnessed an accelerated migration of data to the cloud with data sprawl with security blind spots as unintended consequences. Attackers have turned their attention to finding these “unknown unknowns” and easily exploit unintentionally misconfigured and exposed cloud data resources. It should come as no surprise that it’s more critical than ever to identify where sensitive data exists and is accessed in resources across increasingly complex, distributed, and dynamic multicloud e…

Virtual machines are arguably still one of the most fundamental core infrastructure components when it comes to cloud computing. Whether you are hosting databases, custom apps, runner jobs, or leveraging them as nodes for your container hosts, VMs are core to your arsenal of options. At the same time, given they are designed to host operating systems, and come in all shapes and sizes, they are one of the core areas of Azure compute you should aim to optimize as quickly as possible as part of your FinOps: Cloud Efficiency initiatives. What is Cloud Efficiency Resource Utilization & Efficiency (finops.org) Per the FinOps Foundation, “In context to FinO…

Join us on Thursday, October 5th, 2023 for our latest "What's New in Microsoft EDU" webinar! These 30 minute webinars are put on by the Microsoft Education Product Management group and happen once per month, at both 8:00am Pacific Time and 4:00pm Pacific time to cover as many global time zones as possible around the world. And don’t worry – we’ll be recording these and posting on our Microsoft Education YouTube channel in the new “ , so you’ll always to able to watch later or share with others! Here is our October 2023 webinar agenda: What’s new in Microsoft Teams for EDU What’s new in Microsoft 365 EDU AMA - Ask Microsoft EDU Anything (Q&A) How to…

We continue to expand the Microsoft AppSource ecosystem. For this volume, 77 new offers successfully met the onboarding criteria and went live. See details of the new offers below: Get it now in our marketplace [attachment=51191:name] Advanced Purchasing: Advanced Purchasing from ERP Connect is designed to enhance Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to automate purchasing, improve emails to vendors, easily manage SKUs, and more. The add-in calculates average lead times by item and vendor, dashboards late POs, and shows item purchase histories. [attachment=51192:name] contentACCESS for Outlook: With the contentACCESS add-in for Microsoft Out…

The landscape of cloud computing is evolving rapidly and more organizations are transitioning towards modern microservices architectures. Kubernetes has become the foundation to achieve scalability and blazing fast performance. Azure Kubernetes Service has emerged as a powerful solution, providing a robust and managed Kubernetes environment. As applications scale and demand for faster data access intensify, the need for efficient data caching mechanism becomes apparent. Azure Cache for Redis, a fully managed, open-source compatible, in-memory data store fits the bill! Since Redis is an open-source caching technology, application developers could choose to provision Red…

Introduction Last year Microsoft introduced resource specific structured logging in Azure Firewall, it is well documented here. This year it was announced the general availability as described here. In this post I will dive deep and show the expected cost optimization of this new structured logging, and what is causing this saving. I will use a sample record of a network rule log to explain it. Please note that this saving applies only if the sink is Log Analytics. Log Analytics Log Analytics is a widely used logging solution from Microsoft and its main cost driver is the ingestion, measured in GB. Every ingested network rule, application rule, NAT rule will b…

Skill development plays a vital role in transforming the next generation of professionals. It gives students the opportunity to explore new technologies that can not only impact their future employability but guide them into understanding the possibilities that technology can bring in solving real world problems. The Pakistan User Group, led by MVP Faisal Fareed, recognised the need of equipping students with practical knowledge and skills in Microsoft Business Applications. The Pakistan User Group Faisal Fareed, a Business Applications MVP based in Australia, previously studied at the University of Karachi, saw a gap to empower students to grow their skills with…

Why use a read replica Azure Postgres Flexible Server is the latest Postgres offering sitting on optimized Linux based infrastructure. This fully managed service offers true open-source PostgreSQL with added benefits including built in resiliency, performance monitoring and easy scaling. One of the newest, and most widely adopted features of Flexible Servers is the built in read replica capability. Introduced in March 2023, this feature enables your database to replicate out to read replica instances, and have them fully managed as part of the service. Having the replication process managed ensures healthy operation and prevents on of the most common Postgres iss…

In their drive to deliver innovative connected experiences, businesses have seen a sharp rise in the number of applications they manage. Effectively integrating these applications that stretch across on-premises and multi-cloud environments is a challenge. Achieving seamless integration is not only crucial for efficient operations, but it's also a key strategy to outpace competitors in the market. We are excited to announce our upcoming webinar on Azure Integration Services, "Unleash the Power of a Modern Integration Platform". In this 90-minute, interactive session, you will hear from analysts, product leaders, and our customers on how Microsoft's enterprise integrat…

The latest build of the MSIX Packaging tool (v1.2023.807.0) is now available. It contains features to help users convert packages easily, and the developer tooling gets a boost with additional capabilities built into Visual Studio. Automated accelerators In the June 2023 update, we delved into how accelerators serve as an easy button to streamline the conversion process. We’re pleased to share that accelerators have now reached general availability! Also, with the latest update, when you’re applying a fix for your app using an accelerator, the MSIX Packing tool will display a notification that outlines which FixTypes require manual intervention. Screenshot of c…