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I’m baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! Thanks for all the messages asking “Where is the news update?” “Anna, what is new?” and more. Message received (and sorry!). I’m back and giving you a summary of all the updates you might have missed this year, 2023. By the way, if you want to see a summary of all the updates in 2022, check out the blog Azure SQL News Update: A Year in Review and our YouTube channel https://aka.ms/azuresqlyt. I’m going to get right into it, but I want to throw out there – if I missed something, please let me know and I will update it here! Let’s start with Azure SQL Managed Instance. Private Link, a service that helps you have a secure, isolated conne…

March 2023 brought both new updates and big announcements – spanning the value of AI, becoming acquainted with a zippier Teams, and we got even Loop’ier. Keep scrolling to listed to the podcast episode and learn more about each feature below. In this episode, we cover the following March updates: File web part now: “File and Media”, Viva Connections on iPad, Microsoft Edge + Adobe Acrobat PDF Engine, Microsoft Lists + Approvals app in Teams, OneDrive: Favorite/Unfavorite, Suggested files in 1:1 chat, Microsoft Word: Send to Kindle, and more. We have two guests on the podcast: 1) Matt McKenzie, Director of Microsoft 365 product marketing, shares insights abou…

MIME types describe the media type of content, either in email, or served by web servers or web applications. They are intended to help provide a hint as to how the content should be processed and displayed. Examples of MIME types: text/html for HTML documents. text/plain for plain text. text/css for Cascading Style Sheets. text/javascript for JavaScript files. text/markdown for Markdown files. application/octet-stream for binary files where user action is expected. Server default configurations vary wildly and set different default MIME-type values for files with no defined content type. As new content types are invented or added to web servers, the user…

This article provides information about release-cadence changes for Microsoft Configuration Manager, introducing a new release cycle starting after the release of a Configuration Manager baseline version in 2303. To learn about the changes introduced in previous updates for Configuration Manager, branding, and baselines, see What's new in Configuration Manager incremental versions, Microsoft Configuration Manager FAQ, and, Baseline and update versions. As Windows is moving to a once-a-year update model, Configuration Manager will be better aligning to that cadence by moving from three to two updates a year. The next release of Microsoft Configuration Manager after…

Author(s): Prashant Atri is a Senior Cloud Solution Architect in Global Partner Solutions (GPS), US team. Vengatesh Parasuraman is a Senior Program Manager in Azure Synapse Customer Success Engineering (CSE) team. ADF and Synapse Pipelines offer a feature that allows pipeline execution to be triggered based on various events, such as storage blob creation or deletion. This can be used by customers to implement event-driven pipeline orchestration. If you want to learn how to create storage event triggers in ADF/Synapse pipelines, you can refer to this document. In most cases, customers protect their storage account connections using firewall rules or p…

In a prior blog, we announced the General Availability (GA) of the Microsoft Purview DevOps policies integration with SQL Server 2022 (Arc-enabled). Today, we are launching DevOps policies for Azure SQL Database into GA. In a nutshell, you can use DevOps policies to provision access to database system metadata at-scale, securely and inexpensively. Who needs that access? Your internal IT/DevOps personnel or your external contractors that are tasked with monitoring health, tuning performance, and reviewing audit information in SQL systems. With DevOps policies, you can now manage access to SQL Dynamic Management Views and Functions (DMVs and DMFs) from a centr…

We are excited to share new and updated capabilities for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management. Vulnerability management is a moving target, and we hope these updates will enable you to enhance your vulnerability management program and better protect your organization. Our April update unveils the following enhancements and new capabilities: Enhanced security baseline assessments, including new Microsoft benchmarks, and the ability to add exceptions that exclude the assessment of specific configurations on certain devices. New “Pending restart” information provides information about the reboot status of devices. The ability to view data for devices that a…

Virtual appointments have become increasingly popular, and with the rise of the hybrid workplace, they have become an essential tool for every organization. In this post, we will explore some unique and interesting ways to use the Virtual Appointments app in Microsoft Teams that you may not have considered before. There are endless possibilities for how Virtual Appointments can modernize your organization, limited only by your imagination. Interactive Sessions with your Service Desk Calling into a service desk is often a frustrating experience for users. Some would rather live with a broken system and hope it eventually fixes itself rather than trying to get…

Healthcare has been on the leading edge of a transformative time. To deliver more flexible and personalized care, caregivers must be able to connect virtually with patients and virtual care teams more than ever before. They need modern devices and digital apps to improve the collection accuracy and security of patients’ medical records and reduce time spent on paper-based processes and administrative activities. With some roles supporting healthcare processes from home, healthcare providers raced to enable digital tools such as Microsoft Teams[1] to empower employees to work from anywhere. Patients have also become more digitally sophisticated, wanting more persona…

Introduction As a developer, you know how important it is to keep your applications secure and fast. That's why you'll be thrilled to hear about the latest features coming to Azure Cache for Redis Enterprise and Enterprise Flash. This month, Azure Cache for Redis Enterprise is releasing a set of exciting features for preview that not only improve developer efficiency but also enhance security. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting out, there's something here for everyone. So, if you're ready to take your development to the next level, be sure to check out the detailed list of features released for public preview this April and get started with Azu…

A banner image with text: "Microsoft 365 Admin Digest: Your monthly IT admin blog for all things Microsoft 365.” What does Copilot mean for Microsoft 365 IT administration? How can Microsoft 365 certifications help you along your career? We take a look at these burning questions in this month’s issue of the Microsoft 365 Admin Digest. There’s also a spotlight on the latest admin experience with Viva Topics, a highlight on integrated apps within and outside the Microsoft 365 admin center, and an overview of the new Intune suite. Bonus for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) – check out how Business Assist frees you to focus on running your business and learn about h…

Are you tired of spending countless hours on administrative tasks instead of focusing on what you do best - teaching? Well, we have some exciting news for you! We've compiled a list of the top 10 templates for EDU users that will help you streamline your workload, improve school events, and promote student engagement. Let's dive in and explore these fantastic templates! Course evaluation survey: assess various aspects of a course like teaching performance, content and experience. Use This Template >> [attachment=36433:name] Community volunteer registration form: encourage students volunteering and review responses to promote and coordinat…

Microsoft 365 Defender Monthly news April 2023 Edition [attachment=36396:name] This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from March 2023. Legend: [attachment=36397:name] Product videos [attachment=36398:name] Webcast (recordings) [attachment=36399:name] Docs on Microsoft [attachment=36400:name] Blogs on Microsoft [attachment=36401:name] GitHub [attachment=36402:name] External [attachment=36403:name] Product improvements [attachment=36404:name] Previews / Announcements …

New look and feel for Query command bar Query command bar has undergone a major redesign to provide an improved user experience. The new design is not only visually appealing, but also makes it easier and faster for users to access the commands they need. A few highlights worth calling out: Copy menu is where you can find commands related to copying a query for sharing purposes. Pin to dashboard got promoted to the top level as it is the easiest way to get started with ADX dashboards. A few useful resources are available from the KQL tools menu. Export --> Download is where you can save the content of a query tab to your local machine. …

After using the Azure Maps Creator Onboarding Tool to create an indoor map from your floorplans, the default result can be customized and enhanced to your unique scenario. For example, you can customize your indoor map's look and feel to reflect your brand colors or emphasize rooms or specific areas of interest. While we think Azure Maps Creator already gives you a beautiful default style, out of the box, you can customize your specific experience using Azure Maps directly or by leveraging the open-source style editor Maputnik. We have made Maputnik compatible with Azure Maps styling service. To get started, follow these steps: Create custom styles for indo…

Meet Seth Addo Meet Seth Addo, a Gold Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador and Computer Science student at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Seth has developed a fantastic PowerApps app sample for performing basic authentication in a Power Platform application. In this app, users can enter their login credentials, which are compared with a table containing usernames and passwords. If the entered credentials match, users are granted access to a protected area of the application. This approach can be extended with additional functionality like password reset and multi-factor authentication to enhance application security. Try the PowerApps Login app today for a simpl…

Hi everyone! Brandon Wilson (Cloud Solution Architect/Engineer) here to follow up on the post I authored previously for the Well-Architected Cost Optimization Assessment offering, with another customer offering we have known as the Well-Architected Cost Optimization Implementation. This offering can be considered as a continuation/”part 2” of sorts for the Well-Architected Cost Optimization Assessment, where the goal is to help you implement some of the findings relating to Azure Reservations, Azure Savings Plans, Azure Hybrid Benefits, along with cleaning up some of that cloud waste sitting around. Just as before (and in case you are a new reader), we’ll touch a littl…

In some cases, like when customers use Object-relational Mapping tools (ORM) Like Entity framework or LINQ, part of the code at the end will be converted to a TSQL executable statement. For example, The LINQ with .Where () method will be a TSQL Query with a Where clause : Query Syntax and Method Syntax in LINQ (C#) | Microsoft Learn Write LINQ queries in C# | Microsoft Learn This can cause issues like creating an IN clause that explicitly includes a large number of values (maybe a hundred or more of values separated by commas), which means more consume of resources and an Index\table scan or return errors like 8623 or 8632 For more information: IN…

The Azure SQL Auditing feature is used to track database events and writes them to an audit log in your Azure storage account, Log Analytics workspace, or Event Hubs. If you enable SQL Audit on your Azure SQL database, there will be default settings that your Audit is configured with, including the default Action Groups "BATCH_COMPLETED_GROUP", "SUCCESSFUL_DATABASE_AUTHENTICATION_GROUP","FAILED_DATABASE_AUTHENTICATION_GROUP" If you use Log Analytics, Blob Storage, or both, you will see different Audit Actions as below: - On Log Analytics: AzureDiagnostics | where Category == 'SQLSecurityAuditEvents' |where LogicalServerName_s =~ 'ServerName' |summa…

While many folks observe April 1 as April Fool’s Day, we in the SQL Tools team celebrate April 1 as April Tools Day, a day when we debunk myths surrounding the tools for SQL Server. We recommend having some good chocolate to honor the occasion. Now, you may wonder how we are aware of the misconceptions that exist for the different tools for SQL Server. Some thoughts we hear from direct conversation, for example at conferences and on social media. But one of the best resources is the comments that folks leave when responding to a survey. For example, you may have been using Azure Data Studio and had a dialogue pop-up that asked if you would recommend ADS to …

Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server supports over 50 PostgreSQL extensions. We are also constantly adding new extensions to expand on the functionality provided by the PostgreSQL engine. Until now we have not been providing support for the most important extension from the Postgres ecosystem, namely pg_carbonara. While many developers and DBAs are aware of PostGIS as geo routing extension for Postgres or pg_stat_statements to track slow queries, not many are aware of pg_carbonara, which can be seen as a mandatory extension for a lunch break that allows you to cook a real Italian carbonara. What pg_carbonara does is guide you with step-by-step instructi…

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Monthly news April 2023 Edition [attachment=36346:name] This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from March 2023. Legend: [attachment=36347:name] Product videos [attachment=36348:name] Webcasts (recordings) [attachment=36349:name] Docs on Microsoft [attachment=36350:name] Blogs on Microsoft [attachment=36351:name] GitHub [attachment=36352:name] External content [attachment=36353:name] Product improvements [attachment=36354:name] Announcements Micro…

Introduction The objective of this article is to share a strategy that has been implemented for a client that asked how we can protect its production branches from having secrets in code. After few discussions we have highlighted the following requirements: The solution should be simple to implement: no more than one script to maintain and we didn’t want to have some sort of regex file to teach the script what is a secret. A comprehensive monitoring dashboard should be available to reference all our repositories, pointing out the ones that have secrets and ideally what kind of secrets have been founded (ex: SQL connection strings, Certificates with pr…

I'm sure you've heard about ChatGPT by now. AI capable of solving a number of different tasks. In this article, we'll look at how we can use prompting to learn more about a topic. Let's focus on a topic feared by many computer science students, Big O notation, how to calculate time complexity in algorithm. Enough from me, lets hear from the AI using nothing but prompts :) Let's take on the mindset of a student. References - If you want to try this on your own, try signing up to Azure Open AI What is Azure OpenAI Service? - Azure Cognitive Services | Microsoft Learn - Copilot is another interesting choice, GitHub Copilot · Your AI pair programmer · GitHub So th…

Happy last day of March, MTC’ers! Is it just me, or did this month go by suuuper quick? Without further ado, let’s jump into this week’s recap of the MTC! MTC Moments of the Week Our last MTC Member of the Week spotlight for March goes to @LukeJMadden! While Luke is a newer member to the Community, he’s already been helping out other MTC’ers in the Azure Architecture and Microsoft Bookings forums. Thank you for being here, Luke! We had a double feature over in Events on Thursday! First up, we had a brand new episode of Unpacking Endpoint Management with @Danny Guillory and @Steve Thomas (GLADIATOR). Our hosts were joined live by experts from Mi…