Microsoft Support & Discussions

What is Copilot Studio? Microsoft Copilot Studio is an innovative graphical interface designed to create and manage copilots, introduced with latest updates during MS Build’24, over existing Power Virtual Agents. These copilots are AI-powered conversational interfaces leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) and various knowledge bases. With Copilot Studio, you can deploy your copilot across multiple platforms such as web browsers, custom websites, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365, Facebook, Telegram, and more. You can enhance its capabilities by integrating Power Apps to monitor performance metrics. Moreover, it supports integration with diverse knowledge sources inc…

Microsoft MVPs, Kirsty McGrath and Daniel Anderson, demonstrate Copilot on a giant Surface Pro. Copilot+ PC launched during Microsoft Build, and the announcement has been well received by end users with a series of engagement events taking place across Sydney by Microsoft Australia. Microsoft MVPs also played a significant role in educating the audience on Copilot capabilities through fun activities and demonstrations. Kirsty McGrath, an M365 MVP, is passionate about sharing the latest news around Copilot. She hosts the Microsoft 365 Adoption - Sydney user group, as well as shares adoption resources on her YouTube channel. Kirsty McGrath showcases Copilot…

Welcome to the Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors Program Interview Series! In this series, we will hear and learn from current and old Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors about their personal experiences with the Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors Program and why they think students should join and be a part of the program and community. Today, I will interview Deepthi Balasubramanian, a Gold Student Ambassador from India. Who is currently a final-year student pursuing a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering at Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai (India). His interests lie in AI, Cloud Computing, and Software Engineering. …

Discover how the cloud can make you a better and more productive developer. It can even improve how you collaborate with other developers. For our July roundup, we’re exploring the latest tools, training, and resources that will help you harness the power of the cloud in your development workflows. We have info on cloud-based dev environments (like Microsoft Dev Box and GitHub Codespaces), coding companions (such as GitHub Copilot for Azure), and cloud-native tools (like .NET Aspire). Read on and find out how you can improve productivity and build better apps. We also touch on other developer-related topics from around Microsoft, including a look at working with Data Wran…

Here are the latest Windows 11 features, capabilities, services, and tools that you can start using this month. Based on your feedback, we’ve also included information to help you catch up on lifecycle milestones and preview opportunities. We hope that this paints a better timeline and helps you embrace a secure, cloud-native future with Windows 11. [HEADING=1]New in Windows security[/HEADING] [ENCRYPTION] Configure Windows Hello credentials to encrypt or decrypt files in known folders on the Windows device (for example, Documents, Desktop, and Pictures). Personal Data Encryption (PDE) along with BitLocker protects files and volumes while the system is at rest until …

If you’ve been using driver synchronization updates via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), you may already be aware of the newest cloud-based driver services. Many are already enjoying the benefits of managing their driver updates with Microsoft cloud. This means that we’ll soon be deprecating WSUS driver synchronization. Thanks to everyone who participated in our WSUS driver synchronization deprecation survey. Your input has helped us to plan an optimal transition for you and your organization. Out of the participants who use WSUS, only 34% reported that they use it to synchronize drivers. Most of this 34% reported that they are in the process of implementing a di…

We’ve been gradually rolling out Forms data sync to Excel since early this year. During this process, we actively collected user feedback and iterated to enhance the feature for various use cases. I’m excited to announce that this feature is now fully available for all customers, complete with additional capabilities. Let’s explore these updates together. You can also try it from this template. Create from Excel for the web If you prefer to keep all your data in Excel and are used to starting your data collection journey there, you can now create a form directly from Excel for the web – no need to visit Forms. Simply click "Insert" and select "Forms" in the ribb…

In this guide I am going to show steps to connect Windows Azure VM to Azure SQL DB using Managed Identity covering create user in Azure SQL DB , connect using SSMS and connect using powershell Requirements: Windows 10 or 11 Azure Virtual Machine with system managed identity enabled and admin privileges to run powershell scripts Azure SQL DB server with entra admin access and database for testing SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) latest version Get required information from VM and managed identity: Use Object (principal) ID to get Application ID Go to Entra ID and search Object (principal) ID Select result to get Application ID …

Welcome to the June 2024 edition of What's New in Copilot for Microsoft 365! Every month we highlight new admin and end-user features in Copilot for Microsoft 365, enabling you to better prepare, plan, and roll out Copilot features that help your users be more productive and efficient. This month you will learn about expanded availability, new reporting on adoption and impact, Copilot Deployment Kit to drive adoption with your users, a plugin to extend Copilot in Teams meetings capabilities, and new end-user features in Word, PowerPoint, SharePoint and more. Admin and management capabilities: Expanded availability of Copilot for Microsoft 365 Review Copilo…

In this blog series dedicated to Microsoft's technical articles, we'll highlight our MVPs' favorite article along with their personal insights. Dicky Fung, AI Platform MVP, Hong Kong What is Azure AI Studio? - Azure AI Studio | Microsoft Learn “This article made a strong impression on me, as it comprehensively introduces Azure AI Studio as an enterprise-grade platform that provides a range of capabilities to help developers explore, build, test, and deploy generative AI applications in a secure and responsible manner. It highlights the key features of AI Studio, the use of state-of-the-art AI tools and models, the collaborative environment, the flexibilit…

In June, we introduced exciting enhancements to Microsoft Teams. I regularly use Copilot compose to help make my draft messages clearer and in the tone that I’m aiming for. Additionally, the new meeting organizer controls let me manage access to meeting transcripts, recordings, AI-generated recaps, and Copilot. Even simple updates make a big difference in my daily work, like the ability to mute and unmute myself from the Windows taskbar. The monthly blog covers everything from chat to meetings and town halls, from Teams Phone to Teams Rooms, and more. Whether you're a regular Teams user, an IT administrator, or a frontline manager, you'll find something new and exc…

In our increasingly digital world, the importance of giving a voice and image to chatbots cannot be overstated. Transforming a chatbot from an impersonal, automated responder into a relatable and personable assistant significantly enhances user engagement. Today we're thrilled to announce Azure AI Speech's latest updates, enhancing text to speech capabilities for a more engaging and lifelike chatbot experience. These updates include: A wider range of multilingual voices for natural and authentic interactions; More prebuilt avatar options, with latest sample codes for seamless GPT-4o integration; and A new text stream API that significantly reduces latency for…

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about cross-tenant (sometimes referred to tenant to tenant or T2T) mailbox migrations. In Part 2, we’ll cover how to troubleshoot issues you may encounter during cross-tenant mailbox migrations. There are several tools we wanted to mention that can be useful when troubleshooting. Here is a table with the key elements: T2T migration prerequisites We cannot stress enough how important it is to ensure the configuration is correct. Ensuring this saves time! T2T migration errors and fixes The most common errors in T2T migrations and how to address them. The errors are found using Test-MigrationServerAvailabilit…

We continue to expand the Microsoft AppSource ecosystem. For this volume, 114 new offers successfully met the onboarding criteria and went live. See details of the new offers below: [HEADING=2]Get it now in our marketplace[/HEADING] [attachment=55617:name] Audiencerate CDP (Customer Data Platform): Audiencerate CDP simplifies customer data management, enabling brands to leverage their first-party data effectively. Point-and-click modeling and no-code audience creation streamline complex data processes. Monitor campaigns and achieve cross-device reach within the EU in real time. Adhere to privacy standards while engaging with your audience. Ideal for marketing p…

One of the best parts of my role is the opportunity to work with our MVP community. We have a tight knit group of folks worldwide who are passionate about Surface, Windows, and all things tech. They're super active in their communities, showcasing their thought leadership and technical know-how, making a real impact with customers and enthusiasts alike. With all the buzz around the latest Microsoft and Surface announcements, I wanted to get some insights from our MVPs. They'll share their thoughts on everything from AI PCs to security, management, sustainability, and more. Let’s get started! [HEADING=1]A quick recap[/HEADING] In case you missed it, we rec…

Spoiler (Highlight to read) Windows Server 2025 is the most secure and performant release yet! Download the evaluation now! Looking to migrate from VMware to Windows Server 2025? Contact your Microsoft account team! Windows Server 2025 is the most secure and performant release yet! Download the evaluation now! Looking to migrate from VMware to Windows Server 2025? Contact your Microsoft account team! The 2024 Windows Server Summit was held in March and brought three days of demos, technical sessions, and Q&A, led by Microsoft engineers, guest experts from Intel®, and our MVP community. For more videos from this year’s Windows Server Summit, please find t…

[HEADING=1]Integrating Power BI with Azure Data Services[/HEADING] [HEADING=2]Introduction[/HEADING] Hi, I am Khalid Abdelaty a Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador, studying Computer Science Student @ Tanta University in Egypt. I am fancisanted by the opportunity of AI and the ability to analyze and interpret data. Power BI has seen massive growth in the past couple of years in the IT industry. With the exponential growth of data, employees face challenges in data governance. To manage this unmeasurable data, we need reliable storage solutions. Microsoft Azure facilitates the integration of Power BI with services such as SQL, Stream Analytics, and man…

Use your files, emails, chats and meeting information automatically or with direct references using Copilot prompts in Microsoft 365 apps. You don’t need to copy information then paste it into a browser tool or upload work files and images into other generative AI experiences. Instead, directly from Teams, Word, PowerPoint and other Microsoft 365 apps, you can leverage not only your opened file, email, chat or meeting, but also other work data that you have permissions to in SharePoint and OneDrive. Copilot retrieves and synthesizes information across emails, chats, and files, so you can generate presentations, respond to emails, and catch up on meetings. The Copilot proc…

The Open Container Initiative (OCI) community recently released OCI Image spec v1.1.0 and Distribution spec v1.1.0. Azure Container Registry (ACR) has supported OCI specifications v1.1.0 since its first release candidate in Jan 2023. Today, we announce support for the latest stable release v1.1.0, which provides a production-ready support for OCI artifacts in addition to container images. ACR has passed the OCI conformance test and is now certified by the OCI community as an OCI-v1.1 compliant registry. The test report is available on the OCI-Conformant Products page. By supporting the new version of OCI, ACR can store, distribute, and discover non-contai…

[HEADING=1]Public Preview: Continuous Performance Diagnostics for Windows VMs to enhance VM troubleshooting[/HEADING] Status: In Preview Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution for collecting, analyzing and responding to monitoring data, and maximizing the availability and performance of your applications and services. By leveraging existing on-demand Performance Diagnostics for an Azure VM, Azure Monitor enables you to get actionable insights, recommendations, and diagnostics data to address performance issues. The insights help identify the root cause of these issues. We are excited to announce Continuous Performance Diagnostics. This new …

It is important to stay ahead of the curve and keep services up to date. That's why we encourage all Azure Synapse customers with Apache Spark workloads to migrate to the newest GA version, Azure Synapse Runtime for Apache Spark 3.4. The update brings Apache Spark to version 3.4 and Delta Lake to version 2.4, introduces Mariner as the new operating system, and updates Java from version 8 to 11. Within a few days/weeks, we are disabling Apache Spark 2.4, 3.1, 3.2 job execution. If you are affected you have already been notified. Using the runtime after EOS date is at one's own risk, and with the agreement and acceptance of the risks that jobs will eventually stop e…

Learn how to leverage FAISS with Azure SQL for efficient similarity search. Discover how to integrate FAISS library with Azure SQL, enhancing your data retrieval with speed and precision. Learn from live demos and best practices to apply these techniques to your datasets. Resources: Azure SQL Devs’ Corner View/share our latest episodes on Microsoft Learn and ! Continue reading...

We would like to share an update on the announcement that Microsoft will require multi-factor authentication (MFA) for users signing into Azure. In this post, we share clarifications on the scope, timing and implementation details, along with guidance for preparation. [HEADING=1]Timing[/HEADING] Enforcement for the MFA requirement at Azure sign-in will be rolled out in phases: Phase 1: Starting in July 2024, enforcement for MFA at sign-in for Azure portal only will roll out gradually to all tenants. This phase will not impact any other Azure clients, such as Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell and IaC tools. Phase 2: Starting in early 2025, enforcement…

[HEADING=1]Introduction[/HEADING] Large AI model training can take months to complete on very large AI supercomputers. These AI supercomputers consist of many high-end GPU’s (e.g NVIDIA A100 or H100) all connected with InfiniBand. The Azure NDv5 has 8 H100 GPU’s, each connected directly by NVlink 4 (on a node) and each GPU has a 400 Gbps IB link that enables it to communicate with all the other GPU’s on the AI Supercomputer. AI model training workloads are tightly coupled, at regular intervals all the gradients need to be updated using NCCL collective communication. If any of the gpus or InfiniBand links fail (e.g. dropped GPU, InfiniBand link flap etc) this can cau…

Microsoft threat intelligence empowers our customers to keep up with the global threat landscape and understand the threats and vulnerabilities most relevant to their organization. We are excited to announce that we have recently accelerated the speed and scale at which we publish threat intelligence, giving our customers more critical security insights, data, and guidance than ever before. This blog will show how our 10,000 interdisciplinary experts and applied scientists reason over more than 78 trillion daily threat signals to continuously add to our understanding of threat actors and activity. It will also show how this increased publishing cadence in Microsof…