Microsoft Support & Discussions

Join us in July for a series of free live-streams sharing best practices for securing your AI apps on Azure. You'll learn about managed identity (keyless authentication), user sign-in with Microsoft Entra (for both internal and public-facing apps), data access control for RAG apps, and deployment of a RAG app to a fully private network. Check out the session details below, or register for the entire series now. And don't worry, if you miss a session, you can catch up on the YouTube recording after. [HEADING=1]Using Keyless Auth with Azure AI Services[/HEADING] July 2nd, 2024 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM (UTC) Ready to go keyless and never worry about compromis…

[HEADING=1]Azure SQL Managed Instance with Zone Redundancy to begin billing in Italy-North, Israel-Central, and West-Europe[/HEADING] Microsoft Azure continues to enhance its services, ensuring that customers have access to the latest innovations and features. The latest update is particularly exciting for businesses operating in Italy, Israel, and West Europe: Azure SQL Managed Instance with Zone Redundancy is available in these regions and starts billing for all configurations. [HEADING=2] [/HEADING] [HEADING=2]What is Azure SQL Managed Instance?[/HEADING] Azure SQL Managed Instance is a fully managed database service that offers the best of SQL Server with th…

[HEADING=3]Introduction [/HEADING] Welcome to Part 2 of our exploration into generative AI, where we delve deeper into the practical applications and creative potential of this innovative technology. This article highlights concrete examples from students projects of the course ‘Prompt Engineering’ at Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) in Trento (Italy). The aim is to showcase how students leveraged generative AI in unique ways. In particular, we'll focus on two fascinating projects: "Generative Music" and "Personal Chef," which exemplify the versatility and impact of generative AI in diverse fields. Core element of these projects is the use of a structured…

As you expand your use of the cloud, cost management becomes increasingly important. But lack of visibility into spending practices can hamper your cloud cost management efforts. With cloud costs constantly fluctuating and decision-making often decentralized in large organizations, gaining visibility into expenses can be challenging. The right cloud management tools can help reveal and eliminate hidden costs associated with the cloud and provide a holistic view of all your cloud cost centers. Budget management and forecasting can make understanding and optimizing your cloud costs easier. Budget management refers to the process of overseeing and tracking financial plans…

Organizations leveraging Microsoft Fabric can now use the external data sharing feature to allow users from another Microsoft Fabric tenant access their data. The data stays in the provider's OneLake storage location and no data is moved. Instead, this cross-tenant sharing creates a link, called a OneLake shortcut, and the recipient of the share tenant creates a pointer back to the provider tenant. Users in the recipient tenant are provided a read only access to the data. The data is shared across tenant boundaries, and the recipient can use it with any OneLake compatible Fabric workload in their own tenant. What makes external sharing solution so seamless and frictionles…

As spring turns to summer, and sprouts appear in my garden, I think about all the preparation I’ve made for their environment—turning the soil, setting up the watering system, adding peat moss—and know that the yield will be greater and the harvest better. Such is the case with Microsoft Intune. As we continue to enhance the capabilities, each one an investment, the cumulative result is a richer and more robust management experience. Below, we highlight some of the newest features. [HEADING=1]New troubleshooting tool for mobile devices[/HEADING] Part of diagnosing an issue is not only defining what is wrong but also what is not wrong. Our customers asked for a simpl…

The latest edition of Sync Up is live now in your favorite podcast app! This month, Arvind Mishra and I are explored all the announcements and energy of the Microsoft 365 Community Conference! Even better, we had on-site interviews with a host of OneDrive experts! Mark Kashman (you read that right, the Mark Kashman, of Intrazone!) talked about our experiences at the conference, including the 🤖 Age of Copilots, the magic of in-person conferences, and some of the amazing SharePoint-related features that were shown off! Lesha Bhansali shared how OneDrive is available everywhere, from Windows to Mac to Teams to Outlook, making it easy for your users to be produc…

In collaboration with AI21, Microsoft is excited to announce AI21’s Jamba-Instruct foundation chat completion model available now as a serverless API within Azure AI’s Models-as-a-Service. This marks a new collaboration between AI21 and Microsoft, and the first time Jamba-Instruct is widely available through a cloud partner. “We are thrilled to collaborate with Microsoft to introduce Jamba-Instruct to Microsoft Azure customers. This collaboration underscores our shared commitment to empowering enterprises with innovative AI solutions,” said Pankaj Dugar, SVP, GM North America of AI21. “Microsoft's dedication to putting customers first and making cutting-edge techn…

We've recently updated the end-to-end experience for Microsoft account holders, from form creation to response analysis, making it more modern and intuitive. This exciting revamp gives you a fresh look on the landing, portal, design, and result pages. Whether you're planning a family reunion, organizing a party, or simply doing a check-in, the new Forms offers a seamless and enjoyable experience from start to finish. Let's explore the new experience together! To give you a better sense of the revamped experience and put it to good use, let's create a party invitation together. Summer is here—imagine you’re planning a barbecue at your place, inviting friends over fo…

As the capabilities, and transformational power of AI, continue to evolve at a quickening pace, organizations are grappling with choices around when and how to implement and its impact on organizations and their employee experience. Microsoft is committed to helping organizations begin today building that AI muscle so they can assess and be prepared to adapt new modes of work and workstreams ushered in by this rapidly evolving age of Enterprise AI. In this MidDay Café hosts Tyrelle Barnes and Michael Gannotti have a sit-down discussion around AI, the need to build AI muscle at an individual and organizational level now, and its impact on the employee experience. Also d…

[JUSTIFY]SAP IQ High-Availability can be achieved with IQ Multiplex architecture [ SAP Note 2477758], but not when deployed in NLS mode. As per the SAP First Guidance for SAP IQ 16.x, here, Multiplex Architecture is not available/evaluated for the SAP-NLS solution. This blog outlines one of the methods for deploying SAP IQ-NLS utilizing Azure Premium Files on the Azure platform. [/JUSTIFY] Overview [JUSTIFY]Several customers leverage SAP IQ for storing historical data, extracting aged data from the SAP BW system to enhance SAP BW performance and achieve cost efficiency. It's crucial to meticulously design and implement the SAP IQ architecture to ensure that data…

Microsoft Education is committed to supporting educators and learners with engaging and inclusive learning experiences, wherever teaching and learning happens. Whether you teach and learn in a physical classroom, online, or in a hybrid mode, Microsoft Education has the tools and resources to help you achieve your goals. One of the ways we do this is by integrating our products and services with popular Learning Management Systems (LMS). Building on our previous work to bring Microsoft 365 documents, Microsoft Teams collaboration, OneNote Class Notebooks, and Microsoft Reflect into LMS platforms, our new integration of Teams Assignments represents a leap forward in bringin…

We continue to expand the Microsoft AppSource ecosystem. For this volume, 193 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=55216:name] Buddiz - AI for Schools & Higher Ed Colleges: Buddiz provides AI tools and solutions for schools, colleges, teachers, students, and parents, incorporating interactive chatbots into lesson planning and learning experiences. An advanced dashboard furnishes real-time analytics. [attachment=55217:name] ChatGPTeMail: Najtech's ChatGPTeMail add-in for Microsoft Outlook lets you compose and respond to emails …

Today, I would like to share how to insert records from a CSV file stored in Azure Blob Storage into a temporary table in TempDB in Azure SQL Database using OPENROWSET and a format file. First, we need to create a database scoped credential and an external data source to access the Azure Blob Storage. CREATE DATABASE SCOPED CREDENTIAL MyCredential WITH IDENTITY = 'SHARED ACCESS SIGNATURE', SECRET = 'sv=2022-11-02&ss=bfqt&srt=sco&sp=rwdlacupiytfx&se=2024-06-30T16:56:42Z&st=2024-06-21T08:56:42Z&spr=https&sig=tAjokk5xO9kc%3D'; CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE MyDataSource WITH ( TYPE = BLOB_STORAGE, LOCATION = 'https://blobs…

Spoiler (Highlight to read) 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! Windows Server 2025 is the most secure and performant release yet! Download the evaluation now! 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 …

[HEADING=1]Introduction[/HEADING] Hello and welcome to another blog post about Azure Landing Zones, the best practice framework for accelerating your cloud adoption journey. In this post, I will share with you some of the latest updates and enhancements that we have made to Azure Landing Zones. One of the main components of Azure Landing Zones is the Azure Monitoring Agent (AMA), which enables you to collect and analyze data from your virtual machines, virtual machine scale sets, and hybrid resources. AMA provides a unified agent experience for Azure Monitor, Azure Security Center, Azure Sentinel, and other services. AMA replaces the legacy Log Analytics agent a…

I'm Mahnoor Javaid, an enthusiastic Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador (MLSA) I’m delighted to present my blog, "Getting Started with Azure App Service: A Beginner's Guide to Web App Deployment", developed in collaboration with the Microsoft Learn team. This blog will take you through getting started with Azure App Service with a comprehensive beginner's guide! Learn the step-by-step process of deploying your first web app using Azure. From navigating the Azure portal to mastering deployment via Azure CLI, unlock the secrets to seamless web app deployment. Get ready to elevate your skills and bring your projects to life with Azure App Service! Azure App Service …

If you’ve ever engaged with the content on the Microsoft Learn platform, it's highly likely that the material you utilized was written or co-authored by dedicated contributors. These contributors, often volunteers, generously offer their time and expertise to fill knowledge gaps within our content portfolio by suggesting valuable updates to our material, sharing their knowledge within the Microsoft community, and/or answering questions on the Q&A area of the Microsoft Learn platform! In this interview series, we aim to acquaint ourselves with some of these valuable contributors. Through these conversations, we seek to understand their motivations for sharing…

[HEADING=1]Public Preview: Upgrade Policies for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration[/HEADING] Status: In Preview The upgrade policy of a Virtual Machine Scale Set determines how virtual machines can be brought up to date with the latest scale set model. Before today, upgrade policies were available for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Uniform Orchestration. Now the same upgrade policies available for Uniform Orchestration are available for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration. The upgrade policies available for Virtual Machine Scale Sets are Automatic, Manual and Rolling. Additionally, if using a Rolling upgrade polic…

By: Laura Arrizza – Sr Product Manager | Microsoft Intune The built-in role ‘Endpoint Security Manager’ is used to manage policies and features within the Microsoft Intune admin center Endpoint security blade or, admin actions can be limited by using the custom role with the ‘Security baselines’ permission. With Intune’s June (2406) release, we’ll begin adding new permissions for each endpoint security workload to allow for additional granularity and control. The ‘Security baselines’ permission previously included all security policies and now, it will only include security workloads that do not have their own permission. [HEADING=1]New granular permiss…

Process Monitor v4.01 This update to Process Monitor colorizes the activity operation icons - Registry, File System, Network, Process and Thread, and Profiling Events. Continue reading...

The native JSON type allows JSON documents to be stored in a binary format. This binary format allows for efficient query processing and in-place modifications of JSON documents. The JSON aggregates - JSON_OBJECTAGG & JSON_ARRAYAGG enable easy aggregation of relational data into a JSON document. Learn more in this episode of Data Exposed with Anna Hoffman and Umachandar Jayachandran. Resources: JSON data type (preview) - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn JSON_OBJECTAGG (Transact-SQL) - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn JSON_ARRAYAGG (Transact-SQL) - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn View/share our latest episodes on Microsoft Learn and ! Continu…

If videos are a part of your marketing strategy – and they should be – you'll be happy to know that Microsoft Stream has just rolled out several new features to help you boost your content. We’ve put a summary of Stream’s new capabilities below. Creating useful and compelling video content is a difficult task if you’re creating from scratch. Fortunately, with Microsoft Clipchamp and Stream, you’ve got an end-to-end video creation ecosystem already baked into your Microsoft 365 business license. Clipchamp became generally available to Microsoft 365 customers in 2023 and has already established itself as one of the most intuitive and powerful video editors on the …

Database compatibility level 160 is now the default for new databases created in Azure SQL Database across almost all public regions. The alignment of SQL versions to default compatibility levels are as follows: 100: in SQL Server 2008 and Azure SQL Database 110: in SQL Server 2012 and Azure SQL Database 120: in SQL Server 2014 and Azure SQL Database 130: in SQL Server 2016 and Azure SQL Database 140: in SQL Server 2017 and Azure SQL Database 150: in SQL Server 2019 and Azure SQL Database 160: in SQL Server 2022 and Azure SQL Database For details about which feature, or features compatibility level 160 enables, please see Intelligent query processin…

This is the third article in a series: Stop Worrying and Love the Outage, Vol I: Group Policy and Sharing Violations Stop Worrying and Love the Outage, Vol II: DCs, custom ports, and Firewalls/ACLs Hello, Chris Cartwright here from the Directory Services support team. This is the third post in a series where I try to provide the IT community with some tools and verbiage that will hopefully save you and your business many hours, dollars, and frustrations. Occasionally, we get cases for users working remotely that are unable to log on with a message that the domain is not available. More often than not, this is caused by an overly enthusiastic Cached…