ExpressRoute guided experience for configuring multi-site resiliency circuits and connections is generally available in Azure public cloud. The guided experience makes resiliency the central aspect of configuring ExpressRoute circuits and virtual network gateway connections. Three resiliency options—maximum, high, and standard—are offered. Maximum resiliency offers redundancy both across peering locations and within a peering location. High resiliency offers redundancy across peering locations, but not within a peering location. The standard resiliency offers redundancy only within a peering location. The new experience provides information including distance between the peering-locations (sites) and traffic engineering recommendations to help users make informed configuration decisions. 

Key Highlights:

Multi-Site Resiliency Options: Options include maximum, high, and standard resiliency, each with varying levels of redundancy.

User-Friendly Configurations: Users can configure and connect ExpressRoute circuits via the Azure portal, PowerShell scripts, and ARM templates.

Informed Decisions: Provides traffic engineering recommendations and detailed information on peering locations to aid in configuration choices.

Backward compatible: Supports augmenting existing standard resilient connectivity to multi-site maximum resilient connectivity

Utilize these enhanced capabilities to ensure network resilience with ExpressRoute. For further details, refer to the ExpressRoute QuickStart guides on Microsoft Learn.

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Hi. Using Microsoft 365 on Mac. Trying to save an image in a word doc as a picture but when I right click the save as picture option is greyed out. Word help suggests that was fixed in 2020?? Does anyone have a workaround

​Hi. Using Microsoft 365 on Mac. Trying to save an image in a word doc as a picture but when I right click the save as picture option is greyed out. Word help suggests that was fixed in 2020?? Does anyone have a workaround  Read More

​

I export reports to Excel (built in feature of my accounting program). Until today I have not had an issue using macros store in my personal macro workbook. After an hour of tinkering, I’ve discovered that if I export the file to Excel (thus opening Excel), the macros are not available. Clicking on Macros only shows this.

But if I open Excel first, and open a blank document, then export the report, the macros show up. This has not happened in the past. Any thoughts?

​I export reports to Excel (built in feature of my accounting program). Until today I have not had an issue using macros store in my personal macro workbook. After an hour of tinkering, I’ve discovered that if I export the file to Excel (thus opening Excel), the macros are not available. Clicking on Macros only shows this. But if I open Excel first, and open a blank document, then export the report, the macros show up. This has not happened in the past. Any thoughts?  Read More

​

I am currently working on the integration of the Message Trace API and wanted to clarify some details regarding the rate limit. The REST API I am currently using for O365 Message Trace for my integration is: https://reports.office365.com/ecp/reportingwebservice/reporting.svc/MessageTrace[?ODATA options]  

As mentioned previously,

The rate limits for the O365 Message Trace API are generally aligned with the Microsoft Graph API limits:

Per-Minute Limit: Up to 60 requests per minute

However, during testing the integration, I’ve noticed that my data is not being ingested within that specified timeframe and not aligning to the specified rate limit.

Can someone please confirm if there are any additional limitations or conditions that might cause the rate limit to vary? Are there any other factors, such as throttling or specific request patterns, that could affect the rate limit during data ingestion?
Your guidance on this would be greatly appreciated as it would help me optimize the integration process.

​I am currently working on the integration of the Message Trace API and wanted to clarify some details regarding the rate limit. The REST API I am currently using for O365 Message Trace for my integration is: https://reports.office365.com/ecp/reportingwebservice/reporting.svc/MessageTrace[?ODATA options]  As mentioned previously,The rate limits for the O365 Message Trace API are generally aligned with the Microsoft Graph API limits:Per-Minute Limit: Up to 60 requests per minuteHowever, during testing the integration, I’ve noticed that my data is not being ingested within that specified timeframe and not aligning to the specified rate limit.Can someone please confirm if there are any additional limitations or conditions that might cause the rate limit to vary? Are there any other factors, such as throttling or specific request patterns, that could affect the rate limit during data ingestion?Your guidance on this would be greatly appreciated as it would help me optimize the integration process.  Read More

​

The October 2024 IAMCP and Microsoft Meeting will take place on October 18th, 2024, from 8 AM to 5 PM at the Microsoft Atlantic Yards Office

Address: 200 17th Street NW, Atlanta, GA 30363 This event, hosted by Jason Jones (Director, Microsoft Global Partner Solutions), will bring together local Microsoft partners and industry leaders to discuss key topics and foster collaboration. 

We will have key industry leaders including Andrew Laudato, COO of VitaminShoppe and Ross McKee, Sr Director within Microsoft Global Partner solutions.

Use the link below to register as space is limited

IAMCP

​The October 2024 IAMCP and Microsoft Meeting will take place on October 18th, 2024, from 8 AM to 5 PM at the Microsoft Atlantic Yards Office
Address: 200 17th Street NW, Atlanta, GA 30363 This event, hosted by Jason Jones (Director, Microsoft Global Partner Solutions), will bring together local Microsoft partners and industry leaders to discuss key topics and foster collaboration. 
 
We will have key industry leaders including Andrew Laudato, COO of VitaminShoppe and Ross McKee, Sr Director within Microsoft Global Partner solutions.
 
Use the link below to register as space is limited
IAMCP  Read More

​

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We are excited to announce a promotional offer on several Linux Virtual Machines (VMs) series to help you optimize Azure costs.

From October 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025, you can benefit from an extra 15% savings in addition to the current one-year discount on Azure Reserved VM Instances. This could lead to total savings of up to 56% compared to pay-as-you-go rates.

What’s included in the promotional offer?

This promotional offer is applicable to several of the latest AMD, Intel, and Arm-based Azure VMs across multiple regions. Upon general availability, the new purpose built Cobalt100 Arm-based VMs designed for cloud-native and Linux-based applications will be included in the offer.

The offer is available globally in all regions where Azure VM Reserved Instances can be purchased, except for EU West (Amsterdam), EU North (Dublin), AP Southeast (Singapore), and QA Central (Qatar).

The offer applies to a variety of VM series, including:

AMD-based VM-series: Dasv6, Dadsv6, Dalsv6, Daldsv6, Easv6, Eadsv6, Lasv3, DCadsv5, DCasv5, ECadsv5, ECasv5
Cobalt 100 Arm-based VM-series: Dpdsv6, Dpldsv6, Dplsv6, Dpsv6, Epdsv6, Epsv6
Intel-based VM-series: Ddv5, Ddsv5, Dlsv5, Dv5, Dsv5, Edv5, Edsv5, Ev5, Esv5, and Lsv32.

However, please note that certain VMs in specific regions, such as US East, US Gov Iowa, and US Gov Virginia, are not eligible for this promotional offer.

For more information, please refer to terms and conditions.

How can you take advantage of this promotional offer?

To benefit from this promotional offer, you need to purchase a one-year Azure Reserved VM Instance for a qualified VM SKU and region.

The offer is available to customers with the following Azure subscription types:

Enterprise (MS-AZR-0017P or MS-AZR-0148P)
Pay-As-You-Go (MS-AZR-0003P or MS-AZR-0023P)
Microsoft Customer Agreement

Cloud solution providers can also use the Azure portal or Partner Center to purchase Azure Reservations.

The discount applies automatically to the number of running VMs in qualified regions that match the reservation scope and attributes. The discount is valid for one year after the date of purchase and only applies to resources associated with subscriptions purchased through Enterprise, Cloud Solution Provider (CSP), Microsoft Customer Agreement, and individual plans with pay-as-you-go rates.

Why should you choose Azure Reserved VM Instances?

Azure Reserved VM Instances (or RIs) provide significant cost savings compared to pay-as-you-go pricing by committing to one-year or three-year plans. You can pay for RIs upfront or elect a monthly payment option at no extra cost.

By taking advantage of this promotional offer, you can further optimize your cloud spending. Additionally, Azure RIs offer instance size flexibility, which applies the reservation discount to other VMs in the same size group and region to best meet your changing needs.

Be secure and AI-Ready

There has never been a better time to modernize your IT estate and transition your Linux workloads to Azure: a cloud platform purpose-built for the era of AI, enabling limitless innovation, on your terms.  

World-class AI services with up to 5x faster training and inferencing

Built-in security and compliance from code to cloud, backed by 4B+ annual USD investments in cybersecurity, 10,000+ security experts, and 100+ compliance offerings 

Massive scalability, cost-efficiencies, and performance; including the outstanding price performance that the latest Azure Virtual Machines can deliver. 
Azure meets you where you are in your cloud and AI journey with an adaptive cloud approach, increasing operational agility across hybrid and multicloud environments.  

Get Started Today!

Don’t miss out on this fantastic opportunity to maximize the impact of your IT budget. Purchase one-year Azure Reserved VM Instances for an eligible VM-series in a qualified region between October 1, 2024, and March 31, 2025, to take advantage of this offer.

For more information on how to purchase and manage Azure Reserved VM Instances, visit the Azure portal or contact your Azure representative.

Experience additional savings by combining this promotional offer with other options such as Azure Hybrid Benefit for Linux that allows you to leverage your existing Red Hat and SUSE Linux subscriptions in Azure at no additional cost.

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More 

1. File Actions

If you use the SharePoint File Actions dataset in Microsoft Graph Data Connect, you might want to join it with the SharePoint Files dataset to get the details for each file. This post is about how you can do it, including the most common issues.

2. What is in File Actions

The SharePoint File Actions dataset includes details about every time a file was accessed, deleted, downloaded, modified, moved, renamed, or uploaded. The information about each action includes the type of action, when it happened, what file was acted upon, what application was used, and the user who performed the action (the actor).

For more information about the dataset, see the full schema documentation at data-connect-dataset-sharepointfileactions.md.

3. Joining with other datasets

A common use of this dataset is to join with the SharePoint Sites or the SharePoint Files to understand how much activity is going on for a specific Site or File. You could use this to see which Site or File was the most accessed on a given day. If you accumulate the actions for a longer period, you could find which sites had no activities in the last 90 days.

To find the details for site associated with a specific action, group File Actions by site ID then join with Sites. Here’s a SQL example to get a list of most popular sites during the period covered by File Actions:

WITH ActionsBySite AS (
SELECT
SiteId,
MIN(ActionDate) AS EarliestAction,
MAX(ActionDate) AS LatestAction,
COUNT(*) AS ActionCount
FROM FileActions
GROUP BY SiteId
)
SELECT
S.Id AS SiteId,
S.[RootWeb.Title] AS SiteName,
S.CreatedTime AS SiteCreated,
S.[RootWeb.LastItemModifiedDate] AS SiteLastModified,
S.[RootWeb.TemplateId] AS SiteTemplateId,
A.EarliestAction,
A.LatestAction,
A.ActionCount
FROM ActionsBySite AS A
JOIN Sites S
ON A.SiteId = S.Id
ORDER BY ActionCount DESC
LIMIT 10;

To find details of the file associated with a specific action, group File Actions by File then join with Files. Here’s a similar example to get a list of most popular files during the period covered by File Actions:

WITH ActionsByFile AS (
SELECT
SiteId,
WebId,
ListId,
ListItemId,
MIN(ActionDate) AS EarliestAction,
MAX(ActionDate) AS LatestAction,
COUNT(*) AS ActionCount
FROM FileActions
GROUP BY SiteId, WebId, ListId, ListItemId
)
SELECT
F.DirName,
F.FileName,
F.AuthorEmail,
F.TimeCreated AS FileCreated,
F.TimeLastModified AS FileLastModified,
A.EarliestAction,
A.LatestAction,
A.ActionCount
FROM ActionsByFile AS A
JOIN Files F
ON A.SiteId = F.SiteId
AND A.WebId = F.WebId
AND A.ListId = F.ListId
AND A.ListItemId = F.ItemId
ORDER BY ActionCount DESC
LIMIT 10;

NOTE: Please check with your compliance team if they approve of keeping the File Actions data for longer periods of time. There might be restrictions on how long you should keep private information.

4. Potential issues

With huge datasets like Files and File Actions, there are scenarios where the JOIN is not a perfect match. Here are a few possible issues when joining File Actions with Sites or Files.

4a. Different regions

IMPORTANT: This section applies only to tenants that use the Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo capabilities, as described at Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo and Multi-Geo Capabilities in OneDrive and SharePoint.

The JOIN operation will exclude a specific action if the File Action is in a different region than the File. When a tenant has multiple regions, the actions are recorded in the region of the actor. An actor in that region might be accessing files in other regions, which you might not have in that environment. To overcome that, you must run collection for SharePoint Files from all the regions and combine (union) them into a single dataset.

NOTE: These datasets are partitioned by region for compliance reasons, so please make sure to run this scenario by your compliance team before combining data from multiple regions.

4b. Matching dates

There are certain situations where the Files will be missing when you try the join because your File Action snapshot is more recent than your File snapshot date. For instance, if you have a File Actions snapshot for July 15th joined with a Files snapshot for July 1st. Essentially, the JOIN will exclude the File Action because the File data did not make it yet.

Also, the SharePoint Files dataset might take about a week to fully update. You might exclude an action for a file that was recently created and did not make its way into the Files dataset yet. So even if both the File Actions snapshot and the Files snapshot are from July 1st, there is the possibility that some of the recent files have not been captured yet.

There is also the chance of some File Actions arriving late (typically less than 0.01%). For instance, a small percentage of actions for July 1st might show in the snapshot for July 2nd.

So, in general, if you want to get the most complete dataset, it’s a good idea to wait until July 8th to process and report on actions for July 1st. This will guarantee that you are using a fresher Files dataset and allowing for late-arriving File Actions data.

4c. Not a Document Library

Another reason for not finding a match between the File Actions dataset and the Files dataset is when the file action is for a file not in a document library. The SharePoint Files dataset only includes files in a document library, ignoring other types of lists. This is by design to keep the Files dataset to a more reasonable size.

A common scenario here are actions related to SharePoint pages (files with the “aspx” extension), typically in Communication Sites. While you will not see these “aspx” pages in the Files dataset, you could still count actions per site.

Covering this gap would require adding specific datasets for SharePoint Pages and/or SharePoint Lists, providing additional details. This is something the team is considering for the future, but there is no estimated date for this.

4d. List Item Id missing

The File Actions dataset shows the telemetry as reported by applications. For some of these applications, it is possible that the ListItemId is not reported or is reported as “null”. In that case, the join will exclude those actions.

Again, you could summarize these actions at a site level even if the ListItemId is missing. You can also look at a summary by User Agent to identify specific applications that are not providing data.

5. Conclusion

I hope you learned more about the SharePoint File Actions dataset in Microsoft Graph Data Connect. You can read more about the Microsoft Graph Data Connect for SharePoint at https://aka.ms/SharePointData. There you will find many details, including a list of datasets available and frequently asked questions.

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