I am trying to create a PS script that opens a session on a remote workstation and executes these commands:

​I am trying to create a PS script that opens a session on a remote workstation and executes these commands: netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name=”File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request – ICMPv4-In)” new enable=yes profile=domain Set-ItemProperty -Path ‘HKLM:SystemCurrentControlSetControlTerminal Server’-name “fDenyTSConnections” -Value 0 Enable-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup “Remote Desktop” netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”windows management instrumentation (wmi)” new enable=yes Set-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup “Network Discovery” -Enabled True This is the part of the script giving me trouble: $session = New-PSSession -ComputerName $workstationName# Prompt for credentials$cred = Get-Credential# Use Invoke-Command to run the script block with elevated credentialsInvoke-Command -Session $session -Credential $cred -ScriptBlock {# Check if the session is availableif ($session -ne $null) {Write-Host “Session established. Waiting for the session to be ready…”# PowerShell commands herenetsh advfirewall firewall set rule name=”File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request – ICMPv4-In)” new enable=yes profile=domainSet-ItemProperty -Path ‘HKLM:SystemCurrentControlSetControlTerminal Server’-name “fDenyTSConnections” -Value 0Enable-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup “Remote Desktop”netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”windows management instrumentation (wmi)” new enable=yesSet-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup “Network Discovery” -Enabled TrueGet-Process}# Exit the remote sessionExit-PSSession} else {Write-Host “Failed to establish a session.”} Here is the error.  Any help is appreciated Invoke-Command : Parameter set cannot be resolved using the specified named parameters.At C:XXXXVMPrepBeta6.ps1:67 char:5+ Invoke-Command -Session $session -Credential $cred -ScriptBlock {+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+ CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [Invoke-Command], ParameterBindingException+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : AmbiguousParameterSet,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.InvokeCommandCommand  Read More

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Hi everyone, this is part 11 in a series of posts to show you some of the things that are possible to do with Copilot in Excel. 

What is conditional formatting?

Conditional formatting in Excel is a powerful tool that allows you to apply specific formatting to cells that meet certain criteria. This can include changing the cell’s background color, font color, or adding icons to highlight differences in data. By using conditional formatting, you can help data to stand out and emphasize what’s important, applying your rules automatically as your data changes and grows.

Excel already offers a variety of conditional formatting options you can apply manually to help you call attention to your data: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/fed60dfa-1d3f-4e13-9ecb-f1951ff89d7f

How does Copilot make it better?

Using a formula to determine which cells to format is one of the most versatile conditional formatting tools. However, it can be challenging to set it up to do exactly what you want. You must get the formula and syntax exactly right without having the tools and tips of the formula bar or seeing interim results in cells. With Copilot, you can simply use language to describe exactly what you want to happen.

For example, in this post (Re: Conditional formatting – Microsoft Community Hub), the customer knew exactly how they wanted to color their data. They wanted to flag certain info in different ways based on a payment status and a date. If they utilized Copilot, they could have asked to “Highlight rows in red when the date is this month or earlier and the customer has not paid. Highlight rows in yellow when the date is next month, and the customer has not paid.”

Screenshot of Excel with conditional formatting suggestion from Copilot based on the prompt.

In this example, Copilot understood my table of data, interpreted my prompt, and responded with two conditional formatting rules for me to review and apply. I can deduce that the top rule assigns a red color by comparing the current date to the due date and checking if it’s in the past when the paid status is ‘no’. I can deduce the second rule assigns a yellow color by comparing the current date to the due date and checking if it’s in the future when the paid status is ‘no’. I did not need to know the logical order, needed formulas, or exact syntax to get this result. I only had to tell Copilot what I wanted.

After I review and then apply these custom formula conditional formatting rules, my worksheet shows the appropriate colors and will adjust when I change the data.

Gif showing application of Copilot generated conditional format and then how editing data updates the coloring based on the rule.

What else should I know?

You can also ask copilot to do other types of highlighting:

Make values in ‘Column Name’ greater than ‘number’ have white text on a black background.
Highlight cells in light blue for ‘Column Name’ that contain ‘Specific Text’
Highlight the top 10% of values in ‘Column Name’ using bold font
Apply a Red and Green color scale to the values in ‘Column Name’

When you have applied any conditional formatting rules using Copilot, you can manage and edit existing rules by choosing Conditional Formatting > Manage Rules from the toolbar or ribbon.

Screenshot of the Conditional Formatting menu

Conditional formatting in Excel is a versatile tool that can help you analyze and present your data more effectively. By exploring the various capabilities of conditional formatting in combination with Copilot you can unlock the full potential of this feature and make your spreadsheets more informative and visually engaging.

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More 

Since our last update in July, there’s been no shortage of new exciting updates and news for Linux and open source on Azure. Dive in to learn more!

What’s new with Linux on Azure 

AlmaLinux is available as an endorsed Linux distribution

AlmaLinux, a popular alternative to CentOS Linux, has been available in the Azure Marketplace for over three years and is now an endorsed Linux distribution in Azure. As an endorsed Linux distribution, AlmaLinux will adhere to testing and update standards, while also receiving support as detailed in Microsoft’s Linux and open source support policy. Visit our blog to learn more.

Linux Promotional Offer

I’m excited to share that there is a promotional offer for the latest Linux VMs in Azure. For a limited time, you can save an additional 15% on one-year Azure Reserved Virtual Machine (VM) Instances for the latest Linux VMs. This means you could save up to 56% compared to running an Azure VM on a PAYG (pay-as-you-go) basis. This offer is available until March 31, 2025. To learn more, read the blog and refer to the terms and conditions.

ED25519 SSH key support for Linux VMs (Generally Available)

ED25519 SSH key support for Linux VMs is now generally available in Azure, providing customers with enhanced security and deployment efficiency on Azure. Now customers can choose between RSA and ED25519 based SSH keys.

Azure Cobalt 100-based Virtual Machines (Generally Available)

We recently announced the general availability of the new Azure Cobalt 100-based Virtual Machines. These VMs run on Microsoft’s first 64-bit Arm-based Azure Cobalt 100 CPU, which has been fully designed in-house. They offer up to 50% better price performance than our previous generation Arm-based VMs, making them an appealing option for a wide range of scale-out and cloud-native Linux-based workloads, including data analytics, web and application servers, open source databases, caches, and more. The new Azure Cobalt 100 VMs support a wide range of Linux distributions including AlmaLinux, Azure Linux (via AKS), Debian, Flatcar Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, and more. Check out our blog to get more information.

Landing Zone for Red Hat Enterprise Linux

We’ve developed a landing zone for RHEL on Azure, offering design recommendations and a reference architecture to help support successful RHEL deployments. An Azure landing zone serves as a blueprint for cloud success. Read the blog for more details.

New guides for deploying open source software on Azure

On Azure, you can build and run applications using the open source software of your choice, whether it’s Linux or databases like as PostgreSQL and MySQL. To help accelerate your journey with open source on Azure, we’ve developed end-to-end guides for deploying open source software across a variety of workloads and include projects such as KAITO, PostgreSQL, and Inspektor Gadget. Read the blog for more information.

Azure confidential VMs with NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs (Generally Available)

We announced the general availability of confidential virtual machines (VMs) with NVIDIA H100 Tensor core GPUs. These VMs are ideal for inferencing, fine-tuning or training small-to-medium sized models such as Whisper, Stable diffusion and its variants (SDXL, SSD), and language models such as Zephyr, Falcon, GPT2, MPT, Llama2, Wizard and Xwin. Ubuntu 24.04 is the available Linux OS for these VMs. Visit the blog for additional details.

What’s new with Azure and open source

Flatcar accepted into CNCF at incubating level

 Flatcar has been accepted by the CNCF at incubating level, signaling that the project is considered stable and is used successfully in production environments. This is an exciting milestone for the Flatcar project and cloud native community! For more details, read Brendan Burns’ blog and the CNCF blog.

Linux and open source events 

Over the past few months, we gave talks and connected with other open source enthusiasts at several events, including All Systems Go!, Container Days, Data and AI Masters, DebConf24, Flock to Fedora 2024, FrOSCon, Linux Security Summit, Open Source Summit Europe, Red Hat Summit Connect, Ubuntu Summit, and more. If you missed any of the Microsoft sessions or want to check them out again you can catch some of the recordings:

Event

Session(s)

All Systems Go!

Introducing azure-init, a minimal provisioning agent written in Rust

Waiter, an OS please, with some sysext sprinkled on top

eBPF Data Collection for Everyone – empowering the community to obtain Linux insights using Inspektor Gadget

Container Days

Container Linux: The Next 10 Years

UX: the missing cloud native ingredient

DebConf24

Cloud team BoF

Flock to Fedora

Unlocking Systems Insights: Leveraging eBPF for Data Collection

FrOSCon

Flatcar Linux: what’s new in this Container OS?

Linux Security Summit

Systemd & TPMs 

Open Source Summit Europe

LVBS and Advanced Kernel Integrity 

Verifying and Signing EBPF Programs with Inspektor Gadget

Contain Your Excitement: A Developer’s Guide to Containerized Brillance

Linux Sandboxing with Landlock

Panel Discussion: Do One Thing, and Do it Well: Special Purpose OSes Apply the Unix App Philosophy t…

Next-Gen Testing and Compliance: Ensuring Integrity in a Complex World

Open Source Software Engineering Education

What’s coming up next 

Microsoft Ignite 2024

Microsoft Ignite is coming to the Windy City (Chicago) this year from November 19-22! Whether you’re joining in-person or virtually, be sure to catch one of the Linux and open source sessions:

Session Type

Session

Breakout

What’s new in Linux: How we’re collaborating to help shape its future

Demo

Accelerate deployment of open source applications with Copilot in Azure

Lab (hosted 3x)

Fast track your Linux migration journey with Azure Migrate

Also, you can connect with and attend sessions from Canonical and Red Hat, who are Featured Partners at Ignite.

Upcoming Linux and open source events

We’ll be at KubeCon North America in Salt Lake City! Check out one of the Microsoft sessions and meet with us at our booth.

Sign up for Cloud Native Rejekts (organized/sponsored by Microsoft)
Sign up for the AKS pre-day

Bonus content 

Read about LinkedIn’s journey to migrate most of their estate to Azure Linux
Check out this guest blog post by Jehudi Castro, Public Cloud Alliances Director at Canonical, to learn how Canonical and Azure are working together to improve security, operational efficiency, and performance in the cloud using Linux and open-source software.

If you have any feedback or questions, please drop them in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More 

 फोनपेपर शिकायत कैसे दर्ज करूँ? ग्राहक आप फोनपे हेल्पलाइन नंबर ( +91 O6290-348-172 (भाषा: हिंदी और अंग्रेजी) पर भी कॉल कर सकते हैं।… 

​ फोनपेपर शिकायत कैसे दर्ज करूँ? ग्राहक आप फोनपे हेल्पलाइन नंबर ( +91 O6290-348-172 (भाषा: हिंदी और अंग्रेजी) पर भी कॉल कर सकते हैं।…   Read More

​

फोनपे गलत ट्रांजेक्शन से पैसे कैसे वापस करें?  आप फोनपे हेल्पलाइन नंबर ( +91 O6290-348-172 (भाषा: हिंदी और अंग्रेजी) पर भी कॉल कर सकते हैं।… 

​फोनपे गलत ट्रांजेक्शन से पैसे कैसे वापस करें?  आप फोनपे हेल्पलाइन नंबर ( +91 O6290-348-172 (भाषा: हिंदी और अंग्रेजी) पर भी कॉल कर सकते हैं।…   Read More

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When logged into an Azure Virtual Desktop AVD, users are unable to use Alt + Enter.  I’ve seen pages of keyboard shortcuts but none for Excel Starting  New Line within a Cell.

thanks

​When logged into an Azure Virtual Desktop AVD, users are unable to use Alt + Enter.  I’ve seen pages of keyboard shortcuts but none for Excel Starting  New Line within a Cell.thanks  Read More

​

Hi everybody,

My team and I are having issues using the de MS Teams Desktop App with a guest account.

Context:

We work for a company that doesn’t have an MS Teams license but we are “Staff Augmentation” for another company that uses MS Teams as the primary communication tool. The other company added us as “Guest” in their workspace.

The problem we are having is that on the desktop app when we log in with our main company credentials we get this message because our company doesn’t have a license:

However, we don’t want to enter our company’s Workspace, we want to enter the other company’s workspace (that does have a license).

In the past, we were able to switch by clicking on the “Launch trial” button, and on the next screen, we had the option to switch. But now, when we click that button we get another error:

It looks like the Trial has now expired.

We can use it on the web because it looks like it automatically switches to the other company’s workspace.

I think this is a bug on the Desktop app because it should allow switching the workspace on the “Launch trial” screen.

Do you know if there’s a way to force it to use the other company’s workspace?

How can I report this bug?

Thanks in advance.

​Hi everybody, My team and I are having issues using the de MS Teams Desktop App with a guest account. Context:We work for a company that doesn’t have an MS Teams license but we are “Staff Augmentation” for another company that uses MS Teams as the primary communication tool. The other company added us as “Guest” in their workspace. The problem we are having is that on the desktop app when we log in with our main company credentials we get this message because our company doesn’t have a license:However, we don’t want to enter our company’s Workspace, we want to enter the other company’s workspace (that does have a license). In the past, we were able to switch by clicking on the “Launch trial” button, and on the next screen, we had the option to switch. But now, when we click that button we get another error: It looks like the Trial has now expired.We can use it on the web because it looks like it automatically switches to the other company’s workspace. I think this is a bug on the Desktop app because it should allow switching the workspace on the “Launch trial” screen.Do you know if there’s a way to force it to use the other company’s workspace?How can I report this bug? Thanks in advance.  Read More

​

Are you ready to supercharge Microsoft 365 Copilot? Following the recent Wave 2 announcements and the general availability of Copilot agents, we are excited to introduce a curated set of new Copilot agents developed by Microsoft. These agents are designed to help you and your team optimize and reinvent your business processes. 

Copilot agents can help you transform complex and dynamic processes. By integrating Copilot agents into your workflow, you can harness their power, right within the flow of your work. Powered by Microsoft 365 Copilot, these agents utilize the same scalable, secure infrastructure and platform, tailored to your business needs, providing an intuitive and advanced experience without the need for coding. 

We are releasing the following Copilot agents to enhance your Microsoft 365 Copilot experience and help showcase what’s possible with simple agents created using Copilot Studio agent builder, like the coaching agents and advanced agents created with pro-code like Visual Creator. 

Help your ideas come to life with Visual Creator 
 

Visual Creator: Allows users to generate images, and soon videos, using natural language prompts. Its simple interface provides guidance of what you can create and how to write your prompt so you can enhance your work with compelling visuals.  

Elevate your career with Career Coach 

Career Coach: Provides personalized career development suggestions, including role understanding, skill gap analysis, learning opportunities, and career transition plans. It aims to understand the user’s current role, identify career goals, assess skills and gaps, suggest learning opportunities and create a detailed action plan for future growth. 

Plan and execute brainstorming with Idea Coach 

Idea Coach: Facilitates brainstorming sessions and planning, offering creative exercises, idea organization techniques, and feedback for improvement. It uses a fun, collaborative tone, asks iterative questions and provides detailed agendas and creative suggestions for running effective brainstorming sessions. 

Unlock your potential with Learning Coach 

Learning Coach: Helps users understand complex topics by breaking them down into simple, intermediate, and advanced summaries, and also provides guided practice and learning plans. It employs various techniques for learning complex topics, including glossaries, analogies, practice exercises and structured study plans. 

Write better prompts with Prompt Coach 

Prompt Coach: Assists users in creating effective and well-structured prompts for Copilot. Offering analysis, compliance checks and improvement suggestions. It asks for information on the goal, context, source, and expectations to generate effective prompts and provides detailed analyses for to help elevate your prompt writing prowess. 

Take your writing to the next level with Writing Coach 

Writing Coach: Provides detailed feedback on writing, helps change the tone of messages, translates text, and assists in writing instructions, stories, blog posts, and whitepapers. It focuses on clarity, coherence, grammar, and overall impact, offering specific improvements and alternatives for various types of document authoring. 
 

Availability and deployment 

These Copilot agents, created by Microsoft, extend the native capabilities of Microsoft 365 Copilot with instructions and knowledge sources relevant to each use case. They will be available to Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users from early October 2024. Make sure to check the Teams App Store or use the Microsoft 365 Admin Center to deploy them within your organization. 

Empower your developers and makers 

We are making the instructions for the Career Coach, Idea Coach, Learning Coach, Prompt Coach and Writing Coach Copilot agents, open source, so your makers and developers can use them as a starting point for their own journey in creating agents to improve your business workflows, via Copilot Studio or  Teams Toolkit. 

https://aka.ms/1PDASamples   

Get started today 

Don’t miss out on these powerful tools to enhance your Microsoft 365 Copilot experience. Start by ensuring your users can access these new tools, create excitement internally via your modern workplace champions and encourage your developers to review the source material on the PNP community today. 

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More 

In today’s fast-paced digital world, the way we create and deliver presentations has evolved dramatically. With the integration of AI tools and platforms like Microsoft Designer,, it is possible to craft visually stunning and engaging presentations with ease. In this article, we will explore how Yulia Barnakova, a Microsoft 365 MVP, leverages these innovative tools to revolutionize her presentations and storytelling techniques. 

1. How did you get started with using emerging technologies for presentations and storytelling?   
 
I’ve always loved to play around with technology for storytelling.  When I was a kid, I used to borrow my parents’ camcorder to make stop motion animation video stories with McDonald’s Happy Meal characters.  In my early days in consulting, I discovered the similar magic of PowerPoint animations to make storylines more creative, memorable, and impactful.  I then started to integrate more emerging technology into my presentations, including 3D models, virtual/augmented reality, and now increasingly generative AI imagery, video, audio, and avatars – and now even design itself.  

2. What excites you the most about using the AI tools to help create dynamic presentation?  
 
We now truly have everything we need to create (nearly!) anything we want in just a few clicks, which is exciting for enhancing creativity.  As someone who isn’t naturally artistic, I find it amazing that tools like Microsoft Designer can quickly create professional layouts for slides or social media and edit images, tasks that used to require a lot of manual work. 
Other AI tools for image creation (e.g., DALLE, Midjourney, Playground), video (e.g, RunwayML, Pika Labs), and audio (e.g., Udio or Suno) massively enhance engagement and memorability of our messages.  We are flooded with various forms of presentations daily, and AI tools help us stand out with just a little extra creativity that doesn’t add hours of work. 

3. How and where do you use Microsoft Designer and the AI Tools, and where do you use the content you create with?  
 
I’ve been closely following the evolution of Microsoft Designer, as it’s been exciting to see it constantly adding more and more AI features.  I frequently speak at conferences and enjoy using Microsoft Designer to create flyers for my talks, especially since the hosts don’t always provide them for individual sessions.  Microsoft Designer has a lot of great templates that you can modify and rework (tip: Search “webinar” in the templates section in Social Media).  Since you can’t (yet!) add video backgrounds to flyers, I’ll even sometimes export the template as an image, then paste into PowerPoint and add a video there.  (In this case, you have to set your PPT slide to be the size of the flyer then export when you add the video).  

As for other AI tools, I think AI music can add a nice quick dash of spice to any message.  For example, after finishing a project recently, I created an AI-generated music video to thank each member of my developer team for their unique contributions. I made the lyrics in ChatGPT (refining several times), then pasted into Suno, an AI audio generator.  My team loved the video and said it was the most creative thank you message they’d seen.  So, thanks to AI, it didn’t take me long at all to create a lasting, stand-out memory for them.  A fellow MVP who attended my session was inspired to create a song for his tech meetup, which you can see here.  These types of internal, personal use cases are great ways to experiment with AI, as they’re much less risky than customer-facing ones.  

4. What advice would you give to someone new to Microsoft Designer and AI tools to get the most out of the tool?  
 
If you’re completely new, I’d start with two features.  First, try to remove a background in an image (Edit with AI –> Remove Background) – this is a fairly simple task, and if you’re used to using basic removal tools like PowerPoint, you’ll be surprised at the quality Designer gives.  For instance, take a look at my photobombing avatar; I just put the avatar into Designer’s background removal tool, then put it on top of my friends’ picture and saved. Much cleaner edges than in PowerPoint, for instance.   
 
The second feature I’d try with Microsoft Designer is the avatar creator (Edit with AI –> Restyle Image). Start by uploading your photo into the tool and choosing your style and any background elements (like an office or beach). In no time, you’ll have a fun image that you can use on social media or as a unique profile photo. This is a basic but fun use case to try, especially if you haven’t worked a lot with Designer or AI imagery. 

5. How do you stay up to date with AI presentation tools, given how quickly they’re evolving?   
 
It’s indeed hard!  I have two tips, first follow major technology players like Microsoft on social media and add notifications to immediately see when new features are released.  Over time, you’ll discover leaders who are engaging and active on socials and can follow them as well. You can also subscribe to AI newsletters that give you weekly roundups.   Second, is to experiment constantly and try tools – even if you don’t always need them.  For instance, I make it a habit to use Microsoft Designer at least once a week to see what new features it has.  I also try to do as much as I can with Copilot at work, even if it’s not always perfect.  This enables me to stay on the leading edge and discover new capabilities much faster.  Constant curiosity and experimentation are key. 

Yulia created this group of avatars (in red suits) in Microsoft Designer

The integration of AI tools and Microsoft Designer has significantly changed the way we approach presentations and storytelling By continuously experimenting and staying curious, we can unlock new possibilities and create memorable experiences for our audiences. Embracing these innovations will be key to standing out in an increasingly digital world, and with the right tools, we can captivate and inspire like never before.

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More