Unlocking the Potential of AI in Health Insurance Sales with Copilot for Sales

This discussion offers a glimpse into the future of health insurance sales, where AI-powered tools like Copilot for Sales empower agents to deliver exceptional service while maximizing their productivity. For sales agents and brokers looking to stay ahead in the competitive health insurance market, this video is a must-watch.

Revolutionizing Health Insurance Sales with Copilot for Sales

Integration: Seamlessly connects productivity tools with CRM systems, enhancing data flow and efficiency
Productivity: Offers sales-specific workflows, improving agent efficiency and customer engagement
Personalization: Utilizes AI to tailor customer interactions, summarizing email threads and drafting responses
Competitive Intelligence: Provides real-time competitive insights, aiding agents in offering the best solutions
Efficiency: Streamlines preparation, consolidating information in one place for quicker, more effective meetings

To see all HLS Copilot Snacks video click here.

Special thanks to Ashley Keimach for her expertise and making this video possible

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More 

I want to update my already published offer with formatted text. During publishing, all the formatting and white space were stripped out.

​I want to update my already published offer with formatted text. During publishing, all the formatting and white space were stripped out.  Read More

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When using OneNote Web app and pasting in a block of text, the text box is created about 2 feet wide, scrolling off the screen to the right. If you scroll over to the right edge and try to resize the box by dragging it to the left, then the text itself, which was its original width, gets severely narrowed to the point it is unusable. 

To Reproduce, paste this block (or any similar) of text into OneNote web app, then notice the width of the text box and try to resize it:

Your organization’s attack surface includes all the places where an attacker could compromise your organization’s devices or networks. Reducing your attack surface means protecting your organization’s devices and network, which leaves attackers with fewer ways to perform attacks. Configuring attack surface reduction rules in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can help!

Attack surface reduction rules target certain software behaviors, such as:

Launching executable files and scripts that attempt to download or run filesRunning obfuscated or otherwise suspicious scriptsPerforming behaviors that apps don’t usually initiate during normal day-to-day work

Such software behaviors are sometimes seen in legitimate applications. However, these behaviors are often considered risky because they’re commonly abused by attackers through malware. Attack surface reduction rules can constrain software-based risky behaviors and help keep your organization safe.

For a sequential, end-to-end process of how to manage attack surface reduction rules, see:

Attack surface reduction rules deployment overviewPlan attack surface reduction rules deploymentTest attack surface reduction rulesEnable attack surface reduction rulesOperationalize attack surface reduction rules

​When using OneNote Web app and pasting in a block of text, the text box is created about 2 feet wide, scrolling off the screen to the right. If you scroll over to the right edge and try to resize the box by dragging it to the left, then the text itself, which was its original width, gets severely narrowed to the point it is unusable.  To Reproduce, paste this block (or any similar) of text into OneNote web app, then notice the width of the text box and try to resize it:  Why attack surface reduction rules are importantYour organization’s attack surface includes all the places where an attacker could compromise your organization’s devices or networks. Reducing your attack surface means protecting your organization’s devices and network, which leaves attackers with fewer ways to perform attacks. Configuring attack surface reduction rules in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can help!Attack surface reduction rules target certain software behaviors, such as:Launching executable files and scripts that attempt to download or run filesRunning obfuscated or otherwise suspicious scriptsPerforming behaviors that apps don’t usually initiate during normal day-to-day workSuch software behaviors are sometimes seen in legitimate applications. However, these behaviors are often considered risky because they’re commonly abused by attackers through malware. Attack surface reduction rules can constrain software-based risky behaviors and help keep your organization safe.For a sequential, end-to-end process of how to manage attack surface reduction rules, see:Attack surface reduction rules deployment overviewPlan attack surface reduction rules deploymentTest attack surface reduction rulesEnable attack surface reduction rulesOperationalize attack surface reduction rules  Read More

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In the dynamic world of cloud computing, time is often a critical factor, especially when it comes to recovering from disasters like ransomware attacks or rolling back after a problematic security update. Imagine waking up to find your entire set of Azure VMs compromised by ransomware or discovering that a recent security update has left your systems inoperable. The clock starts ticking, and the longer it takes to restore your VMs, the greater the impact on your business.

The Problem

Azure Backup is a robust solution for protecting your Azure VMs, providing peace of mind with its ability to create and manage backup policies, configure backup schedules, and perform reliable restores. However, the features available for Azure Backup in the Portal UI today only allow the restoration of individual VMs one at a time. Restoring many VMs manually through the Azure Portal can be extremely time-consuming and inefficient, especially when you need to restore an entire set of VMs quickly.

Native Capabilities of Azure Backup

Azure Backup offers extensive features for protecting your VMs:

Automated backup schedules and retention policies – A backup policy can protect multiple Azure VMs consisting of a schedule (daily/weekly) and retention (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly).
Cross-region restore capabilities – Allows you to restore data in a secondary, Azure paired region. This can be useful to conduct BCDR drills or if there’s a disaster in the primary region.
Ransomware protection – Features such as irreversible soft-delete, immutable storage and multi-user authorization can be set at the vault level to safeguard backup data.

Despite these powerful features, there is always room for improvement. For now, there is currently no functionality in the Azure Portal to batch restore multiple VMs simultaneously. This limitation becomes a bottleneck in scenarios where speed and efficiency are paramount.

Az PowerShell Module – A Good Solution

To address this gap, we turn to PowerShell scripting, a versatile and powerful tool for managing Azure resources. Microsoft’s Az PowerShell module provides a comprehensive suite of cmdlets to automate and manage Azure tasks, including VM backups and restores.

Here’s a practical approach: a PowerShell script that enables the parallel restoration of multiple VMs from Azure Backup. This script leverages Az.RecoveryServices to streamline the recovery process, significantly reducing the time required to get your systems back online.

Sample PowerShell Script

Below is a summary of how one example script works. You can find the full example here.

Define Variables:
The script starts by defining the necessary variables, including the resource group, recovery services vault, and cache storage account.
$resourceGroup = “rg-webservers”
$recoveryServicesVault = “rsv-vmbackup”
$cacheStorageAccount = “unique626872”
$cacheStorageAccountResourceGroup = “rg-webservers”
Get the Vault and Backup Container:
It then retrieves the Recovery Services Vault and Backup Container containing multiple VMs that need to be restored in parallel.
$vault = Get-AzRecoveryServicesVault -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -Name $recoveryServicesVault
$container = Get-AzRecoveryServicesBackupContainer -ContainerType “AzureVM” -VaultId $vault.ID​
Loop Through the Backup Items:
The script iterates over each backup item in the container, performing a shutdown and kicking off an in-place restore from the latest recovery points.
foreach ($item in $container) {
# Get the Backup Item from the Vault
$backupItem = Get-AzRecoveryServicesBackupItem -BackupManagementType “AzureVM” -WorkloadType “AzureVM” -VaultId $vault.ID -Name $item.Name

# Get the resource group & VM name for this backupItem
$vmResourceGroup = $backupItem.VirtualMachineId.Split(‘/’)[4]
$vmName = $backupItem.VirtualMachineId.Split(‘/’)[8]

# Shut down the protected VM before restoring it
Stop-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $vmResourceGroup -Name $vmName -Force -SkipShutdown -NoWait

# Get the latest recovery point for the backup item from the last 7 days
$recoveryPoints = Get-AzRecoveryServicesBackupRecoveryPoint -Item $backupItem -VaultId $vault.ID -StartDate (Get-Date).AddDays(-7).ToUniversalTime() -EndDate (Get-Date).ToUniversalTime()

# Restore the Azure VM from the latest recovery point to the original location (replace the source VM)
$OriginalLocationRestoreJob = Restore-AzRecoveryServicesBackupItem -RecoveryPoint $recoveryPoints[0] -StorageAccountName $cacheStorageAccount -StorageAccountResourceGroupName $cacheStorageAccountResourceGroup -VaultId $vault.ID -VaultLocation $vault.Location
}​

By using this script, you can dramatically reduce the time required to restore multiple VMs, enhancing your ability to recover from critical incidents swiftly.

Conclusion

In this post, we’ve discussed the limitations in the Azure Portal for handling multiple VM restores and introduced a practical workaround using PowerShell scripting. This solution enables you to restore your VMs in parallel, significantly cutting down recovery time and minimizing business disruption.

We encourage you to modify the sample script, try it out in your test environment and see the benefits for yourself. Your feedback is invaluable, so please share your experiences and let us know your thoughts on this approach. Together, we can continue to improve and innovate in the realm of Azure Business Continuity.

Call to Action

Modify the sample script and try it out in your test environment for parallel VM restoration.
Share your feedback and experiences with us.
Stay tuned for more tips and tricks on maximizing your Azure capabilities.

Happy scripting, and may your recoveries be swift and seamless!

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More 

Hello,

Not sure if this forum is also for the HTML 5 RD web client but if so, I’d like to request a feature or ask if there’s a way to force the clients to use native resolution. We can force it to use web (vs .RDP) and suppress telemetry but not the native resolution slider. I tried a few DWORDS in HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftRemoteDesktopWeb but no luck.

When we roll this out to hundreds of users, they’ll all have to check that box. Would be nice if we could force it on the admin side with a reg key or the Set-RDWebClientDeploymentSetting cmdlet.

thanks,

Dan

​Hello, Not sure if this forum is also for the HTML 5 RD web client but if so, I’d like to request a feature or ask if there’s a way to force the clients to use native resolution. We can force it to use web (vs .RDP) and suppress telemetry but not the native resolution slider. I tried a few DWORDS in HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftRemoteDesktopWeb but no luck. When we roll this out to hundreds of users, they’ll all have to check that box. Would be nice if we could force it on the admin side with a reg key or the Set-RDWebClientDeploymentSetting cmdlet. thanks,Dan  Read More

​

I am an IT admin for Bookings at our organization. One of our staff members noticed her Bookings meeting confirmations are automatically directed to her trash. I assume this is because the meeting invite is accepted automatically on her behalf. Unfortunately, pertinent information is on those emails (such as notes and customer responses). We have tried to make mailbox rules as well as toggle “ignored” emails off but to no avail. Please advise.

​I am an IT admin for Bookings at our organization. One of our staff members noticed her Bookings meeting confirmations are automatically directed to her trash. I assume this is because the meeting invite is accepted automatically on her behalf. Unfortunately, pertinent information is on those emails (such as notes and customer responses). We have tried to make mailbox rules as well as toggle “ignored” emails off but to no avail. Please advise.  Read More

​

Hello!

I am working on a file that requires use of xlookup. to keep things organized and for ease of reviewal, i use the table headers in the formulas (instead of just column letter). I realized that my formulas are not working properly. when I set the formula up, it only seems to return the value that appears first in the lookup array.

For example, I am trying to find and return three different things: call them A, B, and C. In the table that I am doing the lookup from, if A, B, and C are listed in that order, then my lookups will only have one that works, and it will return A. During trouble shooting, I deleted the rows that had A and B, leaving only C. Once I did this, the C was the first lookup value in the lookup table, and the formula worked (it returned C). This informs me that it is not an error of difference of spelling / spaces / etc. in lookup value and items in lookup array. 

Also during troubleshooting, I used the column letters as opposed to the table header names in the formula, and it worked perfect. 

Has anyone experienced this before / does anyone have any tips??? 

​Hello! I am working on a file that requires use of xlookup. to keep things organized and for ease of reviewal, i use the table headers in the formulas (instead of just column letter). I realized that my formulas are not working properly. when I set the formula up, it only seems to return the value that appears first in the lookup array. For example, I am trying to find and return three different things: call them A, B, and C. In the table that I am doing the lookup from, if A, B, and C are listed in that order, then my lookups will only have one that works, and it will return A. During trouble shooting, I deleted the rows that had A and B, leaving only C. Once I did this, the C was the first lookup value in the lookup table, and the formula worked (it returned C). This informs me that it is not an error of difference of spelling / spaces / etc. in lookup value and items in lookup array.  Also during troubleshooting, I used the column letters as opposed to the table header names in the formula, and it worked perfect.  Has anyone experienced this before / does anyone have any tips???   Read More

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