Category: Microsoft
Category Archives: Microsoft
Practice mode is now available in Microsoft Forms
We’re excited to announce that Forms now supports practice mode, enhancing students’ learning process by offering a new way to review, test, and reinforce their knowledge. Practice mode is only available for quizzes. You can also try out practice mode from this template.
Practice mode
Instant feedback after answering each question
In practice mode, questions will be displayed one at a time. Students will promptly receive feedback after answering each question, indicating whether their answer is right or wrong.
Instant feedback after answering each question
Try multiple times for the correct answer
If students provide an incorrect answer, they will be given the opportunity to reconsider and make another attempt until they arrive at the correct one, allowing for immediate re-learning, and consequently strengthening their grasp of specific knowledge.
Try multiple times to get the correct answer
Encouragement and autonomy during practice
Whether students answer a question correctly or not, they will receive an encouraging message, giving them a positive practice experience. And they have the autonomy to learn at their own pace. If they answer a question incorrectly, they can choose to retry, view the correct answer, or skip this question.
Encouragement message and other options
Recap questions
Once students finish the practice, they can recap all the questions, along with the correct answers, providing a comprehensive overview to help gauge their overall performance.
Recap questions
Enter practice mode
Practice mode is only available for quizzes. You can turn it on in the “…” icon in the upper-right corner. Once you distribute the quiz recipients will automatically enter practice mode. Try out practice mode from this template now!
Enter practice mode
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Deploy Tensorflow Machine Learning models on Azure Container Apps
Introduction
Organisations are increasingly understanding the value that machine learning and artificial intelligence can deliver across all industries. Subsequently those organisations are also evaluating how to move machine learning projects from experimental stages to production. This surge in AI/ML interest also comes at a time when businesses are prioritising cost optimization of new and existing technology projects.
Frequently customers I am speaking too are asking how they can deploy reliable, robust and cost effective deployment platforms for moving machine learning models into production. Customers using Azure to deploy CPU based ML models have a few different options, batch endpoints on Azure Machine Learning, AKS for those familiar with running enterprise Kubernetes and Azure Functions for those customers looking for a serverless option, however today we will be talking about Azure Container Apps offering hybrid benefits of both AKS and Azure Functions.
In this blog post we will walk through how to deploy Machine Learning models in Azure Container Apps. To start with we will discuss why Azure Container Apps can be a great destination for CPU based machine learning models and then we will begin a walkthrough of how to get started. The walkthrough covers deploying a food recognition model with an API as well as a separate front end built in React to pass the image for processing.
What is Azure Container Apps?
Azure Container Apps (ACA) is an opinionated serverless container platform. ACA removes the operational overhead of managing creating and managing Kubernetes clusters meaning engineers or application developers no longer need to worry about completing activities such as node configuration, container orchestration and deployment details. ACA also has otherwise complex to implement features such as EasyAuth, internal service discovery and custom domains available out of the box and configurable through the console!
Why use Azure Container Apps to deploy machine learning models?
Azure container apps as mentioned offers a rich feature set out of the box. One of the most compelling features that suits ML use cases with real time inference is event based scaling using a Microsoft maintained version of the Keda HTTP Autoscaler (or Azure Queue). This means that your containerised ML service will scale on demand as needed based on load. ACA is able to scale to up to 300 replicas and higher numbers can be requested. This means with larger instance sizes customers can scale to thousands of vcpu’s concurrently to deal with millions of requests.
Another benefit of Azure Container Apps is that organisations are able to apply existing standards and processes for application releases using containers to their ML releases too using familiar tooling such as Docker and Container registries. Finally Azure Container Apps is very cost effective. Providing an accurate estimate on costs it difficult as different models have different performance or CPU/Memory requirements but for smaller models running millions of requests a month cost is in the low single digit thousands as opposed to high hundreds of thousands.
The best way to understand the benefits mentioned above is to deploy a model on Azure Container Apps so lets get into the walkthrough!
Walkthrough
All files and code can be found here: owainow/ml-on-aca: A workshop created to assist in deploying containerised ML workloads onto Azure Container Apps. (github.com)
The Readme of this repository is the same as the walkthrough below.
Now we know the how and the why let’s start taking a look at getting started deploying a Tensor flow image inference model on Azure Container Apps.
The model
The API
The API created in this demo uses FastAPI. FastAPI is a high performance web framework for building API’s in Python 3.8. FastAPI also has a great feature that automatically generates documentation for your API, creating a /docs route on the API host. We will be able to use this to test our ML model deployment. This is all contained within the main.py file. The API will allow us to make calls to our model to perform inference.
The frontend
The frontend is built in react. It allows us to make a call to the API by passing in an image URL. The frontend then redirects us to the output of the model running on our other container. This showcases the full flow of the call. As a result this demo does not support a private deployment. We could however make an adjustment to the code so that the API call is made to the backend and instead of redirecting we display the return in the frontend. This would then support a private deployment of the backend.
Getting Started
First clone the repository into your working directory.
We can do this with the following command:
git clone https://github.com/owainow/ml-on-aca.git
To start the demo we require a requirements .txt file outlining the packages required for this walk through. The packages are:
– FastAPI
– Numpy
– Uvicorn
– Image
– TensorFlow
The requirements.txt file can be found in the aca folder and installed with:
pip install -r requirements.txt
You will also need an Azure Subscription with the ability to deploy the following services:
– Azure Container Registry
– Azure Container Apps
If you would like to read more about Azure Container Apps before starting please see the links below:
Container Apps Overview – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-apps/overview
Container Apps Docs – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-apps/?source=recommendations
Compare Container Apps vs Other Container Services – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-apps/compare-options
Create our Azure Resources
We will be creating our Azure resources using the CLI. Please ensure you are logged in and in the correct subscription.
We first will need to create an Azure Container Registry in preparation for creating our two images. To do this with the CLI we can do the following:
ACR_NAME=<registry-name>
RES_GROUP=ml-aca
az login
az group create –resource-group $RES_GROUP –location eastus
az acr create –resource-group $RES_GROUP –name $ACR_NAME –sku Standard –location eastus –admin-enabled true
The admin enabled flag is required for some scenarios when deploying an image for ACR to certain Azure Services including ACA.
We then need to create our Container Apps environment. We will be using the consumption tier for this demo. To create our container apps environment we can run the following command:
az containerapp env create -n MyContainerappEnvironment -g $RES_GROUP
–location eastus
This will be all that is required for now until we have our built container images.
Create our ML Backend Container Image
The model we use in this demo aims to classify images of food that are passed to it. The image is passed directly through a URL and the image is then serialised for processing.
The ML model used in this demo is available from freecodecamp.org. We do not cover the training or packaging of the model in this guide. The notebook for training and packaging the model can be found here: https://github.com/eRuaro/food-vision-backend/blob/main/food_vision.ipynb
To save us the trouble of storing this model locally I have stored a version in a public Azure Storage blob. It is loaded directly by the main.py file from this URL: https://publicdemoresourcesoow.blob.core.windows.net/ml-models/food-vision-model.h5 we could alternatively also pull and store the model in the container image itself.
We will be using ACR tasks to build our image. ACR tasks provides cloud based container image building across platforms to simplify the image creation process. ACR tasks can use hosted or self hosted agents if required for private deployments. In this demo we will be using hosted agents. You can learn more about ACR tasks here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-registry/container-registry-tasks-overview
To use ACR tasks we will run the following commands in our terminal:
cd aca/backend-ml
az acr build –registry $ACR_NAME –image backendml:v1 –file Dockerfile .
While the image is building I would encourage you to review the backend files and Dockerfile to understand what is being deployed.
Create our React Frontend Container Image
The frontend is built in react. It allows us to make a call to the API by passing in an image URL. The frontend then redirects us to the output of the model running on our other container. This showcases the full flow of the call.
As a result this demo does not support a private deployment. We could however make an adjustment to the code so that the API call is made to the backend and instead of redirecting we display the return in the frontend. This would then support a private deployment of the backend.
To build our frontend we will use ACR tasks. We can then build and push our image again:
cd ../frontend-ml
az acr build –registry $ACR_NAME –image frontendml:v1 –file Dockerfile .
While the image is building feel free to review the react files to familiarise yourself with the content.
Deploy our Application
Now our container images are built and uploaded we can deploy our Azure Containers into our Container Apps environments.
We will first create our ML Backend. To do this we need to create a container app associated with the environment we created earlier. We will do this in the portal so we understand some of the options available with Azure Container Apps.
Backend ML Container App
1. Start by navigating to “Container Apps” and clicking “Create”.
2. Now set your new container app name to be “ml-backend” and associate it with the environment you created earlier.
3. Next disable the QuickStart image and select the ACR you created earlier with the associated backend image. You can be flexible with the memory and CPU you would like to allocate to this container. In this example I only allocate 0.5 Cores and 1GB memory.
4. Next we need to enable ingress. As mentioned due to the way our frontend calls the backend API we will need to enable access from “Anywhere” however if we were to change this call we could alternatively limit the backend ingress to within our managed environment.
We also need to set our target port on our backend to port 5000.
5. Finally we should see our creation validated and we can click create.
6. Once creation is finished navigate to the new resource and view the URL. Copy this as we will need this for our front end creation.
We can check our container is running correctly by clicking the url and viewing the message displayed. We can also then navigate to the /docs and view the available API’s.
Frontend ML Container App
1. To create our front end we will follow similar steps to before. We will start by creating a new container app in the same environment we used earlier.
2. We will then select our frontend image and select the same resource limits as before however this time we also need to add an environment variable. We can do this at the bottom of the config options. The environment variable we need to add is:
REACT_APP_API_ENDPOINT | “<BACKEND_URL>/net/image/prediction/”
3. We will enable ingress from anywhere to make our frontend public and set the target port as 3000.
4. We can then let Azure validate the resource and click create one validated. Once this is created we can click on the frontend URL and will be taken to our frontend application.
From this point we can pass through any image url into the field to be processed.
Once the image url is submitted you will see the processing message. After that you will be redirected to the result of the API call on the backend container.
I have uploaded some images into a public storage account. Feel free to try them once your application is up and running:
Garlic Bread 1 – https://publicdemoresourcesoow.blob.core.windows.net/food-images/garlicbread1.jpg
Garlic Bread 2 – https://publicdemoresourcesoow.blob.core.windows.net/food-images/garlicbread2.jpg
Ice Cream – https://publicdemoresourcesoow.blob.core.windows.net/food-images/IceCream.jpg
Lasagna – https://publicdemoresourcesoow.blob.core.windows.net/food-images/lasgna.jpg
Feel free to upload your own images to try or use images from Google. Some images on google may not allow you to process them and may cause an error.
Wrap Up
This has served to show how easy Azure Container Apps makes it to deploy containerised versions of your ML Models ready to be consumed. This example could be improved by adding APIM in front of this ML backend to benefit from rate limiting and other enterprise standard API features.
We could also evaluate the autoscaling of this solution and use Azure Load Testing to ensure our container apps environment is able to scale to meet our expected demand.
The model, backend and front end files are all available in this repository. Feel free to fork this repository and improve the application or adjust it for your own demos.
Follow up
MLOPS can often be a challenge when we think about ML deployments on cloud native platforms. ACA has some features out of the box that can be leveraged to assist from an MLOPS perspective:
– Revisions – Revisions allow users to deploy multiple versions of an application into your container apps environment with build in traffic splitting. This is perfect for trailing new models in development or production environments.
– Azure Container Registry – Because of ACA’s ease of integration with Azure container registry existing ML pipelines deploying and updating new images can use ACR tasks to regularly update container images in ACR as models are improved.
We could also look to make the most of Azure Container Apps DAPR integration out of the box to make our service to service calls simple using DAPR sidecars.
With ML OPS in mind it is worth bearing in mind that ACA is not a native ML platform and requires consideration and most likely a bespoke solution to enable monitoring of the accuracy and performance of the ML Model itself.
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Watch the newly released Surface videos for device repair
The engineers at Surface have created new instructional videos demonstrating how to disassemble the newly available Surface devices, along with a high-level overview of how to replace the components. The latest videos are for Surface Laptop Studio 2 and Surface Go 4.
Use these videos as a companion to the Surface Service Guides documentation,
Surface Laptop Studio 2
Surface Go 4
Surface Laptop Go 2 & Surface Laptop Go 3
Surface Laptop 3 & Surface Laptop 4
Surface Pro 9 with 5G
Surface Pro 8
Surface Pro 7+
See also:
Hands-on videos for Surface device repair (Part 1)
Surface Laptop Studio 2
Contents
Introduction
Removing feet and cover
Removing SSD
Removing display module
Removing Surface Connect port and audio jack
Removing micro SD port
Removing USB ports
Removing fans
Removing subwoofer speakers
Removing motherboard
Removing tweeters
Surface Go 4
Contents
Introduction
Removing kickstand
Debonding and removal of the display
Removing hinges
Removing antennae deck
Removing SD connector
Removing blade connector
Removing camera modules
Removing motherboard
Removing speakers
Surface Laptop Go 2 & Laptop Go 3
Surface Laptop 3 & Surface Laptop 4
Surface Pro 9 with 5G
Surface Pro 8
Surface Pro 7+
Learn more
Hands-on videos for Surface device repair (Part 1)
Full playlist of Surface repair videos
Surface for Business service and repair
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Migrate your existing ADX cluster to support multiple availability zones- Public Preview release
We are very happy to announce Public Preview of the ability of migrating an existing Azure Data Explorer (ADX) Cluster to support multiple availability zones. By using availability zones, a cluster can better withstand the failure of a single datacenter in a region to support business continuity scenarios. The feature will allow clusters that were deployed not supporting zones, to be seamlessly redeployed to support multiple zones.
When availability zones are configured, a cluster’s resources are deployed as follows:
Compute layer: Azure Data Explorer is a distributed computing platform that has two or more nodes. If availability zones are configured, compute nodes are distributed across the defined availability zone for maximum intra-region resiliency.
Persistent storage layer: Azure Data Clusters use Azure Storage as its durable persistence layer. If availability zones are configured, ZRS is enabled, placing storage replicas across all three availability zones for maximum intra-region resiliency.
To add availability zones to an existing cluster, you must update the cluster zones attribute with a list of the target availability zones using one of the following methods:
REST API
C# SDK
Python SDK
PowerShell
ARM Template
Migration to multiple availability zones is supported in all regions that support availability zones but is limited to regions that don’t have capacity restrictions. Check in our documentation the list of currently supported regions.
Using availability zones incurs additional Storage costs.
For more information go to the feature’s documentation.
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Copilot Bootcamp -koulutukset kumppaneille Q3
Copilot-tukiäly ja varsinkin Copilot for Microsoft 365 on varmasti yksi kevään kiinnostavimmista jutuista. Microsoft tarjoaa Q3 kumppaneille useita Bootcamp-muotoisia myynti-, pre-sales- ja teknisiä koulutuksia, joihin kannattaa osallistua. Näiden avulla voi kehittää omaa Copilot-tarjomaa, tehostaa myyntiä ja lisätä teknisiä kyvykkyyksiä. Rekisteröidy mukaan tai katso tallenteet!
Muista, että löydät joka toinen viikko päivittyvän Partner Enablement Newsletterin ja muut kumppanien koulutusoppaat osoitteesta aka.ms/koulutusoppaat
Copilot for Microsoft 365 Pre-Sales & Technical Bootcamp
*New Dates
Open to all partners
Join Microsoft experts on a journey to explore how Copilot for Microsoft 365 provides real-time intelligent assistance, enabling users to enhance their creativity, productivity, and skills.
January 16-18, 2024
February 27-29, 2024
March 26-28, 2024
UTC-8, UTC+0, UTC+5:30
Microsoft 365 CSP Masters Copilot for Microsoft 365 Sales Bootcamp
Open to all partners
Learn about Copilot for Microsoft 365, Microsoft Copilot, and AI-powered collaboration and security value in Microsoft 365. This training will be focused on building a practice and landing your first sale with Copilot for Microsoft 365.
January 24, 2024
UTC-8
January 31, 2024
UTC+5:30
Microsoft Copilot Partner Bootcamp
Open to all partners
Dive into the latest AI capabilities from both business and technical aspects, with coverage of each Microsoft Copilot solution. Learn best practices with selling, deploying, and adopting Copilot Solutions.
January 30-February 2, 2024
UTC-8, UTC+0, UTC+5:30
Trainings visible once registered.
Microsoft 365 CSP Masters Copilot for Microsoft 365 Technical Bootcamp
Open to all partners
Learn about Copilot for Microsoft 365, Microsoft Copilot, and AI-powered collaboration and security value in Microsoft 365. This technical training will be focused on learning how to deploy and manage your first Copilot for Microsoft 365 customer.
February 7-8, 2024
UTC-8
February 20-21, 2024
UTC+5:30
Extensibility of Copilot in Business Applications
February 21-23, 2024
March 5-7, 2024
Enrollment coming soon.
Prepare for New Threats with Microsoft Security Copilot
In this session, you will be introduced to Security Copilot capabilities, its interfaces and plugins, and how to enhance SOC efficiency using the power of AI.
Register here (On-demand)
Trainings visible once registered.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service Copilot Workshop
Learn how you can empower agents with tools powered by next-generation AI that fuel collaboration and productivity across teams. And transform operations with automation that drives efficiency and generates outcome-based value for customers.
Register here (On-demand)
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Copilot Bootcamp -koulutukset kumppaneille kevät 2024
Microsoftin Copilot-tukiäly ja varsinkin Copilot for Microsoft 365 on varmasti yksi kevään kiinnostavimmista jutuista. Microsoft tarjoaa Q3 kumppaneille useita Bootcamp-muotoisia myynti-, pre-sales- ja teknisiä koulutuksia, joihin kannattaa osallistua. Näiden avulla voit kehittää omaa Copilot-tarjomaa, tehostaa myyntiä ja lisätä teknisiä kyvykkyyksiä. Rekisteröidy mukaan tai katso tallenteet!
Muista, että löydät joka toinen viikko päivittyvän Partner Enablement Newsletterin ja muut kumppanien koulutusoppaat osoitteesta aka.ms/koulutusoppaat
Copilot for Microsoft 365 Pre-Sales & Technical Bootcamp
*New Dates
Open to all partners
Join Microsoft experts on a journey to explore how Copilot for Microsoft 365 provides real-time intelligent assistance, enabling users to enhance their creativity, productivity, and skills.
January 16-18, 2024
February 27-29, 2024
March 26-28, 2024
UTC-8, UTC+0, UTC+5:30
Microsoft 365 CSP Masters Copilot for Microsoft 365 Sales Bootcamp
Open to all partners
Learn about Copilot for Microsoft 365, Microsoft Copilot, and AI-powered collaboration and security value in Microsoft 365. This training will be focused on building a practice and landing your first sale with Copilot for Microsoft 365.
January 24, 2024
UTC-8
January 31, 2024
UTC+5:30
Microsoft Copilot Partner Bootcamp
Open to all partners
Dive into the latest AI capabilities from both business and technical aspects, with coverage of each Microsoft Copilot solution. Learn best practices with selling, deploying, and adopting Copilot Solutions.
January 30-February 2, 2024
UTC-8, UTC+0, UTC+5:30
Trainings visible once registered.
Microsoft 365 CSP Masters Copilot for Microsoft 365 Technical Bootcamp
Open to all partners
Learn about Copilot for Microsoft 365, Microsoft Copilot, and AI-powered collaboration and security value in Microsoft 365. This technical training will be focused on learning how to deploy and manage your first Copilot for Microsoft 365 customer.
February 7-8, 2024
UTC-8
February 20-21, 2024
UTC+5:30
Extensibility of Copilot in Business Applications
February 21-23, 2024
March 5-7, 2024
Enrollment coming soon.
Prepare for New Threats with Microsoft Security Copilot
In this session, you will be introduced to Security Copilot capabilities, its interfaces and plugins, and how to enhance SOC efficiency using the power of AI.
Register here (On-demand)
Trainings visible once registered.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service Copilot Workshop
Learn how you can empower agents with tools powered by next-generation AI that fuel collaboration and productivity across teams. And transform operations with automation that drives efficiency and generates outcome-based value for customers.
Register here (On-demand)
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Introducing PivotTables on iPad
We are excited to announce support for PivotTable creation and editing on iPad. PivotTables allow you to calculate, summarize, and analyze data. We have tailored this powerful tool for the iPad’s smaller screen and touch interface. Now, you have the flexibility to move seamlessly between desktop, web, and iPad while maintaining a consistent experience across the board. Unleash the full potential of PivotTables, making every calculation and analysis simple on the go.
1. Create a PivotTable
To get started, navigate to the Insert tab, select PivotTable, and choose a Source and Insertion location. Insert your PivotTable with a single tap.
2. Use the Field List
Tailor a PivotTable to your exact needs with ease using the field list. The areas section at the bottom empowers you to rearrange fields with ease by dragging them across the different sections to achieve an insightful data representation.
3. Change the Source Data
Adjust your PivotTable’s source data seamlessly by navigating to the PivotTable tab and engaging the Change Data Source side pane. It’s a straightforward process that ensures your analysis remains dynamic and up to date.
4. Change the Settings
Fine-tune your PivotTable effortlessly by accessing the Settings side pane. Make the desired modifications and save your changes with a simple tap to make your PivotTable work precisely how you want it to.
5. Move the PivotTable
Move your PivotTable within and across worksheets through cut and paste in the context menu.
Learn more
Check out our documentation below for more information about how to use PivotTables on iPad:
Create a PivotTable to analyze worksheet data
Use the Field List to arrange fields in a PivotTable – Microsoft Support
Change the style of your PivotTable – Microsoft Support
Delete a PivotTable – Microsoft Support
Availability
To use this feature, run Excel on iPad version 2.80.1203.0 and above.
Don’t have it yet? It’s probably us, not you. Features are released over time to ensure things are working smoothly. We highlight features that you may not have because they’re slowly releasing to larger numbers of users. Sometimes we remove elements for further improvement based on your feedback. Though this is rare, we also reserve the option to pull a feature entirely out of the product even if you have had the opportunity to try it.
Sharing feedback
We hope you like this new addition to Excel on iPad and we’d love to hear what you think about it! Settings > Help & Feedback, then select Tell Us What You Like or Tell Us What Can Be Better.
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
New on Microsoft AppSource: December 15-21, 2023
We continue to expand the Microsoft AppSource ecosystem. For this volume, 163 new offers successfully met the onboarding criteria and went live. See details of the new offers below:
Aspect EHS: This environment, health, and safety (EHS) management solution for Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers real-time insights to manage risks and improve operational efficiency. You can automate compliance processes, view insights instantly, and collaborate across your entire organization while increasing transparency of your EHS performance. It includes incident management, audits, inspections, and more.
Drill Down Graph PRO (Pin): This customizable and intuitive graph visual from ZoomCharts lets you create interactive Microsoft Power BI graphs featuring complex hierarchies, explore relations among data points, and identify outliers. Ideal for banking, IT, cybersecurity, sales, and marketing, this tool is used by 80 percent of Fortune 200 companies.
FanTail: FlashBI’s FanTail is designed to make your Microsoft Power BI dashboards shine. The app displays hierarchical data structures using a radial layout so you can drill up and down to see the relative impact and value of different aspects of your business. It uses space more efficiently compared to linear chart tools and is great for visualizing sales data, website navigation paths, revenue sources, and more.
Harvest Connect: Harvest is a cloud-based solution for time tracking, project management and invoicing. Harvest Connect integrates Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with Harvest’s time tracking for seamless revenue recognition and cash receipt management. The app eliminates manual tasks by automating processes such as importing invoices from Harvest and posting them to G/L, VAT, and customer ledgers.
Ivanti Neurons for ITAM: Reduce risks and outages by proactively driving timely asset maintenance and replacement processes with this solution from Ivanti. The mobile app consolidates your IT asset data and lets you track, configure, optimize, and strategically manage them anytime, from anywhere, using barcode scanning. You can search for assets by serial number, tag, device name, user, and location.
Synergyflow: Synergyflow is an intelligent workflow platform that centralizes project management and knowledge capital acquisition, management, and deployment. It is ideal for organizations with project-oriented users and compliance-oriented processes. Synergyflow empowers organizations with training, quality control, best practices, and efficiency to increase knowledge capital, quality, and profitability while decreasing risk.
Go further with workshops, proofs of concept, and implementations
Accounts Payable Approvals: Integrated with Microsoft Teams, this scalable solution from OfficeLabs allows users to manage invoices on the go. It acts as a single storage repository for all supplier invoices with features such as automated approval workflows and Microsoft Power BI reporting. By reducing manual effort and errors, it can make your accounts payable workflow simple and productive.
Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain QuickStart Service: Armanino offers a structured and risk-mitigated approach to migrate your on-premises Microsoft ERP systems to Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Key features include accelerated migration, best practices, comprehensive assessment, data migration and integration, user training, and ongoing support.
Advanced Cloud Protection with Microsoft XDR: 8-Week Implementation: Beyondsoft will integrate Microsoft security tools such as Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Entra ID, and Microsoft Intune to provide continuous monitoring, detection, and incident response services against security threats. The implementation includes cybersecurity assessment and onboarding for up to 100 users, devices, and servers.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Adoption Journey: BRINEL will provide personalized workshops, assessments, integration, and support to help companies understand and utilize Microsoft 365 Copilot for growth and employee experience. Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI-powered assistant that helps users work faster and better across Microsoft applications.
Microsoft 365 Copilot – Expand: Increase Your Business Value: MindWorks’ service will help businesses adopt Microsoft 365 Copilot by providing a framework for implementing the right processes, deploying tailor-made solutions, and leveraging AI. It includes end-user adoption, change management strategy, AI readiness, and custom Copilot and AI extensions.
Microsoft 365 Copilot – Start: Begin a New Journey: MindWorks offers a Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption program that helps customers optimize business value and leverage AI. The program includes readiness and onboarding, end-user adoption, and change management strategies. Identify business opportunities and create a competitive advantage with Copilot.
Microsoft 365 Exchange Online: 7-Day Migration: IT Partner will provide a flexible and quick way to migrate all your emails, contacts, tasks, and other data from a third-party hosted and managed Microsoft 365 Exchange Server to Microsoft 365 Exchange Online. The cutover migration mode transfers all mailbox information to a new location, with email service downtime depending on DNS settings.
Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) Migration: 7-Day Migration: IT Partner offers an IMAP migration service to transfer emails from Gmail, Microsoft 365 Exchange, Outlook.com, and other IMAP-compatible systems to Microsoft 365 and Microsoft 365 Exchange Online. The service covers mailbox data, users, and folders, with break-fix support for migration issues.
On-premises Microsoft 365 Exchange Server to Microsoft 365: 7-Day Migration: IT Partner will help customers running at least one on-premises instance of Microsoft 365 Exchange Server to seamlessly migrate their mailboxes to Microsoft 365. The client must provide a dedicated point of contact, configure network equipment, and assist with high-risk user identification.
G Suite (Google Apps) to Microsoft 365: 7-Day Migration: This service from IT Partner will migrate user mailboxes from G Suite email system to Microsoft 365 using the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) for email migration, focusing on emails and folders only. The solution emphasizes user satisfaction and provides a closeout report upon project completion.
Microsoft Purview Data Security – Labels and DLP: Bulletproof’s consulting service helps organizations deploy Microsoft Purview Data Security tools, including sensitive information types, protection labels, and data loss prevention. Their experts will provide a baseline review, customized recommendations, delivery, and knowledge transfer to ensure successful deployment.
Communication Plan for End-Users: 3-Day Consulting Service: IT Partner will ensure a successful deployment of Microsoft 365, Microsoft Intune, or Microsoft Dynamics 365 with a communication plan that includes a kickoff meeting to assess security objectives and a security roadmap. Success criteria include timely delivery of documents and media materials.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service: Implementation: TrimaxSecure will help launch your company’s digital transformation with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service. This full self-service online portal will enable your agents to take customer requests from any channel, handle multiple sessions at a time, interact with multiple apps without losing context, and enhance their workflow with productivity tools.
Dynamics 365 Sales: 12-Week CRM Migration: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales is a CRM platform designed to empower your sales teams with automation, contextual insights, and next-generation AI. TrimaxSecure’s implementation process includes system setup, data import, sales hierarchy setup, and user acceptance testing.
Dynamics 365 Project Operations: 4-Week Implementation: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations will help you get business insights from sales to project financials and empower your team to streamline project workflows and optimize resources. NaviWorld’s implementation includes FRD, SDD, configuration, data migration, user role setup, training, and go-live support.
Dynamics GP to Dynamics 365 Business Central: Migration: SMB Suite/NextCorp will help streamline your business operations by migrating Microsoft Dynamics GP to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with ongoing support and upgrade assistance. Dynamics 365 Business Central is a cloud-based, all-in-one business management solution for small to medium-sized enterprises.
CSI Security Engagements: 3- to 4-Week Workshops: As part of Microsoft’s Cybersecurity Incentives Program (CSI), the experts from Elisa will evaluate your security posture and offer four different workshops based on your needs to reduce your risk exposure by using advanced Microsoft security products such as Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, Microsoft Secure Score, and Microsoft Purview.
Google Workspace to Office 365: 7-Day Migration: IT Partner offers a secure and cost-effective way to migrate from G Suite to Microsoft 365, including email, contacts, calendars, tasks, files, and data. The process involves gathering and verifying G Suite information, configuring a Microsoft 365 tenant, creating a migration plan, and optimizing the migration.
GoDaddy Office 365 to Microsoft Office 365 Tenant-to-Tenant Cutover Email Migration: 7-Day Service: IT Partner offers migration services from GoDaddy Office 365 to Microsoft Office 365, including planning, design, and email migration. Prerequisites include global-admin level access to both the source and destination Office 365 tenants and access to the email domain DNS zone.
Hybrid Office 365 Migration from Exchange Server: 7-Day Service: Hybrid deployment extends on-premises Microsoft Exchange to Exchange Online, providing seamless user access and centralized mail transport. IT Partner analyzes your current Exchange on-premises solution, prepares configuration for synchronization, sets up user and password synchronization, and migrates mailboxes.
Microsoft Endpoint Management: 2-Month Proof of Concept: T-Systems’ offer provides a minimum configuration of Microsoft Endpoint Manager for self-service device testing. The bundle includes an onboarding workshop and compliance and configuration policies.
MDR Workshop: The experts from Grant Thornton blend technical expertise and business acumen to provide tailored user experiences, adaptive assessments, and actionable analytics to enhance managed detection and response (MDR) programs using Microsoft solutions. The workshop includes analysis of goals, evaluation of technical implementation, and identification of Microsoft technologies to increase value.
Microsoft 365 Copilot and AI Advisory Workshop: Microsoft 365 Copilot offers AI-powered tools to improve productivity and customer experience, automate processes, and gain insights from data. Telstra Purple’s workshop provides Microsoft’s MCI recommendations to deploy and adopt Copilot for Microsoft 365, tailored to the customer’s specific requirements. Deliverables include a collaborative workshop and a high-level report with recommendations.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Discovery Workshop: Telstra Purple’s three-phase engagement assesses user needs, discovers required outcomes, and develops success criteria and recommendations for deploying and adopting Microsoft 365 Copilot. The workshop provides a starting point in the customer’s journey and delivers a high-level report with recommendations and a plan to adopt Copilot.
Microsoft Viva Goals: 12-Week Proof of Concept: Enabling Technologies will help you seamlessly track your business progress with Microsoft Viva Goals to drive clarity and transparency using the OKR (objectives and key results) framework. This proof of concept includes planning, enabling select users, and summarizing key learnings and results. Viva Goals can improve productivity, performance, and employee experience.
novaAudit Power Cloud Edition: 10-Day Implementation: Available only in German, this all-in-one solution from novaAudit simplifies data and document management. Compatible with Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365, it offers granular permission control, third-party system integration, and automated deployment. The implementation includes installation, configuration, and customization.
Office 365 Tenant-to-Tenant Cutover Email Migration: 7-Day Service: IT Partner offers advanced migration services for Microsoft 365 tenants, including planning, design, and email migration. The service ensures minimal downtime for incoming mail and avoids NDR. The migration includes exporting resources from the source tenant, importing them to the destination tenant, and changing records in domain zones.
Tableau to Power BI Migration: The experts from Office Solution will help clients understand their business needs, set up Microsoft Power BI, develop custom dashboards, provide training, optimize performance, ensure security and compliance, and offer strategic insights.
Microsoft Viva Insights: Pilot Program: adaQuest will provide privacy-protected insights and actionable recommendations to streamline decision-making and improve business performance. The pilot program allows you to deploy a Microsoft Viva Insights trial in your production tenant, run queries on your data, deliver results for two advanced analytics reports in Viva Insights, and more.
Power BI: 4-Week Implementation: Microsoft Power BI reports and dashboards provide a comprehensive and detailed view of business metrics in one place, updated in real time and accessible on all devices. This implementation by myPartner provides efficient data collection and management, secure data access, and personalized reports and dashboards.
Power Pages Consultancy: Imperium’s consultation services for Microsoft Power Pages offer affordable website development without compromising on style or information. Their Microsoft-certified experts provide customized solutions that can expand and adapt to your company’s future needs. Onboarding takes as little as a week or two, and they offer extensive training and ongoing support.
Power Platform Management: 2-Month Proof of Concept: T-Systems’ Bundle Quickstart offer supports customers in configuring Microsoft Power Platform management for self-service on their Microsoft Azure tenant. The bundle includes an onboarding workshop and implementation of Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, and Power BI.
Sales Quickstart: 1-Week Implementation: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales is a CRM platform with sales and marketing capabilities, seamless integration, and data analytics reporting. TrimaxSecure’s implementation service includes core customizations, data migration, user acceptance test, and deployment, as well as admin functions, license provisioning, and user account setup.
Securing and Hardening On-Premises IT Environment: 7-Day Service: IT Partner offers professional services to enhance the security of your on-premises and Microsoft 365 environment. Their experts will analyze your IT infrastructure, implement security measures, and deliver a comprehensive closeout report. The plan includes a kickoff meeting, on-premises health check, securing process, and post-assessment tasks.
User Home Folder Migration to OneDrive for Business: 7-Day Project: This service migrates personal files from various storage systems to the user’s Microsoft OneDrive for Business folders, enhancing Microsoft 365 effectiveness. IT Partner verifies domain and workstation configurations, prepares the domain for OneDrive, and configures redirection of work folders.
Windows 10 Autopilot: 3-Week Initial Setup: Windows Autopilot is a cloud-based deployment technology in Windows 10 that simplifies device setup, configuration, and repurposing with minimal infrastructure. IT Partner’s deployment includes customized first boot experiences, automatic enrollment in Microsoft Intune, and immediate application of policies, configurations, and apps.
Contact our partners
Base Registration of Addresses and Buildings
Alna HR Office (WTA Advanced – Consolidated)
Aptean Quality Control for Food and Beverage
Attendant Console for Microsoft Teams
AutomationEdge Hyperautomation Platform
Bank Transaction Import for Dynamics 365 Business Central
bossInterface Vendor Assessment
bossInterface eInvoicing eBill
Business Intelligence Connector
CIO Advisory Services: 1-Week Briefing
Cleo Integration Cloud for Dynamics 365 Business Central
Compleat Accounts Payable & Purchasing Automation
COSMO Advanced Pricing and Discounting
Cyber Security Health Check: 4-Hour Assessment
DataGenie – Your Business Smart Watch
Discover Copilot for Microsoft 365
Drill Down TimeSeries PRO (Pin)
DX360 Security ARMOR Collaboration Edition
Dynamics 365 Customer Service: 1-Hour Assessment
Dynamics 365 Sales: 1-Hour Assessment
Dynamics GP to Dynamics 365 Business Central: 1-Hour Assessment
Enlighten Custom Visual License – Dev Environment
Evaluate Microsoft Azure Discounts: 12-Month Subscription
AWS to Azure: 12-Month Subscription
GCP (Google Cloud) to Azure: 12-Month Subscription
EX Managed Services – Premium (including Microsoft 365 Copilot)
eXperts Hybrid Project Management Service
Factory Cost Control for Italy
GlobalRapide for Endpoint Management for Microsoft Teams Rooms
HAWK:AI Transaction and Customer Monitoring
Market Execution Platform by Eviden
Messaging for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys
ManageWise Services for Microsoft 365: Assessment
Microsoft 365: 3-Week Security Configuration Diagnosis
Microsoft CRM Cloud Migration Assessment
Migration to Dynamics 365: Assessment
Neoteric 365 Scan&Go for Dynamics 365
NTT Extend for Microsoft Teams
Officesuite HD Meeting for Office 365 Add-In
OmniAnalytics for Dynamics 365 Business Central
Power BI Professional Services: 2-Hour Briefing
Prodware Retail Boost Accelerator
Quality Vendor Management Next
Microsoft 365 Collaboration: 1-Week Assessment
Microsoft 365 Intune: 1-Week Assessment
Self Service Portal – Alna HR Office – Consolidated
SharePoint Metadata Sync with Dynamics 365 Using Dataverse
SMART Retail Localization for Georgia
Agrotools: Remote Agricultural Monitoring
Dynamics 365 Migration Service
Tampnet Offshore Private Mobile Network (4G/5G)
Taxxon Enhancement Pack for El Salvador
Taxxon Enhancement Pack for Nicaragua
Microsoft Copilot Readiness: 4-Week Assessment
Microsoft Viva Connections: 4-Week Assessment
CEO Pro for Swedish Real Estate Market
Wipro GenAI Investor Onboarding
Wipro Live Workspace Cognitive Automation
This content was generated by Microsoft Azure OpenAI and then revised by human editors.
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Copilot in Microsoft Word – Copilot Snack Show Me How Video
“One of the challenges that many employees face in their daily work is creating and managing documents efficiently and effectively. Whether it is writing a report, a proposal, a memo, or a presentation, there are often multiple tasks involved, such as researching, drafting, editing, formatting, and sharing. These tasks can take up a lot of time and energy, especially if the documents are complex, lengthy, or require collaboration with others.
Microsoft 365 Copilot in Microsoft Word is a new feature that aims to help employees streamline their document creation and management process, by providing them with smart and personalized assistance. Copilot in Microsoft Word leverages artificial intelligence and natural language processing to understand the context and intent of the user, and to offer relevant suggestions, insights, and actions. Some of the benefits of using Copilot in Microsoft Word include:
– Document generation: Copilot in Microsoft Word can help users generate high-quality content faster and easier, by suggesting text, images, tables, charts, and other elements based on the topic, style, and tone of the document. Users can also use voice commands to dictate their content, and Copilot in Microsoft Word will transcribe and format it accordingly.
– Document transformation: Copilot in Microsoft Word can help users transform their existing document content by rewriting text, making wholesale changes, transforming text into tables, and more.
– Document queries: Copilot in Microsoft Word can help users find answers to their questions and queries within their documents, by using natural language and semantic search. Users can ask Copilot in Microsoft Word to highlight, summarize, explain, or provide additional information about any term, concept, or data point in their documents, and Copilot in Microsoft Word will display the results in a sidebar or a pop-up window.
– Document management: Copilot in Microsoft Word can help users organize and manage their documents more efficiently and effectively, by suggesting tags, categories, folders, and metadata based on the content and purpose of the document. Users can also use Copilot in Microsoft Word to share, sync, and collaborate on their documents with others, by using Copilot in Microsoft Word’s integration with OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, and Outlook.” – Microsoft 365 Copilot
In this video I walk you through document generation, document transformation, chatting with Copilot about your document, and creating a summary of your document.
Resources:
Copilot in Word help & learning (microsoft.com)
Frequently asked questions about Copilot in Word – Microsoft Support
Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word for mobile – Microsoft Support
Copilot prompts tips – Microsoft Support
Thanks for visiting – Michael Gannotti LinkedIn | Twitter
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Azure Spring Apps Enterprise is now eligible for Azure savings plan for compute
Azure Spring Apps Enterprise plan is now eligible for Azure savings plan for compute!
All Azure Spring Apps regions under the Enterprise plan are eligible for substantial cost savings – 20% for one year and 47% for three years – when you commit to Azure savings Plan.
Committing to the savings plan allows you to get savings, up to the hourly commitment amount, on the resources you use. You can choose to pay all at once or monthly. The best part? Turning on the Savings Plan will not mess with your current set-ups or apps. You just get the savings while everything runs as usual. If you are running big apps, this plan can optimize your investments. It brings down your overall costs for using Azure Spring Apps Enterprise.
Here is an example of how Azure savings plan for compute works. If you buy a 1-year savings plan and commit to $5 USD of spend per hour, Azure automatically applies the savings plan to compute usage globally on an hourly basis up to the example $5 hourly commitment. Hourly usage for Azure Spring Apps Enterprise would be billed for active usage as follows:
Usage at or below $5 USD for the hour is billed at lower savings plan prices and covered by the savings plan hourly commitment. Note that you would pay the $5 USD amount every hour, even if usage is less.
For usage above $5 USD for any given hour, the first $5 USD of usage is billed at lower savings plan prices and covered by the savings plan hourly commitment. The amount above $5 USD is billed at pay-as-you-go prices and will be added to the invoice separately.
Azure savings plan for compute is first applied to the product that has the greatest savings plan discount when compared to the equivalent pay-as-you-go rate (see your price list for savings plan pricing). The application prioritization is done to ensure that you receive the maximum benefit from your savings plan investment.
Get Started Today
Learn more about Azure Spring Apps Enterprise plan with these resources:
Azure Spring Apps product page
Azure Spring Apps Enterprise Quick Start
Enjoy FREE monthly grants on Azure Spring Apps
Learn more about the Azure savings plan for compute with these resources:
Azure savings plan for compute product page
Azure savings plans documentation
Azure savings plan cost and usage documentation
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Get Your Complimentary Copy of the 2023 Gartner® Market Guide for Voice of the Employee Solutions
We are thrilled to share that Gartner® named Microsoft Viva as a Representative Vendor in their November 2023 Market Guide for Voice of the Employee Solutions (VoE). Please enjoy a complimentary copy of the report here.
Microsoft Viva covers all key data sources to understand the Voice of the Employee
With Microsoft Viva, you can measure organizational health with employee feedback and Microsoft 365 workplace data to quickly identify actionable employee engagement opportunities.
Table 4: Representative VoE Vendor Data Sources Support from 2023 Gartner Market Guide for Voice of the Employee Solutions
According to Gartner, many organizations still struggle to measure employee sentiment and take effective action to improve the employee experience. The Gartner Market Guide for Voice of the Employee Solutions (VoE) highlights pivotal changes in how organizations are evaluating VoE solutions to help drive organizational success, transformation, and agility in today’s fast-paced global marketplace. HR and IT leaders should use this guide to understand the latest trends and solutions in the VoE space.
The Market Guide summarizes key findings for organizations as they evaluate VoE solutions including:
• It is no longer enough to periodically measure employee engagement. Organizations are seeking more agile, effective, and innovative ways of assessing and responding to employee sentiment to improve employee experience.
• AI is embedded as a core capability for collecting, inferring, analyzing, and describing employee sentiment and employee experience. Applied AI ranges from established natural language processing and machine learning techniques to the early use of GenAI for summarization and data storytelling.
• Voice of the employee (VoE) is an evolving but fragmented market, with no providers meeting all requirements yet. Early adopters are managing multiple sentiment collection and analytics tools to satisfy their needs.
• Some providers are responding to customer demand by blending VoE with other HR processes, such as performance, recognition, learning, leadership actions and workforce management. Others are exploring the intersection of employee and customer experience. Regardless, both approaches are building an ongoing “sense and respond” capability that crosses application boundaries.
Based on these findings, Gartner recommends HR technology leaders strive to deliver deeper, more meaningful employee engagement and experience insights faster by adjusting VoE strategies (including choice of metrics and measurement intervals). Also, expedite vendor selection by prioritizing differentiating capabilities (listening professional services, manager enablement, EX insight management), since basic employee listening features are expected in today’s market.
We believe all of these can be found in the Microsoft Viva employee experience platform:
• Ability to look at insights from employee feedback with Viva Glint and Viva Pulse and workplace collaboration patterns and trends with Viva Insights for a comprehensive lens into the employee experience.
• Templated, ad-hoc, and customizable survey solutions at an organizational and team/project level that cover various workplace experiences, including the employee journey, hybrid work, DE&I, collaboration, etc.
• Real-time analysis, comment summarization, and AI-driven insights and recommendations to radically shorten the time between data analysis and action.
• Built-in safeguards like de-identification, aggregation, and differential privacy to protect the privacy of individuals.
• Professional services from survey design to strategy and transformation planning
These features, combined with the ability for leaders to intersect, overlay, and converge both employee sentiment results with workplace data, unleashes a powerful tool to help HR see where the biggest opportunities are to support employees while directly helping impact company success.
Microsoft Copilot— a differentiator
In their report, Gartner mentions that A I is embedded as a core capability for collecting, inferring, analyzing, and describing employee sentiment and employee experience. This year we have made significant strides to bring Microsoft Copilot into our Viva apps. We are putting core responsible AI principles into practice across the company including policy, engineering, and research.
Using natural language as an input, Copilot in Viva Insights will help leaders generate custom reports to help answer their unique questions about the business. It will also simplify the query building process for analysts by suggesting relevant metrics to include in the analysis. These capabilities will be available in private preview in January 2024.
Microsoft Copilot in Viva Glint, also available for private preview in January 2024, enables leaders to explore and understand employee feedback from thousands of comments by asking questions in natural language.
Building the future together
We’re dedicated to providing our customers with technology that unlocks limitless innovation wherever they may be on their technology journey. Customers like PayPal, Finastra, Sage, and Cricket Australia are leveraging Microsoft Viva to understand and enhance their employee experience. We are excited to continue to support the over 35 million monthly active users utilizing Microsoft Viva each month.1
Our deeply skilled team of Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychologists, organizational consultants, and data scientists are available through Microsoft Unified support to help customers co-design, configure, and implement their employee listening strategies. Established global partnerships help organizations define and deliver a world-class employee experience with Viva. Many of our partner workshops and consulting services can be found here.
With Viva, we are striving to improve employee engagement and business performance with responsible AI and actionable insights, which is why we’re thrilled that Gartner has recognized us as a Representative Vendor for VoE solution.
Learn more
• Read the full complimentary Gartner Market Guide.
• Learn more about Microsoft Viva Workplace analytics and employee feedback.
• Get a free copy of our Holistic listening eBook
• Watch an overview of Microsoft Viva Glint and Copilot.
• Review the extensive documentation for Microsoft Viva.
Gartner, Market Guide for Voice of the Employee Solutions, Ron Hanscome, Helen Poitevin, and 1 more, 27 November 2023
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
The graphic/table was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available here: https://aka.ms/2023GartnerVoEGuide
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
1 Microsoft 2023 Annual Report
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Intelligent App Chronicles: How to build an AI App in less than 2 days!
The Intelligent App Chronicles for Healthcare is a webinar series designed to provide health and life sciences companies with a comprehensive guide to building intelligent healthcare applications.
The series will cover a wide range of topics including Azure Container Services, Azure AI Services, Azure Integration Services, and innovative solutions that can accelerate your Intelligent app journey. By attending these webinars, you will learn how to leverage the power of intelligent systems to build scalable and secure healthcare solutions that can transform the way you deliver care.
Our hosts will be: (99+) Shelly (Finch) Avery | LinkedIn, (99+) Matthew Anderson | LinkedIn & (99+) Frankie Riviera | LinkedIn.
This session, How to build an AI App in less than 2 days!, is on 1/16 at 11:00 CT, click here to register.
Join us for an exciting session on how to use Microsoft technology to build AI-powered healthcare applications. Our guest speaker, Jared Matfess, Sr Dir of Microsoft Solutions at Slalom, will share his non-developer experience on building out an AI Prototype in less than 2 days.
He will cover things like:
The benefits and challenges of building AI-powered healthcare applications
The tools and technologies that Microsoft offers for creating intelligent healthcare solutions
The steps and best practices for building an AI prototype in less than 2 days
The demo and walkthrough of the AI prototype that was built
Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from the experts and engage with other healthcare technology leaders.
Thanks for reading!
Please follow the aka.ms/HLSBlog for all this great content.
Thanks for reading, Shelly Avery | Email, LinkedIn
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Migrate your existing ADX cluster to support multiple availability zones- Public Preview release
We are very happy to announce Public Preview of the ability of migrating an existing Azure Data Explorer (ADX) Cluster to support multiple availability zones. By using availability zones, a cluster can better withstand the failure of a single datacenter in a region to support business continuity scenarios. The feature will allow clusters that were deployed not supporting zones, to be seamlessly redeployed to support multiple zones.
When availability zones are configured, a cluster’s resources are deployed as follows:
Compute layer: Azure Data Explorer is a distributed computing platform that has two or more nodes. If availability zones are configured, compute nodes are distributed across the defined availability zone for maximum intra-region resiliency.
Persistent storage layer: Azure Data Clusters use Azure Storage as its durable persistence layer. If availability zones are configured, ZRS is enabled, placing storage replicas across all three availability zones for maximum intra-region resiliency.
To add availability zones to an existing cluster, you must update the cluster zones attribute with a list of the target availability zones using one of the following methods:
REST API
C# SDK
Python SDK
PowerShell
ARM Template
Migration to multiple availability zones is supported in all regions that support availability zones but is limited to regions that don’t have capacity restrictions. Check in our documentation the list of currently supported regions.
Using availability zones incurs additional Storage costs.
For more information go to the feature’s documentation.
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Outage – GPU labs that use lab accounts
If you are using a lab account with our service and are utilizing one of these virtual machine sizes:
Small GPU (Compute)
Small GPU (Visualization)
Medium GPU (Visualization)
You may get an allocation error, similar to this, when starting the virtual machine in a lab using any of the above virtual machine sizes:
“Unable to start due to Allocation failed. We do not have sufficient capacity for the requested VM size in this region.”
This is due to the Azure virtual machine families (NV and NC) that back these three virtual machines sizes being deprecated.
We are working with internal teams to mitigate the issue and are considering various options as a solution for the issue. Please come back to this post to get the latest update.
Regards,
Azure Lab Services team
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Important Update: We’re Changing Our Email Address
Hello Tech Community members,
We have some exciting news to share with you. Starting from Friday 12th January, 2024, we will be sending our community notifications from a new email address: NoReply@CommunityHub.microsoft.com. This change is a direct result of the feedback we have had from you, our users, around identifying authentic emails from the community and form part of our ongoing efforts to improve your experience and engagement with the community.
What does this mean for you?
You will continue to receive the same types of notifications that you have subscribed to, such as new posts, replies, mentions, and badges.
You will see a new sender name and address in your inbox: Microsoft Tech Community <NoReply@CommunityHub.microsoft.com>
You will need to add our new address to your address book or safe senders list, to ensure that our notifications don’t end up in your spam or junk folder.
How to add our new address to your safe senders list?
We have created a helpful FAQ on this here: Safe Sender FAQ
We hope this update improves your experience and continue to be an active member of the Microsoft Tech Community. If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know in the comments below.
Thank you,
The Microsoft Tech Community Team
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Onboarding Intune managed iOS User Enrollment devices to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Overview
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a unified endpoint security platform that provides protection, detection, investigation, and response capabilities. To use Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on iOS devices, you need to onboard them to the service and assign licenses to users.
This blog post explains the onboarding process of the recently announced support of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Intune managed iOS/iPadOS devices enrolled with Apple User Enrollment mode. This enrollment method was introduced with iOS 13 that allows users to enroll their personal devices in a way that protects their privacy and separates work data (stored on a separate volume) from personal data. User Enrollment devices are managed by Intune with a limited set of policies and configurations.
Apple User Enrollment Methods
Intune supports two User Enrollment methods, for new deployments, choose one that best meets your requirements. This blog post does not focus on one enrollment type.
Account Driven User Enrollment
OR
User Enrollment with Company Portal
Screenshot of a User Enrollment screen.
Device Configuration Profile – SSO App Extension (For Account Driven User Enrollment)
You can skip this step if you are using User Enrollment with Company Portal. This step involves creating an Intune device configuration profile of type Device Features with the configurations below:
App bundle ID: Include the Defender App bundle ID in this list “com.microsoft.scmx”
Additional configuration: Key: device_registration ; Type: String ; Value: {{DEVICEREGISTRATION}}
Assign the policy to the target User/Device Group for assignment.
Tip: For a faster evaluation, create a Device Filter of Managed Device type matching the “Enrollment Profile Name” you specified for the Apple User Enrollment method.
App Configuration Policy – Managed devices
We need to create an App Configuration policy of Managed devices type with Microsoft Defender as the target App.
In the Settings page, select Use configuration designer and add UserEnrolmentEnabled as the key, value type as String, value as True.
Assign the policy to the target User/Device Group for assignment.
Tip: For a faster evaluation, create a Device Filter of Managed Device type matching the “Enrollment Profile Name” you specified for the Apple User Enrollment method.
Deploy Defender App
The final step is to deploy the Microsoft Defender App from Intune either via VPP or the Public App Store. What’s important is to ensure that the App Configuration Policy created above targets the same app source (VPP Or Public App Store) .
Assign the App to the target User/Device Group for assignment.
Important: When you deploy VPP Apps, the default License Type is set to Device, this needs to be changed to User to match the device Enrollment type or else they will fail with error code 0x87D13BA9
Onboarding Experience
Here’s a quick overview of the Microsoft Defender onboarding experience with Apple User Enrollment. In the GIF below you will see the following:
Launch MDE App to Tap and Sign-In.
Accept the License Terms
Allow the creation of local loop-back VPN & App Notifications.
Next you will see a quick view of the VPN profile in the Settings App
Followed by a quick test of MDE by launching a phishing site https://smartscreentestratings2.net which is successfully blocked by MDE.
Note: This enrollment scenario does not support Zero-Touch Silent-Onboarding.
As an Admin you can check the onboarding state of the device from the Microsoft Defender Security Portal
Thanks,
Arnab Mitra
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Important Update: We’re Changing Our Email Address
Hello Tech Community members,
We have some exciting news to share with you. Starting from Friday 12th January, 2024, we will be sending our community notifications from a new email address: NoReply@CommunityHub.microsoft.com. This change is a direct result of the feedback we have had from you, our users, around identifying authentic emails from the community and form part of our ongoing efforts to improve your experience and engagement with the community.
What does this mean for you?
You will continue to receive the same types of notifications that you have subscribed to, such as new posts, replies, mentions, and badges.
You will see a new sender name and address in your inbox: Microsoft Tech Community <NoReply@CommunityHub.microsoft.com>
You will need to add our new address to your address book or safe senders list, to ensure that our notifications don’t end up in your spam or junk folder.
How to add our new address to your safe senders list?
We have created a helpful FAQ on this here: Safe Sender FAQ
We hope this update improves your experience and continue to be an active member of the Microsoft Tech Community. If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know in the comments below.
Thank you,
The Microsoft Tech Community Team
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Public Preview: Microsoft Purview Data Map Audit History
We are excited to announce the public preview of the Data Map Audit history feature in Microsoft Purview.
When a user updates an asset in Microsoft Purview, data map history logs that change and makes the information available in the Microsoft Purview portal. Information about who added or edited an asset, what edits were made, and when the edit happened, is stored for reference later. This information helps data auditors and business owners to maintain compliance and security in their Microsoft Purview accounts. It also allows data stewards and admins to debug issues and curation in their data assets.
Data map history is available to users in both the free and enterprise versions of Microsoft Purview.
Currently, you can view your assets’ history through these:
Central Audit App in Microsoft Purview
Individual Apps in Microsoft Purview
Which assets have history?
Currently, these kinds of assets have data map history available:
Classifications*
Data assets*
Glossary terms*
Business assets*
Domains
Collections
Role assignments
Data sources
Scan
Scan rule set
Credential
Policy
* In-Individual App experience is currently only available for classifications, data assets, business assets, and glossary terms.
How to use data map history
Data map history allows you to see the operational history of changes to your data map assets in Microsoft Purview.
You’re able to see the history for select operations that include:
Creation
Updates
Assignment
For a full list of available operations in Data Map History, see the audit log activities documentation.
Central Audit App Experience
To view the activities within the Audit App, follow these instructions:
Navigate to the Audit solution within Microsoft Purview
Select Search to search for audit records
Select time range for activity.
Narrow the scope of your search using Activities – friendly names, Activities – operation names, or Record types.
Select Search and wait for job state to change to Complete.
Select your search from the list and scroll through or filter the history table to find the operations you’re looking for.
Individual App Experience
To view the activities, follow these instructions:
Search for a data asset, glossary term, or classification in the Microsoft Purview Data Catalog.
Select the History tab.
Scroll through or filter the history table to find the operations you’re looking for.
Limitations
Currently, it takes a couple minutes for an operational item to appear in an assets History tab.
Currently, to see a new item in the History tab, you need to manually refresh the tab
Additional Resources:
Learn about Microsoft Purview: What is Microsoft Purview? | Microsoft Learn
Learn about DataMap Audit History: https://learn.microsoft.com/purview/data-map-history
Query Audit Logs using API: Audit Query- Rest API Purview
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Microsoft Copilot in Viva Glint: Bringing AI to Comment Analysis
Private preview Microsoft Copilot in Viva Glint!
We are excited to announce the addition of Copilot in Viva Glint launching in private preview in January 2024!
This innovative new tool within the Viva Glint platform is designed to help organizational leaders and HR analysts easily understand, interpret, and act on employee feedback. Say “goodbye” to the tedious task of sifting through thousands of comments – Microsoft Copilot in Viva Glint provides short, natural language summaries that accurately represent the feedback you need to see.
Through an interactive question and response format, users can request comment summarization across survey items and double click into specific groups and teams using filter attributes. Current functionality includes the ability to summarize all comments, comments by survey item, comments by sentiment, comments by filter attribute(s), and prescriptive comments.
But that’s not all – as part of our private preview, you’ll have the opportunity to be one of the first to use this new feature. Not only will you have early access to the feature, with no additional cost, but you’ll also have the opportunity to provide feedback that will help us improve and iterate on the feature. And there’s more! You’ll have continued support from our product group and the chance to co-develop the Copilot in Viva Glint experience.
So, how do you know if you’re eligible for this private preview? To qualify, your organization must be on the Viva Glint platform and have survey comment data within Glint. Of note, the private preview will only summarize English comments, although expanding to other languages is a top priority.
Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to be one of the first to try out Microsoft Copilot in Viva Glint and revolutionize the way you handle employee feedback. If interested, please reach out to your Viva Glint Customer Experience Program Manager (CxPM) for more details! If you do not have an assigned Viva Glint CxPM, reach out to your Microsoft sales representative.
Note: All Microsoft Viva private preview customers also need to enroll in the Viva Customer Connection Program (VCCP). If you or your organization hasn’t enrolled in VCCP, you can do so using this link: https://aka.ms/VCCPoptIn
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Compliant collaborations in the media industry
This article presents a solution for sensitive data collaboration between publishers, advertisers and AdTech players in a secure and privacy-compliant way using Data Clean Rooms powered by Confidential Computing.
Architecture
Workflow
The solution involves the following steps:
Advertiser accesses the platform through Web UI or API
Advertiser pre-configures a Data Clean Room with analyses
Advertiser uploads their data, which will be stored encrypted on Azure Blob Storage
Advertiser invites the Publisher to the Data Clean Room
Publisher uploads their data, which will be stored encrypted on Azure Blob Storage
Advertiser activates analysis in the Decentriq platform
Data will be confidentially computed in the Decentriq platform using Intel SGX or AMD SEV-SNP
Results will be stored encrypted and become available for review through the Web UI by both parties
The same workflow can also be initiated by the Publisher, inviting the Advertiser to collaborate.
Components
Azure Static Web Apps are used in this architecture to host a React Web UI, allowing autoscaling and high availability without the need to manage the infrastructure.
Azure Virtual Machines provide flexible computing resources for running applications and handling various workloads. In this architecture, the application backend is run in VMs exposing API endpoints, and can scale based on need.
Azure Blob Storage is a scalable and secure cloud storage service designed to store and retrieve large amounts of data, used in this architecture to persist encrypted datasets.
Azure SGX VMs offer enhanced security and protection for virtual machines (VMs) by leveraging Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) with Intel SGX. It ensures that the data in use and the code running inside the VMs remain encrypted and protected from unauthorized access, even from the cloud provider or administrators, providing an extra layer of security for sensitive workloads and data. It’s also possible to combine the use of Azure Confidential VMs with AMD SEV-SNP in case Intel SGX is too restrictive for the compute payload.
Azure Virtual Network is used to create isolated and secure virtual networks in the cloud, allowing control over network traffic using features like subnets and security groups. In this architecture, the connectivity between Azure VMs and Azure SGX VMs is made though Azure Virtual Network.
Azure Monitor provides a unified platform for collecting and analyzing metrics, logs, and application and network insights to ensure optimal performance, detect issues, and gain actionable insights for proactive troubleshooting and optimization.
Azure Backup offers a reliable and scalable solution for backing up virtual machines, databases, files, and other Azure services with features like incremental backups, encryption, long-term retention, and flexible recovery options to help ensure data resiliency and enable efficient data restoration in case of hardware failures, or other data loss scenarios.
Scenario details
Secure data collaboration in the media and advertising industry is increasingly becoming a necessity. The deprecation of third-party cookies, along with an increased awareness for and legislation of consumer privacy, calls for new, privacy-centric approaches to addressing audiences with relevant advertising.
With Decentriq Data Clean Rooms, brands and publishers have a privacy-compliant and secure method for uncovering joint insights based on first-party customer and audience data — without sharing the data itself, or proprietary algorithms. Simple and secure collaboration in Decentriq Data Clean Rooms allows brands and publishers to discover and target high-value and hard-to-reach audiences, extend the reach of campaigns while maintaining targeting quality with AI-based lookalikes, and more — with broad analytical flexibility and verifiable data confidentiality.
Compliance and control are enforced through trusted execution environment hardware technologies like Intel SGX and AMD SEV-SNP, ensuring that the program code and data are isolated into an enclave that cannot be accessed or modified. Data is encrypted not just at-rest and in-transit but also in-memory while in use. This architecture guarantees that sensitive data remains inaccessible to external parties.
Potential use cases
Activate audiences with first-party data. Brands often serve ads on premium publishers’ inventory. In order to understand the categories to target, brand and publisher data needs to be matched. However, brands and publishers are not willing to share these sensitive datasets. With Decentriq Data Clean Rooms, this analysis is possible thanks to confidential computing that enables partners to collaborate on joint datasets without having to share any raw data.
Uncover customer insights and enrich customer data. With signal loss increasing as third-party cookies are deprecated, brands capacity to uncover insights on their customers is impacted. However brands are not willing to share their CRM data with partners. With Decentriq Data Clean Rooms, brands can enrich their customer data with new insights, collaborating with partners on joint user datasets. Thanks to confidential computing, the raw data remains verifiably inaccessible at all times, also during analysis.
Measure online campaign performance. Online campaign performance is difficult to measure in a world where third-party cookies are blocked by many browsers. In order to track and measure campaign effectiveness, brands, retailers, and publishers need to collaborate. With Decentriq Data Clean Rooms, this collaboration can happen without the risk of breaching consumer privacy and leaking consumer valuable data, since the data stays safeguarded and encrypted at all times.
Considerations
This architecture implements the pillars of the Azure Well-Architected Framework, which is a set of guiding tenets that can be used to improve the quality of a workload. For more information, see the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework.
Security
This solution makes use of Decentriq Data Clean Rooms enabled by Confidential Computing.
Data Clean Rooms enable users to work with and collaborate on data assets with minimal risk. As the first data collaboration platform where users do not have to trust each other, the platform operator, or the cloud provider, Decentriq mitigates the risks of collaborating on sensitive data sets and helps organizations unlock the full potential of their data.
Data protection is verifiable by implementing encryption not just at-rest and in-transit but also in-memory while data is in-use. This is made possible through trusted execution environment hardware technologies like Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX) and AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization with Secure Nested Paging (AMD SEV-SNP) on Azure confidential computing. These technologies provide support to ensure that the program code and data are isolated into an enclave that cannot be accessed or modified.
Cost optimization
Cost optimization is about looking at ways to reduce unnecessary expenses and improve operational efficiencies. For more information, see Overview of the cost optimization pillar.
For a deployment in a single region, example pricing information is available in the Pricing Calculator.
Deploy this scenario
Decentriq Media Data Clean Rooms are available as a low-code/no-code SaaS offering, and can be set up in just a few minutes.
Get started today with the Azure Marketplace solution, you can check it out here.
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