Microsoft | Application Package Repository Telkom University

So, as we all know, the bulk move capability has been removed from Planner (we won’t talk about “Bruno”) , however I’ve been experimenting with Copilot+ for Planner Premium and I was able to assign tasks to different buckets with the command “add the tasks to the “In progress” bucket. Unfortunately this adds ALL the tasks in the plan 🙄. I’ve been trying several variations so that it only applies the action to the selected tasks but I always get the message “I can’t do that just yet.” I’m wondering if it is a question of mnemonic or it simply can perform an action on all tasks or 1 task.

Any suggestions?

This will go a long way with you know who (sorry for the “Encanto” reference, just watched it for the nth time with my kid on the weekend 🤣)

Microsoft

Change Column status to Expiring

/ 2024-09-16

I’m creating a training tracker as a SharePoint list. Within the list I have a date column for when a course is going to require a refresher, which is a calculated column based of Date of Training + Refresher period.

If I set up a choice column with the following options – In Date, Expiring and Expired, how can I achieve the following:

When a refresher date is 30 days away the status changes to ‘Expiring’

AI gave me the solution below, however it keeps failing. Any help greatly appreciated.

Step 1: Create a New Scheduled Flow

Log into Power Automate at powerautomate.microsoft.com.Click on Create > Scheduled flow.Name the flow (e.g., “Expiring Training Flow”) and set the recurrence to Daily:Trigger: Recurrence.Frequency: 1 day.

Step 2: Get Items from SharePoint

Add a New Step > Get Items from SharePoint.

Site Address: Select your SharePoint site.List Name: Choose your list that contains the RefresherDate and Status columns.

Do not apply any filter here — you will handle this in the flow.

Step 3: Initialize Variables for Date Ranges

We will initialize variables to store the dates in dd-MM-yyyy format for comparison with the RefresherDate.

Variable 1: Today’s Date

Add a New Step > Initialize Variable.Name: TodayDateType: StringValue:

plaintext

Copy code

formatDateTime(utcNow(), ‘dd-MM-yyyy’)

This sets today’s date in dd-MM-yyyy format.

Variable 2: 30 Days from Today

Add another Initialize Variable.Name: ExpiringStartDateType: StringValue:

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formatDateTime(addDays(utcNow(), 30), ‘dd-MM-yyyy’)

This sets the date 30 days from today in dd-MM-yyyy format.

Step 4: Apply to Each (Loop through SharePoint Items)

Add a New Step > Apply to Each.In the Select an output from previous steps, choose value from the dynamic content of the Get Items step (this will loop through each item in the list).

Step 5: Add Condition to Ensure RefresherDate Is Not Null

Before comparing the dates, ensure that the RefresherDate is not null.

Inside the Apply to Each, add a Condition:First value: items(‘Apply_to_each’)?[‘RefresherDate’]Condition: is not equal toSecond value: Leave empty (this checks if RefresherDate is not null).

Step 6: Add Condition to Check If RefresherDate is Between Today and 30 Days

Now we will add a condition to check if the RefresherDate is between today and 30 days from today.

Inside the If Yes branch (after checking for null), add a New Condition to compare the RefresherDate to today’s date and 30 days from today.

Condition 1 (Check if RefresherDate is less than or equal to 30 days from today):

First value:

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Copy code

formatDateTime(items(‘Apply_to_each’)?[‘RefresherDate’], ‘dd-MM-yyyy’)

Condition: is less than or equal toSecond value: variables(‘ExpiringStartDate’)

AND

Condition 2 (Check if RefresherDate is greater than or equal to today):

First value:

plaintext

Copy code

formatDateTime(items(‘Apply_to_each’)?[‘RefresherDate’], ‘dd-MM-yyyy’)

Condition: is greater than or equal toSecond value: variables(‘TodayDate’)

This ensures that the RefresherDate is between today and 30 days away, in dd-MM-yyyy format.

Step 7: Update the Status to “Expiring”

In the If Yes branch (if the RefresherDate is within the range), add an Update Item action to update the status.

Site Address: Choose your SharePoint site.List Name: Select your SharePoint list.ID: Use the ID from the dynamic content in the Apply to Each loop.Status: Set the Status column to “Expiring”.

Hi I’m creating a training tracker as a SharePoint list. Within the list I have a date column for when a course is going to require a refresher, which is a calculated column based of Date of Training + Refresher period.If I set up a choice column with the following options – In Date, Expiring and Expired, how can I achieve the following:When a refresher date is 30 days away the status changes to ‘Expiring’ AI gave me the solution below, however it keeps failing. Any help greatly appreciated. Step 1: Create a New Scheduled FlowLog into Power Automate at powerautomate.microsoft.com.Click on Create > Scheduled flow.Name the flow (e.g., “Expiring Training Flow”) and set the recurrence to Daily:Trigger: Recurrence.Frequency: 1 day.Step 2: Get Items from SharePointAdd a New Step > Get Items from SharePoint.Site Address: Select your SharePoint site.List Name: Choose your list that contains the RefresherDate and Status columns.Do not apply any filter here — you will handle this in the flow.Step 3: Initialize Variables for Date RangesWe will initialize variables to store the dates in dd-MM-yyyy format for comparison with the RefresherDate.Variable 1: Today’s DateAdd a New Step > Initialize Variable.Name: TodayDateType: StringValue: plaintextCopy codeformatDateTime(utcNow(), ‘dd-MM-yyyy’)This sets today’s date in dd-MM-yyyy format.Variable 2: 30 Days from TodayAdd another Initialize Variable.Name: ExpiringStartDateType: StringValue: plaintextCopy codeformatDateTime(addDays(utcNow(), 30), ‘dd-MM-yyyy’)This sets the date 30 days from today in dd-MM-yyyy format.Step 4: Apply to Each (Loop through SharePoint Items)Add a New Step > Apply to Each.In the Select an output from previous steps, choose value from the dynamic content of the Get Items step (this will loop through each item in the list).Step 5: Add Condition to Ensure RefresherDate Is Not NullBefore comparing the dates, ensure that the RefresherDate is not null.Inside the Apply to Each, add a Condition:First value: items(‘Apply_to_each’)?[‘RefresherDate’]Condition: is not equal toSecond value: Leave empty (this checks if RefresherDate is not null).Step 6: Add Condition to Check If RefresherDate is Between Today and 30 DaysNow we will add a condition to check if the RefresherDate is between today and 30 days from today.Inside the If Yes branch (after checking for null), add a New Condition to compare the RefresherDate to today’s date and 30 days from today.Condition 1 (Check if RefresherDate is less than or equal to 30 days from today):First value: plaintextCopy codeformatDateTime(items(‘Apply_to_each’)?[‘RefresherDate’], ‘dd-MM-yyyy’)Condition: is less than or equal toSecond value: variables(‘ExpiringStartDate’)ANDCondition 2 (Check if RefresherDate is greater than or equal to today):First value: plaintextCopy codeformatDateTime(items(‘Apply_to_each’)?[‘RefresherDate’], ‘dd-MM-yyyy’)Condition: is greater than or equal toSecond value: variables(‘TodayDate’)This ensures that the RefresherDate is between today and 30 days away, in dd-MM-yyyy format.Step 7: Update the Status to “Expiring”In the If Yes branch (if the RefresherDate is within the range), add an Update Item action to update the status.Site Address: Choose your SharePoint site.List Name: Select your SharePoint list.ID: Use the ID from the dynamic content in the Apply to Each loop.Status: Set the Status column to “Expiring”. Read More

Microsoft

cells in a workbook from cells in other workbooks

/ 2024-09-16

Hi,

I have a workbook called ‘InvoiceList’ the cells are populated with information from my invoices which are each a separate workbook.

Up to now I have populated the cells either by using ‘=’ then navigating to the cell I want the information from, or by using the same method then dragging the cell in the InvoiceList workbook and editing the new cells to reference the next invoice number.

example:

A cell in the invoiceList worksheet contains the following: ='[INV101.xlsx]Sheet1′!$F$17

where the F17 cell contains the customers name.

The next cell (to the right) in the InvoiceList work sheet contains: ='[INV101.xlsx]Sheet1′!$H$20

where the H20 cell contains the date of the invoice.

There are more cells with more information so I end up with a summary of that invoice.

In the next row, I want the same information but for my next invoice number.

Here’s my question – is there an easy way to populate the cells in my InvoiceList workbook? If I drag down a cell or cells, ideally the ‘101’ in the example would become 102, 103 etc.

I’m sure this must be easy for you guru’s – but I’m a ‘needs-must’ user 🙂

Cheers

Mark

Hi,I have a workbook called ‘InvoiceList’ the cells are populated with information from my invoices which are each a separate workbook.Up to now I have populated the cells either by using ‘=’ then navigating to the cell I want the information from, or by using the same method then dragging the cell in the InvoiceList workbook and editing the new cells to reference the next invoice number.example:A cell in the invoiceList worksheet contains the following: ='[INV101.xlsx]Sheet1′!$F$17where the F17 cell contains the customers name.The next cell (to the right) in the InvoiceList work sheet contains: ='[INV101.xlsx]Sheet1′!$H$20where the H20 cell contains the date of the invoice.There are more cells with more information so I end up with a summary of that invoice.In the next row, I want the same information but for my next invoice number.Here’s my question – is there an easy way to populate the cells in my InvoiceList workbook? If I drag down a cell or cells, ideally the ‘101’ in the example would become 102, 103 etc.I’m sure this must be easy for you guru’s – but I’m a ‘needs-must’ user 🙂CheersMark Read More

Microsoft

New Copilot enhancements help small and medium-sized businesses innovate

/ 2024-09-16

Copilot has made a large impact on small and medium-sized businesses over the past year, and we are excited to share how wave two of Microsoft 365 Copilot innovations announced today can help you achieve even more for your business, no matter the size.

In a recent survey of companies with up to 300 employees, business leaders responded they are experiencing on average a 12% faster time to market for new products and services.1

Our customers tell us they are experiencing the impact of Copilot in many aspects of how they do business. ICG, a startup construction firm, is using Copilot to write customer proposals six times faster, which lets their sales team pursue more opportunities and revenue. PKSHA, a software development firm, tells us that Copilot helped their customer success team by reducing time spent on data analysis by 75%, allowing the team to provide insightful recommendations to customers more quickly.

“As a small to mid-sized defense contractor and one of the first U.S. companies to roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot company-wide, IDT is committed to accelerating the delivery of solutions to the Department of Defense. We believe AI-driven technologies like Copilot hold tremendous potential for enhancing our capabilities. The initial results of Copilot’s integration across various functions, including program management, software development, and deployment, have been highly encouraging. We are excited to continue expanding our use of Copilot in partnership with Microsoft, driving innovation and increasing the speed at which we deliver disruptive innovation to our customers.”

– Rob Hornbuckle, Chief Information and Operations Officer, Innovative Defense Technologies

Let’s explore how our latest AI innovations can help you serve your customers as you scale and grow, and help you make your business stand out among the competition.

Microsoft is innovating on behalf of your business

Your AI assistant for work

We’re making the free Microsoft Copilot more accessible to users with a Microsoft Entra ID account. It can be easily accessed at Microsoft.com/copilot and the Microsoft 365 app. Soon you will be able to pin it directly into Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Outlook so it is more available during your day-to-day work. You can use it to ask questions relevant to your business, like summarizing industry trends, all with enterprise data protection so your data is encrypted and private.

You can also enter prompts like “compare a competitor’s product to my product” and ask it to reference your internal product spec sheet by manually adding the file. Copilot will be able to reason over your file and grab the latest publicly available information from the internet to provide a response.

An image of the Copilot for work chat experiences.

While Microsoft Copilot is available to users with an Entra ID account, Business Chat (BizChat) requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription, which can be accessed at Microsoft365.com/copilot.

BizChat combines the power of web-based insights with the Microsoft Graph to bring together data from across your documents, presentations, email, calendar, notes, and contacts—and contextualizes this data with information from the web. Like an assistant, it has a deep understanding of you, your job, your priorities, and your organization. It can find whatever you need in your files (even the files you forgot existed), connect the dots across all your content and context swiftly, and even integrate with the apps you use to run your business.

We have enhanced your BizChat experience with Copilot Pages, a persistent canvas for collaboration. Just click on “Edit in Pages” at the bottom of a Copilot response. This will create a page and open it alongside the chat that includes Copilot’s response. Pages takes the AI-generated content and makes it durable, so you can edit it, add to it and share it with your team, just like you would a Microsoft Word document. You and your team can work together in real time—asking Copilot more questions and adding more content. Copilot Pages will be generally available later this month and will also be accessible in the free Microsoft Copilot.

An image of the Copilot Page experience and how to share a page link with your team.

Analyze your business data

Microsoft Excel is widely used by small businesses for inventory management, dashboards, project workbacks and data analysis as well as other work tasks. Analyzing data can be challenging, but with Copilot, all you have to do is ask to get insights.

Copilot in Excel is now generally available. Just ask Copilot to analyze the data written within your spreadsheets or textual content written in documents and provide actionable insights. Then ask Copilot to visualize the insights in a chart, scatter plot or PivotTable. Copilot can even recommend the right visualization for you to better understand complex data and make more informed decisions with your team.

Furthermore, Copilot in Excel with Python adds the capabilities of Python to let you leverage these advanced analytic capabilities in natural language with no coding required. Just ask your questions using everyday language to enable predictive modeling and text analytics. Iterate with Copilot right in Excel to generate heatmaps and word clouds. These capabilities are rolling out to Microsoft 365 Insiders and will continue rolling out to all our customers over the next few months. Find out more about Copilot in Excel updates.

Get Through the Busy Work, to the Work-Work

Copilot can help you spend less effort on time-consuming, day-to-day work so you can focus your energy on growing your business.

While meeting transcripts contain important information, there is often rich discussion that also happens in meeting chats. Now available, this new feature in Copilot in Teams can answer questions using information from both the transcript and meeting chat to give you a complete picture of what was discussed, helping you stay on top of your meeting details.

Copilot in Outlook will soon be able to help you better manage your inbox with Prioritize my inbox. Copilot will combine the context of your role in your organization and previous work emails to surface the messages most important to you so you can spend less time triaging your inbox and focus on what’s most important. This feature will be in public preview starting late 2024.

Make your business stand out

Copilot in PowerPoint works alongside you to turn your ideas into professional presentations. With the new Narrative builder in PowerPoint, you can ask Copilot to build an outline of your presentation and once you’ve adjusted the outline, you can then ask Copilot to build the slides. It can use your company’s template, or even create custom images generated just for you. You will never have to start from a blank slide again.

Use Copilot agents across all your business apps

Often, small business infrastructure is a combination of disparate tools and software to meet specific process and customer requirements. Copilot can help coordinate all these business functions and workflows using agents, so you can orchestrate your business from a single place.

Copilot agents are generally available in BizChat so you don’t have to spend time switching between different tools or trying to contextualize information from different sources. These agents will allow you and your team to streamline your processes and focus more on the task at hand.

You can build your own custom agent to reason over specific SharePoint sites using agent builder, a lightweight Microsoft Copilot Studio experience integrated into Microsoft 365 Copilot. Click on “Build a Copilot agent” in BizChat and then make the agent available to your team.

In Copilot Studio, you can also create agents for your third-party systems or edit existing agents. You can @ mention the agent as you would any other teammate to ask it questions specifically about that site. Agents are accessible from any device that has BizChat, including mobile devices. Copilot agents and Copilot Studio agent builder will be rolling out to general availability over the coming weeks.

Get Started

To use Copilot right away, just access Microsoft Copilot in the Microsoft 365 app and at Microsoft.com/copilot. You will need to sign in with your Entra ID account.

To use Copilot across all your Microsoft 365 apps and work data, you can purchase Microsoft 365 Copilot as an add-on to your Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Standard or Microsoft 365 Business Premium subscriptions. If you do not already have these core productivity offerings you can purchase them now.

Find out more about Microsoft 365 Copilot or reach out to a Cloud Solution Partner to learn more.

You can start taking steps to prepare, understand licensing and technical requirements, familiarize yourself with new capabilities, and explore the new small and medium-sized business Copilot Success Kit.

______________________________________
1 “New Technology: The Projected Total Economic Impact™: Of Copilot for Microsoft 365 for SMB,” a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft. Results are based on a composite organization.

Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More

Microsoft

Unlock the power of Copilot in Excel, now generally available

/ 2024-09-16

Today, we unveiled the next wave of Copilot including the announcement that Copilot in Excel is now generally available and ready to assist data-driven professionals around the world. In addition, we also announced the public preview of Copilot in Excel with Python, enabling powerful advanced analysis.

Previously, we talked about the vision of how Copilot in Excel could revolutionize the way you understand your data and make better business decisions. We’ve been listening to your feedback and are excited to share improvements for those of you who depend on Excel regularly. Copilot in Excel is built into your workbook, enabling you to iterate with it quickly and easily. This integration allows you to continually prompt as you work, making it feel like you have an Excel expert right by your side.

We heard from those of you who are avid users, that you need even more to supercharge your Excel experience. Copilot in Excel with Python can help you gain deeper insights without needing to be a Python expert.

In this post, we’ll share some lessons from our own Microsoft team members who have been trying out Copilot in Excel in their work. Let’s take a closer look at how Copilot in Excel can help you carry out your daily Excel needs and conduct advanced analysis.

Copilot is your personal Excel expert

Those of you who are frequent Excel users can spend hours every day just formatting your data sheets to more clearly view and use your data. Let Copilot be your personal Excel expert and help you with these frequent tasks. Copilot can now reason over structured data, not just tables, and it can complete tasks such as adding filters or splitting text. Copilot can also help you highlight important information with formula based conditional formatting. For example, Copilot simplifies the process of highlighting crucial information, such as spending that’s higher than revenue in a sales sheet.

Copilot in Excel is asked to highlight marketing spend if it is higher than revenue. Copilot provides a suggested conditional formatting formula. The suggestion is applied and the highlights appear in the spreadsheet.

Excel has hundreds of different formulas to help you organize, visualize and get insights out of your data. While many of you rely on the same formulas every day, we’ve heard that you would like to expand your use of formulas as well as easily access the ones you use regularly. Now you don’t need to do an online search to look up formulas, you can just ask Copilot right in your spreadsheet. Recently we added support for complex formulas like XLOOKUP and SUMIF as well.  

“Copilot helps me with automating some of the repetitive tasks I have…It increases my productivity…helping me write the formulas.” – Victoria, Microsoft Manager

Copilot in Excel is asked to calculate the profit and profitability. Copilot provides suggested formulas. One of the suggestions is previewed, then inserted into the spreadsheet.

Copilot not only executes formulas and formatting, but it also provides steps and explanations along the way. When you ask Copilot a question, it will now respond with a suggestion and an explanation of all the steps to show its “thinking”. You can preview the suggested action and then choose to apply – keeping you in control.

When Copilot can’t make a direct change to your data, it will provide you with steps you can take to make the change yourself – saving you from research outside of Excel and keeping you in the flow of your work. By demystifying these elements, Copilot empowers you to take full advantage of Excel’s capabilities, turning what could be a time-consuming task into a seamless and efficient experience.

Copilot in Excel provides steps to manually accomplish a task, creating a specific chart.

Gain insights with everyday language

Data-driven decision-making is critical for business success. But often gaining insights is one of the most difficult parts of working with data. Copilot can help! Simply request insights from Copilot using natural language, whether you are requesting patterns or analyzing trends.

“When I get a new data that I need to analyze, I use Copilot with a quick prompt of just ‘show me insights on the data’ and Copilot quickly gives me a very broad range of tables and charts that I can explore further and analyze deeper.” – Victoria, Microsoft Manager

As part of Copilot’s analysis, we’re excited to announce that it now recommends the best visual formats, like bar charts, line graphs, or PivotTables and formulates the right sets of fields, layouts, and filters for you – creating a specific chart or PivotTable so you can get all the benefits of Excel’s powerful capabilities without being an expert! For example, a sales consultant can easily understand the relationship between ad spend and campaign reach, with Copilot generating a PivotTable to aid in planning the next quarter’s budget.

Copilot in Excel is asked to group units sold by state. Copilot provides a suggested PivotTable. The PivotTable is inserted onto a new spreadsheet.

Copilot in Excel with Python

Analysts often have specific needs to conduct analysis which takes time and expertise. Now using Copilot in Excel with Python, you can conduct advanced analysis that was previously out of reach. You can use natural language to describe the analysis you want to perform, and Copilot will automatically generate, explain, and insert Python code into your Excel spreadsheet.

Copilot in Excel with Python is prompted to forecast revenue. Copilot creates and inserts Python code including a chart.

This unlocks powerful analytics via Python for visualizations, cleaning data, machine learning, predictive analytics, and more – without needing to be Python proficient yourself. Copilot in Excel with Python also renders stunning visuals that were previously not possible or were difficult to create. Unique visuals like heatmaps, pairplots, multiplots, and violin plots help you understand and communicate your analysis.

Copilot in Excel with Python is asked to visualize data. Copilot creates and inserts Python code resulting in three chart types.

Copilot in Excel with Python generates colorful network graphs.

Python in Excel leverages Anaconda Distribution for Python which includes the most popular Python libraries such as pandas, Matplotlib and scikit-learn. Now, Copilot in Excel with Python can use these libraries too, unlocking their potential with everyday language.

Copilot in Excel with Python not only analyzes and visualizes, but it also shares its thinking, showing and explaining the code it’s using so that you understand how it’s working. It creates a dedicated analysis sheet, with a sandbox for you to collaborate with Copilot, while leaving the original source data untouched. The analysis is refreshable so when source data is updated, you can get an updated analysis as well.

“Copilot in Excel advanced analysis gives me the opportunity to build graphs faster and easier and also format them just right the first time. So instead of having to figure out Python by myself or also trying to figure out where exactly in the formula I need to change my inputs so that the graph looks right, I can just communicate that to Copilot and it’s going to do that for me. “ – Anca, Microsoft Manager

Because it’s all in Excel you can easily share and collaborate with others. For those who are comfortable with Python in Excel, you can even edit the code directly in the spreadsheet giving you full control to adjust as you wish.

“When it comes to collaboration that’s obviously the core of Excel … It’s purely a collaboration tool and it’s used for providing different perspectives and always making sure there’s a collaborative sense. You never do a model on your own…” – Wes, Microsoft Analyst

Copilot in Excel with Python is rolling out to Windows for Insiders and requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Once enabled you can simply click the “Advanced analysis” prompt suggestion or write a customized prompt asking Copilot to “analyze with Python”. We’re also excited to announce that Python in Excel (the experience outside of Copilot), is now generally available in Excel for Windows. To learn more about Python in Excel read the announcement blog.

Transform text to actionable insights

Not all analysis is done with numerical data and we’ve heard from many of you that you need help making sense of text-based data. We’ve taken this feedback and have expanded Copilot’s capabilities beyond traditional numerical analysis. We’re excited to announce that Copilot can now analyze text, transforming raw textual data into actionable insights. This innovation ensures that Copilot can handle complex datasets, whether they are numerical or textual, with the same level of precision and efficiency, ultimately driving better business outcomes.

For instance, a marketing manager can obtain a summary of product reviews to better understand opportunities and challenges. Being able to analyze text with Copilot saves the marketing manager valuable time and energy. And having a summary in seconds means they can make informed decisions or even take action much more efficiently than before.

Copilot in Excel provides an analysis of written customer reviews.

Copilot in Excel with Python helps you go even further by analyzing text-based data too. This provides even deeper insights such as sentiment analysis and keyword extraction, powerful text analytics libraries such as NLTK, and unique visuals like a word cloud that help communicate text-based trends.

Copilot in Excel with Python conducts text analysis. It inserts the analysis, including a word cloud, onto a new sheet.

Copilot in action with Microsoft’s Finance team

Play the video to learn more about how Anca, Victoria and Wes from our Microsoft Finance team utilize Copilot in Excel for their daily needs and advanced analysis.

Transform how you work with data

Excel has long been the cornerstone of data analysis for businesses, researchers, and analysts worldwide. We’re excited to continue Copilot in Excel’s evolution into an assistant that helps transform raw data into actionable insights with greater efficiency and accuracy than ever before. Copilot in Excel with Python brings us a step closer to the vision of analysts leveraging the power of conversational AI with Copilot in Excel to transform how they work with complex data.

Try Copilot in Excel today with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license and join the Microsoft 365 Insider’s program for Copilot in Excel with Python.

Please send feedback in the app and check out below for more information:

Microsoft 365 Announcement blog: Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2 blog
Python in Excel now generally available: announcement blog
Support article: Get started with Copilot in Excel – Microsoft Support
Support article: Copilot in Excel with Python – Microsoft Support
LinkedIn Learning course – free through the end of 2025: Excel with Copilot: AI-Driven Data Analysis | LinkedIn Learning
You may also be interested in Microsoft 365 Copilot finance agent, which delivers generative AI capabilities purpose-built for finance professionals. Agents allow you to enhance Microsoft 365 Copilot by connecting it to new data sources and applications and expanding its functionality. Check out this site for more information.

Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More

Microsoft

Microsoft Entra Hybrid Join – Devices Stuck in “Pending” Status

/ 2024-09-16

Hello Team,

We are facing an issue with our on-premises Active Directory (AD) integrated with Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS). We have correctly configured Microsoft Entra hybrid join using Microsoft Entra Connect, following the official documentation.

However, we have observed that all our devices are showing up in Microsoft Entra devices with a status of “Pending”, and this status remains unchanged indefinitely. To troubleshoot, we have already tried running the following command: dsregcmd /leave. After rebooting the PCs, the issue persists.

Running the below command, results in the following output:

C:Usersabc> dsregcmd /debug /join

DsrCLI: logging initialized.

DsrCmdJoinHelper::Join: ClientRequestId: e58946ab-b851-1759-3658-69824b6857fDsrCmdAccountMgr::IsDomainControllerAvailable: DsGetDcName success { domain:contoso.local forest:contoso.local domainController:\dc1.contoso.local isDcAvailable:true }

PreJoinChecks Complete.

preCheckResult: Join

deviceKeysHealthy: undefined

isJoined: undefined

isDcAvailable: YES

isSystem: YES

keyProvider: undefined

keyContainer: undefined

dsrInstance: undefined

elapsedSeconds: 1

resultCode: 0x0

Automatic device join pre-check tasks completed.

TenantInfo::Discover: Call to DsrBeginDiscover failed before wait. 0x80070057

DsrCmdJoinHelper::Join: TenantInfo::Discover failed with error code 0x80070057.

DSREGCMD_END_STATUS

AzureAdJoined : NO

EnterpriseJoined : NO

We also ran the DSRegTool PowerShell script but did not encounter any significant errors.

Given the error code 0x80070057 and the devices not registering with Azure AD, we suspect there could be an issue either with the tenant discovery process or with certain configuration steps that might have been overlooked.

Has anyone encountered this error before or have any insights into further troubleshooting steps to resolve this issue?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Hello Team, We are facing an issue with our on-premises Active Directory (AD) integrated with Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS). We have correctly configured Microsoft Entra hybrid join using Microsoft Entra Connect, following the official documentation. However, we have observed that all our devices are showing up in Microsoft Entra devices with a status of “Pending”, and this status remains unchanged indefinitely. To troubleshoot, we have already tried running the following command: dsregcmd /leave. After rebooting the PCs, the issue persists. Running the below command, results in the following output:C:Usersabc> dsregcmd /debug /join DsrCLI: logging initialized.DsrCLI: logging initialized.DsrCmdJoinHelper::Join: ClientRequestId: e58946ab-b851-1759-3658-69824b6857fDsrCmdAccountMgr::IsDomainControllerAvailable: DsGetDcName success { domain:contoso.local forest:contoso.local domainController:\dc1.contoso.local isDcAvailable:true }PreJoinChecks Complete.preCheckResult: JoindeviceKeysHealthy: undefinedisJoined: undefinedisDcAvailable: YESisSystem: YESkeyProvider: undefinedkeyContainer: undefineddsrInstance: undefinedelapsedSeconds: 1resultCode: 0x0Automatic device join pre-check tasks completed.TenantInfo::Discover: Call to DsrBeginDiscover failed before wait. 0x80070057DsrCmdJoinHelper::Join: TenantInfo::Discover failed with error code 0x80070057.DSREGCMD_END_STATUSAzureAdJoined : NOEnterpriseJoined : NO We also ran the DSRegTool PowerShell script but did not encounter any significant errors. Given the error code 0x80070057 and the devices not registering with Azure AD, we suspect there could be an issue either with the tenant discovery process or with certain configuration steps that might have been overlooked. Has anyone encountered this error before or have any insights into further troubleshooting steps to resolve this issue? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Read More

Microsoft

Supercharge Your Business. Excel Made Easy: How Copilot Can Revolutionize Your Small Business

/ 2024-09-16

Excel is Now SUPER Powered with Copilot in Excel with Python

Managing a small business can be tough, and making decisions based on data analysis can often feel overwhelming. You’re constantly inundated with data on sales, customers, competitors, and the market.

Microsoft Excel is an indispensable tool for small businesses, offering a wide array of features that can streamline operations, enhance productivity, and drive growth. Whether you’re managing finances, analyzing data, or collaborating with your team, Excel provides the functionality needed to tackle these tasks efficiently. This blog will highlight some of the most interesting and beneficial features of Microsoft Excel for small businesses, showcasing how this versatile software can be a game-changer.

One of the standout features of Excel is its powerful data analysis capabilities. Small businesses can leverage tools like PivotTables, charts, and conditional formatting to gain insights into their operations. PivotTables allow users to summarize large datasets and extract meaningful patterns, while charts provide a visual representation of data, making it easier to understand trends and make informed decisions. Conditional formatting helps highlight important data points, ensuring that critical information stands out.

Excel’s financial management tools are another major asset for small businesses. With built-in templates for budgeting, expense tracking, and financial forecasting, Excel simplifies the process of managing finances. Small businesses can create detailed financial reports, monitor cash flow, and plan for future growth with ease. The ability to customize these templates to fit specific business needs further enhances their utility.

Project management is another area where Excel excels. Small businesses can use Excel to plan, track, and manage projects from start to finish. Features like Gantt charts and task lists help keep projects on schedule and within budget. By organizing tasks, setting deadlines, and monitoring progress, businesses can ensure that projects are completed efficiently and effectively. This level of organization is crucial for small businesses that need to maximize their resources.

Collaboration is made easy with Excel’s cloud-based features. Teams can work on the same document simultaneously, regardless of their location, thanks to Excel’s real-time collaboration capabilities. This fosters better communication and ensures that everyone is on the same page. Additionally, Excel’s sharing and commenting features make it simple to provide feedback and make revisions, enhancing the collaborative process and improving overall productivity.

But how do you make sense of this information? How do you spot the trends to take actions that benefit your business? Microsoft 365 provides tools to simplify this analysis. Introducing Copilot in Excel and Copilot in Excel with Python, designed to help you more easily make sense of the numbers impacting your business.

Copilot in Excel: Your Very Own Excel Expert

Copilot in Excel is like having an Excel expert at your fingertips, available 24/7. Copilot in Excel can analyze your company’s data, uncover trends, and deliver actionable insights. Here’s how it can help:

• Quick Data Analysis: Copilot can look at your data, analyzing it to find important trends and patterns. This means you can make decisions faster without spending hours on the numbers and it also ensures that tasks are performed consistently and accurately.
• Easy Questions: You can ask Copilot questions, like “What were our best-selling products last month?” and get a quick answer. This enables you to take advantage of Excel’s many functions even if you are unfamiliar with them.
• Automate Tasks: Copilot can handle repetitive tasks like formatting data and creating reports. This minimizes the risk of human error, which is common when manually adjusting data, and gives you more time to focus on growing your business.

Consider this scenario: you have a spreadsheet of the year’s sales and marketing spend against your company’s products. With simple natural language prompts, Copilot in Excel can detect the profit you made, and the profit margin of each product. With this, you get valuable insight on what’s making you money, and what isn’t. With Copilot in Excel this analysis is done quickly and accurately, without having to spend hours on end creating formulas and double-checking them when they break.

In the same spreadsheet, you can get important takeaways like where you’re seeing the best sales. Just ask Copilot in natural language to “group units by state” and it will automatically generate a chart that illustrates sales by state. You can even put that chart on a new sheet with one click to focus on it or share with others.

Get Even More Insights with Copilot in Excel with Python

Python, a versatile and widely used programming language, is popular in sectors like finance but can feel out of reach for those who do not know Python code. Copilot now harnesses the power of Python in Excel to enable deep analysis using everyday language. Copilot in Excel with Python enables people across segments such as marketing, sales, and healthcare to leverage the power of Python without needing to be proficient in it. For instance, marketers can utilize Copilot to conduct robust analyses of customer data, monitor campaign performance, and refine marketing strategies – all using natural language. Because this is integrated directly into your spreadsheet, you can access powerful visualizations, machine learning, predictive analytics, and more, all without needing to write any Python code or be a data scientist. Here is what it can do:

• Data Analysis: Python can handle more complex data analysis than Excel alone.
• Custom Charts: Create unique charts and graphs that make your data easier to understand, including word clouds, heatmaps, pairplots, and multiplots.
• Predict Trends: Python can conduct forecasting, so you can make better decisions.

Use Copilot in Excel to analyze text (not just numerical data). See raw textual data turned into actionable insights so you can clearly understand what to do next to drive your business forward.

How These Features Support Your Business

Imagine having a dedicated Excel expert at your fingertips—one who is always ready to scrutinize information, identify trends, and generate actionable insights. With Copilot in Excel, this becomes a reality. You can iterate with Copilot, asking questions, like you would a colleague. By collaborating with Copilot, you can harness advanced analysis tools to transform your data into valuable intelligence. Simply click the Copilot button within Excel to get started.

Copilot in Excel is now generally available and included in both Microsoft Copilot Pro and Copilot for Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Copilot in Excel with Python is in preview and offered through the Microsoft Insider Program. Learn more details in the announcement. If you’re interested in using Python in Excel without Copilot, check out more details on the Python in Excel announcement.

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Use LogicApps and Copilot for Security to auto-process ISAC Emails

/ 2024-09-16

Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) is an organization that provides a central resource for gathering information on cyber and related threats to critical infrastructure and plays an important role in safeguarding industries from emerging threats. By bridging the gap between private and public sectors, ISACs provide timely and actionable intelligence on vulnerabilities that impact critical infrastructure. However, manually processing the ISAC threat bulletins can be overwhelming and slow, leaving security teams scrambling to respond in time. This document explores how leveraging automation through Logic Apps and Microsoft’s Copilot for Security can streamline ISAC email processing, empowering organizations to respond to vulnerabilities faster and more effectively.

In the US, several industries have their own ISACs which are registered with the National Council of ISACs, a subset of these ISACs are given below:

Auto-ISAC: ISAC for the Automotive Industry
E-ISAC: ISAC for the Electric Industry
FS-ISAC: ISAC for the Financial service industry
Health-ISAC: ISAC for the Health care industry
ONG-ISAC: ISAC for Oil & Gas industry

Canada, the UK, and other countries also have localized and industry-specific ISACs for their regions.

ISACs send out threat bulletins in email format which contain CVEs and other threat intel. The receiving members of these bulletins are expected to scan their environment for the mentioned CVEs/threat intel thus allowing for proactive remediation. Below is a sample of a threat bulletin sent by Health-ISAC (available for download here😞

The normal process of scanning CVEs contained in an ISAC requires each CVE to be manually verified against the vulnerability management tool. Other high-priority work can prevent the security analysts from analyzing the CVEs till several days after receiving the ISAC email.

As a large language model (LLM) focused on security, Copilot can take the manual effort out of this analysis by auto converting the generic ISAC bulletin into actionable information that only includes the CVEs that exist in your environment. With the help of Logic Apps to retrieve and parse out the email, an agent type workflow that analyzes the ISAC email and converts it to actionable information can be built. In the next section we will discuss how to build this Logic App.

Logic App

Logic App is a low-code / no-code platform provided in Azure. With it’s over 1000 connectors, it has tremendous capabilities in building automated workflows. This article assumes familiarity with Logic Apps and to get more understanding on building and using Logic Apps, documentation is available here. The user deploying a Logic App needs at least a ‘Contributor’ role in the Azure resource group to which the Logic App is being deployed.

The starting point of the Logic App flow is the trigger that allows a Logic App flow to be executed when the trigger event has occurred. In our example, we use an email trigger and configure it for the specific Outlook mailbox that receives the ISAC email.

To extract the CVEs contained in the email, we will need 2 variables, cveArray, and uniqueCVEArray which are initialized separately.

The subject of the email will determine if it should be processed further. A conditional clause handles the situation, resulting in a true or branch.

Most ISAC emails will have “ISAC” in the email subject which is what determines the outcome. Adding another condition that checks the sender’s email is also recommended as it further ensures that the Logic App runs for a legitimate ISAC email only.

If the conditions have evaluated to true, we continue further execution in the Logic App. Most ISAC emails arrive in HTML format, and two connectors are leveraged. One to extract the HTML body (which is contained in a JSON provided by the Outlook trigger) and another to convert the HTML document to text as shown below:

Once the email body is extracted, we are ready to extract the CVEs. Copilot for Security can natively perform this task however, it’s not the most efficient method with large emails. Hence, we extract the CVEs in the Logic App itself. There are many options to accomplish this, we have chosen the JavaScript connector:

We define a Regular Expression (RegEx) with JavaScript to identify CVEs:

*Note that if the JavaScript Code connector is run in a consumption Logic App, it will need an integration account to run correctly.

The extracted CVEs are now assigned to cveArray variable, however if the same CVE is mentioned multiple times in the email body it will have repeated entries. To remove the duplicates we use the union() function on cveArray and the unique CVEs are then stored in another variable uniqueCVEArray. The data is now ready to send to Copilot for Security.

The Copilot for Security Logic App connector can issue prompts and receive responses. The first prompt will send all CVEs from uniqueCVEArray and ask Copilot to extract those CVEs. While not mandatory, this step ensures that Copilot parses out and understands the CVEs to be presented and prevents wrong input to be provided to downstream prompts.

The second prompt asks Copilot to show how many of the CVEs are present in the environment. This prompt uses KQL to query Microsoft Defender’s Threat and Vulnerability Management (TVM) data to find the CVEs. If you are using another TVM tool you can write a Copilot API plugin for it and modify this prompt to allow Copilot to analyze the CVEs using your specific tool.

*Note that if the Logic App is going to be run frequently, it is more efficient from an SCU consumption perspective to convert the KQL query into a KQL plugin. Or you can also specify the KQL directly in the prompt, where the new prompt is shown below:

“Execute the KQL:
DeviceTvmSoftwareVulnerabilities | where CveId in (AllCVEs) | summarize count() by CveId

where AllCVEs is the list of all CVEs shown previously”

Once we have the CVE scan information our next prompt requests Copilot to write a report and enrich the CVE information with data from Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence (MDTI) and only include the CVEs that were found in the environment.

The results of the CVE’s found and its enriched data will be sent as another email to one or more users. Microsoft Outlook sends formatted emails in HTML format so now we need to convert the report generated by Copilot to HTML format, and in our last prompt we ask Copilot to do just that.

Our last connector is for sending the email via Outlook. This takes the HTML report and sends it as an email to specific users.

Note that in the body of the email we included additional details like Copilot SessionID, the CVE scan report (from the 3rd prompt) and the last HTML report (from 4th prompt). The HTML report is the only one that users are interested in, but having those additional fields helps in initial deployment where you may need to tweak the output to customize it for your environment.

The email received from the last Outlook plugin is shown below. The report format can be easily changed by modifying the 3rd and 4th prompts:

In this article, we showed how to build a Logic App that can act as an agent to process ISAC emails containing CVE information. The Logic App takes a generic ISAC threat bulletin, and with help from Copilot converts the generic email to an actionable email that contains only the CVEs that are present in your environment and enriches the context by providing more information on each.

Depending on the number of ISAC or other CVE-related emails received per week, this Logic App can save several minutes to hours of work for a security organization.

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Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: AI Innovations in SharePoint and OneDrive

/ 2024-09-16

Today, Satya Nadella and Jared Spataro introduced Wave 2 of Microsoft 365 Copilot innovations, including new Copilot agents that automate and streamline processes. Now anyone can easily create an agent with specific subject-matter expertise—from a coach to a brainstorm partner to a field-service technician. These updates represent a big stride forward in helping drive customer value with Copilot, and SharePoint and OneDrive will play a key part in this wave of Copilot innovations.

SharePoint has become the foundational content management platform for enterprises―powering OneDrive, SharePoint sites, Teams, Loop, Stream, and more. It facilitates team collaboration, business processes, knowledge management, and employee communication with robust content services. With hundreds of millions of active users adding over 2.5 billion new files daily, SharePoint is a wealth of valuable organizational knowledge and insights that users can now harness with Copilot agents.

We are excited to announce the public preview of Copilot agents in SharePoint, a new experience that enables any user to quickly create and share agents right from within SharePoint for specific purposes. With a few clicks, you can create and share a Copilot agent in SharePoint―no coding skills required, all while respecting the organization’s security policies. These agents can work on your behalf answering questions about source material, reasoning over that material, and acting like a well-informed teammate would. Copilot agents in SharePoint will enter public preview in early October.

OneDrive is the common files experiences for Microsoft 365 and is the common place you get to all your content, either standalone, in Teams, Outlook, or the Microsoft 365 app. This is why we are also excited to announce Copilot in OneDrive. With it, you can efficiently summarize, get answers from, and compare your files in OneDrive faster than ever. These features are rolling out now and will be generally available by the end of September.

Copilot in SharePoint is now rolling out to customers, with additional features coming later this year. Copilot in SharePoint helps site creators author pages and create stunning sites, using AI and natural language. Simply explain the page you need, and Copilot builds it for you.

Super charge productivity with Copilot agents in SharePoint

Create an agent in just a few clicks: Creating a Copilot agent in SharePoint is a simple starting point for users looking to use AI tools tailored for their particular needs. Make Copilot your own. Use it to collaborate with others using the same relevant knowledge base and make critical decisions efficiently, or to spend less time consuming information so you can focus on more meaningful work. And you can create these agents right from where you’re already working in SharePoint.

Create a Copilot agent in SharePoint with a single click.
Copilot agents in SharePoint work for you, your team, and cross-functional collaborators to help enhance knowledge sharing and teamwork. Let’s say you want to create a Copilot agent for a project you’re kicking off this quarter with a few other teammates. From your SharePoint document library, select only the folders or files you want. Then, with one click, you can create and immediately begin using your new agent. It reasons over the scoped set of SharePoint content to answer your questions, summarize information, or provide valuable insights, giving the most current and accurate response.

Instantly use, share, or edit your Copilot agent in SharePoint.

Secure by design: Creating an agent is as straightforward as creating a file. Agents in SharePoint are saved as Copilot files stored in the site where they’re initiated, ensuring consistent management and governance with site content.

Anyone with edit permissions on a SharePoint site, such as a site member, can create an agent scoped to the content they choose, and the agent will adhere to each user’s SharePoint permissions and the organization’s security policies. These Copilot agents, along with your other Microsoft 365 data, stay within the Microsoft 365 trust boundary.

Customize your agent: To further customize the agent you created in SharePoint, click the edit button to add more files, update the branding, modify starter prompts, and more. You can easily enhance your agent in Copilot Studio with more advanced customization, such as adding actions to automate workflows or additional data sources beyond SharePoint.

Copy and share Copilot agents.

Share and collaborate: Similar to files in other Microsoft 365 productivity apps, you can easily add the agent to a Teams chat or share a link via email to collaborate with others. All you need to do to interact with the agent is @mention it.
Sharing this agent with collaborators for a specific project helps foster teamwork and knowledge sharing so you can all get insights and make decisions based on the same current, relevant information.

Share in a Teams chat and @mention the Copilot agent to interact with it.

Built-in Copilot agent scoped to your SharePoint site: In addition to user–created Copilot agents, every SharePoint site will have a prebuilt Copilot agent grounded in all the content within that site. Any site member can use this Copilot agent to ask questions and gain insights from the site.

How to use Copilot agents: Here are a few examples that might inspire you to create Copilot agents from SharePoint for your own unique needs:

Everyone can benefit from an onboarding or transition buddy. An agent can help you get up to speed in a new role or provide support and guidance to others as you transition to a new team.
Marketing with a product launch agent enables a large, cross-functional team to filter and reason over various marketing documents to understand key dates and deliverables and make decisions or next steps.
Sales teams can get a key advantage with a conversation agent. Copilot can use customer details and interactions to suggest pertinent questions and content, optimizing conversations and engagement
HR can use an onboarding agent to guide new employees through company policies and provide them with instant, relevant answers.
Customer service can find answers and respond to customer questions with a triage agent. It can also surface trends and suggest fixes for common issues.
Engineering and product support can use a field incident report agent to analyze the types of issues coming in from the field and provide an analysis of what product issues should be prioritized.

Copilot agents in SharePoint make it easy to scale knowledge, enhance team collaboration, and drive operational efficiency from where you’re already working. It’s coming to public preview in early October, so give it a try in SharePoint soon.

Boost your efficiency at work with Copilot in OneDrive

Copilot in OneDrive is designed to help you rapidly find the files you need, discover content faster, and enhance your productivity to be more efficient―streamlining your daily tasks without ever opening a file.

OneDrive home screen with Copilot feature drop-down menu

Summarize files quickly: Faster extraction of key information in OneDrive is a productivity booster. With Copilot in OneDrive, you can summarize one or multiple files in your OneDrive web app without opening each file. Additionally, you can generate an FAQ from a document to use or share as a reference asset. For example, after returning from an extended vacation, you can summarize project plans and meeting notes to catch up on your work with one click in OneDrive

Copilot in OneDrive summary of a document.
Compare documents with ease: Locating the right data or understanding the differences between multiple files is time-consuming. You can now select up to five files―even mixing formats such as Word docs, PowerPoints, and PDFs―and have Copilot offer a detailed comparison across all the files. This lets you get a high-level understanding of the information you’re working with.

Table showing details of two documents using file comparison

Get answers on specific content: Sometimes you need to find a quick answer to a question or information that can help you with a project you’re working on. Now, you can ask Copilot questions about the information you need from the documents you choose to gain insights and do your best work.

Copilot answering questions on two documents

The new Copilot in OneDrive features―summarizing content, asking questions about relevant files, and comparing documents―give you the most value out of your content.

Build SharePoint sites effortlessly with Copilot in SharePoint

Every month, millions of users create and edit sites and pages in SharePoint. Copilot in SharePoint now puts your words to work to create beautiful sites and pages. You can use AI and natural language to author pages and create content-rich sites.

Rich text editor that can replace or rewrite screen.

Rewrite text to fit the perfect tone: Spend less time adjusting the messaging on your SharePoint sites and pages, and let the rich text editor give you suggestions to make your text more engaging.

Use natural language to create beautiful pages: Easily create visually appealing SharePoint pages. With Copilot, you can type in the kind of content you want to create, including the language, tone, and information, and it will do the work for you. You can also provide existing content―like a Word document or PowerPoint presentation―to Copilot, and it will transform that content into a beautiful page.

Copilot in SharePoint leverages all the features of the new SharePoint user experience designed to enable you to make more compelling, visually appealing content. With this capability, you can:

Apply branding and theming
Adjust typography and fonts
Create a grid and layout
Add videos and imagery
Use animations and motion

Using Copilot in SharePoint ensures your sites incorporate the newest design elements while staying true to your company brand.

Get started today

We are excited for you to begin using OneDrive and SharePoint features that are part of this next wave of Copilot innovation. You can experience many of these new capabilities that are rolling out today and preview others in the coming weeks.

Watch for the public preview of Copilot agents in SharePoint in early October.
Join Copilot agents and SharePoint product experts on October 16th for an exclusive Meet the Makers episode.
Copilot in OneDrive is rolling out now and will be fully available by the end of September.
Learn more at Microsoft OneDrive: AI Innovations for a New Era of Work and Home on October 8th.
Text rewrite capabilities of Copilot in SharePoint are rolling out now, with natural language page creation coming in early 2025.

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Python in Excel – Available Now

/ 2024-09-16

Combining the Power of Python and the Flexibility of Excel

Python in Excel is now generally available for Windows users of Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise. Last August, in partnership with Anaconda, we introduced an exciting new addition to Excel by integrating Python, making it possible to seamlessly combine Python and Excel analytics within the same workbook, no setup required. Since then, we’ve brought the power of popular Python analytics libraries such as pandas, Matplotlib, and NLTK to countless Excel users.

Watch to learn more about Python in Excel:

“Seamless integration of Python data structures like pandas data frames and NumPy arrays in Excel is a total game changer. This expanded access to Python will create exciting new opportunities for innovation as well as making it even easier for business analysts and data scientists to collaborate.”

Wes McKinney, creator of pandas

With Python in Excel, users can harness advanced analytics for visualizations, data cleaning, machine learning, predictive analytics, and now, even more! Here are a few examples of what is possible, inspired by what our community of analysts is building within the Insiders Audience and internally at Microsoft.

Leverage predictive analytics

Advanced modeling capabilities in Python offer detailed and flexible optimization analysis – such as Monte Carlo simulations. These capabilities allow users to handle complex scenarios, providing deeper insights into their data.

Apply Monte Carlo simulations to project possible expenses.

Visualize network connections

NetworkX is a powerful tool for creating and analyzing complex networks, offering flexibility to model and visualize relationships between nodes effectively.

Use network models to view changes over time.

“Using Python in Excel has significantly streamlined my workflow… It has made complex data handling and visualization straightforward and efficient. The feature requires no setup, saving me significant time. The integration has made advanced data manipulation more accessible.”

Jack McCullogh, Principal Partner PM – Microsoft Business and Industry Copilots

Parse natural language

The NLTK and word cloud libraries in Python provide robust tools for text analysis and visualization. NLTK excels in natural language processing tasks, while word cloud generates visually engaging representations of textual data.

Extract and examine text to derive insights.

“Progressive analysts, who rely on data analytics for insights, could benefit by what we’ve seen with the latest advancements like Python in Excel. Excel’s integration with Copilot brings AI capabilities closer to where data currently resides—within our workbooks. Bringing all of this together with the ability to prompt in plain language could help analysts to leverage state-of-the-art analytics, such as advanced visualizations, allowing them to use just Excel and excel at their craft.”.

Pawan Divikarla, Business Leader, Progressive Insurance

Continuous Improvements

Modern editing

A great Python experience requires modern editing. This includes new features like syntax highlighting, code completion, and aid when referencing data with the xl() function – all of these have been added directly to the Formula Bar. Furthermore, we recently announced the Python Editor, a new surface that is a great companion for authoring code and leverages many of the same experiences found in Visual Studio Code.

Manage all your Python formulas from a single location.

Copilot in Excel with Python

Today we announced the public preview of Copilot in Excel with Python, which is designed to leverage AI to unlock the power of Python in Excel to a broader set of users. With Copilot, you can use natural language to describe the analysis you want to perform, and it will automatically generate, explain, and insert Python code into your Excel spreadsheet.

Dive deeper into your data with Copilot in Excel with Python, all without writing a single line of code.

“With a two sentence Copilot prompt, I was tickled to see Copilot in Excel write Python using RandomForestRegressor from sklearn module, which basically opened the world of machine learning to me. With working Python code in hand, I believe I can tune the parameters to achieve the desire output. When I had to learn Python before I could even start, I didn’t start.”

Mark Hodge, Microsoft 365 Global Blackbelt

Security is our priority

Python code used by Excel runs on the Microsoft Cloud with enterprise-level security as a compliant Microsoft 365 connected experience, just like OneDrive. The Python code runs in its own hypervisor isolated container using Azure Container Instances and secure, source-built packages from Anaconda through a secure software supply chain. Python in Excel keeps your data private by preventing the Python code from knowing who you are, and opening workbooks from the internet in further isolation within their own separate containers. Data from your workbooks can only be sent via the built-in xl() Python function, and the output of the Python code can only be returned as the result of the =PY() Excel function. The containers stay online as long as the workbook is open or until a timeout occurs. Your data does not persist in the Microsoft Cloud.

Learn more about our Data Security

Empowering Excel users

We believe there is a significant opportunity for anyone using Excel for analysis to greatly enhance their work with Python. Alongside incorporating numerous examples, tutorials, and tips into Excel, there are courses for Python in Excel on LinkedIn Learning. A new series, announced today, will be available for free for 30 days! After that time, it will be available to LinkedIn Premium or LinkedIn Learning subscribers.

Thank you for your feedback during Preview

We appreciate everyone who tested the feature, provided early feedback, identified issues, and created content during the initial rollout within the Insiders audience. Your assistance and feedback were crucial in getting us to our current version. We are inspired by what the community has built using Python in Excel already and are excited for even more users to now have access to this powerful feature.

We want your feedback!

Excel and Python users can give feedback directly within the application (go to Help > Feedback), suggest improvements on our Feedback portal, or engage with our team on GitHub.

Availability

Python in Excel is now generally available for Windows users of Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise. With qualifying Microsoft 365 subscriptions, you can calculate Python formulas with standard compute and automatic recalculation mode. For faster calculations with premium compute and access to manual or partial recalculation modes, you must purchase the Python in Excel add-on license or request the license from your administrator.

To learn more about specific details on versions and channels, please see Python in Excel availability.

Other resources:

Introduction to Python in Excel

Getting started with Python in Excel

Learn more about Anaconda

Learn Python in Excel with LinkedIn Learning

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Copilot pages for IT Admins – Sep 2024 update

/ 2024-09-16

Today we announced Copilot Pages, a first step in our new design system for knowledge work. Copilot Pages is a dynamic, persistent canvas in Copilot chat designed for multi-player collaboration. With Pages, you can turn insightful Copilot responses into something durable with a side-by-side page that you can edit and, when ready, share with your team to collaborate.

Copilot Pages starts rolling out today for Microsoft 365 Copilot users and soon for Microsoft 365 subscribers.

If you have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, you and your team can work with Copilot directly on the page when you open it in full screen. In a multiplayer approach, prompt Copilot together as a team to improve and expand responses, learn from each other’s prompts, and organize complex information. With Copilot Pages, human to AI interactions come to life. We see collaborative prompting as the next great step forward in evolving Copilot from an individual, point-in-time exercise into a collaborative experience.

This update is to help IT Admins understand how Copilot Pages work and what it means for their organization. Copilot Pages are .loop files.

Who gets Copilot Pages?

Users with access to Microsoft 365 Copilot will be able to create Copilot Pages, and soon users with access to Microsoft Copilot our free commercial Copilot product will also be able to create pages

Copilot Pages are files that users can extend permissions to others using your organizations file sharing settings. If you need to further limit interaction with .loop files, use Conditional Access. Conditional Access can fully block users from opening the .loop file.

What is created when a user creates a Copilot Page?

A Copilot Page comes to life in your files ecosystem as a .loop file in a new user-owned SharePoint Embedded container. There are two main concepts to Loop: files and containers.

Files: Loop pages and components are .loop files. Copilot Pages are displayed to the right of a Copilot Business Chat. When shared as a component they are displayed as little interactive boxes in Microsoft 365 apps (this is how Loop components work). IT admins manage these .loop files just like any other files (.docx, .pptx, .xlsx, etc.). They support all the features of the SharePoint file system, including everything detailed here.

Containers: Copilot Pages are stored in a new user-owned SharePoint Embedded container, one per user. All content that Loop stores in SharePoint Embedded containers count against the tenant’s SharePoint quota. All your governance and compliance processes apply the same way they would to a user’s OneDrive. Management and graph APIs for these containers will soon be accessible to tools like AvePoint, ShareGate, your in-house tooling, and others.

IT Admin controls

Copilot Pages are rolling out to M365 Copilot users today and soon for M365 subscribers. Because they are .loop files, you can control them using Loop admin switches. Note that disabling Loop in your tenant does not disable Copilot Pages. We added a new switch specifically for Copilot Pages to ensure they’re easily controlled in your organization.

Copilot Pages are default enabled in your tenant (like all Loop integrations). The diagram shows the existing controls and highlights the new Copilot Pages control:

This article covers the Cloud Policy controls for all Loop components, but we’ll cover the “B” cloud policy explicitly here.

B: Create and view Loop files in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat (Not Configured == Enabled) | To change the default configuration for Copilot Pages, follow these instructions:

Sign in to https://config.office.com/ with your Microsoft 365 admin credentials.
Select Customization from the left pane.
Select Policy Management.
Create a new policy configuration or edit an existing one.
From the Choose the scope dropdown list, choose either All users or select the group for which you want to apply the policy. For more information, See Microsoft 365 Groups for Cloud Policy.
In Configure Settings, choose this setting: For Create and view Loop files in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat:

Enabled: Copilot chat experience is available to the users.
Disabled: Copilot chat experience isn’t available to the users.
Not configured: Copilot chat experience is available to the users. Save the policy configuration. Reassign priority for any security group, if required. (If two or more policy configurations are applicable to the same set of users, the one with the higher priority is applied.)

Save the policy configuration.
Reassign priority for any security group, if required. (If two or more policy configurations are applicable to the same set of users, the one with the higher priority is applied.)

In case you create a new policy configuration, or change the configuration for an existing policy, there can be a delay in the change being reflected as described below:

If there were existing policy configurations prior to the change, then it may take 90 mins for the change to be reflected.

If there were no policy configurations prior to the change, then it may take 24 hours for the change to be reflected.

Manage Pages content

All Copilot Pages support the capabilities listed here. In summary, that includes admin toggles, GDPR and EUDB compliance, Intune device management, Conditional Access policies, Information Barriers, Customer Lockbox, individual file recycle bin, version history, audit logs, eDiscovery, export, legal hold, retention policies, sensitivity labels, and data loss prevention.

For many organizations, these capabilities are more than enough for the default Enabled state of Loop experiences. For larger organizations with advanced governance, sharing, and management tools, the following additional capabilities coming in Q4 CY2024 may be of interest to IT Admins:

Retention labels at the file level

Programmatic API access to content in SharePoint Embedded containers (enables third-party Governance, Management, and Compliance tools)

Guest/external access via Entra B2B config for tenants with sensitivity labels

SharePoint Admin Center columns to identify user-owned containers

New user-owned storage containers

The diagram illustrates where Copilot Pages are saved, in a new user-owned SharePoint Embedded container. This content is lifetime-managed with the user account and is deleted when the user account is deleted from the organization. There is a default timeline where it is first soft deleted (can be recovered by an IT Admin) and then purged.

Similarly, when a user leaves, there is an IT Admin workflow to enable access to these containers before deletion so that valuable content can be copied to new locations. The capability to see another user’s Copilot Pages in the Loop app that were assigned before deletion is scheduled for Q4 CY2024.

User-owned containers will be identifiable in the SharePoint Admin Center by two new columns: Principal Owner and Ownership Type. Principal owner will be set to the username when the container is user-owned. And Ownership Type will be User.

Quota

All use of SharePoint Embedded storage counts against your tenant’s SharePoint quota. This is documented here.

Purview and Compliance

There are several compliance and manageability capabilities built into the SharePoint platform that Loop fully supports. Please see this learn article for an inventory. In the next sections, we’ll summarize the top areas we get questions about.

Legal Hold, eDiscovery, and export

Because .loop files are just like all the other files in your SharePoint ecosystem, Purview understands them and supports them natively with very little change. You can place SharePoint Embedded containers on legal hold using the URL to the container just like placing a SharePoint site on hold. You can search for content to place on hold using full text search in Purview. You can export the content in a review set that includes .loop files and automatically convert to .html for offline readable format using Purview Premium.

If you use third-party tools for eDiscovery or export for compliance, programmatic API access to content in SharePoint Embedded containers is coming in Q4 CY2024

Multi-Geo

The user-owned SharePoint Embedded container that holds Copilot Pages is created in the user’s preferred data location.

Sensitivity Labels and Data Loss Prevention

Two ways to control over sharing in your organization are fully supported in .loop files. The first is sensitivity labeling, which you can configure per Copilot page. And, if Copilot finds content that has a source label higher than the page, when adding it onto the page by pressing “Edit in Page,” it will automatically upgrade the sensitivity label. Sensitivity Labels can control things like external sharing rights, encryption of data, and more.

The second is data loss prevention, a security conscious scanner that detects very sensitive information and immediately blocks all sharing and triggers the owner of the file to remove it before full collaboration can be restored.

Audit

Because all .loop files are stored in the SharePoint ecosystem, full audit activity is available in the unified audit log that SharePoint events are already part of. Creates, updates, reads and deletes are all logged with attribution.

Governance Tooling

Governance of a user-owned container is a lot simpler than shared content like an M365 group or a SharePoint site, or even a shared Loop workspace, since it is typically lifetime managed with the user account and no additional regular governance is required. However, if you use third-party tools for governing user-owned containers, programmatic API access to content in SharePoint Embedded containers is coming in Q4 CY2024.

We hope this summary leaves you feeling confident about Copilot Pages in your organization.

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Microsoft

Major updates to the Copilot Success Kit

/ 2024-09-16

As we continue our journey to empowering you and your organization with AI experiences, we are thrilled to announce several significant updates to the Copilot Success Kit.

The Copilot Success Kit is designed to:

Accelerate your time to value with Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Enable your progressive skilling journey with AI tools.

These updates are part of our ongoing commitment to support our community and ensure you have access to the latest resources and guidance.

Screenshot of the Copilot Success Kit page.

New content and features

The Implementation Summary Guide for Leaders has been updated to provide clearer guidance on the three essentials for Copilot success: Leadership, human change, and technical readiness.
The User Enablement Guide has been updated to include guidance on leveraging Microsoft Viva to drive healthy usage and user satisfaction. This comprehensive guide provides detailed instructions and best practices for enabling users to adopt and embrace AI capabilities.
The Technical Readiness Guide has been refreshed with updated Microsoft Copilot Studio and App Assure guidance. This guide focuses on the technical readiness aspects of implementing Copilot and provides valuable insights to ensure your organization is ready to leverage AI effectively.
The Accelerate Copilot with Microsoft Viva guide demonstrates how features and functions across the Viva Suite can accelerate your implementation of Copilot. This includes updated training content and user onboarding toolkits, designed to empower your workforce and drive successful AI usage.
The Use Microsoft Viva Amplify for your Copilot rollout guide provides examples of how Microsoft Digital, our IT organization who empowers our workforce, used Viva Amplify to implement Copilot in our organization. Learn from our experiences and best practices.
Delivering business results with Microsoft 365 Copilot helps you understand the crucial role of functional business leaders in driving successful AI adoption in your organization and provides specific guidance on how to engage them in your AI transformation journey.
Scenario Library enhancements: We have added new industry and functional use cases to the online, interactive Scenario Library. This update also includes Subject Matter Expert videos that showcase new value in various applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These videos are designed to help you understand how to leverage Copilot in different scenarios and maximize its potential.
The Get Started with Microsoft 365 Copilot in Excel guide, included in the Trainer Kit within the Success Kit, provides practical examples for both new and power users of Excel.

Home page of the Microsoft 365 Copilot Hub on adoption.microsoft.com.

Upcoming events and training

To support your adoption efforts, we are hosting a series of events and training sessions in the coming weeks and months. Watch our Copilot Adoption Hub and Microsoft Community Learning channel for more information.

We are excited to provide these guides and based on customer feedback believe they will enhance your experience with Copilot. Stay tuned for more information and be sure to join our upcoming events to learn more about how you can leverage these new resources to drive success in your organization. Comment below and in our community to give your feedback on how we can continue to improve our resources to support your journey.

Download the kit and more adoption resources on our Copilot Adoption Hub at https://adoption.microsoft.com/copilot.

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Microsoft

Enhanced data protection with Windows and Microsoft Copilot

/ 2024-09-16

As generative AI usage continues to surge and become an integral part of daily workflows, organizations are prioritizing privacy and security—and we continue to evolve Copilot experiences in Windows to address these needs. Starting later this month, for organizations with managed PCs running the Pro or Enterprise edition of Windows[1], users signing in with a work or school account will receive an updated experience.

In this post, we’ll dive into:

Improvements to privacy and security
Upcoming changes to the user experience
How to manage these changes in your organization

Commitment to security

Windows 11 plays an important role in your Zero Trust strategy. So does Microsoft Copilot. We’re ramping up data protection to help you advance your security goals while ensuring employees have seamless access to the AI productivity tools they need to stay ahead of the curve.

Microsoft Copilot will offer enterprise data protection for users signed in with an Entra account. This is a significant step in strengthening data protection for Microsoft Copilot as the enhanced security, privacy, and compliance controls and commitments available for Microsoft 365 Copilot will now extend to Microsoft Copilot prompts and responses. If you were hesitant about adopting Copilot for your work needs, now is the time to consider integrating it into your organization.

When Microsoft Copilot updates to enterprise data protection (EDP), commercial data protection (CDP) will no longer apply. EDP is offered at no additional cost when a user signs in with an Entra account and does not require additional action from IT to activate. Additionally, both the in-app and browser experiences for Copilot will shift to an ad-free user interface to minimize disruptions.

Easy access for optimal productivity

Windows 11 Pro and Enterprise have been designed to meet the productivity, security, and manageability requirements of organizations—and we’re applying the same approach to Microsoft Copilot*. Windows 11, together with Microsoft 365 apps, delivers the best experience for employees to work more efficiently and maximize productivity and creativity with Microsoft Copilot.

With updates coming soon to managed PCs, users with work or school accounts can easily access Microsoft Copilot through the Microsoft 365 app if they or their admin have elected to pin Copilot in the Microsoft 365 app. The Microsoft 365 app comes pre-installed on all Windows PCs. This app can be uninstalled or reinstalled from the Microsoft Store and pinned to the taskbar or Start menu as desired.

The Microsoft 365 app simplifies access to Copilot, enabling people to create, share, and collaborate in one place alongside their favorite Microsoft 365 apps, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. For commercial organizations, Microsoft will prioritize future Copilot developments on the experience in the Microsoft 365 app, instead of Copilot in Windows.

The updated entry point for Microsoft Copilot within the Microsoft 365 app

The Microsoft 365 app can be pinned to the taskbar in Windows. The Microsoft Copilot app can be pinned to the navigation bar within the Microsoft 365 app for easy access.

Accessing Microsoft Copilot within the Microsoft 365 app is available at no additional cost for users with an Entra account. Copilot chat within the app is grounded in information from the web and does not access organizational resources or content, such as business apps, email, or other data that resides in a tenant boundary. The same web-based chat experience is available via a user’s default browser when accessing microsoft.com/copilot with an Entra account.

If you have the add-on Microsoft 365 Copilot license, you will have access to both web and work modes in chat, with the option to toggle between the two. The work experience is an AI chat experience grounded in work data inside a tenant boundary. It provides the added benefits of Microsoft Graph-bound chat capabilities and the ability to search across meetings, email, files, and more.

When will this happen?

The update to Microsoft Copilot to offer enterprise data protection is rolling out now.

The shift to the Microsoft 365 app as the entry point for Microsoft Copilot will align with the annual Windows 11 feature update release. Changes will be rolled out to managed PCs starting with the optional non-security preview release on September 24, 2024, and following with the monthly security update release on October 8 for all supported versions of Windows 11. These changes will be applied to Windows 10 PCs the month after. This update is replacing the current Copilot in Windows experience.

Want to get started? You can enable the Microsoft Copilot experience for your users now by using the TurnOffWindowsCopilot policy and pinning the Microsoft 365 app using the existing policies for Taskbar pinning.

Things to consider for IT

Copilot innovations are designed to help everyone, including IT professionals. We want to emphasize that we will continue to offer controls so you can seamlessly manage AI experiences and adopt them for your organization at your own pace.

If you decide to enable Microsoft Copilot for your users, it will appear in the Microsoft 365 app starting mid-September. The option to pin Copilot to the navigation bar within the Microsoft 365 app can be found under Settings on the Copilot page in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
If you do not select to enable Copilot, you can decide whether users will be prompted to pin and enable Microsoft Copilot themselves within the Microsoft 365 app.

If Copilot is pinned, it will be prominently accessible in the Microsoft 365 app as seen in the screenshot above. For more information, see Pin Microsoft Copilot to the navigation bar.

Thank you for joining us on this journey!

Thank you for joining us on this journey! To enable easy access to Copilot for employees, pin the Microsoft 365 app to the taskbar and pin Microsoft Copilot within the Microsoft 365 app.

For more information on managing Microsoft Copilot experiences in Windows, see Manage Copilot in Windows. If you previously enabled Copilot in Windows or the Copilot app in your organization, we recommend that you read through this documentation as it contains critical information to help you manage the changes.

To learn more about other Copilot innovations for work that were announced today, please watch today’s Microsoft 365 Copilot: Wave 2 event and see the Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: Pages, Python in Excel, and agents.

Continue the conversation. Find best practices. Bookmark the Windows Tech Community, then follow us @MSWindowsITPro on X and on LinkedIn. Looking for support? Visit Windows on Microsoft Q&A.

[1] This blog only covers the Windows and Copilot integration for organizations that use work or school accounts to log in to Windows. It does not apply to how people with a Microsoft Account (MSA) use Microsoft Copilot.

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Microsoft

Announcing Copilot Pages for multiplayer collaboration

/ 2024-09-16

Today we announced Copilot Pages, the first step in our new design system for knowledge work. Copilot Pages is a dynamic, persistent canvas in Copilot chat designed for multiplayer AI collaboration. With Pages, you can turn insightful Copilot responses into something durable with a side-by-side page that you can edit and, when ready, share with your team to collaborate. Copilot Pages starts rolling out today for Microsoft 365 Copilot users and soon for all other Microsoft 365 subscribers.

Here’s how you can use Copilot Pages.

Access Copilot at Microsoft.com/Copilot. If you have an M365 Copilot license, you can also access Copilot in Teams and Outlook.
Chat with Copilot as you usually would. Once you receive a response you’d like to keep, click ‘Edit in Pages’. This will create a page and open it side-by-side the chat with the response already copied and formatted, including link previews and code blocks. A reference to the page will automatically be added in the chat.
Add and refine. You can continue your conversation in chat. Clicking ‘Edit in Pages’ will add subsequent responses to the bottom of the page. Everything on the page is editable – just click on the page and start typing. Pro tip: type “/” to view a menu of content types that you can use.
Share and collaborate. When you are ready, you can share your page with others who will be able to collaborate on it with you. People you share with will have access to the page and its content, not your Copilot session. If you and your team have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, you can view the page in full screen to use Copilot directly within the page, adding to each other’s prompts and collaborating on a final output. Pro tip: Click the share icon in the upper right and select “Copy component” to surface the page in a fully interactive way when you paste it in Teams or Outlook.
Access your pages. Return to your page at any time by clicking the link in the chat where you first created the page or by opening the Pages tab in Microsoft365.com, where you will see all the Pages that you previously created.

Key Features

Persistent: Copilot Pages takes ephemeral AI-generated content and makes it durable, allowing you to edit and add to it.

Shareable: Any page you create can be shared as a dynamic, collaborative element in your Teams chats and channels, Outlook emails and meetings, or in the Pages module in the Microsoft M365 app.

Multiplayer: Work collaboratively with your teammates. See everyone’s work in real time and iterate on Copilot prompts as a team if you have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

Here is a short animation will show you how the feature works:
Copilot Pages start rolling out today for Microsoft 365 Copilot customers, check out the experience at Microsoft.com/Copilot.

Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More

Microsoft

Defender for SQL for on-prem Azure Arc connected SQL servers

/ 2024-09-16

Does my DCR need to be configured with a special data source and destination? (Similarly how Azure Monitor needs a special DCR for Arc machines)

I am having trouble using the Azure Built-In policy “Configure Arc-enabled SQL Servers with DCR Association to Microsoft Defender for SQL user-defined DCR”. I would assume a newly created DCR would work just fine, but I am unsure as when I use the policy that will automatically create a DCR and LA workspace, it works fine. Does my DCR need to be configured with a special data source and destination? (Similarly how Azure Monitor needs a special DCR for Arc machines) Read More

Microsoft

Excel Averages

/ 2024-09-16

Hi there. I have a spreadsheet where columns B1 – S1 are labeled week1, week2, week3, etc. up to week 18. In column B2 – S2, I am entering weekly percentages. So, having just completed week2, column B2 has a percentage of 41.4 and column C2 has a percentage of 59.6, while columns D2 – S2 are empty at this point. I want column T2 to display the average to date. So, after week two, it would display the average of 41.4 and 59.6, which would be 50.5. However, when I enter a week 3 percentage in D2 (say 64.0), I would then want the new average (55) displayed in column T2. Since some columns will always be empty until after week 18, I’m not sure how to compute the weekly averages after new percentages are entered each week. Thanks in advance for your help.

Microsoft

Hyperlink Conversion

/ 2024-09-16

Is there an easy way to shorten long URL hyperlinks?

Is there an easy way to shorten long URL hyperlinks? Read More

Microsoft

use results from filtered table

/ 2024-09-16

Hi,

I’m using a spreadsheet to monitor staff clock in and out hours across various properties. We use Bright HR, which allows us to export a csv for each week, from which I copy and paste the columns showing name, date, property where they were working, and the amount of hours for each week.

I have set the table up so I can filter via name. This will allow me to see each caretaker’s hours worked. I then need to be able to see if their total cumulative hours are above or below the set amount of hours we allocated for that property.

For example, If Duane works at property A, and Property A has 20 hours a week allocated to it, and Duane has done a cumulative 48 hours for that month, then I need to be able to see how many hours Duane is short, and how many hours he owes us.

This needs to be cumulative across the year, so I can just add the hours each week to my base table, and have a different sheet display the amount of hours along with the caretaker’s name, amount of hours done, how many hours should have been done, and any difference in those totals.

Any help would be appreciated!

Hi, I’m using a spreadsheet to monitor staff clock in and out hours across various properties. We use Bright HR, which allows us to export a csv for each week, from which I copy and paste the columns showing name, date, property where they were working, and the amount of hours for each week. I have set the table up so I can filter via name. This will allow me to see each caretaker’s hours worked. I then need to be able to see if their total cumulative hours are above or below the set amount of hours we allocated for that property. For example, If Duane works at property A, and Property A has 20 hours a week allocated to it, and Duane has done a cumulative 48 hours for that month, then I need to be able to see how many hours Duane is short, and how many hours he owes us. This needs to be cumulative across the year, so I can just add the hours each week to my base table, and have a different sheet display the amount of hours along with the caretaker’s name, amount of hours done, how many hours should have been done, and any difference in those totals. Any help would be appreciated! Read More

Microsoft

Learning Accelerators, Assignments generally available for Canvas and PowerSchool Schoology Learning

/ 2024-09-16

Today we are pleased to announce general availability of the Teams Assignments integration for Canvas and Schoology Learning! The Teams Assignments integration brings the power of Microsoft Learning Accelerators and generative AI educator tools to your LMS, along with other engaging activities such as Flip videos, Auto-graded Forms, MakeCode projects, Whiteboards, and Reflect check-ins. Grades and feedback are automatically returned to the LMS gradebook.

LMS admin resources for deployment:

Canvas Admin Deployment Guide

Schoology Learning Admin Deployment Guide

NOTE: if you have already deployed the preview, you do not need to re-install – just keep enjoying the app!

Educator resources for readiness:

Using Microsoft Teams Assignments in Learning Management Systems

Readiness for Microsoft Learning Accelerators:

Support reading fluency practice with Reading Progress
Develop confident presenters with Speaker Progress
Develop search strategies with Search Coach and Search Progress
Support building mathematics skills with Math Progress
Build social and emotional skills in your classroom community with Reflect

Achieve More with Assignments in your LMS

The new Teams Assignments integration brings unique new capabilities into your LMS, saving educators time, and providing powerful tools to accelerate learning. For example, with Teams assignments you can:

Leverage AI during assignment creation to rapidly draft assignment descriptions and rubrics
Accelerate student learning and educator insights with Reading, Math, Search, and Speaker Progress assignments
Deliver auto-graded quizzes with Microsoft Forms
Access unique assignment types such as Microsoft Whiteboard, MakeCode, and Flip video
Use Reflect exit check-ins to gain insights into student sentiment related to assignments

Teams Assignments are seamlessly integrated with LMS assignments via the Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®) v1.3 Advantage standard. As an educator, you can create new Teams assignments or link existing Teams assignments in your LMS course. Once linked, you can view and access those assignments as you would any other assignment in the LMS course. Your students can view and access their Teams assignments in the same way as their other LMS assignments. Assignment grades in Teams are automatically imported into the LMS gradebook. You can now use the best that Teams assignments and your LMS offer working together, instead of working alongside each other.

Create and link Teams Assignments in an LMS course.

Access and complete assignments in an LMS course.

Grades automatically post back to the LMS gradebook.

Support for additional LMS platforms will be added soon. You can sign up here for information on current and future LMS integration previews.

Choose the Right Tool for the Right Assignment

Many educators are already using the OneDrive LTI® tool to bring M365 documents into LMS assignments. The new Teams Assignments LTI® tool is a complementary solution that brings unique capabilities of Teams for Education to LMS users. When creating an assignment in your LMS, you should choose the tool that best meets the needs of the specific assignment. Whatever the choice of tool, the assignment can be viewed and accessed like any other assignment in the LMS, and grades will be added into the LMS gradebook.

Teams Assignments LTI®

OneDrive LTI®

What is it best used for?

Learning Accelerators, Forms Quizzes, Whiteboard, MakeCode, Flip video, and other activities exclusive to Teams Assignments.

AI-assisted assignment and rubric creation.

Multiple Word, PowerPoint, Excel documents along with other activities can be required to be submitted by the student as part of a single assignment.

Embedding or linking M365 documents in course content, discussions, announcements, or other LMS content.

Collaborative editing of documents.

Assignments to be completed in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel and submitted for grading in the LMS.

Where are assignments graded?

In Microsoft Teams, with grades and feedback automatically syncing back to the LMS gradebook.

In the LMS, using the native LMS rubrics and gradebook.

Requires Microsoft Teams for Education?

Yes

How to get Help or give Feedback

For any issues deploying the integration, our Education Support team is here to help: Please contact https://aka.ms/EduSupport
Once deployed, the Teams Assignments integration has links to Contact Support and Send Feedback from right within the app. These can be found in the user voice menu in the upper right on any view that appears within the LMS.

Leverage Microsoft Education for more than Assignments in your LMS

The new Teams assignments integration is the latest advancement in our continued efforts to bring the full value of Microsoft Education to users of learning management systems. You can already use the capabilities of Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, OneNote Class Notebooks, Microsoft Reflect directly within LMS courses. You can learn more about these integrations with leaning management systems such as Blackboard Learn, Brightspace, Canvas, Schoology Learning and Moodle in our previous overview, and our support page.

Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®) is a trademark of the 1EdTech Consortium, Inc. (www.1edtech.org)

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Category Archives: Microsoft

Step 1: Create a New Scheduled Flow

Step 2: Get Items from SharePoint

Step 3: Initialize Variables for Date Ranges

Variable 1: Today’s Date

Variable 2: 30 Days from Today

Step 4: Apply to Each (Loop through SharePoint Items)

Step 5: Add Condition to Ensure RefresherDate Is Not Null

Step 6: Add Condition to Check If RefresherDate is Between Today and 30 Days

Step 7: Update the Status to “Expiring”

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Get Through the Busy Work, to the Work-Work

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Excel is Now SUPER Powered with Copilot in Excel with Python

Copilot in Excel: Your Very Own Excel Expert

Get Even More Insights with Copilot in Excel with Python

How These Features Support Your Business

Combining the Power of Python and the Flexibility of Excel

Leverage predictive analytics

Visualize network connections

Parse natural language

Continuous Improvements

Modern editing

Copilot in Excel with Python

Security is our priority

Empowering Excel users

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Other resources:

Commitment to security

Easy access for optimal productivity

When will this happen?

Things to consider for IT

Thank you for joining us on this journey!

LMS admin resources for deployment:

Educator resources for readiness:

Achieve More with Assignments in your LMS

Choose the Right Tool for the Right Assignment

How to get Help or give Feedback

Leverage Microsoft Education for more than Assignments in your LMS

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