Category: News
New Microsoft Teams bulk installer is now available for Windows
We are happy to share that the new Microsoft Teams bulk installer is now available for Windows.
We shared the news of the general availability of new Microsoft Teams in this blog post, and we have also made available tools that help admins to install the new Teams app. More details can be found in Bulk deploy the new Microsoft Teams desktop client.
Online deployment: Download and install the latest new Teams app machine wide:
Command (Run with admin privilege): teamsbootstrapper.exe -p
During online deployment, the bootstrapper app detects the CPU architecture of the system and downloads the corresponding installer of most recently released new Teams client and installs the client machine wide.
Offline deployment: Install pre-downloaded new Teams client MSIX package machine wide: Download Microsoft Teams Desktop and Mobile Apps
For admins concerned with network bandwidth usage of online deployment, offline deployment mode is a great alternative. Admins can download the client only once and use the bootstrapper to bulk deploy machines in their tenant.
Command for local path (Run with admin privilege): teamsbootstrapper.exe -p -o “c:pathtoteams.msix”
Command for UNC path (Run with admin privilege): teamsbootstrapper.exe -p -o “uncpathtoteams.msix”
During offline deployment, the bootstrapper app installs the admin specified package from either local system or UNC path. Please make sure the correct version of new Teams client is downloaded.
Bulk remove new Teams:
Command for deleting every occurrence of new Teams installation: teamsbootstrapper.exe -x
If you choose the bulk removal option, it will uninstall both the machine level and the user level installations. New Teams app instances that are running will be stopped.
We advise admins to use the bulk installer tool to install new Teams client for their tenants.
There are separate new Teams installer files depending on the target system’s CPU architecture: X64/X86/AMR64. The bootstrapper automatically detects the system architecture and downloads the appropriate installer file to avoid performance.
Online mode automatically downloads the most recent released version of the new Teams app. This prevents the problem of outdated versions of the app being installed over and over, which can increase network usage (outdated app versions will update to the newest release right after installation), and slow down essential feature or security updates.
The bootstrapper can be deployed by admins using the deployment tools they already have for example intune/sccm.
Upcoming features and bug fixes:
Auto start support – Create a new command line option that launches the new Teams app for all users on the machine after provisioning.
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Save money with Arc SQL Server licensing – what you need to know | Data Exposed
If you are used to traditional licensing options and pay for software assurance, you may wonder why you would ever use pay-as-you-go billing. In this episode of Data Exposed with Anna Hoffman and Sasha Nosov, we’ll cover how to use our new PayG model and understand how you can use Extended Security Updates.
Resources:
SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc – SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
View/share our latest episodes on Microsoft Learn and YouTube!
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Partner Blog | Reskill: Bridging the talent gap in ERP
Our guest contributor for today’s blog is Kurt Juvyns, Principal Product Manager, Dynamics 365 Business Central.
In the rapidly evolving enterprise resource planning landscape, partners across the globe face a common challenge: talent scarcity.
According to a recent Microsoft survey, a staggering 77% of Business Central partners currently find themselves hindered in achieving business objectives due to a lack of skilled professionals. To address this shortage of talent, we collaborated with leading workforce development partners to develop Reskill — an initiative aimed at bridging this talent gap.
This comprehensive engagement, part of the Microsoft Learn Career Connected program, is designed to attract a diverse range of individuals with specialized skills from outside the “traditional” Business Central ecosystem. Through an in-depth training and coaching regimen, Reskill transforms new hires into adept Business Central consultants and developers, equipping them to navigate the complexities of today’s digital landscape.
Continue reading here
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Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI now available!
Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI—now in general availability—extends the capabilities of the Microsoft Cloud to your datacenters.
IT pros face a complex and challenging environment as they help their organizations move to the cloud, especially when the cloud isn’t the best option for every workload. Managing hybrid cloud migrations while meeting the needs of today’s distributed workforce takes a comprehensive approach that balances performance and accessibility with security and control. For organizations that need desktop virtualization for applications that must remain on-premises for performance, data locality, or regulatory reasons, Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI may be the right solution.
Organizations like Commvault, a global leader in data management, also echo these benefits:
At Commvault, we have a unique environment where thousands of employees need hyper-local acces to data with the lowest latency possible. Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI checked all the boxes and met our needs with its ease of deployment and management, network and storage performance, and its security integrations allowing for governed access policies.
– Ernie Costa, Business Cloud Operations Manager, Commvault
Azure Virtual Desktop and Azure Stack HCI each deliver their own value, and with Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI, organizations can experience both. Read on to learn more about each solution and how Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI brings both together.
What is Azure Virtual Desktop?
Azure Virtual Desktop is a cloud VDI solution designed to meet the challenges of remote and hybrid work. It enables a secure, remote desktop experience from anywhere, providing employees the best virtualized experience with the only solution fully optimized for Windows 11 and Windows 10 multi-session capabilities. It has built-in security to help keep your organization’s applications and data secure and compliant. Azure Virtual Desktop can simplify deployment and management of your infrastructure, gives you full control over configuration and management, and reduces costs by optimizing through existing virtualization investments and skills, as well as consumption-based pricing where you only pay for what you use.
What is Azure Stack HCI?
Azure Stack HCI is a Microsoft infrastructure solution powered by hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) that hosts Windows and Linux virtual machines (VMs) or containerized workloads and their storage. It’s a hybrid product by design that connects on-premises systems to Azure for cloud-based services, monitoring, and management. Azure Stack HCI gives organizations the agility and cost-effectiveness of public cloud infrastructure while meeting the use case and regulatory requirements for specialized workloads that can’t live in the public cloud.
The new feature release of Azure Stack HCI is now in general availability. It brings cloud-based cluster deployment and management together with Azure Arc infrastructure, providing centralized management of workloads. Learn more about Azure Stack HCI.
What is Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI?
Bringing the benefits of Azure Virtual Desktop and Azure Stack HCI together, Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI lets organizations securely run virtualized desktops and apps on-premises at the edge or in their datacenter. For organizations with data residency requirements, latency-sensitive workloads, or those with data proximity requirements. Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI extends the capabilities of the Microsoft Cloud to your datacenters.
With Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI, you can:
Improve performance for Azure Virtual Desktop users in areas with poor connectivity to the Azure public cloud by giving them session hosts closer to their location.
Meet data locality requirements by keeping app and user data on-premises. For more information, see Data locations for Azure Virtual Desktop.
Improve access to legacy on-premises apps and data sources by keeping desktops and apps in the same location.
Deliver the full Windows experience while retaining cost efficiency with Windows 11 and Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session.
Unify your VDI deployment and management compared to traditional on-premises VDI solutions by using the Azure portal.
Achieve the best performance by using RDP Shortpath for low-latency user access.
Deploy the latest fully patched images quickly and easily using Azure Marketplace images.
How to get started
Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI is generally available with the new feature release of Azure Stack HCI. After you deploy an Azure Stack HCI cluster, it will be available as a resource location for Azure Virtual Desktop host pools.
To run Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI, you first need to make sure you’re licensed correctly and understand the pricing model. There are three components that affect how much it costs to run Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI:
User access rights. The same licenses that grant access to Azure Virtual Desktop on Azure also apply to Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI. Learn more at Azure Virtual Desktop pricing. Note, per-user access pricing for external users is not supported on Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI.
Infrastructure costs. Learn more at Azure Stack HCI pricing.
Hybrid service fee. This fee requires you to pay for each active virtual CPU (vCPU) for your Azure Virtual Desktop session hosts running on Azure Stack HCI. This fee is active once the preview period ends.
Want to learn more?
Watch the Microsoft Mechanics episode to see a demo of Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI.
Read the Azure Stack HCI blog to learn more about its general availability details.
Your feedback makes our features better
For customers who have already experienced Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI in our preview phase, your feedback has been invaluable, and we thank you. We continue to integrate your requests and ideas into future releases, and your feedback helps our development teams prioritize new features, address missed opportunities, and ensure the product better meets your needs.
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How Microsoft 365 Delivers Trustworthy AI Blog Post
How Microsoft 365 Delivers Trustworthy AI Whitepaper
In the rapidly evolving business landscape, corporations are perpetually in search of innovative strategies that can amplify productivity and bolster security. Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote in his blog: AI advancements are revolutionizing knowledge work, enhancing our cognitive abilities, and are fundamental to many aspects of life. These developments present immense opportunities to improve the world by boosting productivity, fostering economic growth, and reducing monotony in jobs. They also enable creativity, impactful living, and discovery of insights in large data sets, driving progress in various fields like medicine, science, business, and security. However, the integration of AI into business operations is not without its hurdles. Companies are tasked with ensuring that their AI solutions are not only robust but also ethical, dependable, and trustworthy.
How Microsoft 365 Delivers Trustworthy AI is a comprehensive document providing regulators, IT pros, risk officers, compliance professionals, security architects, and other interested parties with an overview of the many ways in which Microsoft mitigates risk within the artificial intelligence product lifecycle. The document outlines the Microsoft promise of responsible AI, the responsible AI standard, industry leading frameworks, laws and regulations, methods of mitigating risk, and other assurance-providing resources. It is intended for a wide range of audiences external to Microsoft, who are interested in or involved in the development, deployment, or use of Microsoft AI. As Charlie Bell, EVP of Security at Microsoft describes in his blog, “As we watch the progress enabled by AI accelerate quickly, Microsoft is committed to investing in tools, research, and industry cooperation as we work to build safe, sustainable, responsible AI for all.”
The commitments and standards conveyed in this paper operate at the Microsoft cloud level – these promises and processes apply to AI activity across Microsoft. Where the paper becomes product specific, its sole focus is Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. This does not include Microsoft Copilot for Sales, Microsoft Copilot for Service, Microsoft Copilot for Finance, Microsoft Copilot for Azure, Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft Security, Microsoft Copilot for Dynamics 365, or other Copilots outside of Microsoft 365.
At Microsoft, we comprehend the significance of trustworthy AI. We have formulated a comprehensive strategy for responsible and secure AI that zeroes in on addressing specific business challenges such as safeguarding data privacy, mitigating algorithmic bias, and maintaining transparency. This whitepaper addresses our strategy for mitigating AI risk as part of the Microsoft component of the AI Shared Responsibility Model.
The document is divided into macro sections with relevant articles within each:
Responsible and Secure AI at Microsoft – this section focuses on Microsoft’s commitment to responsible AI and what this looks like in practice. The articles within address key topics including:
The Office of the Responsible AI – read this to gain a deeper understanding of what comprises this division within Microsoft.
The Responsible AI Standard and Impact Assessment – every Microsoft AI project must adhere to the Responsible AI Standard and have a valid impact assessment completed.
Microsoft’s voluntary White House commitments – learn more about the commitments the White House made and how Microsoft shares these principles in our development and deployment practices.
Artificial Generative Intelligence Security team – learn about Microsoft’s center of excellence for Microsoft’s generative AI security and the initiatives being driven by this team.
Addressing New Risk – this section centers on the ways in which Microsoft is continuously improving its security practices and service design to mitigate new risk brought forth by the era of AI. As Brad Smith states in his blog, “Even as recent years have brought enormous improvements, we will need new and different steps to close the remaining cybersecurity gap.” This section addresses many actions Microsoft takes to address novel and preexisting risks in the era of AI. The articles within address salient topics including:
The copilot copyright commitment – how Microsoft addresses the risk of customers inadvertently using copywritten material via Microsoft AI services.
Updating the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) to address AI risk – the ways Microsoft has adapted our SDL to identify and prioritize AI specific risks.
Copilot tenant boundaries and data protection with shared binary LLMs – this article describes how your data remains protected and secured throughout the data flow process to the copilot LLMs and back to your end user in this multi-tenant environment.
Copilot data storage and processing – this section answers the question, “what are the data storage and processing commitments applicable to Microsoft 365 copilot today?”
AI specific regulations and frameworks for assurance – this section describes upcoming regulations relevant to artificial intelligence and how Microsoft plans to address each. Regulations and frameworks addressed include:
European Union AI Act
ISO 42001 AI Management System
Cyber Executive Order (EO 14028)
NIST AI Risk Management Framework
Assurance Providing Resources – this comprises miscellaneous resources to providing customers assurance that Microsoft is mitigating risk as part of the shared responsibility model.
Defense-in-depth: controls preventing model compromise in the production environment – this article outlines an entire Microsoft control set designed to mitigate model compromise through defense-in-depth.
As with everything Microsoft does, this whitepaper is subject to continuous update and improvement. Please reach out to your Microsoft contacts if you have questions regarding this content; thank you for your continued support and utilization of Microsoft AI.
Download the Whitepaper
We hope this whitepaper has provided you with valuable insights into how Microsoft delivers trustworthy AI across its products and services. If you want to learn more about our responsible and secure AI strategy, you can download the full whitepaper here: https://aka.ms/TrustworthyAI. This document will give you a comprehensive overview of the Microsoft promise of responsible AI, the responsible AI standard, industry leading frameworks, laws and regulations, methods of mitigating risk, and other assurance-providing resources. You will also find detailed information on how Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 adheres to these principles and practices. Download the whitepaper today and discover how Microsoft can help you achieve your AI goals with confidence and trust.
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Master Generative AI with Azure OpenAI Service: A Comprehensive Guide for Students
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Unlock the Power of Video at Work and School: 6 Features to Use in Microsoft Stream
Microsoft Stream is a powerful video platform that allows you to create, share, and view videos securely at work or school. What’s more, Stream powers the video experience across Microsoft 365, letting you add or view videos directly in the apps you use every day. With features such as sharing, captions, transcriptions, translations, chapters, search, and comments, and embedded forms Stream makes it easy to quickly convey or extract information from video.
There are many ways that organizations use Stream. For example, schools use Stream to share orientation information or for lecture capture, while businesses use it to create and share leadership updates, how-to videos, and onboarding videos. Your journey with video begins at the Stream start page where you can view, search, or create videos. However you use video in your organization, it’s always good to know some of the fundamental features that make working with video simple and productive. Here are six tips for using video at work or school:
Share videos with anyone
Whether you just created a video or viewed one on the Stream start page, you can share it with people both inside and outside your organization. To share internally, simply tap the share button, copy the link and drop it into an email or Teams chat. If your organization has external file sharing enabled, you can change your link type to “anyone with the link” and send the link to anyone. The sharing feature makes it easy to send videos or communicate on a personal level inside and outside of your organization.
Know what’s working with video analytics
Once you have created and shared a video you may want to understand how well it’s performing. Using video analytics you can see visitors over time, trends in views, and even which parts of the video are hot spots. Analytics can also show you which type of content performs best within your organization. To view analytics for videos you own, or have edit access to, open the video and select the Analytics tab in the right-hand pane. This feature helps you understand how your audience is engaging with your video content. Learn more.
Find video content with Microsoft Search
Finding a video within your organization is simple. Just go to office.com, enter your terms in the top search bar, then select Videos in the refinement bar under the search bar. This will return all the video content in your organization that matches the search terms and that you have access to. You can also search on the Stream start page or anywhere else across Microsoft 365. This feature makes it easy to find and access the videos you need. Learn more.
Use chapters to help viewers navigate within videos
With Stream, you can add chapters to your videos to help viewers easily see a breakdown of the content in the video and navigate to the parts they want to view. Adding chapters to a video also helps your video to show up in search for the specific terms used in your chapter names. Chapters are simple and they help your viewers quickly get the information they need from your video. Learn more.
Create playlists to organize and share video collections
Creating video playlists at work has two significant benefits. First, it lets you organize video content into categories or groups making it easier for you and viewers to see related content in one place. Second, it increases the discoverability of the videos in the playlist. And just like you can with individual videos, you can share playlists or embed them into SharePoint pages. This feature helps you organize and share related video content. Learn more.
Add video content to your docs, files, chat and emails
Did you know that you can copy and paste a video in many of the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day, including: Teams, Loop, OneNote, PowerPoint, Word, Viva Engage, SharePoint, and Whiteboard? Just copy the link to the video and paste it into your file. It’s that simple. Additionally, you can send video messages to people directly using Teams video clip and soon you’ll be able to record video messages directly in Outlook while composing an email. These features put video into the flow of everyday work, allowing you to create and view video directly in the files and apps you’re working in.
These are just six of the many ways you can use video at work and school to improve your productivity and collaboration. Interested in creating your first video on Stream? Watch How to make a video using Microsoft Stream.
Feedback
We welcome your feedback. Jump in and join the community:
• Add feature suggestions, ideas, and votes: https://aka.ms/StreamIdeas
• Get questions answered and connect with other in the community in our forum: https://aka.ms/StreamForum
• Sign up for Stream Insiders for opportunities to participate in user research about video in M365: https://ux.microsoft.com/Panel/StreamInsiders
• Sign up for customer office hours to ask questions to Stream product team: https://aka.ms/StreamConnect
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Enable your key business needs within Microsoft Sentinel with step-by-step guidance
Modernize your security operations center (SOC) with Microsoft Sentinel. Uncover sophisticated threats and respond decisively with an intelligent, comprehensive security information and event management (SIEM) solution for proactive threat detection, investigation, and response.
This lightweight guide quickly walks you through business needs related to modernizing your SOC. It helps you make the most of Microsoft security solutions by pointing you to specific training and technical documentation so you can:
Protect the digital estate
Detect issues quickly
Focus on what matters
Investigate with full context
Automate responses
Hunt and identify threats
Once you have reviewed the trainings available, we encourage you to take your learnings one step further by participating in the following:
Complete the 30 Days to Learn It Challenge for Security Operation Analyst
This learning journey has been designed to equip you with the necessary skills for effectively incorporating AI-driven security within your organization. In about 34 hours, you’ll learn how to minimize risks by swiftly addressing active attacks, suggesting threat protection improvements, and reporting policy violations to stakeholders. If you complete the challenge in 30 days, you will receive a discount voucher towards a certification.
Earn a credential with the new Applied Skill
Skill up for in-demand technical scenarios to demonstrate proficiency in specific, scenario-based skill sets so you can make a bigger impact on every project, at your organization, and in your career. To earn the credential, you must show the ability to set up and configure Microsoft Sentinel.
Take full advantage of the key resources by downloading the Modern SOC training guide to enhance your threat protection and response systems.
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Azure AI Speech launches new zero-shot TTS models for Personal Voice
At the Ignite conference on Nov 15, 2023, we announced the public preview of Personal Voice, which is specifically designed to enable customers to build apps that allow their users to easily create and use their own AI voices (see the blog).
Today we’re thrilled to announce that Azure AI Speech Service has upgraded its Personal Voice feature with new zero-shot TTS (text-to-speech) models. Compared to the initial model, these new models improve the naturalness of synthesized voices and better resemble the speech characteristics of the voice in the prompt.
In this blog, we’ll explore how new zero-shot TTS models enable users to create a more natural sounding voice that captures their unique speech characteristics. We’ll also provide a step-by-step guide on how to integrate the personal voice capability into your apps using the Personal Voice API with different zero-shot TTS models.
Zero-shot model upgrades
The Personal Voice capability in Azure AI Speech Service allows customers to create personal voices for their users based on their unique speech characteristics. This feature can be used for various use cases, such as personalizing voice experience for a chatbot, or dubbing video content in different languages with the actor’s native voice.
Zero-shot TTS or foundation TTS models have evolved rapidly in the past year. The industry and academia have proposed various approaches to advance the technology, including Microsoft’s state-of-the-art research models such as VALL-E (X) , FoundationTTS, NaturalSpeech 2 etc. These models are typically trained with large amounts of speech data to cover different text content and voice characteristics, such as timbre, speech styles and accents. With that, the model can gain the zero-shot text-to-speech ability to clone a voice with very little data of target speakers through modules such as auto-regressive transformers or diffusion.
Every model has its strengths and weaknesses, and we understand each customer’s needs are unique. We offer a variety of base models for Personal Voice customers to choose from based on their specific scenarios. Our latest addition, the “DragonLatestNeural” model, features cutting-edge technology that allows for more realistic prosody, higher fidelity, and personalized voices that mimic the nuances of the human speaker in the prompt, with various speech characteristics. This model is currently optimized for content generation scenarios where expressiveness is highly demanded, and latency is of less concern. Our updated “PhoenixLatestNeural” model also enhances the similarity of voice to the human speaker, while maintaining low-latency performance and higher pronunciation accuracy, making it ideal for real-time scenarios. Both models have undergone significant improvements and have been trained in 10x more data than the previous “PhoenixV2Neural” model.
Here are a few voice samples with different speaking styles, generated from the latest Dragon model:
Audio prompt (human voice)
Style
Generated speech and the script
Voice assistant
Good morning! Today’s weather is sunny with a high of 75 degrees. You have two meetings scheduled and a reminder to call your mom. How can I assist you further?
News
In today’s news, a major breakthrough in renewable energy has been achieved by researchers at the GreenTech Innovation Lab. The team, led by Dr. Emily Huang, announced the development of a new solar panel technology that promises to double the efficiency of current models. This significant advancement could lead to a substantial reduction in solar energy costs.
Conversation
Hey, um, everyone, it’s Lisa. So, about dinner tonight, uh, I’m trying to decide whether to cook or maybe order something. I’m thinking, uh, pasta with garlic bread sounds good, but then I saw this new Thai place nearby, and their menu looks really tempting.
Whisper
Sure, here is the note. What else can I do for you?
Excited
Guess what? I just won the lottery – we’re going on a dream vacation!
Shout
Watch out! The ball is heading right towards you!
Story
The moment water started flooding in from the kitchen, I dropped my tools and gasped, “Shit, shit, shit!” instantly realizing my day had taken a turn for the worse.
Below are samples of two voices speaking different languages with zero-shot TTS:
Female
Male
Prompt
Prompt
朋友们,你们真是太给力了。昨天我发了一条视频,希望有人来关注我,结果真的有很多朋友关注我了。我内心非常激动,而且还有人私信我说喜欢我,这让我很感动,感受到了大伙们的友善,谢谢你们!
Okay, um, so, like, I was, uh, trying to, you know, explain this thing to, um, my friend the other day, and, well, I just couldn’t, like, find the right, uh, words? And then, you know, I thought maybe, um, I was just, kind of, overthinking it or, um, something. It’s just, uh, sometimes hard to, you know, put thoughts into, um, words, you know? How was that? Anything else on your mind?
Once upon a time, there was a little rabbit named Benny. Benny loved to hop around in the fields and nibble on carrots. One day, while he was out exploring, he stumbled upon a beautiful garden filled with all sorts of delicious vegetables.
C’era una volta un piccolo coniglio di nome Benny. A Benny piaceva saltellare nei campi e rosicchiare le carote. Un giorno, mentre esplorava, incappò in un bellissimo giardino pieno di verdure deliziose. Benny non riuscì a resistere e iniziò a mangiare la fresca lattuga e i pomodori succosi.
Customer case
GRUP MEDIAPRO, a global media company and the leader of the European audiovisual market, has partnered with Microsoft to respond to the profound transformations in the media sector brought about by AI. In a recent announcement at the ISE fair on Jan 30th, the company unveiled its Artificial Intelligence and Synthetic Media Laboratory, which has been developed in partnership with Microsoft, as part of its commitment to innovation (read the news here).
The lab leverages the latest advances in AI, including zero-shot TTS, to support research and solution development in fields such as personalization of audiovisual and digital content, voice cloning, and video processing. GRUP MEDIAPRO and Microsoft approach this collaboration with a people-centered focus, while remaining committed to legal commitments and ethical principles in the development, deployment, and use of Artificial Intelligence solutions.
You can listen to the story in the CEO’s own personal voice, which was created using the Dragon zero-shot TTS model, in Chinese and Arabic. Tatxo Benet, the CEO, leads the way in showcasing the capabilities of this new technology, which has enabled him to reach to a global audience with the languages he doesn’t speak himself.
How to use it
As part of Microsoft’s commitment to responsible AI, Personal Voice is designed with the intention of protecting the rights of individuals and society, fostering transparent human-computer interaction, and counteracting the proliferation of harmful deepfakes and misleading content. For this reason, Personal Voice is a Limited Access feature available by registration only, and only for certain use cases. To access the API and use the feature in your business applications, register your use case here and apply for the access.
Once you’ve got your access, you can start to build your personal voice project. Use the Projects_Create operation of the custom voice API, to create a personal voice project. Check out more instructions here.
Then you can follow these steps to create a personal voice using zero-shot TTS with the Dragon model.
First, you’ll need to provide the user’s consent for creating a voice profile.
With the Personal Voice feature, it’s required that every voice be created with explicit consent from the user. A recorded statement from the user is required acknowledging that the customer (Azure AI Speech resource owner) will create and use their voice. You can find the template of the verbal statement in different languages here.
Follow the samples here to add a consent from a file or from a URL.
Once you’ve given consent, you can record and upload your voice samples to create a speaker profile ID.
To use Personal Voice in your application, you need to get a speaker profile ID. The speaker profile ID is used to generate synthesized audio with the text input provided. You create a speaker profile ID based on the speaker’s verbal consent statement and an audio prompt.
Follow the code samples here to create a speaker profile ID from a file or from a URL.
After the voice profile ID is created, you can use the zero-shot TTS feature with the selected base model to synthesize speech that matches your natural speaking style, intonation, and accent.
To get a list of supported base model voice names, use the BaseModels_List operation of the custom voice API. Note that DragonLastNeural and PhoenixLastNeural are evolving models. Their performance may vary with updates for ongoing improvements. PhoenixV2Neural is stable without further updates, ensuring a consistent performance. Select the base model that best meets your needs, and use the speaker profile ID to synthesize speech in any of the 100 languages supported.
A locale tag isn’t required in the SSML when using zero-shot TTS. Personal Voice employs automatic language detection at the sentence level. Below is an SSML example using DragonLatestNeural to generate speech for your personal voice in different languages. More details are provided here.
<speak version=’1.0′ xmlns=’http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis’ xmlns:mstts=’http://www.w3.org/2001/mstts’ xml:lang=’en-US’>
<voice name=’DragonLatestNeural’>
<mstts:ttsembedding speakerProfileId=’your speaker profile ID here’>
I’m happy to hear that you find me amazing and that I have made your trip planning easier and more fun. 我很高兴听到你觉得我很了不起,我让你的旅行计划更轻松、更有趣。Je suis heureux d’apprendre que vous me trouvez incroyable et que j’ai rendu la planification de votre voyage plus facile et plus amusante.
</mstts:ttsembedding>
</voice>
</speak>
All customers must comply with the Guidelines for responsible deployment of synthetic voice technology and the code of conduct when using the service.
Get started
With the newly released zero-shot TTS models, the Personal Voice feature of Azure AI Speech is upgraded with higher quality. It generates speech that well captures the nuances of the user’s natural speech. Personal Voice is a Limited Access feature available by registration only, and only for certain use cases. To get started, register your use case here and apply for the access.
In addition to creating personal voices for your users, you can create a brand voice for your business with Custom Neural Voice’s professional voice feature. Azure AI Speech also offers over 400 neural voices covering more than 140 languages and locales. With these pre-built text-to-speech voices, you can quickly add read-aloud functionality for a more accessible app design or give a voice to chatbots to provide a richer conversational experience to your users.
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Build it with AI: Tawi’s Home-Based Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) Toolkit
Build it with AI is a series hosting AI entrepreneurs who share their journeys and experiences driving innovation in the Era of AI.
In this episode, we host Muna Numan and Syntiche Musawu, co-founders of Tawi, an app that uses speech recognition technology to suppress background noise, enhance speech quality and transcribe speech all in real-time for children living with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). With just earphones and a mobile phone, children with APD overcome a huge communication barrier, comfortably interacting with their peers and navigating the world with more confidence to achieve their full potential.
Team TAWI also emerged as the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2023 World Champions, and in this episode, they talk about:
The ins and outs of their product (including the architecture under the hood)
AI technologies that power the product – Azure AI Service (Speech service) and OpenAI’s Whisper (now available on Microsoft Azure)
Challenges, including conflicts during the team formation stage and how they resolved this to achieve their mission.
A one-stop shop for all founders, Microsoft Founders Hub, that provided the cloud infrastructure they needed to build their product, at no cost.
Resources
TAWI Website: https://tawi-ai.com/
Founders Hub to unlock benefits for your tech Azure credits, OpenAI credits, expert 1:1 consultation for your products among other benefits.
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Data MVPs and Microsoft Fabric Super Users in the Era of AI | Data Exposed: MVP Edition
Taking a step back in this episode of Data Exposed: MVP Edition to dive into the Microsoft MVP program and learn what Fabric Super Users are.
Resources:
Microsoft Fabric Learn Together
Become a Fabric Analytics Engineer
View/share our latest episodes on Microsoft Learn and YouTube!
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Data MVPs and Fabric Super Users | Data Exposed: MVP Edition
Taking a step back in this episode of Data Exposed: MVP Edition to dive into the Microsoft MVP program and learn what Fabric Super Users are.
Resources:
Microsoft Fabric Learn Together
Become a Fabric Analytics Engineer
View/share our latest episodes on Microsoft Learn and YouTube!
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Partner Blog | Unlock productivity with Jira Cloud plugin for Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365
By Srini Raghavan,VP, Microsoft Teams Ecosystem
There’s little doubt that AI is transforming the way we work across entire enterprise processes and the day-to-day digital experiences of employees. But what about the business value it represents?
According to a recent global study from IDC, organizations are quickly realizing rapid return on investment and significant increases to customer satisfaction, productivity, and market share that results from AI integration—especially when coupled with 40 percent of organizations reporting implementation times of less than six months and 92 percent of AI deployments taking 12 months or less.*
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What’s new in Microsoft Teams (free) | January 2024
Read more about the latest feature updates and improvements in Microsoft Teams (free) in the recent blog post on the Teams Insider Blog:
https://insider.teams.com/blog/whats-new-in-microsoft-teams-free-jan-2024/
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Get started with Azure partner-led offerings: Azure Migrate and Modernize, and Azure Innovate.
With Microsoft Azure, you have access to a portfolio of products, resources, and offerings to help you meet evolving customer opportunities and join a community of partners committed to leading the way in the era of AI. With Azure, you can meet faster application delivery times, achieve significant cost savings, and access funding through Azure Migrate and Modernize and Azure Innovate. Formerly the Azure Migration and Modernization Program, Azure Migrate and Modernize is an expanded offering for customer migration and modernization scenarios across apps, data, and infrastructure that includes more workloads support, streamlined access to specialized partners, incentives to offset migration costs, and security guidance built into every engagement. Azure Innovate is our newest offering to build new solutions and modernize existing ones on Azure to meet the demand for AI transformation and begin the next wave of growth for your business.
Azure specialized partners and qualified ISVs have access to assessments, pilot POCs, tooling, funding, and Microsoft expert guidance when you need it – all designed to help you accelerate the cloud journey and drive growth and impact. At Microsoft, we recognize that what you need to succeed is unique to your business model, size, and stage of growth. That’s why we’re investing in these two comprehensive offerings that are built for all.
We are setting the pace in 2024 with the latest announcements effective January 1:
Extra small engagement sizes are now available for all scenarios
ISV partners can now nominate strategics in Azure Migrate and Modernize
Top Tier partners can access Azure Migrate and Modernize partner-led for ISVs if they satisfy the IP co-sell top tier criteria
And multiple nominations for the same customer will be available for the same engagement type
Learn more and nominate today!
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What’s New in Microsoft EDU webinar – February 2024
Join us on Tuesday, February 6th, 2024 for our latest “What’s New in Microsoft EDU” webinar! This webinar will also be recapping the big announcements we made at the Bett conference in London in late January. These 30 minute webinars are put on by the Microsoft Education Product Management group and happen once per month, this month both 8:00am Pacific Time and 4:00pm Pacific time to cover as many global time zones as possible around the world. And don’t worry – we’ll be recording these and posting on our Microsoft Education YouTube channel in the new “What’s New in Microsoft EDU” playlist, so you’ll always to able to watch later or share with others!
Here is our February 2024 webinar agenda:
What’s New in AI
What’s new in Microsoft Teams for EDU
What’s new in Microsoft 365 EDU
AMA – Ask Microsoft EDU Anything (Q&A)
How to sign up
OPTION 1: February 6th, Tuesday @ 8:00am Pacific Tim Register here
OPTION 2: February 6th, Tuesday @ 4:00pm Pacific Time: Register here
Send us your questions ahead of time by adding yours into this form: WNIEDUWebinarFeb24QnA
This is what the webinar portal will look like when you register:
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Scvmm iscsi dell storage
Hello all,
I have one unity xt 380 that i want to connect to scvmm. The unity has iscsi interfaces 192.168.x.x and management at different subnet.
I cannot connect to the iscsi through smi-s from scvmm. Can you please help.
Hello all,I have one unity xt 380 that i want to connect to scvmm. The unity has iscsi interfaces 192.168.x.x and management at different subnet. I cannot connect to the iscsi through smi-s from scvmm. Can you please help. Read More
Configuration Manager technical preview version 2401
Automated diagnostic Dashboard for Software Update Issues
A new dashboard is added to the console under monitoring workspace which shows the diagnosis of the software update issues in your environment. You can fix software update issues based on CM troubleshooting documentation.
Introducing Centralized Search box: Effortlessly Find What You Need in the Console!
Users can now use the global search box in CM console which streamlines the search experience and centralizes access to information. This enhances the overall usability, productivity and effectiveness of CM. Users no longer need to navigate through multiple nodes or sections/ folders to find information they require, saving valuable time and effort.
Microsoft Azure Active Directory rebranded to Microsoft Entra ID
Starting Configuration Manager version 2403, Microsoft Azure Active Directory is renamed to Microsoft Entra ID within Configuration Manager.
Enhancement in Deploying Software Packages with Dynamic Variables
With the introduction of retry count in UI administrators while deploying the “Install Software Package” via Dynamic variable with “Continue on error” unchecked to clients, won’t be notified with task sequence failures even if package versions on the distribution point are updated.
Enabling Auto-Image Patching for CMG Virtual Machine Scale Set
With this version of CM Configuration Manager Cloud Management Gateway (CMG) Virtual Machine Scale introduces enabling of Auto-Image Patching for seamless and automated updates to ensure your environment stays current and secure with this efficient solution.
Window 11 Readiness dashboard to support Windows 23H2
With this version of Configuration Manager, the Windows 11 readiness dashboard will show charts for Windows 23H2.
HTTPS or Enhanced HTTP should be enabled for client communication from this version of Configuration Manager
HTTP-only communication is deprecated, and support is removed from this version of Configuration Manager. Please enable HTTPS or Enhanced HTTP for client communication.
Upgrade to CM 2403 is blocked if CMG V1 is running as a cloud service (classic)
The option to upgrade Configuration Manager 2403 is blocked if you’re running cloud management gateway V1 (CMG) as a cloud service (classic).All CMG deployments should use a virtual machine scale set.
Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 operating system site system roles aren’t supported from this version of Configuration Manager
Starting 2403, Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 operating system site system roles aren’t supported in any CB releases.
Improvements to Bitlocker
This release includes the following improvements to Bitlocker:
Based on your feedback, this feature ensures proper verification of key escrow and prevents message drops. We now validate whether the key is successfully escrowed to the database, and only on successful escrow we add the key protector.
This feature prevents a potential data loss scenario where BitLocker is protecting the volumes with keys that are never backed up to the database, in any failures to escrow happens.
Update 2401 for Technical Preview Branch is available in the Microsoft Configuration Manager Technical Preview console. For new installations, the 2401 baseline version of Microsoft Configuration Manager Technical Preview Branch is available on the link: CM2401TP-Baseline or from Eval center
Technical Preview Branch releases give you an opportunity to try out new Configuration Manager features in a test environment before they are made generally available.
We would love to hear your thoughts about the latest Technical Preview! Send us feedback directly from the console.
Thanks,
The Configuration Manager team
Configuration Manager Resources:
Documentation for Configuration Manager Technical Previews
Try the Configuration Manager Technical Preview Branch
Documentation for Configuration Manager
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Partner Blog | What’s new for Microsoft Partners: January 2024 edition
Written by Andrew Smith, General Manager, Partner Program Management
AI and other emerging technologies continue to revolutionize our industry, pushing the boundaries of what is possible and surfacing new customer priorities. As you strategize for the year ahead, membership in the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program connects you to tools, resources, and potential collaborators to advance your business in the direction of your goals. Stay up to date on the latest program offerings with this summary of the top stories from the past few months:
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Customer review: AnnounceBot connects teams by celebrating birthday and work anniversary events
AnnounceBot Automated and Personalized Greetings, a solution published to Microsoft AppSource, helps companies celebrate special occasions like birthdays, work anniversaries, and welcoming new hires. With minimal setup and no calendars or manual work, AnnounceBot increases engagement, collaboration, and retention.
Microsoft interviewed Stephen Cornell, Service Director, Protected Trust, to learn what he had to say about the app.
What do you like best about AnnounceBot?
We absolutely love how easy AnnounceBot is to use! It is user-friendly, and setting it up was quick. Before using AnnounceBot, social media was our only way to track birthdays, which means some folks got left out. And work anniversaries were out of the picture. Since we started using AnnounceBot, we have never missed a birthday or work anniversary. It’s all automatic now.
How has AnnounceBot helped your organization?
Keeping the team engaged became challenging when we transitioned into working remotely. AnnounceBot helped us rebuild team connections by providing a centralized system to celebrate special events. Now, everyone engages in birthday and work anniversary posts, makes jokes, and tells stories about times we were all together in an office. It is a small gesture that has made a big difference in our company culture.
How is customer service and support?
I wanted to know how to check birthdays that are getting tracked. The support team responded within an hour and provided the information I needed.
Any recommendations or insights for other users considering AnnounceBot?
My suggestion would be to set it up in a small team first, just to get the hang of it. Test it out there before you go big and use it for the whole organization.
On a scale from 1 to 5 (5 being the highest), what is your overall rating for this AnnounceBot?
I would give AnnounceBot a 4.5 only because I think they should support Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) integration to make birthdate and joining date collection even smoother.
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