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Can guest users use the Updates and Approvals apps?

​Hi!Can guest users use the Updates and Approvals apps?  Read More

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Starting a new cloud environment is a pivotal moment, and building a robust infrastructure from the outset is essential. Microsoft Azure offers a scalable and powerful platform, but establishing your environment correctly is crucial for long-term success. This guide outlines the key steps to set up a secure, cost-effective, and scalable Azure environment. Each step is accompanied by actionable insights, real-world examples, and reasons why it’s important.

1. Create Custom Virtual Networks (VNet)

Azure provides a default VNet, but creating a custom VNet allows you to tailor your network setup to your specific needs. This customization enhances both security and performance by allowing you to segment your network into subnets that separate different environments like development, staging, and production. This segregation helps you apply security policies more effectively and manage traffic flows efficiently.

Example: Imagine you’re developing a SaaS application for various clients. Creating a custom VNet with isolated subnets for each client ensures their data is separated, enhancing security and performance. This setup prevents unauthorized access between different clients’ data and optimizes network traffic.

Learn more about creating and configuring a VNet

2. Set Up Cost Management and Budgets

Effective cost management is crucial for startups, as it helps you stay within budget and make informed financial decisions. Azure Cost Management provides tools to monitor and analyze your spending, while budget alerts notify you when you’re nearing or exceeding your budget. This proactive approach helps prevent unexpected expenses and ensures you allocate resources efficiently.

Example: Suppose you’re rolling out a new feature and need to monitor its associated costs closely. Setting a budget alert for your development environment ensures you’re notified if you approach your budget limit, allowing you to adjust spending or optimize resource use to stay within financial constraints.

Start with Azure Cost Management

3. Enable Azure Activity Logs, Log Analytics, and Resource Health Alerts

Azure Activity Logs provide visibility into actions taken within your subscription, while Azure Log Analytics allows you to analyze these logs for insights. Resource Health Alerts help you monitor the health of your resources, ensuring that you’re promptly informed of any issues affecting performance or availability. This combination allows for proactive issue resolution and enhances operational efficiency.

Integrate Activity Logs with Log Analytics to track and analyze operations. Set up Resource Health Alerts to get notifications about service disruptions or performance issues. This setup helps you address problems quickly, minimizing their impact on your users and ensuring smoother operations.

Example: If your team frequently deploys updates, monitoring Activity Logs helps identify changes that might introduce issues. Resource Health Alerts notify you if a critical resource, like your database, encounters problems, allowing you to take corrective action before it affects your users.

How to use Azure Monitor logs

Learn about Resource Health Alerts

4. Configure Password Policy and Conditional Access

A strong password policy and Conditional Access in Azure Active Directory (AD) are fundamental for securing your startup’s resources. Enforcing a robust password policy reduces the risk of unauthorized access due to weak passwords. Conditional Access helps control access based on user behavior and risk factors, adding an extra layer of security.

Example: For a fintech startup handling sensitive financial data, implementing Conditional Access to require Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for high-risk actions protects against unauthorized access. This ensures that even if passwords are compromised, additional verification steps are required to access sensitive information.

Explore Azure AD Conditional Access

5. Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) adds an additional verification step beyond just a password, enhancing security by requiring something you know (password) and something you have (a code sent to your phone, for instance). This added layer helps protect against unauthorized access, even if passwords are compromised.

Example: In a healthcare startup dealing with patient data, enforcing MFA ensures that only verified users can access sensitive medical records. Even if a password is stolen, the second authentication factor provides an additional barrier to unauthorized access.

Learn more about enabling MFA in Azure AD

6. Enable Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides ongoing security assessments and recommendations to help you maintain a strong security posture. It helps identify vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and potential threats, allowing you to address them before they become serious issues.

Example: For a startup developing an AI-driven product that handles sensitive data, Defender for Cloud can alert you to security gaps or misconfigurations. By addressing these issues proactively, you protect your intellectual property and maintain user trust.

Get started with Microsoft Defender for Cloud

7. Set Up Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) allows you to assign specific roles with defined permissions to users. This principle of least privilege ensures that users have only the access necessary for their tasks, minimizing the risk of accidental or malicious changes to your resources.

Example: For a small development team, configuring RBAC to limit access to production environments ensures that only authorized team members can deploy updates. This reduces the risk of unintended disruptions or unauthorized changes.

How to configure Azure RBAC

8. Implement Azure Policy and Azure Blueprints

Azure Policy helps enforce organizational standards and compliance by applying rules to your Azure resources. Azure Blueprints allow you to deploy environments consistently according to predefined policies. These tools help maintain governance and compliance as your startup scales.

Example: As your startup expands into new markets with varying regulatory requirements, using Azure Blueprints ensures that new environments comply with local regulations efficiently. This approach saves time and ensures consistent compliance across your organization.

Introduction to Azure Policy

How to use Azure Blueprints

9. Develop and Apply a Tagging Strategy

Tags are essential for organizing and managing your Azure resources. By applying a consistent tagging strategy, you can track costs, enforce policies, and simplify resource management. Tags help you categorize resources by environment, owner, project, or other criteria.

Example: If you’re managing multiple projects, using tags like Environment, Owner, and Project helps you monitor and allocate costs accurately. This organization facilitates budget reporting and resource management, making it easier to track expenses and optimize usage.

Best practices for tagging in Azure

10. Enable Azure Management Groups

Azure Management Groups provide a way to organize multiple Azure subscriptions into a unified hierarchy. This organization simplifies the application of policies and management of compliance across different subscriptions, making governance more manageable as your startup grows.

Example: As your startup expands globally and opens new offices or departments, Management Groups allow you to enforce consistent policies and compliance across all your subscriptions. This unified approach streamlines governance and ensures that your organization adheres to regulatory requirements.

Understanding Azure Management Groups

Pro Tip: Automate Your Setup with Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Automating your environment setup with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools reduces manual effort and minimizes the risk of errors. IaC ensures that your deployments are consistent, repeatable, and scalable, saving you time and effort as you grow.

Example: If you need to deploy identical environments for development, staging, and production, using IaC tools like Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates or Terraform allows you to automate these deployments. This approach ensures that each environment is configured consistently and efficiently.

Introduction to Azure Resource Manager templates

Getting started with Terraform on Azure

Conclusion

Implementing these steps will provide a strong foundation for your Azure environment, helping you manage costs, maintain security, and scale efficiently. By following these actionable recommendations, you set your startup up for success and make the most of Azure’s capabilities. For a more detailed and structured approach to setting up your Azure environment, consider exploring the Azure Setup Guide, which offers a comprehensive framework to ensure a robust and scalable Azure setup.

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More 

Explore New Growth Opportunity with Dynamics 365 Business Central! 

Dynamics 365 Business Central represents an enormous opportunity for SMB partners and customers. It was built for small and mid-size organizations to address key financial and operational management needs.

Attend an upcoming digital bootcamp – we’ll take you step-by-step through how to identify an opportunity, drive effective conversations, and successfully transact Business Central. Show your customers your strategic value to them, help them expand into other Microsoft solutions to grow their business, make business more efficient, and more!

Unlock Your Business Central Opportunity | Digital event details
• Americas/EMEA region: September 19 | 8:00 AM – 10:00 AM, Pacific Time 
• APAC region: September 19 | 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM, Pacific Time

Register Today!
   

​Explore New Growth Opportunity with Dynamics 365 Business Central! 
Dynamics 365 Business Central represents an enormous opportunity for SMB partners and customers. It was built for small and mid-size organizations to address key financial and operational management needs.
Attend an upcoming digital bootcamp – we’ll take you step-by-step through how to identify an opportunity, drive effective conversations, and successfully transact Business Central. Show your customers your strategic value to them, help them expand into other Microsoft solutions to grow their business, make business more efficient, and more!Unlock Your Business Central Opportunity | Digital event details• Americas/EMEA region: September 19 | 8:00 AM – 10:00 AM, Pacific Time • APAC region: September 19 | 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM, Pacific TimeRegister Today!     Read More

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Hi, I have 2000 stocks with quarter profits data by row for 26 years. I have summed up each firm total profits for all years on a Pivot table and got a Rank for them, e.g. Walmart is No. 1, Exxon no. 2. How do I get the Rank posted next to each quarter of data on my detailed excel page?

​Hi, I have 2000 stocks with quarter profits data by row for 26 years. I have summed up each firm total profits for all years on a Pivot table and got a Rank for them, e.g. Walmart is No. 1, Exxon no. 2. How do I get the Rank posted next to each quarter of data on my detailed excel page?  Read More

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For example if you wanted to assign two domains to a user, so that they could send/receive email from a primary domain and an alias domain at the same time?

​For example if you wanted to assign two domains to a user, so that they could send/receive email from a primary domain and an alias domain at the same time?    Read More

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In July, we launched quiz generation for Copilot, revolutionizing the way you create quizzes. And now, just a month later, we’ve taken things up a notch! Copilot can now not only generate quizzes with detailed answer explanations, but it also gives you the power to rewrite each question. No matter what quiz you are creating, Copilot is here to make the process smoother and more intuitive than ever before. Let’s dive in and check how it works!

Generate quiz with answer explanations

Starting now, when you generate a quiz using Copilot, if you select “Including answer explanations,” each question will come with detailed explanations to clarify the reasoning behind the correct answers. You can review the solutions for each question and keep the draft to use. In this case, let’s try generating a math quiz for grade 9 students. Copilot shows us the step-by-step solutions to calculate the correct answer.

Quiz draft with answer explanations

Rewrite the questions and answer explanations
Once you keep the draft to use, if you need to do further modifications on questions, options or the answer explanation, you can easily rewrite it with Copilot’s assistance. Simply click the Copilot icon next to the question and specify how you’d like to modify it. For example, you can make the question easier or add more details to the answer explanation for better clarity. You can also manually customize the answer explanations as needed.

Rewrite questions and answer explanations

Generate answer explanation for newly created questions
After adjusting the generated questions, if you still need to add new ones, Copilot can help by generating answer explanations based on the correct answers you mark, saving you time on manual input.

Generate answer explanation for newly created question

Immediate results and answer explanation for responders
When respondents submit the quiz, they can view their results immediately. They can review the answer explanations to understand which areas they already mastered or where they could improve.

Check result with answer explanations after submitting

Please note that a Copilot for Microsoft 365 license is required to access the above-mentioned Copilot for quiz features. Discover more about Copilot for Microsoft 365 here.

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More