Tag Archives: microsoft
Standalone Intune subscription for onboarding computer with Windows 11/10
Hello,
I have 3 computers that are used for running specific company workloads and are not used by users… These are running Windows 11 or 10 OS. 2 of them are on-prem and one is a VM in Azure.
Now, I would like to have them managed by Intune – same as all end user computers. What is the recommended approach to onboard them to Intune? Is there any “per device” Intune subscription? Or should I just have an extra user account that I will assign Intune subscription and use that account to log in to those computers so that they are enrolled to Intune with that account? Would it cause any conflicts if I have one user account used to onboard several devices?
Not sure what is the best way in those situations…
Thank you
Hello, I have 3 computers that are used for running specific company workloads and are not used by users… These are running Windows 11 or 10 OS. 2 of them are on-prem and one is a VM in Azure. Now, I would like to have them managed by Intune – same as all end user computers. What is the recommended approach to onboard them to Intune? Is there any “per device” Intune subscription? Or should I just have an extra user account that I will assign Intune subscription and use that account to log in to those computers so that they are enrolled to Intune with that account? Would it cause any conflicts if I have one user account used to onboard several devices? Not sure what is the best way in those situations… Thank you Read More
Protecting your IP in the Azure Marketplace
The Azure Marketplace is an online store for Azure customers to discover, evaluate, and purchase a wide array of solutions with integrated billing and easy deployment. While the Azure Marketplace is used for billing, it does not manage licenses directly. It’s essential to integrate your own license management system to protect your intellectual property (IP) from unauthorized access or misuse.
We are seeing an increase in these types of questions, especially from our AI partners. This article outlines strategies to safeguard your IP effectively when deploying an Azure VM or Azure Container Offer.
Obfuscate Your Code
Restrict Shell Access
Use a License Manager
Protect AI Models
Secure Containers with ENTRYPOINT
Utilize Azure Metadata Service
Conclusion
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
AI Frontiers: Human insights on AI training
Recent developments in AI require more computing power to train the models. During training, the model learns from data how to perform specific tasks. Now, recent models like GPT, which have billions of parameters, require memory-intensive processing and power-intensive trainings. This requires a massive infrastructure. Thus, we have two main components for AI model training: data and compute. In my post, I explained training by drawing simple comparisons with human learning, discussed why the cloud can be a perfect fit for training AI models, and outlined some future directions that I believe will be important.
Inferencing and training
Let’s start by briefly comparing the training of AI models with the human learning process. A major difference is that the training of current models is massive and relatively fast, whereas human learning is much more diverse and incremental process, spanning over a long period of time. Consider the development of a baby’s or child’s brain; the learning process here includes observations and discoveries across a wide range of fields over the years. Human learning is a much more incremental and slow process compared to the massive model training conducted today.
AI models are trained on massive datasets, through which they learn to perform specific tasks. During training, these models learn from a training dataset that contains broad knowledge, enabling them to exhibit behaviours that can be described as common sense/behaviour. The objective of this base training is to instil such common sense, where the model showcases human-like behaviours based on general/shared knowledge. In contrast, the human brain undergoes a different kind of trainings by nature, where the subjects are diverse and the environment is constantly changing. Each day, we learn from a multitude of small observations across various fields.
I would like to emphasize two key concepts here: multimodality and model refinement.
Multi-modality & Domain-specific Finetuning
As the brain is complex, we are not sure exactly how different pieces of information correlate within it. Take a simple example: How does reading books improve math skills? We don’t know the exact correlation between them, but we do know that one exists. Skills or insights gained from one area might be beneficial when performing tasks in another field. This underscores the importance of direction with multi-modality, which enhances a model’s ability to reason about an answer. Reasoning is also related to common sense, which we mentioned earlier. A model can exhibit better behaviour when trained on diverse tasks from different domains. Referring again to human learning, we noted that it is more like a slow, incremental process across various fields over a long period. Here, we can draw some parallels between multi-modality/training in different domains and human learning across different fields.
Optimized Fine-tuning
As trained models should be adapted for production use, model refinement is becoming an increasingly important topic. Today, model refinement is achieved through a process called fine-tuning. Through fine-tuning, the model is adapted to specific domains by changing/reconfiguring its parameters. To make it easier to understand, let’s consider an example of human learning. Imagine an exam period where you have exams on different subjects, with one week between each exam. Ideally, you should focus your preparation on the subject of the next exam each week. At the exam, this enables you to answer questions related to that subject more effectively. Fine-tuning is similar in some respects, as the model is fine-tuned specifically for a domain to perform tasks better within that domain. When you fine-tune your model on physics datasets, it is expected to answer physics-related questions better. Similarly, when you fine-tune on Azure Q&A, you can expect your model to answer questions in the Azure context more accurately.
Here we speak of a customization of the model. The model is refined in terms of we adjust model parameters. Thus, we do not require to retrain the base model from scratch. But just to mention, not like training but fine-tuning is also a compute & cost intensive process.
A significant improvement in this area came with LoRA. The concept is to conduct training focused only on the parts of the model that need improvement. Thus, a very small part of the model is fine-tuned (<1%). This requires much less memory in comparison. The added parameters, known as LoRAs, act as adapters associated with the task. The resulting models with adapters can be viewed as experts, effective in their respective tasks. They are referred to as LoRA Experts.
LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models – Microsoft Research
To draw an analogy with the exam period example mentioned earlier, imagine you have one exam each week from a different subject. For each exam, you need specific knowledge for that subject, so ideally, you prepare the week before to be capable of understanding and solving the exam problems related to that specific subject. I see many similarities with the concept of LoRA here. Using different LoRA adapters will provide expert models that can be used for task- or domain-specific applications. Based on a user query, the appropriate LoRA adapter can be selected from a library. This allows the use of an expert model (LoRA Expert) for the task, where it is expected to perform well. The analogy here is like a person who has prepared for a week for a biology exam, then taking the biology exam.
Training LoRA models is very energy-efficient, as it reduces the number of trainable parameters. This introduces a new concept: centralized training for the base model (like GPT) and decentralized training for the Expert models (LoRA adapters).
The initial large-scale training required will be done centrally to generate a base model. This base model will then be used with relatively small refinements, known as LoRA adapters, in a decentralized manner. This approach is logical by nature because the fine-tuning of the model is mostly done for production, where the model is expected to serve a specific domain that requires domain-specific adaptation. This does not necessarily require large-scale centralized training.
Initially, we discussed multi-modality. I don’t want to delve deeply into LoRA here. I would like to just highlight a recent work on multi-modal adaptation of LoRA, which involves the addition of ~2.5% more parameters to the model. The user can refer to [2311.11501] MultiLoRA: Democratizing LoRA for Better Multi-Task Learning (arxiv.org)
Transparent checkpointing
During training, things can go wrong. Ideally, you don’t want the training to have to restart, as this may not be possible due to time and cost constraints. Transparent checkpointing is a promising step forward. It allows you to set checkpoints during the model training process. If an error occurs during training, you can revert to the previous checkpoint without needing to restart from the beginning. This is a significant cost-saving improvement and also makes it easier to change models at the hardware level. Since the model states can be saved, training can be paused and another model, along with its state, can be uploaded. This offers a lot of flexibility, especially in the cloud. I believe that in the future, it might even provide interesting insights into training itself, as it allows observation of disk states at different training milestones.
It is demonstrated as the GPU-adapted version of CRIU for Linux. With CRIU it is possible to freeze and save the CPU state by containers.
As checkpointing builds some kind of insurance, as no complete training restart is needed. Still there is a custom decision needed to be made, where you can choose to set less or more frequent checkpoints. Here comes the trade-off between the cost of more frequent checkpoint vs costs in the case of training failure/loss.
Why checkpoint optimization for large model training matters? – MS Learn
Energy Consumption
The topic of energy consumption and the efficiency of AI systems is very important. To create a sustainable platform, the underlying hardware must be efficient as first. Two key aspects to consider are the efficiency and utilization of the infrastructure. The hardware should be used efficiently and be inherently efficient.
The benefits of training AI models on Azure Cloud Infrastructure include scalability. We are talking about multiple GPUs not operating on the same board and not even in the same rack. They are spread out through consumption and heat. It has a global scheduler across one global hardware fleet of CPUs and GPUs. Thus, this infrastructure can scale from modest training sessions up to an OpenAI supercomputing system.
Before the Azure AI infrastructure was announced, it was expected that the infrastructure would be mostly used for training. However, unexpectedly, the trend appears to be different, showing a comparable utilization of the platform for both training and inference. Inference is an ongoing process that also requires a significant amount of power.
The power consumption is often correlated with the complexity of the task. It is not easy to measure. As of today, we can track the input and output tokens of the model. You can think of tokens as pieces of words, where approximately 750 words are represented by ~1000 tokens. Pricing is also based on the number of tokens. When we consider this, each prompt can lead to a task with varying complexity. Energy usage is highly correlated with complexity, as a more complex prompt will require more memory and hardware resources. As energy becomes more of a critical aspect and even a limitation, assessing the prompt in terms of complexity might help in finding the most efficient hardware fit and provide insights about the required power.
LLM application profiles
Currently, an interesting approach is the use of LLM application profiles. With LLM application profiles, users can be categorized according to the complexity of their queries. This enables matching the complexity of the query with the required or more specialized compute power. Here you can see a categorization of four different use cases with respect to whether the user query requires more prompt or generation-oriented processing: Content Creation, Prompt Engineering, Summarization, and Chatbot.
An optimization related to this is Splitwise. Splitwise introduces the concept of Phase Splitting, which separates the prompt computation and token-generation phases. This is intended to optimally utilize available hardware and parallelize as well. User can refer to Splitwise improves GPU usage by splitting LLM inference phases – Microsoft Research
Project Forge
Recent work like Project Forge showed that using a specialized GPU/accelerator could also be possible and optimal. Forge is a resource manager that can schedule across GPUs/accelerators. It has a global scheduler on one global hardware fleet CPUs and GPUs. The GPUs are clustered with High bandwidth network – Infiniband – to provide a good quality connectivity. On layer on top of them are the hypervisors. Networks are taken care of and tuned to be maintained with a high utilization & efficiency.
Models will be available via AI Frameworks like ONNIX, Deepspeed (to train), Azure OpenAI on top of custom kernels and different kernel libraries. This will provide the user the opportunity to use different and specialized accelerators on NVIDIA, AMD GPUs and Maia.
What runs ChatGPT? Inside Microsoft’s AI supercomputer | Featuring Mark Russinovich
What to learn?
Training Dataset
You don’t want your kids to see harmful content or to go to locations where they might witness non-exemplary behaviour. The same applies to AI models. When a model is exposed to harmful elements or biased content during its training, it might also reflect that in its learned behaviour. You should keep your model away from the toxic junk on the internet.
Even if you protect your kid/model from harmful content, a bad actor/malicious user can still attempt to interact with it for their own purposes. A recent article by Crescendo reveals an interesting case of a ‘jailbreak’ as well, where a user tries to convince/fool the model into saying harmful information. This reported behaviour showcases how complex it can be to draw the lines.
What to unlearn? (forget)
Above, we talked mostly about training and learning. But what about forgetting? We can refer to this as ‘unlearning‘ by AI models. The concept of enabling models to forget involves generating a process, after training, that allows them to unlearn information associated with content that needs to be removed from the training data. I think this is promising, as it can be used to unlearn harmful or biased content. Furthermore, it can be utilized for protecting intellectual property (IP).
The question here is: While the model unlearns certain content, can it still perform as well as before on tasks that are unrelated to that content? The paper presents promising results, reporting that performance on benchmarks remains comparable.
Who’s Harry Potter? Making LLMs forget – Microsoft Research
A second, related question arises: How big does the model need to be to continue performing the task effectively? The user can refer to for further insights: TinyStories: How Small Can Language Models Be and Still Speak Coherent English? – Microsoft Research
Unlearning information, characters, events, and items related to the person/event, while carrying forward valuable and helpful configurations, allows the model to continue performing the task effectively.
Today, we often view models as a black box, lacking the capability to fully understand them due to their complexity. The reasoning behind the model’s output and interpretability is the focus here, to make AI more explainable. In research, this direction is referred to as Explainable AI. I think that, among all the new research directions above, the new fine-tuning adapters, forgetting capabilities, multi-modality, and the ideal model size will help us gain some insights and unlock some mysteries with efficient learning to perform the tasks. In parallel, this also unlocks new possibilities in GPU usage as a consequence.
all the images in this post are AI-generated – by Copilot Designer.
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Stop m365 access from personal laptops
I want to block my users ability to access corporate outlook, excel, teams, SharePoint when they open the portal.office.com from their personal laptop. What is the method of doing this please?
I want to block my users ability to access corporate outlook, excel, teams, SharePoint when they open the portal.office.com from their personal laptop. What is the method of doing this please? Read More
Retain text formatting when using Concat or Textjoin
Is it possible to retain text format when concatenating cells? In this example, I would like to combine cells a2, b2, and c2 retaining the italics formatting on a2. Thanks for your help.
Is it possible to retain text format when concatenating cells? In this example, I would like to combine cells a2, b2, and c2 retaining the italics formatting on a2. Thanks for your help. Read More
Public Preview of Azure Arc Site Manager
This week we are excited to announce the Public Preview of Azure Arc site manager. We designed site manager to meet the needs of customers who manage solutions on the adaptive cloud and want to view and monitor their resources according to their physical locations, such as stores, restaurants, and factories. Within site manager, customers can create Arc sites to represent their on-premises environments and see centralized monitoring information across their edge infrastructure.
Get Started
You can get started by navigating to site manager within Azure Arc (aka.ms/sitemanager). Sites can be created on a resource group or subscription today, and site manager currently supports Azure Stack HCI, Azure Arc-enabled servers & VMs, Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes, and Azure IoT Operations assets. After site creation, all supported resources automatically appear within the site.
For at-scale scenarios, Arc sites can also be created via Infrastructure-as-Code. To learn more, see aka.ms/IaCQuickstart.
Site Monitoring Capabilities
Once the site is created, you can see aggregated connectivity, alerts, and updates for the site. Connectivity status comes automatically for supported resources, update status via Azure Update Manager, and alerts through Azure Monitor, which can be configured following this guidance. Additionally, each Arc site has its own page where more detailed troubleshooting and remediation can be performed.
Coming Soon
Site manager is currently in public preview, and the following features will come soon:
Ability to create sites on a subset of resources in multiple resource groups and/or subscriptions
Support for more resource types, including Arc-enabled SQL servers, Arc-enabled VMware vSphere, and some cloud resources
Expansion to security and health monitoring
Next Steps
Check out our documentation (aka.ms/sitedocs) and go to the Azure portal to try out Azure Arc site manager today (aka.ms/sitemanager). Additionally, feel free to provide feedback to our team here.
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Webinar: How Takeda used generative AI to create a report generation app
In the healthcare industry, report generation is a crucial and time-consuming task that requires sourcing and populating information from various sources. Takeda, a global biopharmaceutical company, worked with their Microsoft code-with team to create a minimum viable product (MVP) application that could accelerate this process using generative AI.
In this webinar, we will discuss the experience with Takeda and Microsoft including the challenges, learnings, and reference open-source code on GitHub that was part of the engagement.
The session will be held April 30th, 2024 @ 12pm EDT / 11am CDT / 10am MDT / 9am PST
Register Here to add to your calendar
Agenda
Overview of the use case and the business problem
Demonstration of the MVP app and its features
Technical details of how the app was built and where to find the source code
Lessons learned
Intelligent App Chronicles for Healthcare
The Intelligent App Chronicles for Healthcare is a webinar series designed to provide health and life sciences companies with a comprehensive guide to building intelligent healthcare applications.
The series will cover a wide range of topics including Azure Container Services, Azure AI Services, Azure Integration Services, and innovative solutions that can accelerate your Intelligent app journey. By attending these webinars, you will learn how to leverage the power of intelligent systems to build scalable and secure healthcare solutions that can transform the way you deliver care.
Our hosts will be: Shelly (Finch) Avery, Matthew Anderson, Rob McKenna & Adam Workman
Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from the experts and take your healthcare applications to the next level. Register now for the Intelligent App Chronicles for Healthcare webinar series, here.
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Power Platform & Dynamics 365 Newsletter – April 2024
April 2024 Edition
The newsletter is attached below.
Welcome to the April 2024 Edition of the Power Platform and Dynamics 365 CE Newsletter!
April was packed with news and highlights!
As usual we have a lot of news and highlights to catch up on and plan!
2024 release Wave 1 GA staring April 2024. Use Release Planner
Best Practice for AI Adoption
Upcoming Microsoft events
Review the new deprecations and removal updates.
Review Power Apps, Dataverse, Copilot product updates.
TIPS: USE COPILOT TO SUMMARIZE THE DOC OR ASK QUESTIONS.
Thanks & regards.
Power Platform & D365 Newsletter Team
—
Advanced Support for Partners (ASfP) and Premier Support for Partners (PSfP) are paid partner offerings at Microsoft that provide unmatched value through a wide range of Partner benefits including account management, technical cloud enablement consultations, and an elevated technical support experience across the Microsoft Cloud (Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform).
Partners in ASfP have higher Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program Capability Scores, attain more Solutions Partner designations, and see uplifts across Azure, M365, and D365. View the data and learn more on the new ASfP Impact slide below.
Please review these resources to learn more and consider booking a meeting to speak directly with our teams for a better understanding of the value-added benefits of ASfP and PSfP.
Book a meeting with an ASfP Evangelist
Book a meeting with a PSfP Specialist
Visit the ASfP Website
Visit the PSfP Website
Download the ASfP Fact Sheet
View the ASfP Impact Slide
Stop by the ASfP Partner Community
April 2024 Edition
The newsletter is attached below.
Welcome to the April 2024 Edition of the Power Platform and Dynamics 365 CE Newsletter!
April was packed with news and highlights!
As usual we have a lot of news and highlights to catch up on and plan!
2024 release Wave 1 GA staring April 2024. Use Release Planner
Best Practice for AI Adoption
Upcoming Microsoft events
Review the new deprecations and removal updates.
Review Power Apps, Dataverse, Copilot product updates.
TIPS: USE COPILOT TO SUMMARIZE THE DOC OR ASK QUESTIONS.
Thanks & regards.
Power Platform & D365 Newsletter Team
—
Advanced Support for Partners (ASfP) and Premier Support for Partners (PSfP) are paid partner offerings at Microsoft that provide unmatched value through a wide range of Partner benefits including account management, technical cloud enablement consultations, and an elevated technical support experience across the Microsoft Cloud (Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform).
Partners in ASfP have higher Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program Capability Scores, attain more Solutions Partner designations, and see uplifts across Azure, M365, and D365. View the data and learn more on the new ASfP Impact slide below.
Please review these resources to learn more and consider booking a meeting to speak directly with our teams for a better understanding of the value-added benefits of ASfP and PSfP.
Book a meeting with an ASfP Evangelist
Book a meeting with a PSfP Specialist
Visit the ASfP Website
Visit the PSfP Website
Download the ASfP Fact Sheet
View the ASfP Impact Slide
Stop by the ASfP Partner Community Read More
Excel Sumifs help
I need to use a sumifs formula to add up a group of numbers with 3 different criterias, and it also needs to subtract my varying goal for the day.
I.e
Sumifs(‘mysummary’!F:F,’goals’!D:D,’goals’!F5,’goals’!E:E,’goals’!G5) but each of those numbers need to subtract my goal set for the day in theory a
Sumifs(‘mysummary’!F:F,’goals’!D:D-M5,’goals’!F5,’goals’!E:E,’goals’!G5)
I need to use a sumifs formula to add up a group of numbers with 3 different criterias, and it also needs to subtract my varying goal for the day. I.eSumifs(‘mysummary’!F:F,’goals’!D:D,’goals’!F5,’goals’!E:E,’goals’!G5) but each of those numbers need to subtract my goal set for the day in theory a Sumifs(‘mysummary’!F:F,’goals’!D:D-M5,’goals’!F5,’goals’!E:E,’goals’!G5) Read More
Formula needed to calculate average over current day in year
I’m looking for a formula to calculate a year-to-date daily average using Excel that would automatically change the amount of days as time goes on. Is there a function that can use a YTD sales quantity and divide by the current number of days from the beginning of the current year?
For example, say I have a total of 45,660 parts sold YTD as of April 22 2024. The average daily sales of that would be 45,660/112=407.7. Would I be able to use a function that would automatically change the 112 value to 113 as the calendar day advances?
I’m looking for a formula to calculate a year-to-date daily average using Excel that would automatically change the amount of days as time goes on. Is there a function that can use a YTD sales quantity and divide by the current number of days from the beginning of the current year? For example, say I have a total of 45,660 parts sold YTD as of April 22 2024. The average daily sales of that would be 45,660/112=407.7. Would I be able to use a function that would automatically change the 112 value to 113 as the calendar day advances? Read More
Business Applications Partner News: Week of April 22
Check out this week’s top resources to stay up-to-date on the latest Business Applications Partner News. Make sure to sign up for the new monthly Dynamics 365 and Power Platform partner newsletters launching soon.
What to register for:
THIS WEEK!
April 24 (Day 2): Q3 CSP Masters Copilot Sales & Technical Bootcamps
Starting April 24: April FY24 High Volume Acceleration Program (Advanced)
What to review/like/share:
Partner Alert: Announcing new features in Dynamics 365 Field Service and Supply Chain Management
Case studies:
Leapwork brings testing efficiencies to Dynamics 365 partners
Upzoids sparks transformation at All Pro Electrical using Power Pages
New FastTrack customer nomination instructions
Partner playbooks, newsletters, and guides
Power Platform Forrester survey
What to watch:
April 11 Tech Talk: Power Pages Site Copilot
New feature: Traceability in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management demo
Reminders: Register for the upcoming partner events!
Events:
May 2: Supply Chain Premium partner webinar
May 9: SMB Partner Hour
May 16-17: Directions Asia
May 21-23: Microsoft Build
May 30: Copilot Studio Partner Opportunity Webinar
Register for upcoming Microsoft AI Training Roadshows
Trainings:
Open April 1-May 31: Q4 Microsoft Catalyst Partner Training
April 30 (PDT), June 11 (IST) (BST): Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management – Demand Planning Workshop
May 13-15 (PDT) | May 15-17 (IST) (BST): SMB Sales Bootcamp
Check out this week’s top resources to stay up-to-date on the latest Business Applications Partner News. Make sure to sign up for the new monthly Dynamics 365 and Power Platform partner newsletters launching soon.
What to register for:
THIS WEEK!
April 24 (Day 2): Q3 CSP Masters Copilot Sales & Technical Bootcamps
Starting April 24: April FY24 High Volume Acceleration Program (Advanced)
What to review/like/share:
Partner Alert: Announcing new features in Dynamics 365 Field Service and Supply Chain Management
Case studies:
Leapwork brings testing efficiencies to Dynamics 365 partners
Upzoids sparks transformation at All Pro Electrical using Power Pages
New FastTrack customer nomination instructions
Partner playbooks, newsletters, and guides
Power Platform Forrester survey
What to watch:
April 11 Tech Talk: Power Pages Site Copilot
New feature: Traceability in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management demo
Reminders: Register for the upcoming partner events!
Events:
May 2: Supply Chain Premium partner webinar
May 9: SMB Partner Hour
May 16-17: Directions Asia
May 21-23: Microsoft Build
May 30: Copilot Studio Partner Opportunity Webinar
Register for upcoming Microsoft AI Training Roadshows
Trainings:
Open April 1-May 31: Q4 Microsoft Catalyst Partner Training
April 30 (PDT), June 11 (IST) (BST): Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management – Demand Planning Workshop
May 13-15 (PDT) | May 15-17 (IST) (BST): SMB Sales Bootcamp Read More
HELP with CTE or a Cursor to update multiple rows in 1 table ..selecting from Multiple databases
Server A Syetemtable of Dbname= ABC DbnameproductidABC123 Syetemtable of Dbname= XYZ DbnameproductidABC987 Syetemtable of Dbname= AQW DbnameproductidAQW123456 Like we have 1000 DB’s in Server A and each db has a system table 1 Main LOGIN info table in Server A Dabatase DB1 SELECT * from DB1. DBO.LOGIN table DBNameproduct IDABCNULLXYZA9065AQW33c@1442these rows in 1 main Login table are not matching the system table rows of each individual Databases Now I want to update 1 Main LOGIN info table in Server A Dabatase DB1, so that I get results matching each login table of all db’s SELECT * from DB1. DBO.LOGIN table DBNameproduct IDABC123XYZ987AQW123456
Server A Syetemtable of Dbname= ABC DbnameproductidABC123 Syetemtable of Dbname= XYZ DbnameproductidABC987 Syetemtable of Dbname= AQW DbnameproductidAQW123456 Like we have 1000 DB’s in Server A and each db has a system table 1 Main LOGIN info table in Server A Dabatase DB1 SELECT * from DB1. DBO.LOGIN table DBNameproduct IDABCNULLXYZA9065AQW33c@1442these rows in 1 main Login table are not matching the system table rows of each individual Databases Now I want to update 1 Main LOGIN info table in Server A Dabatase DB1, so that I get results matching each login table of all db’s SELECT * from DB1. DBO.LOGIN table DBNameproduct IDABC123XYZ987AQW123456 Read More
Unable to Reset Password
I’ve created an Outlook account recently but forgotten the credentials to log back in. Since after creating the account, my inbox has been empty but with only a welcome email. I’ve tried resetting the password via the automated form, which asks for basic details (First Name, Last Name, Microsoft Services used, Recent sent emails with exact Subject lines) but I keep receiving these crappy automated emails from the BOT saying “Unfortunately, our automated system has determined that the information you provided was not sufficient for us to validate your account ownership.“
I couldn’t find a customer service contact number (USA) or a support email to contact a HUMAN. Had anyone faced this issue before, if so how were you able resolve this?
Thanks in advance.
I’ve created an Outlook account recently but forgotten the credentials to log back in. Since after creating the account, my inbox has been empty but with only a welcome email. I’ve tried resetting the password via the automated form, which asks for basic details (First Name, Last Name, Microsoft Services used, Recent sent emails with exact Subject lines) but I keep receiving these crappy automated emails from the BOT saying “Unfortunately, our automated system has determined that the information you provided was not sufficient for us to validate your account ownership.” I couldn’t find a customer service contact number (USA) or a support email to contact a HUMAN. Had anyone faced this issue before, if so how were you able resolve this? Thanks in advance. Read More
Map Home-Directory attribute UNC path for locally connected azure-ad joined shared devices.
We have an on-premises Active Directory (AD) environment connected to Azure AD via AD Connect. We’ve successfully joined our devices to Azure AD using Azure AD Join (MEJ) through Autopilot. We also, using Passthrough Authentication (PTA) for Authentication and we have 3 PTA agents (Including AAD Connect) on-premises.
Now, we want to grant users access to an on-premises file share (File server) while they are physically connected to the local network at the office. Each user has an individual Home Drive (H:) defined in their On-premises “Home-Directory attribute” (HomeDirectory), and we want to make this H drive accessible for any users who sign-in to a locally connected shared AADJ devices at the office (We don’t want these H drives to be available for remote users). Our shared AADJ devices currently have access to on-premises share files when they’re locally connected at the office, but they don’t have access to user’s home drive now.
In summary, we want to map Home-Directory attribute UNC path for locally connected azure-ad joined shared devices for any individual users who sign in to these devices.
We have an on-premises Active Directory (AD) environment connected to Azure AD via AD Connect. We’ve successfully joined our devices to Azure AD using Azure AD Join (MEJ) through Autopilot. We also, using Passthrough Authentication (PTA) for Authentication and we have 3 PTA agents (Including AAD Connect) on-premises. Now, we want to grant users access to an on-premises file share (File server) while they are physically connected to the local network at the office. Each user has an individual Home Drive (H:) defined in their On-premises “Home-Directory attribute” (HomeDirectory), and we want to make this H drive accessible for any users who sign-in to a locally connected shared AADJ devices at the office (We don’t want these H drives to be available for remote users). Our shared AADJ devices currently have access to on-premises share files when they’re locally connected at the office, but they don’t have access to user’s home drive now. In summary, we want to map Home-Directory attribute UNC path for locally connected azure-ad joined shared devices for any individual users who sign in to these devices. Read More
Microsoft Intune Remote Help adds full control for Mac
We’re excited to announce a major enhancement to Microsoft Intune Remote Help’s capabilities: full control support for macOS devices. With organizations that use macOS devices in their environments, providing efficient and secure remote assistance is paramount. This is part of a broader effort across Intune to provide cross-platform support and allow IT admins to manage any device with Intune. With this new functionality, IT help desks can now not only view Mac devices, but also take full control of them, streamlining troubleshooting and reducing time to mitigation. Whether it’s configuring settings, troubleshooting software glitches, or assisting information workers, help desks can tackle problems quickly and efficiently.
Remote Help empowers IT to provide secure helpdesk-to-user connections. Remote Help helps to mitigate security risks, improve efficiency, and support workers anywhere. With the rise of help desk spoofing, the strong authentication built into Remote Help and security controls are more important than ever. Every help desk connection can be trusted, protected with compliant, conditional access policies, including the ability to support multi-factor authentication—ensuring the identity of both the helper and end user. Before initiating a remote session, helpers receive non-compliance warnings if the user’s device does not adhere to organizational policies. Helpers and sharers can also maintain a continuous thread of communication throughout the session, leveraging the chat feature which supports special characters and multiple languages.
How Remote Help works with macOS devices
After an employee reports an IT issue, the help desk starts a Remote Help session through the Intune Admin Center so that they can assist.
When beginning a session, the helper now has the option of full control, which is a new capability for macOS devices.
Remote Help shows the employee the help desk technician’s photo, name, job title, and domain verification through Entra ID creates confidence that the correct person is accessing their device.
Before beginning the session, Remote Help will check if the sharer’s device is compliant. When devices are not compliant, the helper will receive a warning, but can still proceed with the session.
Getting started with Remote Help
Microsoft Intune Remote Help is a key solution in the Microsoft Intune Suite. It is available as an add-on to any Microsoft 365 plan that includes Intune. To get started with Remote Help and the new support for macOS, start a trial of Microsoft Intune Suite today. For more information on Microsoft Intune Remote Help, visit our Microsoft Intune technical product documentation as well as the Microsoft Intune Remote Help product page.
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Drop down list “moving” selection when selected in another cell
I am rather new to excel but have been able to figure out most things with a quick google search. However, this one thing is giving me trouble.
Here’s what I’m trying to achieve:
I have a spreadsheet with different zones I can assign my employees to.
Each zone has cells that are linked to a table with my employee’s names and I can select them via drop down menu.
When I want to move an employee to a different zone, I would like to be able to select their name in a different cell under the new zone and have it automatically reset the old cell containing their name to a blank cell.
Everything I see is just to make it so they can only be selected once, but this would eliminate them from the drop down menu as I assign them.
That means when I want to “move” them I’d have to reset their current cell to blank manually before being able to select them elsewhere.
I want the drop down list to include all of the names all the time but for it to reset the old cell to blank when I select them elsewhere.
Is this possible?
Please help!
I am rather new to excel but have been able to figure out most things with a quick google search. However, this one thing is giving me trouble. Here’s what I’m trying to achieve:I have a spreadsheet with different zones I can assign my employees to.Each zone has cells that are linked to a table with my employee’s names and I can select them via drop down menu.When I want to move an employee to a different zone, I would like to be able to select their name in a different cell under the new zone and have it automatically reset the old cell containing their name to a blank cell. Everything I see is just to make it so they can only be selected once, but this would eliminate them from the drop down menu as I assign them.That means when I want to “move” them I’d have to reset their current cell to blank manually before being able to select them elsewhere.I want the drop down list to include all of the names all the time but for it to reset the old cell to blank when I select them elsewhere. Is this possible? Please help! Read More
The Power of Manager Engagement: A Proven Strategy for Business Success
We know the manager’s role is important. They’re responsible for establishing strategies and goals, overseeing the work to achieve those goals, solving problems, as well as motivating, inspiring, and empowering employees to perform at their best. It’s a tall order. But what happens if a manager’s head isn’t in the game? Can employees be engaged and help the business succeed if their manager isn’t engaged in their own work? Are there business benefits from strong engagement among people managers? Simply put, does manager engagement matter separate from employee engagement?
As part of Microsoft Viva Glint, we get to work with some of the largest, most complex, and successful companies in the world, which includes leveraging the millions of employee feedback data points from our customers’ anonymized Glint survey data to try to answer these kinds of questions.
We got to work collecting and mapping the financial performance data from 862 publicly traded Glint customers over the course of a single year. We examined the survey scores only from those companies’ managers (from any level of management, from individual team managers up to the CEO level) and calculated a quartile rank for each survey item for each company. Those with item score averages above the 75th percentile were categorized as the “most engaged management” group and those below the 25th percentile categorized as the “least engaged management” group. We calculated the financial metrics for each group based on the year-end reporting of the companies’ financial results.
The answer: Yup, manager engagement definitely matters!
The results of the study were compelling. Organizations with more-engaged managers showed much better financial results, with a median pre-tax profit margin 3.25x higher than organizations with less-engaged managers. Additionally, these highly engaged manager organizations showed significantly better return on equity: 10x higher than organizations with less-engaged managers.
These findings highlight the importance of manager engagement in driving business success. By investing in the engagement of their managers, organizations can improve their business success. It is clear that managers’ attitudes influence employees’ attitude, and taking care of managers is also a way to take care of employees. A 2022 Glint research study about what matters most for driving employee engagement highlighted the importance of managers in driving employee engagement and satisfaction.
One key finding from the study was when managers felt positively about the company culture, their team members are also more likely to feel positively about it. Similarly, when managers recommend the company as a great place to work, their team members are also more likely to do so.
Take action
You want to drive business success, right? To do that, you’ll need to support the engagement and success of your managers. According to our research in partnership with Linked on how best to deliver that support, managers need more:
Access to training or learning resources (33% selected this among their responses)
Work-related coaching (32%)
Performance feedback (32%)
Emotional and mental health resources (30%)
Decision-making authority (24%)
Facilitating internal connections (24%)
The way forward
This recent research provides the evidence of what we suspected: the center of any business enterprise is its managers, and the enterprise’s success will depend on those managers’ success – both directly in the decisions they make, and indirectly in their influence on others in the organization. As organizations continue to change, adopt new and sometimes disruptive technologies, re-organize, re-size, and retrench, managers and manager engagement with their work will need to be supported and recognized. Winning organizations recognize this and make smart, targeted investments in their managers.
How do you support and engage your managers? Comment below!
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Methodology
Financial performance data from 01/03/2022 to 12/30/2022 were collected and manually mapped to public Glint clients that had at least one survey with 10 or more manager respondents in 2022 (N=862 public companies).
Company item scores included scores only from manager respondents (any level of management from an individual team manager up to the CEO) and were aggregated by survey cycle, then by client, and were used to calculate a quartile rank for each company. Those companies with item score averages above the 75th percentile were bucketed into the “most engaged management” group and those with item score averages below the 25th percentile were bucketed into the “least engaged management” group. The financial metrics for each grouping were calculated based on the median 2022 year-end financial reporting of the companies in these two buckets.
Engagement was measured by two items: eSat – “How happy are you working at <Company Name>?” and Recommend – “I would recommend <company name> as a great place to work.”). These two items were the most “predictive” of the financial success measures: Stock Return (year end), Market Cap per Employee, Pretax Profit per Employee, Pretax Profit Margin, Return on Capital Employed, and Return on Equity. Other items were tested as well, and while they predicted some of the financial success measures well, the between them the Engagement items were effective in predicting all of them.
References
“Glint Manager Research”, June 2022
“How Combining Employee Engagement and Performance Management Fuels Organizational Success,” Harvard Business Review–Analytic Services
June 2022 LinkedIn Omnibus Survey
“LinkedIn Learning survey”, conducted for LinkedIn by Censuswide in July 2019, including >2,000 working professionals, ages 18-74, across the US.
“Manager Support Study”, June 2022 LinkedIn Omnibus Survey in partnership with LinkedIn Market Research, sample of 1963 employed English-speaking LinkedIn members.
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Sneak peek at new Azure edge infrastructure at Hannover Messe 2024
Written by Cosmos Darwin, Principal Group Manager on the Azure Edge & Platform team
This week is Hannover Messe 2024, the world’s biggest industrial trade fair. Microsoft is there, including members of the Azure Stack team, showcasing how the Microsoft Cloud enables end-to-end manufacturing solutions that help securely connect people, assets, and business processes, empowering organizations to be more resilient.
Near the center of our booth, you can watch a robotic assembly line put together battery parts. The line features standard OT assets from our partner Rockwell Automation and shows how an adaptive cloud approach together with open standards like OPC UA can accelerate industrial transformation. Azure IoT Operations enabled by Azure Arc flows data from the production line into Microsoft Fabric, enabling real-time monitoring and analysis in the cloud.
And if you look closer, you may spot an exciting new infrastructure solution hosting it all:
Caption: Glimpse the new Azure edge infrastructure at the Hannover Messe 2024 expo.
Hardware for the industrial edge
As organizations adopt new OT technologies like Azure IoT Operations, which runs on Kubernetes, a core challenge for IT is to provide an appropriate computing infrastructure at the edge to support it. They need an infrastructure solution that’s easy to deploy, easy to manage at-scale across many locations, and that provides all the capabilities needed to deliver the applications, like managed Kubernetes and enterprise-grade resiliency. Most important of all, it needs to work in an edge setting like a factory floor, where neither the environmental factors nor the budget can accommodate a rack of servers.
For these kinds of situations, our team is working to extend Azure edge infrastructure to smaller form factor devices: edge/industrial PCs. The demo at Hannover Messe runs on three Lenovo ThinkEdge SE30s, an exemplar of this new category. These devices are great: they’re rugged, affordable, and they provide just the right amount of capability for this application, with an Intel Core™ i5 vPro® processor and 16 GiB of memory each.
Caption: Lenovo ThinkEdge SE30 is a great example of the edge/industrial PC device category.
Optimized low-footprint architecture
To make the most of limited resources, this new infrastructure solution blends familiar elements of Azure Stack HCI with some exciting new approaches. Azure Linux is used as the host operating system, and then the Azure Kubernetes Service is used to turn those machines into a Kubernetes cluster. The result is Kubernetes running directly on bare metal, with no virtualization at all. The whole infrastructure solution is deployed and operated from Azure cloud.
Caption: Solution architecture uses Azure Linux and AKS on baremetal to minimize footprint.
(Equivalently, for a more familiar experience, you could also run Windows IoT Enterprise as the host operating system with AKS Edge Essentials virtualized on top. We’re all one engineering team here in Azure, so we won’t be offended – pick whichever OS you prefer!)
Managed from the cloud – demo!
Beyond the on-device architecture, the core promise of adaptive cloud is a unified control plane to manage the whole solution, from apps to infrastructure. Check out this short demo to see how the Azure resource manager (ARM) and Azure Portal can be used with this new edge infrastructure: the solution is presented by a native ARM resource; its configuration is pushed from the cloud to enable repeatability and infrastructure-as-code; integration with management services like Azure Monitor is seamless; and you can even drill down into Kubernetes resources with just a few clicks.
Get ready to try it yourself
For now, this new edge infrastructure solution is a technology demonstration, but we’ve been pleasantly surprised how well it works. We plan to start previews later this year. If you’re interested, sign up now to be among the first to get early access. And in the meantime, watch this space for more news about all things edge infrastructure, from hyperconverged servers to edge/industrial PCs.
<3
– Cosmos
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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance Functional Consultant Blueprint Survey Opportunity
Greetings!
Microsoft is updating a certification for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance Functional Consultant, and we need your input through our exam blueprinting survey.
The blueprint determines how many questions each skill in the exam will be assigned. Please complete the online survey by May 7th, 2024. Please also feel free to forward the survey to any colleagues you consider subject matter experts for this certification. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Rohan Mahadevan rmahadevan@microsoft.com or John Sowles at josowles@microsoft.com.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance Functional Consultant blueprint survey link:
https://microsoftlearning.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3DiP1FrsVMj9y2W
Greetings!
Microsoft is updating a certification for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance Functional Consultant, and we need your input through our exam blueprinting survey.
The blueprint determines how many questions each skill in the exam will be assigned. Please complete the online survey by May 7th, 2024. Please also feel free to forward the survey to any colleagues you consider subject matter experts for this certification. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Rohan Mahadevan rmahadevan@microsoft.com or John Sowles at josowles@microsoft.com.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance Functional Consultant blueprint survey link:
https://microsoftlearning.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3DiP1FrsVMj9y2W
Read More