Microsoft Tech News & Product Updates: 8/17/2020

Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend.

Product News, Tech Posts & Announcements from last week

Azure Infrastructure
Azure Security Best Practices	Tips & Tricks
How to optimize your Azure workload costs	Azure
Enterprise-Scale for Azure landing zones	Tech Community
azure-arc-2020-updates-bring-azure-services-and-management-to-any-infrastructure	Mechanics
Business Applications
How Microsoft’s Helpdesk is propelling the company forward during remote working	IT Showcase
power-platform-admin-center-unified-it-management-experience	Mechanics
power-apps-new-capabilities-building-zero-to-low-code-apps	Mechanics
Bringing Mixed Reality to Power Apps with Alex Tran	MSDN
Windows
Security best practices for Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)	Tech Community
Prioritize investments in tools to accelerate Windows deployment	Tech Community
App Dev
The Developer’s Guide to Azure	Azure
A Closer Look at Data Platform Capabilities in Project Oakdale	Power Apps
SQL on-demand in Azure Synapse Analytics	James Serra
How Azure App Configuration helps developers roll out new features	MSDN
Microsoft 365
Six tips to make the most of Microsoft To Do on Windows	Tech Community
Microsoft’s enterprise network design for the cloud era	YouTube
Security
Getting started with Teams compliance	Tech Community
Built-in vulnerability assessment for VMs in Azure Security Center	Tech Community
Do you have a false sense of cloud security?	Security
Manufacturing	Industry Blog
Microsoft tests hydrogen fuel cells for backup power at datacenters	Microsoft News
The Shift That Will Accelerate Smart Manufacturing Jobs	MBT Mag
Build safer, securer workplaces with IoT during the pandemic	MSDN

View previous weeks news, tech posts and announcements here on Linkedin or follow me on Twitter @MrLouisG

Have a great week!

Microsoft Tech News & Product Updates: 8/3/2020

Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend. A couple of items of note from last week;

Our Teams CSMs during a virtual coffee shop. For more tips on maintain a connected culture check out Matt’s blog to review how remote work is affecting all of us see MICROSOFT ANALYZED DATA ON ITS NEWLY REMOTE WORKFORCE

Product News, Tech Posts & Announcements from last week

Azure Infrastructure
Creating cloud ready environments with Azure landing zones	Azure
Azure Cost Management + Billing updates – July 2020	Azure
New Windows Virtual Desktop capabilities now generally available	Azure
Achieve High-Availability for SAP HANA Scale-Out on SLES with HSR and automatic failover	SAP
Business Applications
Advancing resilience through chaos engineering and fault injection	Azure
Microsoft field technicians get their mobility back with Dynamics 365 app	IT Showcase
A Closer Look at Data Platform Capabilities in Dataflex for Teams	Power Apps
Windows
Enabling secure remote work using Windows Virtual Desktop | Azure Friday	YouTube
Introducing the Bing Enterprise Homepage	Search
Introducing the Microsoft Edge enterprise roadmap and release schedule	Edge
App Dev
Eight ways to optimize costs on Azure SQL	Azure
Azure Synapse | On Demand Serverless Compute	Mechanics
Azure Synapse | Dynamics Data Masking	Mechanics
Azure Hybrid Benefit update: Expanded rights for Microsoft SQL Server	Licensing
Microsoft 365
SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: July 2020	SharePoint
New capabilities for Teams Management | July 2020	Teams
What’s New in Microsoft Teams | July 2020	Teams
To Do is now integrated with the Microsoft 365 suite of applications	ToDo
Announcing Tasks in Microsoft Teams public rollout	Teams | Planner
Basic Authentication and Exchange Online – July Update	Exchange
What’s New with Microsoft 365 | July 2020	YouTube
Security
Boost security of your remote workers with confidence using Security Policy Advisor	Microsoft 365
Empower your analysts to reduce burnout in your security operations center	Security
Inside Microsoft Threat Protection: Solving cross-domain security incidents through the power of correlation analytics	Security
Guiding principles of our identity strategy: staying ahead of evolving customer needs	Security
Manufacturing	Industry Blog
Aiming for more than just net zero	Azure
How Automation and AI May Help Level the Playing Field for Women in Manufacturing	NIST

View previous weeks news, tech posts and announcements here on Linkedin or follow me on Twitter @MrLouisG

Please reach out to us if you need assistance. Have a great week!

Microsoft Tech News & Product Updates: 7/27/20

Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend. A couple of items of note from last week;

Product News, Tech Posts & Announcements from last week

Azure Infrastructure
Introducing the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework	Azure
Deliver hybrid cloud capabilities with the next generation of Azure Stack HCI	Azure
Using Azure Lighthouse and Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions to view telemetry across Multiple Tenants	SAP
How to manage Azure resources with the new PowerShell Invoke-AzRestMethod cmdlet	Tech Community
Enabling secure remote work using Windows Virtual Desktop	Channel 9
Business Applications
Using Microsoft Azure to develop a robust external supplier API catalog	IT Showcase
How to use Power Platform | Getting Started	Mechanics
On-premises data gateway July 2020 update is now available	PowerBI
Democratizing customer feedback with the new Dynamics 365 Customer Voice	Customer Voice
Windows
Explore and validate Windows 10 builds with Windows Insider Channels	Tech Community
New Surface Hub OS update released for public preview	Tech Community
Windows 10 roaming settings for remote work scenarios	Tech Community
Announcing the public preview of Universal Print	Tech Community
App Dev
Learn everything you need to know about Azure Data Explorer	Tech Community
Announcing Machine Learning on Azure SQL Managed Instance Limited Preview!	Tech Community
Business Continuity in SQL Database	James Serra
Microsoft 365
Sync Up – a OneDrive podcast : Episode 11, “Introducing Add to OneDrive”	OneDrive
Lists GA | “A home for all your lists” 🎙 – The Intrazone podcast	Lists
The New Employee Onboarding hub – Improving the new hire experience	SharePoint
New Meeting and Calling Experience in Microsoft Teams!	Teams
Teams is shaping the future of work with low code features to enhance your digital workspace	Teams
From new experiences in Microsoft Teams to better data protection—here’s what’s new in Microsoft 365 in July	Microsoft 365
Reimagining how NBA fans and teams experience the game of basketball with Together mode in Microsoft Teams	Teams
New Meeting intelligence in Insights pane in Outlook	Outlook
Introducing Microsoft Dataflex, a new low-code data platform for Microsoft Teams	Teams
Security
Advancing Privacy with Zero-Knowledge Proof Credentials	Tech Community
Creating a Custom Dashboard for Azure Security Center with Azure Resource Graph	Tech Community
Announcing high value asset tagging in Microsoft Defender ATP	Tech Community
Announcing general availability of the new version of Microsoft Secure Score	Tech Community
Announcing public preview of Microsoft Endpoint Data Loss Prevention	Tech Community
Announcing public preview of Double Key Encryption for Microsoft 365	Tech Community
Seeing the big picture: Deep learning-based fusion of behavior signals for threat detection	Security
Cyber security trends that are here to stay and how to detect and recover from ransomware attacks	Security
Preventing data loss and mitigating risk in today’s remote work environment	Security
Manufacturing	Industry Blog
Build safer, more resilient workplaces with IoT solutions	IoT
5 ways to evolve your Firstline Workforce for the new normal	Teams
Azure Synapse | Just in time inventory at Aggreko	Mechanics
High-Mix/Low-Volume Manufacturers Are a Sweet Spot for Collaborative Robots	NIST

View previous weeks news, tech posts and announcements here on Linkedin or follow me on Twitter @MrLouisG

Remote Work Resources

• Enabling remote work with Microsoft 365 Part 1, Part 2,  Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 & Part 6 – Series on YouTube by Stephen Rose
• If you own Office 365 and are currently deploying Teams, we have multiple free programs we can offer to assist. If you are interested, we can schedule a 30-minute call to review the available resources.
• If you have users that are not licensed for Teams, we are offering a free 6-month Office 365 E1 subscription to our clients affected by COVID-19.
• Microsoft is offering Windows Virtual Desktop at reduced rates.  If you are interested, we can schedule a call to review options.
• We have created a PowerApps CRISIS COMMUNICATION template and reclassified Push Notifications from premium to standard licensing so you can use the apps full functionality.  Details are available here. Schedule a remote MTC session to review app and provide deployment guidance.
• To assist our customers and community in their crisis response efforts, we’re extending the Priority Notifications promotion into the second half of 2020. Ongoing access to Priority Notifications will be available to facilitate in crisis response and recovery efforts. After the promotion period ends, licensed users will be able to send Priority Notifications according to the terms of their subscription.
• Leverage a bot to answer questions and keep employees up to date. Here is a the template for FAQ Plus.  You can find a description of other available templates here.
•  Build a Crisis FAQ bot using Power Virtual Agents
• Build a crisis management site in SharePoint to connect people and information here is the blog post and the Look Book so you can add to your tenant.
• In partnership with Commvault we are offering free data protection for devices through 9/1. Please see offer here.
• The Microsoft Work from Home Guide can be downloaded from this blog post. This is the guide Microsoft distributed to its employees.
• Partner PTC is offering use of their AR Remote Assist Product Vuforia Chalk for free through June.
•  Dynamics 365 Remote Assist allows field technicians and engineers to collaborate with colleagues and experts from different locations, reducing travel and resolving some of the immediate obstacles facing us all. Dynamics 365 Customer Service or Dynamics 365 Remote Assist may be available free of charge for up to 6 months if you are implementing a solution in response to COVID-19, either on a Microsoft-provided template or custom implementation.  
• User Solutions, a producer of production scheduling software systems, announces it will offer Resource Manager for Excel (RMX), a standalone production scheduling and materials requirements planning system, free of charge to manufacturers temporarily repurposing their production lines in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
• Microsoft has created a detailed guide for enabling remote work designed for IT Pros. It can be downloaded from this blog post.
•  New identity features help empower essential Firstline Workers

Join the community Microsoft Tech Community: Enabling Remote Work

Please see my post Enabling Remote Workers for a categorized overview of resources and my Enabling Remote Workers PointDrive for a more comprehensive list of documentation.

Have a great week!