Microsoft AI Solution Portfolio

The objective of my post is to provide a high-level overview of the AI solutions currently offered by Microsoft. These solutions fall into 2 categories, Copilots and Azure AI services. We’ll review both and discuss the differences.

Copilots

Copilots are your digital assistants. They can help you handle information and make repetitive tasks easier. Microsoft has been working on digital assistants since the mid 1990s, when they launched Microsoft Bob. The idea evolved from there to office assistants like “Clippy” to Cortana and now Copilots.

SaaS

Copilots are a type of Software as a Service or SaaS. It means that you can use the Copilot without having to design or build it yourself. A good example of this is pizza. SaaS is like getting pizza delivered. When you want a pizza, you don’t need to have the tools, the knowledge of how to make pizza, or the ingredients. You just need to order it on your app. The same thing applies to SaaS software. You don’t need to have the tools or skills to set up the software. You can buy, configure, and use it.

Types of Copilots

Copilots are of 2 kinds: product and domain. A product copilot knows how to use a product so you can work with it without being an expert. You can find a Copilot for almost every Microsoft product. There are more than 80 Copilots today! For example, there is a Copilot for PowerBI. This copilot can use PowerBI’s advanced features by just using natural language. It can even make a report that suggests pages to build. Here are some popular product copilots.

Copilot in Windows

Copilot in Power Apps

Copilot in Power Automate

Copilot in Fabric and Power BI

Copilot in Dynamics F&O

Copilot in Dynamics Customer Service

Copilot in Dynamics Sales

Copilot for Azure

Github Copilot

Copilots for specific domains have functional and technical knowledge. For instance, Copilot for Finance knows about P&L, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow etc and can use product knowledge to exploit complex features in Excel. Copilots for specific domains can also access external data. For example, you can link to SAP and use this data in your financial analysis. There are more and more domain specific Copilots becoming available. This is a partial list.

Copilot	Domain
Microsoft Copilot	Internet; Included in M365 E5 & E5 licensing
Copilot for Microsoft 365	Microsoft Graph (emails, chat & files in M365)
Copilot for Sales	Sales with connectors to CE content sources i.e. Salesforce.com
Copilot for Service	Customer Service with connectors to CE content i.e. ServiceNow
Copilot for Security	Cybersecurity
Copilot for Finance	Corporate Finance with connectors to ERP content sources i.e. SAP

Working with Copilot

Working with Copilot is a truly personal experience. Its your assistant. Leveraging natural language you create meaningful instructions. Here are a few examples of how I use Copilot. My prompts are in quotations.

I want to ensure I’m focused on impactful tasks.

“Compile a list of key action items from the past week’s meetings, emails, and project updates. Organize the action items by priority and deadline. Include relevant context or background information to provide clarity. Generate a plan outlining the steps needed to accomplish each action item. Assign responsible team members to each task and set expectations for follow-up communication.”

I need to keep up to date on industry news and trends.

“Please act as my administrative assistant and prepare a daily industry brief of big news from the last week regarding the artificial intelligence industry. Please format into a table and include the short topic, brief summary, suggested impact, source name, and link to the source material if I wish to read more. Rank in order of potential impact and only include reputable sources. Be sure to include a variety of sources.”

I want to verify the content I create is complete and relevant to my audience

“I have created this presentation [Add filename] for the CIO of Microsoft. Can you please identify main topics, key messages, and supporting details within this presentation. Structure the information into an outline format and label this as “Presentation Summary”. Considering what you know about Microsoft’s corporate objectives please make some suggestions on how I can improve or clarify the messaging to these objectives. Please label this section as “Suggestions”.”

Technically working with Copilot is referred to as “prompt engineering” though its not as complex as the name implies. Simply ask for what you need as if you were talking to a coworker.

Enhancing Copilots

You enjoy your pizza, but you want to customize it to your preferences. You can add some ingredients you have at home. Maybe you like hot sauce, infused honey, or anything else you fancy. Now it’s truly yours. You have tweaked it to your taste, without changing the basic pizza. The same applies to Copilots. We can use Copilot Studio to improve your Copilots or create custom ones. Copilot Studio may sound new, but it’s a mature and comprehensive solution. It’s based on Azure Bot Service and Power Virtual Agents. Copilot Studio is a low code solution that lets you enhance Copilots with capabilities like workflow and over 1,200 connectors, so you can access data that matters to you. As an example, you may have all your HR policlies and procedures on your intranet portal. You can use Copilt Studio to create an employee self service HR Bot. This would allow employees to ask natural language questions improving their experience while reducing some of HR workload.

Licensing

The licensing for Copilots are typically subscription based which is per user per month charge though there are a few exceptions.

For more information on Copilots check out Microsoft Copilot documentation and resources | Microsoft Learn

Azure AI Services

Azure AI Services provides all the services you would need to build your own Copilot like app. Azure AI Services are referred to as Platform as a Service or PaaS.

PaaS

To make my own pizza I need the tools, the skills and all the materials. It’s not the same as getting one from an app. Azure AI Services lets me be the chef. Now I can change the recipe and make the pizza how I want it.

Types of Services

Copilots mainly deal with generative AI. Generative AI is a type of AI that can chat like humans and create new content from existing information. Azure AI services cover all AI capabilities. It has Machine Learning capabilities which are the basic components of AI as well as Generative AI, Vision, Language, Speech, Document Intelligence and more. Here are a few examples of how Azure AI Services are being used.

Primary AI Service	Customer Story
Machine Learning	Microsoft Customer Story-Bayer accelerates drug research through data analysis in Microsoft Azure
Vision	Microsoft Customer Story-Reddit improves accessibility and SEO through Azure Cognitive Service for Vision image and caption generation
Document Intelligence	Microsoft Customer Story-Volvo Group streamlines invoice and claims processing with Azure AI and AI Document Intelligence
Generative AI	Microsoft Customer Story-CarMax puts customers first with car research tools powered by Azure OpenAI Service

Licensing

Azure AI services are consumption based. You pay for what you use.

Building AI Apps

AI studio is an environment that supports developers in building AI apps. Using our pizza analogy with knowledge and ingredients, I can create a pizza that is very different from the one that is delivered. It can be Sicilian, Deep Dish, Stuffed, etc. It doesn’t have to be a pizza at all. With these ingredients, I can make a calzone or a Stromboli. Have you ever tried the half calzone half pizza? It’s amazing! With AI studio, we can make apps that suit our specific needs and are not constrained by the structure of another app.

An essential part of creating an app is the capacity to use data that is not part of the Generative AI model. This can be achieved by retrieval augmented generation or RAG. A search index connects the external data and the AI model. There are various methods for searching such as key word, vector, hybrid and using a graph. If you want to know more about how to work with your data with RAG architecture, here is an overview. RAG and generative AI – Azure AI Search | Microsoft Learn

Figure 1- A summary of features in Copilot & Azure

Summary of Copilot and Azure AI features

As you develop your AI strategy you will discover use cases requiring different levels of technical investments. With the set of solutions provided by Microsoft you will be able to match the tool to the job enabling the fastest most cost-effective solution. The following table provides an example of how you can align corporate priorities to the Microsoft AI Solution Portfolio.

Bringing it all together

Corporate Priority	Project	AI Solution
Increase Online Sales	Personalize shopping bot with intelligent cross & up sale capabilities	Azure AI Services
Improve Employee Experience	HR bot to provide self service	Copilot Studio
Improve Plant Safety	Real time analysis of safety equipment usage on manufacturing floor	Azure AI services
Improve Employee Experience	Increase employee productivity by enabling AI to reduce mundane tasks	Copilot for Microsoft 365
Improve Time to Market for new products	AI enable researchers	Azure AI Services
Increase OEE	Provide chat capabilities to online repair manuals reducing time needed to service equipment	Copilot Studio
Reduce overall Cyber Security risk	Improve Cyber Security Threat Response Time	Copilot for Security
Reduce operational inefficiency	Reduce time required to onboard vendor/partners	Copilot Studio

Thanks for reading! I hope this was helpful.

Mixed Reality: An essential component of your industry 4.0 strategy

We would like to invite you to a 45 minute “Mixed Reality in Manufacturing” webinar with our partner CraneMorley on December 15^th at 12 (EST). We’ll discuss the business of value of mixed reality and then show you an amazing live 30 minute demonstration.

Its your first day on the job. As you approach the line you see a dazzling array of high tech equipment. Its looks overwhelming and you begin feeling anxious as you get closer to your station. You put on your halolens and a virtual guide walks you through the process. If you encounter a problem, there is a help button connecting you to a live agent who sees exactly what you see and walks you through the resolution. By lunch time you feel productive and confident in your new skills. This scenario and many more enabled by mixed reality are happening everyday throughout the manufacturing industry.

Mixed reality [MR] superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world providing a composite view. Sounds like science fiction though it is a very commonly used technology. Gamers are very familiar with it. Two of the most popular video games in the world Pokemon Go and Minecraft Earth use MR. If you are not familiar with those games google “tiger” on your phone. You’ll see an option for 3D and one to see the 3D image in your environment. If you select 3D image in your environment, you can now superimpose a 3D tiger in your home. Though its not real you get an idea of its veracity, size and movement.

In the workplace, mixed reality is emerging as an important digital transformation tool to improve employee productivity, training, and customer service. Lets examine some of the business drivers we are seeing in the field.

Remote Troubleshooting

Remote troubleshooting allows for an expert to see what you are seeing and collaborate with you without them being physically present. Lets say a machine required for production is down. If you do not have the expertise to fix it yourself, you will need help. That person could be in the building, local or in another country. Getting them in front of the down machine takes time and cost money. Using mixed reality, we remove the time constraint and greatly reduce the cost. Using your headset you call the expert, they don’t need any special equipment and can now see what you are seeing. Your hands are free and can be directed to assist in the troubleshooting and repair. The expert can even annotate within your field of vision, reference images and documentation helping you easily locate the cause and fix the problem.

The benefit achieved is the equipment is repaired and the line moving again faster than with a traditional approach. Less downtime translates to higher throughput. We also reduced travel time, expenses and carbon impact. Clients also report the reduced travel has led to a better work|life balance. There’s no place like home.

If your product requires field support enabling them with mixed reality provides the ability to connect and collaborate with an expert anywhere in the world. The result is faster call resolution, increased first call close rates and reduced cost. Both the customer and the provider benefit as we see customer satisfaction increase.

Microsoft Customer Story-L’Oréal is revolutionizing work with Dynamics 365 Remote Assist on HoloLens 2

Product Design

Product design can be expensive and time-consuming. Lets take the example of a car manufacturer. Creating a prototype design is not trivial. Now instead of creating a physical design what if we used mixed reality to create a virtual design? Designers can now see the new concept in the physical world and model its characteristics. Not being tied to a physical object has additional benefits. Creating cad files is much cheaper and faster than mocking up a psychical auto body so we can create more designs to review. We can invite and collaborate with others regardless of their physical location bringing in new perspectives and ideas. Using mixed reality provides the opportunity to lower cost, increase creativity and decrease time to market.

Ford brings HoloLens to Design Studio; Drives speed creativity and collaboration

Skilling and Training

With a significant portion of the workforce nearing retirement combined with the great resignation have left some manufactures in crisis. Finding, retaining and training workers is a strategic imperative. Mixed reality changes the way we learn. The immersive experience increases speed and retention of skills. Manuals and videos only go so far, image a 3d representation of complex machine in your field a vision. You can walk around it, see it in action and be visually guided through its’ operation. I began this post with an example of just in time training, teaching a worker the skills they need to excel in the context of their workplace.

Microsoft Customer Story-Toyota simplifies complex repairs and accelerates training with mixed reality on HoloLens 2

The examples provided are just a sampling of what can be done, really this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more scenarios and more advanced use cases of this technology. I hope this post helps highlight why mixed reality is an essential component of your industry 4.0 strategy.

Power Apps 4 All | Organizing Your Data with Boards

Power Apps 4 All

Boards | Season 1 Episode 1 is scheduled for October 20^th at 9 EST Register Here

I’m a huge proponent of citizen development using low code tools. I was first introduced to low code development back in the 1980s. Thats when hair bands roamed the earth (search for Poison, Whitesnake, Ratt & Bon Jovi). I was a financial analyst and so tired of the mundane gathering of information from many line of business systems and typing the data into a spreadsheet. I was able to convince by manager to buy a copy of Clarion Software for $495. With Clarion you built a data model and it did the rest creating an exe with lists, forms and reports. I suddenly became very popular, sitting with my business peers building apps to automate their processes. Often they would leave my office after a couple hour meeting with a working program on a floppy disk. Together we built many systems of all kinds, accounting, inventory even a CRM. The inventory planning system ran for over 10 years. Not bad for a $500 investment!

Today our tooling is so much more sophisticated allowing the citizen developer endless creativity while providing centralized governance and security. Our goal with Power Apps 4 All is to enable anyone to automate the processes that make them more efficient i.e. “to achieve more”. In each session we’ll focus on a use case and provide insight on how it can be enabled with Power Apps. The sessions will be scheduled for 60 minutes the first 30 will cover the topic and be recorded. The second half will be open for “ Ask Us Anything” formerly called “Stump the Chump”. This section will not be recorded.

In our 1^st session our topic will be “Boards” a sample app you can download and deploy in Teams. The app allows you to organize information by topic. Why did we pick this app? We are all inundated with information. Finding what we need can be difficult. Boards gives you a way to organize information your way , giving you access to information quickly and easily. A McKinsey report estimates we spend about 1.8 hours every day searching and gathering information. If we could start by just reducing that by 10 minutes a day, that 50 minutes a week or 1.74 days a year. If a company has 1,000 employees that’s 1,740 days of gained productivity. Not a bad ROI!

For more information on the Boards template please see these links.

Sample low code apps for Teams – Boards – YouTube

GitHub – OfficeDev/microsoft-teams-apps-boards: Boards is OOB Power App in Teams

Boards sample app (preview) – Power Apps | Microsoft Docs

Looking forward to seeing you on the 20^th.

Optimizing Business Processes with Office 365, Teams and the Power Platform

Microsoft 365 provides an extensive set of tools providing a method to optimize your organizations business processes. In this post I’ll provide an example. When building a process, I want to focus on these attributes;

Simplicity

Creator – Easy to create and maintain.
Consumer – intuitive and encapsulated (not having to use many systems to get their job done)

Collaborative

Foster the ability to collaborate on work items throughout the process.

Insightful

Continually provide visibility and insights into the process for all stakeholders

For this example, I’m using a safety walk. A safety walk is when a safety inspector walks the floor of a facility and records their findings. If the inspector finds an issue requiring action, they begin the process. An action can be dispatching a service technician to fix something that is broken or creating a purchase requisition to obtain a product or service needed to remediate the issue. In many organizations this would involve access to several systems making the process a bit cumbersome and storing data in silos making reporting difficult. To simply the process we’ll use just one interface Microsoft Teams and remove the data silos for information so it can used as a feedback loop helping to continually improve the process.

Here is a high level overview of the architecture.

The “Safety Tracker” app was built using Power Apps. I created one from scratch with no code in a few hours. When an issue is created several workflows are started using Power Automate.

A text is sent to the facilities manager. Whenever an issue occurs, we want to ensure all relevant parties are notified and we are providing visibility and transparency.
A post is created in Teams. This gives visibly to our co-workers and provides an opportunity for collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Depending on the type of issue we have the ability to begin a process in another system. In our example we need to add new safety helmets to stock so we are creating a purchase requisition. If a repair were needed a work order would have been created and the appropriate technician dispatched. In my example I’m showing Dynamics as the receiving system however this can be SAP, Oracle, ServiceNow etc. there are connectors for 200+ systems. The relevant data from these system is also shown within Teams so the system consumer doesn’t have to jump to another system to complete the process.
We then update views and list to simplify and consolidate data for reporting. Power BI reports and dashboards were created and added as a tab within the Team.
Additional Tabs are added to Teams to include end to end functionality for the process. In my example they include OneNote and File Share capabilities for sharing and reviewing documentation.

To see a demo of the system please check out this video.

I hope you found this post useful and it has inspired you to try this approach on your use case.

Microsoft Tech News and Product Updates: 11/2/2020

Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend. Please find below an overview of last weeks product news, post and announcements.

Looking to drive adoption and create a better user experience? Pin a commonly used app to Teams. In the example pictured above I’ve pinned our intranet “MSW” to the rail (left side control bar). Now I don’t need to leave teams to access company news and information.

Product News, Tech Posts & Announcements from last week

Azure Infrastructure
Taking your automation to the next level with PowerShell 7	YouTube
Azure Cost Management and Billing updates – October 2020	Azure
Collecting and displaying niping network latency measurements with Azure Monitor	SAP
First Look at Azure Automanage	Tech Community

Business Applications
Microsoft unlocks the full potential of the smart building ecosystem	IoT
Power BI October 2020 Feature Summary	Power BI

Windows
Plan to deploy and manage updates for Windows 10 and Office	YouTube
Windows updates and recovery: smooth and seamless for IT and end users	YouTube

App Dev
5 Things you didn’t know about Azure Cognitive Services \| Azure Tips and Tricks	YouTube
Azure SQL Auditing of Microsoft support operation is now in Preview	Tech Community
Understanding Azure Arc Enabled SQL Server	Channel 9
Policy as Code with Terraform and Sentinel	Channel 9

Microsoft 365
SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: October 2020	SharePoint
What’s New in Microsoft Teams \| October 2020	Teams
New training resources for Microsoft Teams admins and IT Pros on MS Learn	Teams
Connect to your own data with more new data types in Excel	Excel
Microsoft Productivity Score and personalized experiences—here’s what’s new to Microsoft 365 in October	Microsoft 365
How to Manage SharePoint and Microsoft Teams with PowerShell Core	SharePoint
A practical guide for managing sharing with OneDrive	OneDrive
Announcing Multi-Geo coverage in Germany and Norway	Microsoft 365

Security
Announcing the Investigation Insights Workbook	Security
Unilever CISO on balancing business risks with cybersecurity	Security
Back to the future: What the Jericho Forum taught us about modern security	Security
Advanced Incident Management for Office and Endpoint DLP using Azure Sentinel	Security
Connect your Favorite Apps to Microsoft Cloud App Security	Security

Manufacturing	Manufacturing Blog
Microsoft named a Leader in the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Industrial IoT Platforms	IIoT
The Future of Connected Devices	NIST
Automating for a Touchless Supply Chain	MBT

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

Have a great week!

Technology Strategist

Microsoft Manufacturing

Microsoft Tech News & Product Updates: 9/7/2020

Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend. Please find below an overview of last weeks product news, post and announcements.

Product News, Tech Posts & Announcements from last week

Azure Infrastructure
Connector for AWS in Azure Cost Management + Billing is now generally available	Azure
5 ways to optimize your backup costs with Azure Backup	Azure
Azure Cost Management + Billing updates – August 2020	Azure
Azure Shared Disk Support for Clustered SAP ASCS/SCS on Windows Cluster	SAP

Business Applications
Managing speaking engagements at Microsoft with the Microsoft Power Platform	IT Showcase
Ways you can deliver quick and agile customer experiences	Dynamics 365

Windows
Microsoft Expressive Pixels: a platform for creativity, inclusion and innovation	Windows
Update on Adobe Flash Player End of Support	Windows

App Dev
Start your DevOps pipeline in the Azure Cloud	Tech Community
Learn how to deploy .NET Core apps to Azure with GitHub Actions	Channel 9
Cosmos DB Referencing Tables	James Serra

Microsoft 365
TLS 1.0 and 1.1 deprecation	Office 365
SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: August 2020	SharePoint
What’s New in Microsoft Teams \| August 2020	Teams
Microsoft Lists in Microsoft Teams is now generally available	Teams
Microsoft Teams Devices for Shared Spaces July and August Update	Teams
Application Guard for M365 Apps public preview	M365
What’s New with Microsoft 365 \| August 2020	YouTube

Security
How Microsoft does Zero Trust	YouTube
Mitigating vulnerabilities with identity security posture assessments	Tech Community
New & Updated Security Tools (Group Policy)	Tech Community
Microsoft Security: What cybersecurity skills do I need to become a CISO?	Security
Force firmware code to be measured and attested by Secure Launch on Windows 10	Security
3 ways Microsoft 365 can help you reduce helpdesk costs	Security

Manufacturing	Manufacturing Blog
US Productivity Jumped Record 10.1% in Q2, But Output Sunk	MBT

Workforce Transformation: Building Digital Skills

As we beginning emerging from the global pandemic and worldwide recession we face the daunting task of rebuilding. Though different for every business, similar themes like changing business models, resiliency in supply chain, modernizing business process and realigning security to new threats have emerged.

Common to solving these and all the others tasks on our seamlessly endless to do list is our people. By transforming our workforce, increasing digital skills and engagement we enable every employee to rebuild, renew and rethink our business. We have the opportunity to come out of this pandemic stronger than ever before. The key is investing in our people.

This Sway provides a summary of programs Microsoft offers designed to increase digit IQ and prepare for the new world we are all face.

Microsoft Tech News & Product Updates: 7/13/2020

Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend. Please find below an overview of available resources and what’s new at Microsoft.

The Future of Work

Product News, Tech Posts & Announcements from last week

Azure Infrastructure
How to create dashboards with Azure Monitor data	YouTube
Assess your VMware workloads for a move to Azure VMware Solution with Azure Migrate	Tech Community
Microsoft Azure Advisor: How to Improve performance, security, and reliability of your Azure VMs	Tech Community
SQL Server 2019 is released for SAP NetWeaver	Tech Community
Business Applications
Making buildings smarter with Azure IoT	Azure
Azure AI: Build mission-critical AI apps with new Cognitive Services capabilities	Azure
Easily add voice commands to your apps with Custom Commands	Tech Community
Streamlining Microsoft’s payment processes with Microsoft Power Automate	IT Showcase
How to manage the Power Platform at enterprise scale AND help solve REAL problems with Alan Chai	Channel9
Power BI Desktop June 2020 Feature Summary	Power BI
2020 release wave 2 plans for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform now available	Dynamics 365
Microsoft acquires Orions Systems to expand Dynamics 365 capabilities	Dynamics 365
Windows
Proactively monitor ARM-based Windows Virtual Desktop with Azure Log Analytics and Azure Monitor	Tech Community
App Dev
Azure Certifications for Developers	Tips & Tricks
One Ops Question: What are Azure Blueprints?	Tech Community
GDPR for Database Developers	Tech Community
Accelerate extraction of text, data and structure from your documents with Form Recognizer	Tech Community
Microsoft 365
On-demand training sessions for SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Yammer, and Stream – 2020-H2	Tech Community
Introducing Microsoft Teams displays	Tech Community
Re-imagine meeting room experiences with Teams-enabled devices for shared spaces	Tech Community
Teams: How to get the most from Together mode	Tech Community
Add additional properties to the profile card using the profile API in Microsoft Graph	Tech Community
The future of work—the good, the challenging & the unknown	Microsoft 365
Security
Introducing event timeline – an innovative, new way to manage your security exposure	Tech Community
Microsoft Security Matters Newsletter – June 2020	Tech Community
Microsoft Threat Protection advanced hunting cheat sheet	Tech Community
Announcing GA: Mark new files as “sensitive by default” in OneDrive & SharePoint	Tech Community
Security Controls in Azure Security Center: Secure Management Ports	Tech Community
Information Protection: Notes from the field	Tech Community
New study shows customers save time, resources and improve security with Microsoft Cloud App Security	Security
Inside Microsoft Threat Protection: Correlating and consolidating attacks into incidents	Security

Manufacturing Industry Blog
Making buildings smarter with Azure IoT	Azure
Recognizing Supplier Quality Problems Before They Spread	MBT

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!

Microsoft Tech News and Product Updates; 06/29/2020

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
Deploy to Azure Container Instances with Docker Desktop	Azure
Introducing Azure Load Balancer insights using Azure Monitor for Networks	Azure
Simplifying declarative deployments in Azure	Azure
Azure.com operates on Azure part 1: Design principles and best practices	Azure
How Azure.com operates on Azure part 2: Technology and architecture	Azure
New and improved learning experience with Microsoft Learn	Learn
New scale-up SAP HANA reference architecture and more	AzureCAT
Azure portal June 2020 update	Tech Community
Business Applications
Behind the Tech: Drew Endy: Bioengineering pioneer	YouTube
Power BI Desktop June 2020 Feature Summary	PowerBI
Dynamics 365 Project Operations preview is now available	Dynamics
Windows
New on Microsoft Learn: Stay current with Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 Apps	Tech Community
App Dev
Azure Arc enabled data services with Travis Wright	YouTube
How to set up test environments in Azure for Developers	Mechanics
How Microsoft’s engineers learned the language of DevOps	IT Showcase
Elastic Jobs in Azure SQL Database – Part 1	Channel9
Microsoft 365
What’s new to Microsoft 365 in June	Microsoft 365
Drive effective meetings with Teams apps while working remote	Microsoft 365
Safe Documents is Generally Available	Microsoft 365
Security
CISO Stressbusters: Post #2: 4 tips for getting the first 6 months right as a new CISO	Security
Endpoint analytics is now available in public preview	Endpoint Manager
How Secure Score affects your governance	Tech Community
Feeling fatigued? Cloud-based SIEM relieves security team burnout	Security
Lessons learned from the Microsoft SOC—Part 3d: Zen and the art of threat hunting	Security
Defending Exchange servers under attack	Security
Modernizing the security operations center to better secure a remote workforce	Security
Proactively reduce lateral movement path risk to your organization with Azure ATP	Tech Community
MIP and Compliance V-blog#3: Setting up a secure collaboration environment – Security Admin POV	Security

Manufacturing Industry Blog
Microsoft acquires CyberX to accelerate and secure customers’ IoT deployments	Security
How the Virtual Twin Experience Can Help Manufacturers Ramp Up Production While Implementing Social Distancing in Factories	Delmia
7 Manufacturing Digitization Challenges — and How to Overcome Them	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.