Posted by: kurtsh | October 21, 2026

NEWS: Retirement of Microsoft DevBox in Sept 2028

Microsoft Dev Box will retire on September 18, 2028. Beginning on September 14, 2026, Microsoft Dev Box will begin the closing-down process. After retirement, Microsoft Dev Box will no longer be available.

Microsoft Dev Box is currently in maintenance mode, and Microsoft’s investments for developer cloud environments are focused on Windows 365. Existing Microsoft Dev Box usage remains supported during the transition period, and we recommend that you begin planning your migration now to avoid disruption to developer workflows.

What this means for you

  • If you currently use Microsoft Dev Box, you can continue using your existing deployments during the transition period.
  • No new feature development is planned for the service.
  • You should evaluate and begin planning your move to Windows 365, which is the recommended path forward for virtualized developer environments.

Recommended action

  • Review your current Dev Box usage, including dev centers, projects, pools, images, and developer workflows.
  • Identify which scenarios can transition directly to Windows 365 and which require additional planning.
  • Validate identity, device management, networking, image, and licensing requirements for your future-state environment.
  • Begin testing replacement workflows as early as possible to reduce risk before retirement.

If you have questions or need support, please contact your Microsoft representative.

Reference:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-4039694&id=567933

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Posted by: kurtsh | October 21, 2026

INFO: Get started with your individual “Azure Dev/Test credit subscription” from your Visual Studio subscription

Every Microsoft Visual Studio subscription comes with a developer Azure subscription & monthly credit allowance. Think of this as a sandbox to learn & work with for independent development & testing workloads.

Every subscriber gets their own “personal” Azure subscription with their own monthly credit allocation depending on what edition of Visual Studio they have: “Pro” gets $50/mo & “Enterprise” gets $150/mo.

ACTIVATING AZURE BENEFIT FOR VISUAL STUDIO SUBSCRIBERS

How to activate the Azure benefit:

  1. Sign in at https://my.visualstudio.com.
  2. Go to Benefits.
  3. Find the Azure tile under Tools.
  4. Select Activate.
  5. If an Azure subscription doesn’t already exist, complete the registration and identity verification.
  6. Accept the terms and select Sign up.

(The account used during activation determines the Microsoft Entra tenant associated with the subscription.)

For more details, visit:

WHAT ELSE DOES MY VISUAL STUDIO SUBSCRIPTION PROVIDE?

For more information about your Visual Studio subscription & it’s benefits, including:

  • IDE: Licensed access to download & install the Visual Studio Enterprise IDE
  • SOFTWARE: Download & use Microsoft software for development purposes at no cost
  • AZURE: Azure credits refreshed every month that you can use to explore and try Azure services
  • AZURE DEVOPS: Usage of features in the Azure DevOps service
  • C# DEVKIT: Download the official C# Dev Kit for VS Code
  • DISCOUNTS: Save up to $900 on registration to Visual Studio LIVE! (Next event in Orlando Nov 15-20, 2026)
  • COMMUNITIES: Access the Azure community, Q&A, Tech Community, & Developer Community

Watch the jumpstart video for https://my.visualstudio.com.  Also read the following:

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Posted by: kurtsh | October 19, 2026

RELEASE: Exchange Online Auto-expanding archive capacity increased to 3TB for E5/G5 & Premium Tier licenses

Microsoft is increasing the maximum auto-expanding archive capacity for eligible Exchange Online mailboxes from 1.5 TB to 3 TB. Rollout begins in mid-October 2026 and is expected to complete by late October. The increase applies to mailboxes assigned the following eligible licenses:

  • Office 365 E5, A5, or G5
  • Microsoft 365 E5, A5, or G5
  • Microsoft 365 Purview Suite
  • Microsoft 365 Purview Suite FLW, EDU, or GOV
  • Microsoft Defender + Purview Suite FLW
  • Microsoft 365 F5 Compliance
  • Microsoft 365 F5 Security + Compliance
  • The combination of the eDiscovery & Audit, Insider Risk Management, and Information Protection & Governance mini suites

Qualifying offerings that include Microsoft Purview E5 capabilities, such as E7, also support the increase. For all other licenses, the existing 1.5 TB limit remains unchanged.

For E5 licenses, verify that Records Management is selected and remains enabled in the user’s license settings.

If auto-expanding archiving is already enabled, no additional configuration or per-GB charge applies. Existing archive content, retention policies, and holds are unchanged. Verify license eligibility and monitor archive growth.

As seen in the Microsoft 365 Message Center MC1472592:

MC1472592 – Microsoft Purview: Auto-expanding archive capacity increases to 3 TB for eligible mailboxes

What and why

Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is increasing the maximum auto-expanding archive capacity for eligible Exchange Online archive mailboxes from 1.5 TB to 3 TB. This enhancement helps organizations retain and manage larger volumes of archived email content without requiring manual archive expansion processes or support requests. Eligible mailboxes with auto-expanding archiving enabled will continue to grow automatically as needed.

Rollout schedule

  • General Availability (Worldwide): Beginning in mid-October 2026 and expected to complete by late October 2026

Impact on your organization

Who is affected

  • Organizations using Exchange Online archive mailboxes with auto-expanding archiving enabled
  • Administrators responsible for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management and Exchange Online archiving
  • Users assigned eligible licenses that support the increased archive capacity

Platforms and services

  • Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management
  • Exchange Online
  • Exchange Online Archiving

What will happen

  • Eligible archive mailboxes with auto-expanding archiving enabled can automatically expand beyond the current 1.5 TB limit up to a maximum of 3 TB per mailbox.
  • No additional configuration is required for eligible mailboxes that already have auto-expanding archiving enabled.
  • No per-GB consumption charge is introduced as part of this change.
  • Existing archive content, retention configurations, policies, and holds are unchanged.
  • No new administrator workflow, user experience, or user interface is introduced.
  • Mailboxes that do not have an eligible license will continue to be limited to 1.5 TB.

Eligible licensing includes:

  • Office 365 E5, A5, and G5
  • Microsoft 365 E5, A5, and G5
  • Microsoft 365 Purview Suite
  • Microsoft 365 Purview Suite FLW, EDU, and GOV
  • Microsoft Defender + Purview Suite FLW
  • Microsoft 365 F5 Compliance
  • Microsoft 365 F5 Security + Compliance
  • Combination of the eDiscovery & Audit and Insider Risk Management mini suites together with the Information Protection & Governance mini suite

Note:* The maximum auto-expanding archive capacity supported through this feature is 3 TB per mailbox for eligible licenses.

**This feature is available to customers licensed with Microsoft Purview E5 or higher qualifying offerings that include Purview E5 capabilities ex E7.

Action required and recommendations

No action is required if eligible mailboxes already have auto-expanding archiving enabled.

We recommend that administrators:

  • Review license assignments for users with large archive mailboxes to confirm eligibility.
  • Monitor archive mailbox growth using Exchange Online PowerShell.
  • Identify mailboxes approaching their applicable archive capacity limits.
  • Update internal documentation, retention guidance, and help desk materials to reflect the new 3 TB limit.
  • Review licensing and retention strategies for users whose archive mailboxes are not eligible for the expanded capacity.

Learn more

Compliance considerations

No compliance considerations identified. Review as appropriate for your organization.

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Posted by: kurtsh | October 15, 2026

WEBINAR: “Scaling Auto Labelling in Microsoft Purview: What’s New and How to Deploy with Confidence” – November 4, 2026

Join us for a practical walkthrough of the latest Microsoft Purview Auto Labeling improvements designed to help organizations scale sensitivity labeling across SharePoint and OneDrive with greater confidence. We’ll cover expanded scale limits, broader simulation, improved policy scoping, and upcoming enhancements for richer evidence and broader file coverage.

You’ll learn how these updates help compliance and security teams validate policies before enforcement, monitor labelling activity across the tenant, reduce policy sprawl, and better explain labelling outcomes to stakeholders. This session is ideal for Purview admins, compliance teams, security architects, and partners helping customers operationalize sensitivity labelling at enterprise scale.

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Posted by: kurtsh | October 11, 2026

INFO: Extended Security Updates for SQL Server in Azure VMs not free for v2016 (13.x)

Starting with the July 14, 2026 Extended Security Update period for SQL Server 2016, migrating a workload to an Azure VM no longer provides free access to Extended Security Updates for SQL Server 2016. See the following documentation:

Retroactive billing for “missed months” of Extended Security Updates
Additionally, customers that enroll in Extended Security Updates after the end of support date for the product, they will be billed a one-time upfront charge for the months they missed after the end of support date, with billing coming in at the end of the month. For example, if a SQL Server 2016 customer enrolls in January 2027, they will receive a one-time back-bill for July, August, September, October, November, and December 2026 during their first month. See the following documentation:

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Posted by: kurtsh | October 1, 2026

WEBINAR: Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance in Action: Best practices and real-world scenarios – October 6, 2026

Go deeper into how Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance supports the day-to-day governance of multi-tenant environments. This practitioner-focused session examines how teams can discover related tenants, establish least-privileged governance relationships, define configuration baselines, monitor configuration drift, and govern new tenants from day one. The technical walkthrough and Q&A will explore practical scenarios and how these capabilities can be applied across real-world tenant estates.

Other references for more information:

  • DOCUMENTATION: Microsoft Entra tenant governance documentation – Microsoft Entra ID Governance | Microsoft Learn (Deployment Guide, Licensing, FAQ, etc.)
  • VIDEOS:
    • Overview: Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance | Find Configuration Drift (10min)
      Ensure your tenant configuration doesn’t drift from defined security and compliance requirements with Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance. Capture configuration as code across 200+ resource types in Entra, Intune, Exchange, Teams, Defender, and Purview. Turn that snapshot into a Monitor. It scans for drift every six hours and flags every policy change.
    • Deep Dive: The New Control Plane for Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance (50min)
      Microsoft had 7 million internal tenants and almost lost control of their environment and your org might be facing the same problem at a smaller scale. In this episode, we sit down with Jeff Staiman, PM Area Lead for Tenant Governance at Microsoft, to break down the feature born from the Midnight Blizzard attack. We cover discovery, drift detection, governance relationships, secure tenant creation, licensing, and exactly where admins should start.
    • AMA (Ask Microsoft Anything): Live AMA: Secure multi-tenant environments with Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance (Recorded Sept 15, 2026))
      Learn more about Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance – a built-in solution that helps bring an organization’s tenants under control, reduce shadow-tenant risk, and manage tenant configuration at scale. By enabling centralized policies and cross-tenant delegated administration, it helps strengthen identity foundations for AI-powered operations. Bring your questions and hear directly from product experts about why securing tenants matters.

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Posted by: kurtsh | September 17, 2026

INFO: Quick Ways to Reduce Your Azure Costs

If you’re looking to tune the costs of your Azure bill, these are a number of techniques to minimize the monthly usage costs your organization pays. Review the following video:

00:54 – Savings with Azure Hybrid Benefit
02:18 – Constrained vCPU options
03:30 – Commitment-based savings plans
05:03 – Savings plans and reserved instances
06:12 – Microsoft Cost Management
06:44 – Budget limits and automation runbooks
08:57 – Azure VM Scale Sets
11:24 – Storage cost management

References:

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Posted by: kurtsh | September 14, 2026

NEWS: Microsoft 365 Copilot adds SpaceXAI Grok models for Word, Excel, PowerPoint

For “Frontier” Microsoft 365 Copilot customers, Microsoft is adding Grok models from SpaceXAI for use with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint – with the intent to roll out model availability broader across other scenarios as we evaluate usage patterns by customers.

Key points:

  • The models require Frontier Program enrollment by the user or the organization in order to use them. If you don’t know what this is, you’re not going to see these models.
  • The model’s availability is disabled by default – and controlled using the same type of subprocessor “switch” as used for Anthropic Claude.
  • The model is only available in Word, Excel & PowerPoint. Availability for “general” Copilot Chat & other scenarios, is pending evaluation of use cases.
  • As a subprocessor, SpaceXAI Grok models when used in this scenario, adhere to the same data privacy & security commitments as documented in the Microsoft Product Terms & Data Protection Addendum, and covered by Microsoft’s Enterprise Data Protection.
  • Usage of the models requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot license,

(Note: Do not confuse this announcement with the article on learn.microsoft.com entitled, “Connect to SpaceXAI models“. This is an older post written for enabling Grok for use with Copilot Studio developers and has existed for more than 6 months. This did not use Grok as a subprocessor and was basically saying “use at your own risk”.)

For those keeping score, Microsoft 365 Copilot has:

And now:

Read more at:

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Posted by: kurtsh | September 7, 2026

TRAINING: Cybersecurity Awareness for Business Users

Every October, people around the world- from students and parents to large organizations and governments- take time to strengthen their online safety habits and learn how to protect their digital lives.  

Microsoft’s pledge to our customers and our community is to prioritize your cybersafety above all else. Whether you’re running a Fortune 100 company, shopping online, or helping your kids with homework, we’re here to help you stay one step ahead of cyber threats. Our goal is simple: to give you the tools, tips, and confidence to be cybersmart every day. 

In the past year, online threats have become more aggressive and harder to spot: 

  • Phishing scams are everywhere—fraudsters now mimic trusted brands to trick you into giving up passwords or personal info. 
  • Fraudulent websites are deceptive and often mimic legitimate businesses or government agencies, luring users into sharing sensitive information like passwords or credit card numbers.   
  • Identity theft is on the rise, with criminals using leaked personal data to open fake accounts or impersonate you online. 

These attacks are fast, sneaky, and can be powered by artificial intelligence. That’s why you need to have a security-first mindset. Today, you need always-on protection that can spot suspicious behavior, predict hacker tactics, and respond quickly—before damage is done. 

The following are a set of resources & training materials to help business users understand the security threats around them both at work and at home.

Announcement:

Resources & training: Cybersecurity Awareness: Education and Resources | Microsoft Security

Infographic downloads:

Online training:

  • Cybersecurity is for everyone
    Recommended learning for beginners, business decision makers, students, and anyone who’s ready to help make their day-to-day online experience safer.
  • Microsoft security help and learning
    Security basics, Security at home and at work, Protect your devices, Protect your identity
    Protect yourself from scams and attacks, Protect yourself from phishing, How to spot a “fake order” scam, Protect yourself from scams and attacks

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Posted by: kurtsh | August 28, 2026

INFO: Options for Teams Meeting “summaries” with or without Transcriptions

WHERE ARE TRANSCRIPTS STORED?
If a transcript is generated of a Teams Meeting by a user that organized a meeting or event, the transcript is usually stored in the meeting organizer’s OneDrive for Business storage as a specially created .MP4 file.  The location is usually in something like “C:\Users\<username>\OneDrive – <customername>\Recordings\<meetingname>.mp4”.  Details are available at Teams meeting recording and transcript storage and permissions in OneDrive and SharePoint – Microsoft Teams.

WHY ARE TRANSCRIPTS REQUIRED FOR TEAMS MEETING RECAPS?
A transcript must be created in order to generate Teams Meeting Recaps because Microsoft’s AI processes the transcript after the meeting has ended, which can take several minutes.  In order to enable or disable the ability to generate a transcript, review the following documentation: Admins- Manage transcription and captions for Teams meetings – Microsoft Teams

WHAT OPTIONS ARE THERE FOR MINIMIZING TRANSCRIPT AVAILABILITY?
For organizations that want Copilot generated summaries of their Teams Meetings but concerned about transcript retention, there are 2 options:

  1. EXPIRATION POLICIES: Use Microsoft Purview retention policies to automatically delete Teams transcripts after a specified expiration period.  Establishing expiration policies for transcripts and recordings is standard policy for many organizations. Review the following documentation for more information on this: Manage Teams recording expiration policy – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn
  2. COPILOT WITH NO TRANSCRIPT:  Engage with Copilot during calls and meetings without recording or transcribing. By specifically preemptively setting a Teams Meeting beforehand as using “Copilot without a transcript”, Copilot can generate AI notes and tasks within a Copilot conversation “in-session” (i.e. *during* the meeting) without storing a transcription and recording. Note however that after the meeting, Copilot won’t be available in the meeting’s Recap tab & no Meeting Recap can be generated *after* the meeting – since a transcription was not stored.  Review the docs for this here: https://aka.ms/copilotnotranscript

WHAT KIND OF TEAMS MEETING SUMMARIES ARE THERE?
For background, are only 2 scenarios where “summaries of a meeting” can be generated:

  1. TEAMS MEETING RECAP: The “Teams Meeting Recap” feature requires the initial creation & storage of a transcript so that the AI can generate the summary after the meeting has ended.  All meeting summary solutions operate this way because this is a computationally intensive AI task that may require several minutes to complete – thus a summary cannot be generated until the end of the meeting when the transcript is complete.   For more information about Teams Meeting Recaps, visit: Intelligent recap for Teams calls, meetings, and events – Microsoft Teams
  2. COPILOT IN-MEETING “CATCH UP” WITH NO TRANSCRIPT:  During a meeting, Copilot can summarize key discussion points, including who spoke and what they said.  It also suggests action items and answers any questions you have, in real time *during* the meeting. After the meeting, Copilot won’t be available in the meeting’s Recap tab & no part of the in-meeting summary will be available. For more on this, visit: Catch up on meetings with Microsoft Copilot in Teams

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