Kurt Shintaku's Blog

The new “Developer’s Guide to Azure” eBook published from Microsoft, written by Build5Nines’ own Chris Pietschmann, is your guide to getting started with Microsoft Azure development.

This book is a great jumpstart to your journey as an Azure Developer or Azure Architect working to create websites, databases, Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, and so much more!

The books chapters include topics such as:

1. Getting started with Azure
2. Connecting your application with data
3. Securing your application
4. Adding intelligence to your application
5. Connecting your business with IoT and gaining insights
6. Deploying your services and reducing costs
7. Share your code, track work, and ship software
8. Microsoft Azure in action
9. Summary and resources

Whether you’re just starting out with Microsoft Azure, working on a cool side project, or are a professional developer, developing with Microsoft Azure services and tools enables you to adopt the latest cloud technologies. This is true regardless of your preferred programming language (C#, Java, Javascript, Python, PowerShell, and more!) and development stack, and even including open source technologies!

• DOWNLOAD: Free eBook: Developer’s Guide to Azure: 2020 Edition (3rd party)
  https://build5nines.com/free-ebook-developers-guide-to-azure-2020-edition/

Today, we are proud to announce the general availability of the Lists app in Teams for all our commercial and GCC customers.

As you might already know, Microsoft Lists, which we announced at Build 2020 is a Microsoft 365 app that helps you track information and organize your work. Lists are simple, smart, and flexible, so you can stay on top of what matters most to your team. Track patients, loans, issues, assets, routines, contacts, inventory and more using customizable views and smart rules and alerts to keep everyone in sync. With ready-made templates, you can quickly create lists from directly within Teams and access them on the Teams mobile app by accessing the Lists tab you added as a channel.

This feature is enabled in GCC by default. The Lists app in Teams includes 3 new industry-specific templates – Patients, Loans and Incidents which can be used by Government agencies. Find out more details in our main announcement post here.

Read the announcement here:

• Microsoft Lists in Microsoft Teams is now GA for GCC tenants
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/microsoft-lists-in-microsoft-teams-is-now-generally-available/ba-p/1621979
• Original Microsoft Lists announcement:
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/announcing-microsoft-lists-your-smart-information-tracking-app/ba-p/1372233

We’re excited to announce the General Availability of Azure AD My Sign-Ins—a new feature that allows enterprise users to review their sign-in history to check for any unusual activity. As we discussed in the Public Preview blog post, the My Sign-Ins page empowers users to see:

• If anyone is trying to guess their password.
• If an attacker successfully signed in to their account from a strange location.
• What apps the attacker accessed.

If you’re an Azure AD user, access your “My Sign Ins” here:

• https://mysignins.microsoft.com/

There’s a similar feature also available for consumer logins using Microsoft Accounts:

• https://account.live.com/activity

Read more here:

• ANNOUNCEMENT: End users can now report “This wasn’t me” for unusual sign-in activity
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-active-directory-identity/end-users-can-now-report-this-wasn-t-me-for-unusual-sign-in/ba-p/1257369
• BLOG: Your Pa$$word doesn’t matter
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-active-directory-identity/your-pa-word-doesn-t-matter/ba-p/731984
• FEEDBACK: Azure AD feedback forum
  http://aka.ms/AzureADFeedback

Azure Firewall Manager is now generally available.

Azure Firewall Manager is a security management service that provides central security policy and route management for cloud-based security perimeters.  It includes Azure Firewall Policy, Azure Firewall in a Virtual WAN Hub (Secure Virtual Hub), and Hub Virtual Network. In addition, we are introducing several new capabilities to Firewall Manager and Firewall Policy to align with the standalone Azure Firewall configuration capabilities.

Key features in this release include:

• Threat intelligence-based filtering allow list in Firewall Policy is now generally available.
• Multiple public IP addresses support for Azure Firewall in Secure Virtual Hub is now generally available.
• Forced tunneling support for Hub Virtual Network is now generally available.
• Configuring secure virtual hubs with Azure Firewall for east-west traffic (private) and a third-party security as a service (SECaaS) partner of your choice for north-south traffic (internet bound).
• Integration of third-party SECaaS partners are now generally available in all Azure public cloud regions.
• Zscaler integration will be generally available on July 3, 2020. Check Point is a supported SECaaS partner and will be in preview on July 3, 2020. iboss integration will be generally available on July 31, 2020.
• Support for domain name system (DNS) proxy, custom DNS, and fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) filtering in network rules using Firewall Policy are now in preview.

Read more here:

• RELEASE: Azure Firewall Manager
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-firewall-manager-is-now-generally-available/

The Azure Maps visual for Power BI will be releasing as a preview this week. Power BI is a powerful analysis and visualization tool. Azure Maps is an important tool for gaining geospatial context and insights that can be used in decision making.

This initial release includes the following visualization layers:

• Bubble layer
• 3D bar chart layer
• Reference layer
• Custom tile layer
• Real-time traffic overlay

In addition to these visualization layers, this visual also leverages built-in Power BI features, such as tooltips, color themes, as wells as filter and slicer support.

• BETA: Azure Maps for Power BI (Public Preview)
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-maps-power-bi-visual-now-in-preview/

Windows Virtual Desktop announced 2 new very impactful features you should know about:

• Azure portal integration
  With the Azure portal integration, you get a simple interface to deploy and manage your apps and virtual desktops. Host pool, workspace, and all other objects you create are Azure Resource Manager objects and are managed the same way you manage other Azure resources.
• A/V redirect for Microsoft Teams
  ”Once you enable A/V redirect in the Desktop client for Windows, the audio and video will be handled locally for Microsoft Teams calls and meetings. You can still use Microsoft Teams on Windows Virtual Desktop with other clients without optimized calling and meetings.”

Read more and find pointers to the documentation here:

• New Windows Virtual Desktop capabilities now generally available
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-windows-virtual-desktop-capabilities-now-generally-available/

Edge is now integrated into the Microsoft public roadmap.

Today, we are announcing the availability of Microsoft Edge enterprise features on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap portal, and a new Microsoft Edge release schedule for Beta & Stable channel releases.

The M365 roadmap portal lets you view upcoming Microsoft Edge enterprise features—you can filter by “Microsoft Edge” in the Products field, or by “Beta channel” and “Stable channel” in the Release Phase field. Developers should continue to reference our Platform Status page for information on supported and upcoming platform features.

…

See the full announcement here:

• BLOG: Introducing the Microsoft Edge enterprise roadmap and release schedule
  https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2020/07/23/introducing-enterprise-roadmap-release-schedule/

PASSsummit 2020 has gone Virtual!

PASS is the premier event for SQL Server database administrators, developers, & architects.  Community driven & supported by Microsoft, PASSsummit has been one of the most successful conferences for data people of all facets.

Learn about the Virtual Summit Packages with over 200 hours of expert-led content, on-demand access, and PASS networking opportunities.

Register here: https://www.pass.org/summit/2020/

Protect your users by automatically opening suspicious emails & documents for them in hardware virtualized containers using the new “Microsoft Defender Application Guard”.

Application Guard for Office is now available in public preview!

Files from the internet and other potentially unsafe locations can contain viruses, worms, or other kinds of malware that can harm your users’ computer and data. To help protect your users, Office opens files from potentially unsafe locations in Application Guard, a secure container that is isolated from the device through hardware-based virtualization. When Office opens files in Application Guard, users can securely read, edit, print, and save those files without having to re-open files outside the container. This feature will be off by default.

Note:  This security service/feature will be coming to Microsoft 365 E5 or M365 E5 Security licensees.

Learn more about Application Guard here:

• DOCS: Application Guard for Office (public preview) for admins
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/install-app-guard?view=o365-worldwide

UPDATE 2/17/21:
This feature was removed from the roadmap.

ORIGINAL POST (AUG 2020)
Did you ever wish you could share your Microsoft Stream-based videos with people outside of your organization/company?

I spotted something that on the public Microsoft 365 roadmap:

Microsoft Stream: Public anonymous external video sharing

Allow individual videos in Microsoft Stream to be marked for external public access allowing people to view the videos without a login. Stream admins will be able to control if this feature is enabled and who within the organization can make videos publicly available.

Slated for release “Q4 Calendar Year 2020”.

• Microsoft 365 Roadmap: Microsoft Stream public anonymous external video sharing
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?featureid=27728