Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Join us for an in-depth look at the latest innovations across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform at this free, digital event.

You’ll hear from James Phillips, President of the Business Applications Group, and other Microsoft leaders as they guide you through what’s new in Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform 2020 release wave 2. Discover what these updates mean for you and your business and how they’ll help you:

• Choose the right path to innovation with modular applications that work together seamlessly.
• Unify relationships, processes, and data with connected cloud and comprehensive business applications from Microsoft.
• Gain end-to-end visibility while enabling your teams to achieve greater outcomes faster with connected data, business analytics, and guidance.
• Thrive as your business changes by extending existing applications and building new solutions.
• Give your organization the tools it needs to provide a safer workplace while maintaining productivity as teams work remotely.

You’ll also get to ask experts your questions during the live Q&A.

Agenda:

• 9:00 AM: Keynote with James Phillips, President, Microsoft Business Applications Group
• 10:30 AM: Live Q&A with Microsoft experts

Register for the event below:

• REGISTER: Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event – October 1, 2020 (9-11AM PST)https://events1.social27.com/microsoft-business-applications-launch-event/auth/register

Recently, Microsoft commissioned Forrester Research to help quantify the benefits companies saw when they actively used and promoted Microsoft Search in Bing.

To do so, Forrester spoke with IT Pros at seven different organizations about how they functioned before and after implementing Microsoft Search in Bing.

Based on those findings, Forrester calculated the benefits to organizations over a three-year period, finding companies could:

• Save between $13-$40M in lost productivity
• Reduce certain support tickets 30-60%
• Save up to an additional $1.1M in combined time and money by retiring existing search solutions

• Full Forrester Total Economic Impact report

Surprised? It’s real. Employees are struggling to manage all the content and information required of them without the right tools. Too often this leads to unnecessary time spent searching, too many clicks to find what they need, or a frustrated employee who gives up and reaches out to the help desk for support. Forrester found that companies actively using Microsoft search in Bing could save each employee 55-82 hours per year otherwise spent searching!

Download the report here:

• REPORT: How IT pros saved time, money, and reduced helpdesk headaches with Microsoft Search – Forrester Report
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-search-blog/how-it-pros-saved-time-money-and-reduced-helpdesk-headaches-with/ba-p/1443490

In trying to enable the modern working from home scenario, the challenge for organizations arises in working with or around their legacy network architecture. As more customers and users move to the cloud, the network’s ability to scale becomes limited. Microsoft’s Chief Security Advisor, Sean Sweeney and Senior Program Manager, Paul Collinge, address the architecture’s design problems and focus on three steps for adapting an organization’s network for heavy remote usage during these unprecedented times while leveraging the capabilities already present in Microsoft 365.

1. Identify paths to optimize for Office 365
2. Implement a VPN split tunnel
3. Take a different approach to security controls

With taking these steps to adapt to a changing security environment, organizations can take advantage of control benefits such as preventing unauthorized access, controlling authorized user access, data loss prevention, and IDS/IPS, DDoS protection. Your organization can effectively elevate security and performance while also protecting your employees at home.

• VIDEO: “Alternatives for Security Controls (for remote work)” (35min)
  https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-security-controls-for-remote-work.html?lcid=en-us

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/