Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Join this Microsoft Planner ‘Ask Microsoft Anything’ (AMA) on Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 9:00 to 10:00 AM PT!

An AMA is a live online event similar to a “YamJam” on Yammer or an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. Share your questions and feedback about Microsoft Planner in the Planner AMA space during this one-hour event. Members of the Planner team will be online to respond directly to your posts.

During the AMA, open the Planner AMA space, and submit your questions and feedback as a new post by clicking on, "Start a New Conversation" at the top of the page.

Add this event to your calendar.

• ANNOUNCEMENT PAGE:
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/planner-ama/announcing-a-microsoft-planner-ama-on-july-28-2020/m-p/1513107

Have you tried the “magic select” option in Paint3D yet? It’s really handy if you want to quickly to cut out something from a picture.

The “magic select” tool lets you easily crop the background of any picture to turn into a sticker to wrap or tile onto 3D objects. Here’s how it works:

• Click on Insert and choose one of your favorite photos.
• Use the “select” tool to drag and select the area that you want. The magic select button will appear.
• Use the add and remove button to draw onto areas that you want to add or remove.
• Once finished, click on the green check mark and the selection will pop-out as a separate layer.

You’ll love creating cut-outs from your favorite family photos, BFF selfies, or pet pics with magic select, then using them as stickers to personalize your creations.

You can make this a sticker by clicking on “make sticker”.

Read the original post here:

• BLOG: 5 Ways to get started with Paint 3D
  https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/04/17/windows-10-tip-five-ways-get-started-paint-3d/

We’ve published the latest summary of the Public Sector roadmap to the Microsoft US Public Sector blog.  This month we cover the following:

• References and Information Resources
• Office 365 & Managing Crisis Communications
• Microsoft 365 for US Government Service Descriptions
• Newsworthy Highlights
• Public Sector Blog Spotlight (GCC, GCCH, DOD)
• Roadmap Changes This Month (GCC, GCCH, DOD)

Read it here:

• July 2020 – M365 US Public Sector Roadmap Newsletter
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/public-sector-blog/july-2020-m365-us-public-sector-roadmap-newsletter/ba-p/1502149

Microsoft Whiteboard is not yet available in Microsoft 365 GCC/Microsoft Team for Government. 

It is on the roadmap to be available to our GCC customers, however, and will be FedRAMP reviewed.

In the meantime, there are a couple alternatives:

• Add Freehand by InVision as a tab in a Team or a meeting chat to collaborate. 

  For more on this, view:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd65qDvLZF0&feature=youtu.be

• Add a OneNote notebook as a tab in a meeting chat and collaborate

  For more on this, view:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDbituQPY9s&feature=emb_logo

IDG recently published a study around the cost advantages associated with cloud-based security information and event management (SIEM) solutions.  In summary:

• Forty percent—lower staffing costs.
• Forty percent—lower operational expenses (OpEx).
• Thirty-four percent—lower capital expenses (CapEx).

For a broader discussion around these numbers, read this about the IDG study & how Microsoft’s cloud-based SIEM, Azure Sentinel, can help you lower your security costs while improving your security coverage & speed of execution.

• Moving to cloud-based SIEM: the cost advantage
  https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2020/06/17/moving-cloud-based-siem-cost-advantage/

The IDG report is available below, entitled, “SIEM Shift: How the Cloud is Transforming Security Operations”.

Many security professionals are realizing that their on-premises or private cloud-based security information and event management (SIEM) system can’t keep up—so they’re migrating this key security operations tool to the public cloud.

The IDG report, SIEM Shift: How the Cloud is Transforming Security Operations, delves into the results of a survey of 300 security and IT decision-makers to discover why more security professionals are moving to cloud-based SIEM. The report reveals that cloud-based SIEM:

• Reduces SIEM costs by lowering or eliminating infrastructure, maintenance, licensing, and staffing costs.
• Helps improve protection with AI and faster threat response.
• Boosts SIEM performance, scalability, and stability.
• Augments security teams with AI, reducing alert fatigue and automating common tasks.

Learn how your peers are strengthening their defense against threats.

• DOWNLOAD: SIEM Shift: How the Cloud is Transforming Security Operations
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/why-companies-are-migrating-siem-to-the-cloud/

For those unaware: Office 365 GCC uses Entra Public/Commercial. (Formerly known as Azure AD Public) This includes all other Government Community Cloud (GCC) products & services including, Dynamics 365 GCC, Power Platform GCC, Microsoft 365 Copilot GCC, etc.

For an explanation of this, please review the following:

Why does Office 365 GCC use Microsoft Entra Public?
The first Office 365 US Government environment, Government Community Cloud (GCC), was created when Microsoft had a single cloud directory. The Office 365 GCC environment was designed to use Microsoft Entra Public while still adhering to controls and requirements outlined in FedRAMP Moderate, Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS), Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 1075, and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-171. Azure Government, with its Microsoft Entra infrastructure, was created later. By that time, GCC had already secured the necessary compliance authorizations (for example, FedRAMP Moderate and CJIS) to meet Federal, State, and Local government requirements while serving hundreds of thousands of customers. Now, many Office 365 GCC customers have two Microsoft Entra tenants:

• one from the Microsoft Entra subscription that supports Office 365 GCC
• and the other from their Azure Government subscription,

with identities in both.

Read more here:

• DOCS: Planning identity for Azure Government applications
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-government/documentation-government-plan-identity#frequently-asked-questions

Something I get a lot from Microsoft 365/Office 365 administrators is, “I can’t keep up with all the notifications that come in from the Office 365 Admin Portal’s message center!”

One way to keep track of these notifications (like when new services and products are being released to your users) is to sync the Office 365 Updates from Message Center to Microsoft Planner.

I discovered this from Petri.com and admittedly didn’t even know this was possible.  Tony Redmond from Petri.com outlines how to accomplish this with really great instructions. 

From a high level, this is what he goes over:

1. Select the type of change notification to synchronize from the Message Center to Planner.
2. Select a target plan.
3. A background process finds matching notifications in the Message Center and creates new tasks in Planner.
4. After synchronization completes, update the new tasks created in Planner.
5. Go back to step 3 and repeat. Synchronization can be manual or automatic.

For exact instructions, visit:

• Syncing Office 365 Updates to Planner
  https://petri.com/planner-link-office365-updates

Maximize value and performance when you move your SQL Server workloads to Azure Virtual Machines. Learn about different SQL Server deployment models and how to choose the right one for your organization.

Read this Packt e-book to learn how to:

• Migrate workloads and manage your SQL Server estate on Azure. 
• Optimize performance over time. 
• Configure virtual machines (VMs) for high availability. 
• Optimize disk layout for SQL Server on VMs. 
• Build a hybrid environment with Azure Virtual Machines running SQL Server.

Download the Packt e-book here:

• DOWNLOAD: SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines (.PDF, 171 pgs)
  https://t.co/hwjPvcjxmg

The Virtual Systems Management Users Group is having their first online user group session June 30th and it’s got some big time guests.

Join us for our inaugural user group session with a stellar line-up is speakers including David James the director of engineering for Configuration Manager at Microsoft and Michael Niehaus.

Tentative Schedule:

Session 1: Cody Mathias, Andrew Jimenez, and Justin Chalfant

• Time: 8 AM PST, 11 PM EDT, 4 PM (GMT + 1)
• Length: 75 Minutes
• Agenda: Introductions and Configuration Items in Configuration Manager

Session 2: David James

• Time: 9:15 AM PST, 12:15 PM EDT, 5:15 PM (GMT + 1)
• Length: 90 Minutes
• Agenda: Q&A with David James

Session 3: Michael Niehaus

• Time: 10:45 AM PST, 1:45 PM EDT, 6:45 PM (GMT + 1)
• Length: 60 Minutes
• Agenda: Autopilot and Intune

Register here:

• Date/Time:
  June 30 session at 8 AM PST, 11 AM EDT, 4 PM (GMT +1)
• Registration:
  https://vsmug.com/2020-06-david-james-and-michael-niehaus

Every organization needs a way to determine success and business impact. However, translating productivity into measurable impact can be challenging. We’ve heard from organizations that they’d like a way to better measure how they are doing—both in regard to:

1. How employees are getting work done more efficiently
2. How technology is enabling them to save time and be more productive

Microsoft Productivity Score focuses on two areas: the Employee experience and the Technology experience. Both provide visibility into how your organization works, insights to identify where you can enable improved experiences, and actions you can take to update skills and systems—so everyone can do their best work.

• The Employee experience shows you how Microsoft 365 is helping to create a productive and engaged workforce. By quantifying how people are collaborating on content, working from anywhere, developing a meeting culture, and communicating with each other, you can see the different ways that work gets done. With advice on how people can work in new ways and training materials to help them learn, you can empower everyone to do their best work.
• The Technology experience provides insights by assessing policies, device settings, and hardware and application performance within the organizational environment and recommends actions taken in Microsoft Endpoint Manager. Users receive the most up-to-date features, persistent security, devices with faster boot times, and increased battery life. You can improve their scores by identifying best practices and ideal configurations to ensure Technology and Employee experiences are mutually supported.

For more on how your endpoints contribute to your Productivity Score, visit:

• BLOG: How endpoints affect productivity with Productivity Score
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/learn-how-business-norms-are-changing-and-how-endpoints-affect/ba-p/1487651