Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Don’t know if or how Microsoft Forms is being used within your organization?  Forms activity reports are rolling out to all Office 365 commercial tenant users over the next week in the Microsoft 365 admin center. 

Expect to see them around March 11.

With this easy to use dashboard, you can dig into many useful aspects of the data:

• Across your organization:
  • # of Forms Designers
  • # of Forms Responders
  • Total # of users (sum of the two above)
  • # of Forms created
  • # of Signed-in responses received
  • # of Anonymous responses received
• Per user level:
  • Last Form activity time
  • # of Forms Created
  • # of Forms responded to

See more details here: Microsoft 365 Reports in the admin center – Forms activity

Read more at the announcement page here:

• RELEASE: Forms Activity Reports in the Microsoft Admin Center
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-forms-blog/forms-activity-reports-in-the-microsoft-admin-center/ba-p/1208017

This is a great article about OneDrive for Business’s deployment & adoption at Microsoft.

Within Microsoft, there are some entrenched employee habits that make the company what it is, like living in email, dressing casually, and project managing a solution for every problem.

Also high on that list?

Saving files locally, a habit that has stuck with a company that grew up around Windows and its system of using folders to store and organize files.

Now, the company wants its employees to store everything in the cloud on OneDrive for Business, where it’ll be more secure and easy to access, plus several other reasons that will be shared below.

…

If this sounds familiar, read the following article about our journey to OneDrive for Business:

• NEWS: OneDrive for Business feature shifts how employees save files within Microsoft
  https://www.microsoft.com/itshowcase/blog/onedrive-for-business-feature-shifts-how-employees-save-files-within-microsoft/
• NEWS: Microsoft’s strategy for file management
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/itshowcase/it-expert-roundtable-sharepoint-and-onedrive-for-business-at-microsoft-file-management/?top
• DOCS: Known Folder Move & OneDrive for Business
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/redirect-known-folders

Got Splunk?  Interested in ingesting Azure Sentinel alerts?

As most of the enterprises consume more and more cloud services, there is a huge requirement for Cloud-Native SIEM where Azure Sentinel comes in play and has following advantages.

• Easy collection from cloud sources
• Effortless infinite scale
• Integrated automation capabilities
• Continually maintained cloud and onprem use cases enhanced with Microsoft TI and ML
• Github community
• Microsoft research and ML capabilities
• Avoid sending cloud telemetry downstream

If you need to focus on Splunk as your aggregation point, the post below has the focus of ingesting Azure Sentinel alerts into Splunk by using the Microsoft Graph Security API.

Read this article for more:

• INFO: Azure Sentinel Side-by-Side with Splunk
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-sentinel/azure-sentinel-side-by-side-with-splunk/ba-p/1211266

We’re excited to share the latest innovations coming to all the Microsoft business applications—from Dynamics 365 to Power BI to Power Automate to Power Apps—and can’t wait to see how they’ll help you better engage customers, make faster decisions, and solve your everyday business challenges. 

Join us for the Microsoft Business Applications Virtual Launch Event on Thursday, April 2, 2020, at 8:00 AM Pacific Time. You’ll hear directly from James Phillips, President of the Business Applications Group, as he guides you through all the new features, capabilities, and apps—and what they mean for you and your business. 

Here’s just a taste of what you can expect at this free, virtual event: 

• Key announcements from the hundreds of new features and capabilities
• In-depth, practical demonstrations
• Advice and insights from Microsoft leaders
• Answers to your common questions 

Whether you’re a business professional, developer, or implementer, you won’t want to miss this virtual event to discover your next step in driving business transformation. Hope you can join us! 

• EVENT: Microsoft Business Applications Virtual Launch Event – April 2nd, 2020, 8:00AM PST
  https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/News-Announcements/April-2nd-Microsoft-Business-Applications-Virtual-Launch-Event/ba-p/493062

We want to hear from you and answer your questions around using Microsoft Teams in the government space! We will be hosting an "Ask Microsoft Anything" (AMA) session on Thursday, March 19 at 9:30-10:30 AM Pacific Time, here, on the Tech Community. Save the date!

To join, simply, visit the Government AMA space on March 19 at 9:30 AM Pacific Time and click "Start a New Conversation" to post your question. This event is open to all Tech Community members and we’ll have members of the Microsoft product, engineering, and licensing teams standing by to provide answers.

In the meantime, if you haven’t already, be sure to join the Public Sector Tech Community.

We look forward to answering your questions!

• EVENT: Microsoft Teams Government “Ask Microsoft Anything” – March 19, 2020, 9:30AM PST
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/public-sector-blog/announcing-a-microsoft-teams-government-ama/ba-p/1218544

Find out how to accelerate your move to the cloud with Windows Virtual Desktop. Register for this virtual event and learn how to get started quickly and securely with new Windows Virtual Desktop features that simplify the deployment and experience of desktop and app virtualization on Azure.

Get best practices and tools directly from the Microsoft team building the product, and learn how it enables you to:

• Deploy the only multi-session Windows 10 virtual desktop experience.
• Quickly enable optimizations for Office 365 ProPlus in a virtualized environment.
• Deploy and scale in minutes through the Azure platform.

This virtual event includes live presentations by Microsoft executives and engineering teams followed by on-demand sessions.

• Date/Time:
  Thursday, March 19, 2020
  9:00 AM Pacific Time
• Registration:
  https://info.microsoft.com/ww-registration-windows-virtual-desktop-virtual-event.html?ocid=AID3008891_QSG_SCL_406242

Microsoft employees are the company’s greatest asset. Our investments in a reimagined employee experience are enabling Microsoft employees to innovate, create, and collaborate seamlessly among the teams in which they work.

We’re moving our entire organization toward a digitally assisted workday in an interconnected and integrated digital workplace, to provide the most productive employee experience possible as we continue our digital transformation.

Focusing on the Employee Experience
Productive Enterprise focuses on reimagining the employee experience at Microsoft. We’re rethinking how we work across physical and digital experiences. By better fulfilling our employees’ needs, we are building a more solid foundation for our entire business.

…

To deliver our vision for a reimagined employee experience, we’re investing in multiple aspects of our technology and culture. The following figure illustrates the six primary investments we’re making.

The six investments of the Productive Enterprise initiative

If you’re interested in learning more about Microsoft Core Services Engineering and Operations (CSEO) strategy in driving the Productive Enterprise initiative, read the following whitepaper that was just published.

• WHITEPAPER: “Reinventing the employee experience at Microsoft”
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/itshowcase/reinventing-the-employee-experience-at-microsoft

Note: We’re encouraging our employees to be the agents for our digital transformation, to expedite our transformation. You can learn more about our digital transformation initiatives by reading “Inside the transformation of IT and operations at Microsoft."

For 13 consecutive years, Gartner has recognized Microsoft as a Magic Quadrant Leader in analytics and business intelligence platforms.

In this report, we believe, you’ll learn about Gartner’s assessment of the features and capabilities that differentiate the various products in this market.

Learn how a comprehensive product vision, positive sales experience, and intuitive user experience contributed to high levels of customer satisfaction and helped position Microsoft as a Magic Quadrant Leader among analytics and business intelligence platforms.

Get the report here:

• DOWNLOAD: 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms
  https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-2020-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-analytics-and-business-intelligence.html?LCID=EN-US

Looking to replace SQL Server Reporting Services now that you’ve moved your databases in to Azure SQL Database Managed Instances?

Check this out:

This graphic above is an example of the reporting that we deliver through “Power BI Embedded for ISVs”.

As you can see, it is a locked down, simple static report, virtually identical to SQL Server Reporting Services… but produced by “Power BI Embedded”.

This is one of the many out of the box experiences you can have with Power BI embedded and is the perfect solution for folks getting out of the stone ages and moving their SQL data & accompanying SQL services to Azure.

WANT MORE?
If you’re interested in learning more about implementing Power BI Embedded as an ISV, please visit: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/power-bi-embedded/.

DEMO
If you’d like to play with Power BI Embedded out-of-box reporting scenarios, visit https://microsoft.github.io/PowerBI-JavaScript/demo/v2-demo/index.html.

From early cancer detection to fighting climate change, new advances in quantum computing are inspiring solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues. Explore the possibilities in our newest series, Quantum Impact, hosted by Dr. Julie Love and Dr. Krysta Svore.

• Learn more about Microsoft Quantum: https://microsoft.com/quantum
• Get started with the Quantum Development Kit (QDK): https://microsoft.com/quantum/develop…
• Request to be an early adopter of Azure Quantum: https://azure.com/quantum
• Read about the latest Microsoft Quantum updates: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/quantum

Watch series:

• VIDEO CHANNEL: “Quantum Impact”
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba88EwG5b0Q&feature=youtu.be