Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Want to see the new Yammer Enterprise in action? Join us for a FREE webinar on 1/30/2020 from 9-10am PT for a deep dive on the new UI and capabilities.

Come see the future of Yammer, January 30, 2020, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific Time.

Join the Yammer product team as we introduce you to the new Yammer – a completely redesigned UI packed with new features and integrations. This webinar will walk through the modern interface, demonstrate new experiences and capabilities, and showcase how Yammer has been rebuilt to power leadership, communications, and engagement. Attendees will have the opportunity for Q&A with the Yammer engineering + marketing team to help prepare for the arrival of the new Yammer. Watch and Add it to your calendar.

Details below.

• DATE/TIME:
  January 30, 2020, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific Time
• ADD TO CALENDAR:
  https://www.myeventurl.com/Events/Details/55
• VIEW:
  https://aka.ms/NewYammerWebinar
• ANNOUNCEMENT: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/yammer-blog/meet-the-new-yammer-webinar-january-30-9-00-am-10-00-am-pt/ba-p/1110854

Feast on bite-sized lessons, exercises, and labs as you master the most important Azure concepts.

More than 100 Azure services offer everything you need to build and run your applications with all the performance, redundancy, security, and scale that the cloud has to offer. But knowing where to begin with all these services can seem overwhelming.

Read this e-book to build your cloud computing skills quickly and efficiently. You’ll be productive immediately, and when you finish, you’ll be well on your way to Azure mastery.

Learn Azure in a Month of Lunches breaks down the most important Azure concepts into bite-sized lessons with exercises and labs—along with project files available in GitHub—to reinforce your skills. Learn how to:

• Use core Azure infrastructure and platform services—including how to choose which service for which task.
• Plan appropriately for availability, scale, and security while considering cost and performance.
• Integrate key technologies, including containers and Kubernetes, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the Internet of Things.

Download the e-book:

• DOWNLOAD: Free eBook, “Learn Azure in a Month of Lunches ()373pgs, .PDF – also available in MOBI or EPUB)
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/learn-azure-in-a-month-of-lunches/?cdn=disable
• SOURCE CODE REPO FOR SAMPLES:
  https://github.com/fouldsy/azure-mol-samples

Are you prepared for the transition to the cloud? If you’re a database administrator, now is the time to get started by downloading “The Essential Guide to Data in the Cloud: A Handbook for DBAs”

Your role as a database administrator (DBA) is about to transform. Now’s the ideal time to get ready for the transition to the cloud and showcase the value you add to the business as a DBA. Learn more about the evolution from on-premises database administration to cloud database management with this guide to data in the cloud.

Get the 19pg PDF eBook here:

• DOWNLOAD: Free eBook, “The Essential Guide to Data in the Cloud: A Handbook for DBAs”
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/data-platform/cloud-dba/

Join us online on February 24th for the Visual Studio for Mac Refresh(); event!

We’ve been hard at work making Visual Studio for Mac a great environment for building .NET Core applications. Recently, we’ve added .NET Core 3.1 support, ASP.NET Core scaffolding, Blazor support and more. It’s a great time to take a deep dive into .NET development, including games, web, mobile and cloud using Visual Studio for Mac.

To get you up to speed with all the latest features and capabilities we’re hosting the Visual Studio for Mac: Refresh(); event on February 24th at 9:00 AM Pacific. Join us online for a day full of demos and conversations around Visual Studio for Mac, web, mobile and game development using .NET.

Save the date, and stay tuned for more event details and the full agenda at the event website. We look forward to seeing you on February 24!

For more information:

• SAVETHEDATE: Visual Studio for Mac: Refresh (); – Feb 24, 2020
  https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/event/

Use technology to amplify your efforts to transform your company’s culture. Work towards building a culture that invites change and empowers employees to reassess, adjust, and try again. When you and your employees are working with shared values and ideas, you are in a stronger position to transform successfully.

Read this e-book, Seven Ways Technology Accelerates Culture Change, to learn how to:

• Work towards a successful digital transformation by setting and reaching goals for your company’s cultural change.
• Use internal data to gain insights into employee performance and behavior.
• Empower employees to reshape company culture and prepare for digital transformation.

Get the eBook here:

• DOWNLOAD: Free eBook, “Seven Ways Technology Accelerates Culture Change” (.PDF, 110MB)
  https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-Seven-ways-technology-accelerates-culture-change-Content-Program.html?lcid=en-us

DevOps enables organizations to deliver software faster and more reliably. But to get the desired results, it’s important to know that there’s more to building an effective DevOps practice than learning new methodologies and technologies. Culture is the key to a successful DevOps transformation.

Download Effective DevOps from O’Reilly to find out how to build a strong and sustainable DevOps culture within your organization.

Read the e-book to learn:

• The foundations and central four pillars of effective DevOps.
• Tips for fostering collaboration, strong interpersonal relationships, and affinity between teams. 
• How to select tools and workflows that support and strengthen your organization’s unique DevOps culture.
• How to troubleshoot common problems and misunderstandings.
• How successful organizations have handled their DevOps journeys.

Get the book here:

• DOWNLOAD: Free eBook, “Effective DevOps” – Building a DevOps Culture at Scale
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/effective-devops/

The majority of my customers have large Yammer Enterprise deployments that they use for providing executive communications, shared expertise, community development, and archives of institutional knowledge.

If you are interested in how the NEW 2020 Yammer Enterprise helps with both Leadership Engagement & Company-wide Communication, check out the following sessions for Ignite 2019:

• IGNITE KEYNOTE: “The future of Yammer: Share knowledge, engage leaders, and build communities in Microsoft 365 “
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/yammer-blog/in-case-you-missed-it-the-yammer-team-at-ignite/ba-p/1009941?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=t.co

• SESSION BRK3002: “Using video to connect leaders and employees on Yammer”
  https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/81500 (Video recording)
  https://medius.studios.ms/video/asset/PPT/IG19-BRK3002 (PowerPoint sides)

Microsoft is pleased to announce the final release of the security configuration baseline settings for Windows 10 version 1909 (a.k.a., “19H2”), and for Windows Server version 1909. Note that Windows Server version 1909 is Server Core only and does not offer a Desktop Experience (a.k.a., “full”) server installation option.

Download the content from the Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit (click Download and select “Windows 10 Version 1909 and Windows Server Version 1909 Security Baseline.zip”).

…

Read more at the announcement post:

• RELEASE: Security baseline for Windows 10 v1909 and Windows Server v1909
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Security-Baselines/Security-baseline-FINAL-for-Windows-10-v1909-and-Windows-Server/ba-p/1023093

As taken from the announcement:

I’m excited to announce that Azure AD authentication to Windows Virtual Machines (VMs) in Azure is now available in public preview—giving you the ability to manage and control who can access a VM.

Deployment of Windows VMs in Azure is becoming very common and a challenge everyone faces is securely managing the accounts and credentials used to login to these VMs. Typically, people create local administrator accounts to login to these VMs and it becomes difficult to manage these accounts as people join or leave teams.

To make things simple people often follow the risky practice of sharing admin account passwords among big groups of people. This makes it very hard to protect your production Windows VMs and collaborate with your team when using shared Windows VMs.

Now, organizations can utilize Azure AD authentication over a Remote Desk Protocol (RDP) for their Azure VMs running Windows Server 2019 Datacenter edition or Windows 10 1809 and later.

Using Azure AD to authenticate to VMs provides the ability to centrally control and enforce policies using tools like Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and Azure AD Conditional Access to allow you to control who can access a VM.

There are many benefits of using Azure AD authentication to login to Windows VMs in Azure, including:

• Utilizing the same federated or managed Azure AD credentials you normally use.
• No longer having to manage local administrator accounts.
• Using Azure RBAC to grant the appropriate access to VMs based on need and remove it when it is no longer needed.
• Requiring AD Conditional Access to enforce additional requirements such as:
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
• Sign-in risk
• Automating and scaling Azure AD join for Azure based Windows VMs.

You can use Azure Portal, AZ CLI, or PSH to enable this capability. Below is a quick example of how to do this from Azure Portal.

Read the rest here:

• PREVIEW: Azure AD authentication to Windows VMs in Azure
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-Active-Directory-Identity/Azure-AD-authentication-to-Windows-VMs-in-Azure-now-in-public/ba-p/827840

We’ve laid out the framework for successfully integrating Microsoft 365 into your organization in 46 slide presentation/guide, courtesy of Microsoft FastTrack.

We’ve compiled an easy-to-follow how-to guide that walks you and your team, step-by-step, through the best way to roll out Microsoft 365t to your organization.  The insights we share come from our most successful customers, who have maximized the power of their investment, adopting multiple, integrated technologies that now form Microsoft 365. Throughout this guide you will find links to additional tools and resources as well as the Adoption Planning Workbook where you can build your customer approach to adoption.

Get the guide & workbook here:

• DOWNLOAD: “Microsoft 365 Adoption Guide”
  https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RWqTOD
• DOWNLOAD: “Adoption  Planning Workbook”
  https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RWtAjg