Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Recently there’s been some significant changes to the way the PowerPlatform is licensed.

For more details, read the following sites:

• A Quick Summary of the October 2019 Power Platform Licensing Changes
  https://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/magnetismsolutionscrmblog/posts/a-quick-summary-of-the-october-2019-power-platform-licensing-changes
• New licensing options for PowerApps and Microsoft Flow standalone paid plans
  https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-licensing-options-for-powerapps-and-flow/

Azure Personalizer is a cloud-based API service that allows you to choose the best experience to show to your users, learning from their real-time behavior.

• Provide information about your users and content and receive the top action to show your users.
• No need to clean and label data before using Personalizer.
• Provide feedback to Personalizer when it is convenient to you.
• View real-time analytics.
• Use Personalizer as part of a larger data science effort to validate existing experiments.

How does Personalizer work?

Personalizer uses machine learning models to discover what action to rank highest in a context. Your client application provides a list of possible actions, with information about them; and information about the context, which may include information about the user, device, etc. Personalizer determines the action to take. Once your client application uses the chosen action, it provides feedback to Personalizer in the form of a reward score. After the feedback is received, Personalizer automatically updates its own model used for future ranks. Over time, Personalizer will train one model that can suggest the best action to choose in each context based on their features.

Read more about Azure Personalizer here:

• PREVIEW: Azure Cognitive Services Personalizer
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/personalizer/

Today, we are proud to announce that Microsoft is positioned as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Endpoint Security Suites, Q3 2019, receiving among the second highest scores in both the strategy and market presence categories.

According to Forrester, “Microsoft has a compelling vision for the future where endpoint threat prevention and detection are completely integrated and inseparable.”

Read the entire announcement and download the Forrester Report here:

• Forrester names Microsoft a Leader in 2019 Endpoint Security Suites Wave
  https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2019/10/01/forrester-names-microsoft-a-leader-in-2019-endpoint-security-suites-wave/

Join us for an exclusive ‘behind the scenes’ experience where you’ll have the opportunity to:

• Get hands on with the Microsoft Surface family of devices and experience real life examples of digital transformation in action.
• Hear and learn from other customers about their digital transformation initiatives.
• Learn about the latest trends driving workplace transformation – from enabling teamwork with the new Surface Hub 2S and Microsoft Teams, to increasing the efficiency of your field workforce with predictive analytics from Dynamics 365 and Surface Go.
• Access programs, resources and solution experts from Microsoft and our partners to help develop and activate your workplace transformation strategy.
• Network with peers while enjoying nibbles and drinks.

Event Agenda

• 4:00pm – 4:15pm
  Arrival and networking
• 4:15pm – 4:35pm
  Welcome remarks
• 4:35pm – 7:00pm
  Tour the Surface experience while enjoying refreshments

Surface Fall Roadshow – Los Angeles

• Date: Tuesday, October 22, 2019 | 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM
• Location: SKYstudio
  1150 S Olive St, 30th Floor, Los Angeles, CA, 90015
• Registration:
  https://www.microsoftevents.com/profile/7961647
  Register here

(Event also stopping at Chicago, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Houston, Dallas, and Portland)

NEW! Transcribe audio files or record your own while staying in the flow in Microsoft Word – coming in early 2020.

We spoke with researchers, reporters, lawyers, and teachers, and learned that people spend a ton of time recording audio interviews on their phone, and then spend even more time transcribing those conversations into Word.

Today, we’re announcing a solution that helps busy professionals upload their own audio files or record new ones on the fly, all within Word. Once your audio has been uploaded or recorded, Word—leveraging your OneDrive account to securely store the audio files and Azure Speech Services under the hood—displays a written audio transcription in the side panel and allows you to quickly and easily bring relevant snippets or the entire transcript into your document to edit. The transcript itself is automatically separated by speaker and into relevant chunks of content, and the interactive panel allows you to easily jump around the recording to find and verify the perfect quote.

Audio transcription in Word will be available in early 2020 in Word for the web, with integration into the Word desktop and mobile apps following in the spring. Exact plans and pricing will be announced closer to general availability.

…

Read about this and more on the Microsoft 365 blog:

• Microsoft 365 makes work and play more intuitive and natural with innovations in voice, digital ink, and touch
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/10/02/microsoft-365-intuitive-natural-innovations-voice-digital-ink-touch/

Here’s a new Office 365 bingo card for those of you wondering “why that new Office 365 feature has been disabled by your IT department”.  (Courtesy of Jamie LaPorte)

Enjoy.

Learn how to create, promote, and manage live events in Microsoft 365.

This deep dive will walk through the best practices and technical steps so your organization can start empowering leaders to connect with their employees, deliver impactful training, and improve communication and culture using Microsoft Teams, Stream, and Yammer.

• WEBINAR: Host Live Events in Microsoft 365 (1hr)
  https://aka.ms/Webinar/HostLiveEvents

(Originally recorded Tuesday, October 08, 2019, 09:00 AM  – 10:00 AM  (PDT))

With business applications forming the backbone of any organization, staying competitive requires app modernization. And that means migrating to the cloud.

Read Expedition Cloud: Inside Microsoft’s Cloud Migration and Application Development Journey for detailed guidance on how Microsoft planned and implemented its own app modernization strategy. By following Microsoft’s approach, you’ll learn how to:

• Assess your applications to identify when each app should be migrated.
• Understand the five different migration approaches: rehost, refactor, rearchitect, rebuild, and replace.
• Choose the best application migration approach and solutions.

Get the eBook here:

• DOWNLOAD: eBook – “Expedition Cloud: Inside Microsoft’s cloud migration & app development journey”
  https://azure.microsoft.com/mediahandler/files/resourcefiles/inside-microsoft-cloud-migration-journey/Inside_Microsoft’s_cloud_migration_journey.pdf?ocid=mkto_eml_EM485491A1LA1&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTVdWallqYzFabUkwT0RabCIsInQiOiJnTXU1NE5PckloeUpWT0JXNkNrb29yMHBoblduUzlmS09JUUY0TXdPc2pEdlNsTUJHK2FnVFpBUll6dlBOTlN4Z3BObTh0XC85NGVhXC9XWXRpdkFpRUtRanROdzV5dlwvXC9DNldJR1ZkQkhEQnRha0RPQ0lHRTFFcWNNYmZneEJIaDVlaXJHNjhPMFVaSU5yVjBvN1wvV1FQZz09In0%3D

Download the new Microsoft Intune adoption kit and customize your own communication plan.

We are excited to announce the updated Microsoft Intune Customer Adoption Pack is now available. It is a set of content and guidance that IT administrators, trainers, champions, and change management professionals can use to drive Microsoft Intune adoption in your organization and help ensure your users get up and running quickly.

…

The Intune Customer Adoption Pack includes:

• Email Templates for Communications Plan (Value, expectations, schedule, availability, instructions for enrollment, reasons for migration)
• Intune End User Enrollment Guide:
  Reference document in PDF or .DOC – customizable with internal resources
• Step-by-step videos to aid users in enrolling devices for Intune
• Enroll your Android device for full management
• Enroll your Android device for Work Profile management
• Enroll your iOS device
• Enroll your macOS device
• Enroll your Windows 10 device

Read more at the announcement blog post:

• BLOG: Microsoft Intune customer adoption pack is now available
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Enterprise-Mobility-Security/Microsoft-Intune-customer-adoption-pack-is-now-available/ba-p/679866
• DOWNLOAD: Microsoft Intune Adoption Pack
  https://aka.ms/IntuneAdoptionKit

The Lessons learned from the Microsoft SOC blog series is designed to share our approach and experience with security operations center (SOC) operations. Our learnings in the series come primarily from Microsoft’s corporate IT security operation team, one of several specialized teams in the Microsoft Cyber Defense Operations Center (CDOC).

Here are the series releases to date, with more coming:

• Part 1: Organization
  https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2019/02/21/lessons-learned-from-the-microsoft-soc-part-1-organization/
• Part 2a: Organizing people
  https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2019/04/23/lessons-learned-microsoft-soc-part-2-organizing-people/
• Part 2b: Career paths and readiness
  https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2019/06/06/lessons-learned-from-the-microsoft-soc-part-2b-career-paths-and-readiness/
• Part 3a: Choosing SOC tools
  https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2019/10/07/ciso-series-lessons-learned-from-the-microsoft-soc-part-3a-choosing-soc-tools/
• …more on the way.

(Graphic of the Microsoft SOC philosophy is available as a poster at https://aka.ms/minutesmatter)