Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Looking for cost efficiency around you Azure spend?

Check out this session from Microsoft Ignite by Joanna Van Gansen, Group Program Manager for the new “Azure Cost Management” (A combined portal incorporating the Enterprise Portal & Cost Management from Cloudyn). 

She goes over techniques for saving money on Azure, including:

• Azure Cost Management
• Azure Advisor
• Reserved Instances
• Azure Hybrid Benefit
• Changing behaviors, planning for the move from on-prem vs the cloud
• Microsoft IT’s experiences in drive down costs in Azure

And the recording has 20min of Q&A with Joanna which is very interesting.  Here’s the recording:

• BRK2476 – Make the most of Azure by optimizing your cloud spend through Azure Cost Management and Reserved Instances
  Learn how to optimize on Azure by analyzing your cloud spend with Azure Cost Management, and by saving on your resources through reserved instances and Azure Hybrid Benefit, which will help you accelerate your future investments confidently. In this session we’ll demo Azure Cost Management and show how you can analyze and set budgets to monitor and optimize your costs and usage.
  RECORDING: https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/64710?source=sessions#ignite-html-anchor
  POWERPOINT DECK:
  https://mediusproduction.blob.core.windows.net/presentations/Ignite2018/BRK2476.pptx

Did you know that Outlook Mobile for iOS & Android is now supported in Office 365 Government?

It can now be used against Office 365 Government tenants without any sort of exceptions or waivers. (Which were required prior to getting FedRAMP approved.)

As with most GovCloud solutions, there are some differences in functionality to know.  Read about GovCloud usage of Outlook Mobile here:

• ANNOUNCEMENT (& FAQ): The Outlook for iOS and Android architecture is FedRAMP compliant for US Office 365 GCC customers
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Outlook-Blog/The-Outlook-for-iOS-and-Android-architecture-is-FedRAMP/ba-p/178007
• DOCS: Using Outlook for iOS and Android in the Government Community Cloud
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/clients-and-mobile-in-exchange-online/outlook-for-ios-and-android/outlook-for-ios-and-android-in-the-government-cloud

Today is the “official” day that we launched Microsoft Teams for GCC. (Our launch is taking place this week because it should be available to all Office 365 GCC tenants as of this past month.)

VIRTUAL EVENT:
Microsoft Teams for GCC

There is a webinar that we will be doing tomorrow Wednesday, 10/24 at 10:00AM if you can make it:

“Transform collaboration in government with Microsoft Teams”

October 24, 2018
1:00 PM ET / 10:00 AM PT

Registration:
https://resources.office.com/en-us-landing-transform-collaboration-in-government-with-microsoft-teams.html?wt.mc_id=AID738947_QSG_277425

Here’s the original announcement:

Introducing Microsoft Teams for the US Government Community Cloud (GCC)

Today we announced that Microsoft Teams—the hub for teamwork in Office 365— will begin rolling out for the US Government Cloud Community (GCC) on July 17th and will be available for all eligible customers by the end of August 2018.

Microsoft Teams is a chat-based workspace that enables teams to be more productive by giving them a single and secure location that brings together everything a team needs including chats, meetings, calls, files, and tools. Now Microsoft Teams meets the federal compliance requirements of GCC customers, including FedRAMP Moderate, CJIS, IRS 1075, and HIPAA, in addition to supporting global standards, including SOC 1, SOC 2, EU Model Clauses, and ISO27001.

Implementing modern collaboration and communications capabilities in the government can streamline your daily work so you can more efficiently deliver against your mission and provide services to citizens and constituents.

Find out more about the announcement here.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Microsoft-Teams-will-be-available-July-17-for-the-US-Government/ba-p/209976

At Microsoft, we will be ending the use of Skype for Business for Microsoft employees internally & switching over to Microsoft Teams.  By group policy, there will no longer be a means to schedule meetings through S4B & instead all meetings are being driven through Teams. 

(The Skype for Business client will remain on our machines & users will still be able to join existing Skype or Business meetings, but chat, creation of new meetings, & other features beyond that will require the use of Teams.)

HOW TO MIGRATE TO MICROSOFT TEAMS (IT PLANNING & TRAINING)    
So how is Microsoft IT doing it?  More importantly, how will you do it?

There’s lots of documentation on migrating to Microsoft Teams and fortunately, it comes with recordings of the original presenters sessions at Microsoft Ignite 2018.

I strongly recommend reviewing the following:

• BRK3141 Designing your path from Skype for Business to Teams
  https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/65549
  Planning the end-to-end upgrade experience
• BRK3142 Planning a seamless migration from Skype for Business to Teams for IT Admins
  https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/65552
• Recommended upgrade path for pure SfBO orgs
• The Teams-only experience
• Upgrade paths for other orgs
• Typical Migration Paths
• Interop between SfB and Teams
• Managing Coexistence
• Planning your migration
• BRK2190 Delighting your End Users: Facilitating a smooth transition from Skype for Business to Teams
  https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/65533
• BRK3124 “Meetings First”:  Microsoft Teams Meetings for ​Skype for Business Server users
  https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/65542
• BRK3230: How Microsoft Does IT:  The Journey from SfB to Teams
  https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/65523

PLANNING RESOURCES
For more Skype-to-Teams Upgrade Planning Resources:

• FastTrack Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams migration
  https://aka.ms/skypetoteams
• Upgrade Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams
  http://aka.ms/UpgradeToTeams
• Free Instructor-led training for Microsoft Teams
  https://aka.ms/teamslivetraining

TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION
For written guidance on how to accomplish & more detail:

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/migration-interop-guidance-for-teams-with-skype
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/skype/grant-csteamsupgradepolicy?view=skype-ps

As of today, users for Azure Information Protection and other Microsoft Information Protection solutions can now use Adobe Reader to read labeled and protected content. Both Microsoft and Adobe are encouraged and excited about this collaboration.

Please view the following blogs on how to use the Adobe reader integration and where to download:

• How to use the Adobe Integration
• What is the new PDF IRM support?
• Download the Public Preview installer

Microsoft announced the next version of the perpetual licensed version of Office at Ignite last month as being generally available to Commercial customers. For customers that aren’t ready for the cloud, Office 2019 provides updates to the on-premises apps with new features for end userd and IT professionals.

• Blog Post: Office 2019 is now available for Windows and Mac

The Office 2019 GA for Commercial customers includes these products:

• Office Professional Plus 2019
• Office Standard 2019
• Office Standard 2019 for Mac
• Visio Professional 2019
• Visio Standard 2019
• Project Professional 2019
• Project Standard 2019

Availability

• General Availability: September 24, 2018
• RTM build for volume license: 16.0.10336.20044
• RTM build for Mac volume license: 16.17 (18090901)
• Office 2019 will initially be available to customers with Enterprise Agreements through the Volume License Service Center. Other channels such as Visual Studio Subscriptions, Imagine, MPN, MAPS and VLSC for non-Enterprise Agreement customers will become available over the next two weeks.

As of October 2^nd, consumer customers can also now purchase Office 2019 from Microsoft and other retailers.

System Requirements

The minimum Windows system requirement is Windows 10

The minimum MacOS requirement is 10.12

For more specific details on the system requirements for both see Office System Requirements

Frequently Asked Questions

Office 2019 Commercial for Windows and Mac Frequently Asked Questions is available to answer questions related to Office 2019 vs Office 365 ProPlus.

Documentation

A large amount of information is being published on http://support.office.com and http://docs.microsoft.com to support this release. Key articles are the following:

• Office 2019 Deployment Guide
• Deploy Office 2019 by using the Office Deployment Tool
• KMS Download Details – Download Center
• What’s New in Office 2019-  covers both Windows and Mac
• What’s New in Project 2019
• What’s New in Visio 2019

Are you a Microsoft 365 Government cloud customer?

A new Microsoft 365 Roadmap site has been released and it now has filters to allow you to see what features are available and which are on the roadmap for specific cloud instances, including:

• Government Community Cloud (GCC)
• GCC High
• GCC High/DoD
• Germany

You can also filter on Office 365, Enterprise Mobility & Security Suite, Windows 10, and all of these suites’ sub-components such as Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, etc.

Visit the new roadmap site here:

• RELEASE: Microsoft 365 Roadmap – now with Government Cloud filters
  https://www.microsoft.com./en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap

During Microsoft Ignite 2018, we announced the coming preview of “Windows Virtual Desktop”.

This is an new end-to-end cloud-based desktop solution that is orchestrated through Microsoft Azure.

Windows Virtual Desktop creates scalable Windows 10 or Windows 7 desktop experiences in the cloud.

• Administrators set up the desktop space from Azure Marketplace “Windows Virtual Desktop” (Not available yet – until public preview)

Creating a Windows Virtual Desktop deployment from the Azure Portal

• Delivers a “full desktop experience” or “collections of apps” or “one specific app”
  • WVD app delivery can be initiated on local desktops & “appear” to be local apps in the Start menu
  • Supports copy & paste to the app from the local desktop, as well as save/open local files & local printers
• Supports “VDI VM-based desktops” or ‘session-based desktops” – all in one
• Session-based i.e. Remote Desktop experience is WINDOWS 10 – not Windows Server. [Exclusive to WVD]
• Supports persistent or non-persistent desktops
• Supports custom VM images or gallery-based templates
• Support Office 365 applications in a multi-user environment (i.e. all the stuff that is hard or impossible to implement or manage)
• Outlook
• OneDrive
• Supports every VM type in the Azure Gallery available in the region selected

Windows Virtual Desktops can be implemented on an VM type/SKU available in the selected region

• Supports optimizing for performance or for cost efficacy:
• breadth mode for performance (spread new VMs/sessions across all hosts)
• depth mode to optimize for costs (use one host to capacity before using another)
• Support Azure Active Directory
• Automated domain join
• Multifactor authentication
• Conditional Access

Multifactor Authentication is supported in tandem with Conditional Access for Windows Virtual Desktops

• Licensing: (any of the following)
• M365 E3/E5
• M365 Business/F1
• Windows E3/E5

I’ve aggregated everything I’ve got around Windows Virtual Desktop into a single location – PowerPoints, documents, and references at the following share:

• INFO: Windows Virtual Desktop Resource Collection (PPTX, .DOC, Videos)
  https://aka.ms/wvdresources

If you’ve ever created a Personal view within Dynamics 365, you know that they can be very useful & big time savers.

But what if you need to delete/remove an personal view or hide a set of personal views that you don’t want to appear in the “My Views” drop down list? 

Here’s how:

1. Go to you list of opportunities or engagements & click on the filter icon in the upper right hand corner, also called “Advanced Find”. 
   A dialog box will appear.
2. Select the “Saved Views” button.
   A list of all existing “personal” views will appear.
3. Check the boxes to the left of each view you wish to deactivate of delete.  Deactivating will hide the view for use later, whereas Deleting will remove the view forever.
4. Select “Deactivate” or “Delete Saved View”.

If you’re interested in Office 365 & End-user Productivity Innovations – as announced at Microsoft Ignite 2018 – we have all the news summarized for you in a few locations:

• “THE BOOK OF NEWS” – ANNOUNCEMENTS AT MICROSOFT IGNITE 2018
  To help ‘keep up’ with all the announcements we made this week at our technical conference, Microsoft Ignite 2018, we released, “The Book of News” – a 27-page PDF that reveals all the announcements that we are made at the event with links for more information for each. The majority of the news is Azure focused however the last 4 pages are oriented around workloads like Office 365.  It’s downloadable below. (.PDF, 27 pgs, 433k)
  https://news.microsoft.com/uploads/prod/sites/507/2018/09/IGNITEBOOKOFNEWS-5ba95469d658b.pdf
• ONEDRIVE ANNOUNCEMENTS
  Are you focused on Microsoft OneDrive? Did you know all the Microsoft Ignite 2018 announcements specifically about OneDrive were summarized by OneDrive product group on their blog? It’s much more comprehensive than the Book of News.  Read it here:
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-OneDrive-Blog/OneDrive-Announcements-at-Ignite-2018/ba-p/255201
• SHAREPOINT ANNOUNCEMENTS
  And the SharePoint team has the same.  Read their announcements from Ignite here:
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-SharePoint-Blog/Build-your-modern-intranet-with-SharePoint-in-Office-365-Ignite/ba-p/255453
  
• MICROSOFT STREAM ANNOUNCEMENTS
  The streaming technology that comes with Office 365 had some great innovations announced as well.
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Stream-Blog/What-s-new-in-Microsoft-Stream-Ignite-2018-announcements/ba-p/260334
• WINDOWS 10 DEPLOYMENT ANNOUNCEMENTS
  The legendary Michael Niehaus (PM for Windows Deployment) has written up a summary of all the important sessions with news in them that folks involved with Windows 10 deployment should review, along with a synopsis.
  https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mniehaus/2018/09/29/a-recap-from-microsoft-ignite-2018/
• MICROSOFT 365 ANNOUNCEMENTS
  If you have responsibility for the Microsoft 365 suite, this may be a good summary for you to review, or you can go directly to some of these other sites for more in depth coverage:
  https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/auspartners/2018/09/28/microsoft-365-announcements-from-ignite/
• TEAMS ANNOUNCEMENTS
  https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/partners/news/article/from-ignite-what’s-new-in-microsoft-teams
• VIRTUAL DESKTOP – INTRODUCTION
  https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/partners/news/article/announcing-windows-virtual-desktop
• SECURITY ANNOUNCEMENTS
  https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/partners/news/article/security-innovation-puts-microsoft’s-experience-to-work-for-customers
• GENERAL PRODUCTIVITY ANNOUNCEMENTS
  This includes announcements about Office for Mac, Search, LinkedIn integration, administration for Microsoft 365, design tools for Office products, GDPR compliance technology, etc.
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2018/09/24/10-new-ways-for-everyone-to-achieve-more-in-the-modern-workplace/