Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Azure Location Based Services (preview) provides developers from all industries, powerful geospatial capabilities, packed with fresh mapping data necessary to provide geographic context to web and mobile applications.

Azure Locaiton Based Services provides the ability to:

• Give context to your data for increased productivity
• Refresh your apps and devices with dynamic information
• Track more than geographic coordinates
• Use Azure Location Based Services with familiar tools and services

This service is an Azure One API compliant set of REST APIs, accompanied with a web-based JavaScript control to make development easy, flexible, and portable across multiple mediums.

The press has written quite a bit about it.  Tom Tom, Delphi, and other location-oriented manufacturers have adopted it:

• Fortune- ‘Microsoft’s next big challenge- Location, location, location’
• Track field assets and create location-aware apps with Azure Location Based Services
• Microsoft builds and integrates Azure Location Based Services directly into the cloud to make ci
• ZDNet- ‘Microsoft launches public preview of Azure Location Based Services with TomTom’
• Microsoft launches Azure Location Based Services for geospatial needs across industries

For more information, visit the product page:

• Infographic: Location is at the Heart of Everything
  https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=863874&clcid=0x409
• SITE: Azure Location Based Services
  http://www.azure.com/locationbasedservices

This isn’t new however, it’s important to highlight this notice given that many folks are still deploying Office 2016 Professional Plus.

Office 365 ProPlus or Office perpetual minimum requirements
Starting October 13, 2020, Office 365 ProPlus or Office perpetual in mainstream support will be required to connect to Office 365 services. Office 365 ProPlus will deliver the best experience, but for customers who aren’t ready to move to the cloud by 2020, we will also support connections from Office perpetual in mainstream support. For more information: Office 365 system requirements updates

Office Perpetual is the “.MSI” installable version of the product that does not get updated with features in the same way that Office 365 ProPlus does. 

Office 2016 Professional Plus’ support for usage against Exchange Online/SharePoint Online implementations ends, per the Microsoft lifecycle site on 10/13/2020 – so folks will need to have transitioned off of Office 2016 Professional Plus by that date (to Office 365 ProPlus or Office 2019 Professional Plus), if they want to continue to use Exchange Online/SharePoint Online, etc. in a supported manner.

Program Manager, Michael Niehaus is the the technical lead for Windows 10 Deployment Services here at Microsoft.  He’s an incredibly important person to Enterprise desktop architects.

He has a blog and recently updated his long running post that talks about how to get Windows 10 Language Packs for deployment in worldwide Enterprise deployments of Windows 10 – specifically for Windows 10 1709 language packs.

Check out the post here:

• BLOG: Finding Windows 10 Language Packs
  https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mniehaus/2017/04/26/finding-windows-10-language-packs/

Jim Naroski covers recent enhancements to Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity solution for the modern workplace. The course transcript, complete with all links mentioned, is available at http://aka.ms/o365update-blog.

Here are the topics covered in the January Update:

• Whiteboard [0:23]
• PowerPoint [1:50]
• Sway [2:54]
• Yammer [4:29]
• OneDrive [5:58]
• eDiscovery [6:52]
• Suggestion Box [7:43]

For previous updates, go to the Office 365 Update YouTube Playlist:
https://aka.ms/o365update-youtube

For written transcripts of new features, visit the Office 365 Update Blog: https://aka.ms/o365update-blog

• VIDEO: Office 365 Update for January 2018 
  https://youtu.be/IP6Toj3KTxk

Everyone knows that the interface for wireless profiles in Windows 8 & Windows 10 have been frustratingly dumbed down.

Let’s say you wanted to:

• Change the priority of the wireless networks that Windows automatically connected to
• View the WiFi password / key for a previously configured

Unless you like using command line tools like ‘netsh’, this is a little frustrating.

The good news is that there’s a 3rd party graphical tool out there called “WiFi Profile Manager” that provides a graphical view of:

• WiFi Profiles / SSID names
• Network connection order
• Security type
• Password / Wifi key

By right mouse clicking on a profile you can change the connection order, view the configured WiFi key/password, remove the profile, and set the network as the “default”.

It’s free so if this is something that you’d like to try, download the tool from below:
(Note: This is a 3rd party tool and not from Microsoft)

• WiFi Profile Manager: View Preferred Wireless Network Profiles in Windows 8/10
  http://www.thewindowsclub.com/wifi-profile-manager-windows-8

Join us in this session for an overview of the capabilities of Azure Active Directory, the Microsoft identity and access management cloud solution (IDaaS). Azure Active Directory provides secure, scalable and easy-to-use identity and access management for your employees, partners, and consumers.

With capabilities such as identity protection, SSO to thousands of SaaS apps, conditional access policies, user behavioral analytics and machine learning-based reports, cross-organization collaboration, social IDs for consumers, secure remote access to on-premises applications, self-service password reset, cloud app discovery and many more, Azure Active Directory is the most comprehensive IDaaS solution.

In this webinar you will learn:

• How Azure AD can help organizations with the comprehensive solutions it offers in cloud identity and access management
• Use cases that illustrate how Azure AD helps IT professionals achieve their objectives
• The set of functionalities available within Azure AD and the latest, most exciting developments within those functionalities

Enroll in the webcast here:

• Identity driven security for your employees, partners and customers with Azure Active Directory
  https://info.microsoft.com/en-us-resources-IdentitydrivensecurityforyouremployeespartnersandcustomerswithAzureActiveDirectory-OnDemand.html?wt.mc_id=AID625608_QSG_SCL_218842

The most recent release of Windows 10 (1703) brings with it several key new policies to control the Windows Delivery Optimization (DO) service.

<taken from blog post “Latest Windows 10 Delivery Optimization Policies (17063)” from 2Pint Software>

DO is the Windows 10 download, caching and Peer-to-Peer technology that is responsible for handling Windows Store and Windows Update downloads. As announces at MS Ignite – it will eventually handle InTune, Office 365 and ConfigMgr content too. Think of it as the new BranchCache and BITS rolled into one.

As we all know – getting the Peer-to-Peer story right is a tricky one, and the existing DO Policies in Windows 10 only go some way to providing the options and granularity of control that’s required by Enterprise customers in order to cater for every possible scenario out there. This release provides a whole host of new stuff that gives you fantastic options in controlling and tuning DO for any occasion. Here’s the rundown of the new stuff…

Read about all the switches & policy fields you can set to provide a more optimized solution to maintain Windows 10.

• 2PINT: Latest Windows 10 Delivery Optimization Policies (17063)
  https://2pintsoftware.com/latest-windows-10-do-policies/

Here are the official documentation articles about these configuration settings:

• Configure Delivery Optimization for Windows 10 updates
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/waas-delivery-optimization
• Administrative Templates (.admx) for Windows 10 Creators Update (1703)
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=55080
• Administrative Templates (.admx) for Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (1709)
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=56121

To kick off the new year ahead of Data Privacy Day we are giving our Windows Insiders an early preview of the Windows Diagnostic Data Viewer coming in our next release of Windows. Our commitment is to be fully transparent on the diagnostic data collected from your Windows devices, how it is used, and to provide you with increased control over that data. This is all part of our commitment to increase your trust and confidence in our products and services.

…

We’ve updated the Microsoft Privacy Dashboard with a new Activity History page which provides a clear and easy to navigate way to see the data that is saved with your Microsoft account. The Microsoft Privacy Dashboard allows you to manage your data and change what data is collected by adjusting the privacy settings on your device or browser at any time.

And in the coming months, we’ll also bring additional features that will allow you to:

• View and manage media consumption data, as well as product and service activity on the Activity History page
• Export for any of the data you see on the dashboard
• Delete specific items to allow for greater individual control

Read more about this announcement on the Windows blog:

• Microsoft introduces new privacy tools ahead of Data Privacy Day
  https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/01/24/microsoft-introduces-new-privacy-tools-ahead-of-data-privacy-day/#TEGJ0MzyfWTXPG7k.97

Have you ever wondered which you should use to deploy OS updates & software packages to locations with low-to-marginal bandwidth:  Windows BranchCache or SCCM Peer Cache?

Yves Perrenoud, Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, wrote a great comparison between the two distributed update solutions, including a chart to goes through the differences between the two with regard to:

• Usage scenarios
• Sharing technology
• Cache
• WinPE support
• Discovery

Check out the full post here:

• SCCM SUPPORT BLOG: Branch Cache vs. Peer Cache
  https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/swisspfe/2018/01/25/branch-cache-vs-peer-cache/

What if we told you Project Online Desktop Client is now integrated with Microsoft Planner?

We are pleased to announce the release of the integration between the Project Online Desktop Client and Microsoft Planner. Starting September 2017, Project users will be able to connect Project tasks to Planner plans. The feature will be available in the September update for Project Online Professional and Premium customers.

This feature release is in response to our customers, who have asked for a way to connect tasks in Project to plans in Planner. We have found that, as project management processes extend across all parts of an organization, there is an opportunity to link the work done by disparate teams and drive greater cross-team alignment. This integration allows teams that manage their work in Project Online to better streamline work with teams that use Planner.

With the integration, task owners can track granular task details in a lightweight tool. Project Managers retain control over the project’s work breakdown structure and can easily view the detailed work being done against a task.

This capability may also be used to reduce complexity of project plans in Project keeping it simple for the project manager to control a smaller number of tasks while task owners can further breakdown the tasks in Planner.

How does it work?

Step 1: Create a Planner plan.

…

Read more about this exciting new feature for Project Online at the Project Support blog:

• Streamline cross-team work with the newly integrated Project Online Desktop Client and Microsoft Planner
  https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/projectsupport/2017/10/05/streamline-cross-team-work-with-the-newly-integrated-project-online-desktop-client-and-microsoft-planner/