Kurt Shintaku's Blog

The Visual Studio 2017 Launch Event is tomorrow!

We’re excited to announce that Visual Studio 2017 will be available for download on Tuesday, March 7, 2017! Join us online for a two-day virtual event celebrating 20 years of Visual Studio and our latest release.

• On March 7, watch our live stream with Julia Larson, Brian Harry, Miguel de Icaza, and Scott Hanselman as they share the newest innovations in Visual Studio, .NET, Xamarin, Azure, and more. After the keynote, Microsoft engineers will lead interactive technical demo sessions to help you get the most out of Visual Studio 2017 and the rest of our tools and platform.
• On March 8, we’ll help you get productive even faster by hosting a full day of live interactive trainings. Make sure to Save the Date for both days and sign up for the March 8 training now.

Check out the agenda & choose the training that best fits your needs:

• Tuesday, March 7: Keynote and Demos
• Wednesday, March 8: Virtual Training

To register, visit:

• EVENT: Visual Studio 2017 Launch Event is tomorrow! (Online)
  https://launch.visualstudio.com/

Microsoft Coprorate VP, Jeff Teper and Senior Product Manager, Bill Baer, are coming to Los Angeles to keynote “SharePoint Saturday”, a SharePoint centric event produced by the SharePoint community.

Check out the sessions being delivered at the event:
http://www.spsevents.org/city/LosAngeles/LosAngeles2017/sessions

Taken from web site:

SharePoint administrators, end users, architects, developers, and other professionals that work with Microsoft SharePoint Technologies will meet for the SharePoint Saturday Los Angeles event on April 8th, 2017 at the Westside Conference Center Pepperdine University located at 6100 Center Drive , Los Angeles CA.

DATE:
April 8, 2017

LOCATION:
Westside Conference Center Pepperdine University, 6100 Center Drive , Los Angeles CA 90045

REGISTRATION:
http://www.spsevents.org/city/losangeles/losangeles2017

Apparently both Google & the makers of Firefox have a preference when it comes to antivirus:  Windows Defender

From a Google Chrome Engineer:

• Google Chrome engineer says Windows Defender “the only well behaved AV”
  https://www.onmsft.com/news/google-chrome-engineer-says-windows-defender-the-only-well-behaved-av

From a Firefox’s engineer.

• Disable Your Antivirus Software (Except Microsoft’s)
  http://robert.ocallahan.org/2017/01/disable-your-antivirus-software-except.html

UPDATE 10/31/17:
We’ve recently renamed/rebranded the Secure Productive Enterprise suite to “Microsoft 365” (E3/E5) which is now reflected in this post as well as my spreadsheet.

——————–
[This is a follow up from an older, previous post which now has outdated information]

To help my customers understand just what is included in the Microsoft 365 E3/E5 suite(s), I’ve created a living spreadsheet that I occasionally use with my customers with collapsible rows for each suite component.

Every product or service is hyperlinked, so if you don’t know what it is, a simple click will lead you to it’s product page.  Every “X” I have showing what suite the product belongs to (on the right) will direct you to the page showing where the product is listed as licensed through that suite.

I’ve been told it’s very useful as a reference.  Hopefully it’ll be useful for you too.

(WARNING: It’s called “living” because I change this spreadsheet monthly and I may not have the most recent stuff posted here. At the time of this edit, I’m making DRAFT .10 available for download here.)

• Kurt’s Microsoft 365 E3-E5 Suite Comparison – .10 – CR
  https://1drv.ms/x/s!Ao0Dfn8MQdoArMp-EYDC1bAP9YeMBA

There’s also a licensing document from Microsoft Volume Licensing that may be useful to you.

• Licensing Secure Productive Enterprise
  http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/D/4/3D42BDC2-6725-4B29-B75A-A5B04179958B/Licensing-Secure-Productive-Enterprise.pdf

According to a new study from Microsoft’s research organization, which analyzed anonymized data on people’s online activities and sleep behavior, a good night’s sleep really does help us do our best the next day, and a couple of bad nights of sleep could hurt us for days to come.

Here’s an excerpt of the summary:

For example, the web-scale study confirms previous lab-based research that shows individual cognitive performance varies throughout the day, aligning with circadian rhythms and so-called chronotype traits – early birds achieve peak performance earlier in the day than night owls. Whenever people wake up, they are sluggish for the first hour or two of their day, a phenomenon known as sleep inertia.

Across the board, keystroke and click speeds were slowest – by up to 31 percent – at 4 o’clock in the morning, an hour that previous research has shown that “your body thinks it should be sleeping,” said Althoff, who is pursuing a PhD in computer science at Stanford University.

“The alignment with lab-based studies on circadian rhythms around sleep and performance is stunning and suggests that we can take sleep research forward and learn new things,” Horvitz said.

The methods can be used to explore patterns of sleep deprivation and recovery, for example.

The study also shows that staying up an extra hour, even if followed by a full night’s sleep, is correlated with slower performance the next day. Going to bed an hour earlier than normal, however, has a negligible effect.

…

Read the summary here:

• NEWS: Sleep deprived? New study says your performance will suffer
  https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2017/01/24/sleep-deprived-new-study-says-performance-will-suffer/

Download the complete research study here:

• MICROSOFT RESEARCH: Harnessing the Web for Population-Scale Physiological Sensing: A Case Study of Sleep and Performance
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/harnessing-web-population-scale-physiological-sensing-case-study-sleep-performance/

Instead of downloading your invoice every month, you can now opt-in to receive your invoice statement attached to your monthly billing email.

In addition, you can configure additional recipients for this email. Save time and send the invoice directly to your accounts payable department.

—

Read step by step instructions on how to configure this at the announcement post on the Azure blog here:

• AZURE BLOG: Now you can get Azure invoices emailed directly to your inbox instead of downloading them
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-email-invoices/

In November 2015, we opened the Cyber Defense Operations Center (CDOC) to bring together the company’s cybersecurity specialists and data scientists in a 24×7 facility to combat cyber adversaries.

In the year since opening, we have advanced the policies and practices that accelerate the detection, identification and resolution of cybersecurity threats, and have shared our key learnings with the thousands of enterprise customers who have visited the CDOC. Today, we are sharing a Cyber Defense Operations Center strategy brief that details some of our best practices for how we Protect, Detect and Respond to cyberthreats in real time.

Read more about Microsoft’s Best Practices for CyberSecurity here:

• SECURITY BLOG: Microsoft’s Cyber Defense Operations Center shares best practices
  https://blogs.microsoft.com/microsoftsecure/2017/01/17/microsofts-cyber-defense-operations-center-shares-best-practices/

Download the Cyber Defense Strategy Brief here:

• DOCUMENT: Cyber Defense Operations Center strategy brief
  http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/6/8/4680DFC2-7D56-460F-AD41-612F1A131A26/Microsoft_Cyber_Defense_Operations_Center_strategy_brief_EN_US.pdf

Earlier this month we released the Power BI report web part for SharePoint Online.

This is an out-of-the-box web part for SharePoint Online that enables SharePoint authors to embed Power BI reports directly in SharePoint Online pages with no code required.

Taken from the announcement page:

The way the feature works is simple. Follow the process below to use this feature.

1. Publish your Power BI report to your Power BI account 
2. Get the URL to the report 
3. Add the Power BI (preview) web part to your SharePoint Online page
4. Paste the URL of the report when prompted
5. To finish, save and publish your page!

What makes the web part special is that it does a number of things from a security & authentication standpoint:

• The user’s account must have access to both the SharePoint site and the Power BI site.
• The user’s security context is used to load the data from Power BI.  Only data that the user has access to is displayed.

Note: The Power BI report web part requires all the viewers to have a Power BI Pro license.

For more on this feature, including the link to the TechCommunity, go to the blog announcement:

• POWER BI BLOG: Integrate Power BI reports in SharePoint Online
  https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/integrate-power-bi-reports-in-sharepoint-online/
• DOCUMENTATION: Power BI Web Part for SharePoint Online
  https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=825698
• DISCUSSION THREAD: Power BI Community
  http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Power-BI-Report-web-part-for-SharePoint-Online-Discussion/m-p/125091

Windows has evolved. Simplify Windows 10 management and lower the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with the Microsoft Cloud.

See how Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) and Windows 10 can be used together to ease procurement, simplify provisioning and lower TCO through modern management & security, and deliver cloud-based updates without the need for an on-premises infrastructure.

• DOWNLOAD: Infographic: Simplify Windows 10 management and lower TCO
  https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Infographic-Simplify-37e77674

Pre-register by February 28 for Microsoft Ignite — you’ll be able to jump the line and register on March 8th.

• Pre-register here.
  https://msignite2017.eventcore.com/