Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Okay – admit it.  There’s a lot about the cloud world that you’re probably lost on.  And meanwhile, IT is going into the cloud and requires cloud skill sets.  IDC predicts that in just 4 years, 1 in every 3 IT positions will be cloud-related.

What do you do?

 
Microsoft IT Pro Cloud Essentials
Microsoft is here to support IT professionals as they lead their companies to adopt the cloud with two new programs:

• Microsoft IT Pro Cloud Essentials
• Microsoft IT Pro Career Center

CLOUD ESSENTIALS
The free Microsoft IT Pro Cloud Essentials is an annual subscription that provides IT professionals with access to cloud services, training, support and certification. This includes:

• Free Azure credits to try cloud scenarios like backup, disaster recovery, security & dev/test.
  • Introductory offer:
    $100/mon for 3 months of Azure credit for anyone that enrolls
  • Limited time offer:  Must sign up before Sept 30, 2016
• Free Pluralsight subscription for on-line training.
• Free Priority support in the TechNet forums. (24 hour SLA)
• A free phone support incident for Azure or on-premises products.
• A free certification exam voucher. ^[2]
• Extended trials of Enterprise Mobility Suite and Office 365.

“CAREER” ESSENTIALS
Meanwhile, the FREE Microsoft IT Pro Career Center provides IT professionals with guidance in evolving their careers in the cloud:

• Map your IT cloud role.
• Follow a learning curriculum for your chosen cloud role.
• Evolve at your own pace & learn with your peers.
• Discover which cloud roles are in demand and their salary ranges.
• Get insights on your personality traits and how they matchup to cloud roles.
• Hear from industry experts about the trends in cloud roles and skills you need.

Sign up here:

• Microsoft IT Pro Cloud Essentials Program
  https://www.itprocloudessentials.com/

Read more about these new resources here:

• BLOG: Microsoft introduces free resources to help IT pros get started and build their careers in the cloud
  https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/2016/04/20/microsoft-introduces-free-resources-to-help-it-pros-get-started-and-build-their-careers-in-the-cloud/
• BLOG: Get started in the cloud with the new IT Pro Cloud Essentials
  https://blogs.office.com/2016/04/27/get-started-in-the-cloud-with-the-new-it-pro-cloud-essentials/

In case you’ve been living in a cave for the past month, (there’s been more coverage of this solution that I’ve seen in a long while) you should know that Microsoft has created & released in preview, a brand new automated workflow solution called “Microsoft Flow”.

WHAT IS IT?
It’s essentially a technology that allows end users to build automated workflows by connecting completely different services together – either from Microsoft or from 3rd parties.

For example, here’s a a workflow :

1. I get a mail from a VIP customer
2. It automatically posts the email to a Yammer Group for review
3. It send a text message to myself and others on the team
4. It adds an entry to a SharePoint todo list
5. Anytime this or anything else is added to this SharePoint todo list, it creates an action item in my personal Wunderlist

The big deal is that we just announced that Microsoft Flow will be integrated into SharePoint moving forward.  This means that this will become a key part of the SharePoint productivity experience.  Taken from the Future of SharePoint announcement:

SharePoint lists give teams the ability to access, share and collaborate around structured data. Customers regularly bring data from other systems into SharePoint lists to support business processes. Last week, we announced Microsoft Flow, a new service for automating workflow across the growing number of apps and SaaS services that business users rely on. Microsoft Flow includes connectors that enable you to exchange data between SharePoint and a variety of Microsoft and third-party services, and store and modify that data within SharePoint. We’re pleased to announce deep integration of SharePoint and Microsoft Flow, which allows you to create and launch Flows directly from a SharePoint list.

A summary of Flow’s capabilities are located at:

• Getting Started with Flow
  https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/getting-started/

For more on Microsoft Flow, check out the Preview site here:

• SITE: Microsoft Flow (Preview)
  https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/

Interested in social sentiment and how to turn it into opportunity?  Grab our new eBook on social media monitoring!

Taken from the download site:

For the record, we don’t think your brand ‘sux’.

In today’s social and mobile world, you may encounter negative sentiment at some point during the life of your business. In our latest e-book Your Brand Sux, we focus on social media monitoring and how to reap the rewards of customer feedback on social, even if it isn’t always positive.

…

Things you’ll learn:

• Tracking brand sentiment
• Tips to improve engagement
• Best practices for global brands
• And more tips for developing amazing customer experiences

Grab the book from the following link:

• DOWNLOAD: Your Brand Sux: A Social Media eBook on How to Turn Social Sentiment into Opportunity
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/your-brand-sux

Hey, are you looking for a nice primer on Office 2016?  Maybe something without all “the ethereal marketing fluff” from a 3rd party?

I found a nice eBook written by a 3rd party – a Microsoft MVP – called “Conversational Office 2016” that I think a lot of people will like.

It’s written for humans, a less so for tech geeks.  But in the vein of the “for Dummies” series of books, it’s very easy to understand and, as the title states, “conversational” in nature.

What I think is cool is that it explains the difference between Office 2016 (software) and Office 365 (subscription), while also going over the new capabilities/features of the Office 2016 suite.

As it’s described online as such:

Microsoft Office has gone through quite a few changes over the last few years since Office 365 intruded upon what was once a very simple suite of applications. Now, “Microsoft Office” is a confusing term often applied to any number of applications and online services, both free and via paid subscription. This book is designed to dispel any confusion, and make you smarter as you support and consume Office.

Grab it for free online now!

• DOWNLOAD: Conversational Office 2016 – Heather Ackmann (2.2MB, .PDF)
  http://conversationalgeek.com/books/conversational-office-2016

IoT all the things!  We just obtained the talents & properties of Solair – a company that has specific skills & solutions for providing massive scale monitoring, analytics, & insights-based optimization.

Today, I’m pleased to announce that Microsoft has acquired Solair, an Italian company that has been delivering innovative Internet of Things (IoT) services to customers across a number of industries, including manufacturing, retail, food & beverage and transportation. Solair shares our ambition for helping customers harness their untapped data and create new intelligence with IoT, and this acquisition supports our strategy to deliver the most complete IoT offering for enterprises. We’re excited about their technology and talent – and delighted to welcome them to the Microsoft team.

Solair’s IoT customization and deployment solutions, built on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, are engineered to help businesses in any industry utilize IoT to run more efficiently and profitably. For example, Solair has brought the power of IoT to the Rancilio Group’s full line of espresso machines, allowing the Italian manufacturer to remotely monitor machines resulting in greater efficiency across the supply chain. Using the power of cloud-based data and analytics, Solair has helped the Rancilio Group reduce costs and increase revenue.

…

IoT COFFEE MACHINES?
And because it’s buzzworthy, the media is highlighting Solair’s implementation of IoT-enabled Professional Grade Espresso Machines from Rancilio. 

It should be noted that Solair implemented this an many more IoT solutions.

• Solair IoT Success Stories:
  https://www.solaircorporate.com/en/iot-success-stories/

Read more on the announcement page:

• ANNOUNCEMENT (MICROSOFT): Microsoft acquires Solair to help customers harness the power of the Internet of Things
  https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/05/03/microsoft-acquires-solair-to-help-customers-harness-the-power-of-the-internet-of-things/
• ANNOUNCEMENT (SOLAIR): Microsoft acquires Solair for a new chapter in IoT
  https://www.solaircorporate.com/en/microsoft-acquires-solair/

Delve Analytics is wicked cool.  It provides end users with the ability to understand how you spend your time & maximize your productivity.

If you have Office 365, “Delve Analytics” can tell you:

• Who you correspond with the most
• How much time you spend on work relative to the rest of your activities
• Who is reading your emails

Most analytics are available from an Office 365 web page for your organization, likely ending with something like “/_layouts/15/me.aspx?v=analytics”.  See the snapshot above to see a part of my personal analytics page.

Here’s a video that shows how it can help people monitor their usage of time to be more productive:

DELVE ANALYTICS OUTLOOK ADD-IN
Additionally, here’s an example of the statistics that you can see about email that you’ve sent.  As you can see, reporting analytics is available directly within the sent email itself inside of Outlook.

More descriptions of what Delve Analytics can empower the end user with are available in this Delve Analytics Infographic:

• DATASHEET: Work Analytics for the Enterprise
  https://resources.office.com/rs/112-YPQ-597/images/Delve-Analytics-Infographic.pdf

For folks that are Office 365 Admins, here’s documentation on how to manage this feature for your users:

• SUPPORT: Delve Analytics for Office 365 Admins
  https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Delve-Analytics-for-Office-365-admins-77590915-6eb0-47a6-a72f-8116cfcfc2c7?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

For a nice write up about Delve’s capabilities, check out this article from Windows IT Pro:

• ARTICLE: Windows IT Pro: Delve Analytics
  http://windowsitpro.com/office-365/delve-analytics

If you’ve had a problem installing April’s Surface drivers or firmware, read on.

• ISSUE 1
  To fix Surface component Devices that did not get updated correctly in April 2016 update: (and you can tell by going into Device Manager and opening the FIRMWARE tab as shown below) Follow instructions here  (ignore comment about latest drivers from 4/19 – there is a new set of drivers on 4/29 that we want to use below:
  (<ks> Additionally, if you have a docking station, disconnect your device from it & run off your power supply during this process.)
• Surface Book Drivers and Firmware
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49497
• Surface Pro 4 Drivers and Firmware
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49498
  (Note the banged out devices that were not correctly installed) 
   
• ISSUE 2
  Some people reported problems with sleep/resume  (30 seconds to resume with no indication, crashing during resume, etc.) that were fixed by this issue.
   
  Read "Mark Toronto" reply on this thread about 45% down the full page.
   
  Quick test for this issue?   (from Command Prompt) run  SFC /SCANNOW  .   If that command reports back no errors, then you are good.   Otherwise follow the procedure to fix it.

(Thanks to coworkers Dave Berger & Dave Derwin for these details)

Billions of documents are stored on SharePoint sites—making it the center of content management and collaboration for over a decade. Whether enabling students to work together or helping a company transform its entire intranet, we have continually evolved SharePoint to meet the changing needs of the digital workplace.

Join us for a live online event to celebrate the launch of SharePoint 2016 and our future vision for SharePoint and SharePoint Online. Hear Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and CVP for OneDrive and SharePoint, Jeff Teper outline the importance of SharePoint and OneDrive for Business and discuss the latest in cloud innovation.

You will get an inside look into the new innovations coming to SP and ODB along with sneak peek demos of what’s coming. Whether you are an executive, IT pro, developer or SharePoint user, we have a lot to share and hope you’ll be part of this historic moment.

Take a moment to register for this event today.

• DATE:
  May 4, 2016
• TIME:
  9:30AM PDT
• REGISTRATION:
  https://vts.inxpo.com/Launch/QReg.htm?ShowKey=30784&AffiliateData=RTMBlog

• FEATURED SPEAKER:
  Jeff Teper
  Corporate Vice President, OneDrive and SharePoint, Microsoft

Recently we wrote this post about our support for BOTH the Democratic & Republican conventions.

We were very clear about goal of providing bipartisan support to both party’s conventions.  In the post, we stressed: (reformatted for clarity)

First, we act in a bipartisan manner and provide similar levels of support to both conventions. 

Second, we make a special effort, as do many companies in our industry, to provide the conventions with technology tools to help enable this part of the American democratic process to operate efficiently and accurately.

And third, we do not endorse either political party or its nominee.

We also explicitly outlined what we’ve committed to each party:

Based on our conversations with the Republican National Convention’s host committee and committee on arrangements, we decided last fall to provide a variety of Microsoft technology products and services instead of making a cash donation. 

For the Democratic National Convention, we’re providing access to similar Microsoft technology as well as some sponsorship of host committee activities.

The Microsoft technology for both conventions includes Office 365, Azure, Surface and other products.

For more on our support, visit our On The Issues blog post below:

• Microsoft’s support for the 2016 Republican and Democratic National Conventions
  http://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2016/04/29/microsofts-support-2016-republican-democratic-national-conventions/

More and more, employees are connecting inside and outside their organizations. IT infrastructure, however, isn’t always scaled to meet their needs.

This short guide provides answers to the biggest communications challenges CIOs face today.

You’ll find out how to:

• Manage disruptive technology
• Address time/money implementation challenges
• Reconcile product and service incompatibility
• Balance risks and benefits
• Solve for unique team needs

Download the guide, and get your teams started toward better collaboration—and greater productivity.

• DOWNLOAD: Free eBook, “5 Biggest CIO Communications Problems, Solved” (17pgs, 770k)
  https://resources.office.com/en-us-landing-5-biggest-cio-communications-problems-solved-ebook.html