Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Office Scripts is generally available. Office Scripts is an automation feature-set in Excel for the Web that allows users with all levels of programming experience to automate their repetitive workflows.

Basically, if you regularly acquire an Excel spreadsheet that you need to reformat (hiding columns, set conditional formatting on cells, add charts, etc.):

1. Office Scripts can record the settings you apply.
2. The script is saved to OneDrive.
3. The user can edit the script directly within Excel for the Web using the built-in Code Editor
4. The script can be rerun on on future spreadsheets, applying all your formatting & changes

Office Script is available for Office 365 E3/E5. (Note: Office Scripts is not available for GCC/non-commercial clouds & there is no immediate roadmap – yes, I’ve pinged the Program Manager)

For a demo on how this is done:

• VIDEO: What’s new in Office Scripts for Excel on the web
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94YYO3xiSOI

Read more about the release here:

• RELEASE: Office Scripts is now generally available
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/office-scripts-is-now-generally-available/ba-p/2352548
• DOCS: Office Scripts documentation – Office Scripts
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/scripts/

Today, Microsoft announced the new “Power Apps Developer Plan”, unveiled at Microsoft Build 2021.

• All the features
• All the Dataverse
• All the sharing
• Free for dev and test.

Forever.

Power Apps Developer Plan

What’s included
You get a free developer environment to develop and test apps, including support for premium and custom connectors, Dataverse, and additional developer environments.

• Power Apps—Create and test unlimited apps with Dataverse and premium connectors.
• Power Automate—Automate workflows between applications and services.
• Dataverse—Build a data model that all your apps can use.
• Connect Your Data—Connect to data sources using connectors or with Custom APIs.
• Pick your tool—Use Power Apps, Power Automate, Dataverse, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and Azure services to create the solutions you need.

The Power Apps Developer Plan is restricted to building and testing apps to validate prior to production. To distribute apps for production purposes, choose a plan from the Power Apps pricing page.

Note:  There are a few limitations: (So people don’t use Developer Plan for production use)

• All users on this plan will see a banner saying the app is in dev/test when using.
• The environments will have infra limits that are plenty for user testing but not prod scale (no HA/DR, about 2 millions rows max, deleted after inactivity, etc)

For details on how to take advantage of this new offer, visit:

• SIGN UP: Power Apps Developer Plan
  https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/developerplan/
• DOCS: Power Apps Developer Plan – Power Apps
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/developer-plan

We are excited to announce the public preview of Azure Security Center (ASC) integration with GitHub Actions… our first steps towards building shared tooling and experience by extending the reporting from container scans into Azure Security Center.

With this tighter integration we are allowing DevSecOps teams to run vulnerability scans, resolve findings, and visualize the security posture of workflows within their CI/CD pipeline.

CI/CD vulnerability scanning of container images helps shift security left by offering increased visibility and control and by providing CI/CD scan assessments to Azure Security Center (ASC). Now, your security teams can access a holistic, 360-degree view across CI/CD pipelines and runtime resources through CI/CD scan assessments in ASC. DevSecOps teams will now receive greater, shared insight into development practices and potentially vulnerable code, containers, and infrastructure.

Going forward, any workflow that pushes a container image without a scan action present will alert the user with an ASC recommendation. Each ASC recommendation details the affected resources along with a proposed remediation path and steps to help each path achieve a “healthy” state. Below are details on how to enable the new capabilities across GitHub and Azure to get you started with your DevSecOps journey.

…

For more details on what the workflow looks like & how to enable this feature, visit:

• Kickstart collaborative DevSecOps practices with GitHub and Azure
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-developer-community-blog/kickstart-collaborative-devsecops-practices-with-github-and/ba-p/2357730

Have you ever wanted to install apps & tools on your Windows computer with a simple command like:

winget install PowerToys

Y’can now with the Windows Package Manager 1.0.

We started a journey to build a native package manager for Windows 10 when we announced the Windows Package Manager preview at Microsoft Build 2020. We released the project on GitHub as an open-source collaborative effort and the community engagement has been wonderful to experience! Here we are today at Microsoft Build 2021…

We are excited to announce the release of Windows Package Manager 1.0!

WINDOWS PACKAGE MANAGER 1.0

CLIENT
The winget client is the main tool you will use to manage packages on your machine. The image below displays winget executed in Windows Terminal via PowerShell. You can see the list of available commands used to manage packages and work with manifests. You can search for a package (search looks at the name, moniker, and tags) using winget search vscode. Installing something on your machine is as easy as winget install PowerToys. You can check for upgrades to packages with winget upgrade or you can just upgrade everything with winget upgrade --all. Are you setting up a new machine? Be sure to winget export packages.json on your current machine (and copy the file to your new machine) so you can winget import packages.json on the new machine. With winget list you can see everything installed in Add / Remove Programs, and you can winget uninstall <SomePackage> to remove it from your system. You can learn more about the commands and syntax from our documentation.

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More information – including how to get it – is available in the announcement post below.

• ANNOUNCEMENT: Windows Package Manager 1.0
  https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-package-manager-1-0/

Live Security and Compliance Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Microsoft Product Experts

Register Now: Tuesday, June 1, 2021, 11:00 AM – 11:45 AM CDT

Microsoft Security and Compliance thought leaders Matthew Littleton / @Matthew Littleton (CYBERSECURITY)  (Microsoft Global Advanced Compliance Specialist, and Retired Navy Captain) and Matt Soseman / @Matt Soseman  (Microsoft Senior Security Architect) will offer unique insights and a depth of knowledge around the Microsoft Security product suite during this 45 minute open forum Q&A.

These leaders will bring nearly 25 years at Microsoft to bear while answering questions pertaining to product capabilities and updates, feature availability, and applications for federal cybersecurity mandates such as the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) and DFARS 7012. Questions may cover the following and much more:

• Data Loss Prevention
• Microsoft Intune
• Azure Active Directory and Conditional Access
• Microsoft Cloud App Security
• Microsoft 365 GCC & GCC High

In this Ask Me Anything (AMA) style session, Matt and Matt will address audience members and their respective scenarios deploying in the Microsoft Government Cloud to better prepare teams looking to protect corporate and US Government Data. 

The goal of this session is to address contractors questions in light of the recent Cloud Security and Compliance Series event where both Matt and Matt have addressed topics such as “CMMC Compliance in the Microsoft Sovereign Cloud” and “Meeting CMMC Level 3 with Microsoft Intune / Meeting CMMC with Microsoft Information Protection (MIP)”.

Registration here:

• Live Security and Compliance Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Microsoft Product Experts
  https://www.bigmarker.com/summit-7-systems/Microsoft-Security-Compliance-AMA?utm_bmcr_source=PublicSector

The Security Methodology for the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework is the CISO/CIO’s view for effectively integrating with the business + organizing/focusing security disciplines in your program.

Recently released, the Secure methodology provides a vision of the complete end state to guide the improvement of your security program over time. The following infographic provides a visual mapping of the key ways that security integrates with the larger organization and the disciplines within security.

To access this guidance, visit:

• http://aka.ms/CAFSecure

Use Microsoft 365 usage analytics within Power BI to gain insights on how your organization is adopting the various services within Microsoft 365. You can visualize and analyze Microsoft 365 usage data, create custom reports and share the insights within your organization. You can also gain insights into how specific regions or departments are using Microsoft 365.

Microsoft 365 usage analytics gives you access to a pre-built dashboard that provides a cross-product view of the last 12 months and contains a number of pre-built reports. Each report provides you with specific usage insights. User-specific information is available for the last full calendar month.

The data model that powers the template app includes user attributes from Active Directory, enabling the ability to pivot in certain reports. The following Active Directory attributes are included: location, department, and organization.

See Enable Microsoft 365 usage analytics to start collecting data.

Microsoft 365 usage analytics contains a number of reports detailed in the following sections.

You can access detailed reports for each area by selecting the data tables. You can view all pre-built reports by selecting the tabs at the bottom of the site. For more detailed instructions, read Navigating and utilizing the reports and Customizing the reports.

You install it as a Global Administrator into Power BI by following the instructions below: (You need to have a Power BI Pro license to use the Template)

• Enable Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/usage-analytics/enable-usage-analytics

Docs on how to use Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics, how to modify the reports/dashboards, etc. is here:

• Power BI-based Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/usage-analytics/usage-analytics

If you have to download the Power BI Template used for Usage Analytics, download it here:
(We recommend you depend on the “Get Apps” entry for Power BI apps because the template is updated regularly and downloading the .PBIT will leave you stuck at one release.)

• Power BI Template for Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics (.PBIT)
  https://download.microsoft.com/download/7/8/2/782ba8a7-8d89-4958-a315-dab04c3b620c/Microsoft%20365%20Usage%20Analytics.pbit

Got Office 365 E3/E5/G3/G5 and using Microsoft Teams? Wanna make your own webinars… for no extra cost?

INTRODUCING MICROSOFT TEAMS WEBINARS
Any user of Microsoft Teams with an E3/E5 or G3/G5 license can now make & schedule their own webinars at no additional cost through the very Teams client that they use every day. (Pending rollout to their Office 365 tenant) 

This means that licensed Teams users can now:

• Schedule a Teams Webinar on their own
• Have attendees “register” for your meeting/webinar through a auto-generated (customizable) registration web page
• Send out Calendar (.ICS) appointments to registrants
• Automatically send updated appointments if the date/time details change as needed
• Run webinars for up to 1000 interactive users (voice-enabled) & identify participation levels based on registered users
  (Attendees above 1000 transition to “spectators” that can not use voice but can participate in written Q&A)
• Transfer participants lists directly into Dynamics 365 Marketing to run campaigns
• Export participants lists for other CRM solutions

For more details about Teams Webinars, please see the following resources:

• Announcement: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2021/05/11/introducing-webinars-in-microsoft-teams-easy-professional-webinars-to-engage-customers/
• Video Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alMGNVGE1pI
• Getting Started Guide: https://teamworktools.azurewebsites.net/assets/TeamsWebinarsGetStartedGuide.pdf

Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) is now in public preview!  Learn how to make it easier for your organization to manage access to Azure resources at scale:

The public preview of Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) in Azure builds on Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to make it easier for organizations to manage access to Azure resources at scale. This first release of ABAC supports Azure Storage with resource attributes. Many of you are familiar with Azure RBAC role assignments, which enable you to grant access to one Azure resource or all resources in a hierarchy.

We’ve received the following feedback for Azure RBAC.

• In some scenarios, you need more fine-grained access control than what RBAC offers. For example, you need to grant access to some, not all, resources in a hierarchy.
• You need to make access control decisions based on business information, such as a resource’s deployment stage or a user’s project. Such information is commonly referred to as attributes or tags and using attributes in access control decisions is commonly referred to as ABAC.
• As your Azure usage grows, you need to manage access with relatively fewer role assignments.

With this preview, you can now write ABAC conditions in Azure role assignments. An ABAC condition consists of one or more target actions and a corresponding logical expression using attributes. When a user tries to perform the targeted action in an ABAC condition, the logical expression must evaluate to true to grant access. By using attributes as additional inputs into access control decisions, you can achieve even more fine-grained access control than what RBAC offers with relatively fewer role assignments.

…

Read the full announcement here:

• Introducing Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) in Azure – Microsoft Tech Community
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-active-directory-identity/introducing-attribute-based-access-control-abac-in-azure/ba-p/2147069

Some people learn best with audio. Presenting “Learn Azure in a Month of Lunches”, the audiobook:

• Chapter 1: Before you begin – Azure – Month of Lunches (microsoft.com)
• Chapter 2: Creating a virtual machine – Azure – Month of Lunches (microsoft.com)
• Chapter 3: Azure Web Apps – Azure – Month of Lunches (microsoft.com)
• Chapter 4: Introduction to Azure Storage – Azure – Month of Lunches (microsoft.com)
• Chapter 5: Azure Networking basics – Azure – Month of Lunches (microsoft.com)
• Chapter 6: Azure Resource Manager – Azure – Month of Lunches (microsoft.com)
• Chapter 7: High availability and redundancy – Azure – Month of Lunches (microsoft.com)
• Part 2: High availability and scale – Azure – Month of Lunches (microsoft.com)
• Chapter 8: Load-balancing applications – Azure – Month of Lunches (microsoft.com)
• Chapter 9: Applications that scale – Azure – Month of Lunches (microsoft.com)
• Chapter 10: Global databases with Cosmos DB – Azure – Month of Lunches (microsoft.com)
• Chapter 11: Managing network traffic and routing – Azure – Month of Lunches (microsoft.com)
• …and 12 more chapters.

Listen to the audio book below:

• AUDIOBOOK: Azure – Month of Lunches https://audio.microsoft.com/azuremonthoflunches

Get the free eBook at:

• EBOOK: Azure in a month of lunches
  http://aka.ms/monthoflunches