Customize and configure shared devices for Firstline Workers at scale

Customize and configure shared devices for Firstline Workers at scale

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Howdy folks,


Firstline Workers have been at the forefront of our economy over the past several months as they perform critical jobs like maintaining critical supply chains, serving as first responders, and caring for the most vulnerable. It is more important than ever to empower these workers with tools and technology designed to support their unique scenarios.


 


One example of a specific Firstline scenario is the need be able to share tablets or mobile devices between shifts while maintaining security and compliance. In April, we announced the preview of shared device sign-out for Android and iOS. Once a device is provisioned into a shared device mode, Firstline Workers can sign out of all web browser sessions and applications that have been configured to support this feature, such as Microsoft Teams, with a single click.


So today I am excited to announce three new preview capabilities that make it easier to set up and customize how Firstline Workers use shared devices.



  • Provisioning shared devices at scale with Microsoft Endpoint Manager –  Microsoft Intune and Configuration Manager are now part of a unified management platform known as Microsoft Endpoint Manager. You can choose to enroll your Android Enterprise (AE) dedicated devices into Microsoft Intune with Azure AD shared mode automatically configured.


 


Pick the enrollment profile in Intune console for “Android Enterprise dedicated device with Azure AD shared modePick the enrollment profile in Intune console for “Android Enterprise dedicated device with Azure AD shared mode


 


 


Pick up a new device (or factory reset) and just get started on enrollment. Just following a few on-screen steps, you can complete the enrollment.Pick up a new device (or factory reset) and just get started on enrollment. Just following a few on-screen steps, you can complete the enrollment.


 



  • Device-based Conditional Access for shift workers – You can now enforce Zero Trust security policies using device compliance to secure corporate data for users signing in and out of apps on shared devices.


Android-FLW-RequireCADevicePolicy.PNG


 



  • Customized sign-in experience with Microsoft Managed Home Screen You can now use Managed Home Screen to provide a simple sign-in and sign-out experience across all apps, including Microsoft Teams, that participate with shared device sign-out. Customize a single screen for users to easily sign-in, configure a session PIN for the duration of the shift, and configure timers for automatic sign-out for added security. To see the full list of configurations available with Managed Home Screen, see the documentation.


 


Customize the device sign-in experience for any Firstline Worker.Customize the device sign-in experience for any Firstline Worker.


 


Check out our documentation on how to enroll in shared device mode to get started today.


 


As always, we hope you’ll try out the new features and share feedback through the Azure Forums or by following @AzureAD on Twitter. 


 


Best regards,


 


Alex Simons (@Alex_A_Simons


Corporate Vice President of Program Management 


Microsoft Identity Division 


 


 


Learn more about Microsoft identity: 



 

Azure Marketplace new offers – Volume 96

Azure Marketplace new offers – Volume 96

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.











We continue to expand the Azure Marketplace ecosystem. For this volume, 83 new offers successfully met the onboarding criteria and went live. See details of the new offers below:

























































































































































































































































































































































Applications


ACSIS Cloud Based Traceability Solutions.png

ACSIS Cloud Based Traceability Solutions: The ACSIS cloud platform provides traceability of products, inventory, and assets to enable real-time visibility and optimization across your organization’s extended supply chain.


ADISIGHT-DDS.png

ADISIGHT-DDS: Designed for production planning personnel in the manufacturing industry, ADISIGHT-DDS calculates and simulates the delivery date of materials and parts based on demand prospects and priorities set for each order. This app is available only in Japanese.


AUDIT MASTER.png

AUDIT MASTER: Available only in Japanese, AUDIT MASTER collects, monitors, and audits database operation logs, enabling users to manage multiple database environments, including Microsoft Azure SQL Database.


Azure Sentinel-as-a-Service.png

Azure Sentinel-as-a-Service: AccountabilIT’s round-the-clock security operations center (SOC) connects to your Microsoft Azure Sentinel deployment to quickly strengthen your organization’s security posture and provide enhanced protection against threats.


Azure Sentinel Cognitive SOC Service.png

Azure Sentinel Cognitive SOC Service: Powered by Microsoft Azure Sentinel, Wipro’s Cognitive SOC-as-a-Service delivers managed detection and response from Wipro’s 15 global cyber defense centers. Rapid deployment with pre-built integrations and use cases helps customers realize value within days.


B12 for K12.png

B12 for K12: Tightly integrated with Microsoft Teams, B12 for K-12 is a communication platform for K-12 schools that links the four key stakeholders in education (student, educator, school management, and guardians) to support educational goals and outcomes.


BankBI SAAS.png

Bank-BI SAAS: Bank-BI is an enterprise-wide business intelligence and analytics solution that offers sophisticated capabilities for data modeling, reporting, query, and analysis while collecting data from numerous disparate sources in a central repository.


Bever Pharmaceutical Manufacturing.png

Bever Pharmaceutical Manufacturing: Built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Microsoft Power Platform, Bever Pharma is a process control system for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Facilitate digital transformation by boosting productivity, reducing ongoing costs, and increasing patient, doctor, and partner satisfaction.


Billing subscription to Sepago for Nerdio Manager.png

Billing subscription to Sepago for Nerdio Manager: Nerdio Manager for Windows Virtual Desktop enables you to deploy, manage, and autoscale your desktop environments. Operationalize large deployments, reduce Microsoft Azure costs with scheduled and event-driven autoscaling, and speed up deployments with Nerdio.


Cerenade eCMS Offer.png

Cerenade eCMS Offer: Cerenade’s eCMS is comprehensive case management software for attorneys and paralegals. The solution helps users manage cases, clients, forms, processes, reports, and billing to help their practices run more efficiently and effectively.


Check-in & check-out online for hotels.png

Check-in & check-out online for hotels: The NeoCheck Onboarding platform enables customers to check in online from any device before arriving at a hotel. The process is simple, guided, and fast (approximately 40 seconds), and it complies with data collection security requirements.


Claimbox.png

Claimbox: Claimbox provides scalable service to manage millions of claims for the insurance industry. Available only in Polish, Claimbox helps decrease the cost of indemnities and claims operations while delivering an outstanding digital experience for customers.


Clobba.png

Clobba: Clobba is a reporting and analytics module for monitoring call quality, user adoption, employee productivity, call costs, and SIP trunk utilization in Microsoft Teams. The solution is fully customizable for user requirements, whether they are IT administrators or business users.


Covid19 Health Check.png

COVID-19 Health Check: Built on Microsoft Power Apps and SharePoint Online and integrated with Microsoft Teams, InfoTech’s COVID-19 Health Check application is designed to help companies cope with the COVID-19 pandemic within their walls, both physical and virtual.


Dasha Voice AI Platform.png

Dasha Voice AI Platform: Dasha.AI’s Voice AI Platform helps automate your business with conversational, human-like voice artificial intelligence. Deliver an exceptional customer experience while generating leads, gleaning actionable insights, and growing your sales pipeline.


Document management.png

Document Management: Developed by SimbioX IT Consulting, GED Fast is a cloud or on-premises SharePoint-based solution that enables you to quickly scan, organize, and search business documents using any device. This app is available only in Portuguese.


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factoHR: Designed for organizations of any size across all industries, factoHR is a comprehensive human resources management system that covers recruitment, onboarding, time tracking, payroll and leave management, analytics, and more.


Foglight for Databases.png

Foglight for Databases: Quest’s Foglight for Databases helps users detect and resolve performance issues by providing a single view into complex environments and enabling database administrators to quickly pinpoint issues before they spiral out of control.


Gamma People Centric Security (DLP) for Teams.png

Gamma People Centric Security (DLP) for Teams: Gamma is a people-centric security solution that continuously monitors employee actions in real time and delivers event-driven security awareness training with patent-pending AI technology.


Human Resources.png

Human Resources: SimbioX IT Consulting’s ContrataFast human resources solution helps reduce the time spent onboarding new employees by enabling them to submit all their documentation digitally from any device. This app is available only in Portuguese.


Immuta.png

Immuta: Immuta’s award-winning automated data governance platform creates trust across data security, legal, compliance, and business teams so that they can work together to ensure timely access to critical business data with minimal risks.


iNeurons.png

iNeurons: Built on Microsoft Azure, iNeurons helps small and midsize manufacturing organizations with intelligent manufacturing and digital transformation services, data acquisition from machines and sensors, data calculation, and decision analysis. This app is available only in Traditional Chinese.


Infosys Virtual Assistant.png

Infosys Virtual Assistant: Infosys Virtual Assistant is a bot that features multiple artificial intelligence and natural language processing capabilities and uses a wide range of Microsoft services, including Bot Channels Registration, Azure App Service, Azure Application Insights, Azure Cognitive Services, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Storage.


Insite LMS - The enterprise construction platform.png

Insite LMS – The enterprise construction platform: The Insite LMS enterprise construction platform drives efficiency in industrial construction sites by supporting logistics, material tracking, site management, deviations, and project progress.


Fast Intranet.png

Intranet Fast: Available only in Portuguese and integrated with Microsoft 365, SimbioX IT Consulting’s Intranet Fast is a cloud or on-premises SharePoint-based solution to help you engage employees across more than 30 communication, productivity, security, and governance capabilities.


iRep Security.png

iREP Security: iREP Security is a mobile reporting, maintenance tracking, and monitoring system that uses GPS trackers and live image captures to enable your investigating officers and guards to write incident reports on-site.


Knowledge Mining Solution.png

Knowledge Mining Solution: WinWire Technologies’ Knowledge Mining Solution for healthcare organizations uses Azure Cognitive Search, Azure Cognitive Services, and Azure Text Analytics for health to uncover latent insights. The solution ingests unstructured data and enriches medical terms with ICD-100-CM and RxNorm codes.


Manapro Solutions.png

Manapro Solutions: Manapro Consultants offers its Infrastructure Assurance service and other critical business services on Microsoft Azure. Available only in Spanish, this offering includes consulting on secure and scalable Azure deployments tailored to your organization’s remote growth needs.


Markup ERVS - Electronic Remote Voting System.png

Markup ERVS – Electronic Remote Voting System: Markup ERVS is a secure electronic remote voting system that enables elected officials to record their vote in committee, council, or plenary proceedings from authenticated devices and from any location with a reliable internet connection.


Mountable Hybrid Image Backup to Azure with BMR.png

Mountable Hybrid Image Backup to Azure with BMR: UltraBac’s Hybrid Image Backup solution uses a mountable image format that can be written to any disk or online storage media type. Users can schedule backups at any required frequency, with no limit to the number of incremental backups between full backups.


NCR Transaction Processing - Authentic.png

NCR Transaction Processing – Authentic: Whether you need to add mobile payment and e-commerce capabilities, build a multichannel payments solution, create a payments hub, or develop omnichannel payment services, NCR Corporation’s Authentic empowers you to deliver great customer-focused services now and in the future.


NeoFace Reveal.png

NeoFace Reveal: NEC’s NeoFace Reveal is a latent facial recognition and identification application that enables government agencies to detect and identify facial images by quickly searching against small to very large image databases.


NOREN.png

NOREN: NOREN is a content management system (CMS) that supports day-to-day website operations with out-of-the-box CMS standards. This app is available only in Japanese.


On-Shelf Availability Measurement (SaaS).png

On-Shelf Availability Measurement (SaaS): Retail Solutions’ Retail Compass is an enterprise on-shelf availability measurement platform that enables almost real-time identification of macro and micro trends, allowing CPG suppliers and retailers to make strategic decisions that lead to optimized stock and the recapture of lost sales.


On Shelf Availability Solution.png

On Shelf Availability Solution: Bee Solutions’ On Shelf Availability solution determines whether products are being replenished on store shelves, identifies phantom inventory, and determines when extra inventory needs to be sent to stores. This app is available only in Portuguese.


OutBoard DataTiering.png

OutBoard DataTiering: Datavard OutBoard is a comprehensive suite designed to help you manage your complete data lifecycle and keep your SAP data growth under control. Reduce operational efforts and expenses, easily access archived data, and boost system performance with OutBoard.


Panzura.png

Panzura: Panzura transforms cloud storage into high-performance enterprise file systems. Whether you have five locations or 500, Panzura delivers one authoritative data source for all users, one set of data to manage, one security policy to implement, and one view over your entire file network.


Pass On Bag of Good - B2B.png

Pass On Bag of Good – B2B: Repasses Intermediation of Payments Ltda drives sustainability in fashion and other industries by providing businesses with co-branded “bags of good,” encouraging shoppers to fill the bag with clothing they no longer use so it can be resold and worn again. This offering is available only in Portuguese.


Socxo.png

Socxo: Socxo helps organizations achieve a balanced blend of branded, industry, and user-generated content for highly effective internal and external communications. The gamified platform provides deep insights around social media reach, content performance, engagement, and lead generation.


SOFTEL Cloud Security Management (Education).png

SOFTEL Cloud Security Management (Education): SOFTEL’s Cloud Security Management solution enables education industry users to identify shadow IT applications; run awareness, password security, and active antivirus campaigns; monitor, report, and score security; lock down desktop applications; and more.


SOFTEL Cloud Security Management (Finance).png

SOFTEL Cloud Security Management (Finance): SOFTEL’s Cloud Security Management solution enables finance industry users to identify shadow IT applications; run awareness, password security, and active antivirus campaigns; monitor, report, and score security; lock down desktop applications; and more.


SOFTEL Cloud Security Management (Government).png

SOFTEL Cloud Security Management (Government): SOFTEL’s Cloud Security Management solution enables government industry users to identify shadow IT applications; run awareness, password security, and active antivirus campaigns; monitor, report, and score security; lock down desktop applications; and more.


SOFTEL Cloud Security Management (Healthcare).png

SOFTEL Cloud Security Management (Healthcare): SOFTEL’s Cloud Security Management solution enables healthcare industry users to identify shadow IT applications; run awareness, password security, and active antivirus campaigns; monitor, report, and score security; lock down desktop applications; and more.


SOFTEL Cloud Security Management (Manufacturing).png

SOFTEL Cloud Security Management (Manufacturing): SOFTEL’s Cloud Security Management solution enables manufacturing industry users to identify shadow IT applications; run awareness, password security, and active antivirus campaigns; monitor, report, and score security; lock down desktop applications; and more.


SOFTEL Cloud Security Management (Retail).png

SOFTEL Cloud Security Management (Retail): SOFTEL’s Cloud Security Management solution enables retail industry users to identify shadow IT applications; run awareness, password security, and active antivirus campaigns; monitor, report, and score security; lock down desktop applications; and more.


SOFTEL Microsoft User Adoption (Education).png

SOFTEL Microsoft User Adoption (Education): SOFTEL’s User Adoption and Change Management portal and training services enable education industry Office 365 administrators to provide customer-led user adoption for Office 365, monitor users’ Microsoft product utilization, and monitor and report on overall consumption.


SOFTEL Microsoft User Adoption (Finance).png

SOFTEL Microsoft User Adoption (Finance): SOFTEL’s User Adoption and Change Management portal and training services enable finance industry Office 365 administrators to provide customer-led user adoption for Office 365, monitor users’ Microsoft product utilization, and monitor and report on overall consumption.


SOFTEL Microsoft User Adoption (Government).png

SOFTEL Microsoft User Adoption (Government): SOFTEL’s User Adoption and Change Management portal and training services enable government industry Office 365 administrators to provide customer-led user adoption for Office 365, monitor users’ Microsoft product utilization, and monitor and report on overall consumption.


SOFTEL Microsoft User Adoption (Healthcare).png

SOFTEL Microsoft User Adoption (Healthcare): SOFTEL’s User Adoption and Change Management portal and training services enable healthcare industry Office 365 administrators to provide customer-led user adoption for Office 365, monitor users’ Microsoft product utilization, and monitor and report on overall consumption.


SOFTEL Microsoft User Adoption (Manufacturing).png

SOFTEL Microsoft User Adoption (Manufacturing): SOFTEL’s User Adoption and Change Management portal and training services enable manufacturing industry Office 365 administrators to provide customer-led user adoption for Office 365, monitor users’ Microsoft product utilization, and monitor and report on overall consumption.


SOFTEL Microsoft User Adoption (Retail).png

SOFTEL Microsoft User Adoption (Retail): SOFTEL’s User Adoption and Change Management portal and training services enable retail industry Office 365 administrators to provide customer-led user adoption for Office 365, monitor users’ Microsoft product utilization, and monitor and report on overall consumption.


SOFTEL Skype for Business Auto Answer (Education).png

SOFTEL Skype for Business Auto Answer (Education): SOFTEL’s auto-answer solution for Skype for Business supports cases where education industry end users are not allowed to physically interact with the user interface to accept incoming calls. In most cases, this is to facilitate voice or video calls being instigated by external boards or examiners.


SOFTEL Skype for Business Auto Answer (Finance).png

SOFTEL Skype for Business Auto Answer (Finance): SOFTEL’s auto-answer solution for Skype for Business supports cases where finance industry end users are not allowed to physically interact with the user interface to accept incoming calls. In most cases, this is to facilitate voice or video calls in remote branches or secure locations.


SOFTEL Skype for Business Auto Answer (Government).png

SOFTEL Skype for Business Auto Answer (Government): SOFTEL’s auto-answer solution for Skype for Business supports cases where government industry end users are not allowed to physically interact with the user interface to accept incoming calls. In most cases, this is to facilitate voice or video calls being instigated by judiciaries and other legal entities.


SOFTEL Skype for Business Auto Answer (Healthcare).png

SOFTEL Skype for Business Auto Answer (Healthcare): SOFTEL’s auto-answer solution for Skype for Business supports cases where healthcare industry end users are not allowed to physically interact with the user interface to accept incoming calls. In most cases, this is to facilitate voice or video calls in rural patient clinics or patient at-home services.


SOFTEL Skype for Business Auto Answer (Manufacturing).png

SOFTEL Skype for Business Auto Answer (Manufacturing): SOFTEL’s auto-answer solution for Skype for Business supports cases where manufacturing industry end users are not allowed to physically interact with the user interface to accept incoming calls. In most cases, this is to facilitate voice or video calls in remote offices or overseas locations.


SOFTEL Skype for Business Auto Answer (Retail).png

SOFTEL Skype for Business Auto Answer (Retail): SOFTEL’s auto-answer solution for Skype for Business supports cases where retail industry end users are not allowed to physically interact with the user interface to accept incoming calls. In most cases, this is to facilitate voice or video calls being instigated in remote offices.


SOFTEL Teams Direct Routing (Education).png

SOFTEL Teams Direct Routing (Education): SOFTEL’s solution for the education industry supports direct routing and associated services in Microsoft Teams. The offering integrates with analog workflows and features SBC management and monitoring, user adoption, device management, and more.


SOFTEL Teams Direct Routing (Finance).png

SOFTEL Teams Direct Routing (Finance): SOFTEL’s solution for the finance industry supports direct routing and associated services in Microsoft Teams. The offering integrates with analog workflows and features SBC management and monitoring, user adoption, device management, and more.


SOFTEL Teams Direct Routing (Government).png

SOFTEL Teams Direct Routing (Government): SOFTEL’s solution for government supports direct routing and associated services in Microsoft Teams. The offering integrates with analog workflows and features SBC management and monitoring, user adoption, device management, and more.


SOFTEL Teams Direct Routing (Healthcare).png

SOFTEL Teams Direct Routing (Healthcare): SOFTEL’s solution for the healthcare industry supports direct routing and associated services in Microsoft Teams. The offering integrates with analog workflows and features SBC management and monitoring, user adoption, device management, and more.


SOFTEL Teams Direct Routing (Manufacturing).png

SOFTEL Teams Direct Routing (Manufacturing): SOFTEL’s solution for the manufacturing industry supports direct routing and associated services in Microsoft Teams. The offering integrates with analog workflows and features SBC management and monitoring, user adoption, device management, and more.


SOFTEL Teams Direct Routing (Retail).png

SOFTEL Teams Direct Routing (Retail): SOFTEL’s solution for the retail industry supports direct routing and associated services in Microsoft Teams. The offering integrates with analog workflows and features SBC management and monitoring, user adoption, device management, and more.


Spinify For Teams.png

Spinify For Teams: Spinify for Microsoft Teams is a sales gamification solution designed to motivate, engage, and celebrate your teams. Motivate teams with instant recognition and productivity gains, and increase sales performance with real-time competitions.


Symbio.png

Symbio: Ploetz + Zeller GmbH’s Symbio SaaS offering goes beyond traditional business process management (BPM) to serve as a company-wide integrated management system. Available in German and English, Symbio helps organizations visualize, optimize, and automate all their processes.


Teams Legacy Integration for Modern Workplace.png

Teams Legacy Integration for Modern Workplace: Mercato Solutions Limited’s Microsoft Teams integration offering modernizes your legacy systems by enabling them to work in Teams in a highly scalable Microsoft Azure environment. Bridge the gap between third-party systems and Teams, ensuring legacy systems are no longer a costly problem.


Thalamus.png

Thalamus: Thalamus is a web portal that provides interactive reporting to internal and external stakeholders. Designed for the healthcare sector, Thalamus meets the needs of those who want to keep their data private, while still being easy enough for anyone to use.


The Illusive Platform and Azure Active Directory.png

The Illusive Platform and Azure Active Directory: The Illusive Platform enhances the visibility and monitoring of privileged identities in Microsoft Azure Active Directory by identifying and eliminating pathways and credentials that attackers might exploit to move toward critical data.


Tiliter.png

Tiliter: The Tiliter Scan&Go Scale identifies products without barcodes to improve the self-checkout process. The solution uses artificial intelligence and computer vision to recognize any product without a barcode, including fresh produce, mixed nuts, dried fruit, candy, and bakery items.


TrackIT - Fleet management solution.png

TrackIT – Fleet management solution: TrackIT is an innovative solution that facilitates the management of machine fleets. Using IoT, big data, business intelligence, and AI technologies, TrackIT combines operational and managerial demands in a single platform. This app is available only in Portuguese.


Trio Enterprise.png

Trio Enterprise: Empower your service teams by backing them up with subject matters specialists and other experts throughout your organization. With Enghouse Contact Center in Microsoft Teams, users can answer calls, search databases, join specialist teams, subscribe to statistics reports, and more.


Violence detection.png

Violence detection: Oddity.ai B.V.’s deep learning algorithm accurately detects violence in live video content while accounting for anomalies and ensuring privacy by recording only activities, not human traits.


Wood ENVision.png

Wood ENVision: Wood’s ENVision provides real-time insights into emissions and carbon releases by streamlining and automating diverse types of data to provide a clear, auditable, and accurate view of emissions from any asset, organization, or city.



Consulting services


2 Day Azure Best Practices Assessment.png

2 Day Azure Best Practices Assessment: This two-day assessment from AccessIT Group includes a test of your Microsoft Azure environment against industry benchmarks, including 900 tests and more than 300 rule validations via read-only API access.


App Mod-New App Service SQL DB 3wk Imp.png

App Mod/New (.Net) App Service & SQL DB: 3wk Imp: InCycle Software’s .NET Application Modernization Accelerator for Microsoft Azure App Service and Azure SQL Database provides the key components for successful application modernization. Use cloud services and modern practices to drive business advantage with InCycle and Azure.


Azure 1-Wk POC_1.png

Azure: 1-Wk POC_1: In this one-week proof of concept, Phidiax will assess your organization’s environment and provide you with guidance and recommendations via a collaborative approach, ensuring you have a clear understanding of the next steps toward cloud development.


Azure Governance Workshops - (3) 2 hour sessions.png

Azure Governance Workshops – (3) 2 hour sessions: Champion Solutions Group’s Azure GlidePath for Governance Jumpstart Service delivers three two-hour workshops to help you embrace access, security, and governance in your Microsoft Azure environment.


Azure Synapse Analytics 1 Day Online Workshop.png

Azure Synapse Analytics 1 Day Online Workshop: CLOUD SERVICES’ workshop contains theoretical and practical tasks designed to help you start working with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, which combines enterprise data warehousing and big data analytics. Learn to solve analytics tasks more efficiently with CLOUD SERVICES.


Azure WVD with Zero Trust Model 2Wk Implementation.png

Azure WVD with Zero Trust Model 2Wk Implementation: This two-week implementation from Adfolks will quickly deploy and scale your Windows Virtual Desktops and applications on Microsoft Azure in a zero-trust security framework. Get built-in security and compliance features as well as simplified management with Adfolks and Azure.


Cyber Defense 365 2-Day Implementation.png

Cyber Defense 365: 2-Day Implementation: Protect your organization’s business data, operational infrastructure, and business identity against cyber threats with MICROSYS SRL’s Cyber Defense 365 enhanced security and data protection implementation.


DaaS on Azure Cloud 1 Week Implementation.png

DaaS on Azure Cloud: 1 Week Implementation: Adfolks’ DaaS on Azure includes build, configure, manage, and store functions while delivering safe, secure, and intelligent desktops that are ready to use.


Migrate on-premises SQL to Azure 1-Hr Briefing.png

Migrate on-premises SQL to Azure 1-Hr Briefing: In this free one-hour briefing, SSA Group will cover everything you need to know about migrating your on-premises Microsoft SQL Server database to Microsoft Azure. Deliverables include recommended steps you can take to start the cloud migration process.


Virtusa SQL DB Migration Assessment in 4 weeks.png

Virtusa SQL DB Migration Assessment in 4 weeks: Virtusa LTD’s accelerated assessment includes a report that will provide options to migrate your workloads to Microsoft Azure quickly and cost-effectively. This assessment also facilitates cloud migration at scale from multiple sources.



Tips for setting up sales forecasting in Dynamics 365 Sales

Tips for setting up sales forecasting in Dynamics 365 Sales

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Most sales organizations understand the value of maintaining an accurate sales forecast. However, many are still tracking forecasts with a time-consuming spreadsheet. This blog post provides some best practices for using forecasting capabilities in Dynamics 365 Sales to help simplify creating accurate forecasts, even during rapidly changing conditions.

Benefits of sales forecasting

Sales forecasting is a projection of the sales that your organization expects to make within a set timeframe. Having current and accurate sales forecasting empowers you to better allocate your resources, modify your strategy to address unforeseen circumstances, and provide critical coaching support to sellers that need it. Dynamics 365 Sales forecasting simplifies the bottoms-up method of sales forecasting and leverages the collective knowledge of the people closest to the field your sales team.

Here are our best tips for maximizing forecasting capabilities

Start with a template: You might think that building your forecast from scratch is the best approach, but we’ve heard from people that they spent a lot of time doing this only to realize later that they could’ve saved time by using one of the pre-built templates:

  • Org chart forecasting allows you to roll-up your forecast values through your organization’s reporting structure.
  • Product forecasting allows you to base the forecast on the products you expect to sell.
  • Territory forecasting aggregates values through the geographical territories that your company does business in. Configuring a territory forecast requires setting up territories in a hierarchy, assigning territories to individuals, and assigning accounts to territories.

Want more details? Check out our doc: Select a template for a forecast.

Use a descriptive name: Be sure to include the timeframe and other clearly identifiable details in your forecast name so that it’s easier to find later. For example, North America Widget Forecast Q2 2020.

Roll up the hierarchy to the right person: Keeping in mind that you’ll probably want to share your forecasting with your management chain, be sure to put that person’s name at the top of the forecast hierarchy. It’s straightforward to do this just select the right entity type when you set up the forecast and see a quick preview to ensure you made the right selection. We won’t go into the steps now, but check out our docs for details.

Pick the right forecast timeframe (or timeframes): With Dynamics 365 Sales, you can configure multiple forecasts each with different timeframes, which is handy to address different reporting period needs such as monthly or quarterly. We recommend picking either 12 periods for monthly and four periods for quarterly.

Tune the forecast for your organization: Although the templates provide an end-to-end forecast, you may want to modify the forecast so that it works just right. As an example, perhaps you want your finance team to see the whole forecast, you can grant them access through the security tab. For steps on how to do this and more, make sure to read the documentation.

Forecast categories are an important part of the forecast and we’ve provided the most used sales categories out-of-the-box. Deals are segmented into these categories based on the sellers’ confidence level that they will close. The pipeline, best case, and committed categories denote deals that are high, medium, and low confidence, respectively. You’re free to modify these categories to create forecast columns that make the most sense for your organization. Check out the docs for more details.

Keep your team accountable: In the template, we’ve labeled the committed forecast as an adjustable column. This means that your managers and sellers can submit their own forecast outcomes. Coupled with quotas, which we recommend you upload through Excel in the activation step, you’ll be able to inspire more accountability from your team.

Iterate, iterate, iterate: There are many more useful capabilities like filters, snapshots, and drill-downs so even if you later discover that you need to tune up your forecast, no problem. Templates allow you to quickly build a new forecast to tailor fit the experience to your sellers’ needs.

Tips for sales forecasting during a crisis or unpredictable event

Encourage your sales team to keep their sales data up to date more frequently: During uncertain times, sales managers need clear visibility into the rapidly changing pipeline to make the best decisions about where to focus their time and resources. Asking your sales team to input their data as soon as they learn it will help you spot trends in time to mitigate unforeseen outcomes.

Run your forecasts more often: Just as your sales team should be extra vigilant when keeping their sales data up to date, sales managers should run their forecasts more frequently too a couple times a day during a crisis isn’t too often. Because the data may be changing rapidly, running a forecast can help you identify issues more quickly.

Don’t be afraid to step away from your forecast temporarily to focus on building relationships: Forecasting can be difficult when unexpected events happen, and it may be more productive for your sales team to focus on maintaining customer relationships until circumstances become more predictable. Nurturing relationships now will no doubt help you plan later when the time is right, and circumstances become more favorable to projecting sales.

Next steps

You can learn more about sales forecasting in these posts:

Driving accountability with advanced forecasting in Dynamics 365 Sales

Predictive Sales Forecasting in Dynamics 365 Sales

The post Tips for setting up sales forecasting in Dynamics 365 Sales appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Democratizing IoT with IoT Plug and Play and New Pricing for Azure IoT Central

Democratizing IoT with IoT Plug and Play and New Pricing for Azure IoT Central

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Democratizing IoT for mainstream adoption is a core mission of Microsoft Azure IoT. While Azure IoT Central already simplifies IoT solution development, the recent addition of support for IoT Plug and Play and the introduction of a new Azure IoT Central pricing tier allows for the streamlined integration of devices into IoT solutions with an expanded set of scenarios.


iotc-pnp-1.JPG


Common IoT solution development challenges


IoT solution development typically starts by defining the device capabilities required for a solution. These are often solution specific and involve custom development on both the device and in the cloud. Device developers write code specific to the requirements, while cloud developers build corresponding cloud software to process and visualize the device data specific to the solution. This tight coupling (between device and cloud software) often results in little or no code reuse, preventing solutions from being future proof and generating cross dependencies that require close collaboration between device and cloud developers. In addition to software development challenges, hardware sourcing, integration, and ramping to production can take months, leading to long and expensive timelines.


 


IoT Plug and Play offers new approach to solution development


IoT Plug and Play introduces a new approach to building IoT solutions by decoupling the software on the device and solution in the cloud. With IoT Plug and Play, device developers describe the device capabilities using a declarative model. The type and shape of data the devices send to the cloud, as well as the interaction patterns for cloud to device communications, are modeled with the Digital Twin Definition Language (DTDL), an open-source language for describing models for IoT digital twins. The device model serves as a contract between the device and the IoT solution. Device developers can now build their device software independently of solutions. While solution developers can now build standard visualizations and experiences that can be reused across solutions. And as new IoT Plug and Play devices become available, these devices are easy to connect to existing solutions without any additional development


 



 


IoT Plug and Play support in Azure IoT Central


With IoT Plug and Play now supported in Azure IoT Central, solution builders can build end-to-end production-grade IoT solutions without having to write new code on the cloud or the device. Start by selecting/buying ready-to-use devices found in the Azure Certified Device Catalog. These devices can be provisioned in Azure IoT Central in minutes as their capabilities are described in the catalog and programmatically understood.


 


iotc-pnp-2.JPG


 


It gets even easier, as solution developers can start using simulated devices complete with rich dashboards and visualizations derived from the DTDL device model. Once devices are added, it’s just a few clicks to add monitoring, alerting, device management jobs, and more. Additionally, ISVs and partners building Line of Business (LOB) applications can easily package devices into turnkey solutions for specific verticals—e.g., retail, health, manufacturing, smart buildings, energy—by pairing Azure IoT Central solution templates with IoT Plug and Play-enabled devices, making it easy to scale to multiple deployments.


 


iotc-pnp-3.JPG


 


IoT Plug and Play accelerates solution development by pairing ready to use IoT Plug and Play-certified devices with ready to use IoT platforms like Azure IoT Central, eliminating the need to write embedded code and reducing the overall integration time from weeks/months to days/hours. As a result, IoT becomes easier, faster and more predictable when you start with IoT Plug and Play in Azure IoT Central.


 


$1 per year per device


Additionally, we’re excited to be announcing the introduction of a new pricing tier for Azure IoT Central. Customers have made it clear that Azure IoT Central’s simplified pricing model is a fantastic way to streamline budgeting for large deployments and deliver predictable monthly costs for IoT solutions. However, the existing pricing tiers don’t meet the needs of devices sending just a few messages per day. To address this, we are introducing a new pricing tier in December 2020 at less than $1 per year per device. This new tier, named ST0, is designed for devices sending messages as frequently as every two hours. This new flexibility enables new scenarios such as fleet management, smart metering, smart appliances, smart buildings, as well as the breadth of asset and condition monitoring or predictive maintenance. Look for details to show up on Azure IoT Central pricing in the week ahead.









































 

Standard Tier 0



Standard Tier 1



Standard Tier 2



Use case



For devices sending a few messages per day



For devices sending a few messages per hour



For devices sending a message every few minutes



Price per device per month



$0.08



$0.40



$0.70



Monthly device message allocation



400



5,000



30,000



Include free quantities per application



2 free devices (800 included messages)



2 free devices (10,000 included messages)



2 free devices (60,000 included messages)



Overage pricing per 1K messages



$0.070



$0.015



$0.015



 


Additional resources include


Holiday shopping season 2020

This article was originally posted by the FTC. See the original article here.

The holiday season is upon us and retailers are already preparing for what they hope will be a successful shopping season. Because of COVID-19, it’s likely that we’ll be going online to look for those perfect gifts. With so many deals around and what seem like eternal “Black Friday “ sales, it’s important to keep some online shopping tips in mind.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.