Oracle Releases April 2021 Critical Patch Update

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

Oracle has released its Critical Patch Update for April 2021 to address 384 vulnerabilities across multiple products. A remote attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

CISA encourages users and administrators to review the Oracle April 2021 Critical Patch Update and apply the necessary updates.

Experiencing Data Access issue in Azure Portal for Log Analytics – 04/20 – Resolved

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

Final Update: Tuesday, 20 April 2021 16:16 UTC

We’ve confirmed that all systems are back to normal with no customer impact as of 04/20,15:00 UTC. Our logs show the incident started on 04/20,13:21 UTC and that during the 1 hour and 39 minutes that it took to resolve the issue some customers using Azure Log Analytics in East US Region may experience data access, data gaps, data latency and missed or delayed alerts.
  • Root Cause: The failure was due to a regression in one of the backend services.
  • Incident Timeline: 1 Hour & 39 minutes – 04/20,13:21 UTC through 04/20,15:00 UTC
We understand that customers rely on Azure Log Analytics as a critical service and apologize for any impact this incident caused.

-Jayadev

Highlights from 2021 release wave 1 for Dynamics 365

Highlights from 2021 release wave 1 for Dynamics 365

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

In today’s complex economic landscape, your business needs the latest digital capabilities to engage customers, connect people, insights, and processes across the organization, and grow revenues. 2021 release wave 1 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 continues our commitment to continuously deliver capabilities that help you adapt to rapid change in your industry, innovate and solve challenges collaboratively, and harness insights to stay focused on what matters.

Designed to help you build agility and resiliency into every layer of your business, this six-month release wave of new and updated capabilities spans end-to-end customer experience and commerce, including supply chain and finance.

Connected customer experiences

Customer experience is built on consistent and personalized experiencesfrom the customer’s first interaction with the company through purchase and support. Microsoft is committed to helping you deliver personalization at scale, starting with rich insights to better understand preferences and needs, coupled with orchestrated customer journeys that open doors to new ways to attract, engage, and delight customers with a more human and empathetic approach.

Microsoft customer data platform (CDP)

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insightsthe Microsoft customer data platform (CDP)connects data sources to gain the most comprehensive view of the customer, providing real-time insights that drive action in moments that matter.

This release wave extends audience and engagement insights for a more holistic view of customers. Audience insights enable every organization to unify and understand their customer data to harness it for intelligent insights and actions. Engagement insights enable individual and holistic interactive analytics over web, mobile, and connected products customer journey touchpoints. New turnkey integrations make it easier to share insights with other Microsoft or third-party applications, including Bing Ads, Google Ads, Facebook, HubSpot, Marketo, and many other popular services.

In addition, we’ve added AI-powered suggestions to help segment customers for more personalized messages, as well as features like predicted customer lifetime value and transaction and subscription churn to identify high-value and at-risk customers.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights works in lockstep with customer journey orchestration capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing (below) to power even more personalized experiences.

Read more 2021 release wave 1 highlights for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Voice empowers organizations to easily scale feedback capture for agile responses and personalized customer experiences, all in a robust feedback management solution. The new wave of updates enhances personalization and analysis capabilities, making it easier than ever to understand your customers and build better experiences.

Custom survey headers provide more flexibility and personalization in outreach to customers, while customer survey scoring empowers users to create and unlock the insights that matter to their business.

Read more about updates to Dynamics 365 Customer Voice.

Marketing

New customer journey orchestration capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing bring together the worlds of customer experience and marketing automation to engage customers in real-time based on interactions across marketing, sales, commerce, and service. And the enhanced cross-journey customer insights and analytics capabilities in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights help create more personalized experiences.

A completely redesigned email editor leverages AI to help you quickly create impactful, professional, and personalized content and deliver it at the right time. And enhanced integration with Microsoft Teams adds new webinar capabilities within Teams and the improved event participant engagement functionalities within Dynamics 365 Marketing.

Read more 2021 release wave 1 highlights for Dynamics 365 Marketing.

Sales

Release wave 1 updates for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales showcase the best of Microsoft productivity, collaboration, and intelligence in one business app to guide sellers to close deals faster.

Sellers can automate time-consuming sales tasks, such as creating and sending emails to customers, as well as updating customer records with up-to-date profile data from LinkedIn. Conversational intelligence automatically extracts actionable insights directly from sales calls.

An embedded Teams chat experience allows sellers to share Dynamics 365 information in Teams chats and channels and access linked Teams chats and channels within Dynamics 365. And an optimized seller workspace helps sellers understand pipeline health with out-of-box interactive charts and metrics and course-correct fading deals with AI-driven relationship and opportunity scores.

Explore more 2021 release wave 1 highlights for Dynamics 365 Sales.

Service

New capabilities help customer and field service teams deliver more consistent and engaging experiences, from the call center to on-site visits.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service is delivering the all-in-one contact center, now with first-party voice built on Microsoft Azure Communication Services and intelligent, skill-based, and omnichannel routing across channels. In addition, we are enhancing agent productivity capabilities in knowledge management, timeline, email, and agent dashboards.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service introduces a comprehensive experience for customers that will allow them to self-schedule service and rate technicians to ensure maximum satisfaction. Dynamics 365 Field Service, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, and Microsoft Teams enable field technicians to stay connected to work orders, information, and experts in real-time.

Learn more about updated capabilities to transform customer service and field service.

Connected operations

Complex organizations depend on the seamless flow of data, consistent business processes, and collaboration across finance and operations departments. This release wave further brings together people, data, insights, and processes with cross-app capabilities.

Commerce

Earlier this year, we announced the preview of business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce, bringing together business-to-consumer (B2C) and B2B e-commerce capabilities onto a single unified retail and commerce platform. The 2021 release wave 1 will further empower Dynamics 365 Commerce users to better understand, serve, and engage with their customers while efficiently running operations across the value chain.

B2B e-commerce capabilities previously in preview are now generally available, bringing intelligent and user-friendly features available to B2C e-commerce retailers to business partners. This release offers partner onboarding, order templates, quick order entry, account statement, invoicing management, and more. In addition, we are delivering native integration to Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service for unified customer engagement across touchpoints.

Other enhancements include new AI-powered intelligent shopping features for more personal and relevant shopping experiences, such as the ability to shop similar looks and similar descriptions. We’ve also invested in expanding omnichannel capabilities, including the ability for retailers to notify frontline workers on mobile devices through the Microsoft Teams mobile app.

Retailers will also be able to synergize task management between Dynamics 365 Commerce and Microsoft Teams to improve productivity. And support for curbside pickup scenarios allows customers to pick up orders with a safe, contactless experience.

Retailers can further connect experiences across the end-to-end shopper journey with Microsoft Cloud for Retail, announced at NRF 2021.

Read a comprehensive overview of updates to Dynamics 365 Commerce.

Fraud Protection

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection brings together account protection, payment protection, and loss prevention, providing a 360-degree view of the fraud landscape to merchants.

Two new features significantly improve insights that can help better detect suspicious activity. Velocities help customers prevent loss from fraud by using the relationships and patterns between transactions to identify suspicious activity. External calls let Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection ingest external data from third-party information providers or in-house data models.

Read more about updates to Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection.

Finance

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance provides real-time visibility into operations, predictive outcomes, and data-driven decisions that drive business agility and growth.

Release wave 1 brings intelligent cash flow forecasting to preview with automation based on predictive results. These updates include users’ experience out-of-the-box machine learning, including when customers are predicted to pay, forecasting the budget, and viewing forecasted cash positions based on actual accounts payable, accounts receivable and project transactions, and predicted outcomes.

Finance insights bring the power of AI into finance processes, with configurable and extensible models to help you accurately and intelligently predict your company’s cash flow. Globalization capabilities deliver localization for Egypt, general availability of a new electronic invoicing service, public preview of tax calculation service, and several other highly requested features.

Explore the full set of updates in the release plans.

Supply Chain

Major shocks to supply and demand over the past year have exposed the fragility of the global supply chain. Moving forward, organizations must architect resiliency into their supply chains with the capacity to scale operations to meet demand and proactively remedy disruptions, as well as streamline order fulfillment.

We are introducing new capabilities to ensure a smooth-running production line and improve day-to-day work on the factory floor. The new Cloud and Edge Scale Unit add-ins for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management enable companies to easily scale production and distribution during peaks and keep critical processes running at high throughput on the edge.

Additional updates increase the visibility of inbound goods and automate landed cost calculation, streamline and automate rebates and royalties, help overcome disruptions by managing changes in process manufacturing master data, and improve overall warehouse operating efficiency.

Read how these updates help you architect resiliency into your supply chain.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management, announced at Microsoft Ignite, is a new application that can help accelerate omnichannel transformation across order and fulfillment. It provides the flexibility companies need to capture orders from any order source, including e-commerce, marketplace, mobile apps, or traditional sources like electronic data interchange (EDI).

Service-based operations

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations unifies operational workflows to provide the visibility, collaboration, and insight needed to drive success across teams from sales to finance. Updates in release wave 1 deliver rich new experiences with the ability to forecast, use, and invoice non-stocked materials on projects. Also included is the ability to set up contractual commitments like billing methods and chargeability rules by task or by work breakdown schedule. Customers using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation will be able to upgrade to Dynamics 365 Project Operations.

Read more about updates to Dynamics 365 Project Operations.

Business management for small and midmarket organizations

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central provides a connected cloud business management solution for growing small to medium-sized businesses (SMB), bringing together finance, sales, service, and operations teams within a single application. Updates in this release wave help you adapt faster, work smarter, and perform better. New customer onboarding capabilities provide getting started checklists and in-app contextual guidance to help speed time to productivity for employees. Improved interoperability with Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel empowers a more collaborative, productive organization. In addition, this release wave expands availability to more countries, including India, Greece, Romania, and Turkey.

Discover the latest innovations for Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Human Resources

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources provides HR leaders with the tools needed to optimize workforce programs such as leave and absence, benefits, and compensation, as well as transform the employee experience with self-service. A new app for Microsoft Teams enables employees to view time-off balances and submit leave requests from within the unified collaboration workspace they already use. The app has been enhanced to include support for benefit notifications and a summary statement providing a consolidated view of benefits for employees. Other updates continue to broaden the human capital management (HCM) ecosystem through integration APIs and strategic partnerships.

Learn more about new and planned capabilities for Dynamics 365 Human Resources.

Catch up on the 2021 release wave 1

For a complete list of new capabilities, please review the Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform 2021 release wave 1 plans, as well as the overviews of new capabilities for Dynamics 365, integrated Microsoft Teams experiences, and new Power Platform capabilities announced at Microsoft Ignite in early March.

The post Highlights from 2021 release wave 1 for Dynamics 365 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

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

MCAS: Top 5 Queries You Need to Save

MCAS: Top 5 Queries You Need to Save

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

By: @erinboris @Caroline_Lee 


 


Hi Everyone!


 


After speaking with a few of our customers, we realized that some were not familiar or aware of their ability to leverage suggested and saved queries inside of Cloud App Security. In this blog, we will show you what we consider our top five use cases for custom queries!


 


But before we get into this great feature, below is how to navigate to it–


When you get to the Dashboard, click on Investigate and then Activity Log. At the top left, you will see “Select a Query.”


 


Caroline_Lee_1-1618494155199.png


 


Out of the box, users are given 10 built-in suggested queries they can start using immediately: Cloud App Security discovered app filters and queries. These queries include admin activities, failed logins, file and folder activities, password changes and quite a few more! Our customers use these queries as a starting point and customize them depending on their use cases. Aside from this immediate benefit, you can also create your own saved queries based on your typical investigations or customized environment.


 


Below, we have compiled a short list of use cases we have seen our customers use for custom queries that may help you as well.


 


Use Case #1: Someone has added an external account with a personal email to our Teams tenant, which goes against company policy, and we need to know who and when it was done.


 


Filters Needed:



  • Activity Type equals “Create User”

  • User name does not equal “On-Prem Directory Synchronization”


Caroline_Lee_2-1618494551485.png


Note: Ensure you run this query in your environment and exclude any accounts that may be a part of this process. We needed to exclude users associated with On-Prem Directory Synchronization and you may too


 


Use Case #2: We want to block the use of ActiveSync to push users to leverage updated authentication methods. Prior to denying the use of ActiveSync, we need to see who may be using it today and communicate before deprecation.


 


Filters Needed:



  • Device Type equals Mobile

  • Activity Type equals ”Log on: OrgIdWsTrust2:process” and “Failed Log On: OrgIdWsTrust2:process”


Note: OrgIdWsTrust:process is an activity type that surfaces ActiveSync data


 


Caroline_Lee_3-1618494659779.png


 


Use Case #3: We recently had a user that was potentially compromised, we forced them to reset their password but we want to ensure that they have completed this as directed.


 


Filters Needed:



  • Activity Type equals “Force User to change password on next logon” and “Change password


Caroline_Lee_4-1618494743082.png


 


Use Case #4: All of our administrators are given Windows laptops, we would like to see if any administrative activities have been conducted using a Mac.


 


Filters Needed:



  • User Agent String contains “MAC OS X”

  • Administrative Activity is “True”


Caroline_Lee_0-1618494860137.png


 


Use Case #5: As an administrator, I want to see all file downloads that were not blocked via session controls from an unmanaged device.


 


Filters Needed:



  • Activity type equals “Download File”

  • Applied Action does not equal “Blocked”

  • Source equals “Session Control”

  • Device Tag does not equal “Hybrid Azure Ad joined, Intune Compliant”


Caroline_Lee_1-1618494932341.png


 


For ease of use, all queries can be saved and can be accessed later under “Saved queries,” this will reduce the time and resources needed to reproduce the filters.


 


Caroline_Lee_2-1618494949982.png


 


Lastly, we wanted to point out that each of these queries can be turned into a policy in just a few clicks. Once your conditions have been perfected and all appropriate environment tweaks are made, you can select “New Policy from search” that will redirect you to the policy page. All filters and conditions will be automatically listed and all you have left is some naming, alerting details and after actions to complete your policy.


 


Caroline_Lee_3-1618495035772.png


 


We hope you found this article helpful and ask that you drop us a comment and let us know what custom policies you are using today!

Big data preparation in Azure Machine Learning – powered by Azure Synapse Analytics

Big data preparation in Azure Machine Learning – powered by Azure Synapse Analytics

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

Many customers who embark on a machine learning journey deal with big data, and need the power of distributed data processing engines to prepare their data for ML. By offering Apache Spark® (powered by Azure Synapse Analytics) in Azure Machine Learning (Azure ML), we are empowering customers to work on their end-to-end ML lifecycle including large-scale data preparation, featurization, model training, and deployment within Azure ML workspace without the need to switching between multiple tools for data preparation and model training. The ability to build the full ML lifecycle within Azure ML will reduce the time required for customers to iterate on a machine learning project which typically includes multiple rounds of data preparation and training. 


 


With the preview of managed Apache Spark in Azure ML, customers can use Azure ML notebooks to connect to Spark pools in Azure Synapse Analytics, to do interactive data preparation using PySpark. Customers have the option to configure Spark sessions to quickly experiment and iterate on the data. Once ready, they can leverage Azure ML pipelines to automate their end-to-end ML workflow from data preparation to model deployment all in one environment, while maintaining their data and model lineage. Customers who prefer to train in the Spark environment can choose to install relevant libraries such as Spark MLlib, MMLSpark, etc. to complete their training on Spark pools.


 


Customers in preview will be able to benefit from the following key capabilities:


Reuse Spark pools from Azure Synapse workspace in Azure ML


Customers can leverage existing Spark pools from Azure Synapse Analytics (Azure Synapse) in Azure ML by just linking their Azure ML and Synapse workspaces via the Azure ML Studio, the Python SDK, or the ARM template. Customers just need to follow the widget in UI or leverage a few lines of code as described in the documentation here.


Picture1.png


Once the workspaces are linked, customers can attach existing Spark pools into Azure ML workspace and can also register the supported linked services (data store sources).


Picture2.png


 


 


Perform interactive data preparation via Spark magic from Azure ML notebooks


Customers can use Azure ML notebooks to start Spark sessions in PySpark via Spark Magic on attached Spark pools. Customers can register Azure ML datasets to load data from storage of choice. For data in Gen1 and Gen2, customers can use their own identities to authenticate access to data by leveraging AML datasets. The attached Spark pools can be used normally in Azure ML experiments, pipelines, and designer. More information on leveraging Spark Magic for data preparation on AML notebooks here


Picture3.png


 


 


Productionize via Azure ML pipelines to orchestrate E2E ML steps including data preparation


After completing the interactive data preparation, customers can leverage Azure ML pipelines to automate data preparation on Apache Spark runtime as a step in the overall machine learning workflow. Customers can use the SynapseSparkStep for data preparation and choose either TabularDataset or FileDataset as input. Customers can also set up HDFSOutputDatasetConfig to generate the sparkstep output as a FileDataset, to be consumed by the following AzureML pipeline step. More details on How to use Apache Spark (powered by Azure Synapse) in your machine learning pipeline here.


 


Get started with big data preparation in Azure ML via Apache Spark powered by Azure Synapse


Get started by visiting our documentation and let us know your thoughts. We are committed to making the data preparation experience in Azure ML better for you!


Learn more about the Azure Machine Learning service and get started with a free trial.