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CISA Releases Twenty Industrial Control Systems Advisories

by Scott Muniz | Nov 10, 2022 | Security, Technology

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

CISA Updates Advisory on Threat Actors Exploiting Multiple CVEs Against Zimbra Collaboration Suite

by Scott Muniz | Nov 10, 2022 | Security, Technology

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

CISA and the Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) have updated joint Cybersecurity Advisory AA22-228A: Threat Actors Exploiting Multiple CVEs Against Zimbra Collaboration Suite, originally released August 16, 2022. The advisory has been updated to include an additional Malware Analysis Report containing new indicators of compromise.

CISA encourages organizations to review the latest update to AA22-228A and apply the recommended mitigations.

Honoring American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month

by Scott Muniz | Nov 10, 2022 | Security

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

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

Customer Service voice support channel launches in the UK

by Contributed | Nov 9, 2022 | Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, Technology

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

Since the November 2021 launch in select geographic regions of the native voice channel in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, we have been expanding worldwide to satisfy growing customer demand. We are proud to announce that we now support local country regions as well. As of October 2022, the voice support channel is live in the United Kingdom.

Native voice support channel capabilities

The integrated voice channel allows customer service representatives to communicate with customers on the phone to resolve issues. The UK launch includes all the features that the voice channel in omnichannel Customer Service environments supports today.

Self-serve voice support channel with Power Virtual Agents

The UK general availability launch also integrates Power Virtual Agents. Subject matter experts can build conversational interactive voice response (IVR) bots in just a few clicks to help customers quickly self-serve, reducing contact center operation costs. Learn how to configure Power Virtual Agents bots for voice.

Azure direct routing and Microsoft calling plans

The launch of the voice channel in the UK is supported by Azure Communication Services, with Azure direct routing in preview. Learn how you can use the telephony carrier of your choice.

The UK voice support channel is also supported by Microsoft calling plans in public preview. Customers can purchase their own numbers through Azure subscriptions. Check your eligibility and learn how to enable Microsoft calling plans.

As the native voice channel in Dynamics 365 Customer Service continues to expand in regions, languages, and capabilities, subscribe to this blog for the latest updates. Set up your Omnichannel for Customer Service and install the voice channel today.

Learn more

Read the documentation to learn about the features the voice channel now supports in the UK: Voice channel in Omnichannel for Customer Service | Microsoft Learn

The post Customer Service voice support channel launches in the UK appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

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

Microsoft Releases November 2022 Security Updates

by Scott Muniz | Nov 9, 2022 | Security, Technology

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

Azure Marketplace new offers – November 9, 2022

by Contributed | Nov 9, 2022 | Technology

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

We continue to expand the Azure Marketplace ecosystem. For this volume, 125 new offers successfully met the onboarding criteria and went live. See details of the new offers below:

Get it now in our marketplace
	.NET on CentOS Stream 8: This offer from AskforCloud provides .NET on CentOS Stream 8. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for the web, for mobile devices, for IoT, or for other uses. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
	.NET on Debian 10: This offer from AskforCloud provides .NET on Debian 10. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for the web, for mobile devices, for IoT, or for other uses. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
	.NET on Debian 11: This offer from AskforCloud provides .NET on Debian 11. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for the web, for mobile devices, for IoT, or for other uses. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
	.NET on openSUSE 15: This offer from AskforCloud provides .NET on openSUSE 15. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for the web, for mobile devices, for IoT, or for other uses. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
	.NET on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7: This offer from AskforCloud provides .NET on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for the web, for mobile devices, for IoT, or for other uses. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
	.NET on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9: This offer from AskforCloud provides .NET on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for the web, for mobile devices, for IoT, or for other uses. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
	.NET on SUSE Enterprise Linux 12: This offer from AskforCloud provides .NET on SUSE Enterprise Linux 12. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for the web, for mobile devices, for IoT, or for other uses. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
	.NET on SUSE Enterprise Linux 15: This offer from AskforCloud provides .NET on SUSE Enterprise Linux 15. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for the web, for mobile devices, for IoT, or for other uses. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
	.NET on Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS: This offer from AskforCloud provides .NET on Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for the web, for mobile devices, for IoT, or for other uses. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
	.NET on Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS: This offer from AskforCloud provides .NET on Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for the web, for mobile devices, for IoT, or for other uses. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
	.NET on Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS: This offer from AskforCloud provides .NET on Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for the web, for mobile devices, for IoT, or for other uses. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
	.NET on Windows Server 2012 R2: This offer from AskforCloud provides .NET on Windows Server 2012 R2. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for the web, for mobile devices, for IoT, or for other uses. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
	.NET on Windows Server 2016: This offer from AskforCloud provides .NET on Windows Server 2016. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for the web, for mobile devices, for IoT, or for other uses. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
	.NET on Windows Server 2022: This offer from AskforCloud provides .NET on Windows Server 2022. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for the web, for mobile devices, for IoT, or for other uses. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
	.NET SDK on Debian 10: This offer from AskforCloud provides a .NET software development kit (SDK) on Debian 10. The kit includes everything you need to build and run .NET applications. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft.
	.NET SDK on Debian 11: This offer from AskforCloud provides a .NET software development kit (SDK) on Debian 11. The kit includes everything you need to build and run .NET applications. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft.
	.NET SDK on openSUSE 15: This offer from AskforCloud provides a .NET software development kit (SDK) on openSUSE 15. The kit includes everything you need to build and run .NET applications. .NET is an open-source developer platform created by Microsoft.
	AI Signature Recognition: AI Signature Recognition from Cogniware uses algorithms and computer vision to verify the authenticity of signatures. Easily verify thousands of paper-based customer signatures. A demo version and a full version are available. The full version include automatic processing of photos and an implementation in your environment.
	AllegroGraph 7.3.0: AllegroGraph is a multi-modal graph and document database that supplies foundational structure for scalable enterprise knowledge graphs. Thanks to its database security, AllegroGraph is fit for HIPAA access controls, privacy rules for banks, and security models for policing, intelligence, and government.
	Azure CLI on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9: This offer from AskforCloud provides the Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI) on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. The cross-platform tool allows you to connect to Azure and execute administrative commands through a terminal using interactive command-line prompts or a script.
	Azure CLI on Windows Server 2012 R2: This offer from AskforCloud provides the Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI) on Windows Server 2012 R2. The cross-platform tool allows you to connect to Azure and execute administrative commands through a terminal using interactive command-line prompts or a script.
	Azure CLI on Windows Server 2016: This offer from AskforCloud provides the Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI) on Windows Server 2016. The cross-platform tool allows you to connect to Azure and execute administrative commands through a terminal using interactive command-line prompts or a script.
	Azure CLI on Windows Server 2019: This offer from AskforCloud provides the Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI) on Windows Server 2019. The cross-platform tool allows you to connect to Azure and execute administrative commands through a terminal using interactive command-line prompts or a script.
	Azure CLI on Windows Server 2022: This offer from AskforCloud provides the Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI) on Windows Server 2022. The cross-platform tool allows you to connect to Azure and execute administrative commands through a terminal using interactive command-line prompts or a script.
	Azure Virtual Desktop on Ubuntu 22.04 for Developers: This offer from Ntegral provides Ubuntu 22.04 on a Microsoft Azure virtual machine. The desktop image comes preconfigured with Visual Studio Code, Git, and LibreOffice, an open-source office suite that’s compatible with Microsoft Office.
	Cassandra on Debian 10: This offer from AskforCloud provides Apache Cassandra on Debian 10. Cassandra is an open-source NoSQL distributed database trusted by thousands of companies for scalability and high availability. Cassandra enables developers to scale their databases dynamically, using off-the-shelf hardware, with no downtime.
	Cassandra on Debian 11: This offer from AskforCloud provides Apache Cassandra on Debian 11. Cassandra is an open-source NoSQL distributed database trusted by thousands of companies for scalability and high availability. Cassandra enables developers to scale their databases dynamically, using off-the-shelf hardware, with no downtime.
	Confidencial Encryption Technology: Confidencial’s selective encryption technology allows you to embed protected content within your Office documents and Microsoft Teams messages that’s viewable only by the individuals or groups you designate. Thus, you could create a document that contains portions visible only to HR, with other portions visible only to your legal department.
	Ctelo Office Connect for Microsoft Teams: Ctelo Office Connect is an add-on to Ctelo Business Phone that connects offices based in countries with strict telecom regulations. This makes it possible to deploy a global telephony solution based on Microsoft Teams.
	Ctelo Voice Channel for Microsoft Dynamics: Ctelo Voice Channel for Dynamics 365 Customer Service enables representatives to resolve customer service issues via phone. Part of the Ctelo Business Phone offering, Ctelo Voice Channel makes it possible to use the existing company telecom contract and phone numbers in both Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Dynamics.
	Docker on AlmaLinux 8: This offer from AskforCloud provides Docker Community Engine on AlmaLinux 8. Docker is a platform that enables developers and system administrators to build, run, and share applications with containers.
	Docker on AlmaLinux 9: This offer from AskforCloud provides Docker Community Engine on AlmaLinux 9. Docker is a platform that enables developers and system administrators to build, run, and share applications with containers.
	Docker on Oracle Linux 8: This offer from AskforCloud provides Docker Community Engine on Oracle Linux 8. Docker is a platform that enables developers and system administrators to build, run, and share applications with containers.
	Docker on Rocky Linux 8: This offer from AskforCloud provides Docker Community Engine on Rocky Linux 8. Docker is a platform that enables developers and system administrators to build, run, and share applications with containers.
	Docker on Ubuntu 22.04: This offer from AskforCloud provides Docker Community Engine on Ubuntu 22.04. Docker is a platform that enables developers and system administrators to build, run, and share applications with containers.
	env0 Pro: DevOps engineers, infrastructure-as-code developers, and site reliability engineers can use env0 to automate Terraform and Terragrunt Git flows, simplify the governance of cloud deployments, and manage the provisioning of teams, users, and environments.
	Fedora 36 Desktop: This offer from Ntegral provides Fedora 36 on a Microsoft Azure virtual machine. The desktop image comes preconfigured with Visual Studio Code, Git, and LibreOffice, an open-source office suite that’s compatible with Microsoft Office.
	Foxit eSign: Foxit eSign, an electronic signature tool, lets you quickly and easily prepare, send, sign, and track legally binding documents and agreements. Foxit eSign also can automate workflows. When you add Foxit eSign to Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, you can maximize document completion within your standard workflows.
	Locust, Packaged by Data Science Dojo: This offer from Data Science Dojo provides Locust on Ubuntu 20.04. Locust is an open-source load-testing framework for web apps. It’s based on Python and is used for quality assurance processes. Through Locust, web testers can determine the potential of a website to withstand a number of concurrent users.
	MetaSpark: Useful for project management, IT support, customer relationship management, or onboarding, MetaSpark consolidates tasks in one unified workspace. As teams deliver on their work, they can be recognized and rewarded based on company goals.
	Oracle 8.5 Minimal: This offer from Art Group provides an image of Oracle 8.5 built with a minimal profile. It contains just enough packages to run Oracle 8.5 within Microsoft Azure, bring up an SSH Server, and allow users to log in. Integrated cloud tools and technologies simplify infrastructure deployment.
	PULSE: Delivery deadlines are getting tighter for all storytellers, whether you’re a studio or a production company. By using PULSE, production teams and vendors will benefit from automation tools, a central storage location, and a collaborative workspace. Pull, transcode, and deliver production content to all your creative teams without data wrangling or manual file transfers.
	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6 Desktop: This offer from Ntegral provides Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6 on a Microsoft Azure virtual machine. The desktop image comes preconfigured with an RDP-based remote desktop environment and LibreOffice, an open-source office suite that’s compatible with Microsoft Office.
	Rocky Linux 9 Desktop “Blue Onyx”: This offer from Ntegral provides Rocky Linux 9 on a Microsoft Azure virtual machine. The desktop image comes preconfigured with an RDP-based remote desktop environment and LibreOffice, an open-source office suite that’s compatible with Microsoft Office.
	Siemens NX: Siemens NX on Microsoft Azure lets you run your CAD tools on the cloud. NX is built on a flexible and extensible architecture, and it supports working from home, from the office, or a remote location with secure and uninterrupted access.
	Spark on Debian 10: This offer from AskforCloud provides Apache Spark on Debian 10. Apache Spark is an open-source analytics engine for executing data engineering, data science, and machine learning on single-node machines or clusters. It supplies high-level APIs in Java, Scala, Python, and R, along with an optimized engine that supports general execution graphs.
	Spark on Debian 11: This offer from AskforCloud provides Apache Spark on Debian 11. Apache Spark is an open-source analytics engine for executing data engineering, data science, and machine learning on single-node machines or clusters. It supplies high-level APIs in Java, Scala, Python, and R, along with an optimized engine that supports general execution graphs.
	Spark on Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS: This offer from AskforCloud provides Apache Spark on Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS. Apache Spark is an open-source analytics engine for executing data engineering, data science, and machine learning on single-node machines or clusters. It supplies high-level APIs in Java, Scala, Python, and R, along with an optimized engine that supports general execution graphs.
	Spark on Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS: This offer from AskforCloud provides Apache Spark on Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS. Apache Spark is an open-source analytics engine for executing data engineering, data science, and machine learning on single-node machines or clusters. It supplies high-level APIs in Java, Scala, Python, and R, along with an optimized engine that supports general execution graphs.
	VenueArc – Event Management: VenueArc streamlines event and venue management operations to help performing arts professionals increase accessibility, collaboration, productivity, and profitability. It features CRM integration, a contract generator, single sign-on through Azure Active Directory, and a pay-as-you-go model.
Go further with workshops, proofs of concept, and implementations
	Airport Analytics: 6-Week Proof of Concept: In this proof of concept, Glorious Insight will deliver its airport analytics platform on Microsoft Azure and assist in user adoption to drive successful outcomes. The platform will provide accurate collection of key performance indicators.
	App of the Future Greenfield Envisioning & Design: 5-Day Workshop: InCycle’s App of the Future offer provides a Microsoft-funded engagement to quickly envision, prototype, and design an app on Azure. InCycle will conduct a design workshop to uncover your top business objectives, then create a rapid Azure prototype and reference architecture design.
	Azure Arc Deployment: 1-Day Workshop: In this workshop, Chrisons will demonstrate how to manage, secure, develop, and operate infrastructure, apps, and Azure services. Participants will learn how to centrally manage a wide range of resources, including Windows and Linux servers, SQL Server, Kubernetes clusters, Azure Arc, and other Azure services.
	Azure Database Migration: 1-Week Implementation: Start your journey to Microsoft Azure with PetaBytz’s migration service. PetaBytz’s team of experts will move your database assets to Azure so you can meet key business demands, such as scale, uptime, security, automation, and data insight innovation.
	Azure DevOps, GitHub, and DevSecOps Workshops: Achieve a DecSecOps culture in your organization with Azure DevOps and GitHub. Over the course of a few workshops, DevTools will help your team adopt Azure DevOps and GitHub to achieve CI/CD features and application security in a DevSecOps workflow.
	Azure Optimization: 2-Hour Workshop: This workshop from Cloud Direct will tell you why and how to align your Azure environment to the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework. You’ll be able review your Azure environment for opportunities to reduce spending, increase security, and boost technical performance.
	Azure Site Recovery Implementation: SVA will set up Azure Site Recovery to keep your applications operational during planned or unexpected outages. Azure Site Recovery provides you with replication, failover, and recovery processes. This offer is available only in German.
	Azure Stack HCI: 2-Day Workshop: Chrisons will show you how Azure Stack HCI works and how to implement relevant solutions, such as enabling servers or centralized cloud management. Azure Stack HCI is built to accommodate everything from a small, two-node deployment to a 16-node deployment spread across offices and datacenters around the world.
	Azure Stack HCI: 3-Hour Workshop: This workshop from Greeneris will introduce you to Azure Stack HCI and the benefits it can bring to your organization. Azure Stack HCI is a hyperconverged infrastructure cluster solution that hosts virtualized Windows and Linux workloads and their storage in a hybrid environment that combines on-premises infrastructure with cloud services.
	Azure Synapse and Power BI: 6-Week Pilot Implementation: KiZAN will deploy a pilot implementation of a modern data platform, provide opportunities to work with Microsoft Power BI and Azure Synapse in your production environment, and develop a plan to assist with a full production deployment of Power BI and Azure Synapse.
	Azure Virtual Desktop Implementation and Support: TOSYS will set up Azure Virtual Desktop so your company can try it out in small-scale or large-scale production use. Azure Virtual Desktop can be used for telework, regardless of whether the device is a PC or a smartphone. This service is available only in Japanese.
	CFO Cockpit Package for Financial Analysis: Using Microsoft Power BI, Polestar will create a dashboard that will give you a bird’s-eye view into your company’s financial performance. Analysis typically covers a profit and loss statement, a balance sheet, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and inventory.
	Churn Prediction Software Implementation: Using Azure Machine Learning, Polestar can help you identify employees with a greater likelihood of leaving your company. Being aware of the underlying parameters that could be responsible for attrition will give you the flexibility and time to act accordingly.
	CI/CD Pipeline Implementation (5 Weeks): In this implementation, Linnovate will create a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline for a single containerized application in an existing Kubernetes environment using Azure DevOps.
	Course to Implement Microsoft Sentinel: This course from Nebulan, available in Spanish, will give you practical experience in implementing Microsoft Sentinel. Participants will learn about threat detection, incident management, automation, and workbooks.
	Custom Application Development with Azure: Zure’s team will assist your company with application development using Microsoft Azure Platform as a Service technologies, which feature modern architecture choices and DevOps practices. Zure offers concept design services, application development, application support, and everything in between.
	Implementation of Azure Services: SEIDOR will implement Microsoft Azure services to help your business be more profitable and competitive. You’ll receive business continuity and optimization of systems and applications, investigation of cyber threats, and secure desktop and application delivery from any device and any location.
	IoT Apps Using PaaS: 2-Month Proof of Concept: Internet Initiative Japan Inc. will support customers’ IoT environment development with Azure Platform as a Service, licensing provisions, network functions, and selection of IoT devices. This service is available only in Japanese.
	LTI Sustainable Smart Spaces: 12-Week Implementation: LTI will implement its connected-building solution, which includes sensors and uses numerous Azure services, so your organization can optimize building performance and align to environmental and sustainability goals.
	Modern Secure Datacenter: 10-Day Implementation: Abtis specializes in managed security services for medium-sized companies. In this engagement, Abtis will provide cloud security management, cloud workload protection, and network security through various Azure services. This offer is available only in German.
	PetaMigrate: 3-Day Workshop: Learn about PetaBytz’s cloud adoption framework in this workshop, which will include an assessment of your organization’s IT landscape and guidance for a migration to Microsoft Azure. PetaBytz can enable you to adopt Azure services with minimal downtime.
	Power Move to Azure with Skytap: Using Skytap, Kyndryl will migrate your IBM AIX Power workloads to Microsoft Azure. Kyndryl provides production-ready preintegrated offerings that cover all transformation needs: strategy, development, migration, modernization, and management.
	Predictive Order Management System: 8-Week Implementation: Having a lean, efficient supply chain is vital for manufacturing, distribution, or retail businesses. In this engagement, Datamind will implement an AI-based predictive order management system to improve your supply chain efficiency and deliver daily order recommendations.
	Privileged Identity Management Jump-Start: Steeves and Associates will discuss the Privileged Identity Management service of Azure Active Directory, determine your company’s business and technical objectives, deliver a workshop to plot out an implementation, and conduct an IT operations training.
	Sales Forecasting Implementation: Using Microsoft Power BI dashboards and data engineering with Python and Azure Data Factory, Polestar will forecast your sales over a specified period of time. This implementation is appropriate for retail stores, consumer packaged goods companies, or insurance agents.
	Secure App and Internet Gateway: 6-Week Implementation: LAB3 will deploy a secure internet gateway in your tenant to provide round-the-clock visibility and threat management that meets the protection standards of the Infosec Registered Assessors Program (IRAP). IRAP is governed and administered by the Australian Cyber Security Centre.
	Shield One Managed Security Service (1 Year): Get a bird’s-eye view of your cybersecurity with the security information and event management capabilities of Microsoft Sentinel. Signal Alliance can connect your Microsoft 365 suite and all other security tools to its Shield One managed service. This will provide continual monitoring and incident response for your enterprise platforms.
	Well-Architected: Public Cloud Security Posture Workshop: Elisa’s experts will introduce the security posture management and workload protection capabilities of Microsoft Defender for Cloud. You’ll later get an assessment of your public cloud security, followed by recommendations. Continuous posture monitoring by Elisa is available as an option.
Contact our partners
9A Connected Factory & Insights
App Modernization Assessment
Aquila Clouds FinOps
Aruba EdgeConnect Enterprise in Azure Virtual WAN
Automate Information Extraction from Images/Videos Using AI
Azure and Microsoft 365 License Consultancy: 4-Day Assessment
Azure Arc Hybrid Managed Services
Azure Assessment from Ascend
Azure Boards: 1-Hour Briefing
Azure DevOps: 1-Week Assessment
Azure Virtual Desktop: 3-Day Assessment
CB Blockchain Seal for SharePoint
Cerberus – Domain Analysis: 3-Month Assessment
Cerberus Strategic Assessment
Cloud Migration Readiness: 2-Week Assessment
Cloud Readiness Briefing
Cortex EIP Version 1.2.311
Custom Software Development: 2-Day Assessment
Cymmetri Platform
Data Modernization Discovery: 3-Day Assessment
DeepSense
delphai for M&A
delphai for Sales
EasyGov: Delivering Convenience & Transforming Governance
Ecosystem Intelligence
Enow’s Monitoring and Reporting for Microsoft 365
Exodus EMM Migration to Microsoft Intune
Eyeglass: Disaster Recovery Automation
Feelix: AI-Based Chronic Disease Management System
FlowFit
Fusion Analytics v16.5
Kontent.ai
Lizard Uni Bot
Managed Service and Shared SBC for Microsoft Teams
Move to Azure: 1-Week Assessment
NebulaGraph Enterprise
Noibit’s Managed Service for Microsoft Sentinel
Pavement Express
Power Finance: 1-Week Assessment
Predictive Safety Fatigue Management System
Sirus NGSI-LD Context Broker Web App
Software & Cloud Economics Assessment
Springboard: Infrastructure-as-Code Framework for Azure
TCS Envirozone
Tetrate Istio Distribution
Unified Customer Intelligence
Verizon 5G Edge

Charity scams for veterans tug at heart strings and grab for wallets

by Scott Muniz | Nov 9, 2022 | Security

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

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

Streamline your make-to-order supply chain

by Contributed | Nov 8, 2022 | Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, Technology

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

New make-to-order (MTO) automation capabilities available with the October 2022 release of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management streamline order-taking and related downstream processes. Supply chain planners can benefit from improved capable-to-promise (CTP) accuracy with plan-specific delay tolerance, keep supply available for last-minute orders, and automatically populate external order information during intercompany trade.

Impact of make-to-order

With MTO, production only starts after a customer places an order for a specific product. The main benefits of MTO are that you can accommodate customer-specific products and you don’t need to keep inventories of finished goods with the related risk of wastage. However, with MTO, your delivery time includes the production lead time and depends on the availability of resources and raw materials. This often leads to the need for CTP, close tracking of resource capacity, and flexibility for last-minute orders.

Until now, supply chain planners had to monitor and adjust supply levels and current demand manually. With the new automation capabilities in Supply Chain Management, planners can automate these tasks. The system takes informed actions based on parameters they set.

Benefits of make-to-order automation

Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of six improvements we’ve made for make-to-order scenarios.

Delay tolerance control

Delay tolerance represents the number of days beyond the lead time that you’re willing to wait before you order new replenishment when existing supply is already planned. It helps you avoid creating new supply orders if the existing supply will be able to cover the demand after a short delay. With the new Negative days option for delay tolerance control, you can determine whether it makes sense to create a new supply order for a given demand. The ability to control delay tolerance at the master plan level gives you more flexibility between the static plan and the dynamic plan used for CTP calculations. Automating the process ensures that CTP calculations don’t allow delays. You can optimize refill orders on the static plan to use existing orders, even it causes a bit of delay.

Use latest possible supply

The Use latest possible supply option lets you keep products available for last-minute orders. It optimizes the use of existing supply by pegging the latest possible supply to a demand instead of using the first possible supply.

Single-level marking

Marking links supply to demand for the purpose of cost allocation. It resembles pegging, which indicates how master planning expects to cover demand. However, marking is more permanent than pegging because it’s respected by later planning runs. Now you can limit inventory marking to a single level when firming planned orders. That allows you to keep component assignments flexible for production orders after firming.

Order-specific fulfillment policy

You can already set a global default fulfillment policy and then override it for specific customers. Now you can view which default policy applies directly on the order and override it for individual orders. Previously, the order taker had to manually change the policy on the sales order. Now this step is automated, giving more control to the order taker and enabling flexible order processing.

Line-controlled delivery

Delivery terms, mode of delivery, and external item numbers are critical information to track when one company receives a customer sales order, and another company ships the goods to the customer. Now purchase order lines are updated automatically to include this information from the intercompany sales order. This improvement enhances intercompany information exchange. It ensures that detailed demand information flows to the supplying company and that companies meet their customer commitments.

graphical user interface, text, application

User-defined period on Capacity load page

We’ve added a field to the Capacity load page. The new Number of days field allows you to define a custom period over which to view the capacity load of a resource, enabling long-term evaluation.

Learn more about make-to-order automation

To learn more about MTO automation in Supply Chain Management, read the documentation: Make-to-order supply automation | Microsoft Learn.

For more information about the delay tolerance impact, read Delay tolerance (negative days) | Microsoft Learn.

For more information about the impact of marking when firming planned orders, read Inventory marking with Planning Optimization | Microsoft Learn.

The post Streamline your make-to-order supply chain appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

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

Azure DevOps – Leveraging Pipeline Decorators for Custom Process Automation

by Contributed | Nov 8, 2022 | Technology

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

Introduction

Background

In the recent pandemic, health institutions all across the world have been pushed to their limits on about every facet. Through this, many such institutions have begun to reprioritize their modernization efforts around their cloud infrastructure to support increasing demands and hedge against uncertainty. As institutions are migrating their existing workloads into the cloud, a common challenge they are faced with is that many of their on-prem security processes and standards tend to not map one-to-one with the services they are being migrated to. With the sensitive nature of the healthcare industry, it is especially important to solution feasible routes to always ensure security and validation is in place end-to-end.

In this blog post, we will look at how Azure DevOps Pipeline Decorators can be leveraged to bridge the gap in our cloud environment with the customer’s existing security processes on their on-premises IIS server.

What are Pipeline Decorators?

If you have ever run across jobs executing on your azure pipelines that you have not previously defined, there is a good chance you may have already run into decorators before!

Pipeline decorators allow you to program jobs to execute before or after any pipeline runs across your entire Azure DevOps organization. For scenarios such as running a virus scan before every pipeline job, or any sort of automated steps to assist with governance of your CICD processes, pipeline decorators grants you the ability to impose your will at any scale within Azure DevOps.

Read further on decorators on Microsoft Learn: Pipeline decorators – Azure DevOps | Microsoft Learn

In this blog post, I will be walking through a sample process based on the customer scenario’s requirements, and how the pipeline decorators can fit in to assist with their governance objectives.

Scenario

Customer’s Azure DevOps organization has grown to a considerable size composed of numerous projects with various applications with no clearly defined process or standards they adhere to. All of these applications have been hosted on an on-premises IIS server, where the application teams are trusted to provide manual inputs to deployment variables.

Due to the lack of out-of-the-box controls for validating IIS file path permissions with Azure Active Directory identities within Azure DevOps, this was an area of concern with the customer as the deployed production applications effectively did not have any preventative measures to address malicious actors or human error overwriting existing applications.

When looking at the deployment tasks to IIS servers from Azure DevOps, the two primary variables the customer was looking to control were:

virtualAppName– Name of an existing an already existing virtual application on the target machines

websiteName– Name of an existing website on the machine group

Considering the RBAC strategy the customer has in mind with AAD, there will be a third variable to represent the ownership of the application via an AAD group.

groupId– AAD ID of the application owner’s group

In the next section, I will outline a high-level process proposal based on these three variables, that goes into onboarding applications.

Solutioning

High-Level Process Proposal for Onboarding New Applications

For this demo’s purposes, we will make the following assumptions to build out a process that illustrates how application teams can successfully onboard and assist the operations team in successfully managing the application environment within their on-prem IIS server.

Assumptions

Ops team only require the following three parameters to help govern application deployments:
- virtualAppName
- groupId
- websiteName

Application teams only need flexibility while building applications within the CICD pipelines, and currently do not have much concerns or the expertise to manage deployments.

Ops team wishes to also build security around these parameters such that only the authorized actors will be able to modify these values.

Onboarding New Applications

Ops team provides a template (such as GitHub issues templates) for new application requests to the application teams, and captures the following IIS deployment-specific information:
- virtualAppName
- groupId
- websiteName
For this demo, I have created a simple GitHub issues YAML form which the operations team can leverage to capture basic information from the application teams, which can also be tied to automation to further reduce operational overhead:

Ops team is then notified of the request, and upon successful validation continues to provision an Application Environment with the captured information
1. application environment in this context involves the following components:
  1. Key Vault (per application)
  2. Service Connection to application Key Vault with read permissions over secrets
  3. Place the application team provided, ops team validated virtualAppName, groupId, websiteName values as secrets
  4. Place Service Connection details in the project variable group to allow for the decorator to dynamically retrieve secrets for each project
  5. Application registered onto the IIS server that adheres to existing IIS server file management strategies

Once the environment is ready for use, notify the application teams by updating the issue template and now the application teams only need to focus on building and publishing their artifact within their CICD pipelines

Updating Existing Applications

Ops team provides a template for change requests to the application teams, and captures the following information:
- virtualAppName
- groupId
- websiteName
- Change Justification/Description

Core Ops team reviews and approves the change request

Update the application environment accordingly

Notify the application team

Now with the high-level process defined, we will now look at how we could bring in the relevant parameters into the decorators to impose validation logic.

Building the Demo

Setting up our Demo Application Environment

In this example, I created a key vault named kv-demolocaldev, and placed the virtualAppName, groupId, and websiteName so we may retrieve the values later as shown below:

Now, we must create the project and subsequently create the service connection to the key vault scoped to the project.

To do this, I created an Azure Resource Manager Service Connection while using my demo identity, that is scoped to the resource group containing the key vault:

Once the service connection is done provisioning, you can navigate to the AAD object by following the Manage Service Principal link, which will allow you to retrieve the Application ID to be used when adding the access policy.

Selecting the Manage Service Principal link will take us to the AAD object, where we can find the Azure Application ID to add to our Key Vault access policy.

The service connection will only need GET secret permissions on its access policy.

Afterwards, we now capture the information about the service connection and key vault by creating a variable group on the application’s Azure DevOps project named demo-connection-details:

There will need to be additional steps taken to provision the IIS server as well with the parameters, but for this demo’s purpose we will assume that the provisioning steps have already been taken care of. Now with this, we can move onto building out our decorators.

Building the Decorators

For the pipeline side, the customer is looking to control both the pre-build with validating the input variables, and post-build in placing guardrails around deployment configurations with the validated parameters.

Both pre and post decorators will leverage the same key vault secrets, so we will start with integrating the key vault secrets into the YAML definition.

Pipeline decorators leverage the same YAML schema as the YAML build pipelines used within Azure DevOps. Meaning we can take advantage of conditional logic with repo branches, dynamic variables, and pull in key vault secrets with service connections.

The high-level logic we are attempting to demonstrate for the pre and post decorators are the following:

Pre:

Check for variables/conditions to bypass decorators

Using pre-established variables, connect to application’s Azure Key vault and retrieve secret values

For each of the deployment variables, process custom validation logic

Post:

Deploy the application/artifact to the IIS server

You can find the demo files within the following repo: https://github.com/JLee794-Sandbox/ADO-Decorators-PoC

Pre-build decorator

To ensure users can opt-out of the process during development, we can leverage the same YAML schema as build pipelines to construct our conditionals.

Check for variables/condition to bypass decorators

In the pre-build decorator YAML definition (located in Build/Pre/input-parameter-decorator.yml), for pipeline builds that run off the main branch, that also checks for a simple variable flag named testDecorator to be true for the decorator to execute.

steps:

– ${{ if and(eq(variables[‘Build.SourceBranchName’], ‘main’), contains(variables[‘testDecorator’],’true’) ) }}:

Following right after, I retrieve websiteName, groupId, and virtualAppName with the connection details we have placed within the demo-connection-details, which will be passed in by the build pipeline.

– task: AzureKeyVault@2

  displayName: ‘[PRE BUILD DECORATOR] Accessing Decorator Params from the key vault – $(decorator_keyvault_name), using $(decorator_keyvault_connection_name) connection.’

  inputs:

    azureSubscription: $(decorator_keyvault_connection_name)         # Service Connection Name (scoped to RG)

    KeyVaultName: $(decorator_keyvault_name)   # Key Vault Name

    SecretsFilter: ‘websiteName,groupId,virtualAppName’   # Secret names to retrieve from Key Vault

    RunAsPreJob: true

Now that the secrets have been pulled in, we can now run our custom validation logic for each. For the purpose of this demo, we will just check that each variable exists and throw an error through a simple PowerShell script.

– task: PowerShell@2

    name: ValidateDeploymentVariables

    displayName: ‘[PRE BUILD DECORATOR] Validate Deployment Variables (Injected via Decorator)’

    inputs:

      targetType: ‘inline’

      script: |

        $errorArr = @()
        try {

          Write-Host “VirtualAppName: $(virtualAppName)”

          # your input test cases go here

          # e.g querying the remote-machine to match the virtualAppName

        }

        catch {

          errorArr += ‘virtualAppName’

          Write-Host “##vso[task.logissue type=error]Input parameter ‘virtualAppName’ failed validation tests.”

        }
        try {

          Write-Host “GroupID: $(groupId)”

          # your input test cases go here

          # e.g querying the remote-machine to match the groupId against the local file permissions

        }

        catch {

          Write-Host “##vso[task.logissue type=error]Input parameter ‘groupId’ failed validation tests.”

          errorArr += ‘GroupID’

        }
        try {

          Write-Host “WebSiteName: $(webSiteName)”

          # your input test cases go here

          # e.g querying the web-site URL to see if site already exists, etc.

        }

        catch {

          Write-Host “##vso[task.logissue type=error]Input parameter ‘webSiteName’ failed validation tests.”

          errorArr += ‘GroupID’

        }
        if ($errorArr.count -gt 0) {

          # Link to your teams documentation for further explanation

          Write-Warning -Message “Please provide valid parameters for the following variables: $($errorArr.join(‘, ‘))”

          Write-Warning -Message “See <https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/process/variables?view=azure-devops&tabs=yaml%2Cbatch> for additional details”

          throw “Please provide valid values for $($errorArr.join(‘, ‘)).”

        }

And we are done with the pre-build decorator! Of course, while developing it is important to iteratively test your code. If you would like to publish your code now, skip to the (Publish your extension) section below.

Post-build decorator

For our post-build decorator, all we want to do is determine when the decorator should run, and simply invoke a deployment task such as the IISWebAppDeploymentOnMachineGroup task.

Of course, there are many more validation steps and tools you can place here to further control your deployment process, but for the sake of this demo we will just be outputting some placeholder messages:

steps: – task: PowerShell@2 name: DeployToIIS displayName: Deploy to IIS (Injected via Decorator) condition: | and ( eq(variables[‘Build.SourceBranch’], ‘refs/heads/main’), eq(variables.testDecorator, ‘true’) ) inputs: targetType: ‘inline’ script: | # Validation steps to check if IIS # Validation steps to check if iOS or Android # > execute deployment accordingly Write-Host @” Your IIS Web Deploy Task can look like this:

– task: IISWebAppDeploymentOnMachineGroup@ inputs: webSiteName: $(webSiteName) virtualApplication: $(virtualAppName) package: ‘$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)***.zip’ # Optionally, you can parameterize this as well. setParametersFile: # Optional removeAdditionalFilesFlag: false # Optional excludeFilesFromAppDataFlag: false # Optional takeAppOfflineFlag: false # Optional additionalArguments: # Optional xmlTransformation: # Optional xmlVariableSubstitution: # Optional jSONFiles: # Optional “@

Publishing the Extension to Share with our ADO Organization

First, we need to construct a manifest for the pipeline decorators to publish them to the private Visual Studio marketplace so that we may start using and testing the code.

In the demo directory, under Build we have both Pre and Post directories, where we see a file named vss-extension.json on each. We won’t go into too much of the details around the manifest file here today, but the manifest file allows us to configure how the pipeline decorator executes, and for what sort of target.

Read more on manifest files: Pipeline decorators – Azure DevOps | Microsoft Learn

With the manifest file configured, we can now publish to the marketplace and share it with our ADO organization:

Create publisher on the Marketplace management portal

Install tfx command line tool
```
npm install -g tfx-cli
```

Navigate to the directory containing the vss-extension.json

Generate the .vsix file through tfx extension create

> tfx extension create –rev-version TFS Cross Platform Command Line Interface v0.11.0 Copyright Microsoft Corporation === Completed operation: create extension === – VSIX: /mnt/c/Users/jinle/Documents/Tools/ADO-Decorator-Demo/Build/Pre/Jinle-SandboxExtensions.jinlesampledecoratorspre-1.0.0.vsix – Extension ID: jinlesampledecoratorspre – Extension Version: 1.0.0 – Publisher: Jinle-SandboxExtensions

Upload the extension via the Marketplace management portal or through tfx extension publish

Share your extension with your ADO Organization on the management portal

Install the extension on your ADO Organization
1. Organization Settings > Manage Extensions > Shared > Install

Testing the Decorator

Now that your pipeline decorators are installed in your organization, any time you push an update to the Visual Studio marketplace to update your extensions, your organization will automatically get the latest changes.

To test your decorators, you can leverage the built in GUI for Azure DevOps to validate your YAML syntax, as well as executing any build pipeline with the appropriate trigger conditions we have configured previously.

In our demo application environment, I updated the out-of-the-box starter pipeline to include our connection variable group, as well as specify the testDecorators flag to true:

variables:

– name: testDecorator

  value: true

– group: demo-connection-details

Running the pipeline, I can now see the tasks I have defined execute as expected:

Once we verify that the pre and post tasks have run as expected with the conditional controls evaluating in a similar manner, we can then conclude this demo.

Conclusion

Now with the decorator’s scaffolding in place, the customer can continue to take advantage of the flexibility provided by Azure DevOps pipeline’s YAML schema to implement their existing security policies at the organization level.

I hope this post helped bring understanding to how pipeline decorators can be leveraged to automate custom processes and bring governance layers into your ADO environment.

If you have any questions or concerns around this demo, or would like to continue the conversation around potential customer scenarios, please feel free to reach out any time.

Improve admin productivity with guided Customer Service channel setup and settings search

by Contributed | Nov 7, 2022 | Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, Technology

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

We recently announced the unified Customer Service admin center, which consolidates administration experiences across the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service suite. The unified admin center simplifies setup tasks with a step-by-step guided experience to help admins easily onboard customer service channels. A dedicated search for settings makes discovering and updating settings fast and easy.

Follow the wizard to easily set up customer service channels

The guided setup wizard helps you configure customer service channels such as email, case, chat, and voice. The wizard guides you through all the steps to configure users and permissions and set up queues and routing rules to help you start handling customer issues with minimal fuss.

After all the steps are complete, you’ll find instructions to validate that the channel is set up correctly. You can also go directly to a step to modify settings.

graphical user interface, text, application, email

Search for admin settings

The search admin settings page helps you quickly discover the admin setting you want to manage. Along with top matches, the page lists settings for new features, so that you can evaluate whether they might be helpful for your business and start to adopt them.

With the new unified Customer Service admin center, it’s easier than ever to manage users, add channels, route and distribute workloads, and get valuable insights about all the activity across your digital contact center. Migrate to the new app to discover how you can streamline digital contact center operations, help your agents be more productive, and earn customers for life.

Learn more

To find out more about the new unified Customer Service admin center app, read the documentation: Customer Service admin center | Microsoft Learn

Not yet a Dynamics 365 customer? Take a guided tour and get a free trial.

The post Improve admin productivity with guided Customer Service channel setup and settings search appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

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

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Introduction

Background

What are Pipeline Decorators?

Scenario

Solutioning

High-Level Process Proposal for Onboarding New Applications

Assumptions

Onboarding New Applications

Updating Existing Applications

Building the Demo

Setting up our Demo Application Environment

Building the Decorators

Pre-build decorator

Post-build decorator

Publishing the Extension to Share with our ADO Organization

Testing the Decorator

Conclusion

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Search for admin settings

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