This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Today marks a pivotal moment in the 2024 Imagine Cup as we reveal the top three teams selected to progress from the semifinals to the highly anticipated Imagine Cup World Championship, live at Microsoft Build!
The Imagine Cup, the premier student technology startup competition, has attracted thousands of visionary student entrepreneurs worldwide. Each team has developed an AI-driven solution to tackle pressing challenges including accessibility, sustainability, productivity, and healthcare.
This year’s semifinalists have demonstrated exceptional innovation with Azure AI services and OpenAI, showcasing their innovation, grit and ability make a positive impact through entrepreneurship. Congratulations to all the semifinalists for their remarkable achievements!
However, only three teams have been selected to progress to the World Championship where they will live on the global stage as they vie for the Imagine Cup Trophy, USD100,000, and a mentorship session with Microsoft Chairman and CEO, Satya Nadella! You can watch these startups live at Microsoft Build on May 21 to see who wins.
Drumroll, please, as we unveil FROM YOUR EYES, JRE, and PlanRoadmap! These startups represent the pinnacle of creativity and resilience, embodying the spirit of innovation that defines Imagine Cup.
About: Using Azure Computer Vision and Text Translator, FROM YOUR EYES has built a mobile application that offers both fast and qualified visual explanations to visually impaired users.
In their own words…
Who/what inspires you?“After being selected as one of Microsoft’s leading women in technology in 2020, I was invited to join the experience team of Microsoft’s Seeing AI program. It was there that I took on responsibilities and crossed paths with visually impaired developers worldwide who held significant roles. They encouraged me to delve into coding. In addition, Onur Koç, Microsoft Turkey’s CTO, also greatly inspired us, he addressed all student ambassadors saying, ‘Software is magic. You can change the life of someone you’ve never met on the other side of the world.’ We were deeply moved by this, and with this motivation, we worked to reach people…with our developed technology, and we succeeded.”
How do you want to make an impact with AI? “The issue of blindness directly affects 330 million people worldwide and indirectly impacts over a billion individuals. For a visually impaired person, using image processing solutions means freedom. With the technology we have developed, our goal is to enable visually impaired individuals to live freely, remove barriers to their dreams, and solve the problem of blindness through technology. This competition will provide us with the opportunity to promote our technology to millions of visually impaired individuals worldwide. They do not have time to waste. We also want to quickly deliver our technology to those in need.”
About: Using Azure Machine Learning, Microsoft Fabric, and Copilot, JRE has built a slag detection system used in the continuous casting process of steel. Accurately detecting slag optimizes yield while improving quality.
In their own words…
Who/what inspires you?Jorge: “I learned how to code out of necessity. Even though I took courses as an undergrad, I never really liked the type of projects we did because they were primarily simulations about atomic interactions and molecular optimizations. I found these problems beautiful but very abstract. After college, many people wanted to create businesses around apps, and I learned how to code front and back-end applications to sell these apps. Later on, when I started working in the steel industry, I was frustrated by the lack of automation and unsafe and repetitive processes, so I started creating more complex integrated systems in this space.”
How do you want to make an impact with AI? “Our aim is to redefine manufacturing for the 21st century—making it smarter, more efficient, and sustainable. The Imagine Cup represents a unique opportunity to showcase our solution to a global audience, garnering support and resources necessary to scale our impact. We’re driven by the challenge of solving real-world problems and believe that through this competition, we can take a significant step towards achieving our vision.”
About: Using Azure OpenAI Service, PlanRoadmap has built an AI-powered productivity coach to help people with ADHD who are struggling with task paralysis get their tasks done. Their coach asks questions to identify the user’s obstacles, suggests strategies, and teaches the user about their work style.
In their own words…
Who/what inspires you?Aaliya: One of my biggest inspirations has been my father… as he helped guide my direction within computer science. He has always been an advocate for women in STEM, and at a young age, that was incredibly powerful to be supported on. It enabled me to overcome feelings of imposter syndrome and have confidence in myself. He has always painted a vision of who I could be before I really believed in myself, and he inspires me to be dedicated, passionate, and ambitious.”
Clay: “At a young age, I was diagnosed with dysgraphia, a condition that impairs writing ability and fine motor skills. Even if not explicitly stated, when everything in school is handwriting, you are at a pretty severe disadvantage when you struggle to even write a few sentences.”
Ever: “Some of my biggest inspiration in pursuing computer science and engineering has been from cinema. I didn’t really have many people in my life who were in the tech field growing up, so I got a lot of inspiration from seeing tech in movies. In cinema you can see tech exactly as the artist imagined it, without the restrictions of the real world.”
How do you want to make an impact with AI? Clay: “As I became increasingly proficient in programming, I realized that not only did I want to do something big, but that I had the potential to make it happen. We are unified under the mission to help people with ADHD achieve their dreams. Our customer discovery efforts have revealed that despite significant increases in technological tools, there are still millions of people facing barriers caused by their ADHD symptoms and related executive function deficits. We want to change that. The mentorship from Microsoft will help us with the technical innovation and provide that frictionless experience to provide a novel approach towards supporting neurodivergent people.”
Up Next…
These top three teams will be live on the global stage at Microsoft Build on May 21 for the Imagine Cup World Championship, showcasing the depth and promise of their startups. Follow the journey on Instagram and X to stay up to date with all the competition action – and join us live to find out who is crowned champion!
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We’re excited to announce a new project onboarding feature is now available in the Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal. The portal makes it easier to deploy Dynamics 365 projects successfully by guiding you from the start of your project to the end, giving you valuable insights and recommendations along the way. All you need to do to get started is create your implementation project in the portal, and the new onboarding wizard makes it easy. Here’s how:
User-friendly interface removes technical barriers. The onboarding wizard’s intuitive and user-friendly interface is designed to make the onboarding process accessible whatever your technical background. It acts as a virtual assistant, walking you through each step of project creation with clear instructions and prompts.
Projects are ready to use immediately. On completion of the onboarding process, your Dynamics 365 implementation project is instantly available, streamlining collaboration and ensuring that stakeholders have swift access to project resources.
Data is protected automatically. If the implementation project targets a tenant other than the one you’re signed in to, the onboarding wizard starts an approval flow. Two reviewers for the targeted tenant must both approve the request before information such as the customer name and telemetry insights are made available. This automatic review process ensures compliance with data protection regulations and builds trust with customers.
Successful Dynamics 365 implementations by design
The Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal is based on Success by Design, a systematic approach for successful cloud deployment that was developed by Microsoft. Success by Design provides prescriptive guidance for designing, building, and deploying your new Dynamics 365 solution. The onboarding wizard represents a pivotal advancement in the journey towards a successful Dynamics 365 implementation. By guiding you through the creation of your implementation projects, facilitating reviews, and offering relevant insights, the Implementation Portal and the onboarding wizard help your business harness the full potential of Dynamics 365 with confidence and efficiency.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Seattle—April 17, 2024—Today, we are pleased to announce the release of document translation (preview) and transliteration features for Azure AI Translator containers. All Translator container customers will get these new features automatically as part of the update.
Translator containers provide users with the capability to host the Azure AI Translator API on their own infrastructure and include all libraries, tools, and dependencies needed to run the service in any private, public, or personal computing environment. They are isolated, lightweight, portable, and are great for implementing specific security or data governance requirements.
As of today’s release, the following operations are now supported when using Azure AI Translator containers:
Text translation: Translate the text phrases between supported source and target language(s) in real-time.
Text transliteration: Converts text in a language from one script to another script in real-time. E.g. converting Russian language text written in Cyrillic script to Latin script.
Document translation (Preview): Translate a document between supported source and target language while preserving the original document’s content structure and format.
When to consider using Azure AI Translator containers?
You may want to consider Azure AI Translator containers in cases where:
there are strict data residency requirements to ensure that sensitive information remains within the company’s security boundary.
you reside in industries such as government, military, banking, and security enforcement where the ability to translate data without exposing it to external networks is a must.
you require the ability to maintain continuous translation capabilities while operating in disconnected environments or with limited internet access.
optimization, cost management, and flexibility to run on-premises with existing infrastructure is a priority.
Getting started with Translator container.
Translator containers are a gated offering. You need to request container access and get approved. Refer to the prerequisites for a more detailed breakdown.
How do I get charged?
The document translation and transliteration features would be charged at different rates similar to the cloud offering.
Connected container: You’re billed monthly at the pricing tier of the Azure AI Translator resource, based on the usage and consumption. Below is an example of document translation billing metadata transmitted by Translator connected container to Azure for billing.
Disconnected container: As shown in the below usage records example, the aggregated value of ‘Billed Unit’ corresponding to the meters ‘One Document Translated Characters’ and ‘Translated Characters’ is counted towards the characters you licensed for your disconnected container usage.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
This April at Hannover Messe, the world’s leading industrial trade fair, organizations across engineering, digital technologies, energy, and more will gather to demonstrate solutions for high-performance, sustainable industries. Microsoft is honored to attend this year’s event to showcase how Microsoft Dynamics 365 helps manufacturers:
Modernize service operations with AI to close work orders faster.
Deliver end-to-end personalization to customers and improve efficiency.
Increase visibility into your product genealogy across steps in the supply chain.
Modernize service operations with Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service
New Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service enhance data insights, boost productivity and deliver more customization for field service managers. These capabilities are generally available today.
Managers can now interact with Copilot to find pertinent information about work orders, prompting Copilot using natural language for details and insights, right from the Dynamics 365 Field Service web app. By simplifying data retrieval and minimizing time spent searching for information, managers can boost the efficiency of work order processes.
In addition, Copilot can provide work order summaries, reducing time spent reading through lengthy work orders to quickly get an overview and understanding of key points of the work to be done. Organizations now have more control to include specific data in the summaries for their users, which can lead to more useful and actionable summaries.
To help ensure smooth communication flows when using the Dynamics 365 Field Service Outlook add-in, field service managers can ask Copilot to compose clear and concise email content recapping details of scheduled work orders, which can then be edited or further customized before sending. And with the Dynamics 365 Field Service plugin for Copilot, field service managers and technicians can find key information about work orders and Dataverse records from within a Microsoft Teams chat using natural language. Starting today, technicians can also ask Copilot to search through lengthy product manuals to find answers to help resolve product issues faster.
Dynamics 365 Field Service users with the Field Service app in Teams can now share links to work orders that automatically expand to provide key details. This link unfurling capability eliminates the need for technicians to switch between apps. Visit Modernize Service Operations with AI booth at the Hannover Messe expo, Hall 17, Stand G06 to discover new ways to transform your service operations with generative AI and mixed reality.
Deliver end-to-end personalization to customers and improve efficiency
At Hannover Messe, we’ll highlight the end-to-end customer experience for manufacturing teams. At our booth and across multiple sessions, we’ll showcase how manufacturing teams across sales, service, and marketing can leverage the power of Copilot and Dynamics 365 to enhance their customer interactions and deliver personalization at scale by refining internal workflows.
Harnessing the end-to-end, unified platform of Dynamics 365 across the teams enables better visibility and deeper personalization. A prime example is Sonepar, a leading global electrical distributor. They’re now leveraging Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to deliver exceptional experiences to their customers.
“With this platform, we are able to transfer data regarding customer needs and requests between teams, measure the service provided to our customers and the time taken to resolve problems”.
Improve visibility into product genealogy with traceability
Today, we’re announcing the upcoming preview of traceability for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Traceability allows you to increase visibility into product genealogy through the different steps of the supply chain. You can track events and attributes throughout supply chain processes, and query and analyze the data with an intuitive interface. This capability supports you in meeting industry-specific regulatory requirements, tracking the achievement of sustainability and ethical supply chain goals, and gaining deeper insights into how supply chain events impact product quality and customer satisfaction.
Traceability is designed to work seamlessly with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, using the data already tracked in Dynamics 365. This removes the need to purchase or integrate a separate traceability solution, which can be costly and complex. Now, you can benefit from the simplicity and performance of using the built-in capabilities. Check out traceability at Demo L in the Microsoft booth at Hannover Messe.
Join us at Hannover Messe
Visit us at the Hannover Messe expo, Hall 17, Stand G06, to explore demos of new capabilities announced today, and learn about our end-to-end, AI-powered solutions for manufacturers across industries.
Hannover Messe 2024
Join is at the world’s leading industrial trade fair.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Delivering exceptional service is key for building customer preference and loyalty. Today, we’re introducing new capabilities for Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service that help service managers and technicians efficiently find the information they need to resolve issues right the first time while keeping customers updated at every step of the process. Additionally, with the introduction of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist capabilities within Microsoft Teams and seamless data flow across Dynamics 365 Field Service, finance, and operations applications as well as Microsoft 365, we’re helping break down application silos and making it easier to stay in the flow.
Streamlining work order management with next-generation AI
With new capabilities generally available starting today, field service managers can interact with Copilot to find pertinent information about work orders using natural language in the Dynamics 365 Field Service web app. Copilot can assist in retrieving work order details, summarizing them, and presenting them in an easily digestible format. Copilot can also go beyond searching work orders to searching other Microsoft Dataverse records, including accounts, contacts, opportunities, and more. In addition, organizations can now configure the data that Copilot uses to generate work order summaries in Dynamics 365 Field Service to meet their specific business needs.
“The introduction of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service, with its powerful summarization capabilities, is a game-changer. Not only does it benefit our leaders, but it also streamlines internal communications, aids finance, and helps customers stay up to date. By automating this process, we reduce manual work and ensure critical information isn’t overlooked.”
Amit Nene, Business Applications Director, BW Packaging Platform, Barry Wehmiller
With new capabilities generally available starting today in the Dynamics 365 Field Service Outlook add-in, field service managers can go beyond asking Copilot for help creating work orders based on customer emails and scheduling them. They can now also ask Copilot to draft email updates to customers recapping details of scheduled work orders or suggesting next steps for unscheduled work orders.
Boosting technician efficiency with new tools in Teams
With the Dynamics 365 Field Service plugin for Microsoft Copilot now generally available, field service managers and technicians can use natural language chat in the flow of work in Teams to find key information about their work orders and other Dataverse records. Starting today, technicians can also use this experience to ask Copilot to search through lengthy product manuals and find relevant answers to resolve product issues faster.
Should technicians need additional assistance from remote experts to resolve issues, starting today they can access Dynamics 365 Remote Assist capabilities in the flow of work in Teams. As a technician shares what they see through their mobile device’s camera during a video call, the mixed reality tools enable technicians and remote experts to use annotations and arrows to refer to specific parts of a machine. These spatial annotations stay anchored even if the camera moves. Access to Dynamics 365 Remote Assist is available at no additional cost with Dynamics 365 Field Service, and licensed customers can try out Remote Assist’s spatial annotation capabilities available in preview starting today within their Teams mobile app for iOS.
To further streamline collaboration among field service managers, technicians, and remote experts in Teams chats, meetings, or channels, Dynamics 365 Field Service users who have installed the Field Service app in Teams can now share links to work orders that automatically expand to provide key details. This link unfurling capability is generally available starting today.
Introducing efficiencies with more integrated offerings
Next week at Hannover Messe 2024, the world’s leading industrial trade fair, organizations across engineering, digital technologies, energy, and more will gather to demonstrate solutions for high performance, sustainable industries. The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service team is honored to attend to showcase how the innovations announced today can help manufacturers. Visit us at the Hannover Messe expo, Hall 17, Stand G06 to discover new ways to transform your service operations with generative AI and mixed reality.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We’re excited to announce the general availability of new and enhanced experiences in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service as part of our 2024 release wave 1 cadence. This release focuses on extending Microsoft Copilot capabilities by infusing generative AI into customer, agent, and supervisor experiences. We’re also enhancing voice, messaging, and email channels to provide a unified, omnichannel experience.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service helps organizations improve every aspect of contact center operations. We’re continuing to invest in generative AI to help contact centers create seamless self-service options for common questions. Plus, it helps every agent become a super-agent when it comes to more complex, high-touch issues.
Copilot and AI innovation in Customer Service
Since we announced Copilot capabilities a year ago, organizations have been realizing the benefits of generative AI in the contact center. Copilot answers agents’ questions, drafts email, provides case and conversation summaries, and automates time-consuming tasks. We’ve enhanced the email drafting capability further by including a contextual inline email editor, making it even easier for agents to deliver personalized service.
Also in this release, we’re enabling agents to generate AI-powered timeline highlights to get an overview of key activities like emails, notes, appointments, tasks, phone calls, and conversations. This minimizes the amount of clicking and scrolling an agent must do to get caught up on case and customer details.
Organizations can extend Copilot capabilities with prompt plug-ins in public preview this month. With plug-ins, agents can generate a summary of their customers, products, cases, or any other entities in Microsoft Dataverse without having to switch tabs or log in to a separate app.
Generative AI in external apps with Microsoft Copilot for Service
In February, we introduced Microsoft Copilot for Service, which enables organizations to use Copilot capabilities with their existing customer relationship management (CRM) solutions such as Salesforce, and other productivity apps like Microsoft Teams and Outlook. It helps organizations by making their knowledge more accessible. This speeds up training and problem-solving, making work easier for agents.
In Teams, agents can save time by accessing a customer’s CRM records during a meeting. Agents can update the case and contact details, and link to open CRM records from Teams.
In Outlook, Copilot for Service can draft personalized, contextual customer service emails based on predefined intents, or agents can provide their own custom intents. Copilot can also help agents catch up on email quickly by generating summaries of long email conversations and display summaries of all the activities and information of a case. They can then save the summary to the CRM system and access it later.
Preparing for meetings is easier for agents because Copilot for Service provides the case summary associated with the meeting, along with access to view and edit CRM records. Furthermore, Copilot for Service can recommend CRM updates to agents based on information it finds in Outlook, such as contacts, emails, meetings, and summaries.
Voice channel enhancements in Customer Service
The omnichannel capabilities in Dynamics 365 Customer Service help organizations provide support to customers across multiple channels, including email, voice, text message, chat, and social media. This release brings several voice channel enhancements and certifications.
With enhancements to outbound dialing, agents can easily search for a customer in the outbound dialer and open the customer record right from the call history. They can now test the microphone and speakers before and during calls. Agents can also rate the call quality using a five-star rating system with the ability to describe issues with lower quality calls. We’re also enhancing customer trust, compliance, and security with sensitive data masking in data storage, during interactive voice response (IVR) sessions, and agent sessions.
IVR enhancements to the Dynamics 365 Customer Service Omnichannel add-on help customers self-serve before they must speak with an agent. In addition to improved speech recognition accuracy, these new voice features enable organizations to set prompts on silence, control timeouts, enable barge-in at any step, and suppress noise. The result is a smooth, contextual experience for customers.
Customers in Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud (GCC) Moderate can now access features from the voice channel. In addition, we’re submitting Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) certifications for the components of the omnichannel stack in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. This high-level certification for government clouds will ensure the security of newly integrated features.
Workforce management
Intelligent forecasting with Dynamics 365 Customer Service introduces an AI-powered forecasting feature designed to predict service volumes and agent demands effectively. By analyzing historical data and trends, this intelligent model provides accurate predictions for up to six months into the future. Organizations can use this capability to optimize resource allocation, streamline operations, and improve customer satisfaction, thanks to daily and intraday forecasts for cases and conversations.
Forecasting is tailored to the unique needs of front-office and back-office operations. It distinguishes between direct customer interactions (conversations) and internal processing (cases), offering flexibility in forecasting for different service channels. This allows organizations to plan resources efficiently, ensuring optimal service levels and agent availability for both immediate and future service demands.
Operational metrics such as service level, shrinkage, and concurrency are considered in forecasting agent demand, aligning capacity with operational constraints. The model’s auto-detection of seasonality and holidays further refines accuracy, enabling businesses to adapt to service demand variations. User-friendly charts and the ability to slice forecast data by channels and queues provide valuable insights, while the export functionality enhances usability and integration with other tools.
Email enhancements
An intuitive agent experience is key to connecting with customers. Dynamics 365 Customer Service offers a robust agent desktop with generative AI, collaboration tools, and productivity features in a customizable workspace.
Agents now have a more efficient way to search for customers. They can use any part of the customer’s name to quickly find the right recipient. Email addresses are displayed alongside recipient names, making it easier for agents to identify and select the correct contact. Additionally, agents can see if recipients have set an out-of-office status, so they can adjust their communication accordingly.
The enhanced email attachment experience allows agents to quickly drag and drop attachments in emails. It also includes a reminder system that prompts agents if they mention an attachment in the email but forget to include it. These capabilities help agents save time and increase productivity when handling email communications.
To benefit the support organization, we’re also introducing the ability to create multiple cases from emails. The feature allows for automatic case creation for all mailboxes that receive an email, ensuring full visibility into customer issues. It enables teams to respond independently to customer issues, without case transfers, leading to quicker first responses and improved handling times. By avoiding case transfer delays, teams can more quickly meet service level agreements.
Next-generation AI that’s ready for enterprises
Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service offers a range of privacy features, including data encryption and secure storage. It also allows users to control access to their data and provides detailed auditing and monitoring capabilities. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is built on Azure OpenAI, so enterprises can rest assured that it offers the same level of data privacy and protection.
AI solutions built responsibly
We are committed to creating responsible AI by design. Our work is guided by a core set of principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. We’re putting those principles into practice across the company to develop and deploy AI that will have a positive impact on society.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Empower agents to resolve issues quickly using generative AI and automation.
Red Hat announced that it is updating its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) royalty model to a scalable model, which is expected to affect all Red Hat resellers across the market. In response to Red Hat’s price changes, Azure will also be rolling out price changes for all Red Hat Enterprise Linux instances. These changes started occurring on April 1, 2024, with price decreases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and RHEL for SAP Business Applications licenses for vCPU sizes less than 12. All other price updates will be effective July 1, 2024. Read the blog for more details.
Azure Monitor VM Insights Dependency Agent support for RHEL 8.6 Linux VMs
Azure Monitor VM Insights now supports Dependency Agent for RHEL 8.6 Linux VMs, enabling you to monitor their network connections and processes in the Azure portal.
Azure IoT Edge supports Ubuntu Core Snaps
We announced that, in collaboration with Canonical, we addressed a longstanding request from our shared customers to support Ubuntu Core Snaps in Azure IoT Edge. The Tier 1 supported operating systems for Azure IoT Edge were expanded to include Ubuntu Core Snaps on AMD 64 and ARM 64. This expansion not only broadened the horizons for Azure IoT Edge applications, but also ensured seamless integration and development across a wider range of devices and systems. For more details, see documentation on Azure IoT Edge documentation.
End of support for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS for Batch pools
Batch pools with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS VM images and the Batch node agent SKU batch.node.ubuntu 20.04 will no longer be supported in Batch after 23 April 2025. If you are impacted, learn what required action you need to take and how you can get help and support if needed.
New features for Azure Linux
We’ve recently released new features for Azure Linux, including OSsku in-place migration which enables you to trigger a node image upgrade from one Linux distro to another on an existing nodepool. Read the blog from to learn about the latest Azure Linux features, upcoming feature features, and ways to stay connected with the Azure Linux team.
What’s new with Azure and open source
New documentation for capturing real-time insights (in just one click!) from your AKS cluster using Inspektor Gadget
We recently published new documentation outlining common use cases of how you can troubleshoot and debug your AKS cluster using the CNCF sandbox project, Inspektor Gadget. The documentation features a one-click experience where you can deploy Inspektor Gadget on an AKS cluster and easily experiment with the gadgets detailed in the documentation.
Microsoft open sources Retina
We released Retina as an open-source repository that helps with DevOps and SecOps related networking cases for your Kubernetes clusters. Retina is a cloud-agnostic, open-source Kubernetes Network Observability platform which helps with DevOps, SecOps and compliance use cases. It provides a centralized hub for monitoring application and network health and security, catering to Cluster Network Administrators, Cluster Security Administrators and DevOps Engineers. To learn more, visit our Retina page and read the announcement blog.
Linux and open source events
The last few months have been a busy time for events! Microsoft was speaking and attending events across the world, including FOSDEM, SCaLE 21x (Microsoft was a Gold sponsor), WASM I/O, Cloud Native Rejekts, and KubeCon Europe. Check out Brendan Burns’ blog to learn more about important enhancements and innovations in Azure, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and our open-source projects. You’ll also find us at more events soon, we hope to see you there!
What’s coming up next
Open Source Summit North America (April 16-18)
Join Microsoft at Open Source North America in Seattle! Come meet us at booth P6 to connect with Microsoft experts and see the latest open-source technologies in action. Also, be sure to check out all the exciting Microsoft sessions to learn more about Microsoft’s contributions to the open source community, best practices for using open source technologies, and insights into emerging trends in open source. Read this blog to learn more.
LinuxFest Northwest (April 26-28)
Attending LinuxFest Northwest? Be sure to check out the session from Sudhanva Huruli, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, who will share learnings from releasing Azure Linux, Microsoft’s open source Linux distribution.
Red Hat Summit (May 6-9)
Microsoft will be a Platinum sponsor at Red Hat Summit, which is taking place in Denver, Colorado on May 6-9. Visit the us at booth #202 to connect with experts and attend the Microsoft sessions to discover best practices for running Red Hat workloads on Azure.
Upcoming End of Life (EOL), End of Support (ES), and/or End of Maintenance (EOM)
CentOS Linux 7: CentOS 7 will reach EOL on June 30, 2024. Customers will need to migrate to a new operating system to continue receiving updates, security patches, and new features. Read the documentation for CentOS migration options and paths in Azure.
RHEL 7:RHEL 7 will reach EOM on June 30, 2024. Customers will need to upgrade to a newer version of RHEL or purchase Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS) from Red Hat to continue to receive security updates and bug fixes. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of RHEL if possible to take full advantage of new features, ongoing support and more.
RHEL 6:RHEL 6 Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) will end on June 30,2024. Customers will need to migrate to a newer version of RHEL to take full advantage of new features, security enhancements, bug fixes, ongoing support and more.
Are you currently using CentOS and looking to migrate to a new operating system on Azure? Watch the on-demand webinar on navigating the end of CentOS with Ubuntu on Azure.
Did you know you can use Inspektor Gadget on AKS clusters via VS Code? Check out the demo here.
If you have any feedback or questions, please drop them in the comments.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
With more than 800,000 organizations depending on Microsoft Entra to navigate the constantly evolving identity and network access threat landscape, the need for increased transparency regarding product updates — particularly changes you may need to take action on — is critical.
Today, I’m thrilled to announce the public preview of What’s New in Microsoft Entra. This new hub in the Microsoft Entra admin center offers you a centralized view of our roadmap and change announcements across the Microsoft Entra identity and network access portfolio. In this article, I’ll show you how admins can get the most from what’s new to stay informed about Entra product updates and actionable insights.
Discover what’s new in the Microsoft Entra admin center
Because you’ll want visibility to product updates often, we’ve added what’s new to the top section of the Microsoft Entra admin center navigation pane.
Figure 1: What’s new is available from the top of the navigation pane in the Microsoft Entra admin center.
What’s new is not available in Azure portal, so we encourage you to migrate to the Microsoft Entra admin center if you haven’t already. It’s a great way to manage and gain cohesive visibility across all the identity and network access solutions.
Overview of what’s new functionality
What’s new offers a consolidated view of Microsoft Entra product updates categorized as Roadmap and Change announcements. The Roadmap tab includes public previews and recent general availability releases, while Change announcements detail modifications to existing features.
Highlights tab
To make your life easier, the Highlights tab summarizes important product launches and impactful changes.
Figure 2: The highlights tab of what’s new is a quick overview of key product launches and impactful changes.
Clicking through the items on the highlights tab allows you to get details and links to documentation to configure policies.
Figure 3: Click View details to learn more about an announcement.
Roadmap tab
The Roadmap tab allows you to explore the specifics of public previews and recent general availability releases.
Figure 4: The Roadmap tab lists the current public preview and recent general availability releases.
To know more, you can click on a title for details of that release. Click ‘Learn more’ to open the related documentation.
Figure 5: Learn more about an announcement by clicking its title.
Change Announcements tab
Change announcements include upcoming breaking changes, deprecations, retirements, UX changes and features becoming Microsoft-managed.
Figure 6: Change announcements tab displays changes to the existing features.
You can customize your view according to your preferences, by sorting or by applying filters to prepare a change implementation plan.
Figure 7: Apply filters, sort by columns to create a customized view.
What’s next?
We’ll continue to extend this transparency into Entra product updates and look forward to elevating your experience to new heights. We would love to hear your feedback on this new capability, as well as what would be most useful to you. Explore what’s new in Microsoft Entra now.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In an era where service management is increasingly complex, the integration of core business functions has become critical. Fragmented systems can lead to a cascade of issues—inefficient scheduling, delayed invoicing, and a decline in customer satisfaction. Today we are thrilled to announce the general availability of the native integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Business Central. This integration equips organizations with a comprehensive approach that harmonizes service delivery with financials, resources, and inventory management. It also equips frontline workers with modern tools, ensuring exceptional service from the outset. Let’s explore the advantages that this seamless integration provides.
Bridging the gap between Field Service and ERP systems
The division between Field Service and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems has long presented significant challenges, including:
Lack of financial visibility: Without integration, businesses struggle to understand job costs and profitability, leaving their financial health in the dark.
Inefficient scheduling: Siloed systems lead to inefficient scheduling of technicians, resulting in lost time and resources.
Delayed invoicing: Manual processes and disconnected systems often cause delays in invoicing and payments, leading to cash flow disruptions.
Data inconsistencies: Inconsistent data across systems creates errors and confusion, impacting decision-making.
Costly and slow integrations: System integrations can be expensive and time-consuming, leading to slow time to value and ongoing maintenance cost.
The integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Business Central directly addresses these challenges by providing:
Real-time visibility: Through comprehensive integration from front-line operations to back-office functions, organizations gain immediate visibility into all aspects of their operations, including finances, inventory, and resource management.
Improved scheduling: With Copilot-assisted scheduling in Field Service dispatchers can match the right technician to the right job at the right time.
Streamlined financial operations: Automated billing and invoicing not only accelerate the payment cycle, improving cash flow management, but also reduce errors, enhancing overall profitability, and transforming every work order into an opportunity for growth.
Empowered frontline workers: Access to a modern mobile app empowers frontline workers to see their work on the go, access it offline, and make updates while on the job – providing more accurate data for the back office.
Fast and cost-effective integration: This out-of-the-box integration reduces the cost and time associated with traditional integrations, leading to quicker time to value and less ongoing maintenance cost.
Key Capabilities
The integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Business Central not only addresses existing challenges but also enables new opportunities for businesses to enhance efficiency, improve customer satisfaction, and drive growth. Key capabilities include:
Data synchronization: Ensures a single source of truth by synchronizing key data between the two systems.
Product inventory and pricing: Business Central provides the inventory data and price lists for Field Service, which helps with accurate work order creation and product usage tracking. When products are used, the inventory levels are automatically adjusted.
Projects and Accounts: Work Orders are seamlessly synced with Business Central Projects and Customer Accounts, ensuring precise project tracking and customer billing.
Resources: Resources are automatically synced, enabling invoicing based on resource usage and rates established in Business Central for Work Order services.
Accurate invoicing through automation: Automates the syncing of field activities with Business Central, minimizing manual effort and errors. Organizations have control over when information is synced, and can choose to post project journals manually or automatically upon Work Order completion.
Efficient scheduling for dispatchers: Simplifies technician scheduling by suggesting the right resource based on availability, skills, and distance to the job site using Copilot-enabled scheduling capabilities in Field Service.
Mobile access for frontline workers: Empowers technicians with the Field Service Mobile app, providing access to necessary information on the go, even in remote offline areas. Features like Inspections, Guides, and Remote Assist enhance technician capabilities.
Comprehensive reports and analytics for service managers: Comprehensive data leads to comprehensive reporting. Organizations can access information on service delivery, financials, and inventory, allowing for improved business decision making.
Call to action
The integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Business Central is a deliberate stride towards operational coherence and efficiency. Companies that adopt this integrated solution stand to witness an increase in operational productivity, revenue growth, and customer satisfaction metrics. Transform your operations today and unlock new growth opportunities with Dynamics 365 Field Service and Business Central integration.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
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