Join us at SapphireNOW for the latest updates on running SAP solutions on Microsoft Azure

by Contributed | Jun 9, 2021 | Technology

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

We are excited to participate in SAP SapphireNOW this year building on the momentum we have created with our expanded partnership with SAP announced earlier this year with new Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Teams integrations. At Microsoft Ignite last year, we shared a migration framework to help customers achieve a secure, reliable, and simplified path to the cloud. The expanded partnership with SAP and the migration framework are key components of our broader vision to build the best platform for mission-critical SAP applications for both customers and partners. As a Gold sponsor at SapphireNOW, we are participating in several sessions, including one in which Matt Ordish covers how customers can unlock value from their SAP data on Azure, and another in which Scott Guthrie joins SAP’s Thomas Saueressig in the Supply Chain keynote to discuss why supply chain resilience and agility are paramount to ensuring continual business operations and customer satisfaction.

Our platform continues to run some of the biggest SAP landscapes in the cloud across industries. Achmea, a leading insurer based in the Netherlands, is building a cloud strategy that aims to deliver flexibility, scalability, and speed across the business, with less intensive lifecycle management requirements for its IT team. With close collaboration between Microsoft and SUSE, Achmea has successfully moved some of its biggest SAP systems to Azure. Walgreens recently completed the 9,100 store roll out of their SAP S/4 Hana Retail system in the United States. The new solution enables Walgreens’ ambition for a digital and enhanced customer experience and replaces the legacy Retail, Supply Chain and Business Services back-end of the business with modern solutions and business processes.

 SAP on Azure Migration Framework

We have continued our strong pace of innovation across our key product areas building on the updates we announced in our SAP TechEd blog last year. Across the migration framework, we have several new product updates to further simplify running SAP solutions on Microsoft Azure. Below is a summary of some of the key product updates:

1. Lower TCO and improve dynamic handling of bursts in workloads We have added new SAP-certified compute and storage options and capabilities to help you right-size your infrastructure during the PREPARE phase of your migration.


2. Cloud-native solutions for efficient and agile operations during the MIGRATE and RUN phases The new release of our deployment automation framework lays the foundation for repeatable SAP software install, OS and other configurations. We have added key improvements to Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions (AMS) and Azure Backup for HANA.


3. Deeper integration with our partners to simplify customer journey to Azure: We are building our platform from the ground up for better integration with our managed services providers (MSP) and ISV partners. We are proud to share updates on the work we have done with Scheer GmbH and our preferred partnership announcements with SNP and Protera.

Let’s walk through these updates in more detail.

New SAP-certified Msv2 Medium Memory VM sizes will deliver a 20% increase in CPU performance, increased flexibility with local disks, and a new intermediate scale up-option

In response to customer feedback, we announced the Preview of new M-series VMs for memory-optimized workloads at Ignite. Today we are happy to announce the GA of these VMs with SAP certification. These new Msv2 medium memory VMs:

• Run on Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8280 (Cascade Lake) processor offering a 20% performance increase compared to the previous version.


• Are available in both disk and diskless offerings allowing customers the flexibility to choose the option that best meets their workload needs.


• Provide new isolated VM sizes with more CPU and memory that go up to 192 vCPU with 4TiB of memory, so customers have an intermediate option to scale up before going to a 416 vCPU VM size.

For more details on specs, regional availability, and pricing, read the blog announcement.

Lower TCO, consolidate complex HA/DR landscapes, and achieve faster database restart times with SAP-certified SAP HANA Large Instances (HLI) with Intel Optane

We are excited to announce 12 new SAP certifications of SAP HLI with Intel Optane following the recent record benchmark on the massive S896om instance. SAP HLI with Intel Optane helps customers reduce costs, simplify complex HA/DR landscapes, and achieve 22x faster database restart times, significantly reducing planned and unplanned downtimes. These new certified instances enable customers to:

• Reduce the cost of the SAP HLI Optane instances by 15%


• Take advantage of the SAP HLI Optane high memory density offerings for OLTP and OLAP workloads to reduce platform complexity for scale-up and scale-out scenarios.


• The SAP benchmark on 16 socket 24TB S896om HLI instance, is the first of its kind on a hyperscaler platform and also the highest recorded for Optane system. This is a testament to our commitment to deliver a high degree of performant, reliable, and innovative infrastructure for customers running mission-critical SAP workloads in Azure.

Please see, SAP HANA hardware directory for recent HLI certified Optane instances in Azure.

New Azure storage capabilities in public preview to simplify handling dynamic workloads

We have added several capabilities to Azure premium storage to improve operations and offer customers more flexibility in handling the dynamic nature of their workloads.

1. For phases of increased I/O workload, we released the possibility of changing the premium storage performance tier of a disk last year. Building on that, we now have a public preview to change the performance tier for a disk online to a higher tier. This addresses scenarios in which you need higher IOPS or I/O throughput due to time-consuming operational tasks or seasonal workloads.


2. For short I/O workload bursts we released public preview of on-demand bursting for premium storage disks larger than 5132GiB. The on-demand bursting allows bursting of up to 30K IOPS and 1GB/sec throughput per disk. This addresses short-time bursts of I/O workload in regular or irregular intervals and avoids short-term throttling of I/O activity.


3. For several Azure VM families that are SAP-certified, we released VM-level disk bursting. In smaller VM sizes such as the ones used in the SAP application layer, I/O peaks can easily reach the VM quota limits assigned for storage traffic. With the VM-level disk bursting functionality, VMs can handle such peaks without destabilizing the workload.


4. Price reduction of Azure Ultra disk : As of April 1^st, 2021, we reduced the price for the I/O throughput component of the Azure Ultra disk by 65%. This price reduction leads to better economics, especially with SAP workload triggered I/O load on the DBMS backend.

Accelerate deployment with the SAP on Azure Deployment Automation Framework

To help our customers effectively deploy SAP solutions on Azure, we offer the SAP Automation deployment framework, which includes Infrastructure as Code, and Configuration as Code, as open-source that is built on Terraform and Ansible. We are excited to have released the next version of the framework. In this release, we introduce capabilities to simplify the initial setup required to begin the deployment process for SAP systems. Other capabilities in this release include support for subnets as part of the Workload Zone, an Azure Firewall for outbound internet connectivity in isolated environments, and support for encryption using customer-managed keys.  A detailed list of capabilities is in the Release Note.

 A new feature becoming available in Private Preview at the end of June is the SAP Installation Framework. This feature will provide customers with a repeatable and consistent process to install an SAP product. To register for the Private Preview, please fill out the SAP Deployment Automation – private preview request form.

Seamlessly monitor SAP NetWeaver metrics with Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions (AMS)

Customers can now use AMS to monitor SAP NetWeaver systems in the Azure portal. In addition, customers can use the existing capabilities in AMS to monitor SAP HANA, Microsoft SQL Server, High-availability (pacemaker) Clusters, and Linux Operating System. The SAP BASIS and infrastructure teams within an organization can use AMS to collect, visualize and perform end-to-end SAP technical monitoring in one place within the Azure portal. Customers can get started with AMS without any license fee (consumption charges are applicable) in the following regions: US East, US East 2, US West 2, North Europe, and West Europe. 

Speed up backups with the latest updates to Azure Backup for SAP HANA

Now SAP HANA users can protect larger SAP HANA databases with a faster backup solution (up to 8 TB of full backup size and ~420 MBps speeds during backup and restore). Support for incremental backup is now generally available, enabling customers to assign cost-optimal backup policies such as weekly and daily incrementals. Customers can also secure their backups with HANA native keys or customer-managed keys in key vault for backup data at rest, and protect against regional outages by restoring to secondary paired region on-demand using the cross-region restore functionality. Customers can also monitor their entire Azure backup estate using Backup center, which is now generally available.

Strategic collaborations and product integrations with our partners will accelerate moving SAP solutions to Microsoft Azure

As we invest in building solutions that simplify the migration of SAP solutions to Azure, we closely collaborate with our global partners right from the design stage. One such design partner is Scheer GmbH. Scheer GmbH specializes in providing SAP consulting and managed services for customers in the EU region and has been one of our earliest design partners in the development process for products such as SAP automation deployment framework (available as open-source), Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions, and SAP HANA Backup solutions. Robert Mueller, Managing Director, Cloud Managed Services group Scheer says “With Microsoft Azure, we can offer our SAP customers the best and most secure cloud platform for their digital transformation ever. Through our partnership, we were able to incorporate our years of experience from operating SAP systems as well as the requirements of our customers into the Azure services. The Microsoft engineering team is an excellent and reliable partner who understands the needs of MSPs as well as their customers on an equal footing and implements them in an agile fashion. We look forward to continuing this partnership in the future and learn more from each other to create the best cloud to run SAP and business processes!”

Customers with complex SAP migration requirements can leverage our preferred partnership with SNP. SNPs BLUEFIELD™ approach helps customers migrate and upgrade to S/4 HANA in a single, non-disruptive go live. SNP’s Cloud Move for Azure provides rapid assessments, Azure target solutioning, and pricing. SNP’s CrystalBridge® offers automated migration capabilities in a cost-effective and secure fashion. Customers can also take advantage of data transformation capabilities of CrystalBridge® for selective data migration, mergers, and acquisitions.

We are happy to announce that we have also established a preferred partnership with Protera. Protera’s FlexBridge® helps customers accelerate SAP migrations to Azure by providing automated assessments, intelligent provisioning, and automated migrations. FlexBridge® also offers SAP management solutions on Azure providing a dashboard of operational metrics, service desk integration, cost analysis, and SAP maintenance optimization such as patching, system copies, and environment snoozing.

In addition to these updates, stay tuned for several exciting product announcements in the next few months. As we wrap this year, I also wanted to share why thousands of customers, including SAP, trust Azure to run their SAP solutions. We look forward to seeing you virtually at our sessions at SapphireNOW.

Meet a recent Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador graduate: Daniel Gomez Jaramillo

by Contributed | Jun 9, 2021 | Technology

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

This series highlights Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors who achieved the Gold milestone and have recently graduated from university. Each blog features a different student and highlights their accomplishments, their experience with the Student Ambassadors community, and what they’re up to now. 

Today we’d like to introduce Daniel Gomez Jaramillo, who is from Colombia and just completed his Systems Engineering studies at the University of Cuenca in Ecuador.  

Responses have been edited for clarity and length.  

When you became a Student Ambassador in 2018, did you have any specific goals you wanted to reach, like attain a skill or work on a particular quality? What were they, and did being a Student Ambassador help you achieve them? How has being in the community impacted you in general? 

I had no clear goals at the time, however, I decided to apply to become a Student Ambassador with the aim of acquiring new knowledge and being able to share it with my local community. I also wanted to meet other members so that I could learn from them because back then I was and always will remain passionate about technology. I was accepted into this wonderful community, and from that moment on, my life changed radically in every way, at the student, professional, and personal levels. 

The program has helped me a lot in different ways. I was able to acquire new knowledge about Microsoft Azure and web application development with .NET. As time went on, I was able to share that acquired knowledge with others through tutorial articles, online sessions, in-person workshops, and at special events of Microsoft and Student Ambassadors as well.  

Thanks to the events, I have been able to improve my skills when making a presentation, and the quality of my writing. In the professional field, this has helped me a lot, as I have received job offers as a result of being in the program. One was to work in the field of software development and content dissemination at RIGANTI, a company in the Czech Republic responsible for providing a framework on .NET for web application development. To this day, I am still working with them as a part-time employee. 

I was able to meet amazing people from all over the world and have been able to form strong friendships that I am sure will be for life. 

What were some of the accomplishments that you’re proudest of and why?  

Talking about a single achievement within the program is impossible. Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors has been like my second career, full of learning and amazing experiences. Anyway, here I can mention those I will never forget:  

I organized the Virtual Summit of the Microsoft Communities of Ecuador in 2020 with other Student Ambassadors, Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), and others, including Pablo Veramendi, the Student Ambassador Global Program Director.  Around 2000 people from all over Latin America participated in the event, where we were able to exchange knowledge about Microsoft’s different technologies through 37 hours of live streaming spread over 3 days.  There were 43 virtual sessions in total, and I was able to present several technology sessions about Azure and .NET. 

In 2021, I organized HackLatam 2021, a virtual hackathon, again with Student Ambassadors,  Microsoft employees, and MVPs from all over Latin America.  About 350 students from different countries were able to generate projects with Microsoft technology solutions to contribute to the education sector.  

An additional event that I will mention is Microsoft Ignite of 2020, where I was invited as a Student Ambassador to present a session to around 350 people in my native language for Spanish speakers. 

What do you have planned after graduation?  What’s next for you?  

In addition to my work with Riganti, I am working at a medical specialty center in Ecuador as a Software Engineer managing the system that supports the place.   

In about a year, I plan to study my masters’ degree, as I’m also very passionate about the research area. Finally, in the middle future, I would love to form a space or a kind of foundation so that people from vulnerable sectors can acquire new knowledge and generate technological solutions. 

If you could redo your time in the Student Ambassador community, is there anything you would have done differently?   

I don’t think I’d change anything. Everything I have lived through–the experiences, the process of self-discovery, learning and sharing with others, has allowed me to be the person I am today. I am very grateful to Microsoft for everything they have done for me as a Student Ambassador, and I will be grateful forever, as they allowed me to achieve amazing things, develop my potential, and above all, allow me to meet amazing people whom I consider my true friends. 

If you were to describe the community to a student who is considering joining, what would you say to convince them to join? 

Do you want your life to change radically in all aspects? The Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors program is for you! In addition to having the opportunity to be associated with one of the most important technology companies on the planet, you can acquire new knowledge with a myriad of benefits, participate as a community according to your interests, and meet wonderful people from all over the world.

And what advice would you give to new Student Ambassadors? 

You all have the ability to accomplish amazing things, and thanks to your passion for technology, today you are part of this wonderful program. When you start, it’s normal to have doubts or want to know more about something in particular, so you can always ask another Student Ambassador for help for whatever you need, or you can also contact the Community Program Managers. Take advantage of all the opportunities that come your way.  At first it can be a little scary to meet many people, but this community is amazing, and everyone is willing to help others.  Feel free to propose initiatives, and events.  Other Student Ambassadors will help you on your way.  

Also, discover the things that you are passionate about within the community and develop your potential. Connect with others, and we’ll achieve amazing things among all. All the energy you share will always come back to you.  Student Ambassadors for life! 

Do you have a motto in life, a guiding principle that drives you? 

Do what you love! For me, success is doing what you want to do, with the people you want to be with. I was able to learn this as a Student Ambassador, and I will apply it forever. 

Lastly, on a lighter note, can you share a random fun fact about yourself that few people are aware of? 

I use PowerPoint for everything–to make posters, rollup banners, image editing, video materials, and much more. 

Thank you, Daniel, and good luck to you in all your future endeavors! 

Azure Security Center and Azure Sentinel: Better Together

by Contributed | Jun 9, 2021 | Technology

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

Customers using the cloud today are experiencing new challenges, such as rapidly changing workloads and insecure configurations, increasingly sophisticated attacks, and limited visibility into security and compliance. Rapidly changing workloads are both a strength and a challenge of the cloud. On the one hand, end-users are empowered to do more. On the other, how do you ensure that the ever-changing services people are using and creating are up to your security standards and follow security best practices? On top of this, no matter where you run your workloads, attacks are getting more sophisticated. making end-to-end visibility into your security and compliance and staying up to date with the latest threats more important than ever. Given the shortage of security professionals, organizations are consistently doing more with fewer resources, which is increasingly complicated as resources become specialized and focus on different aspects of the threat protection story. Microsoft works to empower all security professional with the right tools to act quickly and efficiently.

Given the dynamic nature of the cloud and the constantly evolving threat landscape, we need intelligent, automated, integrated security to close the gaps, providing visibility and proactive response across the organization. 

Microsoft provides SIEM and extended detection and response (XDR) tools that emphasize integration to help your security teams stay ahead of attacks. Microsoft Defender, our XDR, manifests itself in two tailored experiences: Azure Defender and M365 Defender.  

Azure Defender, part of Azure Security Center, provides advanced threat protection across many resource types, including Servers, Kubernetes, Key Vault, and more.  

Azure Sentinel, our cloud native SIEM, is deeply integrated with our XDR and provides security information event management and security orchestration automated response.   

As a starting point, refresh your understanding of Azure Security Center, Azure Defender, and Azure Sentinel by checking out this article: What’s the difference between Azure Security Center, Azure Defender and Azure Sentinel? – Microsoft Tech Community  

Many customers are currently using Azure Security Center and Azure Sentinel but are looking to get the most out of both products to enhance protection and visibility across their enterprise.

Azure Security Center continuously scans your hybrid cloud environment and provides recommendations to help you harden your attack surface against threats. When Azure Defender does detect attempts to compromise your system, it will surface an alert in Azure Defender. You can conduct investigation and remediation from the Azure Defender blade all from the same pane of glass. You can review the alert and understand what resources were affected, what severity the alert is, and more. Directly from the Azure Defender alert, you can also mitigate the threat or prevent future attacks by resolving relative ASC recommendations. To reduce the burden on your security team, you can also set up  workflow automation, triggering an automated response for similar future alerts. By setting up a logic app to respond to similar alerts in the future, you can react faster and focus more time on remediating alerts.  

Cloud workload owners who manage a cloud workload and its related resources are responsible for implementing and maintaining protections by the organization’s security policies. These personas find value in ASC’s recommendations based on out-of-the-box security initiatives and the Azure Security Benchmark. These initatives are customized through features like secure score exemption or adding custom policies. Cloud workload owners are typically not focused on alerts, as this is the responsibility of the Security Operations team, who monitor and respond to security alerts. The Cloud Workload owners concentrate on securing the infrastructure while the SecOps team responds to threats where they do occur. As such, these teams leverage different tools in support of their missions. 

Cloud Workload owners will frequently leverage ASC’s recommendations blade to reduce the attack surface and harden against threats. SecOps teams will focus on monitoring alerts that do come in and working toward expedient remediation. This integration is where the Azure Security Center and Azure Sentinel better together story begins. Azure Sentinel comes with several connectors for Microsoft solutions, available out of the box and providing real-time integration. With Azure Sentinel’s built-in connector for Azure Security Center, you can stream Azure Defender alerts to Sentinel in just a few clicks. You can even stream information around security recommendations, secure score, and regulatory compliance through continuous export. Streaming updates will send information about changes in one of these categories, such as an increase in your secure score or a change in your compliance posture relative to a regulatory compliance metric.  

But what if your SecOps team is interested in evaluating other sources of threats beyond Azure Defender? Beyond connectors to Microsoft solutions, Azure Sentinel has built-in connectors to the broader security ecosystem for non-Microsoft solutions.  

By aggregating seemingly disparate alerts into a centralized source, Sentinel connects these alerts and builds a story. Once the data flows to Sentinel, we leverage a feature called fusion to employ scalable machine learning algorithms to correlate many low-fidelity alerts and events across multiple products into high-fidelity, actionable incidents. When we think about cloud security challenges, this feature provides the needed visibility and allows your security team to prioritize their time. 

Note for our customers in Azure Government: Fusion is now available in Azure Government!  

Once we have onboarded alerts to Sentinel through our connectors, SecOps teams can use playbooks, automation rules, and Kusto queries for further investigation, threat hunting, and automation. Graphical and AI-based analysis will reduce the time it takes to understand the full scope and its impact. You can visualize the attack and take quick actions in the same dashboard.  

Automation rules help you triage incidents in Azure Sentinel. You can use them to automatically assign incidents to the right personnel, close noisy incidents or known false positives, change their severity, and add tags. They are also the mechanism by which you can run playbooks in response to incidents. 

Playbooks are collections of procedures triggered from Azure Sentinel in response to an alert or incident. A playbook can help automate and orchestrate your response and are configured to run automatically when specific alerts or incidents are generated by being attached to an analytics rule or an automation rule, respectively.  

Write Kusto Query Language (KQL) statements to query log data to perform detections, analysis, and reporting in Azure Sentinel.  Simple actions like querying the log data allow Sentinel to bring value and turn the multiple data sources into meaningful, actionable information. These intelligent response and automation methods enable your team to quickly and efficiently address alerts and allow you to focus your time on high-priority items, which is increasingly important as we continue to do more with fewer resources in this space.  

 When we couple these two great products is an integrated end-to-end detection, investigation, and response platform for protecting cloud workloads. With Azure Security Center, we can gain visibility into our cloud environment and address recs to help us harden our attack surface. Azure Defender provides visibility where we do see threats or attempts to compromise our system. From here, we can stream these alerts to Sentinel for further investigation and threat hunting. Automated responses in Sentinel facilitate risk mitigation and focus on what’s important.  

Integrating these tools also allows the different personas focused on defending workloads in an organization to have visibility into what matters to them. For example, even if a Cloud Workload owner suppresses an alert, it will still create an incident in Sentinel which surfaces in a dismissed state. This process facilitates focus on various aspects of the threat protection story. This integrations enables security analysts to receive actionable information reducing time to action and enabling decision-making. 

Check out this video for more: Video | Better together for US government: Azure Security Center + Azure Sentinel | Azure Government (microsoft.com)

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/gADITMKYuSA

Get Started with Azure Security Center and Azure Sentinel and Learn More About Security with Microsoft 

Below are additional resources for learning more about security with Microsoft. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters and follow us at @MSFTSecurity or visit our website for the latest news and cybersecurity updates. 

• Get Started with Azure Security Center 


• Get Started with Azure Sentinel 


• Announcing the Azure Sentinel: Zero Trust (TIC3.0) Workbook 


• What’s New: Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Workbook 

• Investigate Azure Security Center Alerts Using Azure Sentinel 

Microsoft works to ensure a great OneDrive experience on Apple products

by Contributed | Jun 9, 2021 | Technology

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

As hybrid and remote work continue, many organizations are giving employees flexibility to choose not only where they work but also the devices they use to get work done. We have been working closely with Apple to ensure we’re providing a great user experience in OneDrive on Apple products, whether people are using OneDrive to keep their work files synced and protected or to store and share their personal files and photos in the cloud.

Today, we’re excited to share some of the updates and improvements we’re in the process of making to OneDrive running on Apple products to help people be more productive no matter where they are.

OneDrive support for M1-powered Macs

You asked and we listened! 
We are thrilled to announce that later this year, we will be updating OneDrive for Mac to run natively on M1-powered Macs. This means that OneDrive will take full advantage of the performance improvements on M1, making you even more productive on the latest iMac, MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini.

Note: OneDrive is currently available using Rosetta 2 on M1 -powered Macs.

Known Folder Move

We have been actively working to address your request to enable Known Folder Move (KFM) support for macOS, and we’re thrilled to announce that soon you’ll be able to roll out KFM for your macOS users and redirect their Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders to OneDrive.

This means that people using OneDrive on the latest version of macOS can continue using folders they’re familiar with to do their daily work and be assured that their data is backed up and secure.

KFM will also enable your macOS users to access their most important files across different devices and applications with no disruption to productivity, because their content is automatically synced to OneDrive. In addition, your users will be able to securely share their data within and outside their organization, increasing collaboration.

Redirect your important Mac folders (Desktop, Documents and Pictures) to OneDrive with KFM for Mac.

And if you decide to perform a device refresh, you don’t need to worry about losing user data. For new machines, you can configure KFM from the start, so all new files are uploaded to the cloud. This is great for your organization as it increases user engagement with OneDrive, and you can easily protect files with enterprise-level security and compliance that comes built in. IT admins will be able to use preferences to encourage Mac users to perform KFM to keep their files backed up and protected, or they can use a silent property to automatically move content in the Desktop, Documents, and Picture folders to OneDrive.

This update will be available to all Mac users, enabling you to also keep your personal files and family photos in your important folders (Desktop, Documents, and Pictures) synced, protected, and available on other devices, and there’s no extra cost for macOS folder backup (up to 5 GB of files without a subscription). So even if your device gets lost or damaged, you won’t lose your important documents and favorite pictures when they are synced to OneDrive.

For organizations, KFM should be available for private preview  later this year. To sign up, please enroll here.

Note:

1. Files On-Demand and the latest version of macOS would be required for KFM.


2. KFM will be available for the Standalone app, followed by the App Store app soon after.

Files On-Demand and Finder updates

Later this year we will be revamping the OneDrive sync experience on the latest version of macOS based on Apple’s new File Provider platform to improve the Finder experience for OneDrive. With this update, the OneDrive folder will be visible under Locations in the Finder sidebar, providing easy and quick access to all your OneDrive files.

OneDrive folder will be visible under Locations in the Finder sidebar providing a native experience.

We will also be updating the Files On-Demand experience. OneDrive Files On-Demand, which is enabled by default, helps you view and access all your files, individual or shared, without having to download them and use device storage.

This update will provide refreshed file status iconography in OneDrive:

• Online-only files will be represented by a cloud icon     


• When you open an online-only file, it downloads to your device as a locally-available file


• Locally downloaded files that require device space will display the always-available file icon

This redesign is aimed at rendering a seamless OneDrive experience that feels native on the latest version of macOS. Deeply integrated with Finder, this refresh anchors on simplicity to improve ease of use while providing all the same benefits and functionality you have with your current version of Files On-Demand in OneDrive for macOS.

Updated OneDrive Files On-Demand experience for Macs.

Regardless of which macOS version you are running, OneDrive Files On-Demand helps you:

• Save space on your device by making certain files available online only and access them just as you would any other file on your device.


• Set files and folders to be always available on the device for offline access.


• See important information about files, such as whether they are shared.


• See thumbnails of more than 300 file types even if the necessary application to access a file isn’t installed.

Save space on your device by making certain files available online only

Read more about Files On-Demand for macOS here.

Sync Admin Reports support for macOS

Last month, we announced OneDrive Sync Admin Reports for Windows in the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center.

We are thrilled to announce that soon we will be bringing the same functionality to macOS as well.

These reports will give IT admins more visibility into macOS users in their organization running OneDrive Sync and any errors they might be experiencing. With an at-a-glance view of OneDrive Sync across their organization, IT admins can quickly and proactively resolve issues to help people stay productive while improving OneDrive adoption and user experience.

OneDrive admin reports will give IT admins more visibility into macOS users in their organization .  

Performance and reliability improvements

We’ve been working diligently to improve performance and reliability for OneDrive running on macOS. Last month, the team rolled out updates that reduced the amount of CPU usage by 40 percent, helping save battery power and speed up performance for multi-tasking. We’re excited to roll out additional improvements over the next few months that further optimize performance and reliability to improve the user experience.

Exclude syncing of specific file types

Last month, we enabled functionality in OneDrive for macOS that allows IT admins to prevent the OneDrive sync app from uploading certain files to OneDrive or SharePoint. IT admins who are managing macOS devices in their organizations can enable this setting using the prescribed plist file entry to prevent users from uploading specific file types such as .exe or .mp3 when they sync their OneDrive files.

When this setting is enabled, the sync app doesn’t upload new files that match the specified keywords, and the files remain in the local OneDrive folder.

In Finder, the files will appear with an “Excluded from sync” icon in the Status column, and users will see a notification in the OneDrive activity center explaining why the files aren’t syncing.

Exclude files notification in Finder and Activity center.

Offline editing with Office Apps in iOS

We are glad to announce that later this month iOS and iPadOS users will be able to edit Office documents that they have marked for offline use in the OneDrive mobile app. When they are offline, they only have to tap Edit or Open in Word or PowerPoint to start editing. When they’re online again, they can pick up right where they left off.

Offline editing will be available with the Office mobile app as well as the standalone Word and PowerPoint apps on iOS and iPadOS.

iOS and iPadOS users will be able to edit Office documents that they have marked for offline use in the OneDrive mobile app

Learn more and stay engaged..

We continue to evolve OneDrive as a place to access, share, and collaborate on all your files in Office 365, keeping them protected and readily accessible on all your devices, anywhere.

 To learn more about OneDrive:

• You can stay up-to-date on all things via the OneDrive Blog and the OneDrive release notes.


• Check out the new and updated OneDrive documentation.


• Take advantage of end-user training resources on our Office support center.


• Check out our  episodes of Sync Up- a OneDrive podcast to learn more about OneDrive from the experts. 

Thank you again for your support of OneDrive. We look forward to your continued feedback and hope to connect with you at another upcoming Microsoft or community-led event.

 Thanks for your time reading all about OneDrive,

 OneDrive Team | Microsoft

“Visio for everyone” ? – The Intrazone podcast

by Contributed | Jun 9, 2021 | Technology

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

Get ready to take your diagramming skills to the next level!

In this episode, Chris and I talk with Mukul Kumar (Senior product manager) and Nishant Kumar (Product manager) from the Visio team at Microsoft. They have some exciting news that’s ‘goodness at no cost’ to a lot of people in Microsoft 365. We’ll dig into this and all things Visio – its place in the world of productivity, use cases for beginners to experts – web to desktop, and more.

The goal after finishing this episode: to be so fluent, you diagram in your sleep.

Listen to podcast below:

https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/19387808/height/90/theme/custom/thumbnail/yes/direction/backward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/247bc1/

Subscribe to The Intrazone podcast! And listen to episode 66 now + show links and more below.

Intrazone guests: Nishant Kumar (product manager | Microsoft) and Mukul Kumar (senior product manager | Microsoft).

Links to important on-demand recordings and articles mentioned in this episode:  

• Hosts, guests, and related products
  
  
  
  • Mukul Kumar | Twitter | LinkedIn [guest]
  
  
  • Nishant Kumar | LinkedIn [guest]
  
  
  • Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]
  
  
  • Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host] 
  
  
  • SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog 
  
  
  • Visio | @MSVisio | Visio community blog 
  
  
  
  


• Articles and sites
  
  
  
  • “Bringing Visio to Microsoft 365: Diagramming for everyone” (related Visio announcement blog post)
  
  
  • “Recapping Ignite with the five biggest Visio updates” (recent Ignite blog post)
  
  
  • Visualize with Visio (video series)
  
  
  • Learn more about Microsoft Visio (support.microsoft.com)
  
  
  • Microsoft Docs – The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 
  
  
  • Microsoft Tech Community Home
  
  
  • Stay on top of Office 365 changes
  
  
  • Listen to other Microsoft podcasts
  
  
  
  


• Events
  
  
  
  • Microsoft 365 Collaboration Summit (June.8-10, 2021) [hybrid event: online and in-person (Orlando, FL)
  
  
  • Microsoft Viva AMA (June 23, 2021) [Within the Microsoft Tech Community]
  
  
  • Join the Visio team for a free webinar: “Create new opportunities with Microsoft Visio for HR, finance, and facilities teams” (June 29, 2021, at 11:00 AM PDT).
  
  
  • Inspire 2021 (July 14-15) [virtual]
  
  
  • SharePoint Fest – Chicago (July 26-30, 2021)
  
  
  
  

Subscribe today!

Listen to the show! If you like what you hear, we’d love for you to Subscribe, Rate and Review it on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Be sure to visit our show page to hear all the episodes, access the show notes, and get bonus content. And stay connected to the SharePoint community blog where we’ll share more information per episode, guest insights, and take any questions from our listeners and SharePoint users (TheIntrazone@microsoft.com). We, too, welcome your ideas for future episodes topics and segments. Keep the discussion going in comments below; we’re hear to listen and grow.

Subscribe to The Intrazone podcast! And listen to episode 66 now.

Thanks for listening!

The SharePoint teams want you to unleash your magic, creativity, and productivity – and visualize it all. And we will do this, together, one diagram at a time.

The Intrazone links

• Show page


• Apple Podcasts


• Google Play Music


• Spotify


• Pandora


• Stitcher


• Overcast


• TuneIn


• RadioPublic


• iHeart


• RSS

+ Listen to other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Left to right [The Intrazone co-hosts]: Chris McNulty, director (SharePoint/Viva – Microsoft) and Mark Kashman, senior product manager (SharePoint – Microsoft).

The Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365 intelligent intranet (aka.ms/TheIntrazone)