Microsoft To Do iOS 14 widgets are now available

by Contributed | Feb 9, 2021 | Technology

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

With the launch of iOS 14, you can now add widgets to your home screen. We’re excited to announce that To Do widgets for iOS 14 are now available! We’ve added three new types of widgets for you – read on to learn more.

Your Tasks Widget

The Your Tasks widget helps you select and view tasks from a list of your choice. The widget is available in two sizes: the medium widget shows a list of your tasks, while the large widget shows a list of your tasks along with due dates and other details. By default, the Your Tasks widget shows the Tasks list. To change the list it displays, long press on the widget and select Edit Widget, then select your list of choice.

 Your Task widget

My Day Widget

In the My Day widget, you can view the first task on your My Day list. Want to see the rest of your list? Tap anywhere on the widget to open the My Day list in To Do.

My Day Widget

Add Task Widget

The Add Task widget allows you to quickly add a task to a list of your choice without having to open the To Do app. To add a task, tap anywhere on the widget. To pick which list your task is added to, long press on the widget and select Edit Widget.

Add Task Widget

How to get started with To Do’s widgets:

1. Long press on any empty space on your home screen to enter the home screen edit mode, then tap the plus icon [+] to open the widgets menu.


2.  Search for To Do or scroll down to find Microsoft To Do, then add the widget of your choice. (You can also add multiple widgets!)

You can also create a widget stack with To Do and Outlook widgets to access your tasks and calendar all in one, or create stacks with multiple To Do widgets to keep track of all your tasks in one view.

We’d love to hear your feedback on the new widgets. What’s your favorite widget? Let us know in the comments below or connect with us on Twitter and Facebook. You can also write to us at todofeedback@microsoft.com.

Automatically disable On-prem AD User using a Playbook triggered in Azure

by Contributed | Feb 9, 2021 | Technology

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

Many organizations have an on premises Active Directory infrastructure that is synced to Azure cloud. However, given that the on-prem side is the authoritative source of truth, any changes, such as disabling a user in the cloud (Azure AD), are overridden by the setting defined in the on-prem AD in the next scheduled sync. This presents challenges when you want to orchestrate a user property change from Azure that needs to persist even after the sync happens. To address the problem, this solution leverages Azure Automation Accounts and Hybrid Worker features across Windows & Azure. Automation Accounts are used to perform cloud-based automation across Azure and non-Azure environments. For non-Azure environments such as an On-Premises Active Directory, an Automation Hybrid Worker is required in addition to the Automation Account to be able to issue commands to the On-Premises Active Directory from Azure. Hybrid Workers can be used in Linux and Windows environments and if one has deployed  Azure Arc , then they can also be used with the same OS types running in AWS or GCP so long as those machines are reporting to a Log Analytics workspace.

Deployment Steps

Create an Automation Account and link it with the Log Analytics Workspace

1. Create an Automation Account from the Azure Portal

2. Deploy the Automation Hybrid Worker solution from the Azure Market place

Link a Log Analytics Workspace to your Automation Account.

Link the LA workspace to an automation account using the “Change Tracking” menu item on the list. If the Log Analytics workspace is in either East US or East US2 then you need to use the region mapping in the following link to select the location of your automation account: Supported regions for linked Log Analytics workspace | Microsoft Docs

It is highly recommended that the permissions of the account used above be restricted to the minimum required to disable user accounts using the Delegation userAccountControl bit mask. More details can be found here: UserAccountControl property flags – Windows Server | Microsoft Docs

To create a new PowerShell Runbook navigate to you Automation Account and select the Runbooks blade. 

Param (

[string] $SAMAccountName

)

if (Get-Module -ListAvailable -Name ActiveDirectory) {
    Write-Output "ActiveDirectory PowerShell module already exists on host."
} 
else {
    Write-Output "ActiveDirectory PowerShell module does not exist on host. Installing..."
    try {
        Import-Module ActiveDirectory
    }
    catch{
        Write-Error "Error installing ActiveDirectory PowerShell module."
        throw $_
        break
    }

    Write-Output "ActiveDirectory PowerShell module installed."
}

Write-Output "Finding and disabling user $SAMAccountName"
try {
    Get-ADUser -Identity $SAMAccountName | Disable-ADAccount
}
catch {
    Write-Error "Error disabling user account $SAMAccountName"
    throw $_
    break
}
Write-Output "Successfully disabled user account $SAMAccountName"

The script takes in a SAMAccountName parameter which it uses to find the appropriate user and disable the account. This script can be modified to do a variety of other tasks, such as password resets, adding/removing users to/from groups, etc.

To confirm successful registration, navigate to your automation account then select Hybrid worker groups. You should see the recently registered Hybrid Worker Group in the list per below screen shot.

It is also recommended that you use TLS versions more recent than 1.0 and 1.1. For this reason you may be required to run the below command as well:

[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12

 

You can learn more about the process of deploying Hybrid Workers here:

 Deploy a Windows Hybrid Runbook Worker in Azure Automation | Microsoft Docs

 

On successful registration you should see an output similar to the below:

To confirm successful registration, navigate to your automation account then select Hybrid worker groups. You should see the recently registered hybrid worker group in the list per below screen shot.

 

 

 

Test the Runbook 

To ensure the Runbook is working ok before integrating with a Logic App, execute the Runbook manually from the Azure Portal and specify a test account in the SAMAccountName box, select HybridWorker in the Run Settings section and then choose your Hybrid Worker group name from the drop-down list:

 

 

Steps to orchestrate from Azure Sentinel/Logic Apps

Below is the structure of the orchestration Logic App that triggers the runbook to disable qualifying accounts from the On-Prem AD. With this action the next on-prem to cloud AD sync will maintain the state on the account – in this case disabled, until the setting is reversed from the on-prem AD Users & Computers management console.

Parse the JSON output from the Entities-Get Actions step above in order to extract the Azure User ID and SAM Account name needed to perform disable operations-first on Azure then on the On-Prem Active directory.

Disable Account in Azure AD

Create Hybrid Automation Job 

 

The string function below is contained in the ‘Runbook Parameter SamAccountName’ above and is needed to extract the SAMAccount from the UPN of the user as the On-Prem AD can only act on the User ID when specified in this format:

    substring(body(‘Parse_JSON’)?[‘Name’], 0, sub(length(body(‘Parse_JSON’)?[‘Name’]),indexOf(body(‘Parse_JSON’)?[‘Name’],’@’)))

To simulate the block orchestration from Azure Sentinel, you may use the below sample query to create an Analytics rule that will detect a failed log on due to a wrong password entered on Azure AD portal. You can then simulate failed log on attempts with the account you wish to test with.

    SigninLogs

    | where Location == “KE” and Identity contains “mytestaccount” and ResultType ==”50126″

    | extend AccountCustomEntity = AlternateSignInName

Troubleshooting guide for Hybrid Runbook Workers can be found here : Troubleshoot Azure Automation Hybrid Runbook Worker issues | Microsoft Docs

 

This Playbook can be deployed directly from GitHub on this link: Azure-Sentinel/Playbooks/Block-OnPremADUser at master · Azure/Azure-Sentinel (github.com)

Troubleshooting guide: Troubleshoot Azure Automation Hybrid Runbook Worker issues | Microsoft Docs

Special thanks to @haelshab  for his valuable collaboration in this project & @YanivS  for suggestions to enhance the solution

New transactable offers from Greater Than, Letsignit, and ZEDEDA in Azure Marketplace

by Contributed | Feb 9, 2021 | Technology

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

Microsoft partners like Greater Than, Letsignit, and ZEDEDA deliver transact-capable offers, which customers can purchase directly from Azure Marketplace. Learn about these offers below: Enerfy Loyalty: Designed to help auto insurance carriers create engaging programs that generate customer loyalty and increase sales, Enerfy Loyalty from Greater Than helps your organization collect valuable customer data, increase customer satisfaction, strengthen customer retention, and gain new customers via peer recommendations. Letsignit Email Signature Manager: Keep your company branding consistent and transform email into a low-cost acquisition channel with Letsignit’s cloud-based email signature management solution. Letsignit features an easy-to-use interface and Office 365 integration to help you showcase your brand and communicate key contact information while freeing up IT resources across your organization. ZEDEDA Edge Orchestration for Azure IoT: Integrate ZEDEDA’s cloud-based orchestration solution to simplify Microsoft Azure IoT Edge project deployment and scale quickly across thousands of nodes. The fully automated, one-click Azure IoT Edge runtime deployment features comprehensive security capabilities and integrates Azure IoT Hub Device Provisioning Service to eliminate manual, per-device configuration.

Track projects and share news in Teams with two new Power Apps

by Contributed | Feb 9, 2021 | Technology

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

Within the Teams app store, you’ll now find two brand new applications published by Microsoft: Milestones and Bulletins. With the Milestones app, you can seamlessly track projects across your company, and with Bulletins, you can quickly publish news articles to the rest of your company.

Both are deeply integrated within Teams, but what makes them unique is that they are built with Power Apps on top of the recently released Dataverse for Teams. By shipping them on top of Dataverse for Teams, we’re making it possible for you to fully customize these apps from top to bottom and to leverage them as inspiration to build your own apps!

Further customizing the apps to fit your needs
Like the existing Employee ideas, Inspection, and Issue reporting Teams apps, these brand new apps are built on top of Power Apps so that you can easily customize them to address your company’s specific needs.

With Power Apps and Dataverse for Teams, you can change things as simple as the branding of your app, all the way to what type of data you want to collect and the business rules you want to enforce.

Using Milestones and Bulletins as inspiration for your next app
If the new Milestones and Bulletins apps have inspired you to build your own apps on top of Dataverse for Teams, check out our documentation on how to get started.

In particular, these new apps take advantage of the recently released share with colleagues functionality. With the new share with colleagues feature, you can take apps like Bulletins and broadly distribute them to the rest of the company. The same feature can allow you to build organization-wide apps like time reporting, invoicing, expense reporting, and more, all on top of Dataverse for Teams.

Governing apps on top of Dataverse for Teams
Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t call out the powerful tools we ship to allow admins to govern apps like Milestones and Bulletins. In particular, we’ve shipped a powerful template as part of the Center of Excellence Starter Kit to manage Dataverse for Teams environments. With it, users within your company can provide business justifications for Dataverse for Teams so that admins can approve the usage.

We can’t wait to see what you’re able to build with Power Apps and Teams
We’re always excited to see what the community is able to build. To learn more about the Milestones and Bulletins, and to get further inspiration for what’s possible, check out the deep dive into these two apps by the Power Apps team.

Microsoft Search and More with Bill Baer – MidDay Café 02-22-2021

by Contributed | Feb 9, 2021 | Technology

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

Join us for MidDay Café this upcoming 02/22, at 12 noon eastern, as we host Microsoft’s Bill Baer, Senior Technical Product Manager for Microsoft Search.

Search at Microsoft has been a rapidly evolving service building upon the power of the Microsoft Graph. Properly leveraged within an organization the power of search, search driven, applications can be transformational. As Senior Technical Product Manager for Microsoft Search, Bill Baer will be bringing us the latest in Microsoft search to help organizations unlock the potential in their Microsoft 365 data and more.

In addition to our guest segment on search MidDay Café will also feature our hosts Patrick Miller, Mark Litwin, Peter Anello, Samantha Brown, and myself covering the latest in Microsoft news and events, as well as taking open QA around your questions.

MidDay Café 02/22/2021 Agenda:

• Welcome and Introductions.


• Mid-Day Café News and Events


• Microsoft Search and More with Bill Baer, Senior Technical Product Manager for Microsoft Search


• Open Q&A


• Wrap Up

Resources:

• Add the event to your calendar by downloading the .ics file from here  


• Join the event directly by clicking this link at 12 noon eastern 2/22 


• HLS Blog 


• Mid-Day Café Mailbag (submit your questions here before the event!)

Thanks for visiting – Michael Gannotti   LinkedIn | Twitter

Michael Gannotti