Announcing General Availability of Az.Tools.Predictor

by Contributed | Apr 28, 2022 | Technology

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

On November 10, 2020, we announced the first preview of Az.Tools.Predictor, a PowerShell module suggesting the Azure cmdlet to use with parameters and suggested values.

Today, we are announcing the general availability of Az.Tools.Predictor.

How it all started

During a study about a new module for Azure, I was surprised to see how difficult it was for the participant to find the correct cmdlet to use. Later, I was summarizing the learnings of the study, and though it would be great if we could have a solution that could help people finding the right cmdlet to use.

At the same time, we were starting to work on Predictive IntelliSense in PowerShell and after a couple of meetings with Jason Helmick, it became clear that this would be a great mechanism to address the challenge I had seen few days before by providing, in the command line, suggestions about cmdlet to use.

We quickly thought that some form of AI could help providing accurate recommendations so we involved Roshanak, Yevhen and Maoliang from our data science team to work with us on how we could build an engine that would provide recommendations for PowerShell cmdlets based on the user’s context.

Behind the scenes

Once a functional prototype was built, we wanted to confirm its usability before considering any public previews.
For our team usability is important, over time certain key combinations became a reflex and we knew that we had to fit in the existing memory muscle and become intuitive for PowerShell. For predictors to be successful, we organized several usability studies with prototypes of Az Predictors and addressed several improvements, like the color of the suggested text or the key combination to use to accept or navigate amongst predictions.

One of our initial prototypes was using the color scheme below, we wanted to have a clear color-based differentiation between typed characters and suggestions hoping this would help user navigate the suggestion. We worked with our design team to address the issue and evolve our design towards the current design.

We also evaluated if the information provided in the suggestions is helpful. Below is another of our early designs. By listening to our customers and observing how they are using the tool, we learned that showing cmdlets first then parameters and associated value samples was not as useful as showing the full line and not using more space in the terminal which is our current design.

During the last months we have done a few previews (read about preview 5) to stabilize the module as PowerShell and PS Readline which we depend on became stable. We have also improved our model based on the feedback we have collected and addressed issues reported.

Getting started

We would like to invite you to try the stable version of Az.Tools.Predictor.
To get started, follows these steps:

1. Install or upgrade PowerShell v7.2
   https://docs.microsoft.com/powershell/scripting/install/installing-powershell


2. Install or upgrade PSReadline 2.2
   

   Install-Module -Name PSReadLine -Force

   
   


3. Install or upgrade Az.Tools.Predictor
   

   Install-module -name Az.Tools.Predictor -Force

   
   


4. Enable Az Predictor
   

   Enable-AzPredictor -AllSession

   
   

Once installed, it is recommended that you restart your PowerShell sessions.

For more details, visit the Az Predictor documentation page: https://docs.microsoft.com/powershell/azure/az-predictor

Inline view mode (default)

Once enabled, the default view is the “inline view” as shown in the following screen capture:

This mode shows only one suggestion at a time. The suggestion can be accepted by pressing the right arrow or you can continue to type. The suggestion will dynamically adjust based on the text that you have typed.
You can accept the suggestion at any time then come back and edit the command that is on your prompt.

List view mode

This is my favorite mode!

Switch to this view either by using the “F2” function key on your keyboard or run the following command:

Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionViewStyle ListView

This mode shows from your current prompt a list of possible matches for the command that you are typing. It combines suggestions from your local history and from Az Predictor.

Select a suggestion and then navigate through the parameter values with “Alt + A” to quickly fill replace the proposed values with yours.

Next steps

This is just the beginning of our journey to improving the usability of Azure PowerShell!

We will be carefully listening to every feedback that you send us: 

• Open an issue on GitHub to report a problem


• Tell us about your experience using this survey: http://aka.ms/azpredictorsurvey


• Reach out to us on Twitter: @azureposh

We will share soon more about how we plan to expand this experience to other environments.

Credits

“It takes a village to raise a child” Az.Tools.Predictor is the result of the close collaboration of several teams distributed across continents and time zones working hard during the pandemic.

Voices of Healthcare Cloud brings you “Machine Vision Pilot for Central Line Dressing Maintenance “

by Contributed | Apr 27, 2022 | Technology

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

On March 15, Synaptiq and Microsoft issued a press release announcing a new Machine Vision pilot program for hospitals. In collaboration with Microsoft, Synaptiq built a demo solution to proactively inform care teams of potential Central Line dressing compliance issues.

The pilot program is designed to help reduce preventable injuries from hospital-borne Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections (CLABSIs) and improve speed of care and patient outcomes. It also helps providers standardize care for new and existing staff, identify education opportunities, and decrease documentation time.

According to the NIH, CLABSIs are largely preventable infections that occur in more than 400,000 patients annually in the United States alone, resulting in over 28,000 deaths and costing U.S. hospitals $2 billion. A key piece of preventing CLABSIs is maintaining Central Line dressings as clean and intact as possible.

Machine vision is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that enables computers to derive information from visual inputs. It is able to collect more precise visual data than human vision ever could, and uses processing power to analyze the visual data faster and more thoroughly than the human mind.

Because visual cues play such a vital role in ensuring patient safety and preventing CLABSIs, machine vision has the potential to exponentially enhance care teams’ ability to recognize and respond to possible infections – before the human eye can even detect a problem is present.

I am truly excited to provide our Voices of Healthcare viewers with a first-look at this incredibly important pilot. I had the opportunity to assist in building the demo solution alongside Synaptiq and cannot wait to see how it helps save many, many lives in the years to come.

For this session on May 11, 2022, Synaptiq’s CEO Stephen Sklarew and Mariana Gattegno, Quality and Patient Safety consultant at Volpini Solutions LLC, will discuss the current status of Central Line dressing maintenance in hospitals today, review the pilot program details, and demo the solution. They will also answer questions and discuss how hospitals joining this effort will benefit.

Synaptiq’s solution to assess Central Line dressings using Microsoft Technologies

Synaptiq’s Machine Vision Pilot Program for Central Line Dressing Maintenance is an example of how Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare can rapidly deliver a machine vision application that works seamlessly with care teams to help provide superior patient experiences.

We see many benefits, such as:

• Hospitals in the pilot program will have an exclusive early adopter opportunity to test the solution first-hand, and their care teams will be able to help design the future solution that best meets their needs.


• It is powered by Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare and leverages many Microsoft technologies that are already licensed by most major hospital systems in the United States.


• There are three applications that are part of the solution that support this process: The Central Line Assessment app (Microsoft PowerApps); CLABSI Prevention Team (Microsoft Teams); and Central Line Maintenance dashboard (Microsoft Power BI)


• The Central Line Assessment app runs on a smartphone for convenient bedside access and is used to capture and analyze photos of patients’ dressings. If a potential compliance issue is identified, the care team is alerted to take action. Over time, data from the provider’s electronic medical record (EMR) system accumulates information from the Central Line Assessment app and the patient’s medical record, and the Central Line Maintenance dashboard provides canned reports and ad hoc analysis capabilities to identify trends.


• Most importantly, Synaptiq’s Pilot Program for this solution is an example of how Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare can rapidly deliver a machine vision application that works seamlessly with care teams to help provide superior patient experience – and help save lives.

Come join us to hear how this hospital pilot program will work and how your organization can get involved.

This session will be on May 11th at 11:00 PT / 12:00 MT/ 1:00 CT / 2:00 ET

Please click here to join or download the calendar invite here

As always, we will record the session and post the recording afterward for future consumption. We have a new landing page for this series, so favorite or follow https://aka.ms/VoicesofHealthcareCloud to make sure you never miss a future session.

Please follow the aka.ms/HLSBlog for all this great content.

Enhanced Antimalware Protection in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Android

by Contributed | Apr 25, 2022 | Technology

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

We are excited to share major updates to the Malware protection capabilities of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Android. These new capabilities form a major component of your next-generation protection in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. This protection brings together machine learning, big-data analysis, in-depth threat research, and the Microsoft cloud infrastructure to protect Android devices (or endpoints) in your organization.

Today, we are thrilled to announce the public preview of this new, enhanced anti-malware engine capability!

What to expect with this enhancement:

• Cloud Integration with support for metadata-based ML models, file classifications and reputation-based ML models, etc.


• Better support for false positive and false negative prevention.


• Reduced memory and CPU footprints.


• Integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365 Defender portal across platforms.


• Threat nomenclature: The change in threat / malware name will now be in accordance with the standard naming scheme followed across all platforms, including Windows. This is part of the effort for aligning our nomenclature across all platforms and having a single naming mechanism for consistency.

  Changes to Android Threat names as depicted in the security center portal will be as under:

<Platform>.<Category>.<Family>.variant     —->     [Threat Type]:[Platform]/[Malware Family].[Variant]?![Suffixes]?

Example:

Old Syntax                                                     New Syntax

There are no changes to the user experience aside from the threat naming: 

  Screenshot showing a threat detection on the device 

Microsoft 365 Defender portal example: 

Screenshot showing an alert in the portal with the new naming convention

Getting started with the preview: 

To get started, an IT Admin needs to use Microsoft Endpoint Manager (MEM) – Intune – to manage deployments from Managed Google Play’s pre-production tracks for Android.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/defender-endpoint/android-intune?view=o365-worldwide

Use the recommended minimum version as 1.0.3825.0301. Sometime after GA, APKs older than version 1.0.3825.0301 would stop getting Antimalware protection, so it’s recommended to plan for an upgrade.

We welcome your feedback and look forward to hearing from you! You can submit feedback through the Microsoft Defender Security Center or through the Microsoft 365 security center.