by Contributed | Apr 19, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
MVPs know better than most that education is not something that starts and ends with a formal experience like college. Instead, education is a life-long process and requires continual upskilling.
Four MVPs were recently featured in two separate sessions at MS Ignite about the importance of skilling and certification in their careers. In the first session, Azure MVP Tiago Costa and Office Apps & Services MVP Chris Hoard shared the digital stage with tech trainers and managers on the value of Microsoft Certifications.
Tiago, from Portugal, says he has personally used Microsoft Certification to progress into new roles and climb the corporate ladder. Tiago advises tech enthusiasts of all experience levels to experiment with MS Learn, a resource that is “free and of amazing quality and accuracy.”
“If you have the willingness to learn, it doesn’t matter what level of expertise you have,” Tiago says. “I have helped people with literally zero – I will repeat, zero – experience in IT and today they are tech leaders with their field.”
UK-based Chris agrees: “Authenticity, validation, knowledge, closing skill gaps, finding a new passion, the prospects of better wages or even a better job – these are all good reasons why learning and certification are important.”
“My advice is that it is never too late to start. Set yourself a modest goal and once you have started, don’t stop – keep learning and unlearning,” Chris says.
Later at the conference, Business Apps MVPs Amey Holden and Lisa Crosbie shared their learning journeys as part of the Australian tech community.
Amey says that she was thrown into the deep end when a respected practice lead sold her to a project as an expert in Dynamics 365 when “actually I was a clueless graduate with some impressive Excel formulae skills.”
Thus, Amey’s Power Platform journey began with a three-day crash course in Dynamics 365 Sales and “piles of PDFs with labs and content to learn everything (back in the days before MS Learn!)” Now, however, Amey is a big fan of the platform as it “has given me the tools to understand all new features and functionality.”
“Being officially recognized by Microsoft for your knowledge and achievements helped to boost my confidence earlier in my career when the impostor syndrome kicked in or I genuinely had no idea what I’m doing,” Amey says.
“It has helped me attain knowledge that I never knew I would have needed until I find myself calling on it during client conversations. This has helped me to more easily become a trusted client advisor who can have a positive and valuable impact.”
Lisa similarly uses MS Learn to illuminate new tech knowledge. Lisa made a career change from book publishing to tech in 2016, and says MS Learn “is an awesome revision tool for a number of certifications in my main area of Power Platform and Dynamics 365, as well as using it to upskill in new areas and pass certification exams in M365 and Azure AI.”
“It is a good discipline to make sure I stay up to date with new features and review the things I use less often. I also feel it gives credibility to the advice I give to customers and gives me confidence in my knowledge,” Lisa says.
“I always have more collections bookmarked and not enough hours in the day!”
For more, check out Amey’s and Lisa’s session at MS Ignite, as well as Tiago’s and Chris’ session.
by Contributed | Apr 19, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We’re excited to announce that we have reached a new milestone in our XDR journey: the integration of our endpoint and email and collaboration capabilities into Microsoft 365 Defender is now generally available. Security teams can manage all endpoint, email, and cross-product investigations, configuration, and remediation within a single unified portal.
Register for the Microsoft 365 Defender’s Unified Experience for XDR webinar to learn how your security teams can leverage the unified portal and check out our video to learn more about these new capabilities.
This release delivers the rich set of capabilities we announced in public preview, including unified pages for alerts, users, and automated investigations, a new email entity page offering a 360-degree view of an email, threat analytics, a brand-new Learning hub, and more – all available exclusively in the Microsoft 365 Defender portal at security.microsoft.com.
Now is the time to start moving your users to the unified experience using the automatic URL redirection for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and automatic URL redirection for Microsoft Defender for Office 365 as the previously distinct portals will eventually be phased out.
Figure 1: Endpoint features integrated into Microsoft 365 Defender.
Figure 2: Email and collaboration features integrated into Microsoft 365 Defender.
We’re excited to be bringing these additional capabilities into Microsoft 365 Defender and look forward to hearing about your experiences and your feedback as you explore and transition to the unified portal.
To read more about the unified portal experience, check out:
by Contributed | Apr 19, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Ivana Tilca’s tech journey is marked by a life-long passion for learning. The AI MVP from Argentina is now a tech evangelist at the top of her field, but things were not always this way.
Originally, Ivana began her academic career in journalism at National University in Cordoba, Argentina. For family reasons, however, Ivana moved back to her home city of Salta where she changed course and began studies in Information Systems.
“I started speaking at events and mentoring students at my university in my 20s, and from that moment I realized the passion I feel for technology and for sharing with the community,” Ivana says.
It was not as easy to learn then as it is now. Rather, the education experience relied on books or the little content that existed on the internet. That’s when Ivana found Microsoft Channel 9, a video platform that covered innovation and topics breaking new ground. Then, Ivana says she was later able to support those videos with MS Learn and MS Docs.
Fast forward years later and Ivana is an accomplished MVP and Quality Manager at 3XM Group. These resources changed the course of her education experience, Ivana says, especially in an ever-changing field like AI. Further, the tech evangelist continues to take advantage of online resources to study AI, autonomous systems and mixed realities.
“I believe that technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, and the reality is that those who do not spend time updating themselves lose competitiveness in the professional market,” Ivana says.
“Further, continuing to face challenges gives you motivation and passion for your profession.”
For those looking to break into AI, Ivana suggests the following open resources: Bring AI to your business with AI Builder, AI edge engineer, Build AI solutions with Azure Machine Learning, Explore computer vision in Microsoft Azure.
“I think many professions in the future will involve the use of AI,” Ivana says. “AI has existed for several years, but recently it has grown and found its place. It is a branch of technology that is just beginning and will continue to improve constantly, and personally, I believe that it has no limits.”
For more on Ivana, visit her Twitter @ivanatilca
by Contributed | Apr 19, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 3.0 Preview 2 has been released. This release contains improvements and updates to the Microsoft.Data.SqlClient data provider for SQL Server.
Our plan is to provide GA releases twice a year with two preview releases in between. This cadence should provide time for feedback and allow us to deliver features and fixes in a timely manner. This second 3.0 preview includes many fixes and changes over the previous 3.0 Preview 1 release.
Please note the first item in the list of breaking changes from previous releases. If you use Azure Managed Identity authentication with a user-assigned identity, you will need to update your connection information.
Breaking Changes over preview release 3.0.0-preview1
- For User-Assigned, Azure Managed Identity (MSI) authentication, the `User Id` connection property now requires `Client Id` instead of `Object Id` [read more about the new Azure.Identity library dependency]
- `SqlDataReader` now returns a `DBNull` value instead of an empty `byte[]`. Legacy behavior can be enabled by setting `AppContext` switch **Switch.Microsoft.Data.SqlClient.LegacyRowVersionNullBehavior** [read more about this change]
Preview 2 also includes many bug fixes and performance improvements. For the full list of changes in Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 3.0 Preview 2, please see the Release Notes.
If you missed our 3.0 Preview 1 announcement, the most notable new feature in 3.0 is Configurable Retry Logic.
Configurable retry logic is available when you’ve enabled an app context switch. Configurable retry logic builds significantly more transient error handling functionality into SqlClient than existed previously. It will allow you to retry connection and command executions based on configurable settings. Since it is even configurable outside of your code, it can help make existing applications more resilient to transient errors that you might encounter in real-world use.
For a detailed look into this feature, check out the blog post Introducing Configurable Retry Logic in Microsoft.Data.SqlClient v3.0.0-Preview1.
To try out the new package, add a NuGet reference to Microsoft.Data.SqlClient in your application and pick the 3.0 preview 2 version.
We appreciate the time and effort you spend checking out our previews. It makes the final product that much better. If you encounter any issues or have any feedback, head over to the SqlClient GitHub repository and submit an issue.
David Engel
by Contributed | Apr 19, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Microsoft Ignite might be done and dusted for another year, but that did not stop scores of MVPs and tech enthusiasts in both China and Japan from continuing their education journey in March.
Following the global tech conference, both communities in Asia decided to review the takeaways in their local language and focus on lessons learned.
First, Microsoft China hosted a two-day digital conference, Microsoft Ignite China, that comprised seven keynotes, 11 connection sessions and 30 featured sessions. In collaboration with the MVPs and Regional Directors (RD), the March 18 event brought to life six hours of online engagement per day, with two RDs contributing to the “Connection Zone” and nine MVPs helping with live stage sessions.
Data Platform MVP Dan Zhang says it is very important for self-learners to have an integrated and authentic learning platform in China. Microsoft Ignite China, along with resources like MS Learn, are vital to staying on top of the ever-changing world of tech, Dan says.
“Knowledge on the internet is separated and unsystematic, which will cost learners a lot of time and energy to find good resources and materials. The emergence of MS Learn is a good benefit for numbers of developers,” Dan says.
“Continuous learning in technical areas is important in China since it can help developers keep up to pace with new tech and the environment,” agrees AI MVP Yuxiang Wang. Meanwhile, Azure and AI MVP Hao Hu suggests that an additional achievement system on MS Learn could be one way to encourage developers to further their skills.
Later that month on March 24, it was time for the community-driven learning event Microsoft Ignite Recap Community Day in Japan. A total of 20 MVP/RD/community leaders contributed to 10 sessions across the 4-hour event. Not only that, but the 20 MVP/RDs also shared their Ignite recommended sessions for further member learning.
Business Applications / Office Apps & Services MVP Taichi Nakamura joined multiple sessions and shared the latest updates of Microsoft 365 & Power Platform. Taichi says he wanted to take part simply because it looked fun. “I wanted to share my joy with attendees, provide our passion to attendees, and call more attention to join a tech community,” he says.
Developer Technologies MVP and fellow session presenter Kazushi Kamegawa says the pandemic has enacted many rapid changes in the world, and education remains an important way to stay connected. “As an engineer, of course, in order to adapt to the new world in the future, I think I have to continue to learn, to identify the right information, and not to be left behind by the situation in the world.”
Azure MVP Tetsuya Odashima contributed to one of the Ignite recommended session resources and says it is important to remember that “learning is not something that is given by someone, but something that you can get by acting on your own.”
“Learning new things stimulates curiosity,” posits Enterprise Mobility MVP Yutaro Tamai. “I’d like to share this experience with more community members.”
For more information on the dual events, visit the community pages for Microsoft Ignite China and Microsoft Ignite Recap Community Day Japan.
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