New approval modes A new approval feature lets users switch approval modes. (i.e. requiring all approvers to agree vs. requiring only one approver when having multiple approvers)
Build richer flows
New actions available to work with dates and times (i.e. converting time zones). In addition, you are now enabled to leverage nested lists of items and use an “apply to each” action inside of other “apply to each” actions.
Mobile improvements Microsoft Flow buttons’ input types have been extended so that you can collect email addresses and files (i.e. pictures from your camera roll). In addition, single sign-on has been added for Microsoft services so you no longer need to re-enter your password.
Also, OneDrive for Business has a new action that lets you generate PDFs from any file!
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Through the use of Azure Active Directory (AD) Privileged Identity Management, you can manage, control, and monitor access within your organization to resources in Azure AD, as well as other Microsoft online services such as Office 365 or Microsoft Intune.
Organizations aim to minimize the number of people who have access to secure information and resources in order to decrease the chances of a malicious user gaining access. However, users still need to carry out privileged operations in Azure, Office 365, or SaaS apps. As a result, organizations give users privileged access in Azure AD without monitoring what those users are doing with their admin privileges. Azure AD Privileged Identity Management helps to resolve the risk created by this dilemma.
Azure AD Privileged Identity Management helps you:
See which users are Azure AD administrators
Enable on-demand, "just in time" administrative access to Microsoft Online Services like Office 365 and Intune
Get reports about administrator access history and changes in administrator assignments
Get alerts about access to a privileged role
Require approval to activate (Preview)
Azure AD Privileged Identity Management can manage the built-in Azure AD organizational roles, including (but not limited to):
Global Administrator
Billing Administrator
Service Administrator
User Administrator
Password Administrator
Just in time administrator access
Historically, users could be assigned to an admin role through the Azure classic portal or Windows PowerShell. As a result, that user becomes a permanent admin, always active in the assigned role. Azure AD Privileged Identity Management introduces the concept of an eligible admin. Eligible admins should be users that need privileged access every now and then, but not all of the time. The role is inactive until the user needs access, then they complete an activation process and become an active admin for a predetermined amount of time.
Enable Privileged Identity Management for your directory
You can start using Azure AD Privileged Identity Management in the Azure portal. (NOTE: You must be a global administrator with an organizational account, for example, @yourdomain.com, not a Microsoft account - for example, @outlook.com - to enable Azure AD Privileged Identity Management for a directory)
Sign in to the Azure portal as a global administrator of your directory.
If your organization has more than one directory, select your username in the upper right-hand corner of the Azure portal. Select the directory where you will use Azure AD Privileged Identity Management.
Select More services and use the Filter textbox to search for Azure AD Privileged Identity Management.
Check Pin to dashboard and then click Create. The Privileged Identity Management application opens.
If you're the first person to use Azure AD Privileged Identity Management in your directory, then the security wizard walks you through the initial assignment experience. After that you automatically become the first Security administrator and Privileged role administrator of the directory.
Azure AD Privileged Identity Manager provides an admin dashboard that gives you important information such as:
Alerts that point out opportunities to improve security
The number of users who are assigned to each privileged role
The number of eligible and permanent admins
A graph of privileged role activations in your directory
Privileged role management
With Azure AD Privileged Identity Management, you can manage the administrators by adding or removing permanent or eligible administrators to each role.
Configure the role activation settings
Using the role settings you can configure the eligible role activation properties including:
The duration of the role activation period
The role activation notification
The information a user needs to provide during the role activation process
Note that in the image, the buttons for Multi-Factor Authentication are disabled. For certain, highly privileged roles, we require MFA for heightened protection.
Role activation
To activate a role, an eligible admin requests a time-bound "activation" for the role. The activation can be requested using the Activate my role option in Azure AD Privileged Identity Management.
An admin who wants to activate a role needs to initialize Azure AD Privileged Identity Management in the Azure portal.
Role activation is customizable. In the PIM settings, you can determine the length of the activation and what information the admin needs to provide to activate the role.
Review role activity
There are two ways to track how your employees and admins are using privileged roles. The first option is using Directory Roles audit history. The audit history logs track changes in privileged role assignments and role activation history.
The second option is to set up regular access reviews. These access reviews can be performed by and assigned reviewer (like a team manager) or the employees can review themselves. This is the best way to monitor who still requires access, and who no longer does.
Azure AD PIM at subscription expiration
Prior to reaching general availability Azure AD PIM was in preview and there were no license checks for a tenant to preview Azure AD PIM. Now that Azure AD PIM has reached general availability, trial or paid licenses must be assigned to the administrators of the tenant to continue using PIM. If your organization does not purchase Azure AD Premium P2 or your trial expires, mostly all of the Azure AD PIM features will no longer be available in your tenant. You can read more in the Azure AD PIM subscription requirements
Today at Inspire, Satya Nadella unveiled Microsoft 365, which brings together Office 365, Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility + Security, delivering a complete, intelligent and secure solution to empower employees. It represents a fundamental shift in how we will design, build and go to market to address our customers’ needs for a modern workplace.
The workplace is transforming—from changing employee expectations, to more diverse and globally distributed teams, to an increasingly complex threat landscape. From these trends, we are seeing a new culture of work emerging. Our customers are telling us they are looking to empower their people with innovative technology to embrace this modern culture of work.
With more than 100 million commercial monthly active users of Office 365, and more than 500 million Windows 10 devices in use, Microsoft is in a unique position to help companies empower their employees, unlocking business growth and innovation.
Microsoft 365 Enterprise is designed for large organizations and integrates Office 365 Enterprise, Windows 10 Enterprise and Enterprise Mobility + Security to empower employees to be creative and work together, securely.
Microsoft 365 Enterprise:
Unlocks creativity by enabling people to work naturally with ink, voice and touch, all backed by tools that utilize AI and machine learning.
Provides the broadest and deepest set of apps and services with a universal toolkit for teamwork, giving people flexibility and choice in how they connect, share and communicate.
Simplifies IT by unifying management across users, devices, apps and services.
Helps safeguard customer data, company data and intellectual property with built-in, intelligent security.
Microsoft 365 Enterprise is offered in two plans—Microsoft 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E5. Both are available for purchase on August 1, 2017.
Microsoft 365 Enterprise is built on the foundation of the highly successful Secure Productive Enterprise, which grew seats by triple digits in the last year. Going forward, Microsoft 365 Enterprise replaces Secure Productive Enterprise to double-down on the new customer promise of empowering employees to be creative and work together, securely.
Microsoft 365 Business is designed for small- to medium-sized businesses with up to 300 users and integrates Office 365 Business Premium with tailored security and management features from Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility + Security. It offers services to empower employees, safeguard the business and simplify IT management.
Microsoft 365 Business:
Helps companies achieve more together by better connecting employees, customers and suppliers.
Empowers employees to get work done from anywhere, on any device.
Protects company data across devices with always-on security.
Simplifies the set-up and management of employee devices and services with a single IT console.
Microsoft 365 Business will be available in public preview on August 2, 2017. It will become generally available on a worldwide basis in the fall of 2017, priced at US $20 per user, per month.
As a part of our commitment to small-to-medium sized customers, we’re also announcing the preview of three tailored applications that are coming to Office 365 Business Premium and Microsoft 365 Business:
Microsoft Connections—A simple-to-use email marketing service.
Microsoft Listings—An easy way to publish your business information on top sites.
Microsoft Invoicing—A new way to create professional invoices and get paid fast.
Today, we are also announcing that Microsoft’s mileage tracking app, MileIQ, is now included with Office 365 Business Premium.
Satya also discussed how Microsoft 365 represents a significant opportunity for partners to grow their businesses. Microsoft 365 will drive growth by enabling our more than 64,000 cloud partners to differentiate their offerings, simplify their sales processes and increase their revenue.
According to two Forrester Total Economic Impact™ Studies (commissioned studies conducted by Forrester Consulting), Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Microsoft 365 Business increase average partner margins by an estimated 35 percent and 20 percent, respectively, over three years. Partners can learn more and explore training, sales and deployment resources on the Microsoft 365 partner site.
We are incredibly enthusiastic about Microsoft 365 and how it will help customers and partners drive growth and innovation. To learn more about Microsoft 365, please visit Microsoft.com/Microsoft-365.
Managed Solution is in the top 1% of Microsoft Cloud Service Providers worldwide, and a premier partner aligned with Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
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MS Paint fans rejoice: The original art app isn’t going anywhere – except to the Windows Store for free!
Today, we’ve seen an incredible outpouring of support and nostalgia around MS Paint. If there’s anything we learned, it’s that after 32 years, MS Paint has a lot of fans. It’s been amazing to see so much love for our trusty old app. Amidst today’s commentary around MS Paint we wanted to take this opportunity to set the record straight, clear up some confusion and share some good news:
MS Paint is here to stay, it will just have a new home soon, in the Windows Store where it will be available for free.
Paint 3D – the new app for creativity, also available for free with the Windows 10 Creators Update, will continue to get new feature updates. In addition to the new 3D capabilities, many of the MS Paint features people know and love like photo editing, line and curve tools, and 2D creation are in Paint 3D.
So, thanks for all the MS Paint love, keep the feedback coming via the Paint 3D app, and keep creating!
Throughout the Technical Previews, we’ve seen tremendous customer and partner excitement around Microsoft Azure Stack. In fact, we’re speaking with thousands of partners this week at our Microsoft Inspire event. Our partners are excited about the new business opportunities opened up by our ‘One Azure Ecosystem’ approach, which helps them extend their Azure investments to Azure Stack, to unlock new possibilities for hybrid cloud environments. In that vein, today we are announcing:
Orderable Azure Stack integrated systems: We have delivered Azure Stack software to our hardware partners, enabling us to begin the certification process for their integrated systems, with the first systems to begin shipping in September. You can now order integrated systems from Dell EMC, HPE, and Lenovo.
Azure Stack software pricing and availability: We have released pricing for the pay-as-you-use and capacity-based models today, you can use that information to plan your purchases.
Azure Stack Development Kit (ASDK) availability: ASDK, the free single-server deployment option for trial purposes, is available for web download today. You can use it to build and validate your applications for integrated systems deployments.
Azure Stack promise
Azure Stack is an extension of Azure, thereby enabling a truly consistent hybrid cloud platform. Consistency removes hybrid cloud complexity, which helps you maximize your investments across cloud and on-premises environments. Consistency enables you to build and deploy applications using the exact same approach – same APIs, same DevOps tools, same portal – leading to increased developer productivity. Consistency enables you to develop cloud applications faster by building on Azure Marketplace application components. Consistency enables you to confidently invest in people and processes knowing that those are fully transferable. The ability to run consistent Azure services on-premises gets you full flexibility to decide where applications and workloads should reside. An integrated systems-based delivery model ensures that you can focus on what matters to your business (i.e., your applications), while also enabling us to deliver Azure innovation to you faster.
In its initial release, Azure Stack includes a core set of Azure services, DevOps tooling, and Azure Marketplace content, all of which are delivered through an integrated systems approach. Check out this whitepaper for more information about what capabilities are available in Azure Stack at the initial release and what is planned for future versions.
Hybrid use cases unlock application innovation
Azure and Azure Stack unlock new use cases for customer facing and internal line of business applications:
Edge and disconnected solutions: You can address latency and connectivity requirements by processing data locally in Azure Stack and then aggregating in Azure for further analytics, with common application logic across both. We’re seeing lots of interest in this Edge scenario across different contexts, including factory floor, cruise ships, and mine shafts.
Cloud applications that meet varied regulations: You can develop and deploy applications in Azure, with full flexibility to deploy on-premises on Azure Stack to meet regulatory or policy requirements, with no code changes needed. Many customers are looking to deploy different instances of the same application – for example, a global audit or financial reporting app – to Azure or Azure Stack, based on business and technical requirements. While Azure meets most requirements, Azure Stack enables on-premises deployments in locations where it’s needed. Saxo Bank is a great example of an organization who plan to leverage the deployment flexibility enabled by Azure Stack.
Cloud application model on-premises: You can use Azure web and mobile services, containers, serverless, and microservice architectures to update and extend existing applications or build new ones. You can use consistent DevOps processes across Azure in the cloud and Azure Stack on-premises. We’re seeing broad interest in application modernization, including for core mission-critical applications. Mitsui Knowledge Industry is a great example of an organization planning their application modernization roadmap using Azure Stack and Azure.
Ecosystem solutions across Azure and Azure Stack
You can speed up your Azure Stack initiatives by leveraging the rich Azure ecosystem:
Our goal is to ensure that most ISV applications and services that are certified for Azure will work on Azure Stack. Multiple ISVs, including Bitnami, Docker, Kemp Technologies, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux, are working to make their solutions available on Azure Stack.
You have the option of having Azure Stack delivered and operated as a fully managed service. Multiple partners, including Avanade, Daisy, Evry, Rackspace, and Tieto, are working to deliver managed service offerings across Azure and Azure Stack. These partners have been delivering managed services for Azure via the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program and are now extending their offerings to include hybrid solutions.
Systems Integrators (SI) can help you accelerate your application modernization initiatives by bringing in-depth Azure skillsets, domain and industry knowledge, and process expertise (e.g., DevOps). PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is a great example of an SI that’s expanding their consulting practice to Azure and Azure Stack.
Orderable integrated systems, free single-server kit for trial
Azure Stack has two deployment options:
Azure Stack integrated systems – These are multi-server systems meant for production use, and are designed to get you up and running quickly. Depending upon your hardware preferences, you can choose integrated systems from Dell EMC, HPE, and Lenovo (with Cisco and Huawei following later). You can now explore these certified hardware solutions and order integrated systems by contacting our hardware partners. These systems come ready to run and offer consistent, end-to-end customer support no matter who you call. They will initially be available in 46 countries covering key markets across the world.
Azure Stack Development Kit (ASDK) – ASDK is a free single server deployment that’s designed for trial and proof of concept purposes. ASDK is available for web download today, and you can use it to prototype your applications. The portal, Azure services, DevOps tools, and Marketplace content are the same across this ASDK release and integrated systems, so applications built against the ASDK will work when deployed to a multi-server system.
Closing thoughts
As an extension of Azure, Azure Stack will deliver continuous innovation with frequent updates following the initial release. These updates will help us deliver enriched hybrid application use cases, as well as grow the infrastructure footprint of Azure Stack. We will also continue to broaden the Azure ecosystem to enable additional choice and flexibility for you.
I look forward to hearing what everyone does with Azure Stack!
Achieve IT infrastructure cost savings of at least 50%
Call Southern California’s most trusted name in cloud at 800-208-3617 for real time pricing and a cost benefit analysis for Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon’s AWS.
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Here’s what’s new in the latest update to Skype on Windows 10
Today, we’re excited to roll out an update to the Skype app on Windows 10 which makes it easier for you to stay in touch with friends from your Windows 10 devices.
With the new update, you can easily share your files to Skype, react to messages, and get to your calls and conversations faster than ever. Let’s take a look at what’s new in this update:
Get to your calls and conversations faster
In the first in a set of updates we’ll be making, the new look helps you get to your calls and conversations faster – you can now start new conversations, see your profile and visit the dial pad from the top of your recent conversations.
Share photos, videos and more directly to Skype
Now you can easily share files, videos, photos, links and more directly to Skype from your Windows 10 PC – just click on the Windows share charm, and select Skype.
New message reactions
By simply tapping on the reaction icon next to any message or video call, you can now easily express how you feel at any time.
We’re excited to share these new features to make it easier than ever for you to stay in touch with friends from your Windows 10 devices. To learn more about the new Skype, check out the Skype blog!
Managed Solution is in the top 1% of Microsoft Cloud Service Providers worldwide, and a premier partner aligned with Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
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Recent updates for security and compliance include enhancements to Microsoft Defender, eDiscovery, Advanced Data Governance, Advanced Security Management and expanded support for Windows Information Protection. Read on to learn more about these updates.
Enhancements to threat protection visibility and controls
Office 365 Exchange Online Protection (EOP) and Microsoft Defender were designed to keep your organization protected against cyber-attacks while supporting end-user productivity. The Office 365 team continues to enhance both EOP and Defender by offering deeper insights and more flexible controls. This month, we are introducing the following new capabilities:
Threat Protection status report—New reporting for Defender and EOP that adds visibility into malicious emails detected and blocked for your organization. This supplements the recently introduced reports in the Security & Compliance Center for Defender Safe Attachments.
Enhanced quarantine capabilities—Now all emails classified as malware from both EOP and Defender are quarantined. This builds upon the existing quarantine experience by allowing administrators to review and delete emails from quarantine.
New Defender Safe Links Policy features—Four new features build upon the Safe Link policies.
Per-tenant block list—Provides the administrator the ability to block specific URLs.
Email wildcarding for domains and handles—Enables you to save time by writing partial domain/handle names.
Split Safe Links policies—Allows Safe Links policies to be customized for specific user lists in the organization, including groups, individuals and divisions.
Expanded character limit for URLs—Enables blocking/allowing URLs with longer character lengths.
Additional details on these new features can be found in the Microsoft Tech Community, as well as on the EOP and Defender product pages. EOP is offered across our enterprise E1, E3 and E5 suites. Defender is offered as both a standalone SKU or as part of E5.
New features streamline your compliance process using Office 365
Businesses around the world must be able to keep and protect important information and quickly find what’s relevant to continue to meet legal, business and regulatory compliance requirements. At Microsoft, we know how demanding and complex compliance can be and have recently released several new eDiscovery and Data Governance features in Office 365 to support your compliance needs. These features include:
Optical character recognition in Advanced eDiscovery—Extracts text from image files or objects within the files, significantly reducing the amount of manual remediation work required to analyze image files.
Rights management (RMS) decryptionin Office 365 eDiscovery—Automatically decrypts RMS-encrypted email messages at export time when you choose the MSG Export option.
Unified case management—Provides a consistent user interface spanning the eDiscovery capabilities in Office 365, from core to advanced, which helps to reduce potential human errors by streamlining eDiscovery case definition and eliminating several steps in the process.
Visit the Microsoft Tech Community for more details about the new eDiscovery features. Unified case management and RMS decryption are included with Office 365 E3. Optical character recognition is included with Advanced eDiscovery in E5.
Announcing general availability of Supervision capabilities in Office 365 Advanced Data Governance
Many organizations have the need to perform supervision of employee communications. This need stems from internal security and compliance guidelines, or from regulatory bodies such as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). In both cases, failure to have a demonstrable supervision process in place could potentially expose organizations to liability or severe penalties.
To address this need, we’ve released the new Supervision feature in Office 365 Advanced Data Governance. Supervision covers not only email communications, but also third-party communications streams, such as Facebook, Twitter, Bloomberg and many more. Visit the Microsoft Tech Community for more details about the general availability of Supervision.
Supervision is part of Office 365 Advanced Data Governance, which is available as part of Office 365 E5 or the Office 365 Advanced Compliance SKU.
Windows Information Protection now supports Office desktop applications
In August, we announced our support of Windows Information Protection (WIP) for Office mobile apps on Windows tablets and phones, to help prevent accidental business data leaks while letting users maintain control over their personal data by designating content as “work” or “personal.” We’re pleased to announce we have expanded support for WIP to include the Office 365 ProPlus desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and Skype for Business. This will help provide more comprehensive protection of your business data on Windows 10 devices. To read more about WIP, check out our Microsoft Tech Community blog.
SIEM connector—now available for Office 365 Advanced Security Management
A year ago, we announced a way for you to get greater visibility and control over Office 365 with Advanced Security Management (ASM). Since then, we have added new features to help you better determine shadow IT activity. We also enhanced control over third-party appsconnected to Office 365. After these updates, we started hearing that some of you were looking for a way to export alerts to other systems that are integrated into your existing workflows. Today, we are releasing a solution that supports centralized monitoring of ASM alerts with your security information and event management (SIEM) software. Integrating with an SIEM allows you to better protect Office 365 while maintaining your organization’s security workflow, automate your security procedures and correlate between your cloud-based and on-premises events.
Outlook for Mac is adding several highly requested features for Office 365 customers, including the ability to send an email at the time of your choice and request delivery notifications and read receipts. These additions deliver on four of our top 10 requested features, and are designed to help you get more done quickly and stay in control of the day ahead.
A big part of our prioritization of new features and enhancements comes from the votes and feedback we receive from you at our Outlook UserVoice site, and the input we get from our Office Insiders. We thank you all for your feedback and are excited to hear what you think of our new additions!
Here’s a look at what’s new.
Send your emails when you want
The best time to write an email and the best time to send an email may not always align. With our new Send Later feature, you can write an email now and schedule it to be sent automatically at the perfect time. Once you are done drafting your email, click the drop-down next to Send and then select Send Later. Choose the date and time to send the email and the message is saved to your Drafts folder. When the scheduled time comes, the email is automatically sent—you don’t even need to have Outlook or your computer open!
Use read and delivery receipts to track your emails
Sometimes you need to be notified that an important email has been delivered to and read by your recipient. Outlook for Mac now supports both read and delivery receipts. A delivery receipt confirms delivery of your email message to the recipient’s mailbox, but not that the recipient has seen it or read it. A read receipt confirms that your message was opened.
Sending the same email over and over again? Email templates are great for sending messages that include information that infrequently changes from message to message. Compose and save a message as a template and then reuse it when you want it. New information can be added before the template is sent as an email message. For more details, see Can I create email templates in Outlook 2016 for Mac?
Stay on top of your day by creating calendar events and tasks from emails
Emails contain the important information you need to get things done throughout the day. Often, however, those tasks need to be scheduled as part of your day to get completed on time. You can now drag and drop emails directly to your calendar to reserve that time. The subject of the email becomes the calendar subject, and the body of the email goes in the notes field.
For those of you who are task users, you can do the same thing. Drag the email to your task view to create new items.
Improving the account setup experience
We’ve simplified the Add Account experience in Outlook for Mac. Previously, you needed to know details about what type of account you have (e.g., Office 365 or Exchange, IMAP or POP). Now you can simply enter your email address and Outlook detects your account settings and guides you through the process. And if you’ve signed in to other Office apps before launching Outlook for the first time, you will be asked if you want to add that account automatically. For more details, see Set up Outlook on your Mac.
How do I get all these new improvements?
The Send Later feature is available to Office Insider Fast users today on version 15.36 (170606) and will be available to all Office 365 subscribers in July. The Request a Delivery and Read receipts, email templates, and creating calendar events and tasks from emails additions are available today to all Office 365 subscribers on version 15.35 (170610). The improved account setup experience is available to all Outlook Mac users on version 15.34 (170515).
Managed Solution is in the top 1% of Microsoft Cloud Service Providers worldwide, and a premier partner aligned with Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
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