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
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!
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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).
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A significant number of customers have reported ransomware (Win32.WannaCrypt) that was suspected to be introduced into their environment via email, this malware is using social engineering to target companies. Microsoft Anti-Malware products have been updated and detect the present version of this malware from definition version 1.243.290.0 onwards. The ransomware then propagates in the Customers environment exposing a windows vulnerability that was patched in March 2017 encrypting the contents of the hard drive
Remediation Steps:
Impacted customers should work through their disaster recovery plans to rebuild and/or patch their systems. Microsoft support will render assistance to infected customers in priority and based on business impact.
Install Security Update MS17-010, to PREVENT further spread of the malware.
Create the registry key to disable SMBv1 (used only if Security Update MS17-010 cannot be applied).
Updated Antivirus definitions should be applied (Microsoft Anti-Malware products detect the present version of this malware from definition version 1.243.290.0 onwards).
Microsoft Security Response Center Guidance is published here. Microsoft Security has made available the security fix for Microsoft Security Bulletin MS17-010 for Windows 2003 and Windows XP.
Update the SDK to remove reference to the Azure Access Control Service (ACS)
With the deprecation of the Azure Access Control Service (ACS), it is important to update the SDK authentication code to remove all references to the ACS. Effective from versions Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2016 Update 1 (v8.1.1) and Microsoft Dynamics 365 (v8.2), Microsoft removed Live ID support and ACS dependencies on the server-side. It is required to update the references in all client side components as well.
For more information about the impacted versions and a workaround, review this article on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Team blog.
Dynamics 365 Insider Preview Program
Microsoft will invite customers and business partners to join The Dynamics 365 Insider Program. This program is committed to:
providing a solid platform for open and honest feedback to the Research & Development team
a forum to experience new features and functionality firsthand
a window to road test new software updates
Quite a few changes will be implemented for this new preview program. The onboarding and participation experience are the biggest changes, including:
continuous preview enrollment via “one time” registration
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Service Pack 1.1 (on-premises)
Update 0.1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Service Pack is now available and includes resolutions for some of the following issues:
The Outlook client fails initial configuration with single sign-on (SSO)
“Access Is Denied” error message occurs when you change an owner of a record through a lookup field
“Access Is Denied” error message occurs when you change an owner of a record through a lookup field.
Cancelling SLA Key performance indicators (KPI) does not cancel SLA timer.
The MSE 2017 Update 1.4 was just released in May 2017. New Features
Engagement Analytics with Power BI: the Power BI content pack for MSE was extended by a new Engagement Analytics report; adding to the Engagement Performance and Team Performance reports previously released. The report provides additional insights with metrics based on location, sentiment, tags, and authors.
Improved usability in Social Selling Assistance: the Social Selling Assistant experience received a first polishing pass. Some updates were made to the UI and the main navigation now contains a direct link to the Post view in Analytics, filtered for private messages, so users can get to their customers’ messages in a single click.
Improvements
Improved visibility of links, text and tooltips when using the dark theme.
Fixed an issue that prevented sending private messages to Facebook from within Microsoft Social Engagement.
For more information, review the following article post.
Supported email service configurations for server-side synchronization
Dynamics 365 customers with an email service included in their installation are faced with the decision of using server-side synchronization or the email router/Outlook synchronization. In both situations, there are multiple things to consider, including data encryption. This Technet article provides a table showing what’s supported by server-side synchronization for each type of installation. There are also scenarios included that aren’t supported by server-side synchronization.
Additional News
Microsoft to deliver Microsoft Cloud from datacenters in Africa
Few places in the world are as dynamic and diverse as Africa today. In this landscape, there is enormous opportunity for the cloud to accelerate innovation, support people across the continent who are working to transform their businesses, explore new entrepreneurship opportunities and help solve some of the world’s hardest problems. For these reasons, Microsoft is very excited to share our plans to deliver the Microsoft Cloud from datacenters in Africa.
Services include Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 — from datacenters located in Johannesburg and Cape Town, with initial availability in 2018. This announcement brings Microsoft to 40 cloud regions around the world — more than any other cloud provider — and will help organizations and people from Cairo to Cape Town accelerate their journey to cloud computing.
For more information about this opportunity, take a look at this post on the Official Microsoft Blog.
Changes in the Dynamics 365 Portal trial strategy
As part of the Dynamics CRM 2016 SP1 release, Microsoft introduced the Portal Service for Dynamics CRM and launchedhttps://experience.dynamics.com, where customers can request a Managed Portal trial to use in their Dynamics tenant.
With the launch of the Dynamics 365 service, the whole trial strategy for Dynamics 365 service has been redefined. Portal trials are now bundled as part of Dynamics 365 trials along with other add-ons like field service and project service. Apart from giving an integrated trial experience, the bundled Portal trials get converted into Paid version automatically when you purchase your Dynamics 365 subscription. This functionality was not available with Managed Portal trials before.
Universal Resource Scheduling Solution for Dynamics 365 Update 1
This past fall, Microsoft introduced the Universal Resource Scheduling Solution in Dynamics 365. Regardless of what type of scheduling your organization is engaged in: Field Service scheduling, Project Service Scheduling, Case scheduling, Lead scheduling, custom scheduling, the Universal Resource Scheduling Solution helps you book your skilled resources to the right work, at the right time, independent of work stream.
Update 1 is now available with new features to enhance the scheduling solution, including:
Fulfilled and remaining duration: an out of the box way to track fulfillment of a requirement and filter out requirements which have been fully scheduled
Configurable Colors on Resource Summary Rows: option to add colors to the resource summary rows for the daily, weekly, and monthly schedule board views
Requirement Search: Users can now search for requirements in the requirements list on the schedule board.
For more information on the Universal Resource Scheduling Solution update, review this post on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Team blog. Additional update information can be found here.
Sample apps for Project Service Automation T&E entry
Source code samples are now available for two mobile apps which can be used with the Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation solution. One app is for project team members to enter their time entries and the other app is for them to enter their expenses. Review this blog post for more details on the apps and where to access the download.
Training Corner
Training Sites & eLearning
Get the most up to date training and eLearning information for Dynamics 365 from the Help Center. The highly anticipated Training & Adoption Kit for Dynamics 365 is also available for download which includes user guides, quick reference cards, eBooks for end users and admins. Feel free to modify the content and distribute to your customers.
Want to know what new features are available for both online and on-prem customers? Then check out What’s new in Dynamics 365 Help and Training.
Roll Back Upgrade via Restore Feature
Did you know the Backup/Restore feature in Dynamics 365 can be used to roll back an upgrade? Once upgraded, customers can select a backup from the previous version and restore to it. This will effectively roll the instance back to the previous version.
Invite Users to access Dynamics 365 with Azure business-to-business (B2B)
Customers can invite other users to access their Dynamics 365 CRM (online) instance through their Azure portal. Invited users can access the Dynamics 365 CRM (online) instance using their own login credentials once an Office 365 Global admin has assigned them a Dynamics 365 license and a security role. For more details on how to invite a user, review this article.
Introducing the Data Export Service for Dynamics 365
The Microsoft Dynamics 365-Data Export Service is a free add-on service made available on Microsoft AppSource that synchronizes Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) data to a Microsoft Azure SQL Database store in a customer-owned Microsoft Azure subscription. The Data Export Service synchronizes the entire Dynamics 365 data initially and thereafter synchronizes delta changes on a continuous basis as they occur in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online) system. This helps enable several analytics and reporting scenarios on top of Dynamics 365 data with Azure services, such as Power BI or Machine Learning and opens up new possibilities for customers and partners to build custom solutions. For use cases and to learn how to set up the service, take a look at this article.
Analyze your Dynamics 365 business processes with Power BI
The new Process Analyzer Content Pack for Power BI is now available for Dynamics 365 version 8.2 and higher. This content pack links directly to the Dynamics 365 database, creating interactive data visualizations that help provide insights into business process flows. Track service performance with metrics like volume in processes with average duration in stage (broken down by stage), the process stage funnel, volume over stage completion date, and velocity through stages (with duration and days since completed). Users can create personalized business-process analytics that are most relevant to them and explore the information using the Power BI portal.
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Today, we’re excited to announce Data Visualizer, a new Visio feature that automatically converts process map data in Excel into data-driven Visio diagrams. This update, which is available to Visio Pro for Office 365 users, helps reduce manual steps while giving business analysts even more ways to create process diagrams in Visio.
Automatically create process diagrams from Excel data
Diagrams don’t always start in Visio. They often begin as hand-drawn sketches or—in today’s data-driven age—in Excel. Using Data Visualizer, business analysts can represent process steps and associated metadata in a structured Excel table and quickly convert that information into a visualized Visio diagram. You can do this by either using a premade Excel template or an existing spreadsheet of your own design. The premade templates—there’s one for basic and one for cross-functional flowcharts—provide a sample mapping table to populate with diagram metadata. The table includes predefined columns for process step number, description, dependencies, owner, function, phase and more. You can also customize the table with your own columns to meet specific business requirements.
Once the table is populated, Visio’s wizard helps you complete the remaining steps to transform your Excel data into a Visio process diagram. If you customize the premade template or create one of your own, the wizard helps you map certain flowchart parts, like swim lanes and connectors. The resulting diagram is linked to the Excel table, so if the underlying process data is modified, the diagram updates accordingly. Likewise, shape modifications in Visio are preserved if the Excel data changes.
Additionally, analysts can save their Visio diagrams and the underlying Excel mapping table as a single package using the “Export as a Template Package” feature. These packages can be shared and reused by others, eliminating the need to recreate the same diagram from scratch while encouraging process consistency across the organization.
No matter your preference—whether creating diagrams from a template or your own spreadsheet—the underlying Excel data travels with the related Visio Pro for Office 365 file, helping ensure your team always has the latest diagram version.
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Azure Data Factory March new features update
Hello, everyone! In March, we added a lot of great new capabilities to Azure Data Factory, including high demanding features like loading data from SAP HANA, SAP Business Warehouse (BW) and SFTP, performance enhancement of directly loading from Data Lake Store into SQL Data Warehouse, data movement support for the first region in the UK (UK South), and a new Spark activity for rich data transformation. We can’t wait to share more details with you, following is a complete list of Azure Data Factory March new features:
Support data loading from SAP HANA and SAP DW
Support data loading from SFTP
Performance enhancement of direct loading from Data Lake Store to Azure SQL Data Warehouse via PolyBase
Spark activity for rich data transformation
Max allowed cloud Data Movement Units increase
UK data center now available for data movement
Support data loading from SAP HANA and SAP Business Warehouse
SAP is one of the most widely-used enterprise softwares in the world. We hear you that it’s crucial for Microsoft to empower customers to integrate their existing SAP system with Azure to unlock business insights. We are happy to announce that we have enabled loading data from SAP HANA and SAP Business Warehouse (BW) into various Azure data stores for advanced analytics and reporting, including Azure Blob, Azure Data Lake, and Azure SQL DW, etc.
The SAP HANA connector supports copying data from HANA information models (such as Analytic and Calculation views) as well as Row and Column tables using SQL queries. To establish the connectivity, you need to install the latest Data Management Gateway (version 2.8) and the SAP HANA ODBC driver. Refer to SAP HANA supported versions and installation for more details.
The SAP BW connector supports copying data from SAP Business Warehouse version 7.x InfoCubes and QueryCubes (including BEx queries) using MDX queries. To establish the connectivity, you need to install the latest Data Management Gateway (version 2.8) and the SAP NetWeaver library. Refer to SAP BW supported versions and installation for more details.
You can now use Azure Data Factory to copy data from SFTP servers into various data stores in Azure or On-Premise environments, including Azure Blob/Azure Data Lake/Azure SQL DW/etc. A full support matrix can be found in Supported data stores and formats. You can author copy activity using the intuitive Copy wizard (screenshot below) or JSON scripting. Refer to SFTP connector documentation for more details.
Performance enhancement of direct data loading from Data Lake Store to Azure SQL Data Warehouse via PolyBase
Data Factory Copy Activity now supports loading data from Data Lake Store to Azure SQL Data Warehouse directly via PolyBase. When using the Copy Wizard, PolyBase is by default turned on and your source file compatibility will be automatically checked. You can monitor whether PolyBase is used in the activity run details.
Apache Spark for Azure HDInsight is built on an in-memory compute engine, which enables high performance querying on big data. Azure Data Factory now supports Spark Activity against Bring-Your-Own HDInsight clusters. Users can now operationalize Spark job executions through Spark Activity in Azure Data Factory.
Since Spark job may have multiple dependencies such as jar packages (placed in the java CLASSPATH) and python files (placed on the PYTHONPATH), you will need to follow a predefined folder structure for your Spark script files. For more detailed information about JSON scripting of the Spark Activity, refer to Invoke Spark programs from Azure Data Factory pipelines.
Max allowed cloud Data Movement Units increase
Cloud Data Movement Units (DMU) reflects the powerfulness of copy executor used to empower your cloud-to-cloud copy. To copy multiple files with large volume from Blob storage/Data Lake Store/Amazon S3/cloud FTP/cloud SFTP into Blob storage/Data Lake Store/Azure SQL Database, higher DMUs usually provide you better throughput. Now you can specify up to 32 DMUs for large copy runs. Learn more from cloud data movement units and parallel copy.
UK data center now available for data movement
Azure Data Factory data movement service is now available in the UK, in addition to the existing 16 data centers.With that, you can leverage Data Factory to copy data from Cloud and On-Premise data sources into various supported Azure data stores located in the UK. Learn more about the globally available data movement and how it works from Globally available data movement, and the Azure Data Factory’s Data Movement is now available in the UK blog post.
Assigning multiple users to a task is now possible in Microsoft Planner
As of today, Microsoft Planner users can assign multiple people to a task—a feature that tops the list at planner.uservoice.com. Now, users can assign more than just one user to a task in Planner, and every user that is assigned the task will see it on their My Tasks page.
Our goal is to support additional collaboration, and we will continue to develop features and enhancements that our users want. Feel free to join the conversation about this feature and many others at our TechCommunity page. Also, please share your feedback with us about Planner features you would like to see at planner.uservoice.com.
—The Planner team
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