Microsoft Teams

Microsoft has been ramping up its efforts for nonprofits during this year, including the Microsoft Security Program for Nonprofits and a pledge to increase its spending to help nonprofits over the next five years. This week, the company is launching the new Microsoft Accessibility Nonprofit Tech Accelerator (NTA) program.

In a blog post, Microsoft’s head of Access Technology Program, Sunday Parker explains her own personal journey to become a champion of nonprofits.

With the Accessibility Nonprofit Tech Accelerator, Microsoft is creating a program that provides support for nonprofits focusing on disabilities. NTA gives access to Microsoft’s enterprise-grade technology to help.

Microsoft says a grant round will start in 2023 and a pilot program will be available for a “small subset” of nonprofits that are helping to reduce the Disability Divide.

Webinar

To provide further information, Microsoft is hosting an Accessibility for Nonprofits Webinar on December 6. In that session, Microsoft will talk about the following points:

• ccessibility Nonprofit Tech Accelerator 2023 grant program that provides selected organizations with technology grants and dedicated specialist staff to support your mission.
• Access to Microsoft Philanthropies grants and discounts across our nonprofit cloud products including Azure, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft 365 for all registered 501 c3 organizations.
• Microsoft Accessibility team will share our commitment to disabilitynonprofit partners, our work on AI for Accessibility & Innovation.”Tip of the day: The Windows Sandbox gives Windows 10/11 Pro and Enterprise users a safe space to run suspicious apps without risk. In out tutorial we show you how to enable the Windows Sandbox feature.

Source Winbuzzer

Microsoft is continuing its goal to be at the forefront of the hybrid work revolution at Microsoft Teams continues to drive that focus. In its latest effort, Microsoft is adding new software known as “Teams Shared Device” that is available for enterprise users.

With Microsoft Teams Shared Device, users essentially get a license to be able to adapt and remain secure. It is a rebranding of the previous Common Area Phone (CAP) feature.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic and the transformation of the workplace to hybrid remote solutions, Microsoft Teams has been one of the giants in business collaboration and communication. To ensure Teams remains top of the pile, Microsoft has kept throwing features at the platform for the last two years.In its latest effort, the company is bringing games to Microsoft Teams. Available in both chats and video calling, Microsoft thinks games will bring some levity to meetings. Critics may say this is Microsoft simply adding a feature because it can, and this is one tool too much.After all, Teams is an enterprise communication and collaboration service. Either way, Microsoft will now allow users on Teams to use a new app known as Games for Work. Through this app, users (individually and in a group) can play a selection of classic casual games.For example, Minesweeper, Wordament, Solitaire, and IceBreakers are among the catalog of available games. Up to 250 people can play the games together. Surely many organizations will see games as a productivity distraction during working hours.

Productivity

Microsoft argues that while this can be the case, it does not have to be. The company points to a study from Brigham Young University that finds playing short games helps workers stay 20 percent more productive if they play together. Playing for 45 minutes can be more productive than standard team-building exercises.Have we just found the real reason is buying Activision Blizzard for $69bn? Maybe the company will be folding Call of Duty into Microsoft Teams so workers can play 50-person deathmatches against their executive team.Tip of the day: To prevent attackers from capturing your password, Secure Sign-in asks the user to perform a physical action that activates the sign-in screen. In some cases, this is a dedicated “Windows Security” button, but the most common case in Windows is the Ctrl+Alt Del hotkey. In our tutorial, we show you how to activate this feature.

Source  Winbuzzer

In an announcement this week, the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) said that is now using Microsoft’s Secure Supply Chain Consumption Framework (S2C2F). This guideline ensures open-source software (OSS) is developed in a secure way.

S2C2F was created by Microsoft is a guideline standard for OSS software. Microsoft has been using the guideline since 2019 and has been pushing for OpenSSF to adopt the guidelines. In a blog post this week, Microsoft says the OpenSSF adopting the standard is important because the foundation is a Linux Foundation project.

“The S2C2F is designed from the ground up to protect developers from accidentally consuming vulnerable packages (including malicious and compromised packages), helping to mitigate supply chain attacks through decreasing consumption-based attack surfaces.”Microsoft says the S2CF2 guidelines are now part of the OpenSSF and are available to all founding members. It is worth noting that Microsoft is one of those founding members alongside IBM, Google, OWASP Foundation, Red Hat, NCC Group, Google, and others.

More Protection

OpenSSF was founded in August 2020 and aims to increase security around openopen-sourcevices. The group says the intention is to connect and secure software by leveraging the Linux Foundation. For example, the “Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII)” and the “GitHub-initiated Open Source Security Coalition (OSSC),” are part of the initiative.

OpenSSF describes the S2C2F as a complete guideline:“The Secure Supply Chain Consumption Framework (S2C2F), when coupled with a producer-focused artifact-oriented framework such as Supply chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA), gives software producers and consumers a complete guide for how to approach building and consuming software securely.”

• “Ingest it: meaning that all open source software “artifact inputs” are controlled.
• Scan it: where organizations have knowledge about any vulnerabilities or malware in an OSS artifact.
• Inventory it: where OSS artifacts used in production environments are known.
• Update it: where software artifacts can be updated.
• Audit it: where the “full chain-of-custody” of an OSS artifact can be proven.
• Enforce it: where OSS artifacts are controlled and consumed from trusted sources.
• Rebuild it: which involves creating a new chain of custody from the source code of an OSS artifact. This approach is said to address “build-time attacks such as those seen on CCleaner and SolarWinds.”
• Fix it: where it’s possible to “patch, build, and deploy any external artifact within 3 days of harm notification.  Tip of the day: To prevent attackers from capturing your password, Secure Sign-in asks the user to perform a physical action that activates the sign-in screen. In some cases, this is a dedicated “Windows Security” button, but the most common case in Windows is the Ctrl+Alt Del hotkey. In our tutorial, we show you how to activate this feature.

Source  Winbuzzer

As part of its Supply Chain Solution announcements today, Microsoft is unveiling a new supply chain service that will promote collaboration and data management for customers. Called the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, the new service combines components of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, and Dynamics 365.

According to the company, Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, gives customers the ability to adopt the components they want to meet their supply chain commitments.

Alongside the release of the platform in preview, Microsoft is also releasing a preview of the Supply Chain Center. This drives the Supply Chain Platform by giving customers ways to be more efficient through a purpose-built command center.

Starting with the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, the service taps into Microsoft Dataverse. If you’re unfamiliar with Dataverse, it is a platform that lets users store and manage data that is used by business apps in a secure environment. All information is stored within tables and each table has rows and columns.

Dataverse allows customers to leverage common attributes, meanings, and tables quickly. Within the Supply Chain Platform, Dataverse allows customers to access a catalog of hundreds of connectors to provide more visibility on their supply chain.

Because the platform is open, Microsoft is urging partners to become involved. The company says partners can leverage Azure, Teams, Power Platforms, and Dynamics 365 (Supply Chain Management) to provide solutions. Amongst the partners the Supply Chain Platform connects to are inVia Robotics, Cosmo Tech, SAS, 09 Solutions, and many more.

Microsoft Supply Chain Center

Built within the platform is the Microsoft Supply Chain Center, which Microsoft says is the heart of the overall Supply Chain Platform. The company describes it as a “command center,” a central hub where customers can sync data across their supply chain systems.

With the Data Manager tool, users can tap into the Supply Chain Center to ingest data and orchestrate visibility across their chain. Moreover, they can also engage in action. Microsoft Supply Chain Center is in preview with the following benefits:

• “The supply and demand insights module uses advanced Azure AI models to predict upstream supply constraints and shortages through supply intelligence. Organizations can perform simulations using data from their supply chain network to predict stock-outs, over-stocking or missed-order lines. Combined with smart news insights, which provides relevant news alerts in the Supply Chain Center on external events, supply chain practitioners can make decisions and plan with real-world event information and historical insights for product demands.
• The order management module in Supply Chain Center intelligently orchestrates and automates fulfillment with a rules-based system using real-time omnichannel inventory data, AI, and machine learning. Organizations can quickly meet future order volumes and fulfillment complexities by extending their capabilities with pre-built connectors to specialized technology partners for order intake, delivery, and third-party logistics services. Existing Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management customers will automatically get access to Supply Chain Center and the order management module at launch.
• With secure, built-in Teams integration, customers can mitigate supply constraints by collaborating with external suppliers in real-time, to secure new supply sources, troubleshoot transportation issues and communicate up and downstream impacts based on changes.
• By having partner modules built into the Supply Chain Center, customers can easily unlock specific solutions like freight visibility from Overhaul. Since everything runs off Dataverse, the data is consistent no matter what module you are using. This eliminates pasting information back and forth and reconciling which reports have the most up-to-date information.”

When Microsoft said it would spend $7.5 billion buying GitHub, the company faced plenty of pushback. After all, this was a once fierce critic of open source buying the biggest repository for open source projects. Of course, Microsoft has been fixing its open-source reputation in recent years and GitHub was a way to build the company’s credentials.

Microsoft’s fiscal 2023 is well underway and the company is announcing a mixed-bag Q1 earnings call. In recent years, the company has been on a rolling road of success, quarter after quarter, year after year. While there is a lot to still be pleased about, the Fiscal 2023 Q1 earnings also provide areas where Microsoft will need to improve.

Revenue increased once again for Microsoft, jumping 11 percent compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2022. However, new income took a hit, decreasing by 14 percent year-on-year. Of course, Microsoft still made a profit, but it was lower than Q1 2022.

In terms of raw numbers, Microsoft took $50.1 billion in revenue and $17.6 billion in net income.

As I recently reported, the PC market is in decline after increasing during the pandemic. Microsoft has confirmed it is seeing the effects of this decline. The company says it saw a 15 percent fall in Windows OEM revenue during Q1. This is the money that PC manufacturers such as Lenovo, Dell, and HP pay to Microsoft to include Windows on their devices.

Microsoft says this decline stems from a “continued deterioration in the PC market.” Even so, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is bullish and says despite the PC market, Window remains in a strong position:

“Despite the drop in PC shipments during the quarter, Windows continues to see usage growth,” Nadella says, pointing to a 20 percent in the number of monthly active users on Windows devices compared to before the pandemic.

Surface

Personally, I think it has been a poor 12 months for Surface. Underwhelming product launches like the Surface Laptop 5, Surface Pro 9, and Surface Studio 2+ and completely ignoring the Surface Duo points to a confused hardware operation. Even so, during Q1 Surface revenue was by 2 percent year-on-year.

Although, Microsoft is now including PC accessories and HoloLens sales in a new “devices revenue” bracket. In other words, that increase may not be entirely down to the success of Surface. In fact, despite the new products mentioned above, Microsoft forecasts a decline in devices revenue this current quarter.

The company says it predicts a decline of 30 percent in fiscal 2023 Q2.

Tip of the day: When Windows 10 or Windows 11 has issues, it’s not rare to run into startup problems. Corrupted Windows files, incorrect system configuration, driver failure, or registry tweaks can all cause this issue.

Using Windows startup repair can fix boot issues caused by the most prevalent issues. Though it may seem that all is lost when you run into startup problems, it’s important to try a Windows boot repair so you can at least narrow down the source of the issue. If it doesn’t work, you may have to reinstall the OS or test your hardware.

Source Winbuzzer

Microsoft’s seemingly perpetual rollout of features for Microsoft Teams continues with the launch of language interpretation. Available in Teams meetings, the feature allows the app to support interpreters for attendees during meetings.

The new tool is rolling out in general availability for Microsoft Teams on desktop and the web. With this feature, meeting admins can access professional interpreters to translate meetings into other languages. This happens in real-time, so attendees can select their preferred language and hear the translation.

Microsoft says the translation will be louder than their speaker. This allows the interpreter to be heard over the sound of the ongoing meeting. In a Tech Community post to outline the tool, Microsoft points to the following core features:

• “Listen to a meeting in the language they are most comfortable using.
• Collaborate in meetings where multiple languages are spoken.
• Support inclusivity in meetings by making spoken content more accessible to all participants.”

Global Audience

In the post, Microsoft’s Shalendra Chhabra discussed the importance of Teams being able to cater to a global userbase:

“Here at Microsoft, we serve a diverse set of global customers, including governmental institutions that hold parliament meetings in multiple languages, multinational and multilingual corporations, businesses that work with vendors around the world, and many more,” Chhabra says. “This feature was built to support customers and users who need to communicate in the virtual world across languages.”

When organizing a meeting, it is possible to provide an interpreter or use one of Microsoft’s. The tool is available on channel meetings, scheduled meetings, webinars, and any meeting up to 1,000 attendees.

Tip of the day: With many reachable wireless access points popping up and disappearing again, the available networks list can become quite annoying. If needed you can use the allowed and blocked filter list of Windows to block certain WiFi networks or all unknown WiFi networks.

Source  Winbuzzer

Microsoft Teams now has a feature that integrates the service more deeply with Microsoft Excel Live. Specifically, users can now collaborate on Excel Live spreadsheets directly on Teams. In an announcement blog, Microsoft says the feature is in preview on the Teams Public Preview channel.

Thanks to this integration, users have tools to navigate documents and remain in meetings on Teams. Furthermore, it is also possible to carry on with individual workloads or link to others on a document.

Excel Live presentations in Microsoft Teams are available via “Share” and then selecting “Excel Live”. Here Teams highlights spreadsheet files available or allows access to OneDrive to pull up files from storage. When a file is chosen, Team will ask the user if they want to share the file.

Availability

As noted, the feature is currently only available to users on the Microsoft Teams Public Review channel. In its testing phase, there are also limitations that are worth knowing about. For example, on mobile there is only the ability to share files. Sharing, viewing, and editing, are available for web users.

Below is the availability of features across platforms:

Of course, all features will roll out across platform before this integration progresses beyond preview and to full release. Microsoft says one organisation can host a maximum of 25 meeting participants using Excel Live. So, if the meeting has more attendees, only a subset of 25 can collaborate on spreadsheets.

Tip of the day: With a single registry tweak, it’s possible to add a ‘Take Ownership’ button to the right-click context menu that performs all of the necessary actions for you. You’ll gain full access to all possible actions, including deletion, renaming, and more. All files and subfolders will also be under your name.

The Take Ownership context menu will set the currently active user as the owner of the files, though they must also be an administrator. They can then enter the folder or modify the file as they usually would.

Source  Winbuzzer