This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Windows updates keep you protected and productive in different ways, and we continue to optimize the update experience. Whether you’re an IT administrator or a general user, Windows monthly updates provide you with the security fixes to help keep your devices protected—as well as enhancements based on your feedback. Monthly updates are cumulative and include all previously released fixes to guard against fragmentation of the operating system (OS). This contributes to the reliability and quality of the Windows platform.
This post summarizes the different types of monthly updates and shares insights on how we’ve optimized our approach to Windows servicing and delivery.
Monthly security update release
For many of you, Update Tuesday (also referred to as “Patch Tuesday”) is a regular part of Windows servicing. Published on the second Tuesday of each month, our security update releases are cumulative. That is, they include both new and previously released security fixes along with non-security content introduced in the prior month’s optional non-security preview release (see below). These updates help keep Windows devices secure and compliant by deploying stability fixes and addressing security vulnerabilities.
Note: People tend to use “B release,” quality update, security update, and LCU interchangeably.
Monthly security updates are mandatory and are available through our standard channels, which include Windows Update, Windows Update for Business, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Configuration Manager, Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), and the Microsoft Update Catalog.
Optional non-security preview release
You’ve got options with optional non-security preview releases. Available the fourth week of the month, these production-quality updates are released ahead of the planned security update release for the following month. In addition, new features, like Search highlights, may initially be deployed in the prior month’s optional non-security preview release, then ship broadly in the following month’s security release.
Note: The term “optional non-security preview release” now replaces what we used to call either a “C” or “D” release to align with the current process.
Optional non-security preview releases are also cumulative and are only offered for the most recent supported versions of Windows.
Starting in April 2023, we now target optional non-security preview releases for the fourth week of the month. We have found this to be the optimal time for us to publish and for you to consume these updates. That’s two weeks after your latest monthly security update and about two weeks before you’ll see these features become part of the next mandatory cumulative update. We’re excited for this improvement as it is meant to optimize the validation of payloads, improve consistency, and enhance the predictability of your testing, update, and upgrade experience.
To access optional non-security preview releases, navigate to Settings > Windows Update > Advanced options > Optional updates, select from the available updates, and click Download and install.
Out-of-band releases
Out-of-band (OOB) releases may be provided to fix a recently identified issue or vulnerability. They are used in atypical cases, such as security vulnerabilities or a quality issue, when devices should be updated immediately instead of waiting for the next monthly quality update release. Out-of-band releases are cumulative, meaning that they include the updates from the previous security and/or non-security release, as well as the additional fix.
Continuous innovation in Windows 11
Beginning with Windows 11, version 22H2, new features and enhancements are delivered to the most recently released in-market version of Windows 11 more frequently using servicing technology. As with all updates, we utilize a phased and measured approach in rolling out continuous innovation to the Windows 11 ecosystem.
Experiences may be introduced in an optional non-security preview release prior to being made available broadly via a monthly security update or via Controlled Feature Rollout (CFR) technology. For more information on how to control when select features introduced via servicing are released to the devices you manage, see Commercial control for continuous innovation.
Recommendations
As a general practice, we recommend that you update your devices as soon as possible, whether you’re a general user or an IT professional. For IT admins, we also recommend taking advantage of the optional non-security preview releases to internally validate releases ahead of the following month’s security update release.
To help manage updates across your organization, bookmark these resources:
Windows release health on Microsoft Learn (also available in the Microsoft 365 admin center)
These pages are available in multiple languages and refer to each release by a unique KB number.
IT admins may validate fixes and features in a preview release by leveraging the Windows Insider Program for Business or via the Microsoft Update Catalog.
If you are a Microsoft Partner or registered commercial customer, you can also take advantage of the Security Update Validation Program (SUVP). It’s a quality assurance testing program designed for the monthly security update release. As a SUVP partner, you can start testing these security updates three weeks prior to Update Tuesday and provide us with feedback regarding usability, bug reports, test reports, etc.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Across Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Viva Sales, we’ve introduced, and will continue delivering, a cascade of AI capabilities to help businesses and individuals achieve more. Earlier this month, we announced Dynamics 365 Copilot, which uses OpenAI’s GPT capabilities to provide AI-powered assistance across business functions. For instance, a smart news insights capability for Microsoft Supply Chain Platform alerts warehouse and logistics professionals to external events, such as weather or geo-political activities, that might trigger a disruptionand then proactively helps them plan their mitigation with Copilot-powered content.
GPT-4 will bring more powerful capabilities to Microsoft business applications
The Azure OpenAI service uses large-scale, generative models to unlock new reasoning and comprehension capabilities across our business applications. Our unique and strong collaboration with OpenAI creates a “better together” experience for our customers. We’ve taken OpenAI models and built features on top of them, experimenting with multiple available models, including text-davinci-002 and text-davinci-003, ChatGPT, and GPT-4, the newest and most capable model in the GPT series.
These examples provide insight into how GPT-4 will create new possibilities to bring customers additional business value and where it may be better suited to address certain scenarios. We incorporate various models from OpenAI and Microsoft depending on the product and scenario. Some more complex tasks may be suited for one model, while others could be powered just as welland perhaps more quicklywith a different model.
Here’s an example of an experiment using Power Virtual Agents conversation booster in a fictional customer scenario to help the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) answer this question from their users: What are the documentation requirements for deductions?
domain = “irs.gov” query = “What are the documentation requirements for deductions?”
In contrast with text-davinci-002 and text-davinci-003, which mostly provide references, ChatGPT and GPT-4 provide more explanatory information along with links to their sources.
In Dynamics 365 Marketing, content ideas uses AI to generate marketing copy. In the following experiment, we asked for newsletter content around three key points:
Thank you for choosing to receive email from CONTOSO
Experience these valuable benefits: exclusive offers, sales alerts and new product launch info
Enjoy $10 off your next online purchase, enter code SPRING2022 at checkout
Then we performed internal testing to evaluate the results from the four models.
As with the IRS example, GPT-4 provides the most detailed response, including a bullet list of benefits. It even added an encouragement not to miss the opportunity, implicitly understanding that a coupon code should have a time component.
Prompt engineering and model tuning
Through our access to OpenAI models, we had the opportunity to engineer context-specific prompts for each scenario we tested. Consider the following example, in which we supplied various levels of context as input for the question, Do you know how to deploy a model on Azure ML?.
Without context, known as “zero shot,” the response from GPT-4 is random, not knowing which scenario is intended. The response with some context is more targeted. The most comprehensive context, which included retrieval augmented generation (RAG) from the desired sources, resulted in the most targeted response.
Along with engineering more context-rich prompts, we went under the hood to tune some models with training samples from domain-specific languages. For instance, the Power Automate “describe it to design it” capability shipped in October 2022 uses a model trained with samples that better represent the cloud flow language. For details, see our blog post explaining how we build fine-tuned models.
Our experimentation, tuning of input and models, and collaboration with OpenAI enable us to quickly develop and deliver the best AI-powered capabilities to our business users. And we’re doing it in a way that helps mitigate harm and provides our customers with provenance-checked results by implementing our Responsible AI practices.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Viva Topics in Engage doubles the impact and access of your knowledge at your fingertips – and how you pay it forward to others.
On today’s episode, we hear from Raj Jain (Principal product manager – Viva Engage and Answers team at Microsoft) about all things topical about Viva Topics, specifically – the role of Viva Topics within your Viva Engage community discussions, questions, and announcements posts. The real value gives you a built-in knowledge management system that balances and refines the length of your internal communications without sacrificing the depth you pay forward to each person that reads your comm.
Be sure to visit our show page to hear all episodes, access the show notes, and get bonus content. And stay connected to the SharePoint community blog where we’ll share more information per episode, guest insights, and take any questions or suggestions from our listeners and SharePoint users (TheIntrazone@microsoft.com).
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Our customers run Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations applications globally and must meet multiple tax compliance and other regulatory and local business practice requirements (we call them localizations). These requirements are complex and change frequently, especially in many countries within Latin America (LATAM).
As a part of our continuous commitment to customers and partners and following our strategy of expanding the out-of-the-box country coverage, in 2023 release wave 1, we will ship localizations for seven additional LATAM countries: Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay.
Microsoft localizations for these new countries were built in collaboration with Finnie, S.A., an affiliate of Artware SRL based on their LATAM localization solution. To better align with other Microsoft out-of-the-box localizations, this third party localization solution was redesigned utilizing the rich capabilities of Globalization Studio tools and services and integrated into Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, and Dynamics 365 Project Operations applications.
This expansion helps LATAM and global partners to focus more on delivering extra value to customers by extending these out-of-the-box localizations from Microsoft to meet more specific vertical or other customer requirements which might be different in each country. Our flexible, easy-to-use Globalization Studio tools and services make localization easier to extend and maintain for Microsoft partners and customers.
With this release, we are extending the out-of-the-box support to 51 countries/regions and 67 languages. Together with partner localization solutions and our no-code/low-code Globalization Studio tools and services, this expansion makes it easier for our customers to run their businesses globally (currently our customers use Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations applications in over 200 countries/regions).
LATAM Country Localization Overview
The new LATAM localizations have over a hundred new features covering key globalization areas in Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, and Dynamics 365 Project Operations, including:
tax determination and calculation,
electronic invoicing and invoicing processes,
tax audit and reporting,
banking and payments,
business documents,
and other areas (like fixed assets localization, etc.)
Our solution also contains cross-LATAM features which have common functionalities for the new countries in LATAM. These common features include tax setup and master data, invoice processing from various sources (sales orders, purchase orders, projects, etc.), common tax reports, and check and payment processing among other features. These cross-LATAM features reduce duplication, so only country-specific features, like electronic invoice formats, reports and business document layouts belong to a given country localization.
A sneak peek on localization for Chile
The first country localization released is Chile. We made it available in Public Preview in version 10.0.33 (the “May” release).
As for any localization, localization-specific fields, and functionality work on a LE (Legal Entity) basis, so to enable the Chilean localization you need to choose Chile as Primary address for your LE. As any new functionality in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, the new localizations for LATAM are under Feature management, so you will need to enable “(Preview) LATAM globalization expansion” feature to see it.
Sales Order in Chilean Legal Entity
After you have completed the setup, you will see LATAM and Chile-specific user interface elements in your LE. For example, a LATAM tab is displayed on the Sales Order form in the associated screenshot. Within the LATAM tab, region-specific fields for processing the invoice have been added.
The feature populates all required data to produce an Electronic Invoice for Chile and generate required tax reports.
Sales tax report for Chile
Timeline
We are releasing the localizations for the Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay as Public Previews first. Later, based on customer and partner feedback, we will make them generally available. You can find more details on the timeline and the list of features in the 2023 release wave 1 plan.
Call for action
We value your feedback please take part in Public Previews as the new LATAM localizations become available per our release plan! And stay tuned we are planning a Tech Talk to cover these localizations in more detail and more!
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Digital collaboration has become the norm, and more promising apps and tools are available daily. The benefits speak for themselves: increased productivity, convenience, innovation—the list goes on. But there are still challenges to address.
Recent Comments