This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Rolling out in preview, there’s now limited support for labels configured for user-defined permissions. This encryption configuration refers to the settingLet users assign permissions when they apply the labeland the checkboxIn Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, prompt users to specify permissionsis selected:
When a document is labeled with user-defined permissions and uploaded to SharePoint or OneDrive, these services can now process the document so that it can be opened and edited in Office for the web, the label name is displayed in theSensitivitycolumn, and the encrypted file is returned in search results for the label ID.
Labels with this configuration are now displayed in Office for the web. However, currently, users can’t apply these labels in Office for the web and if these labels are selected, users see a message instructing them to apply the label using a desktop app.
The contents currently can’t be inspected for search, data loss prevention, or eDiscovery.
Windows: Minimum version of 16.0.16327 from Current Channel (Preview), or minimal version of 16.0.16414 from the Beta Channel
macOS: Minimum version of 16.51 from Current Channel (Preview) or from the Beta Channel
Note: If you use earlier versions and co-authoring is enabled for your tenant, AutoSave and co-authoring will be temporarily disabled for documents after users apply a sensitivity label that’s configured with user-defined permissions, or users change the permissions. After they close the document and wait 10 minutes, these features are available again.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
a banner depicting the title of the blog with tagline ”Your monthly IT admin blog for all things Microsoft 365”
Welcome to the Microsoft 365 IT admin blog, your monthly source of tips, insights, and best practices for managing and optimizing your Microsoft 365 environment. In this edition, get ready for the next AMA on Microsoft 365 Copilot, learn about Bing Chat Enterprise, and the latest enhancements to the Microsoft 365 admin center. Read on to catch up about all things Microsoft 365 administration.
Join the next AMA on Microsoft 365 Copilot
We’ll be hosting the next AMA (Ask Me Anything) focused on Microsoft 365 Copilot and Bing Chat Enterprise on August 10 in the Microsoft 365 Copilot Tech Community. The event was a great opportunity to hear from members like you and have the team of experts answer questions. You can start sending in your questions to the event page now, and a team of experts will join us to help answer them during the event. The first AMA was held on July 13, and focused on preparing for Microsoft 365 Copilot. If you missed it, you can review the full list of questions and answers here.
Bing Chat Enterprise now in preview
At Microsoft Inspire, Microsoft announced Bing Chat Enterprise, giving organizations AI-powered chat for work with commercial data protection. Chat data is not saved, Microsoft has no eyes-on access, and your data is not used to train foundation models. This gives users access to better answers, greater efficiency, and new ways to be creative while staying secure. Users can access Bing Chat Enterprise using their work account wherever Bing Chat is supported – Bing.com/chat and Microsoft Edge sidebar.
To enable the preview, eligible customers can turn on Bing Chat Enterprise by going to https://aka.ms/TurnOnBCE to opt in. You will also need to ensure Microsoft Search in Bing setting in the Microsoft 365 admin center is turned on. Learn more about managing Bing Chat Enterprise here.
Have questions about Bing Chat Enterprise? Check out the FAQ here.
Highlights across Microsoft 365 administration
Let’s check out some of the latest features we launched in the Microsoft 365 admin center and how they can help you get things done.
Learn about Microsoft 365 Backup and Archive
Microsoft also announced many new AI capabilities across Microsoft 365 at Inspire. Particularly for Microsoft 365 admins, Microsoft 365 Backup was introduced to help you back up and quickly restore your organization’s data to a prior point-in-time after a catastrophic event or unforeseen data loss. Microsoft 365 Archive offers long-term storage of inactive or aging files that you might still want to maintain for compliance or retention requirements. You can also catch up on details on Microsoft 365 Copilot licensing and availability announced during the opening keynote.
Simplify controls with the Microsoft Edge manager service
Following our announcement in May, The Microsoft Edge management service is now generally available (Roadmap ID 123856). You can access the service through the Microsoft 365 admin center, Org settings > Microsoft Edge to configure Microsoft Edge browser settings for your organization and apply these settings by group assignment or group policy. Through the portal, you can also manage browser extensions and policies or view user requests for browser extensions. To learn more, read about the Microsoft Edge management service.
An image of the Microsoft Edge management service portal
Improve employee experience with Viva Pulse
Last week, Microsoft announced the general availability of Microsoft Viva Pulse, a new employee feedback experience that is now available for use with your Viva Suite subscription. It empowers managers and project team leaders to request and receive feedback from their teams at any time. Managers and project leads can choose from research-based templates to quickly create a survey and send it to select individuals or groups. They can also track feedback to understand team sentiment over time and show teams they’re being heard by working together to take clear steps to address needs.
As an admin, you must execute a script in PowerShell for these notifications to appear. After the script is executed successfully, users will receive email notifications when a feedback author requests a Pulse, when feedback providers are reminded to respond, when a feedback author is notified their Pulse request has closed, and when a feedback author shares a Pulse report. Find the script to enable notifications for your organization here.
Better plan for change with Feature release status in the message center
In continued efforts to make it easier for IT departments to manage change with greater predictability, Microsoft recently made feature release status in the message center for Teams, and Outlook on the web, and Microsoft 365 admin center available worldwide to customers. Now, you can have visibility to feature rollout status in the message center, Planner sync for the message center, and Service Communications API, along with the ability to view release status in Targeted and Standard release rings. Additionally, on the message center, you can apply filters based on the status of the releases and the timeframe of their status changes. To learn more, you can read the documentation here.
An image of the feature release status column in the message center
Stay updated
As always, stay current with the latest updates Microsoft 365 admin center from the Microsoft 365 roadmap and the message center. In addition, we also highlight new feature releases and enhancements released each month in our What’s new in the Microsoft 365 admin center article.
Comment below if there are IT admin or change management topics you would like us to explore in the future!
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
The customer service world has undergone a significant transformation in recent years. With the rise of digitalization and advanced technologies, customers now expect seamless and personalized experiences across multiple channels. Automation and AI have become integral to customer support teams, enabling faster response times and more efficient issue resolution.
Moreover, post-pandemic, remote work and virtual communication have become the norm, reshaping the way customer support teams operate and collaborate. Agents find themselves in silos, unable to seek immediate help from colleagues in neighboring cubicles like in traditional office settings.
As businesses strive to meet the escalating demands of customers, contact center leaders must be strategic about agent productivity. They must enhance agent collaboration and efficiency, ensuring the delivery of high-quality customer service even in a dispersed working environment.
We acknowledge customer service is a collective effort. Hence, by bringing together Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Teams, we aim to provide agents with a cohesive environment to get help from experts across the entire company to resolve complex customer issues which they might not have expertise on. Both experts and agents can use their preferred tools; Dynamics 365 Customer Service for agents and Microsoft Teams for experts. Experts don’t have to be Dynamics users; a Teams license is all they need to participate and collaborate effectively.
With the enhancements in this release wave, Teams collaboration features (embedded chat, swarming, and Teams meeting integration) are even more robust. Let’s dive into the details of these exciting advancements.
Keep Teams chat participants informed of updated fields
Reduce overhead for agents by automatically updating all chat participants when an essential field on a connected record is updated. This time-saving feature helps keep everyone in the know without any manual effort. This allows agents to focus on what’s important and helping experts in the chat be aware of pertinent updates.
Send a bot event update in the connected Teams chat to inform participants of an updated field on the connected record. With the suite of Teams collaboration features, not only you can start a chat with the users who are connected with Dynamics 365 records, now you can keep them informed when the record changes, without any manual effort. For example, when the priority of a case changes, all the chat participants are notified.
Dynamics links unfurled in Teams chat
Links to Dynamics 365 and Power Apps records are unfurled when pasted in Microsoft Teams chats and meetings. See the details of your business data in your Microsoft Teams chats and feel confident that the link you’re selecting is an authentic Power Apps link. Now, when you paste a Dynamics 365 Customer Service link into a Microsoft Teams chat, meeting, or channel, participants will see an adaptive card with more details about the shared link. Links to canvas apps will show the app name and record name. Model-driven app links to records show the entity type. The user pasting the link can delete the card in the message compose window before sending the message if they don’t want to send the link as a card.
Timeline integration
When you start a connected chat or connect an existing chat to a record, you can see it as an activity on the connected record’s timeline. This makes it easy for agents to get the full case view by allowing them to see any chats related to the case or record directly on the timeline.
If there is an agent hand-off, the next agent, who may not have been a part of the chat initially, can also see the conversation on the timeline. The next agent can directly join the discussion as a chat participant to see the entire chat exchange.
To enable the feature, the admin can turn on the Join chat toggle in the Customer Service admin center app. This gives users with read and write privileges the ability to join a connected chat.
Swarming enhancements
Customer support swarming helps agents connect with experts in their organization to solve cases faster. We made the following enhancements to swarming:
Guided admin setup: The guided, step-by-step setup makes it easy for admins to configure and onboard their agents. It significantly reduces the time for admins to configure swarming in their organizations, helping make the onboarding experience more efficient. Now agents can more quickly get the help they need from experts across the organization.
Swarm form UI: Administrators can add a tab, section, or field to the swarm form and customize it as needed. The changes they make will promptly reflect in the agent workspace. The swarm creation form now comes with an advanced look and feel. With the visual indicator, agents can view the progress of swarm creation and see the steps completed and those remaining.
Auto resolve swarm: When a case is closed (that is, canceled or resolved), associated swarms are automatically resolved.
With Microsoft Teams chat embedded in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, collaborating with colleagues is easier than ever. Both agents and experts can stay informed about important case details without making a lot of manual updates and circling back. Try these features and more with the latest updates to Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Harness the power of the Internet of Things (IoT) to revolutionize your organization’s service delivery with Field Service. Connected field service refers to IoT connected devices sending information about their performance to a field service organization. This allows the field service organization to perform proactive and predictive maintenance for their clients moving from a break-fix model. Instead of the client calling you and saying, “This machine is broken,” you call the client and say, “We see your machine might be performing less than optimally. We will come in later today to service it.” Based on the service alert, the best-suited technician with the right skill and proximity to customer location is dispatched to resolve the issue resulting in reduced asset downtime.
How does connected field service improve your key performance indicators (KPIs), you ask? Let’s discuss seven KPIs that will improve with connected field service.
This is an important field service KPI related to customer experience. According to Aberdeen, the average first-time fix rate for an organization is around 75 percent.1 That means three out of four service calls are resolved on the first visit by a technician. With connected field service, you notify the customer when things need to be fixed or adjusted. You can funnel information about the problem, as well as customer information, to a technician in real time, and the technician arrives on-site with all relevant customer history.
First-time fix rates remain consistently high in connected field service organizations. This improves customer experience, which increases retention and referral in most organizations. Keeping your customers informed throughout the resolution process builds confidence and trust and leads to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty. More importantly, customers want their problems fixed the first time to minimize disruption.
2. Customer retention
This is a standard field service KPI. Think about it along these lines: there is a cost for most of your clients to switch to a different field service provider. They need to do a lot of research, break your contract, initiate a new contract, and so on. In a predictive maintenance context, customer retention tends to be very high because equipment malfunctions are addressed even before customers have the chance to call it in. Remote monitoring of IoT devices enables organizations to enhance their responsiveness to customer needs. With continuous monitoring, you can quickly detect issues and notify customers about service disruptions or necessary actions. Keeping your customers informed throughout the resolution process builds confidence and trust and leads to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty. By using Connected Field Service, the client has “one less thing to worry about,” and they are not likely to walk away from those contracts.
3. Percentage of billable hours
Percentage of billable hours is a measure of productivity because it refers to the percentage of time your technicians are doing work that is directly billable to a client. For productivity to increase on the technician side, technicians need tools, guidance, and data they can pull up in real time. Percentage of billable hours typically drops when technicians need to spend a large portion of time on non-essential, more logistical business tasks. When all the resources are transparent within the same customer relationship management (CRM) system—which happens at the intersection of the cloud, IoT, and connected field service—technicians’ time becomes more productive.
4. Completed vs. invoiced jobs
This KPI goes right to your revenue stream, as you typically cannot get paid for a job without invoicing it. You are looking for integrative, intelligence-driven solutions whereby customer information is “speaking” directly to invoicing within your CRM. The goal is to create a seamless loop for the client: you solve a problem they were not even aware of by using information from connected devices, and once the problem is solved, the invoice arrives ready to go. There are no lags. Connected field service can help keep your financials consistent.
5. Cost reduction
IoT-powered Field Service enables organizations to streamline their operations and reduce costs. Remote monitoring and predictive maintenance reduce the need for frequent physical inspections and unnecessary maintenance visits, resulting in efficient resource utilization and reduced operational expenses. Proactive problem diagnosis and maintenance prevent major breakdowns and extensive repairs. Prevented issues lead to cost savings by minimizing downtime, eliminating emergency service calls, and optimizing resource allocation.
6. Employee retention
Customer retention is crucial to your bottom line, yes, but employee retention is a good measure of how functional your organization is in terms of leadership, managers, and processes. One of the core issues when employees leave any field service organization is lack of communication and collaboration; connected field service can help solve collaboration problems by allowing everyone in your organization open access to the same sets of resources and data. (You can restrict some access to the most senior levels, too.) If employees feel like a valuable part of the business, they are less likely to leave.
7. Resource allocation
With device data and service maintenance information gathered through IoT, organizations can make informed decisions when dispatching technicians. Factors such as device performance data, historical maintenance records, technician expertise, availability, and proximity help to optimize resource allocation. Assigning the right technician with the appropriate skills and proximity to the job ensures efficient service delivery and reduces response and resolution times.
Learn more about connected field service
Connected Field Service can impact almost any KPI. This is a look at seven of them, but there’s more to explore—learn how Dynamics 365 Field Service can help you deliver exceptional service.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
With Clipchamp as part of Microsoft 365, it’s easy to know where to turn to make videos and get started. Anyone can confidently create and publish videos, using an intuitive interface and harnessing useful tools. Clipchamp empowers anyone to produce high-quality videos they can be proud of.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Efficiently managing Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance operations is essential for developers and DBAs seeking high-performing, reliable applications in the cloud. This article introduces a powerful PowerShell script leveraging the OpenAsync technique, designed to optimize these Azure database solutions by implementing a resilient connection policy and enabling asynchronous query execution. Today, I would like to share several topics about OpenAsync and ExecuteAsync learned about several support cases worked on previously.
The Script: Harnessing the Power of OpenAsync
The provided PowerShell script showcases two fundamental functions: Open-ConnectionAsync and Execute-QueryAsync. These functions capitalize on the OpenAsync technique to revolutionize the way connections are established and queries are executed in Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance environments.
1. Open-ConnectionAsync Function
This function establishes an asynchronous connection to the target Azure database and incorporates the following key features:
Asynchronous Connection: The use of OpenAsync enables the script to asynchronously establish connections, preventing application blocking and ensuring high responsiveness.
Exponential Backoff: The function gracefully handles transient connectivity issues with an exponential backoff strategy, intelligently delaying connection retries and allowing the infrastructure to recover from potential disruptions.
2. Execute-QueryAsync Function
This function revolutionizes query execution by leveraging the OpenAsync technique and includes the following essential elements:
Asynchronous Query Execution: By utilizing the OpenAsync approach, queries are executed asynchronously, maximizing application performance and responsiveness.
Dynamic Timeout Adjustment: The function applies a backoff mechanism to dynamically adjust the CommandTimeout property during query execution retries. This intelligent approach extends query execution time, significantly reducing the likelihood of timeouts due to transient performance fluctuations.
Empowering Developers and DBAs
The script offers developers and DBAs significant advantages:
1. Resilience in Connectivity: The OpenAsync technique combined with exponential backoff ensures that connection attempts are smartly retried, minimizing the impact of temporary connection issues and promoting application stability.
2. Optimized Query Performance: Asynchronous query execution and dynamic CommandTimeout adjustment guarantee queries have sufficient time to complete successfully, enhancing application performance even during peak database activity.
3. Tailored Customization: The script’s adjustable parameters, including $totalQueries, $maxConnectionAttempts, and $maxQueryAttempts, provide developers and DBAs with the flexibility to tailor the script to their specific use cases.
Conclusion
By leveraging the power of OpenAsync, developers and DBAs can unlock the full potential of Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance. Our PowerShell script empowers them to optimize connection handling and query execution, ensuring a resilient and high-performing experience in the Azure cloud.
Disclaimer: The PowerShell script is intended for educational purposes only. Prior to applying any script to production systems, developers and DBAs should thoroughly test it in a controlled environment and adhere to security and performance best practices.
function Open-ConnectionAsync {
param (
[string]$connectionString,
[int]$maxAttempts
)
$attempts = 1
while ($attempts -le $maxAttempts) {
try {
$connection = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection
$connection.ConnectionString = $connectionString
Write-Host "$(Get-Date) - Attempting to establish connection..."
$openTask = $connection.OpenAsync()
# Esperar hasta 0.5 segundos (500 milisegundos) para la conexión.
Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 50
if ($openTask.IsCompleted) {
If( -not $openTask.IsFaulted -and -not $openTask.IsCanceled)
{
Write-Host "$(Get-Date) - Connection established successfully."
return $connection
}
}
}
catch {
$attempts++
$backoffTime = [math]::Pow(2, $attempts) * 1000
Write-Host "$(Get-Date) - Error establishing connection: $_.Exception.Message. Retrying in $backoffTime milliseconds..."
Start-Sleep -Milliseconds $backoffTime
}
}
Write-Host "$(Get-Date) - Maximum connection attempts reached. Could not establish connection."
return $null
}
function Execute-QueryAsync {
param (
[System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection]$connection,
[string]$query,
[int]$queryNumber,
[int]$maxAttempts
)
for ($i = 1; $i -le $maxAttempts; $i++) {
$queryTimer = [System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch]::StartNew()
try {
$command = $connection.CreateCommand()
$command.CommandText = $query
Write-Host "$(Get-Date) - Attempt $i to execute Query $queryNumber..."
$command.CommandTimeout = 30 + ([math]::Pow(2, $i) * 10) # Increase CommandTimeout with backoff value
$openTask = $command.ExecuteNonQueryAsync()
# Esperar hasta 0.5 segundos (500 milisegundos) para la ejecución de la consulta.
Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 50
if ($openTask.IsCompleted) {
If( -not $openTask.IsFaulted -and -not $openTask.IsCanceled)
{
$queryTimer.Stop()
Write-Host "$(Get-Date) - Query $queryNumber, attempt $($i + 1) executed successfully. Execution time: $($queryTimer.Elapsed.ToString())"
return
}
else
{
Write-Host "$(Get-Date) - Query $queryNumber, attempt $($i + 1) execution failed. Retrying..."
throw "- Query $queryNumber, attempt $($i + 1) execution failed. Retrying..."
}
}
}
catch {
$queryTimer.Stop()
Write-Host "$(Get-Date) - Error executing query $queryNumber, attempt $($i + 1): $_.Exception.Message. Execution time: $($queryTimer.Elapsed.ToString())"
if ($i -lt $maxAttempts - 1) {
$backoffTime = [math]::Pow(2, $i) * 1000
Write-Host "$(Get-Date) - Retrying query $queryNumber in $backoffTime milliseconds..."
Start-Sleep -Milliseconds $backoffTime
}
else {
Write-Host "$(Get-Date) - Maximum query attempts reached. Moving to the next query."
}
}
}
}
$connectionString = "data source=tcp:servername.database.windows.net,1433;initial catalog=DBName;User ID=UserName;Password=Password; ConnectRetryCount = 3; ConnectRetryInterval = 10; Connection Timeout = 30; Max Pool Size = 100; MultipleActiveResultSets = false; Min Pool Size = 1; Application Name = Testing by JMJD -SQL; Pooling = True;Connection Timeout=5"
$totalQueries = 300
$maxConnectionAttempts = 10
$maxQueryAttempts = 10
for ($i = 1; $i -le $totalQueries; $i++) {
$connection = Open-ConnectionAsync -connectionString $connectionString -maxAttempts $maxConnectionAttempts
if ($connection) {
$query = "SELECT 1"
Execute-QueryAsync -connection $connection -query $query -queryNumber ($i + 1) -maxAttempts $maxQueryAttempts
$connection.Close()
}
}
Write-Host "$(Get-Date) - End of the script."
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Introduction
The new task history feature in Microsoft Project for the web helps task owners stay on top of their tasks and quickly identify recent progress that has been made or changes that have impacted the schedule. Edits to tasks such as adding or removing labels, changing the duration, or changes to other tasks that affect the schedule of work all appear in the new Changes pane in Task Details. It is rolling out now, and will be available world-wide over the next few days.
First open a project at Project Home or in a Project tab in Microsoft Teams.
Open task details for any task. It can be reached by clicking the task details in the task grid, or by clicking a task card in the board view.
In the corner of task details, there is a new task history icon. Click it to open the changes pane.
Details about the recorded changes
All the changes a user makes to a task are recorded in task history. For each edit, details are shown such as who made the change, when they made it, what property was changed, the previous value, and the new value.
Changes that are recorded include edits such as
Adding or removing labels
Changing the duration or effort
Editing checklists
Adding or removing attachments
Edits to any custom columns
Changes made to other tasks that impact the selected task
Project for the web makes it easy to track tasks and identify dependencies. Dependencies between tasks means it is crucial for task owners to understand how changes across the project impacts their work. Task history makes it easy to identify these changes and stay on track. Changes made to other tasks that impact either the start date or finish date of the selected task have a history record that shows high-level information about the edit.
In the example shown below, Allan Smith edited the duration of a related task called “Kick-off budgeting.” This edit impacted the start date of the currently selected task.
Navigating to related task edits
Clicking the task title for these changes takes you to the related task and highlights the relevant edit. In this example, clicking the task title of the previously shown change record opens the “Kick-off budgeting” task and highlights the change in duration.
Pressing the browser back button or pressing the back button in Teams returns to the previously selected task.
Pro-tip: use task history with task conversations to stay on track
Task history pairs perfectly with task conversations to enable in-context chat about changes to tasks. For projects that have been pinned in Teams channels, the bottom of the task details pane includes a task conversation button. Pressing it opens the conversation pane.
Chats in this pane automatically include a link to the task to help everyone quickly get to a shared context. More information about task conversations can be found at the Microsoft support page for them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why don’t I see the task history button? Task History is only available to users with a Project Plan 3 or greater license. If the icon doesn’t appear in task details, work with your Administrator to verify the license that is assigned to you.
Will edits made by users without a Project Plan 3 license be shown in the Changes pane? Yes. Edits made by all users, regardless of their license, will appear in the changes pane. Only users with a Project Plan 3 or greater license will be able to open the changes pane to view these edits.
Is task history available in Planner? No. Task history -along with other powerful features such as custom columns and the timeline view- helps to give teams with more sophisticated project management requirements the tools they need to keep their projects on track. These features can all be found in Project for the web.
Can my team build Power BI reports using Task History data? Yes. Task history data is stored in Microsoft Dataverse and can be queried using Power BI. Learn more about the schema by visiting our support page.
Do edits to tasks using the Project scheduling APIs appear in task history? No. Only edits to tasks made using the grid, board, or timeline views appear in the Changes pane.
My team uses Project in Power Apps, do edits made in that context appear in task history? Edits made in the grid, board, and timeline views appear in Task History. Any edits to tasks using Power Apps forms as well as any edits to columns added to tables in Dataverse are not shown in task history.
My team has customized Project in Power Apps, will task history work in our environment?
Yes, but your administrator needs to ensure that they are validating their customizations with the latest release, including any customization of security roles in Dataverse.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We are excited to announce some updates to our Viva Insights Meeting effectiveness report template that will enhance your experience and make the insights more actionable! As part of our ongoing commitment to providing valuable tools for our customers, we have reevaluated the insight naming conventions for this template and made some changes.
In our quest to enhance meeting effectiveness, we have focused on ensuring insights resonate with users. While the conclusions drawn from the data remain unchanged, you’ll notice a shift from a passive tone to a more actionable sense in our insight framing.
To improve clarity and eliminate confusion, we have revisited the names of several insights, making them easier to comprehend. We understand the significance of intuitive and understandable naming conventions, and addressing this issue has been a priority for us.
Existing insight name
New insight name
Short and small
Large and long
Advanced meeting notice
Short notice
Attendee availability
Conflicting
Joined on time
Joined late
Ended on time
Ended late
No multitasking
Multitasked
New name descriptions and actionable takeaways for improved meeting effectiveness
1. “Short and small” is now “Large and long”: This insight highlights meetings that have 9 or more invitees and last more than 1 hour.
Action: Foster focused discussions and prevent attendee fatigue to ensure more productive and impactful outcomes.
2. “Advanced meeting notice” has been renamed “Short notice”: This change aims to emphasize meetings that have are scheduled with less than 24 hours of notice.
Action: Ensure that important meetings are scheduled with enough lead time to enable employees to feel in control over their days and sufficiently prepare for meetings.
3. “Attendee availability” is now “Conflicting”: This insight highlights meetings where scheduling conflicts are present amongst participants, potentially impacting meeting attendance.
Action: Identify and address scheduling conflicts, optimize attendee availability, and facilitate more productive meetings by effectively managing conflict commitments.
4. “Joined on time” is now “Joined late”: This insight highlights meetings where attendees were unable to join a Teams meeting within five minutes of the scheduled start time.
Action: This can be caused by back-to-back meetings that make it challenging for employees to take breaks and join the next meeting on time. Use the Shared meeting plan to automatically build in a few minutes between meetings to provide a short break.
5. “Ended on time” is now “Ended late”: This insight focuses on meetings that exceeded their scheduled duration.
Action: Prompt participants to conclude discussions within the allotted time and ensure timely transitions to subsequent tasks.
6.”No multitasking” has been changed to “Multitasked”: This insight highlights the instances where attendees are sending chats or emails during meetings.
Action: Encourage attendees to minimize multitasking and prioritize focused engagement, enhancing meeting productivity and outcomes.
To see these changes, simply download a new version of the Power BI template from the product and load in data from a Meeting effectiveness query. All your existing Meeting effectiveness queries will be compatible with this new version. Any Meeting effectiveness reports that you have created before this update will also continue to work, however from this point forward, the prior version of the template will not be available to download.
We’re committed to continuously improving our products to better serve our customers. The updates to The Meeting effectiveness report template are rooted in research and user feedback, with the aim of providing actionable insights and eliminating confusion. We believe that these changes will significantly enhance your experience with our product and empower you to drive better outcomes in your meetings. We look forward to your feedback and encourage you to explore the newly refined template.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In this guest blog post, Stig Panduro, Senior Director of Microsoft Alliance at Silk Technologies, explores software as a service (SaaS) and what your business should consider and prepare for as you plan your cloud migration.
In the fast-paced world of software development, staying ahead of the competition is vital for success. Simply dominating the market today is no guarantee of continued leadership in the future. To maintain a competitive edge and meet evolving customer demands, software companies must explore new technologies and business models.
One model that has gained significant traction is providing software as a service (SaaS). By adopting SaaS, companies can offer customers seamless access to software without the hassle of physical installations, making it an enticing choice, particularly in today’s remote work environment.
Is your product ready for this transformation into a SaaS offering? Achieving this requires migrating your software from traditional on-premises infrastructure to the cloud. If your software relies on databases like Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server, the migration process becomes far more complex.
The SaaS phenomenon
Migrating to SaaS is the process of transitioning from a conventional on-premises software model to a dynamic software-as-a-service paradigm. Gartner’s extensive market research indicates SaaS is expected to grow 17.9% in 2023. This surge in popularity can be attributed to several factors. SaaS empowers software customers with unparalleled flexibility, allowing them to purchase and install software at their convenience, and providing remote accessibility. No longer must they schedule on-site visits from the vendor for hardware installations. Moreover, SaaS offers subscription-based pricing, replacing hefty upfront costs with a pay-as-you-go model, significantly reducing capital expenditures.
Simultaneously, SaaS presents software companies with a wealth of opportunities. By offering a SaaS version of their products, companies can tap into a broader customer base. The subscription-based pricing model enables them to achieve stable, recurring revenue. These factors combine to make the transformation into a SaaS offering an enticing prospect.
Challenges you might encounter
While the potential rewards of migrating to SaaS are immense, cloud migration itself poses formidable challenges. Moving your applications to the cloud is a complex undertaking. Some applications can be effortlessly lifted and shifted to the cloud, but others require significant refactoring. This process is time-consuming, costly, and inherently risky. If your applications rely on databases, expect additional hurdles during the migration process. These databases demand unparalleled performance levels, which might not be achievable through native cloud infrastructure alone unless you’re willing to pay for additional cloud resources. These challenges frequently surface unexpectedly during the migration process, causing significant complications.
Implementing a zero-downtime deployment strategy is another potential stumbling block. SaaS applications are expected to be available around the clock, serving a global user base. Any downtime is met with little tolerance from users, who demand uninterrupted service. By adopting a zero-downtime deployment approach, you can seamlessly update your application without disrupting customer workflows. However, downtime events can occasionally be beyond your control. It becomes crucial to establish a robust disaster recovery plan to minimize the impact of outages on your zero-downtime deployment strategy.
As you onboard more customers, achieving seamless and cost-effective scalability becomes paramount. Furthermore, the inherent flexibility of SaaS makes it challenging to calculate an accurate total cost of ownership (TCO) and offer competitive pricing. Questions concerning user capacity, traffic handling capabilities, and storage volume must be thoroughly analyzed during the early stages of SaaS cloud migration to ensure optimized TCO and cost control.
Formulating your SaaS migration strategy
In the face of these daunting cloud migration obstacles, hope shouldn’t be lost. By bringing together your business analysts, architects, and developers and meticulously outlining business and application requirements, you can begin to simplify your SaaS migration strategy. Careful analysis of your software’s architecture will help identify elements that can be smoothly transitioned to the cloud, as well as areas requiring more extensive adjustments. Significant code optimization will likely be necessary to achieve the desired outcome.
If you find yourself at a loss on how to execute a SaaS cloud migration, turn to Silk. The Silk Data Virtualization Platform acts as a bridge between your applications and the underlying infrastructure. By utilizing a higher-performance compute network, Silk connects with compute VMs, surpassing the limited-capacity data network of cloud infrastructure. This empowers Silk to support performance-intensive workloads, eliminating the need for oversized compute VMs to achieve faster performance. Silk’s innovative design decouples performance and capacity, eliminating wasteful spending on unnecessary resources to meet IOPS or throughput targets. By offloading network layer tasks to the compute layer, Silk significantly reduces latency, resulting in highly responsive applications.
In addition to performance optimization, Silk offers enhanced resiliency through a self-healing architecture that proactively avoids disruptions and an active-active architecture that eliminates single points of failure by distributing management across cloud zones. The platform also provides critical enterprise data services like zero-footprint snapshots, enabling the creation of data copies for dev/test or disaster recovery purposes without compromising performance or incurring additional storage costs.
Scalability is a core pillar of Silk’s value proposition, ensuring seamless and cost-efficient migration of customers and their data as your SaaS platform expands. Leveraging machine learning-based monitoring capabilities, Silk analyzes cloud usage patterns to optimize your cloud experience and achieve the most cost-effective price point.
SimCorp’s success story
One company that recently made a successful move to SaaS was SimCorp. SimCorp is a leading provider of investment management solutions serving 40 percent of the world’s top financial companies. SimCorp’s flagship product, SimCorp Dimensions, empowers over 200 global clients with efficiency and flexibility in asset management. Initially available solely as an on-premises solution, SimCorp recognized the market was increasingly turning toward SaaS and embarked on transitioning SimCorp Dimensions into a SaaS offering. Considering the time and effort required for a full refactor, it opted for a lift-and-shift approach to Microsoft Azure. However, it needed to ensure the consistent high performance needed for its SaaS offering to be a success.
SimCorp turned to Silk and its data virtualization platform that sits between SimCorp Dimensions and the underlying Azure infrastructure. Silk proved ideal for performance-intensive workloads, giving SimCorp the boost it needed while providing dramatic and consistent reductions in latency for maximum application responsiveness. With Silk, SimCorp migrated one of its largest clients from an on-premises setup utilizing expensive compute and storage solutions to its SaaS offering. By leveraging Silk’s capabilities, the client experienced a remarkable 20 percent improvement in performance compared to its previous on-premises setup.
Ulrik Elstrup Hansen, VP and Head of SaaS Innovations at SimCorp, attests to the value of Silk: “I would recommend other companies to use Silk because of their ability to provide you with the right level of performance and resiliency. You get a partner that is truly invested in your success. With Silk, we are able to get closer to the promise of the cloud.”
Embrace the SaaS revolution with Silk
The shift toward SaaS holds immense potential for software companies seeking sustained growth and customer satisfaction. Overcoming the challenges of cloud migration is a prerequisite for unlocking the benefits of this transformative model. And while it might be a mountain to overcome, it is not, in fact, impossible.
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