In Episode 354, Ben and Scott catch up on news and the latest announcements starting with Cisco and Splunk merging. Then they discuss the Surface and AI event where we saw the latest Surface hardware and learned about the straight to GA release of Microsoft 365 and Windows Copilot.

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In Episode 353, Scott talks to Ben about how he’s using Portainer for container management on his home network and some tips and tricks for managing apps on your Mac (sorry Windows users). Then they pivot to Microsoft’s largest conference of the year – Microsoft Ignite – coming Nov 14-17, 2023 for in-person attendees and November 15-16, 2023 for virtual attendees.

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In Episode 352, Ben and Scott discuss their workflow and approach for “Read it later” services and Scott introduces Ben to a new service he’s started using called Omnivore. Then they discuss a new feature coming to a SharePoint site and e-mail inbox near you – newsletter publishing from SharePoint.

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In Episode 351, Ben and Scott catch up on some of the latest news around Power Automate, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Excel. First, they discuss the Public Preview of Application Insights integration with Power Automate for debugging your cloud flows. Next, they break down the still in Private Preview features of platform SSO for macOS clients. And then they close on some exciting announcements around the addition of Python functions to Microsoft Excel.

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In Episode 350, Ben and Scott talk about some of the ambiguity in features between several types of Teams channels, a new model that includes access to Microsoft Learn for those taking role-based Microsoft certification exams, and a simplified experience for creating and managing CDN endpoints using Azure Front Door for Azure Storage customers.

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In Episode 349, Ben and Scott talk through considerations for working with Azure Policy to enable diagnostic settings at scale. Along the way they also talk about helpful tools that are available that can help you get your environment configured the way you need even quicker.

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In Episode 348, Ben and Scott start the discussion focusing on the shifting dynamics of open-source tool access for customers, particularly in light of HashiCorp’s decision to transition to a Business Source License (BSL). This move essentially limits what competitors can do with their code, requiring them to acquire a commercial license from HashiCorp if developing. While the change doesn’t significantly impact customers who primarily use Terraform for deploying and managing resources, it may have significant implications for companies building competitive services based on HashiCorp’s community products.

As the discussion progresses, Ben and Scott transition into an exploration of Azure subscriptions. They suggested that businesses, especially those in their early stages, should create more Azure subscriptions than they think they need. This is due to a paradigm shift from treating resource groups as units of management aligned with business needs to viewing subscriptions in the same way. The conversation emphasized the importance of understanding this concept and planning accordingly when setting up Azure.

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Merill is a Principal Product Manager in the Microsoft CAT team with a focus on Microsoft Graph for Identity and brings his experiences working with Microsoft Entra customers to the masses.

In the conversation, we explore Merill’s various contributions to technical tools aimed at simplifying complex processes when working with the Microsoft Cloud. His creations include CMD.Ms, a tool that streamlines access to different Microsoft services; Azure AD Exporter, a tool that exports your entire Microsoft Entra ID configuration and Azure AD B2C into JSON files; and Graph X-ray, a Chrome extension that converts API calls into code in your preferred language. Lastly, He highlighted the ‘Weekly Dose of Microsoft Entra’ newsletter as an ideal resource for keeping up-to-date with relevant news, blog posts and videos. To learn more from Merill and keep up with Microsoft Entra news, sign up for his newsletter at entra.news.

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In Episode 346, Ben and Scott discuss how some of the recent attacks on Microsoft 365 customers have led to Microsoft, in partnership with CISA, offering expanded cloud logging capabilities to all customers for no additional charge.

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In episode 345, Ben and Scott discuss the upcoming Microsoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Archive services, as well as the pricing and value of Microsoft Co-Pilot. Microsoft 365 backup and Microsoft 365 archive services will provide users with options for backing up data in Microsoft 365, including SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange. They also discuss the benefits this will have on purchasing backup service directly from Microsoft, as well as how third-party backup providers can take advantage of this announcement.

They also discuss how Microsoft 365 Archive, will complement Microsoft 365 Backup by offering cold to cool data storage for inactive data in Microsoft 365. This service aims to provide cost savings for storing older content while maintaining administrative search capabilities and other functionalities.

The conversation then moves on to the pricing and value of Microsoft Co-Pilot. They discuss the potential benefits of using Co-Pilot for tasks like drafting proposals or generating meeting notes. However, they also express concerns about the pricing compared to existing licensing models and whether the value delivered by Co-Pilot justifies the cost. They speculate on how organizations might justify the expense based on time savings and productivity gains. Overall, they express a mix of excitement and skepticism about Copilot and emphasize the need to see it in action before fully evaluating the value.

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