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Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast

Ben Stegink, Scott Hoag

Your Microsoft Cloud News from a couple of IT Pros

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  • May 7, 2020 · 30 min

    Episode 176 – April Showers Bring May Microsoft 365 Updates

    In Episode 176, Ben and Scott dive into the April announcements around feature updates to Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Threat Protection, and Azure Active Directory. Transcript Email Download New Tab - Welcome to Episode 176 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast, recorded live on May 1, 2020. This is the show about Microsoft 365 and Azure from the perspective of IT pros and end users. Where we discuss a topic or recent news and how it relates to you. In this episode, Scott and Ben discuss some of the recent news from the month of April, including some upcoming conferences, Azure AD Security, and Microsoft Teams. - I feel like April was never going to end. - Well, it has, I mean, it's still might not have, but officially on the calendar it has. In our brains and collective consciousness it may have not. - Yes, but the good news is, at least here in Florida, we are slowly starting to open back up. The question is, are you going to go out and do anything, now that it's opened back up? - Well, we chose to open on our day of highest deaths. So my personal approach is to stay home a little bit while longer. - You've already had it, you're immune. - We'll see, I'm thinking about paying the 120 bucks to get the test, just to find out. - Are you just to find out if you had it or not? - Yeah, some of the labs are starting to get it. So Quest has one. - Got it, interesting. - And less little antibody test. - I saw the mall, town center is going to open Monday, I think is what I saw. So yeah, stores, restaurants, I think they said are gonna open, but they have to be at 20% capacity. I think it was or 25% capacity. - Yep, 25 here. - So, we'll see. We haven't gone out and done a whole lot. We've started to see a few more people. I'm getting kind of stir-crazy and I don't know, like, I feel like we've flattened the curve and we don't need to talk about this too long 'cause we have other topics to talk about. But it's like at what point in time do you just have to start going out? Because obviously vaccines are gonna be a long way off. It feel like the curve is starting to flatten out. So I'm kind of getting close to that approach of, "All right, it's time to start getting out, "seeing some people doing some normal activities again." So yeah, my two cents. - Slowly but surely, like get back out, see family, things like that, where you can and where it makes sense. - And that's what we did. My wife's family came over the other day and they didn't even come inside. We actually just sat outside at the picnic tables, in the park next to our house. And it was her sister's birthday, so it was fun. It was fun to see them, we hadn't seen them in like a month. So all good, but there's some other events coming up now too, that are free. So there's some silver lining in all of this. There are some free events coming up that people can participate in. - Nice, what type of free events are coming? - Yes, what type of free events? So as an IT pro and as an IT pro-ish podcast, one may or may not appeal to a bunch of our audience, but Build, I have never been to a Build. This year I'm going to Build Scott, virtually because it's free and it's virtual. So that is one of the events coming up. I think you registered for it the other day. I registered for it last night. So I am going to try to keep some of the sessions. Sometimes there's some interesting things that come out of Build, especially around late Visual Studio Code or some of the PowerShell or source control stuff that I use with my PowerShell. There's always stuff that comes out around Azure and things that, well, we may not go Build applications. They still can be applicable to IT pros in terms of how you manage what developers may try to do to your environment based on new capabilities being released. So even though I'm not a developer, I still try to keep track of some of those developer-ish type conferences. - Yeah, so I think there's some exciting things that they have planned this year, if anything, just in the delivery model that they're going to use for it. So not only is registration open and certainly you should go register because it is a free event. I think there's some constraints there for a lot of us. Like one of the things I love about, you know, going to conferences, isn't just the networking. Like that's certainly valuable. But if you are going to go to sessions, you're there and it's much easier to go and not be distracted by work. So I think lots of people are gonna be potentially competing for work over May 19 and 20 while this goes on, but it's gonna be a 48-hour event and it's gonna be running for 48 hours straight, which means you're going to have coverage in geographies, which would typically feel like they would have to miss out on an event like this, just due to time of day. So if you think about folks over in Australia, and APAC, and certainly Europe and things like that, everybody is going to be able to get in on the fun. - Yeah, it should be good. And there's another one coming up that will be short. Let me think, it'll be the day after this recording goes live. Office 365 Nashville is doing a virtual one. So Daniel Glenn is kinda spearheading that one and that one is going to be on May 8. So this episode should come out May 7. I think registration will still be open, but it's a free virtual event that you can go sign up for. I'm actually speaking at that one because it was virtual and enabled me to speak at that one. So that one's coming up, we'll put a link in that one, if you wanna go register there. And then there's also one that Joel Oleson is doing. I can't remember the name of it right now, but we'll put it in the show notes. - Yeah, My 365 something or on there. - Yeah, it was gonna be like the virtual Olympics and then they ran into like some trademark issues because apparently Olympics is trademarked. Imagine that, who saw that one coming? Marathon, Virtual Marathon, I think is what it is. But it's another Microsoft 365 free Virtual Marathon. I think that one's like 36 hours straight. And I've seen like, he's trying to get 900 live sessions over the course of 36 hours. - That's gonna be quite a bit. - Yes, we will find the link for that and put that in the show notes as well. - Outlook add-ins are a great way to improve productivity and save time in the workplace. And Sperry Software has all the add-ins you'll ever need. The Save As PDF add-in is a best seller and is great for project backups, legal discovery, and more. This add-in saves the email and attachments as PDF files. It's easy to download, easy to install, and Sperry Software's unparalleled customer service is always ready to help. Download a free trial at SperrySoftware.com. S-P-E-R-R-Y-S-O-F-T-W-A-R-E.com and see for yourself how great Save As PDF is. Listeners can get 20% off their order today by entering the code cloudIT. That's cloudIT, C-L-O-U-D-I-T all one word at checkout. Sperry Software, work in email, not on email. - Those are all the events I have. Do you have any other ones that I didn't think of? - No, we did just have the Virtual Azure Global Bootcamp, which passed. But lots of these sessions for that were recorded. So if anybody did miss the 2020 Azure Virtual Bootcamp, just hop on YouTube and search around for some of those videos and things that came out from all the wonderful speakers who put their time into it. - All right, sounds good. Yeah, we didn't do much here because it was all virtual. So who knows if they do kind of an in person one later this year, maybe we'll try to jump on, maybe we'll just have to wait for round two and come back to it in 2021. - It'll still be there. - Yep, it will, hopefully I'll in person again. So there was also some news that came out these past few weeks, different things around Azure, some office 365 stuff, some Azure AD stuff, some that spans all of them like Windows Virtual Desktop. So we decided we'd just dive into some of these news articles that have our news announcements that have come out over the last few days. Take your pick. Which one would you like to start with? - Let's see, I always like the identity stuff. I think they've done some good things there for customers, especially as some of the licensing has opened up like bringing Azure AD Premium P1 to the Microsoft 365 business here and things like that. And they're starting to open up the platform more and more for all customers. Which is always nice to see, especially in these times when everyone is working at home or remotely, or if anything, just on the go more than they are. I think that whole Zero Trust Model around identity and securing your identities and gating your access to all these resources, is super important. So one of the things they've done there is they've extended the ability to use Azure AD single sign-on for an unlimited number of cloud apps at no extra cost. And that's across every SKUs. So now in the past, you would have been limited in the number of cloud apps that you could add to a user. And then also the number that you could potentially perform SSO against your Azure Active Directory with. So this is using SSO with Azure AD, whether you're federated or unfederated. And like I said, it's available across all of the pricing tiers or SKUs of Azure AD, even Azure Active Directory free. - Perfect, 'cause this used to be, I think the limit used to be 10, right? I think it was 10 apps. - 10 apps, yeah but you were even limited within SKUs by how many apps you could have and some could have 10 cloud apps, but not SSO. And others could have 10 cloud apps with SSO. So now it's just open across the board, which is much nicer. I mean, it's more consumable. So you make those things more readily available and hopefully people actually use them. You know, that would be the next step is going out and get

  • Apr 30, 2020 · 57 min

    Episode 175 – File Shares for Clients in the Cloud with Azure Files

    In Episode 175, Ben and Scott talk about using Azure Files as a remote file share in the cloud for client devices and the things you'll want to think about to get everything up and running. Transcript Email Download New Tab - Welcome to Episode 175 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast recorded live on April 24, 2020. This is a show about Microsoft 365 and Azure from the perspective of IT pros and end users, where we discuss the topic or recent news and how it relates to you. In this episode, Ben and Scott discuss Azure file shares for client devices, domain controllers, Azure AD networking and other cloud services and how they all fit together. - The thunder is never done, all the tornadoes rolling through. It was nasty last night. - You know what? I did not hear a thing. I may or may not have been up until like, 2:30 the night before working on stuff and then I crawled in bed at like 12:30 last night. I was so tired, I passed out and I woke up when one of my kids came in our bedroom at some time, 4:00 a.m. and my wife was like, "Did the thunder wake them up?" I was like, "Was it thundering?" I never heard a thing. - Man, corona times have not been kind to my sleep schedule. It's turned into like, aah, let's watch a movie and then the movies over and it's aah, maybe I would like just one TV show or let me read this book for a little while or whatever it happens to be. So I think last night, I was up until... Last night, I was late, it was 3:00 a.m., hence, my coffee brewing slowly this morning. So I heard that whole storm all through and the whole thing. I was sitting in my kitchen, it was awesome coming through, it was a good one. I like a good storm. - So I woke up and I was actually bummed it didn't wake me up 'cause I'm the same way, I love a good thunderstorm, especially at night. For whatever reason, those night thunderstorms and the lightning lights up the whole house and the thunder just rolls. I don't know, it's cathartic for some strange reason, as long as there's not a tornado blowing my house down. - Yeah, well, there's that whole thing, but it was definitely a good thunder and lightning storm and it was tornadoes and stuff farther to the north, but not so much for us. So, it was just a good rain event. - Yes, I will say not growing up in Jacksonville, I have been impressed with the geographic surrounding of Jacksonville and how it seems to deter most storms from hitting us. Like we never really seem to get tornadoes or really bad storms from the west because of the river and because we're sitting just down low enough. I think the Gulf of Mexico messes up a lot of them and then the way Jacksonville's kind of set in on the coast if you're going up the Florida coast and up in the Georgia and South Carolina, it seems to deter any hurricanes from really having a direct hit on Jacksonville. - Yes, it is the farthest point west on the East Coast. Like when you think about that dip in, so it's not just Florida to Georgia and all that, like pull out a map and look all the way up, it is the farthest point west, from Maine all the way down to us. - What about the Keys? Don't the Keys loop back into the west? - They do, but they're sitting actually like-- - They're just sitting in the middle of the ocean. - They are, right? But they're all the way down at that eastern tip of Florida is, think about like going down to Miami and you're pretty much a straight line down to the Keys from there. So they are still farther east than we are, but as a chain of islands, they stretch pretty far over, but at that point, they're underwater anyway . - Got it. - So as a landmass with too big bodies of water like you talked about, between the ocean and the river, being a pretty substantial river, but at least nice and wide, it's good enough to pick up a lot of the weather that comes through here. - I remember that growing up in Michigan too. I mean, like Michigan is significantly bigger than the river but Michigan was spared at least a lot of the bad thunderstorms and tornadoes and all of that because of like Michigan. They would hit Wisconsin, the lake would break it all up before it hit Michigan. I went and spent a week in Wisconsin. It was like tornadoes every day. Don't go to Wisconsin. - Don't go to-- - Sorry to anybody that's from Wisconsin that's listening. I much prefer Michigan to Wisconsin. - You're gonna start a fight or something. - Probably. I have some good stories about Wisconsin and Michigan, but we don't need to talk about those today. - As IT professionals in the cloud era, sometimes it feels like we don't speak the same language as the rest of the organization. So when stakeholders from finance or other departments start asking about a specific project or Teams Azure costs, they don't always realize how much work is involved in obtaining that information, sifting through cluttered CSVs and a complex mess of metadata in order to manually create custom views and reports. It's a real headache. On top of helping you understand and reduce your organization's overall Azure spend. ShareGate Overcast lets you group resources into meaningful cost tabs and map them to real world business scenarios. This way you can track costs in the way that makes most sense with your corporate structure, whether it's by product, business unit, team or otherwise. It's a flexible, intuitive and business friendly way of tracking Azure infrastructure costs and it's only available in ShareGates Overcast. Find out more on sharegate.com/itpro. - Should we talk about what I was staying up late playing with today? - Yeah, it sounds like you were staying up late doing things that I was not. While I was watching, crappy movies and contributing to Netflix viewing hours, you were doing real work, supposedly. - Well, so supposedly 'cause it all started with a client question which led to me playing with this, with my own domain and Azure tenants 'cause I don't wanna break anything. So, to set this up, Azure Files with... So Azure Files has been able to do SMB for a while. You can use the like storage account name and the private key to actually map a network drive to Azure Files, all of this. They have recently and I think it's still certain aspects of this are still in preview. - Yes, they are. - They rolled out the ability to do Azure Files over SMB, leveraging either Active Directory or Active Directory Domain Services to authenticate users to the file shares, rather than using a storage name and a key so that all of those NTFS type permissions can be used or supported through a mapped Azure file share. But there are a ton of restrictions and requirements and prerequisites around doing that, which could lead to the question that we were actually debating before we started recording of should you actually do this and if you do this, what all do you need to think about? Because this has led me down a massive rabbit hole of VNets and DNS and AD and AD DS and all of that. - Yes and you're leveraging preview services, which is even, well preview functionality I guess, which makes it even more interesting. So, when you initially came and you had asked me the question of, okay, I'm trying to stand up a file share and I'm doing the domain authentication thing and it's really a pain and in the back of my head, I'm thinking isn't that relatively new and probably in preview and my first question back would be, well, why do the preview functionality, right? Especially, if it's for a customer. Like typically, we don't wanna take customers into preview stuff, even if it's public preview, because if we just consider Azure life cycle, there's no guarantee that a preview service ever actually goes GA'd. So obviously, Azure Files is GA'd and all that kind of stuff and it's sitting there ready to go, but Microsoft could look at this feature where they're doing SMB file shares with AD, with Azure AD rather, and with on-prem AD and they can say like, "Yeah, I don't wanna do on-prem AD anymore, "I'm only gonna do AD "because that's an easier scenario to support." - Well, but it's not just AAD, it's AAD DS. It doesn't support AAD. - Yeah. - Remember? We gotta clarify these two. - I get my storage confused because there actually are parts of storage, like blobs and containers which do support Azure Active Directory for role based access controls and things. So you can totally do AAD authentication there. Anybody who thinks Azure Storage isn't a confusing service being that it's a storage account, but it's not just a storage, it's blobs, its files, it's tables, its queues, its disks, it's-- - Right, it's got sub services. - It's static websites, it's like 10 other different things, it's amazing. - Azure Files are gonna be like the Teams of Office 365 or everything's just gonna get sucked into the storage fortex. - Well, if you think about it, storage is kind of important, right? In the grand scheme of things and the overall fabric because what is Azure? It's a bunch of hosts who are running hypervisors and it's a bunch of file servers that are pulling configuration off of storage controllers and things like that, right? So, at the end of the day, storage is what makes-- - Storage is important. - It makes the world go round. - Which is digressing. So, this whole storage authentication thing, I'm not gonna say it's just Azure AD DS. Should I go through the prerequisites and what I found and then we can keep talking through this scenario? - Sure, just to lay out the scenario, what you're trying to do is you're trying to stand up a file share in Azure that is available to clients, not to other servers that exist out there. - Yeah, so you're not going to a server. - But to individual clients and you require per user authentication from each of those clients to the file share, right? Okay. - Right. So,...

  • Apr 23, 2020 · 35 min

    Episode 174 – Azure Web App for Containers

    In Episode 174, Ben and Scott dive into Azure App Service for Linux and Azure Web App for Containers as a hosting option for microservices and more. Transcript Email Download New Tab - [Ben] Welcome to episode 174 of the Microsoft cloud IT Pro podcast recorded live on April, 16, 2020. This is the show about Microsoft 365 and Azure from the perspective of IT Pros and end users. Where we discuss the topic or recent news and how it relates to you. In this episode, we talk about Azure services for Linux and Azure Web Apps for containers as a hosting option for microservices. - [Scott] You've made it to another Friday. - [Ben] Is that what day it is? - [Scott] It is, as Rebecca Black, do you remember that song Friday? - [Ben] Oh no, please, please - [Scott] Yes, no. - [Ben] No, no!!! - [Scott] I asked her, Well hold on. As she taught us, Friday is the day that comes after Thursday, right? Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday, today it is Friday, Friday partying, boom. - [Ben] But that would assume that I knew that yesterday was Thursday. - [Scott] Yeah, well, I'm just telling you like, "Hey, Rebecca Black could help you get through COVID-19." - [Ben] No, it hurts. - [Scott] Just to throw, Just to throw that out there for you. - [Ben] Well, we're almost through it, we have our escape plan now right? As of yesterday? - [Scott] Yeah. - [Ben] Although there's no timeline on our escape plan, it's just a plan. This is how we're going to escape at some point on time. - [Scott] Well It's phased and it's gated. It's very devopsy. They got that going for them, - [Ben] Yes. - [Scott] But, you know beaches are reopening today. We got that going for us. - [Ben] They are. But only for a few hours right? Cause I saw they're opening today at five but then it was like five to 8 p.m. And then 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. - [Scott] Yes, yeah. - [Ben] Which means-- - [Scott] Six hours a day. - [Ben] They are essentially trying to avoid people going out and hanging out all day because let's face it in Jacksonville nobody goes to the beach from eight till eleven, unless you're gonna go for a walk or run or something like that. And same thing from five to eight. It's hey, you can go take a walk, you can go take a run, you can go exercise, but you're not gonna go lay out and party at the beach all day. - [Scott] Yeah, no, it's one of those I go kinda like two ways about it. Cause you know people are gonna abuse it. - [Ben] Right. - [Scott] No matter what. There's gonna be lawn chairs and things out there now people have to patrol it and all those kinds of things but I am genuinely looking forward to just going back to the beach and being able to like stick my feet in the ocean again. Like that's one of the advantages of living here. - [Ben] Right. - [Scott] And being close to all of that, so... Yeah, I'm sad I can't take a lawn chair with me, but I'm not gonna be one of those people. But I am totally gonna go stick my feet in the ocean. - [Ben] Oh did they say no lawn chairs too? - [Scott] Yeah, they don't want you, like you said, congregating or any kind of chance of that going on. - [Ben] I missed that part. It was interesting though because of the-- - [Scott] It was in like the Sheriff's webcast about it. - [Ben] Okay. - [Scott] So it's not in the official thing but they did call it out in the Sheriff's one so I think they're gonna be kinda going by and talking to people. - [Ben] So did you read the whole article, this made me laugh. Primarily because it's so interesting to me. I have family in other states and everybody has their different definition of essential activities when they put these stay at home orders in place. It's like, hey you can only go on the beach for essential activities. And in Florida, based on governor, the governor's executive order, essential activities include, participating in recreational activities consistent with social distancing guidelines such as walking, biking, hiking, fishing, running, swimming, taking care of pets and surfing. - [Ben] So if you're in Florida, surfing, swimming, I mean I get some of it's exercise based but then you look at places like Michigan where they're not even allowed to do any residential or commercial construction projects. Those are considered nonessential. In Florida surfing is essential. - [Scott] As it should be. I have a weather reporting app. So I don't surf but I go out and go paddle boarding, and the weather reporting app follows all the cameras up and down the beaches and the inner coastal here just so, sometimes it's not about even like wind speed or tide or things like that, it's really just about how calm it is out there cause there's some parts of the inner coastal and things that are-- - [Ben] Do you ever go paddle boarding in like six foot waves? - [Scott] You know sometimes I would, but my paddle boards and inflatables so just so its a little bit more implorable for me to get around. And it needs to be like really calm and really flat in the ocean, just to kinda keep the stability needed. It's not a paddle board that you wouldn't necessarily surf in on - [Ben] Got it. - [Scott] You know if I went out and bought like an eleven foot board that was a hard deck, then I could do some different things, but, yeah. I'm looking forward to having the ability to have just at least one extra option for something to do. - [Ben] Yeah. No I get it, like, I totally wish we lived closer and who knows. If this goes on much longer we may just drive out there some morning just to let the kids go run around and walk on the beach for a little bit. Because we are starting to get a little stir crazy. - [Scott] Just bring your bikes, you park at my house, you make the kids ride their bikes to the beach and then make them ride back and they're all good and tired, you know. - [Ben] Oh, except then they fall asleep in the car on the way home, and then they don't want to take a nap. - [Scott] Well it just means you get to drive the car around longer. It needs to be run anyway, you know, it's not like you're going out every day anymore. - [Ben] We were talking the other day, we couldn't even remember the last time we put gas in the car. - [Scott] It's been a while so I had to run an errand yesterday or at least I thought I had to run an errand, where I was just gonna go pick up my dog's medication, like flea and tick stuff right, we were in and out. - [Ben] Yep. - [Scott] And so I was walking out of the house and my wife said, oh don't worry about it. I've got to go out later to pick up groceries so I'll go do it. And I thought to myself, you know, I'm already like halfway out the door. I put my keys in my pocket you know, I got like my wallet in my pocket, this hasn't happened in a long time, this is oh exciting. So I kinda stood there in the garage with the garage door open, looking at my car and I said, all right well I'm just gonna start it up, cause it's gotta be started anyway. And then that turned into, well I should really just drive it around the neighborhood. So one friend I used to like lazy roll, just kinda like basically around the long block which you know takes like 10 minutes to drive around the neighborhood and do all that. And I was like yeah, I got to drive a car today. That was crazy. - [Ben] Did you put your seat back, roll down your windows and crank up your music too? - [Scott] No, I really should have though. You know everybody likes to see that Malibu rolling through. - [Ben] You know you gotta show it off. Oh here is your new quote Scott, this came from Michigan's governor. Speaking of quotes from governors, ''It is better to be six feet apart right now than six feet under.'' - [Scott] Yes. True statement, your outlook on things, yes, that is absolutely true. - [Ben] All things that make us laugh. Yeah I have all kinds of those. I will say the memes out of all this have been great. So, with all of that, all that said, should we talk about other stuff, like cloudy, cloudy stuff - [Scott] Yeah. - [Ben] Since its, is it cloudy today? It supposed to be raining this week. That's the only downside of the beaches opening it's supposed to rain all weekend. - [Scott] I will make do. - [Ben] All right, take an umbrella. - [Ben] Outlook Add-Ins are a great way to improve productivity and save time in the workplace. And Sperry Software has all the Add-Ins you'll ever need. The save as PDF Add-In is the a best seller and is great for project back ups, legal discovery and more. This Add-In saves the email and attachment as PDF files. It's easy to download, easy to install and Sperry Software's unparalleled customer service is always ready to help. Download a free trial at sperrysoftware.com, s-p-e-r-r-y-s-o-f-t-w-a-r-e.com and see for yourself how great save as PDF is. Listeners can get 20% off their order today by entering the code cloudIT. That's cloudit, C-L-O-U-D-I-T, all one word at checkout. Sperry Software work in email not on email. - [Ben] So Azure Web Apps, its something you said you have been working on recently. And you said we should talk about it. - [Scott] Yes, that is in fact true. So I have been doing a fun little project at work. It's a little bit of a transformational project of taking an existing series of microservices that are all hosted in Azure Kubernetes service today. And seeing if we can't break those microservices out, and potentially host them in another hosting container or another provider that's gonna allow us to run those Web Apps. And do it with the same performance characteristics and monitoring kinda operational insights we need, but at a much cheaper cost. So if you think about something like AKS, you know you stand up a cluster and typically you want some kind of a HA because it's a cluster, so you gonna want multiple things like multiple nodes in a node pool. You've got an AKS,...

  • Apr 16, 2020 · 34 min

    Episode 173 – Zoom, Teams, and Slack, Oh My!

    In Episode 173, Ben and Scott talk about their experiences with online meeting platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Slack as all of us continue to cope with remote work. Transcript Email Download New Tab - Welcome to Episode 173 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro podcast recorded live on April 9, 2020. This is a show about Microsoft 365 and Azure from the perspective of IT pros and end users, where we discuss a topic or recent news and how it relates to you. In this episode, with the recent uptake in usage of Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Slack, Ben and Scott compare the tools and discuss why people should stop pitting these tools against each other. This is not our sleepy Scott and Ben. This is our wide awake Scott and Ben. I don't know if that would be better or worse. - Tell you what, it would be something. - It would be something. - Oh, so. - Here we are, week 534 of staying at home. - Of Isolation. - I no longer know what day it is. I no longer know what month it is. It's just another day. I was thinking of "Groundhog Day." Remember the movie, "Groundhog Day?" - Do I remember it? I've been watching it lately. Yes, it's an excellent movie. - It is we're reliving "Groundhog Day". We just wake up and it's always today. It's never tomorrow. - Yeah. If you're looking for another fun Bill Murray movie, in this time of isolation and sitting back and you've never seen it, you should go check out, "What about Bob?" - What about, I remember "What about Bob?" - "What about Bob?" is one of those classics that just holds up over time. - You know what? - So well. Baby steps. - I need to go watch it again. It has been a long time. I think I only watched it once. - It's time to get back in. And have you finished up, "Tiger King" yet? - I have not started and I refuse to start. - Oh, c'mon! Don't be that way. We can have a whole discussion about whether Carol actually killed her husband. What did Joe do? Oh man, we gotta get you into it. - No, I have talked to people and everybody is like, it is absolutely terrible but I guess, then, I watched the whole thing cause I just had to see the train wreck. - Yeah, you know we tried to stop after episode one but then you know they auto play so quick. I swear the vendor searches starting things quicker now. I've noticed on both Netflix and Prime, you're sitting there, Prime is really fast. Prime Video, it's three seconds and the next thing starts, the next episode, and you're going whoa, hold on! I didn't even have time to grab the remote, so yeah. - That's funny. Yeah, it's funny that's what I keep hearing from people. They're like, I watched the first episode or I watched first episode and a half and it was so terrible I was gonna turn it off but I couldn't. Isn't that the epitome then, of a great, a great job by the writers or something? To create something that everybody thinks is so terrible they wanna stop watching it but they can't. - Yeah, I will tell you. It was shot in an excellent way. The team that shot it and made the documentary, they're great at getting the shot. They have some of just shocking conversations with people. You don't even know how they got them on video to the point where you think it's a movie but then, you recognize that these people are just that dumb to say these things on camera. Or maybe they're that cerebral and that smart? I really don't know. Just some of the things, like you watch through the B-roll they have is great through the whole thing and they weave an excellent story. If you're looking to waste 5 hours of your life, it is there. - There is always that. As IT professionals, in the cloud era, sometimes it feels like we don't speak the same language as the rest of the organization. So, when stakeholders from Finance or other departments start asking about a specific project or Teams Azure cost, they don't always realize how much work is involved in obtaining that information. Sifting through cluttered CSVs and a complex mess of metadata in order to manually custom views and reports. It's a real headache. On top of helping you understand and reduce your organizations overall Azure spend, ShareGate Overcast, let's you group resources into meaningful cost tops and map them to real world business scenarios. This way, you track costs in the way that makes most sense with your corporate structure whether it's by product, business unit, team or otherwise. It's a flexible, intuitive and business friendly way of tracking Azure infrastructure costs. And it's only available in ShareGate Overcast. Find out more on sharegate.com/ITpro. So, with a terrible segue, should we move from talking about video on Netflix and Amazon and all the fun video we've watched to video on meetings. And some of the discussion that's happened in the last couple of weeks around different web conferencing platforms, and I've may even pull some other platforms in here because it's been interesting. As everybody has gone and started working from home to see this whole, really a battle, is what I would call it between specifically Teams and between Zoom. - Yeah, let's get in to it. I'm excited. - And just some of interesting things too, you've noticed. You said you've noticed there's some Teams with edu. But I will say I had an update. So, transparency, I use Zoom every week. We use Zoom for the podcast. We're using it right now. And if anybody wants to join, our meeting code is, no, I'm not gonna do that. But I could. - C'mon, you could though. - I could though. Because I've installed a couple Zoom updates. Zoom has been throwing out updates daily, over the last week or so. I don't know when this update happened. Because in all fairness, we last used Zoom when we recorded six days ago. And I haven't started another Zoom meeting since then. But you used to click on our link for our podcast that would let you right in. You could do all of that. Today, you went to join and it said, you have to wait for Ben to start the meeting. And then, I started the meeting and you joined. And then, I got a pop up that you were waiting in the, I don't know, if they call it the lobby or whatever, you were waiting and I had to admit you. - I did not make, I just thought your Zoom OPSEC was getting that much better and you were trying to annoy me, in all the wrong ways. - Yes and I didn't. I have not updated. Well, I did update the meeting invite. It may have gone and pull out some different settings. But I did not update any settings or anything around our meeting. Other than, I did have to reschedule it cause we're recording on Thursday instead of Friday. And all of this stuff just got turned on by default for a pre-existing scheduled meeting. So, I am not doing any better at my Zoom OPSEC. Apparently, Zoom is and rightly or wrongly, they just went and enabled all of the stuff on my meetings that I already had scheduled. I had no idea. Who knew? So, one piece of advice, if you are using Zoom and you want some of these settings at the way they were originally, you may wanna go look at your settings. You may have to make some changes or people might not be able to get into your meeting until you get there. - I think there's somethings like that. Yeah, they have just been pushing out all these updates and it's like every other day, I've seen an update to the Zoom client, locally. But there have been some good blogs other there from folks like Liam Cleary had a really good one: Still using Zooms for meetings; Wanna still keep using Zoom for meetings; here are somethings that you might wanna take a look at. Just to make sure that you are maybe positioned the right way and that you have setup some of this settings in a manner that actually puts you in a better place. - Yeah and they did add a security tab at the bottom now, too. So, I have a separate tab now where I can just click security and I can go do it, go in and do things like enable that waiting room or lock the meeting and choose what I want to allow participants to do. So, there's some really nice updates that have come out of this. I think, getting on my soapbox for a minute, the part that bugged me about all of this, when all of this came out was, I'm not gonna call anybody out by name, there were some people that were non-Microsofties, there were some Microsoft people that I saw saying this is everybody all of a sudden jumped on, Zoom is terrible. Go use Teams because Zoom has horrible security. It was instilling this sense of fear in a bunch of people that used Zoom. Saying that it was terrible-- - Ah yes, the FUD. - Right. Saying it was this terrible, insecure platform. Stop using it all together. And yes, there were obviously some security things that have come out of this. There's been some security things about the whole end-to-end encryption and where it's sending data. But at the end of the day, even before all of this, I have used Zoom for years. There were certain settings you can enable. You have always been able to password protect meetings. You've always been able to set different 10 digit invitation URLs. They've had those 10 digit URLs forever. There were ways you could protect it. And I genuinely was not worried about using Team or Zoom when all of this stuff start coming out. My daughter was using Zoom meetings for other stuff. I was like, you know what, I know the people running the meetings. I'm sitting here, I'm seeing the meetings, I'm seeing how they have it set-up. You could secure your meetings fairly well if you knew what you were doing, made the right settings, made the right adjustments. I will give them that, yes, it's not as secure as Teams. If you look at the URL to join a Teams meeting, it is significantly longer. There is more security around Teams. But at the end of the day, I felt like Zoom got a little bit of a bad rap from some people in terms of how

  • Apr 9, 2020 · 28 min

    Episode 172 – Office 365 for Small and Medium Business Rebranding

    In Episode 172, Ben and Scott break down some announced changes around the rebranding of several Office 365 for Business SKUs to Microsoft 365. Sponsors ShareGate – ShareGate’s industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Sperry Software – Powerful Outlook Add-ins developed to make your email life easy even if you’re too busy to manage your inbox Office365AdminPortal.com – Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Intelligink – We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Show Notes New Microsoft 365 offerings for small and medium-sized businesses Name change for Office 365 ProPlus Introducing the new Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions Microsoft 365 Business Voice for SMB now available worldwide, Up to 300 users Microsoft Teams Cloud Telephony single SKU Understanding Microsoft Teams Calling Plans About the sponsors Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

  • Apr 2, 2020 · 39 min

    Episode 171 – Working from home with Sarah Lean

    In Episode 171, Ben and Scott are joined by Sarah Lean, Microsoft Cloud Advocate, to talk about working from home and some ways to adapt to remote presentations. Sponsors Sperry Software – Powerful Outlook Add-ins developed to make your email life easy even if you’re too busy to manage your inbox ShareGate - ShareGate's industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Office365AdminPortal.com - Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Intelligink - We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Show Notes Focus Assist Present PowerPoint in Microsoft Teams and still see the chat Homeworkers rejoice: Microsoft Teams’ customized background feature hides distractions at the press of a button Episode 114 – Answering “Why Cloud?” with Sarah Lean What is Azure Cost Management and Billing? Collab365: GlobalCon 2 About Sarah Lean Sarah fell in love with technology at an early age and has made it her career. She has a deep and wide-ranging knowledge of a variety of best-in-breed technologies. In recent years she has started to focus and specialize in all things Cloud, especially Microsoft Azure. Sarah joined Microsoft as a Cloud Solution Architect in January 2018 and her focus is on helping organizations with their Data Center Transformations. Within her role, she gets to combine her 13+ years’ experience of managing and designing on-premises environments and her passion for Azure, helping customers start their cloud journey is an ideal role for her. Sarah is a STEM Ambassador and is hopeful that sharing her story can help inspire the next generation into a STEM career. In February 2017 Sarah founded the Glasgow Azure User Group, which is a community group that meets every two months and aims to bring together people who are looking to learn and network with their peers. As well as running a user group Sarah loves to attend other groups and speak at them as well. Sarah can be found on Twitter @techielass, GitHub at https://github.com/weeyin83, and her blog at https://www.techielass.com. About the sponsors Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

  • Mar 26, 2020 · 41 min

    Episode 170 – Azure Resource Manager All The Things!

    In Episode 170, Ben and Scott are joined by Alex Neihaus to talk about Azure Resource Manager Templates, PowerShell, and the Azure CLI. Sponsors ShareGate - ShareGate's industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Sperry Software – Powerful Outlook Add-ins developed to make your email life easy even if you’re too busy to manage your inbox Office365AdminPortal.com - Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Intelligink - We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Show Notes Alex's Blog The mother of all Azure SQL Database ARM templates Azure/aks-engine AzureRM cmdlets return an object with a JSON-like format Azure Building Blocks: Simplifying Resource Deployment Windows activation fails in forced tunneling scenario About the sponsors Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

  • Mar 19, 2020 · 37 min

    Episode 169 – Working From Home

    In Episode 169, Ben and Scott take a break from the cloud and talk about the current situation with COVID-19 and how it's impacting many of us with work from home policies that have been put in place to maintain social distancing. Sponsors ShareGate - ShareGate's industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Opsgility - Your Cloud enablement partner to help guide your organization through all phases of Cloud migration and adoption Office365AdminPortal.com - Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Intelligink - We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Show Notes Get Your Mass Gatherings or Large Community Events Ready Global Azure and COVID-19 Current crowds at the Magic Kingdom for tonight's showing of Happily Ever After... #DisneyWorld Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19): The epidemic and the challenges. Suddenly working at home? We’ve done it for 22 years—and have advice 8 Tips To Make Working From Home Work For You Custom Teams/Zoom backgrounds stevesi/backgrounds MSAdministrator/awesome-video-chat-backgrounds Found some more video chat backgrounds - @SoniaCuff Software duet Display Luna Display About the sponsors Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

  • Mar 12, 2020 · 48 min

    Episode 168 – Live from Collab365 GlobalCon1!

    In Episode 168, Ben and Scott come to you live from Collab365 GlobalCon1 (well, really the comfort of their homes) and talk about Universal Print coming to Azure, the announcement that org-wide teams are coming to Office 365 for tenants with less than 5,000 users, and the GA of PowerShell 7.0. Sponsors ShareGate - ShareGate's industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Opsgility - Your Cloud enablement partner to help guide your organization through all phases of Cloud migration and adoption Office365AdminPortal.com - Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Intelligink - We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Show Notes Announcing Universal Print: a cloud-based print solution What’s New in Microsoft Teams | February 2020 Microsoft’s Bad Idea to Create an Org-Wide Team for New Office 365 Tenants - Office 365 for IT Pros Create an org-wide team in Microsoft Teams Free Office 365 E1 Trial for 6 months in response to COVID-19 Manage the Office 365 E1 Trial Manage the Microsoft Teams Exploratory license Announcing PowerShell 7.0 About the sponsors Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

  • Mar 5, 2020 · 39 min

    Episode 167 – Azure Certification Updates!

    In Episode 167, Ben and Scott discuss some updates that allow you to deploy resources in Azure to scopes above a resource group and then break down some big changes coming to the Azure certifications. Sponsors ShareGate – ShareGate’s industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Sperry Software – Powerful Outlook Add-ins developed to make your email life easy even if you’re too busy to manage your inbox Intelligink – We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Office365AdminPortal.com – Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Show Notes String functions for Azure Resource Manager templates uniqueString() Did you know you can deploy ARM templates to any scope in Azure now? #AzureRm Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Tools Azure/Azure-Lighthouse-samples Updates to Several Azure and Data & AI Certifications are Coming Soon Updates to Azure certification exams announced in January 2020 About the sponsors Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

  • Feb 27, 2020 · 32 min

    Episode 166 – Gear and Tech

    In Episode 166, Ben and Scott take a break from talking about the cloud and get into some of the gear and software they've picked up over the last few months. Sponsors ShareGate – ShareGate’s industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Sperry Software – Powerful Outlook Add-ins developed to make your email life easy even if you’re too busy to manage your inbox Intelligink – We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Office365AdminPortal.com – Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Show Notes Yamaha MG12 12-Input 4-Bus Mixer Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface with Pro Tools HyperDrive GEN2: Next Generation USB-C Hub. 2X Speed & Power HDCP 4K HDMI cables: How to cut through the marketing lingo and figure out what you actually need Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini HDMI Live Switcher New Apple MacBook Pro (16-Inch, 16GB RAM, 1TB Storage, 2.3GHz Intel Core i9) gfxCardStatus Logitech Spotlight Presentation Remote - Advanced Digital Highlighting with Bluetooth, Universal Presenter Clicker, 30M Range and Quick Charging Macbook Pro 13" 2020 Rumors https://twitter.com/_rogame/status/1230397536579604484 Rumor: 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro rates 10nm Intel Ice Lake processor Here’s our first look at Apple’s brand new rack-mounted Mac Pro Apple Mac Pro Rack - Unboxing and Observations from a Music Professional Using the magic that is PowerShell implicit remoting we updated Import-Module with -UseWindowsPowerShell About the sponsors Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

  • Feb 20, 2020 · 29 min

    Episode 165 – Power Virtual Agents

    In Episode 165, Ben and Scott run through Power Virtual Agents, a feature of Power Platform that allows you to create and manage "no-code" (or to be more realistic - "low-code") bots. Sponsors ShareGate – ShareGate’s industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Sperry Software – Powerful Outlook Add-ins developed to make your email life easy even if you’re too busy to manage your inbox Intelligink – We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Office365AdminPortal.com – Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Show Notes Update to Microsoft Search in Bing through Office 365 ProPlus "wowzy, 1000 dollar per month for Power Virtual Agents? No 'included in O365' license available?" Microsoft Power Virtual Agents Microsoft Power Virtual Agents Pricing Billing unit and billing sessions Power Virtual Agents overview Assign licenses and manage access to Power Virtual Agents Key concepts - Enhanced authoring in Power Virtual Agents Key Concepts - Publish your bot About the sponsors Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

  • Feb 13, 2020 · 29 min

    Episode 164 – Certificates are hard

    In Episode 164, Ben and Scott dive in and discuss some new features that are coming to the Office 365 Admin Center and Azure Lighthouse that are going to make your life easier if you manage more than one tenant. Sponsors Skill Me Up – Only Skill Me Up provides the bridge from fundamentals to certification paths to advanced skills to accelerate digital transformation in 1 subscription with 5 ways to learn. Sperry Software – Powerful Outlook Add-ins developed to make your email life easy even if you’re too busy to manage your inbox ShareGate – ShareGate’s industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Intelligink – We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Office365AdminPortal.com – Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Show Notes LEGO Masters on Fox Can't access Microsoft Teams - TM202916 New organization switcher in the Microsoft 365 admin center Introducing Conditional Access for the Office 365 suite! Azure Active Directory Conditional Access settings reference New Azure Lighthouse features are now generally available What is Azure Lighthouse? View and manage service providers Deploy Azure Policy to delegated subscriptions at scale About the sponsors Everyone on your team is unique...so is SkillMeUp.com. Only Skill Me Up provides the bridge from fundamentals to certification paths to advanced skills to accelerate digital transformation with 1 subscription with 5 ways to learn. Start your free pilot today and supercharge your IT and Microsoft Azure skills. https://skillmeup.com/pilot/?src=Pod Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

  • Feb 6, 2020 · 34 min

    Episode 163 – So… what is Power Platform?

    In Episode 163, Ben and Scott dive in Power Platform and the PL-900 Power Platform Fundamentals exam. Along the way, they discuss what makes up Power Platform and how you can approach learning about Power Platform. Sponsors ShareGate - ShareGate's industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Opsgility - Your Cloud enablement partner to help guide your organization through all phases of Cloud migration and adoption Office365AdminPortal.com - Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Intelligink - We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Show Notes Exam PL-900: Microsoft Power Platform Fundamentals (beta) Exam PL-900 Exam Skills Outline Microsoft Power Platform Power Apps Power Automate Power BI Power Virtual Agents Announcing changes to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Security concepts in Common Data Service Microsoft Power Platform Fundamentals Learning Path About the sponsors Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info. Everyone on your team is unique...so is SkillMeUp.com. Only Skill Me Up provides the bridge from fundamentals to certification paths to advanced skills to accelerate digital transformation with 1 subscription with 5 ways to learn. Start your free pilot today and supercharge your IT and Microsoft Azure skills. https://skillmeup.com/pilot/?src=Pod

  • Jan 29, 2020 · 29 min

    Episode 162 – Bing, Office 365 ProPlus, and Microsoft Search – Oh My!

    In Episode 162, Ben and Scott discuss one of the latest bad moves out of Redmond - forcefully installing the Microsoft Search in Bing extension in Google Chrome. Sponsors Skill Me Up – Only Skill Me Up provides the bridge from fundamentals to certification paths to advanced skills to accelerate digital transformation in 1 subscription with 5 ways to learn. ShareGate – ShareGate’s industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Sperry Software – Powerful Outlook Add-ins developed to make your email life easy even if you’re too busy to manage your inboxOffice365AdminPortal.com – Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Intelligink – We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Show Notes Extension of Microsoft Search in Bing to be installed to Office 365 ProPlus customers Microsoft Search in Bing and Office 365 ProPlus How to exclude the extension for Microsoft Search in Bing from being installed How to remove the extension after it’s been installed The Day Microsoft Office Turned into Malware Office 365 ProPlus to change Chrome's default search engine to Bing in upcoming update Change to Bing Search for ProPlus should be opt-in only Google’s Five-Year Plan For GCP Has Funding Strings Attached: Report About the sponsors Everyone on your team is unique...so is SkillMeUp.com. Only Skill Me Up provides the bridge from fundamentals to certification paths to advanced skills to accelerate digital transformation with 1 subscription with 5 ways to learn. Start your free pilot today and supercharge your IT and Microsoft Azure skills. https://skillmeup.com/pilot/?src=Pod Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

  • Jan 23, 2020 · 32 min

    Episode 161 – Office 365 News

    In Episode 161, Ben and Scott discuss the updated timeline for the migration from Office 365 to Microsoft Stream and some new functionality coming to Office 365 and Outlook on the web that will make it easier to import personal calendars from Outlook.com, Live.com, and Google. Sponsors ShareGate – ShareGate’s industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Sperry Software – Powerful Outlook Add-ins developed to make your email life easy even if you’re too busy to manage your inbox Skill Me Up – Only Skill Me Up provides the bridge from fundamentals to certification paths to advanced skills to accelerate digital transformation in 1 subscription with 5 ways to learn. Office365AdminPortal.com – Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Intelligink – We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Show Notes Microsoft Ignite 2020 Pre-registration Join Ben at North American Collaboration Summit and save $50 off full conference pass or workshops using coupon code "Stegink" Office 365 Video transition to Microsoft Stream overview Office 365 Video migration timing setting Microsoft Stream and Office 365 Video feature comparison Teams cloud meeting recording Where your meeting recordings are stored Which regions does Microsoft Stream host my data in? Add a calendar in Outlook on the web Download the new Microsoft Edge based on Chromium About the sponsors Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Everyone on your team is unique...so is SkillMeUp.com. Only Skill Me Up provides the bridge from fundamentals to certification paths to advanced skills to accelerate digital transformation with 1 subscription with 5 ways to learn. Start your free pilot today and supercharge your IT and Microsoft Azure skills. https://skillmeup.com/pilot/?src=Pod Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

  • Jan 16, 2020 · 31 min

    Episode 160 – Office Cloud Policy Service

    In Episode 160, Ben and Scott dive into the Office Cloud Policy Service, part of the Office Admin Center and talk through how to manage the user configuration for your Office clients all in the cloud without GPOs. Sponsors Sperry Software – Powerful Outlook Add-ins developed to make your email life easy even if you’re too busy to manage your inbox Skill Me Up – Only Skill Me Up provides the bridge from fundamentals to certification paths to advanced skills to accelerate digital transformation in 1 subscription with 5 ways to learn. ShareGate – ShareGate’s industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Office365AdminPortal.com – Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Intelligink – We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Show Notes Pepsi Generation Security Baseline recommendations now available in Office Cloud Policy Service Office Admin Center Overview of the Office cloud policy service for Office 365 ProPlus Requirements for using the Office cloud policy service Security baseline for Office 365 ProPlus (v1908, Sept 2019) - FINAL Office What’s New Management Preview Updates Now Available Office‎ What's New management Preview About the sponsors Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Everyone on your team is unique...so is SkillMeUp.com. Only Skill Me Up provides the bridge from fundamentals to certification paths to advanced skills to accelerate digital transformation with 1 subscription with 5 ways to learn. Start your free pilot today and supercharge your IT and Microsoft Azure skills. https://skillmeup.com/pilot/?src=Pod Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

  • Jan 9, 2020 · 31 min

    Episode 159 – Azure Spot VMs and Azure AD Cloud Provisioning

    In Episode 159, Ben and Scott kick off 2020 with a discussion about the deprecation of Low Priority VMs in Azure and the introduction of Spot VMs and then they talk about a new feature available in Azure AD that can help you synchronize users and groups from disconnected domains. Sponsors ShareGate - ShareGate's industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Opsgility - Your Cloud enablement partner to help guide your organization through all phases of Cloud migration and adoption Office365AdminPortal.com - Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Intelligink - We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Show Notes Azure Spot Virtual Machines Preview: Deploy Spot VMs using the Azure portal Bring identities from disconnected ADs into Azure AD with just a few clicks! What is Azure AD Connect cloud provisioning? How is Azure AD Connect cloud provisioning different from Azure AD Connect sync? Azure AD Connect cloud provisioning new agent configuration Previous Episodes Episode 129 – The Latest and Greatest in Azure and Office 365 Episode 137 – Azure and Office 365 News Episode 152 – Using Azure DevOps to Automate Azure Deployments with Steven Murawski Episode 154 – Azure AD Security with Ramiro Calderon and Stefan van der Wiele About the sponsors Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Everyone on your team is unique...so is SkillMeUp.com. Only Skill Me Up provides the bridge from fundamentals to certification paths to advanced skills to accelerate digital transformation with 1 subscription with 5 ways to learn. Start your free pilot today and supercharge your IT and Microsoft Azure skills. https://skillmeup.com/pilot/?src=Pod Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

  • Jan 2, 2020 · 31 min

    Episode 158 – What are security defaults?

    In Episode 158, Ben and Scott dive into a change that is going to impact all Microsoft Partners and their security posture in Azure Active Directory. Sponsors ShareGate – ShareGate’s industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs\ Opsgility – Your Cloud enablement partner to help guide your organization through all phases of Cloud migration and adoption Sperry Software – Powerful Outlook Add-ins developed to make your email life easy even if you’re too busy to manage your inbox Office365AdminPortal.com – Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Intelligink – We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Show Notes Airing of Grievances Partner Security Requirements Replacement of baseline policies with security defaults What are security defaults? Episode 74 – Securing Office 365 (Part 1) Past Episodes Episode 120 – All Of The Portals Episode 126 – Privileged Accounts In Azure AD The Right Way Episode 151 – Microsoft Information Protection with Gagan Gulati and Adam Hall Episode 154 – Azure AD Security with Ramiro Calderon and Stefan van der Wiele Episode 155 – Microsoft 365 Tenant Level Services About the sponsors Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Everyone on your team is unique...so is SkillMeUp.com. Only Skill Me Up provides the bridge from fundamentals to certification paths to advanced skills to accelerate digital transformation with 1 subscription with 5 ways to learn. Start your free pilot today and supercharge your IT and Microsoft Azure skills. https://skillmeup.com/pilot/?src=Pod Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

  • Dec 26, 2019 · 35 min

    Episode 157 – The “why” of Microsoft cloud services?

    In Episode 157, Ben and Scott go sideways and talk about Microsoft's approach to documenting not only the How but the Why of services and products that they release and how customers can obtain operational guidance today. Sponsors Opsgility - Your Cloud enablement partner to help guide your organization through all phases of Cloud migration and adoption Sperry Software – Powerful Outlook Add-ins developed to make your email life easy even if you’re too busy to manage your inbox ShareGate - ShareGate's industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs Office365AdminPortal.com - Providing admins the knowledge and tools to run Office 365 successfully Intelligink - We focus on the Microsoft Cloud so you can focus on your business Show Notes Microsoft Teams is getting Outlook integration, tasks support, and more "One thing I'm noticing from the #MSIgnite attendee feedback is that some "don't want to hear the opinions of others" they want MSFT to tell them what to do." https://twitter.com/_achu/status/1200593596409425922 https://twitter.com/benstegink/status/1200955121418620928 Applying for the Project Cortex Preview Program Previous Episodes Episode 114 – Answering “Why Cloud?” with Sarah Lean Episode 121 – Moving at the Speed of the Cloud Episode 143 – Adoption Change Management for Microsoft 365 with David Callaghan Episode 153 – Crafting the Story for Microsoft 365 with Stephen Rose Episode 155 – Microsoft 365 Tenant Level Services About the sponsors Every business will eventually have to move to the cloud and adapt to it. That’s a fact. ShareGate helps with that. Our industry-leading products help IT professionals worldwide migrate their business to the Office 365 or SharePoint, automate their Office 365 governance, and understand their Azure usage & costs. Visit https://sharegate.com/ to learn more. Sperry Software, Inc focuses primarily on Microsoft Outlook and more recently Microsoft Office 365, where a plethora of tools and plugins that work with email have been developed. These tools can be extended for almost any situation where email is involved, including automating workflows (e.g., automatically save emails as PDF or automatically archive emails that are over 30 days old), modifying potentially bad user behaviors (e.g., alert the user to suspected phishing emails or prompt the user if they are going to inadvertently reply to all), and increased email security (e.g., prompt the user with a customizable warning if they are about to send an email outside the organization). Get started today by visiting www.SperrySoftware.com/CloudIT Everyone on your team is unique...so is SkillMeUp.com. Only Skill Me Up provides the bridge from fundamentals to certification paths to advanced skills to accelerate digital transformation with 1 subscription with 5 ways to learn. Start your free pilot today and supercharge your IT and Microsoft Azure skills. https://skillmeup.com/pilot/?src=Pod Intelligink utilizes their skill and passion for the Microsoft cloud to empower their customers with the freedom to focus on their core business. They partner with them to implement and administer their cloud technology deployments and solutions. Visit Intelligink.com for more info.

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