Feb 4, 2021
On February 1, 2021, the following products will be changed to end-of-life:
- Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights (including “Additional Cases”)
- Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service
The “Customer Service Insights” standalone experience is moving into “Dynamics 365 Customer Service”, where customers can find the same capabilities deeply embedded in the customer service experiences.
What is customer service insights?
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights helps both agents and customer service managers make better decisions and proactively improve customer satisfaction by using artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics capabilities for Customer Service and Omnichannel. You can empower your teams with insights into customer satisfaction–boosting analytics and AI-powered features to spend less time searching and more time engaging with customers.
As an agent, you can leverage real-time similar cases and knowledge article suggestions that are customized for the current context. The AI-driven technology empowers agents to help solve customer issues more quickly, improving resolution rates and customer satisfaction.
These capabilities are deeply embedded into the core agent and manager experiences in Customer Service and Omnichannel.
Feb 2, 2021
Summary
Campaign starts on the 2st February, will end on the 31st of August 2021. It aims to reward Partners when bringing ACA, and while hitting campaign ACR thresholds. This campaign encourages Partners to bring ACA and accelerate ACR increase
Start date : 2st of February 2021
End date: 31th of August 2021
Campaign consists of an earning Period from 2st of February 2021, till 30th of June 2021, and a monitor period from 1st of July 2021, till 31st August 2021.
Customer segment
SMB only
Eligible Products
Azure, Azure RI
The Program
Consists of an earning Period from 1st of February 2021, till 30th of June 2021, and a monitor period from 1st of July 2021, till 31st August 2021.
Criteria
- CSP indirect Resellers must be enrolled in the “Campaigns” program on partner center to be eligible for the campaign
Terms and conditions
- CSP indirect Resellers will earn incentive payment of 500 USD, when they bring new eligible customer add
- Partner must bring an eligible new customer add, with 0 ACR per months, 12 months prior to campaign start date. Customer has to maintain the 250 USD ACR for 3 consecutive months, during campaign period
- For new eligible customers hitting 250 USD in June, the ACR will be monitored in July 2021, and August 2021 to stick to the 3 consecutive months rule
- Any new eligible customer hitting 250 USD ACR threshold for the 1st time in July 2021, and August 2021 (Monitor period after end of campaign) will not be counted as new customers, hence Partner will not earn incentive against those customers.
- If customer drops his ACR to below $250 during campaign period, Partner will not be eligible for incentive payment.
- Trial subscriptions are excluded from incentive program
Customer segment
SMB only
Eligible Products
Azure, Azure RI
Payment
Incentive Payments are transferred via wire transfer.
Eligible Participants who earned incentive will be paid within 60 days after end of August 2021
Jan 26, 2021
Microsoft provides a holistic approach to security, helping you to protect identities, data, applications, and devices across on-premises, cloud, and mobile.
Foundational to the security of every computer system are the following:
- Threat protection using Microsoft Defender for Office 365 which safeguards your organization against malicious threats posed by email messages, links (URLs), and collaboration tools.
There are two available plans, the following table summarizes what’s included in each plan.
| Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1- $2.00/user/month |
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2-
$5.00/user/month |
Configuration, protection, and detection capabilities:
Safe Attachments
Safe Links
ATP for SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams
Anti-phishing in Defender for Office 365 protection
Real-time detections |
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 capabilities+
Automation, investigation, remediation, and education capabilities:
Threat Trackers
Threat Explorer
Automated investigation and response
Attack Simulator
Campaign Views |
Learn more
- Information protection and Identity and access management using Office 365 Data Loss Prevention and Exchange Online Archiving
- Office 365 Data Loss Prevention – $3.00/user/month
That helps your organization:
- identify sensitive information across many locations, such as Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Teams.
- Prevent the accidental sharing of sensitive information.
- Monitor and protect sensitive information in the desktop versions of Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.
- Help users learn how to stay compliant without interrupting their workflow.
- View DLP alerts and reports showing content that matches your organization’s DLP policies.
Learn more
- Exchange Online Archiving – $3.00/user/month
That assists your organization with your archiving, compliance, regulatory, and eDiscovery challenges while simplifying on-premises infrastructure, and thereby reducing costs and easing IT burdens.
Learn more
Jan 8, 2021
What’s New : Meetings
Virtual Breakout Rooms
Breakout rooms allows meeting organizers to divide the meeting into smaller groups to facilitate discussions and brainstorming sessions. A breakout room can be created in a Teams meeting or a Teams channel meeting, allowing greater flexibility on how you want to meet. Organizers can easily jump in between breakout rooms, deliver announcements to all breakout rooms at once, and bring everyone back to the main meeting at any time. Any files from the breakout rooms can be shared in the main meeting and is available afterwards in the meeting chat. Learn more.
End-of-meeting notifications
Microsoft Teams notifies the participants in a meeting when there are five minutes remaining in the scheduled meeting time. The notification appears on screen for 10 seconds and disappears without any user action. This helps you stay on track and wrap up as necessary without unintentionally running late to your next schedule. Notification is triggered for all scheduled private and channel meetings and does not cause the meeting to end automatically.
Teams meeting pre-join experience
We have now improved the pre-join meeting experience for Teams meetings including easier discovery of audio, video, and device configurations before joining a meeting. Previously, you had to go to settings to change meeting devices, but now these can be easily adjusted prior to the meeting in the pre-join experience.
New languages supported for real-time translation in live events
Translate Japanese, Korean, French, French-Canadian, Spanish, Spanish-Mexican, Traditional Chinese, Swedish, Dutch, Italian, Hindi-Indian, Portuguese-Brazilian, and Russian into up to 50 different languages. Learn more.
Live events limit increases are extended until June 30, 2021
To continue help support our customers, through June 30, 2021, we extended limit increases for live events, including:
- Event support for up to 20,000 attendees
- 50 events can be hosted simultaneously across a tenant
- Event duration of 16 hours per broadcast
Additionally, events for as many as 100,000 attendees can be planned through the live events assistance program. Learn more.
What’s New : Calling
Multiple Number Dialing
You can now see a split button in the chat header for audio/video calling. This displays multiple numbers for a single contact making it easier to view available numbers to initiate a call.
Live Captions for 1:1 Calls
Whether you’re in a noisy environment or just missed what was said, live captions can make it easier to follow along in calls. Admins can disable this capability if desired, and users have control to turn these off. For the most accurate captions possible, it is recommended to speak clearly into the microphone and avoid having multiple people speaking at the same time.
What’s New: Devices
New features rolling out to Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows
The latest app for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows, version 4.7.15.0 is now available in the Teams Admin Center. The latest update includes the following new capabilities:
- Cortana Voice Assistance (Preview): Launching in Preview, in-room meeting attendees can now use voice assistance powered by Cortana to join and end their meetings without touch. Using natural language, people can simply state “Cortana, join/end my meeting” for a seamless hands-free experience.
- Control Spotlight from console: People in the meeting room can now control the Teams meeting Spotlight feature from the Teams Rooms console control. Once enabled, the individual identified as the spotlight will be the main video shown to all participants in the Teams meeting.
- Share HDMI audio: A highly requested feature, users connecting to a Teams Room via HDMI can now share their PC audio into the Teams meeting.
Enhanced meeting experiences on Teams phones
Teams phones now support a new video layout including 3×3 gallery view, large gallery view for more participants and Together mode. Using 3×3, users can see the video feeds of up to 9 meetings participants at a time. For even larger meetings, enable large gallery view to show up to 49 participants. Teams phones now also supports Together mode, the meeting experience where participants are transported to a virtual shared space. No matter which style of meeting you select you can always enable background blur to reduce distractions and obscure any imagery found in a video setting.
Proximity Join for Teams conference phones
Proximity based meeting join for an available Microsoft Teams conference phone is supported from this update. The Microsoft Teams client on your PC and mobile detect proximity of the conference phone via the BLE beacon transmitted by the phone and allow you to add the phone easily to the meeting from your pre-join screen on your desktop or mobile client. When a user adds the conference phone to the meeting, the phone would auto accept the incoming meeting request. Learn more.
New unified communication workstation and phone form factors from Yealink and Audiocodes
Yealink is excited to introduce a new set of peripherals, the WH66 and WH67, an integrated unified communication workstation. The all-in-one format has a built-in speakerphone, wireless mobile phone charger, multi-touch screen and USB hub. Calling is now even more convenient with a dedicated Teams button. All these features reduce the number of tools and wires on a desktop, simplifying a workspace and boosting productivity.
Jan 8, 2021
Download Citrix e-book Today.
There have never been so many ways for people to get work done. Mobile devices and apps allow employees to be productive from anywhere, at any time. That’s certainly great for the business—but it complicates life for IT.
The more options people get, the more diverse the enterprise environment grows. Plus, the more difficult it becomes for IT to secure, provision, patch, update, repair, and maintain all the software and hardware now in use across the workforce.
Welcome to the painful reality of today’s distributed enterprises the world over.
Some might say that these headaches are simply growing pains on the path to a cloud-first world. That once you centralize and standardize on a single cloud platform, all the headaches will go away.
Unfortunately, that’s just wishful thinking.
The fact is, we like choice, even in clouds. In fact, a majority of organizations that already in the cloud are in multiple types—whether on-prem, off-prem or hybrid. (A recent study put the percentage at almost 73 percent, with that number rising every year.) The reason? Flexibility, pure and simple. One cloud platform might work well for content collaboration, but it doesn’t necessarily do what you need for delivering apps or services to distant users.
The surprise for most, however, is that you don’t have to give up all the choices and flexibility to avoid the dreaded complexity that today’s distributed infrastructures create.
With a secure digital workspace, you can get both, making work and IT simpler. That’s because a secure digital workspace provides a single place for people to securely access all their apps, desktops, and data from anywhere.
Employees become more productive and engaged because they get a consistent single sign-on experience, no matter how or where they work, including:
• Any device
• Any cloud
• Any network
• Any type of app—cloud/SaaS, web, mobile, Windows
On the back end, a secure digital workspace gives IT unified security and control without the cost and complexity of managing myriad point solutions. Plus, they can simplify endpoint management and security, which is a good thing since the number of network-connected devices is expected to be almost 50 billion connected devices by 2020.*
More importantly, a secure digital workspace can help you increase business agility. Because you can onboard employees and offices faster and roll out new services and apps in less time, you—and your users—can respond to new opportunities in ways you never thought of before.
So if you’re finally ready to make the leap into the cloud, be sure to deliver a strategy that works not only for the business, but your workforce as well. To learn more about how a secure digital workspace can make your users more productive, simplify IT and deliver the security and agility your organization requires download this Ebook now !
Jan 8, 2021
We are pleased to announce the General Availability (GA) of Attack simulation training in Microsoft Defender for Office 365. Delivered in partnership with Terranova Security, Attack simulation training is an intelligent social engineering risk management tool that automates the creation and management of phishing simulations to help customers detect, prioritize and remediate phishing risks by using real phish and hyper-targeted training to change employee behaviors.
Emulate real threats with intelligent simulations
Intelligent simulations automate simulation and payload management, user targeting, schedule and cleanup. In the Microsoft 365 Security Center, administrators can launch a simulation and choose a technique commonly used by attackers and target users.
Attack simulation training dashboard
Wide variety of Phishing Techniques
Following the simple steps outlined in the workflow, administrators can choose from the top five social engineering techniques and select the phish template from a list of real attacks seen in their tenant. Optionally customers can upload their own template and then select the users to whom the simulation will be sent.
Phishing Techniques available
Phish Template Library from Real Phish Emails
To maximize accuracy, Attack simulation training pulls its phishing templates from real world phish attackers seen in the customers environment. The security administrator can automate a “payload harvester” that collects and neutralizes phish emails received by the organization.
Payloads Available
Through the real payload harvester, Attack simulation training trains employees to identify and report the kinds of emails real attackers will send them. The security administrator can set up targeted payload harvesting as well, using conditions like technique used, department targeted and frequency.
Payload Harvesting Conditions
Finally, security administrators can add ‘phishing indicators’ like an incorrect domain name, an urgency tip or a misspelled company name to train end users on commonly-seen phishing indicators.
Add indicators to phishing templates
User targeting and training assignment
User targeting is automated, and the administrator can use any address book properties to filter for a user list and target them. The administrator can also quickly import a list of “repeat offenders” or employees who have failed a simulation in the past and target the simulation to this group.
Target users based on address book filters
The administrator can then assign training tailored to a user’s behavior in the simulation. Microsoft recommends training to assign based on learning pathways and our intelligence into which training is effective for which kinds of behavior. The administrator can also choose to assign training themselves. For example, an administrator may choose to assign 3 trainings to users who were compromised in the simulation but only 2 to those who clicked and 1 to all users. The landing page on which the end user will land to access this training are wholly customizable for the look and voice of your brand. Finally, the administrator has the option to schedule the simulation to launch right away or at a later time, which can be customized by recipient time-zone.
Assign Training
Customized Role Based Access ensures that administrating the simulation and training is a secure and diversified workflow.
Quantify social engineering risk and prioritize remediation through training
The training effectiveness metric, which plots your organization’s actual compromise rate in a simulation against Microsoft’s predicted compromise rate, measures the effectiveness of the training program. Overlay the dates of training completion and simulations to correlate which trainings caused a drop in compromise rate and evaluate their effectiveness.
Training Effectiveness Report
Gain visibility over your organization’s training completion and simulation status through completeness and coverage metrics and track your organization’s progress against the baseline predicted compromise rate. Every reporting dashboard can be filtered in different ways and exported for reporting. Multiple reporting views allowing you to drill down on training efficacy, training completion, repeat offenders and coverage.
Reinforce the human firewall with industry-leading Security Awareness Training
Terranova Security’s huge library of phish training content enables personalized and highly specific training targeting based on the user’s behavior during a simulation.
Training Library
Nanolearnings, microlearnings, and interactivity
cater to diverse learning styles and reinforce awareness. Additionally, all trainings are available in 40+ languages and accessible to the highest standards to meet the needs of Microsoft’s global customers.
Attack simulation training enables organizations to improve their security posture by training their employees effectively and changing risky behavior. Organizations can choose from multiple training options to best fit their needs – using Microsoft’s recommended learning pathways, choosing to assign training manually, or choosing not to add training to a simulation.
E3 Trial
As Microsoft mentioned in their blog announcing the expansion of public preview to E3 license holders, we will continue to offer a subset of Attack simulation training capabilities to E3 customers as a trial. The trial offering contains the ability to use a Credential Harvest payload and the ability to select from 2 training experiences ISA Phishing and Mass Market Phishing. The trial offering will not include any other phishing techniques, automated simulation creation and management, conditional payload harvesting, and the complete catalog of Terranova Security trainings.
To get started today, go to Attack simulation training in your M365 Security and Compliance Center or use this link: aka.ms/AttackSim.
