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How AI for Humanitarian Action can empower a sustainable future

Two female refugees in Athens
Photo courtesy of Sara Hylton for Mercy Corps.

Last year, I had the opportunity to visit schools and youth community centers in refugee camps in Greece and Jordan. Here young people, who were forced to leave their homes and communities, were preparing for the next phase in their lives. They were attending school and learning, through nonprofit-run programs, technology and entrepreneurial skills. I was moved by their willingness to work hard under difficult circumstances, with smiles on their faces, and by their hopeful view of the future.

At Microsoft Philanthropies, we feel an obligation to ensure that the benefits of the digital economy are available to everyone. The young people I met, and the many who remain displaced, were a reminder of why that work is so important. It’s why we launched AI for Humanitarian Action earlier this week, to help nonprofits save more lives, alleviate suffering and restore human dignity. Through this new initiative, front-line relief organizations will be able to use technology to anticipate, predict and better target response efforts.

It’s also why this week, in conjunction with the United Nations General Assembly session, we strengthened our commitment to sustainable development efforts through new digital skills partnerships with U.N. organizations. These partnerships focus on humanitarian initiatives in which we believe we can have the greatest global impact advancing education and employment, with an emphasis on preparing people with the skills they need in our global economy. We aim to help create meaningful livelihood opportunities for refugees and displaced youth, ensure more gender equality, promote accessibility, and overall, build stronger and more resilient communities.

With our partnership with UNICEF, for example, we are applying technology and expertise to ensure that the most vulnerable children on the move have access to education and protection. The first initiative will be a “learning passport,” being developed in collaboration with the University of Cambridge. It will be a digital, personalized, globally accredited learning platform aiming to enable children, who have had their learning disrupted, to keep learning – wherever they are.

We are working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to reach over 25,000 refugee young women and men by 2021 with access to accredited, quality and relevant digital learning and market-oriented training opportunities. The partnership will include training and knowledge sharing with UNHCR international teams and local partners, who will also help deliver the content. Microsoft also joined this week with the International Labor Organization (ILO) on the Decent Jobs for Youth global initiative to help equip young women and men with digital skills and improve youth employment. It’s a privilege for Microsoft to partner with the nongovernmental organizations and others working to solve global challenges. We’re inspired by their work and hope to contribute to it by providing technology tools and resources to help them serve even more people.

We recognize the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals are addressing urgent and complex societal issues that are bigger than any one organization. That’s why we believe in partnering across public, private and nonprofit sectors to deepen and broaden our collective impact. The more we — as governments, nonprofit and private companies — can work together toward these shared goals, the greater and more lasting our impact will be toward building a sustainable future for all.

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Celebrate MINECON Earth at Microsoft Store parties Sept. 29 in the US and Canada

MINECON Earth, Minecraft’s worldwide celebration livestream of all things Minecraft is just around the corner! It’s happening this Saturday, Sept. 29 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PDT and we’re inviting the Minecraft community to join us at Microsoft Stores across the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada.

A MINECON Earth party is not only a great place to meet other players and learn from skillful creators – depending on the location you can also expect giveaways, Q&A panels with developers or builders, costume contests, Minecraft trivia and the opportunity to snag exclusive MINECON Earth merch!

No less than 81 Microsoft Stores are joining in on the fun this year to celebrate this one-of-a-kind event! Visit the official MINECON Earth page for the full list of locations near you, details about each celebration and info on how to get tickets. Attendees will be admitted 30 minutes prior to the broadcast start time, so come early to ensure you get a seat!

Eight Microsoft Stores will also host some Minecraft content creators you may be familiar with. They’ll be hanging out with attendees at the following locations:

If you can’t make it to an in-store event, be sure to watch MINECON Earth on Mixer, YouTube, Facebook Live and Twitch. We hope you’ll join us!

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Gears Pro Circuit Season 2 heads west to San Diego

Gears Pro Circuit Season 2 makes its first appearance on the West Coast this week with the Gears Pro Circuit San Diego Open, taking place from September 28th-30th at the Town and Country Resort and Convention Center. The top Gears teams from around the world will all be in attendance as they battle it out for a piece of the $250,000 prize pool.

OpTic Gaming comes into the event as the favorite to take home the title following their dominating performance in New Orleans and winning the last seven online 2Ks. Echo Fox coming in as the second seed is looking to avenge their loss in New Orleans and take home the championship. Ghost Gaming and Spacestation Gaming, Europe’s top team, both feature new team members as they look to run the table to the Championship Match on Sunday.

San Diego also marks the Gears Pro Circuit debut of 2v2 Gnashers Only on Boxes. Featuring a $10,000 prize pool, this side tournament will take place during the Gears Pro Circuit San Diego Open and will have some of the top players in Gears looking to prove their CQB dominance. Anyone with an event pass (spectator or team) is eligible to compete for free. Registration will be from 10am-1pm PDT, on Saturday, September 29th at the main registration table on a first come, first serve basis. Make sure to get their early as the tournament is capped at 96 teams and will start at 2:00 PM PDT on Saturday.

Share: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-JcwyhoRTw

Watch all the action at http://live.gearsofwar.com starting at 2:00 PM PDT on Friday, September 28, then into the weekend on both Saturday and Sunday at 10:00 AM PDT.

Visit https://gearsofwar.com/en-us/esports and follow @EsportsGears on Twitter to keep up-to-date with the latest information about Gears Esports and the Gears Pro Circuit San Diego Open!

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Teachers: Take your students around the world during Nov. 13-14 Skype-a-Thon – miles add up to provide school resources for kids in need

An estimated half a million students from over 100 countries will connect during Skype-a-Thon on November 13th and 14th. Each year, this 48-hour global learning event brings classrooms together, using Skype to not only deepen students’ understanding of the world beyond their classroom walls, but to help them become global citizens.

Participating classrooms travel “virtual miles” via Skype to talk to thousands of volunteer guest speakers about topics like conservation, history, animals, computer science, and more, or to simply share in song and dance, games, reading, stories, and virtual field trips.

This event is always special, but this year is extra special: By participating and travelling those virtual miles, your students can help other students in need. Microsoft is partnering with the nonprofit WE for Skype-a-Thon 2018 to help support access to quality education for children around the world.

For every 400 virtual miles traveled by Skype-a-Thon participants, Microsoft will donate to WE, an organization that makes doing good doable. WE Schools, a free service-learning program, helps students domestically and WE Villages, a holistic, sustainable international development model, helps students internationally.

The model is built on five pillars of impact – Education, Water, Health, Food and Opportunity. Microsoft’s donation will support WE Village’s Education pillar to provide access to education for children overseas and support UN Sustainable Development Goal #4 – Quality Education. If we reach our goal of 14 million virtual miles, together we can support up to 35,000 children across nine WE Villages partner communities. The donations will be tailored to each village’s unique needs, funding everything from construction of new classrooms and libraries, to school supplies, to teacher training.

Craig Kielburger, Co-Founder of WE, is as excited as we are and recently shared with me that he can’t wait to “embrace the collective energy and passion created during this event and turn it into real impact for thousands of children in need.”

In addition to teaching kids about giving back, Skype-a-Thon continues to be a fun and engaging way for teachers to help students build empathy and compassion. Sara Arlotti, Executive Director for Hearts on Fire, has partnered with Skype-a-Thon to motivate thousands of students across the globe to #BeTheSpark of compassion and change in their own communities. She says she believes the annual program has “opened the hearts and minds of students and teachers by bringing social change rock stars to the classroom.”

Sign up today!

  1. Register and download the Skype-a-Thon Step by Step Activity Plan to help you organize and prepare your students for their virtual Skype adventures.
  2. Get ideas and learn from teachers who have participated in the past with their students in the Skype-a-Thon Flipgrid.
  3. Schedule Skype calls with other classrooms or guest speakers via the Skype in the Classroom website for November 13-14 for your miles to be counted towards our goal.
  4. Download the Skype-a-Thon Teacher Toolkit filled with resources for your classroom from passports, certificates, posters, social media examples, and activities to track your miles and the impact each of your connections made to the world.
  5. Share your plans and goals with the Skype in the Classroom (@SkypeClassroom) community before and after the event with #skypeathon and #MicrosoftEDU. See ideas in our social media guide.

To learn more about how you and your classroom can support UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #4: Quality Education and other SDGs through WE, check out the free WE Schools Service Learning Kit.

“Skype-a-Thon is a huge highlight each school year for my third graders!  This year, in addition to adding up our miles to places like Antarctica, India and more, we’ll be directly helping kids around the world support UN SDG #4 Quality Education. My class is going to try to travel 10,000 virtual miles so we can help 25 children in need in WE Villages! Having teachers come together to #TeachSDGs through the #skypeathon is a major step in helping to improve our world.” 

– Amy Rosenstein, 3rd grade teacher, Ardsley, New York, Westchester County NY School District

For more info, follow @MicrosoftEDU and @SkypeClassroom and reach out to us with any questions via Twitter!

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Fans get a look at highly anticipated ‘Forza Horizon 4’ for Xbox One

Today, at a special episode of Inside Xbox broadcast directly from Great Britain at the Goodwood House, we gave fans a closer look at the highly anticipated Xbox One racing game Forza Horizon 4, talked to the creative talent behind Fortnite Battle Royale, revealed new titles coming soon to Xbox Game Pass like Wolfenstein: The New Order and Metro 2033 Redux, revealed mouse and keyboard support for Xbox One, and much more. For a full recap, read on below or watch the replay of Inside Xbox episode above when the VOD is available.

New Forza Horizon 4 Launch Trailer

At the start of the show, we got our first look at a brand-new trailer for Forza Horizon 4. Dynamic seasons change everything at the world’s greatest automotive festival where you can go it alone or team up with others to explore beautiful and historic Great Britain in a shared open world. Collect, modify and drive over 450 cars; race, stunt, create, and explore – choose your own path to become a Horizon Superstar when Forza Horizon 4 Ultimate Edition launches exclusively on Xbox One and Windows 10 September 28; standard edition launches October 2.

Game Pass October Titles Revealed

Next up on the show was the first reveal of the new games entering the Xbox Game Pass catalog starting on October 1. With awesome titles like Wolfenstein: The Order, Metro 2033 Redux, LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures, and Forza Horizon 4, this month’s group of titles is as great as any we’ve seen enter the program. With over 100 great games available for one low monthly price, including highly-anticipated new Xbox One exclusives the day they’re released, plus more games added all the time, Xbox Game Pass gives you the ultimate freedom to play.

Games with Gold October Titles Revealed

As an added special,on today’s show we got our Games with Gold reveal for Xbox One and Xbox 360 for October! On Xbox One, battle it out in the kitchen in Overcooked! then get ready to defeat the forces of evil in Victor Vran. On Xbox 360 and Xbox One via Backward Compatibility, create movie magic in Stuntman: Ignition and take out a new batch of targets as Agent 47 in Hitman: Blood Money.

Talking with Playground Games’ Ralph Fulton

Graeme sat down with Ralph Fulton from Playground Games to talk about the launch of Forza Horizon 4, the reaction to the gameplay demo (available now) and sharing a few details about what the near future holds for fans for both Forza and Playground Games who joined the Microsoft family earlier this year.

Forza Horizon 4 Bond Car Reveals

Speaking of Playground Games, we had even more news to share on Forza Horizon 4 which is launching with some day one DLC and it’s a love letter to 007. With 10 classic James Bond cars on the way, and even some of the weirder ones, the only thing we’ll be missing is a properly shaken and stirred martini to make us feel like the super spy himself.

Fortnite Interview and Xbox One S Fornite Battle Royale Bundle

Getting ready to celebrate the first birthday of Fortnite Battle Royale, our very own Larry Hryb sat down with Nathan Mooney from Epic Games to look back on the year that was. A time before Ninja and Drake were besties, when Thanos appeared, and many other memorable moments. Mooney also shared what the future of Fortnite has in store for all of us. Not to mention the reveal of the Xbox One S Fortnite Battle Royale console bundle.

Route Creator Revealed for Forza Horizon 4

Next up were even more details for Forza Horizon 4 – the reveal of the much-requested fan feature: Route Creator. This in-game tool will allow fans to draw our their very own course in the world of FH4 and then share that online with the larger gaming community.

New Xbox Update Details

The first info for the next Xbox One update came through today as well, with features like Dolby Vision, new voice integration for Cortana and Alexa-enabled devices, and new details on Xbox Avatars. But in perhaps the biggest bit of news coming to Xbox…

Mouse and Keyboard Support for Xbox

Phil Spencer joined Inside Xbox for a very exciting piece of news: mouse and keyboard support for Xbox One. Soon, developers will be able to build mouse and keyboard support in their games if and how they choose — entirely at their discretion — and Xbox will support them in creating the right experience for their games to ensure an optimal and fair gaming experience. Warframe will be one of the first titles testing mouse and keyboard input when the feature arrives to Insider. We also announced that we’re partnering with Razer, a premiere peripheral manufacturer in the gaming hardware space, to bring you the best possible mouse and keyboard experience for this new functionality. We’ll have more details to share on mouse and keyboard support during our November episode of Inside Xbox.

Announcing X018

A global celebration all things Xbox filled with news, first looks, and surprises live streamed on the largest Inside Xbox episode ever. X018 will be hosted at the fourth-annual Xbox FanFest: Mexico City. While more than 10,000 fans will join us onsite, we hope millions of Xbox fans will join the celebration online. We will livestream X018 on Inside Xbox so fans all around the world can participate online.  Inside Xbox will air 3 – 5 pm central time on Saturday, Nov. 10, and fans can tune into Mixer throughout the weekend for additional X018 news.

Reach Out Worldwide Charity

Last year, Xbox teamed up with Cody Walker for Game4Paul3 and helped raise over a $150,000 for Reach Out World Wide. We’re getting everyone back together this year for another big charity stream, and we could not be more excited about this event. Catch the Game4Paul4 live stream on October 11.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider DLC Reveal

Shadow of the Tomb Raider may be the conclusion of the new Lara Croft trilogy, but there’s still plenty do to after the credits roll. In fact, seven-months-worth of tombs to explore. Larry raided Rich Brigg’s brain-space from Crystal Dynamics for an exclusive look at the first DLC coming this October on this episode of Inside Xbox.

The Forza Horizon 4 Seasons Simulator

We looked at the one-of-a-kind Forza Horizon 4 Seasons Simulator. The 360-degree booth is designed to mimic the changing seasons in Forza Horizon 4 where celebrities had to endure rain, snow, heat, and mud while they play the game on Xbox One X. Check out these stars battling all the elements on Inside Xbox.

Hollow Knight Interview

Hollow Knight is an incredible indie platformer that’s full of style and mystery, and it’s available on Xbox One right now. The Voidheart Edition on Xbox One means you get all the DLC included for free and is currently 20% for a limited time until October 2. Learn about this modern classic here on the show.

A Closer Look at the Forza Horizon 4 cover car: the McLaren Senna

Only 500 of these high-performance machines were made — and they’re completely sold out. The last one was auctioned off for close to three million dollars and Justine got to check out the cover vehicle for Forza Horizon 4 with Tanner Foust to find out why they’re so coveted.

McLaren Senna Stunt

Inspired by the cover car and spectacular showcase events in Forza Horizon 4, we staged an unprecedented head-to-head race at one of the world’s most iconic motor racing venues. The race saw a McLaren Senna take on the bikes in a straight fight to the top of the Goodwood Estate’s world-famous Hill Climb. And despite the bikes’ unconventionally direct route up the hill, including a few jaw-dropping jumps and tricks, the Senna’s incredible speed and power won out in the end.

Thanks to everyone who tuned in! We hope you enjoyed the show and we can’t wait to tell you all about next month’s episode in a few weeks.

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Developers: Mouse and keyboard support enabled on Xbox One for select Xbox Insiders in coming weeks

At Xbox, we’re committed to bringing gamers more choice in what they play, who they play with and how they play. We’re also equally committed to providing developers with the best platform to create and deliver the best gaming experience on Xbox. Today we’re announcing a new way to play games on Xbox: we’re enabling mouse and keyboard support on Xbox One for select Xbox Insiders in the coming weeks.

With this new input support at the platform level, developers can now build mouse and keyboard support in their games if and how they choose. It’s important to note that mouse and keyboard support for games is added on a title-by-title basis, entirely at developers’ discretion. For all other titles, nothing changes. Mouse and keyboard input is not enabled by default for games. Each development team knows their titles best and we support them in creating the right experience for their games as they see fit, to ensure an optimal and fair gaming experience. Warframe will be one of the first titles testing mouse and keyboard input when the feature arrives to Insider in the coming weeks.

While most wired or wireless USB keyboards and mice will work on Xbox One, we know access to best-in-class hardware is a must. That’s why we’re partnering with a premiere peripheral manufacturer in the gaming hardware space – Razer – to bring you the best possible mouse and keyboard experience for this new functionality. We’ll have more to share soon on this partnership, but for now check out Razer’s website and our Xbox Twitter and Facebook pages for a sneak peek.

We’ve been working closely with studios of all sizes to ensure mouse and keyboard experiences on console are fun, fair and correctly balanced, and look forward to introducing more games with support for mouse and keyboard input in the future. Tune into the November 10 edition of Inside Xbox for more details about additional titles supporting mouse and keyboard, and to learn more about our partnership with Razer.

Features like mouse and keyboard support come to life with the right fan feedback. So, as always, please share feedback with us and with your favorite developers to ensure we’re getting this right. If you’d like to test out this experience on Xbox, you can join the Xbox Insider program. For more on the latest news from Xbox, stay tuned to Xbox Wire.

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10 new ways for everyone to achieve more in the modern workplace

It’s been over a year since we introduced Microsoft 365, the complete, intelligent, and secure solution that empowers employees to drive their organizations to future growth. Customers are seeking to transform and support a workforce that is more diverse and mobile than ever before, and they are relying on latest advancements in technology to do so. Customers such as Goodyear, Eli Lilly, and Fruit of the Loom use Microsoft 365 to empower their employees.

Microsoft 365 is growing quickly, built on the strength of more than 135 million commercial monthly Office 365 users. Windows 10 has approximately 200 million commercial devices in use, and there is an install base of over 82 million for Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS). Today, at the Microsoft Ignite Conference in Orlando, Florida, we are introducing new capabilities in Microsoft 365 that make it possible for every person to do their best work.

1. Microsoft Teams is the fastest growing business app in Microsoft history

After less than two years in market, more than 329,000 organizations worldwide use Microsoft Teams, including 87 of the Fortune 100 companies. In fact, 54 customers now have more than 10,000 active users of Teams, and Accenture just crossed the 100,000 active-user mark in Teams. Further growth has been spurred by the recently announced free version of Teams.

We continue to add powerful new capabilities to foster teamwork and collaboration. New artificial intelligence (AI) powered meeting features are now generally available—including background blur and meeting recording. Background blur uses facial detection to blur your background during video meetings, and meeting recording allows you to playback recorded meeting content at any time with captions and a searchable, timecoded transcript.

General availability of new live event capabilities will begin to roll out worldwide in Microsoft 365 later this year. These new tools allow customers to create and stream live and on-demand events in Teams, Yammer and Microsoft Stream to inform and engage customers and employees, wherever they are. Beginning in October, employees can watch videos on the go with the Stream mobile app for iOS and Android, with support for offline viewing. And we’re working with our ecosystem of device partners to deliver new devices optimized for Teams meetings and calling, including the new Surface Hub 2. Surface Hub 2 is perfect for dynamic teamwork and features a light, sleek, and intelligent design that’s easy to move around and fit in any workspace. The first phase of Surface Hub 2, Surface Hub 2 S, will start shipping in the second quarter of 2019.

Animated image of a man blurring his background in Teams.

Blur your background during meetings.

2. Extend the power of Teams to empower workers in all roles and across industries

We are extending the power of Teams with new experiences that are tailored to industry-specific and role-based workflows. For example, new capabilities in Teams help empower Firstline Workers to do their best work. With new schedule management tools, managers can now create and share schedules, and employees can easily swap shifts, request time off, and see who else is working as well as important announcements. These new features will be available in October. As an example of how Teams can enable secure workflows for regulated industries, we’re delivering a new care coordination solution, now available in private preview, that gives healthcare teams a secure hub for coordinating care across multiple patients. It provides for integration with electronic health records (EHR) systems and enables care providers to communicate about patient care in real-time within Teams’ secure platform. We are also releasing two new secure messaging features with particular relevance in healthcare settings—image annotation, now generally available, and priority notifications, which will roll out by the end of this year to all Teams commercial customers. These capabilities support HIPAA compliance and enable doctors, nurses, and other clinicians to communicate about patients while avoiding the privacy risks that arise when healthcare professionals use consumer chat apps.

Image of a mobile device creating an event in Microsoft Teams.

Easily swap shifts, request time off, and see who else is working.

3. Find what you need faster with Microsoft Search

Microsoft Search, a new cohesive search capability, makes it easier for you to find what you need without leaving the flow of your work. We’re putting the search box in a consistent, prominent place across Edge, Bing, Windows, and Office apps, so that search is always one click away. We’re also supercharging the search box so you can not only quickly find people and related content, but you can also access commands for apps and navigate to other content wherever you need to get work done—even before you start typing in the search box. Recognizing that you work in an ecosystem of information, we’re extending Microsoft Search to connect across your organization’s data, inside and outside of Microsoft 365. Learning from your everyday work patterns and acting as a brain for your organization, the Microsoft Graph personalizes your experiences everywhere. We’re pulling together the power of the Microsoft Graph and AI technology from Bing to deliver future experiences that are more relevant to what you are working on. This will include automatically answering questions such as “Can I bring my wife and kids on a work trip?” by using machine reading comprehension that takes knowledge of the world and pairs it with understanding of your organization’s documents. Preview the Microsoft Search capability it as it rolls out to Office.com, Bing.com, and in the SharePoint mobile app today, with many more experiences to come in Edge, Windows, and Office.

Image shows Microsoft Search in Office.com.

Find what you need faster with Microsoft Search.

4. Create content that stands out with Microsoft 365

Three new features in Microsoft 365 use the power of AI to help you create content that shines. Ideas is a new feature that follows along as you create a document and makes intelligent suggestions. In PowerPoint, Ideas recommends designs, layouts, and images. In Excel, Ideas recognizes trends, suggests charts, and identifies outliers in your data. Ideas will be generally available in Excel soon and will also begin rolling out in preview to the other apps starting with PowerPoint Online. Additionally, new data types in Excel turn references to stocks and geographies into rich entities that can be used to build powerful, interactive spreadsheets. The Stocks and Geography data types—generally available soon—make it easy to get updated stock prices, company information, population, area, and more. Finally, new image recognition capabilities in Excel take a picture of a hand-drawn or printed data table and turn it into an Excel spreadsheet, making data entry as easy as taking a picture.

Animated image shows a laptop open and Ideas being used in PowerPoint.

In PowerPoint, Ideas recommends designs, layouts, and images for your presentation.

5. Office loves the Mac

Office empowers everyone to achieve more on any device. And Office loves the Mac. We’re committed to the Mac as a first-class endpoint and have made significant investments in the platform over the past year—including moving the Mac and Windows versions of the apps onto a single code base and releasing new features for the Mac every month. We also tailored new experiences for the Mac, like the new Touch Bar integration.

Today, we’re announcing OneDrive Files On-Demand for Mac, a way to access all your personal and work files from the cloud in Finder without using storage space and only download them when you need them. Files On-Demand gives the Mac an intelligent connection to the cloud and is just one more example of the power of Office on the Mac platform. Preview it before it rolls out to all Mac users.

Image shows OneDrive Files On-Demand on an open Mac.

OneDrive Files On-Demand for Mac displays all your OneDrive files in Finder but only downloads them when you need them.

6. Work together with your entire network with LinkedIn in Outlook and Office web apps

We’re announcing two new ways to use the power of the LinkedIn network within your daily workflow. Soon, when you connect your LinkedIn account to Office 365, you’ll be able to coauthor documents with people in your LinkedIn network in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and send emails to them directly from Outlook. This brings your corporate directory and your LinkedIn network together, so you never lose touch with the contacts who can help you succeed, inside or outside your organization. You’ll also see LinkedIn highlights about the people in your meeting invites, providing you with insights about attendees, so you can prep for important meetings quickly and easily. These features help you focus on what’s important by providing information and connections directly in your flow of work and will be coming soon in a staged rollout.

7. Deliver a modern desktop with Azure

For many companies, the specific needs of their business demand a virtualized desktop experience. Today, we are introducing Windows Virtual Desktop, the only cloud-based service that delivers a multi-user Windows 10 experience, which is optimized for Office 365 ProPlus and includes free Windows 7 Extended Security Updates. With Windows Virtual Desktop, you can deploy and scale Windows and Office on Azure in minutes with built-in security and compliance. Sign up to be notified of the preview availability.

8. Manage your environment with the Microsoft 365 admin center

Following our recent release of the new Microsoft 365 admin center, we’re announcing new features to help you to monitor and manage applications, services, data, devices, and users across your Microsoft 365 subscriptions, including Office 365, Windows 10, and EMS. The Microsoft 365 admin center has several new capabilities to help you better manage your environment, including insight-based recommendations, a more consistent UI, and customized views for each of your admins. The public preview of these features is rolling out now to targeted release admins and soon to all admins. To get started, visit admin.microsoft.com.

Image shows the Microsoft 365 admin center on an open laptop.

Manage your environment more easily with the Microsoft 365 admin center.

9. Achieve modern compliance easily for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and more

In the world of complex regulations and evolving privacy standards, customers consistently tell us they need the built-in, intelligent capabilities of Microsoft 365 to proactively achieve compliance in their organizations. We’ve expanded Compliance Manager to now include 12 assessments across different industries. The unified labeling experience is also now available in the Security & Compliance Center as a single destination where you can create, configure, and automatically apply policies to ensure protection and governance of sensitive data.

Image shows the Compliance Manager on a tablet.

Compliance Manager now includes 12 assessments across different industries.

10. Advancing security for IT professionals

The work we do in security at Microsoft gives us the broadest perspective on the challenges and a unique ability to help. We focus on three areas: running security operations that work for you, building enterprise-class technology, and driving partnerships for a heterogeneous world. Today, we’re announcing several new enterprise-class capabilities that leverage the Microsoft intelligent cloud and operational learnings to help organizations secure their people, devices, and data.

New support for passwordless sign-in via the Microsoft Authenticator app is now available for the hundreds of thousands of Azure Active Directory connected apps that businesses use every day. Nearly all data loss starts with compromised passwords. Today, we are declaring an end to the era of passwords. No company lets enterprises eliminate more passwords than Microsoft.

Microsoft Secure Score is the only enterprise-class dynamic report card for cybersecurity. By using it, organizations get assessments and recommendations that typically reduce their chance of a breach by 30-fold. It guides you to take steps like securing admin accounts with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), securing users accounts with MFA, and turning off client-side email forwarding rules. Starting today, we’re expanding Secure Score to cover all of Microsoft 365. We are also introducing Secure Score for your hybrid cloud workloads in the Azure Security Center, so you have full visibility across your estate.

Finally, we are announcing Microsoft Threat Protection, an integrated experience for detection, investigation, and remediation across endpoints, email, documents, identity, and infrastructure in the Microsoft 365 admin console. This will save analysts thousands of hours as they automate the more mundane security tasks.

Image shows Microsoft Secure Score in Microsoft 365 Security, on a tablet.

Microsoft Secure Score is expanding to cover all of Microsoft 365.

We look forward to bringing you these new ways to achieve more from unlocking creativity to advancing security. You can learn more about our announcements, see all of our Microsoft Ignite sessions live streaming or on-demand, and connect with experts on the Microsoft Tech Community.

Editor’s note 9/24/2018:
This post has been edited with updated information on the availability of Ideas and new data types in Excel.

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Julia White: How Microsoft Azure enables a new wave of edge computing

We are going through a technology transformation that is unlocking new scenarios that were simply not possible before. Smart sensors and connected devices are breathing new life into industrial equipment from factories to farms, smart cities to homes, while new devices are increasingly cloud connected by default – whether it’s a car or a refrigerator.

Simultaneously, hybrid cloud is evolving from being the integration of a datacenter with the public cloud, to becoming units of computing available at even the world’s most remote destinations working in connection with public cloud.

Bring these two realities together, with AI running across all systems, and we enter the era of the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge.

The intelligent cloud is ubiquitous computing enabled by the public cloud and powered with AI. In this way, we refer to Azure as the world’s computer, powering every type of intelligent application and system our customers envision.

The intelligent edge is the continually expanding set of connected systems and devices that gather and analyze information close to the physical world where data resides, to deliver real-time insights and immersive experiences that are highly responsive and contextually aware.

Enabling intelligent cloud and intelligent edge solutions requires a new class of distributed, connected applications and will ultimately deliver break-through business outcomes. These cloud/edge applications are built as a single solution yet run in a distributed fashion – optimized to take advantage of both robust cloud capabilities and edge locality. At the edge, the application is contextually aware and can run in both connected and disconnected states.

While the era of intelligent cloud and intelligent edge is new, the approach to building and running solutions that take advantage of this architecture is based on enduring principles. Fundamentally, a cloud/edge application must be developed and run as a single environment from the application services to AI to security and management.  

Today, I’d like to share with you how we’re building Azure cloud/edge capabilities aligned with these enduring principles while uniquely delivering consistency across the cloud and the edge:

  • Consistent app platform across cloud and edge. We’ve built Azure to provide consistency in programming models, data services, AI, and DevOps to simplify cloud/edge app development and ensure on-going app management is efficient. For example, you can develop an event-based application with Azure Functions that runs on Azure, on Azure Stack and on any device with Azure IoT Edge.

  • Holistic security. To provide security across the cloud/edge application, Azure Security Center provides unified security management and advanced threat protection for systems running in cloud and on the edge. We also recognize that cloud and edge environments have different security risks, so we have built additional protections including Azure Sphere’s ground-breaking security for MCU-based edge devices.

  • Single identity management. Providing single identity controls across the cloud/edge application is necessary to secure and manage applications wherever they reside. Azure Active Directory provides unified identity management and conditional access across the cloud and edge, providing protection from unauthorized access to apps and data wherever it resides.  

  • Consistent cloud and edge management. With an app distributed across different edge solutions, manageability of the devices and the code they run becomes an important consideration. Azure management tools for monitoring, running updates, backup, and disaster recovery span cloud resources in Azure and the app and devices running at the edge environment.

  • Artificial Intelligence. Tapping into the contextual insight from the edge provides Machine Learning models more robust data and thus better results. Azure enables you to combine data in the cloud and from the edge to develop ML models. Then, the same ML models developed and tested in Azure can be distributed to run across a massive set of certified devices running with Azure IoT Edge.

  • Comprehensive intelligent edge portfolio to meet every need. While Azure provides a robust set of cloud services and edge devices, we know the diversity at the edge will only grow. This is why we are equally investing with the ecosystem of ISVs, SIs, and solution providers to ensure you have the right edge solution for your unique business. Azure will continue to push the boundaries of the market as we’ve done with Azure Stack that is both cloud and edge, and Azure Sphere that provides unparalleled security for MCU based devices.

Consistency across intelligent cloud and intelligent edge_v02

Other cloud vendors claim support for cloud/edge computing with servers that run VMs or containers. However, this approach doesn’t recognize the massive diversity of edge devices and use cases, nor provides the consistent approach across app model, management, and security that enterprise solutions require. 

To further enable the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge approach, we are announcing a number of new Azure capabilities today.

  • Azure Digital Twins. This brand-new Azure service enables you to create a comprehensive digital model of any physical environment. This includes a model of people, places, and things as well as the relationships and processes that bind them. And, this digital model isn’t just a static experience. Azure Digital Twins connects the digital model directly with the devices and sensors in the physical world to keep the digital model always up-to-date. This enables two additional ground-breaking capabilities:

    • The ability for digital model changes to trigger business logic and workflows to the physical environment, through an event driven, workflow approach. For a simple example, when everyone has vacated a conference room you can instantly turn off the lights and lower the air conditioning.

    • Azure Digital Twins integrates seamlessly with Azure data and analytics services so you can track all past activities, run simulations, and predict the future of your digital model and physical environment.

  • Azure IoT Edge extended offline. To address the ever-expanding use cases at the edge, we are adding the capability for IoT devices to operate disconnected from the internet for extended periods with the public preview of Azure IoT Edge extended offline capability.

  • Azure IoT Central. Today, Azure IoT Central moves into general availability. Azure IoT Central is a fully managed global IoT SaaS (software-as-a-service) solution that makes it easy to connect, monitor, and manage your IoT assets at scale. This means you can bring your connected products to market faster and provide new value add services to your connection solution.

  • Azure Sphere preview. In February 2018, we announced Azure Sphere, a new solution for creating highly-secured, internet-connected microcontroller (MCU) devices running on the edge. Today, we are excited to announce broad availability of the first Azure Sphere dev kit and public preview of the Azure Sphere OS, Azure Sphere Security Service, and developer tools.

  • Azure Data Box Edge. Today we are announcing Azure Data Box Edge is available in preview. Azure Data Box Edge enables you to pre-process data at the edge and also move data to Azure efficiently. Azure Data Box Edge uses advanced FPGA hardware natively integrated into the appliance to run machine learning inference algorithms at the edge efficiently. The size and portability allow you to run Azure Data Box Edge as close to users, apps and data as needed.

  • Azure Stack. We began shipping our first Azure Stack systems a year ago and we have seen amazing solutions built by our customers to address disconnected and compliance use-cases. We have regularly released new services to run on Azure Stack and today, I’m excited to share that Azure Event Hubs will also be coming to Azure Stack. With Azure Event Hubs on Azure Stack, customers can run cloud-style telemetry ingestion from websites, apps, and any streams of data. We are also expanding capacity for Azure Stack systems enabling customers to use Azure Stack in even more scenarios.

We are also excited to see how customers and partners are solving real-world problems using intelligent cloud and intelligent edge solutions with Azure.

Schneider Electric is gaining a lot more business insight by proactively identifying pump problems real-time through predictive edge analytics. They can shut down pumps before damages occur, protecting machinery and preventing potential environmental damage. “In some critical systems—whether at an oil pump or in a manufacturing plant—you may have to make a decision in a matter of milliseconds,” says Matt Boujonnier, Analytics Application Architect for Schneider Electric. “By building machine learning algorithms into our applications and deploying analytics at the edge, we reduce any communication latency to the cloud or a central system, and that critical decision can happen right away.”

Cree, an innovator of power and radio frequency semiconductors, turned to Azure Data Box Edge to archive the millions of quality-control photos from their manufacturing processes to Azure. They also make use of the edge computing capabilities to package the images into a single file as part of the upload, which leads to easy  retrieval and management of the archived data later. This approach helps Cree manage their continued growth of storage without hampering the business. Cree also plans to use Azure Machine Learning to train a model in the cloud and  run it  on Data Box Edge to detect bad parts as they come off the production line, which enables Cree to easily scale their processes.

iMOKO, a digital health charity, wanted to make sure that the children and communities in remote areas, often without connectivity, have access to healthcare services. “Since using Microsoft Azure Stack, we’ve had a significant improvement in the performance of the iMOKO application. It runs really fast and well, even in rural and remote areas. The key reason for choosing the Azure Stack with Revera was around the reliability and trustworthiness in the healthcare setting,” said Jodi Mitchell, CEO for iMOKO. By using technology at the edge, iMOKO can place health services within an arm’s reach of everyone who needs it no matter where they are in New Zealand.

The intelligent cloud and intelligent edge make it possible to provide consistent power to critical institutions like hospitals and schools, manage precious resources like energy, food and water, as well as create devices that help people who have disabilities or diseases live more comfortably and connect with loved ones, and much more.

We look forward to welcoming you at Ignite 2018 where you will learn more about customers and partners using Azure solutions across the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge, the next wave of computing.

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Microsoft releases platform to build company-specific skills for Cortana

In a classic scene from the 1999 cult film Office Space, programmer Peter Gibbons is admonished for attaching the wrong cover sheet to a “TPS” report. Nearly two decades later, Microsoft is unveiling a platform for enterprises to enable the personal intelligent assistant Cortana to complete company-specific tasks, including correctly filing TPS reports.

The Cortana Skills Kit for Enterprise was presented Monday at the Microsoft Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida. The development platform is currently available by invitation only.

“At heart, we are about providing valuable assistance to users throughout their day. That assistance takes different forms depending on where the users are in their day and what they are trying to do,” said Javier Soltero, the Microsoft corporate vice president in charge of Cortana. “It’s important for enterprises to be able to enable their workforces to use Cortana to perform company-specific tasks.”

The development platform is powered by the Azure Bot Service and leverages Language Understanding from Azure Cognitive Services, allowing developers to create company-specific skills for Cortana using known and trusted tools, explained Vivek Goswami, a program manager on Soltero’s team. Additional features include control via Azure Active Directory over when skills are deployed and who can access them.

Soltero said the extension of Cortana skills development to enterprises is the start of a journey into a realm where voice and natural language are the primary means of interacting with technology.

“In the same way you don’t have to go around teaching people how to use a smartphone because they know how to touch and swipe, we have arrived there with voice, we are finally to, ‘Okay, now what can you do?’” he said.

The specific skills that enterprises will create for Cortana remain to be revealed, noted Goswami, who imagined scenarios ranging from human resources to smart building features such as a skill that allows employees to ask the personal intelligent assistant to schedule an office cleaning, saving 20 to 30 minutes of intranet surfing to make the arrangements themselves.

As a proof of concept, IT developers at Microsoft used the enterprise platform to create an IT help desk skill that enables Cortana to file tickets for employees who are having computer problems and connect them to someone who can help.

“One of the things that holds people back from getting better service from a help desk is the often-laborious task of filing the ticket in the first place,” noted Soltero. “You don’t bother because you’re in the middle of something so you restart the app or reboot your computer. You endure pain in different forms instead of actually getting the issue resolved.”

Now, a simple, natural language verbal request to Cortana frees Microsoft employees “to stay in the flow of what they are doing,” he added.

If such experiences prove successful in the workplace, modern workforce employees will be more likely to access Cortana outside of work, too. After all, few people carry two phones – one for work, one for personal use. Instead, they have one phone that’s loaded with both work apps and personal apps, work email and personal email, a work calendar and personal calendar.

“We can enable the blurring of those lines without compromising privacy or enterprise utility and, at the same time, delight the user,” explained Soltero, who led the successful development of the Outlook app for iOS and Android prior to working on Cortana.

Related:

John Roach writes about Microsoft research and innovation. Follow him on Twitter.

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Adobe, Microsoft and SAP announce the Open Data Initiative

Industry leaders team up to help customers connect data across their organizations, find powerful insights and deliver intelligent services with AI

Shantanu Narayen, CEO, Adobe, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP
Shantanu Narayen, CEO, Adobe (left), Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft (center), and Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP (right), introduced the Open Data Initiative at the Microsoft Ignite conference.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Sept. 24, 2018 — On Monday, the CEOs of Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and SAP (NYSE: SAP) introduced the Open Data Initiative at the Microsoft Ignite conference. Together, the three longstanding partners are reimagining customer experience management (CXM) by empowering companies to derive more value from their data and deliver world-class customer experiences in real-time.

In today’s world, data is a company’s most valuable asset. However, many businesses struggle to attain a complete view of their customer interactions and operations, because they are unable to connect information trapped in internal silos. At the same time, important customer information also resides in external silos with intermediary services and third-party providers, limiting a company’s ability to create the right connections, garner intelligence and ultimately extract more value from its own data in real time to better serve customers.

Companies around the world use software and services from Adobe, Microsoft and SAP to run product development, operations, finances, marketing, sales, human resources and more. Today, Adobe, Microsoft and SAP are joining forces to empower their mutual customers with the Open Data Initiative, which is a common approach and set of resources for customers based on three guiding principles:

  • Every organization owns and maintains complete, direct control of all their data.
  • Customers can enable AI-driven business processes to derive insights and intelligence from unified behavioral and operational data.
  • A broad partner ecosystem should be able to easily leverage an open and extensible data model to extend the solution.

Based on these principles, the core focus of the Open Data Initiative is to eliminate data silos and enable a single view of the customer, helping companies to better govern their data and support privacy and security initiatives. With the ability to better connect data across an organization, companies can more easily use AI and advanced analytics for real-time insights, “hydrate” business applications with critical data to make them more effective and deliver a new category of AI-powered services for customers.

“Adobe, Microsoft and SAP are partnering to reimagine the customer experience management category,” said Shantanu Narayen, CEO, Adobe. “Together we will give enterprises the ability to harness and action massive volumes of customer data to deliver personalized, real-time customer experiences at scale.”

“Together with Adobe and SAP we are taking a first, critical step to helping companies achieve a level of customer and business understanding that has never before been possible,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “Organizations everywhere have a massive opportunity to build AI-powered digital feedback loops for predictive power, automated workflows and, ultimately, improved business outcomes.”

“Microsoft, Adobe and SAP understand the customer experience is no longer a sales management conversation,” said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP. “CEOs are breaking down the silos of the status quo so they can get all people inside their companies focused on serving people outside their companies. With the Open Data Initiative, we will help businesses run with a true single view of the customer.”

To deliver on the Open Data Initiative, the three partners are enhancing interoperability and data exchange between their applications and platforms — Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Experience Platform, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP C/4HANA and S/4HANA — through a common data model. The data model will provide for the use of a common data lake service on Microsoft Azure. This unified data store will allow customers their choice of development tools and applications to build and deploy services.

With the Open Data Initiative, companies will be able to:

  • Unlock and harmonize siloed data to create new value
  • Bi-directionally move transactional, operational, customer or IoT data to and from the common data lake based on their preference or needs
  • Create data-powered digital feedback loops for greater business impact, while also helping to enable their security and privacy compliance initiatives
  • Build and adopt intelligent applications that natively understand data, relationships and metadata spanning multiple services from Adobe, SAP, Microsoft and their partners

Technology leaders at top retail and consumer products companies, such as The Coca-Cola Company, Unilever and Walmart, have expressed support and excitement about the Open Data Initiative.

“This initiative from Adobe, Microsoft and SAP is an important and strategic development for the Coca-Cola System,” said Barry Simpson, chief information officer at the Coca-Cola Company. “Our digital growth plans centered around our customers are fueled by these platforms and open standards. A more unified approach to the management and control of our data strengthens our ability to support our growth agenda and our ability to satisfy security, privacy and GDPR-compliance requirements. The industry needs to follow these leaders.”

“Every day, 2.5 billion people use a Unilever product in over 190 countries around the world,” said Jane Moran, CIO, Unilever. “The Open Data Initiative from Adobe, Microsoft and SAP is an important undertaking that will help us reimagine customer experience management by bringing together data across our entire organization to build more direct, meaningful relationships with consumers in real time.”

“We’re excited about the Open Data Initiative and the value it will unlock for Walmart,” said Clay Johnson, executive vice president and enterprise chief information officer, Walmart Inc. “With greater ability to connect and harness the power of our data, we can enhance the associate experience and create entirely new ways to serve our customers online and in our stores.”

More information is available at https://www.microsoft.com/opendatainitiative, https://www.adobe.com/experience-platform/open-data-initiative.html and http://www.sap.com/opendatainitiative.

About Adobe

Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

About SAP

As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 404,000 business and public sector customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

For more information, press only:

Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, +1 (425) 638-7777,

rrt@we-worldwide.com

Stefan Offerman, Adobe, (408) 536-4023, sofferma@adobe.com

Rajiv Sekhri, SAP, +49 6227 7-74871, rajiv.sekhri@sap.com

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.