At the Kamla Nehru Public School (KNPS) in Punjab’s Chak Hakim village, the teachers all tend to wear sports shoes. “Forget about fancy footwear,” says Charu Chhabra, the vice principal, with a chuckle. “When you have a principal who likes to run everywhere, you have to keep up too.” She is talking about Paramjeet Kaur Dhillon, who has led the sprawling institution with about 1,600 students since its founding in April 2007, when it had just six rooms and a strength of 68. Dhillon’s zeal to keep pace with the changing times is infectious, say her colleagues, and it is what has allowed them to swiftly respond to the pandemic. Together, they designed and rolled out a remote learning program as early as April, well before schools in urban settings had even grasped the new reality.
For the moment, the principal’s famous speedy gait is limited to her home, but she stops by in the various virtual classrooms every day. Her students—who come from 65 farming villages around the city of Phagwara in Punjab—log in over smartphones, tablets, and laptops with recently upgraded internet data plans. Classes typically last for six hours and they are so engaging, says Satinder Kaur, mother of a Grade 6 student, that her son actually misses studying on weekends and holidays. Over e-mail and instant messaging, schools from Delhi and Pune have asked the first movers in online teaching to share their secrets.
Dhillon herself had never seen a desktop until the late 1980s when she was teaching physics at the MGN School in Jalandhar. Members of the staff who wished to operate the fascinating machine were asked to attend lessons after class hours, and Dhillon signed up promptly. For weeks, she would pack extra tiffin boxes for her two small children and set out on a moped to learn the fundamentals of computing. All evening and the next morning, algorithms and binary codes would run through her head. “I dreamed about computers,” she recalls. “I was always eager to update myself so that I could teach my students too.”
Little surprise then that information technology has been front and center of the curriculum at KNPS. Dhillon is often heard saying she does not want students to feel let down, as if she “only given them half a loaf”. As such, they evaluate themselves not only against peers in India but also the world. The school offers kindergarten to Grade 12 education and its students belong mostly to modest households. Several are first-generation learners. Their parents, while not highly literate, raise money abroad by working in factories or driving cabs. It lets them afford electronic devices and schooling for their offspring. “They want their children to have the things which they could not access growing up,” says the principal.
Fluency in the English language and technology are particularly valued by parents in this milieu. An attempt in 2014 to go from bags-to-laptops flopped as many did not have laptops. “We had tried so at least we knew how you fail,” Dhillon remembers. “Nothing can be made mandatory in a village school.” Through a partnership in 2015, KNPS became a Microsoft Showcase school. That is when a softer approach to integrated digital learning with the curriculum began in the form of bring-your-own-devices or BYOD. Some parents had apprehensions about introducing their wards to the Internet early on, but they came around after reassurances. Children shared devices and familiarized themselves with Microsoft’s learning tools such as OneNote for taking notes, Kahoot! for game-based learning, and Sway for making presentations.
Let’s say, for example, you want to keep track of that pollen level. You would navigate to the website where that information exists, click on the specific data you want to track, then save the page as a pin within the assistant extension.
The pollen level will then display on your personal assistant dashboard, which will update as new information is available. It might be one of a dozen types of information your personal assistant tracks and displays, from package tracking to unread emails to campsite availability. And you can ask to be notified if that pollen level hits a certain value or have your assistant automatically book you a campsite and let you know.
Those notifications could come on the browser itself or via a not-yet-built mobile app, made possible because the browser is running in the cloud and uses WebDriver to simulate basic browser navigation such as clicking and scrolling. For tasks like checking email, the user’s cookies would be securely passed to the cloud and used to refresh the data.
But, of course, your new assistant is just getting to know you and your needs, so it may not get everything right on the first try.
That’s why another critical piece of the project is a user’s ability to search for information using their own natural language, and to continuously provide feedback to train the personal assistant to become more useful over time.
So, if you type “What is the ragweed pollen level today?” into the search bar on your personal assistant dashboard – or, eventually, ask it out loud through your app – your personal assistant would display what it thinks is the information you’re after. If it gets it wrong, you tell it.
Over time, the personal assistant not only gets more accurate, but learns your specific style of searching.
“The trainability of this model is really compelling,” said Jeff Ramos, who heads the Microsoft Garage. “It could really set Edge apart in the browser space and even automate tasks across platforms.”
For many governments, the world changed on March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. While several had been planning and preparing months in advance to address the virus and its cascading effects, many governments were unfortunately caught off guard by its rapid spread and were left scrambling to find ways to keep the numerous varied aspects of government from completely shutting down.
Fighting the pandemic and its fallout have been incremental challenges on top of government’s responsibility to provide “everyday services” such as providing social benefits and support to citizens with existing needs, delivering the mail, and issuing business or building permits—all of which help keep the economy from collapsing. Additionally, governments are experiencing historic levels of applications for social service benefits from citizens affected by the economic fallout of the pandemic. Governments need to address this unique combination of challenges, and do it while maintaining social distancing and following other COVID-19 safety protocols, which in many cases meant government offices being shut indefinitely.
However, several months into the pandemic there is cause for hope. While the virus continues to ebb and flow at different rates around the world, most governments are getting a good grip on the situation as they adjust to “the new normal.” Thanks in large part to the use of technology, many governments are now able to maintain vital services that citizens depend on day to day, while they were also creating new functions required to address the unprecedented public health, economic, and societal challenges associated with COVID-19.
Of course, the technology industry has not been sitting still in the face of this global crisis. Microsoft has been investing heavily to increase the scale and security of technology offerings. Those of us on Microsoft’s Government Industry Team are leveraging technology applications from other industries to help governments address their current set of challenges.
One example is a new offer just launched in July to help the retail industry combat fraud: the new Dynamics Fraud Protection offering was originally developed for retail, using sophisticated AI and Machine Learning technology to prevent fraud. Governments are unfortunately experiencing historic levels of social benefit fraud, which has coincided with the historic increase of social benefit applications mentioned earlier. Governments are beginning to adopt the Account Protection module from this new Dynamics service to prevent fraudulent accounts from being created, effectively preventing fraudulent benefit payments.
Another example comes from leveraging a healthcare use case: telemedicine and televisits. Governments face the challenge of maintaining continuity of care for their citizen-clients receiving social care and benefits. We are working with partners such as Avanade, Accenture, and others to adapt the Microsoft Teams Virtual Visits functionality originally created for telemedicine in the healthcare industry to meet the specific needs of government social services customers.
These are just a few examples of how governments have transformed virtually overnight by implementing innovative and transformative technology solutions that facilitate cross-agency collaboration, enable government employees to remotely access to government systems, and ensure the delivery of trusted and secure services to citizens, business, and other stakeholders—all while ensuring security and compliance requirements.
Here are some additional examples of how governments are using Microsoft technology to run their operations and serve their citizens while responding to the COVID-19 crisis.
Remote employee access to government systems:
Traditionally, most government workplaces have required their workers to come into an office and use government-specific applications running on ‘enterprise’ computers on a government network. When COVID-19 safety protocols dictated that offices around the world must close, many governments turned to Microsoft and its partners to help them enable remote work for their employees without sacrificing security or compliance. These solutions have enabled governments to maintain continuity operations and continue to deliver essential services to citizens and businesses.
The city of Langnau am Albis in Switzerland is using Microsoft 365 to maintain operations for the community and provide secure communication and collaboration. Recently they conducted their first virtual municipal council meeting which took place using Teams.
Likewise, the Lleida City Council in Spain is using virtual desktop technology along with Teams to enable over 1600 employees to work from home and maintain operations across the city.
For years the Gauteng Government in South Africa has taken steps on their digital transformation journey to enable its employees to work from home. However, those plans were accelerated due to the COVID-19 crisis. The adoption of Microsoft 356, and especially Microsoft Teams, has enhanced communication and collaboration across the government’s enterprise.
Cross-agency collaboration:
There has never been a more important time for government entities to coordinate and collaborate to ensure an effective response to the pandemic and ensure efficient operations. Microsoft Teams and applications built on Azure and Power Platform delivered by Microsoft partners are enabling new ways of collaboration across government agencies.
For example, Microsoft partner Radix has helped the Brazilian Agency for Industrial Development (BAID) create an app that matches medical and dental care providers seeking Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and the manufactures and associations providing PPE. This app is helping protect frontline health workers across Brazil.
Deliver trusted and secure services:
Governments exist to serve their citizens, and Microsoft technologies are helping ensure essential services are not interrupted during this crisis.
For example, the Cheshire West and Chester Council, United Kingdom is using a Bot to help answer the 500 percent increase in citizen inquiries about topics ranging from coronavirus symptoms and social care to changes with the Council Tax to waste collection, among others. This has freed Council staff to work on other aspects of service delivery.
The Poste Italiane (Italian Postal Service) is partnering with Microsoft to accelerate its digital transformation plans to modernize the Postal Service and speed the nation’s recovery by using AI and Dynamics 365 among other technologies.
In Sao Palo, Brazil, the Bom Prato program from the Secretariat of Social Development of the State of Sao Palo is helping feed 8000 meals to the homeless throughout the city of Sao Palo. This is enabled by an app created on the Power Apps platform and Dynamics 365 used by field agents assisting the homeless.
These are just a few examples of how governments are using Microsoft’s latest technologies to not only respond to this crisis but adapt to the ‘new normal’ and set themselves up to successfully deal with the next crisis—which hopefully will not take place anytime soon.
Since schools and universities had to make the unexpected move to remote learning earlier this year, education leaders, faculty, and teachers from all over the world have been innovating and adapting to ensure quality learning for students. As hybrid and remote learning continues into this next school year, educators are applying lessons from the recent past to navigate the ongoing transition, while updating approaches and processes to respond to new government reporting regulations.
To support teachers, faculty, schools, universities, and education systems, today we are announcing expanded capabilities of the Education Insights app in Microsoft Teams, with new features available in preview now.* New views showcase student engagement data to help school and university leaders better understand how remote learning approaches and pedagogy are performing. With insights spanning entire institutions, districts, and systems, leaders can more easily discover trends, identify opportunities for improvement, and adapt and personalize their teaching and learning strategies.
The new view is designed to help education leaders:
Ensure equity and continuity of teaching in remote settings, and identify students at risk by tracking their engagement over time
Identify trends in engagement and interaction across schools and grade levels
Discover and celebrate best practices in remote instruction and provide leaders with school- and system-level insights
Comply with regulations for digital engagement reporting with one-click data export
Critically, Education Insights ensures security and protection of students’ sensitive information. Each report is only available to approved staff members who are given permissions by the IT admin. The information collected and shown meets more than 90 regulatory and industry standards, including GDPR and the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). For more technical information, visit the Insights support page.
Shine a spotlight on class activity and student learning
Identify at-risk students with the Student Digital Activity Report
Identify trends in engagement and interaction with leader view
The data from the whitepaper “Disruptions and Opportunities: Lessons from Hybrid Learning” revealed that educators who use Microsoft Teams report high levels of confidence in their ability to assess remote learning outcomes. The functionality in the Education Insights app supports and expands effective assessment with access to information that is helpful for both educators and leaders.
Cody Grindle, VP of Information Systems at IDEA Public Schools, said:
“The new Insights dashboard for leaders gives us actionable information on student engagement and virtual learning across our network. The near real-time activity metrics and report export features provide effective tools not only for attendance and daily/weekly trends, but also to provide student- level data for research across other academic indicators.”
Remote and hybrid learning is challenging for all, but with Insights in Microsoft Teams for Education, leaders, faculty, and teachers can stay up to date with how students and classes are progressing, and take action to ensure the best learning outcomes. If you’re already using Microsoft Teams for Education, the new features are available to preview in the Insights app for free, so install the app.* If you’re not yet using Teams, click here to get started. For more information and resources, visit our hybrid learning resource page.
*Note: The Education Insights app is available now, and the new features are available to preview for anyone who currently has an A1, A3, or A5 faculty M365 license.
This school year, parents, teachers, and students are likely dealing with remote, virtual, distance, or hybrid learning, rather than heading back to the classroom. With learning (and maybe working, too) taking place wherever there’s room in your home, a good computer can help with academic success in a remote environment. Here are some tips to get set up and ready to go.
1. Customize the PC settings
Everyone learns things and does tasks differently—and Windows 10 PCs are designed to adapt.
You can also set parental controls in Family Options. This is to help ensure younger kids stay safe as they explore the Internet. Set screen limits for games and apps to build healthy habits on the PC. Whenever you want to make changes, just start with the Settings panel. There’s a search bar built in, so you can instantly find the options you’re looking for.
2. Set up a note-taking system
OneNote makes it easy to take, keep, and organize notes from classes, study sessions, and test preparation. For example, you can start by organizing and labeling sections by the classes on schedules and the materials you’ll get for them, like readings, class recordings, and practice tests. That way, they’re ready to receive documents from the teacher and will have everything organized and in one place when it’s time for exams.
You’ll be grateful to have a digital notebook when you need to find specific facts like the information the teacher said would “definitely be on the test.” Rather than flipping through your notebook page after page, just search in OneNote.
By adjusting these settings before you start the school year, you’re preparing for academic success. You increase productivity by organizing everything in one place where it can be referenced anytime and on any device.
3. Get Microsoft Office for free
Got an email address ending in .edu? Then you’re in luck. For eligible students and educators, Office 365 Education version is free!
Make remote learning easier with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Microsoft Teams, and more. Why you should download it right now:
Work together with real-time coauthoring, autosaving, and easy sharing in your favorite web apps: Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
Stay on top of your email with Outlook for the web and a 50 GB mailbox.1
Enjoy a digital hub that integrates the conversations, calls, content, and apps your school needs to be more collaborative and engaged with Microsoft Teams.
Use built-in accessibility features and Learning Tools that support reading, writing, math, and communication.
Never run out of space with unlimited personal OneDrive cloud storage.2
4. Never lose your work
Teachers understand that technology is imperfect. But with cloud storage becoming the norm, it’s assumed that work can and will be recoverable if the PC falls off a bed, was accidentally was left on top of the microwave, or gets swallowed by your roommate’s golden retriever.
When you enable backup and restore files and folders with OneDrive, you can safeguard term papers, school projects, and even class notes. But it’s not set to back up by default—you have to tell it which folders you want saved! You can then access them on any device or retrieve them wherever you or the student in your life finds themselves studying. You can even password-protect folders containing your most sensitive files.
If you don’t already have a great computer for your student, check out our tips on what to look for in a new computer. If you already have a computer, the setup tips outlined here will help you increase productivity, keep organized, and protect work to help increase your academic success during remote learning.
By Mike Tholfsen Posted on August 26, 2020 at 7:40 am
Save teachers and students time and effort with new transcription capabilities in Word
By Mike Tholfsen
Educators and students are actively spending time and energy adapting to virtual learning while handling life at home. Our bandwidth to figure out new processes, keep track of various conversations, and digitize workflows while still aspiring to do our best work is limited and that’s why we’re excited to share that Transcribe in Word is here.
Easy transcriptions save you time, effort, and help better remember conversations
There are several scenarios where Transcribe in Word can help – in example,
For post-interview processing: From student assignments like interviewing a career role model to formal research studies, a lot of time is wasted today manually re-listening and transcribing recordings to gather quotes and annotate patterns. Students with may struggle focusing on the conversation while jotting down notes.
For making the most of feedback sessions: Students may need feedback early in their essay-writing process, but when grading comes around, it may be difficult for educators to recollect all the suggestions given from an earlier chat. On the flip side, students may be overwhelmed by all the details in verbal feedback sessions as they try their best to remember it later.
For referencing notes after meetings or video conferences: Educators may forgo jotting down notes in parent-teacher meeting to be present in the moment, but wish they had key details later.
For creating during projects: Whether it’s for extracurricular clubs or hobbies such as journalism with the school paper or making a new podcast, a lot of time can be spent working with audio and video media or manually writing up transcripts to publish.
Transcribe in Word can help you stay focused on your conversation in the moment or preserve valuable time and energy by converting speech into text.
Getting started
Make sure you’re signed into Microsoft 365 using the Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome web browser
Go to the Home tab > Dictate dropdown > Transcribe button
Select Start recording to Upload audio
Check out your new transcript with timestamps, speaker labels, audio playback, and options to add the content into the document
Tip: To make this work over a video conferencing call, just start recording in Word while no headset is used so Word can pick up the sound coming out of the device.
Conversations that are recorded or uploaded are saved to your personal OneDrive. Transcribe individually separates different speakers so it’s clear which part was said by a teacher versus a student. After the conversation, parts of the recording can be played back by clicking on timestamped audio and the transcript can be edited.
With smartphones being ubiquitous for educators and students alike, Transcribe enables upload of audio that was recorded outside of Word. Whether recorded on a phone or elsewhere, simply select the file to upload and transcribe. Transcribe supports .
The transcript will appear alongside the Word document, along with the recording which can be played back to hear how something was said, not just read what was said. Want to send or work with an entire transcript? Simply click “add all to document” and the full transcript will be laid out in Word.
Here is a detailed video showing the entire scenario, step by step:
[embedded content]
Transcribe in Word is available in Word for the web for all Microsoft 365 subscribers. Currently, only transcribing audio into English (EN-US) is supported. Transcribe in Office mobile will be coming by the end of the year. For more detailed steps see: Transcribe in Word
Since its launch in November 2019, Microsoft HoloLens 2 has helped enterprises in manufacturing, construction, healthcare, and retail onboard employees more quickly, complete tasks faster, and greatly reduce errors and waste. It sets the high-water mark for intelligent edge devices by leveraging a multitude of sensors and a dedicated ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) to allow multiple real-time computer vision workloads to run continuously. In Research Mode, HoloLens 2 is also a potent computer vision research device. (Note: Research Mode is available today to Windows Insiders and soon in an upcoming release of Windows 10 for HoloLens .)
Compared to the previous edition, Research Mode for HoloLens 2 has the following main advantages:
In addition to sensors exposed in HoloLens 1 Research Mode, we now also provide IMU sensor access (these include an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer).
HoloLens 2 provides new capabilities that can be used in conjunction with Research Mode. Specifically, articulated hand-tracking and eye-tracking which can be accessed through APIs while using research mode, allowing for a richer set of experiments.
With Research Mode, application code can not only access video and audio streams, but can also simultaneously leverage the results of built-in computer vision algorithms such as SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) to obtain the motion of the device as well as the spatial-mapping algorithms to obtain 3D meshes of the environment. These capabilities are made possible by several built-in image sensors that complement the color video camera normally accessible to applications.
HoloLens 2 has four grayscale head-tracking cameras and a depth camera to sense its environment and perform articulated hand tracking. It also has two additional infrared cameras and accompanying LEDs that are used for eye tracking and iris recognition. As shown in Figure 1, two of the grayscale cameras are configured as a stereo rig, capturing the area in front of the device so that the absolute depth of tracked visual features can be determined through triangulation. Meanwhile, the two additional grayscale cameras help provide a wider field of view to keep track of features. These synchronized global-shutter cameras are significantly more sensitive to light than the color camera and can be used to capture images at a rate of up to 30 frames per second (FPS).
Figure 1: Hololens 2 Research Mode enables access to the gray-scale, depth camera and IMU sensors on device. This complements the color camera normally available to applications.
The depth camera uses active infrared (IR) illumination to determine depth through phase-based time-of-flight. The camera can operate in two modes. The first mode enables high-framerate (45 FPS) near-depth sensing, commonly used for hand tracking, while the other mode is used for lower-framerate (1-5 FPS) far-depth sensing, currently used by spatial mapping. As hands only need to be supported up to 1 meter from the device, HoloLens 2 saves power by reducing the number of illuminations, which results in the depth wrapping around beyond one meter . For example, something at 1.3 meters will appear at 0.3 meters in HoloLens 2 in this case. In addition to depth, this camera also delivers actively illuminated IR images (in both modes) that can be valuable in their own right because they are illuminated from the HoloLens and reasonably unaffected by ambient light. Azure Kinect uses the same sensor package, but with slightly different depth modes.
With the newest Windows Insider release of Windows 10 for HoloLens, researchers now have the option to enable Research Mode on their HoloLens devices to gain access to all of these external facing raw image sensors streams. Research Mode for HoloLens 2 also provides researchers with access to the accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer readings. To protect users’ privacy, raw eye-tracking camera images are not available through Research Mode. Researchers can access eye-gaze direction through existing APIs.
For other sensor streams, researchers can also still use the results of the built-in computer vision algorithms and can now also choose to use the raw sensor data for their own algorithms.
The sensors’ streams can either be processed or stored on device or transferred wirelessly to another PC or to the cloud for more computationally demanding tasks. This opens a wide range of new computer vision applications for HoloLens 2. HoloLens 2 is particularly well suited as a platform for egocentric vision research as it can be used to analyze the world from the perspective of a user wearing the device. For these applications, HoloLens devices’ abilities to visualize results of the algorithms in the 3D world in front of the user can be a key advantage. HoloLens sensing capabilities can also be very valuable for robotics where these can, for example, enable a robot to navigate its environment.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced today the creation of several multidisciplinary Quantum Information Science Research Centers in support of the National Quantum Initiative.
Today marks one of the U.S. government’s largest investments in this field. It is also a noteworthy moment for Microsoft, which is providing scientific leadership, in addition to expertise in workforce development and technology transfer.
Microsoft is one of the five core founding members of one of the newly-formed centers, the Quantum Science Center (QSC), along with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and Purdue University. In addition to the Quantum Science Center, Microsoft is also a partner in the Q-NEXT center, led by Argonne National Laboratory and joined by Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. And finally, Microsoft is enrolled in the External Advisory Board of the Quantum Science Accelerator Center, led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and joined by Sandia National Laboratory.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), a longstanding DOE Lab collaborator with Microsoft and co-founding member of Northwest Quantum Nexus, will also participate in QSC and Q-NEXT. In both these Centers, Microsoft and PNNL will continue their work on quantum chemistry, algorithms, and tools, leveraging earlier innovations involving NWChem and the QDK.
As has been our impact and experience with other collaborations involving U.S. government entities, universities, and Microsoft, the newly-created QIS Research centers will bring together the best of the public and private sector together to solve the scientific problems that lie on the path to a commercial-scale quantum computer.
While quantum computing will someday have a profound impact, today’s quantum computing systems are still nascent technologies. To scale these systems, we must overcome a number of scientific challenges.
Microsoft has been tackling these challenges head-on through our work towards developing topological qubits, classical information processing devices for quantum control, new quantum algorithms, and simulations. Our team has been collaborating with universities globally since its inception, even opening labs on the campuses of UC Santa Barbara, Purdue University, the University of Sydney, Copenhagen University, and the Technical University of Delft. With today’s announcement, the efforts and expertise of this global network will be taken to the next level across a number of areas.
We believe that we will need to explore new materials combinations in order to realize significant performance improvements in topological qubits, and DOE National Labs have vast experience with the exploration of materials. They also have unique tools, such as a spallation neutron source and synchrotrons for probing the properties of these materials in order to screen them for use in quantum devices. Together, Microsoft and its partners in the DOE’s labs can design the probes of the future that are tailored for topological quantum materials.
At the other end of the quantum computing stack, the Centers can bolster our efforts to benchmark quantum algorithms and protocols for qubit validation and verification. Oak Ridge’s Leadership Computing Facility features a number of near-term quantum computing testbeds, while our Azure Quantum service is backed by Microsoft’s cloud computing expertise and infrastructure, as well as decades of research in quantum algorithms and languages such as our high-level quantum programming language Q#, which can be targeted at near-term quantum computing testbeds and also at the quantum computers of the future.
Today’s announcement connects extensive public-private expertise, resources, and funding to tackle the tough problems ahead and accelerate progress.
As we gear up for our annual Ignite conference, I’m struck by how much we’ve learned these past few months—from our customers, from researchers and experts in every field, and from our own experiences at Microsoft navigating remote and hybrid work models. For all of us, these lessons extend to our home lives as well. Maybe you’re coordinating factory floor operations from a kitchen table hundreds of miles away or greeting your Grandpa on a video screen as he virtually attends a family picnic, it’s probably dawned on you that our world is changing in durable ways. As we work to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, we’re learning to embrace a heterogeneous future. Our mission is to enable people, teams, and organizations to thrive in this new world of remote and hybrid work and learning. Last month at Inspire, I shared how we’re working together with our partners to build new experiences for our customers designed to connect people, inspire creativity, and foster innovation. (To learn more how we’re meeting the evolving demands of the “next normal” with Microsoft 365, you can also check out my Inspire session).
We’re committed as ever to develop technology that helps you keep moving forward, no matter if you’re fully remote or in a hybrid work environment. This month, we’re releasing new features in Microsoft Teams to help users automate more of their workflow, ideate on digital whiteboards more easily, help improve readability while browsing the web, and more.
Let’s take a deeper look at these updates and what else is new in August.
Manage Tasks and more in Teams
New features to manage tasks, automate workflows, and streamline collaboration in Teams.
Stay on top of tasks without leaving Teams—Managing your tasks gets easier if you don’t have to flip between places to see them all. The new Tasks app in Teams provides a new unified view of tasks and assignments from across Microsoft To Do, Planner, and Outlook, helping you consolidate and prioritize your tasks. Along with a consolidated view of your tasks, we’ve also added a new List view with the ability to edit multiple tasks at once, Graph API and Power Automate integrations, and task publishing capabilities to come. The new experience is rolling out to desktop users now. To get started, add the “Planner” app (the name will later change to “Tasks”) to your Teams client or add it as a tab at the top of a Teams channel.
Simplify actions and alert teammates more easily with new Power Automate capabilities—We’re adding new actions and triggers to Power Automate in Teams to allow users to streamline their workflow. Using the new “create a team” action, you’ll be able to seamlessly spin up a new team as part of your business process—such as automatically creating a team site with members for a project you’re working on. Also, you can now use @mentions in your flows to make sure important messages reach the intended recipient.
We’ve also added two new triggers to Power Automate. Using the “for a selected message action” trigger, you can now create customized message actions to initiate critical business processes directly from a message—including converting a message in a chat into a Sales opportunity in Dynamics. Also, when a team member is removed from a team, specific actions can be set in motion—like notifying the team owner. To get started, open the “Flow” app in Microsoft Teams and start building a flow with these two new triggers.
Boost productivity with Microsoft Teams apps designed for remote work—In a remote and hybrid work environment, ensuring everyone is informed, aligned, and engaged can be difficult. We’ve created a new web page with a curated a list of apps for Microsoft Teams that can help improve collaboration and productivity. From managing marketing campaigns and building sales proposals to solving issues with automating responses and prioritizing tasks, these apps will help keep you connected and moving forward in a remote and hybrid world.
Access Visio directly from a tab within Teams channels—As part of our commitment to make collaborating on Visio diagrams within Teams seamless, we have added “Visio as a tab.” Visio tabs in Teams allow team members to quickly access content in a dedicated space within a channel or in a chat. Adding a tab in Teams is available to all Teams users (editing is only available for those with a Visio Plan 1 or Plan 2 subscription). This feature is now available.
Collaborate and organize your work more effectively
New features to help you collaborate more effectively in meetings, access and create Visio diagrams, and browse the web more productively.
Run effective meetings, brainstorm, and think creatively with updates to Whiteboard in Teams—Though many of us aren’t physically together these days, we all still need our brainstorming and creative thinking sessions. But this can be hard in a remote and hybrid work environment. We’ve added new features to Whiteboard in Teams to make it easier to keep the creative process moving forward virtually. Now, you can quickly add sticky notes to a canvas, making it easier to contribute if you’re using a device without a digital pen. We’ve also added the ability to move and re-order objects on the canvas through a simple drag and drop gesture. Finally, we’ve improved the performance, so Whiteboard is now faster than ever. Learn more about these new capabilities and other features in our Whiteboard Help section.
Improve readability and manage notes more effectively in Microsoft Edge—60% of the time people spend on the PC is within the web browser, and it has become the primary way we work, learn and play. That’s why it’s critical that your web browser enables your productivity and helps keep you safe. This month we’re releasing several new capabilities for Edge. First, Collections now allows you to export to OneNote. When you send to OneNote, all your collected content retains its formatting, so you get visual links and all your notes organized neatly.
We’re also bringing Picture Dictionary to Immersive Reader in Microsoft Edge. Picture Dictionary will provide a picture representation of a selected word on a web page to help increase comprehension. Get started by turning on the Picture Dictionary toggle in Reading Preferences.
Lastly, we’ve added 5 different highlighter colors, support for screen readers, and the ability to view and validate digital signatures to the built-in PDF reader.
Streamline user and app deployments
New capabilities and resources to help your IT departments streamline new roll outs.
Provision users to Azure AD from SAP SuccessFactors —With the integration between Azure AD and SAP SuccessFactors, you can now automate user access to applications and resources so that a new hire can be up and running with full access to the necessary applications on day one. The integration also helps you reduce dependencies on IT helpdesk for onboarding and offboarding tasks. Get started now by following our documentation.
Request help while deploying Microsoft 365 in your organization —Getting new tools deployed quickly and efficiently is critical to maintaining productivity. To help ensure we’re here for our customers, we’ve streamlined the process for requesting assistance from FastTrack for Microsoft 365. FastTrack is a benefit that comes with your Microsoft 365 subscription, at no additional cost, for customers with eligible plans of 150+ licenses. To get started, sign in and select “Request assistance from FastTrack for Microsoft 365.”
Quickly secure your Windows 10 PCs through a simplified security policy setup experience—With so many employees working remotely, it’s important to ensure their PCs are protected. We are rolling out a new setup experience within Microsoft 365 admin center that makes it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to deploy a lightweight security baseline policy for protecting their Windows 10 computers. This new experience will ensure their devices have the appropriate protections configured—such as encrypting hard drives with BitLocker or locking the screen when users walk away—and are better protected from unauthorized access and malicious threats like viruses and malware. This new policy applies to all Windows 10 devices that are enrolled in Microsoft Intune with a Microsoft 365 Business Premium subscription plan.
Application Guard, which helps desktop users stay safer and more productive by opening Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files in a virtualized container, is now generally available.
As organizations are navigating their transition to a more sustainable, hybrid workplace, we are committed to developing technologies that help people, teams, and organizations thrive. All of these updates are aimed at enabling people to collaborate securely and productively from anywhere. We invite you to stay tuned as we share many exciting new announcements next month at Ignite!
How has your career and outlook evolved over the years?
The first decade of my career was very technical in its focus. I was a research kind of person then. I wrote a lot of technical papers and got published.
Then came my reinvention. I was technically strong, but I started to recognize a need to understand the big picture. That is, how to take technical advances and create an impact in the real world.
So, I went back to school and did an MBA at Wharton (at the University of Pennsylvania.) I went into consulting and worked in a range of roles. Nowadays, I am focused on issues like responsible AI, ethics, and policy.
That brings us to your current role at Microsoft. Can you explain what a National Technology Officer does?
My role involves thinking about the next generation of technology – emerging topics that are beyond our current horizon. How will these impact not only our business and our customers, but also society as a whole? It is a technology-specific role with a national circle of concern.
I look at how Microsoft can help my country achieve its potential. How it can empower people, communities, and governments. The effects of technology go well beyond business. They impact individuals and society as well.
Tell us about your work as part of the Sensitive Uses Working Group of AETHER?
We look at the challenges that AI innovations can bring across the globe. It’s a matter of not just asking what AI can do, but what AI should do. There are situations when we need to pause and think about where we are heading and the consequences.
We have laid out six ethical principles for AI: fairness; reliability and safety; privacy and security; inclusiveness; transparency; and accountability.
By holding these principles up like a mirror, we set standards for the company and guidelines for our customers and partners.
Why did you join this group?
I was asked to join the effort and at first I declined. I believed I had just too much on my plate with all my other responsibilities. But then, the following weekend, I watched a documentary about how technology was used to interfere with the (2016) U.S. elections.
It made me realize that I had to contribute. It was just too important. Sometimes serendipity makes you realize that your day job is not enough. You are being called to do something that is above and beyond. And you must rise to the opportunity, no matter what.
You work across India, which is a massive and diverse nation. How important is it for Microsoft to pursue policies of diversity and inclusiveness globally?
Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. To empower people, you need to have some understanding of their perceptions and backgrounds.
So, we need diversity and inclusion in our company to really have a shot at carrying out our mission. We also need to be inclusive. I am a pretty bold person, and I do speak my mind. It is not just a gender thing.
But as a woman, perhaps, and also as a former strategy consultant, I am pretty perceptive about what is happening in a room or in a team. Are people stressed? Are people getting on each other’s nerves? Or is somebody feeling that they are not being included? You must care and be courageous about calling that out.
