Peruse dashboards and drill into data specifics to make informed strategic decisions.

An online immersion session is not your typical online event. Each 90-minute interactive session starts with an online roundtable discussing your business challenges and then launches you into a live environment in the cloud. A skilled facilitator will guide you through simulated business scenarios that are customized to your interests.

We will send you a link to connect your own device to a remote desktop loaded with our latest and greatest technology, so you can experience first-hand how Microsoft tools can solve your biggest challenges in a collaborative, fun environment.

Online immersion sessions help you discover how to:

• Keep information secure while being productive—Make it easier to work securely and maintain compliance without inhibiting your workflow.
• Capture, review and share notes from anywhere—Boost your team’s productivity by sharing documents and collaborating in real time.
• Use social tools to find experts and answers—Break down barriers between departments to share knowledge quickly.
• Quickly visualize and analyze complex data—Zero in on the data and insights you need without having to involve a BI expert.
• Co-author and share content quickly—Access and edit documents even while others are editing and reviewing them—all at the same time.

Expect to leave the session with enough time-saving skills to more than offset your time investment within a few short days.

Each session is only open to 20 participants. Reserve your seat now and learn how you can be more productive anywhere, anytime with Office 365.

Sessions are held at 10 a.m. PT and 12 p.m. PT every Wednesday. Register now!

The post Find and leverage collective intelligence to produce higher impact deliverables using Office 2016 and Windows 10 appeared first on Office Blogs.

We’re excited to announce the .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 release today. It includes support for additional Linux distributions, has many updates and is the first Current release. I will describe all of these changes below. The release is a preview release and is intended as an early look at the .NET Core 1.1 release. It is not “Go Live” and is not yet recommended for production workloads.

ASP.NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 and Entity Framework Core 1.1 Preview 1 are also shipping today. Please check out those releases, too.

You can download the release now:

• Windows x64
• Windows x86
• macOS x64
• Linux x64

You can see the full set of .NET Core 1.1 downloads on the .NET Core Preview Download page.

.NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 Docker image will be posted shortly.

You can find the existing .NET Core 1.0 releases on the dot.net/core page. .NET Core 1.1 will also be listed on that page once it is shipped as a stable release.

Improvements

The .NET Core 1.1 release is the first 1.x minor update. Its primary product theme is adding support for new operating system distributions.

Operating System Distributions

Support for the following distributions was added:

• Fedora 24
• Linux Mint 18
• OpenSUSE 42.1
• macOS 10.12
• Windows Server 2016

You can see the full set of supported distributions in the .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 release notes.

APIs

1380 APIs were added in this release. You can see the complete set in the API Difference .NET Core App 1.0 (ref) vs .NET Core App 1.1 (ref) document.

APIs were added to enable specific scenarios. There was no specific theme to the API additions.

No new .NET Standard version was created. .NET Standard 2.0 support is still coming.

Fixes

Many specific product changes were made. You can look at the full set of .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 Commits to learn more.

The previously announced MSBuild and CSProj changes are not part of this release, but are still coming.

Adopting .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1

.NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 is a safe and easy install. It works the same way as .NET Core 1.0. There are a few things you will want to know about using it.

Side-by-side Install with .NET Core 1.0

.NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 installs side-by-side with .NET Core 1.0. .NET Core 1.0 applications will continue to use the .NET Core 1.0 runtime. The .NET Core 1.0 environment is designed to be almost completely unaware that a later minor or major release is also installed.

There is only one command — dotnet new— that will change as a result of installing .NET Core 1.1. dotnet new will create new projects that require .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1, as opposed to .NET Core 1.0. As a result, you may want to avoid installing it on a machine where you are doing .NET Core 1.0-based development with the command line tools. If you are on Windows and use Visual Studio for creating new projects, and not dotnet new, then installing .NET Core 1.1 is fine to do.

We would appreciate feedback on this design choice. The current design is that dotnet new will create new projects for the latest .NET Core version installed. If you don’t think that’s the right choice, tell us what you would like to see.

Trying it out

You can start by installing .NET Core 1.1 Preview. After that, you can use the .NET Core tools just like you have with .NET Core 1.0. Try the following set of commands to create, build and run a .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 application:

dotnet newdotnet restoredotnet run

You can take a look at the dotnetapp-preview sample to try a .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 application, with or without Docker.

Upgrading Existing Project

You can upgrade existing .NET Core projects from using .NET Core 1.0 to .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1. I will show you the new project.json file that the updated dotnet new now produces. It’s the best way to see the new version values that you need to copy/paste into your existing project.json files. There are no automated tools to upgrade existing projects to later .NET Core versions.

The default .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 project.json file follows:

This project.json file is very similar to what your .NET Core 1.0 project.json looks like, with the exception of the netcoreapp1.1 and 1.1.0-preview1-001100-00 target framework and meta-package version strings, respectively.

You can use the following substitutions to help you update project.json files that you want to move temporarily or permanently to .NET Core 1.1.

• Update the netcoreapp1.0 target framework to netcoreapp1.1.
• Update the Microsoft.NETCore.App package version from 1.0.x (for example, 1.0.0 or 1.0.1) to 1.1.0-preview1-001100-00.

You can also just write 1.1.0-preview1 as a short-hand, skipping the build-specific information. It works and enables you to more easily move forward with .NET Core 1.1 nightly builds if you adopt those. You will want to change the metapackage version to 1.1.0 when .NET Core 1.1 ships as a stable release. The target framework version will not change. It is set for the lifetime of .NET Core 1.1.

Upgrading to .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 Docker Images

.NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 images will soon be published to the microsoft/dotnet repo. The two new tags for .NET Core 1.1, for the .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 SDK and Runtime images, respectively will be: 1.0.0-preview2.1-sdk, 1.1.0-core.

The latest and other versionless tags will not been updated to point to .NET Core 1.1, but are still pointing to .NET Core 1.0. As a note, we are still deciding if the versionless tags should always point to LTS releases (see explanation below) or if it is OK for them to point to Current releases. Our thinking is that they should only ever point to LTS releases, leaving Current as opt-in. We’d appreciate your feedback on that.

You can try the new Docker images with the dotnetapp-preview sample in the .NET Core Docker Samples repository. The other samples can be easily modified to also exercise the .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 images, following the project.json upgrade instructions I gave you above.

“Current” Release

We announced in July that we would be adopting a dual-train strategy for .NET Core releases. At the time, we called the two different product trains “LTS” and “FTS”. Those release terms have since been renamed to “Long Term Support (LTS)” and “Current Release”. This is similar to what other platforms do, like Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu and Node.js. In fact, we adopted “Current” since the term was already in use and already had the meaning that we wanted.

We call different releases “trains” since it is easy to apply the train (the long vehicles on metal tracks) analogy to software releases. You can make references to “trains running on schedule” and there being an opportunity to “catch the next train”. I’m sure you can come up with more of these in the comments.

There is more to it, though. The LTS (slow) and Current (fast) trains define different releases cadences, different expectations on the kinds of changes that are acceptable in updates and different support timeframes. Based on our experience with the .NET Framework where we only ever had one train, we wanted to have more flexibility in releases and be able to better serve different customers with different expectations of us.

We ship LTS releases after in-depth and lengthy testing, significant customer adoption (before being named LTS) and a high degree of stability. Once released, the goal is to update LTS releases as little as possible, only for security, significant reliability, performance issues and the rare important feature addition. They are supported for up to three years. Our more conservative customers tell us “I love this plan!”. They would love zero changes if we could make that happen, although they realize that’s not quite realistic.

Current releases are the ones we are actively working on currently. .NET Core 1.1 is such a release. We do our major feature work in these releases and also add support for new operating system distributions. These releases are stable but are also much faster moving, so require more testing when you adopt them. They are also only supported for three months after the next Current release ships. To stay on a supported version, you need to move to the next Current release before the three months passes. With Current, you get new features must faster, but have to stay on that release train.

Support for some new operating system distributions will get added in LTS releases too, but that will be done on an exception basis. Windows Server 2016 and macOS Sierra are examples where that happened.

Once we’re happy with a series of Current releases and have had enough feedback, we label the next release as LTS and then repeat the whole process again. This could happen after few or many Current releases in a row. It depends a lot on the feedback we are hearing.

The transition of a Current release to LTS is a good opportunity to “switch trains”. We expect that some developers will choose Current releases during development of longer projects to get the latest features and broader set of fixes and then switch to LTS later in the project (assuming the timing works out)  getting ready for their production rollout.

Please take a look at the .NET Support and Versioning blog post for more information.

Versioning, Filenames and Docker Tags

If you’ve worked on a significant project with lots of users and releases, you’ll probably know that product naming and versioning is suprisingly hard. The .NET Core project doesn’t escape this problem. In fact, it seems to embrace it, having chosen version strings that are not nearly as intuitive we could like. This section of the blog post hopefully provides you with a decoder ring on those versions, which we really should have shared earlier.

There are two distributions of .NET Core: a Runtime, and an SDK that includes the Runtime and some Tools. Easy so far. The primary issue is that the SDK distribution is the most popular distribution, but doesn’t share the same versioning scheme as the Runtime. The challenge is that we primarily talk about the product in terms of Runtime versioning (including this blog post), while the SDK is versioned in terms of the Tools it carries. There are a variety of reasons why we chose to do that. That’s the context.

.NET Core installers, Docker images and and project.json files carry version numbers that you need to use and reason about. It can be challenging selecting and/or writing the right thing because some of these strings look suprisingly similar, but mean different things.

Here are the key versions and what they mean, in prose English.

• 1.0.0-preview2-sdk– Refers to the .NET Core 1.0 SDK, which includes a stable 1.0 Runtime and preview 1.0 Tools. This is the second preview release of the .NET Core Tools.
• 1.0.0-preview2.1-sdk– Refers to the .NET Core 1.1 SDK, which includes a preview 1.1 Runtime and preview 1.0 Tools. It’s called preview2.1 because it’s a dot release for the Tools relative to preview2, even though it comes with a new Runtime.
• 1.1.0-preview1— Refers to the first preview of the .NET Core 1.1 Runtime.

We intend to ship the final 1.0 version of the .NET Core Tools next year. This situation should get better. It will enable us to ship a 1.0.0-sdk release, with no preview string. The SDK and Runtime versions still won’t match. We’re discussing what to do about that. We’d like the Tools to be able to version faster than the Runtime, however, we may opt to get the version numbers to artificially be the same from time to time to make Runtimes and SDKs easier to match up, including the branding terms we use in blog posts.

Closing

Please try out the .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 release. We want to hear your .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 feedback as we get ready to ship the final version of .NET Core 1.1. For those of you installing .NET Core on one of the newly supported operating system distributions, we want your feedback even more to help us scout out those releases more deeply.

Thanks to everyone for trying out and adopting .NET Core. We appreciate all of the feedback, product contributions and the general energy around the project. Thanks!

SUMMARY: Microsoft Scripting Guy Ed Wilson announces November 14, 2016 as date for PowerShell 10th anniversary celebration

Can you believe that PowerShell is nearly 10 years old (that is a long time in ‘internet time’)? On November 14, 2016 we will celebrate the occasion with a day-long event that will run from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon (PST). We will stream this live event on the Channel 9 homepage.

This is going to be a day long extravaganza befitting the most awesome management, tool ever shipped. We will have segments on SQL and PowerShell, Azure Automation and PowerShell, the future of PowerShell and even the state of PowerShell community featuring the Microsoft Scripting Guy and a group of PowerShell MVP’s. The roster is looking like a who’s who in the PowerShell world.

We will even have sessions on some of the far out things you can do with PowerShell such as setting up a Minecraft Server, controlling sprinkler systems or an IOT-based Theramin, and even managing a Tesla (among other things).

But wait, there is more. There will also be opportunities to hear from the team members talk about how the product has evolved, and the new open source engagement. Stick around and join in on coding contests, or drop in and drop out as required … because what is even better than a live birthday party for your favorite command line product and mine? Well you know that … recordings of the birthday party. So every topic will be recorded, and you can check back and view them again and again and again.

Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.

And one more thing … you probably already know this, but I will say it anyway: the kick off features the dynamic duo Jeffrey Snover and Kenneth Hansen. So join us for kick off at 8:00 AM PST for the way cool PowerShell 10th Anniversary Celebration. Yeah, it will be that good.

Entity Framework Core (EF Core) is a lightweight, extensible, and cross-platform version of Entity Framework. Today we are making Entity Framework Core 1.1 Preview 1 available.

Upgrading to 1.1 Preview 1

If you are using one of the database providers shipped by the EF Team (SQL Server, SQLite, and InMemory), then just upgrade your provider package.

PM> Update-Package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer -Pre

If you are using a third-party database provider, then check to see if they have released an update that depends on 1.1.0-preview1-final. If they have, then just upgrade to the new version. If not, then you should be able to upgrade just the EF Core relational components that they depend on. Most of the new features in 1.1 do not require changes to the database provider. We’ve done some testing to ensure database providers that depend on 1.0 continue to work with 1.1 Preview 1, but this testing has not been exhaustive.

PM> Update-Package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Relational -Pre

Upgrading tooling packages

If you are using the tooling package, then be sure to upgrade that too. Note that tooling is versioned as 1.0.0-preview3-final because tooling has not reached its initial stable release (this is true of tooling across .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, and EF Core).

PM> Update-Package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tools -Pre

If you are using ASP.NET Core, then you need to update the tools section of project.json to use the new Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tools.DotNet package. As the design of .NET CLI Tools has progressed, it has become necessary for us to separate the dotnet ef tools into this separate package.

"tools": {
  "Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tools.DotNet": "1.0.0-preview3-final"
},

What’s in 1.1 Preview 1

The 1.1 release is focused on addressing issues that prevent folks from adopting EF Core. This includes fixing bugs and adding some of the critical features that are not yet implemented in EF Core. While we’ve made some good progress on this, we do want to acknowledge that EF Core still isn’t going to be the right choice for everyone. For more detailed info of what is implemented, see our EF Core and EF6.x comparison.

Improved LINQ translation

In the 1.1 release we have made good progress improving the EF Core LINQ provider. This enables more queries to successfully execute, with more logic being evaluated in the database (rather than in memory).

DbSet.Find

DbSet.Find(…) is an API that is present in EF6.x and has been one of the more common requests for EF Core. It allows you to easily query for an entity based on its primary key value. If the entity is already loaded into the context, then it is returned without querying the database.

using (var db = new BloggingContext())
{
    var blog = db.Blogs.Find(1);
}

Mapping to fields

The new HasField(…) method in the fluent API allows you to configure a backing field for a property. This is most commonly done when a property does not have a setter.

public class BloggingContext : DbContext
{
    ...

    protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
    {
        modelBuilder.Entity()
            .Property(b => b.Url)
            .HasField("_theUrl");
    }
}

By default, EF will use the field when constructing instances of your entity during a query, or when it can’t use the property (i.e. it needs to set the value but there is no property setter). You can change this via the new UsePropertyAccessMode(…) API.

protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
{
    modelBuilder.Entity()
        .Property(b => b.Url)
        .HasField("_theUrl")
        .UsePropertyAccessMode(PropertyAccessMode.Field);
}

You can also create a property in your model that does not have a corresponding property in the entity class, but uses a field to store the data in the entity. This is different from Shadow Properties, where the data is stored in the change tracker. This would typically be used if the entity class uses methods to get/set values.

You can give EF the name of the field in the Property(…) API. If there is no property with the given name, then EF will look for a field.

public class BloggingContext : DbContext
{
    ...

    protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
    {
        modelBuilder.Entity()
            .Property("_theUrl");
    }
}

You can also choose to give the property a name, other than the field name. This name is then used when creating the model, most notably it will be used for the column name that is mapped to in the database.

protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
{
    modelBuilder.Entity()
        .Property("Url")
        .HasField("_theUrl");
}

You can use the EF.Property(…) method to refer to these properties in a LINQ query.

var blogs = db.Blogs
    .OrderBy(b => EF.Property(b, "Url"))
    .ToList();

Explicit Loading

Explicit loading allows you to load the contents of a navigation property for an entity that is tracked by the context.

using (var db = new BloggingContext())
{
    var blog = db.Blogs.Find(1);

    db.Entry(blog).Collection(b => b.Posts).Load();
    db.Entry(blog).Reference(b => b.Author).Load();
}

Additional EntityEntry APIs from EF6.x

We’ve added the remaining EntityEntry APIs that were available in EF6.x. This includes Reload(), GetModifiedProperties(), GetDatabaseValues() etc. These APIs are most commonly accessed by calling the DbContext.Entry(object entity) method.

Connection resiliency

Connection resiliency automatically retries failed database commands. This release includes an execution strategy that is specifically tailored to SQL Server (including SQL Azure). This execution strategy is included in our SQL Server provider. It is aware of the exception types that can be retried and has sensible defaults for maximum retries, delay between retries, etc.

protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder)
{
    optionsBuilder.UseSqlServer(
        "",
        options => options.EnableRetryOnFailure());
}

Other database providers may choose to add retry strategies that are tailored to their database. There is also a mechanism to register a custom execution strategy of your own.

protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder)
{
    optionsBuilder.UseMyProvider(
        "",
        options => options.ExecutionStrategy(...));
}

SQL Server memory-optimized table support

Memory-Optimized Tables are a feature of SQL Server. You can now specify that the table an entity is mapped to is memory-optimized. When using EF Core to create and maintain a database based on your model (either with migrations or Database.EnsureCreated), a memory-optimized table will be created for these entities.

protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
{
    modelBuilder.Entity()
        .ForSqlServerIsMemoryOptimized();
 }

Simplified service replacement

In EF Core 1.0 it is possible to replace internal services that EF uses, but this is complicated and requires you to take control of the dependency injection container that EF uses. In 1.1 we have made this much simpler, with a ReplaceService(…) method that can be used when configuring the context.

public class BloggingContext : DbContext
{
    ...

    protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder)
    {
        ...

        optionsBuilder.ReplaceService();
    }
}

What’s happening after 1.1 Preview 1

The stable 1.1 release will be available later this year. We aren’t planning any new features between preview1 and the stable release. We will just be working on fixing bugs that are reported.

Our team is now turning its attention to the EF Core 1.2 and EF6.2 releases. We will share details of these releases in the near future.

Hi everyone! We are delighted to announce the availability of System Center 2016 Service Manager. This new release of Service Manager contains a wide array of additions & improvements- its faster, provides better usability, and comes with many new features.

When we talk about performance, this release of Service Manager  is a big leap from its predecessor. This release offers enhanced performance across all areas of the product, including Work Item creation, Workflow runtime, and Connector sync time.

Here is a quick glimpse of what we have found in our testing (in comparison with Service Manager in System Center 2012 R2):

You can read about details of these comparisons here.

In addition to the significant performance enhancements, there are also several new features to enhance your experience with System Center 2016 Service Manager:

• Data Warehouse cubes now contain new date dimensions which can help in creating rich reports and slice data based on Year, Quarter, Month, Day etc.
• New HTML based Self Service Portal, which offers many new features with easy to navigate modern UI and multi browser support.
  
• Support for .Net framework 4.5.1, which expands the possibilities for developing solutions on Service Manager platform.
• Console forms now contain out-of-the-box spell check support, to make life of the help desk analysts a little easier.
• A new console task – Open Activity in Progress, makes it easier to analyse the currently in progress activities without needing to dig for them inside the Service Request or Change Request forms.
• Service Manager now supports integration with Lync 2013 and Skype for Business in Microsoft Office suite 2013 and 2016, which helps to contact a user from an Incident form.

All these new features and other performance and usability enhancements are now available in System Center 2016 Service Manager. You can read more about them in detail from in the What’s New in Service Manager documentation. Also, feel free to use the comment section to share your feedback and suggestions. We are looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Get started now!  Download System Center 2016.

Hello Windows Insiders!

Today we are excited to be releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14955 for Mobile and PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring.

What’s new in Build 14955

Outlook Mail & Calendar Update (PC & Mobile): We have updated the Outlook Mail and Calendar apps to 17.7466.4062x.0.. This update introduces a few new things for you to check out:

• You can now open email messages in a new window.
• You can now use Quick Actions directly from new email notifications.
• Get someone’s attention with @mentions. Type the @ symbol anywhere in the body of your email and start typing to pick the person you want to address.

Context Awareness in Narrator (PC): As you navigate around, you can be notified about different groups or other areas you move to, such as groups in the Office ribbon. To configure the amount of context you hear, cycle through options with ALT + Caps Lock + /. To change whether the context is read before the item with focus or after, use CTRL + Caps Lock + /. To check the context at any point. Press Caps Lock + D twice.

Other improvements and fixes for Mobile

• We fixed the issue causing you to be unable to sign into apps such as Feedback Hub, Groove, MSN News, etc. with your Microsoft Account if you sign out or get signed out of these apps.
• We fixed the issue that was causing some devices to appear “stuck” on the blue Windows logo screen during the boot cycle when rebooting a phone on earlier builds.
• We fixed a bug resulting in notifications banners not appearing from Outlook Mail accounts that had been pinned as tiles to Start.
• We fixed an issue resulting certain apps being unexpectedly missing from the Share dialog.
• We fixed an issue where Insiders who had configured a data limit on their phone may have ended up in a state where they would receive frequent notifications about having exceeded that limit.
• We fixed an issue where the horizontal progress dots (as displayed when using the indeterminate ProgressBar control, for those who are familiar with XAML) were incorrectly fading out at the right side.
• We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to enter input into the Time or Place fields when creating a Reminder in Cortana.

Other improvements and fixes for PC

• Now you can draw along the protractor and have the degree visual remain visible until you start drawing again. We’ve also updated the degree visual to be more clear – black text on a white background, as opposed to the previous black text on a red background.
• We fixed the issue causing you to be unable to sign into apps such as Feedback Hub, Groove, MSN News, etc. with your Microsoft Account if you sign out or get signed out of these apps.
• This build includes several fixes for precision touchpad:
  • We fixed an issue where precision touchpad was mis-classifying presses when mousing with one finger and pressing with another.
  • We fixed the issue in which “Reset touchpad” was appearing on PCs that don’t support precision touchpad (legacy touchpad).
  • We fixed the issue where the 4-Finger gesture graphic would be viewable in Settings on PCs that support only 3-contact.
  • We fixed an issue with popular graphics app Paint.NET where horizontal scrolling was broken.
• This build includes several fixes for Narrator:
  • We have added a new key command to read the active window title of the current application. You can use Caps Lock + / for this.
  • We’ve improved Narrator’s recognition of edit boxes on the web in Scan Mode so you get the message to use space to edit more consistently when focus has moved to an edit box.
  • We’ve done work to ensure that continuous reading is interrupted appropriately if focus changes or you issue a Narrator command that should stop continuous reading. We’ve also worked to ensure that continuous reading doesn’t stop when it shouldn’t.
• We’ve updated the Trusted Platform Module Management control panel (TPM.msc) to provide additional detail when the TPM is “Not ready for use” or “Ready for use, with reduced functionality”.
• We fixed an issue resulting in Task Manager always opening with the default view, despite having configured it on the previous launch (for example, to “Show more details”).
• We fixed an issue where attempting to partition a USB drive via DiskPart would fail with the error “The system cannot find the file specified”.
• We fixed an issue where certain USB drives were failing to mount automatically or via Device Manager, despite being mountable using Disk Management.
• We fixed an issue where Accessibility settings were failing to roam down-level to some PCs running the Windows 10 Anniversary Update – triggering a sync loop and possibly causing some performance issues on those down-level PCs. If you have encountered this issue, to get out of this state – you will need to change a setting under Settings > Ease of Access so that fix will roam down-level. Whichever setting you changed to trigger roaming can be changed back if needed.
• We fixed an issue where Settings would crash when copying hardware properties from the Wi-Fi settings page.
• We fixed an issue where files were no longer automatically selected after being pasted into a folder in File Explorer.
• We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to enter input into the Time or Place fields when creating a Reminder in Cortana.
• We’ve updated the advanced tab of the device properties window in the Sounds control panel to now allow you to select the following sample dates as the default format for devices that support it: 24 and 32 bit at 176400Hz, and 16, 24 and 32 bit at 352800 Hz.
• USB Audio 2.0 devices are now named based on the make/model of the device, rather than using a generic name, in places across the system, for example Device Manager.
• We fixed an issue in Microsoft Edge that prevented dragging content out of the browser to other windows
• We fixed an issue that caused Microsoft Edge to crash when using the Share button to share web pages and PDFs to Mail.

Known issues for Mobile

• If your device never successfully updated to Build 14951, please see this forum post. If your device did receive Build 14951, you should be able to download and update to this build just fine. THANK YOU Insiders who helped us with getting the 0% download issue fixed last week!
• Some Insiders are receiving an 0x80242006 error trying to update to the latest builds. We are investigating – see this forum post.
• You will be unable to install additional languages, keyboards, and speech packs on your phone for the next few weeks. If you have existing languages, keyboards, and speech packs installed – they will carry over when you update to new builds. You just can’t install any new ones. If you do a hard reset of your phone on these builds – you will also be unable to install additional languages, keyboards, and speech packs. You can use Windows Device Recovery Tool to go back to Windows Phone 8.1 or Windows 10 Mobile, install any languages, keyboards, and speech packs you need and then update to the latest build in the Fast ring as a workaround.
• Excel Mobile will freeze after adding sheets and eventually crashes.

Known issues for PC

• If you have a 3rd party antivirus product installed on your PC – your PC might not be able to complete the update to this build and roll-back to the previous build.
• Insiders may experience the Windows Ink Workspace crashing when using the protractor – we’re investigating.

Upcoming Bugbash Just a reminder that we are planning to kick off our next bugbash starting on Tuesday, November 8th and finishing at the end of the day on Sunday, November 13th. I’ll have more details in the coming weeks. Looking forward to seeing a lot of participation from Insiders! If you have ideas on what Quests you will like to see for the Bug Bash, let us know!

Team Updates

I am currently in New Zealand to keynote the Microsoft Ignite conference. My keynote was about being entrepreneurial, no matter if you work for yourself or a company. My examples were all, of course, Windows Insiders related. You and your stories inspire me every day!

The talk resonated with the audience. The format was 65 minutes of tech demos by experts for AI, bots,  collaboration tools, sentiment analysis, holograms and I closed with a step-by-step “how to bring this home to your company or organization” with some real examples of Windows Insiders who are doing this very thing.

The bonus: getting 2500 people to #NinjaCat!

I cannot thank the organizers of Ignite New Zealand enough! When Regan Murphy reached out to be 12 months ago and asked me to keynote this event, I had *no idea* it was the biggest tech conference in New Zealand. It’s been absolutely incredible to watch so many of our Microsoft partners and customers gather at this amazing yearly event (21 years and running!) to learn, be inspired and connect with one another. The comment I keep hearing over and over is “we wait all year for this event”. The community is VERY strong here and our team is learning a ton of things to take back home.

We also have two other sessions on the Windows Insiders: One of our Group Program Managers who drives selfhost and flighting, Katharine Holdsworth delivered the Inside the Windows Insider Program session, talking about the history of the program and the infrastructure that makes it run. Our Director of Marketing, Jeremiah Marble and I are delivering the session on CoCreate(Community) about how we work with the Windows Insiders globally to build Windows together.

We will be hosting local Windows Insiders for dinner on Wednesday night to talk about some of the upcoming things for the program as well as to understand what people are looking for from the program.

There are also going to be some podcast and radio show surprises so please do stay tuned for more from New Zealand!

Thank you everyone and keep hustling,
Dona <3

To read last week’s post, see The week in .NET – Bond – The Gallery.

Preview 1 of .NET Core 1.1, ASP.NET Core 1.1, and EF Core 1.1 announced

Preview 1 versions of .NET Core 1.1, ASP.NET Core 1.1, and Entity Framework Core 1.1 were released today. Check out the blog posts to discover the new features!

• Announcing .NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 by Rich Lander.
• Announcing ASP.NET Core 1.1 Preview 1 by Jeffrey T. Fritz.
• Announcing Entity Framework Core 1.1 Preview 1 by Rowan Miller.

On .NET

Last week, Rowan Miller was on the show to talk about Entity Framework Core 1.1:

This week, we’ll speak with Martin Woodward about the .NET Foundation. The show is on Thursdays and begins at 10AM Pacific Time on Channel 9. We’ll take questions on Gitter, on the dotnet/home channel and on Twitter. Please use the #onnet tag. It’s OK to start sending us questions in advance if you can’t do it live during the show.

The Changelog podcast

I hope you will forgive me for the self-promotion… I had the chance to be interviewed on the Changelog podcast and you might want to check it out.

Package of the week: FluentValidation

FluentValidation is a lightweight validation library that uses a fluent interface and Lambda expressions for building validation rules. It’s written by Jeremy Skinner and is compatible with .NET Standard 1.0.

Game of the week: Reverse: Time Collapse

Reverse: Time Collapse is an action-adventure game that features a unique time travel story, in that time travels backwards. Take on the role of a scientist, a journalist and a secret agent who are forced to time travel as a result of a laboratory accident. Use each of the characters to solve puzzles across time while avoiding the deadly attacks of the Guardians of Time and Secret Service agents. Reverse: Time Collapse explores historical events such as WikiLeaks (2010), the Kennedy Assassination (1963) and Roswell (1947).

Reverse: Time Collapse is under active development by Meangrip using Unity and C#.

User group meeting of the week: VS 2015 with .NET Core Tooling in Raleigh, NC

TRINUG.NET holds a meeting on Wednesday, October 26 in Raleigh, NC, to talk about .NET Core tooling in VS 2015.

Blogger of the week: Rick Strahl

Rick’s been blogging for as long as I can remember, and his posts are always very detailed and carefully researched. He’s a problem solver, and likes to share his findings. It’s fair to say that anyone who has been working with .NET for a few years has saved some time thanks to one of Rick’s posts at least once. This week’s issue features his latest post.

.NET

• .NET Core Tooling in Visual Studio “15” by David Carmona and Joe Morris.
• Announcing the October 2016 Update for .NET Core 1.0 by Lee Coward.
• Introducing C# script runner for .NET Core and .NET CLI by Filip W.
• Making .NET code less allocatey – Allocations and the Garbage Collector by Maarten Balliauw.
• Tuples with C# 7.0 by Christian Nagel.
• Generate C# ETW EventSource classes from JSON event specifications using T4 by Ohad Schneider.
• EntityFramework Configuration Provider for .NET Framework & .NET Core by Patrick J. Nolan.
• Windows 10 1607, UWP and Lifecycle on HoloLens (2), Composition APIs–Walked Through Demo Code, and Project Rome–Transferring Browser Tabs Across Devices by Mike Taulty.
• Why the Command Line? Why now? by Sam Basu.
• Multiple optimizations passes with case insensitive routing by Ayende Rahien.
• Introducing NATSConsumer and .NET Core support by Daniel Wertheim.
• Interception in .NET – Part 3: Static Interception by Ricardo Peres.
• .NET Core Microservices using GeekseatBus by Welly Tambunan.

ASP.NET

• Exploring ServiceStack’s simple and fast web services on .NET Core and Exploring Application Insights for disconnected or connected deep telemetry in ASP.NET Apps by Scott Hanselman.
• Modifying the UI based on user authorisation in ASP.NET Core by Andrew Lock.
• Angular 2 and ASP.NET Core MVC by Ryan Southgate.
• Creating route links and passing-in values by Marek Fišera.
• Contoso University updated to ASP.NET Core by Jimmy Bogard.
• Using Apache Web Server as a reverse-proxy for ASP.NET Core by Shayne Boyer.
• Creating a new .NET Core web application, what are your options? by Jon Hilton.
• Accessing SQL from Entity Framework Core Queries in ASP.NET Core by Rion Williams.
• Request Filtering for ASP.NET Core applications: Part 4 – Extending the Request Filtering Rules and Localization Resource Generator & Translator via “dotnet” CLI by Hisham Bin Ateya.
• ASP.NET Core: Globalization and Localization by Daniel Jimenez Garcia.
• Building Apps with Polymer and ASP.NET CORE and Don’t Share Your Secrets! (.NET CORE Secret Manager Tool) by Fizz.
• Error Handling and ExceptionFilter Dependency Injection for ASP.NET Core APIs by Rick Strahl.
• Working with Environments and Launch Settings in ASP.NET Core by Matthew P Jones.

F#

• Deploying F# Suave web application to Azure using Flynn, by Zohaib Rauf.
• F# – Basic Merkle Tree, by Ramón Soto Mathiesen.
• Writing a PNG Decoder in F#, Part I, by Steve Hawley.
• Implementing Spark Apps in F#, by Kaarthik Sivashanmugam.
• F# compiler speeds up, thanks to Gusty.

Check out F# Weekly for more great content from the F# community.

Xamarin

• Xamarin Beta Release: Cycle 8 Service Release 1 by Adrian Murphy.
• Xamarin.Forms Book Now Available in Easy to Digest Chapter Summaries by Charles Petzold.
• Create a Game with iOS 10 and Message App Extensions by John Miller.
• Understanding the Uniqueness of Mobile DevOps with Roy Cornelissen, Xpirit by Anusha Sethuraman.
• Snack Pack 2: iOS Simulators and The Xamarin Show 7: Continuous C# & F# IDE for iPad with Frank Krueger by James Montemagno.
• Push Notifications Lifecycle by Adam Pedley.
• Reactive Goodies – IReactiveDerivedList Basics, ReactiveUI Goodies – IReactiveDerivedList Filtering 1, ReactiveUI Goodies – IReactiveDerivedList Filtering 2, and ReactiveUI Goodies – IReactiveDerivedList Grouping by Jan Hannemann.
• ADAL and the .NET Standard Transition by Nicolò Carandini.
• Getting the most out of your assets – The MonoGame Content Pipeline by Simon Jackson.
• VSTS – Mac build agent fail restoring NuGet packages by Jim Blizzard.
• How To Build Honest UIs And Help Users Make Better Decisions by Graeme Fulton.
• Icons As Part Of A Great User Experience by Nick Babich.

Azure

• Use .NET Core to Create Azure Blob Storage SAS Keys by Carlos Mendible.

Games

• Kat Commentary – VR Techniques (Part 1 – Movement) by Kat Harris.
• The Damage Is Too Damn High or Achieving the Perfect Balance by Arthur Mostovoy.
• Beginning C# Part 15: Do/While Loops by Brian Moakley.
• Tobi’s Unity Utilities by Tobias Wehrum.
• MVC Pattern by Alex Ouellet.

And this is it for this week!

Contribute to the week in .NET

As always, this weekly post couldn’t exist without community contributions, and I’d like to thank all those who sent links and tips. The F# section is provided by Phillip Carter, the gaming section by Stacey Haffner, and the Xamarin section by Dan Rigby.

You can participate too. Did you write a great blog post, or just read one? Do you want everyone to know about an amazing new contribution or a useful library? Did you make or play a great game built on .NET?
We’d love to hear from you, and feature your contributions on future posts:

• Send an email to beleroy at Microsoft,
• comment on this gist
• Leave us a pointer in the comments section below.
• Send Stacey (@yecats131) tips on Twitter about .NET games.

This week’s post (and future posts) also contains news I first read on The ASP.NET Community Standup, on Weekly Xamarin, on F# weekly, and on Chris Alcock’s The Morning Brew.

Recently a colleague got a new PC and asked me how he could migrate his existing virtual machines to his new system.  Because he had enabled a virtual Trusted Platform Module (TPM) on these VMs, he wasn’t sure how to proceed. This is also a common scenario when moving VMs to a guarded fabric.

TPMs are an established and standardized technology which can be used for different purposes around system trustworthiness and identity. For example, they can be used to ensure the OSes boot loader and boot configuration has not been tampered with before unsealing a BitLocker encrypted disk, or to have a strong system identity based on hardware. Virtual TPMs bring these great capabilities to virtual machines running on Windows 10 1511 and Windows Server 2016 hosts or newer.

To protect the virtual TPM’s state, it is stored encrypted. This means, some keys must be updated so the VM can run on the destination system. The overall process involves two basic steps before moving the VM to the new host:

1. Importing the destination system’s guardian information on the source host
2. Updating the virtual machine’s key protector

Importing the destination system’s guardian

First, the guardian information for the destination system or fabric must be exported. If you plan to authorize a guarded fabric, please make sure the destination hosts are properly configured with the Host Guardian Service information. Also, note that if you run this on a host in a guarded fabric, each host that is part of this guarded fabric will be able to run the virtual machine once the key protector is updated. If in doubt, ask your administrator.

The following script snippet can be used to export guardian information from a destination host by simply running it on this host.

If the destination host is part of a guarded fabric, the Host Guardian Service’s data is written to the file. Otherwise, a local guardian is created if it does not exist with the default name and exported.

On the source host, run this command in an administrative PowerShell to import the guardian information which was previously exported.

Updating the virtual machine’s key protector

With the destination system’s guardian information present on the source system, each virtual machine’s key protector can now be updated to include the new guardian.

For this step, the assumption is that the source system is running in local mode and the right guardian information is present. If you are running on Windows 10 and can start your VM with a virtual TPM, this should be the case.

The script loops through all VMs with an enabled vTPM and adds the guardian for the destination system exported above.

Finishing up

Finally, the virtual machines can be exported on the source and imported on the destination host. You should be good  to start the VMs.

Hope this helps,

Lars

Hello again from Seattle! We’re at PASS Summit 2016 this week, so it’s a great time to announce some exciting news and deliver further on the reporting roadmap we shared at last year’s PASS Summit 2015.

Technical Preview

We’re excited to announce that we’re making available a Technical Preview of Power BI reports in SQL Server Reporting Services. We plan to release the preview on Thursday along with some more info, but in the meantime, here are a couple of key things to know:

• This Technical Preview is a pre-configured Virtual Machine in the Azure Marketplace. The VM includes everything you need, even sample reports and data, making it quick and easy to give it a try. We wanted to offer it to you while we continue to work toward a preview you can download and install in your own on-premises environment.
• This preview supports Power BI reports that connect “live” to Analysis Services models– both Tabular and Multidimensional (cubes). We plan to extend support to additional data sources in a future preview.

Power BI reports in SQL Server Reporting Services

This Technical Preview represents our progress toward on-premises self-service BI via Power BI reports in Reporting Services, an important goal in our reporting roadmap. With this solution, you’ll be able to

• Visually explore data and create an interactive report using Power BI Desktop
• Publish that report to an on-premises report server (SQL Server Reporting Services)
• Share the report with your coworkers so they can view and interact with it in their web browsers

A few weeks ago at Microsoft Ignite, we showed the first sneak peek at the progress we’ve made; this week at PASS Summit, you’ll be able to try it for yourself.

Join us at PASS Summit

If you’re in Seattle for PASS Summit, don’t miss our session:

• Wednesday 1:30 PM in room 6B:
  SQL Server Reporting Services: What’s New and What’s Next [BID-215-M]
  by Chris Finlan and Riccardo Muti

You might be interested in several other sessions covering Reporting Services as well:

• Wednesday 10:15 AM in room 401:
  Advanced SSRS Tricks and SSRS Web Reporting [BIA-207-PR]
  by George Su
• Wednesday 4:45 PM in room 611-614:
  Reports on the Run: Mobile Reporting with SQL Server 2016 [BID-104]
  by Peter Myers
• Thursday 10:15 AM in room 618-620:
  Programming Reporting Services 2016 [BIA-301]
  by Tillmann Eitelberg and Frank Geisler
• Thursday 10:15 AM in room 2AB:
  Mobile, Paginated, KPIs, and Power BI, Oh My! SSRS 2016 Reporting [BID-208]
  by Steve Wake

And join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtags #summit16 and #SSRS.

Stay tuned for more info

Watch this blog for a follow-up post this Thursday, when we plan to release the Technical Preview and Chris Finlan will walk you through how to get started. We’re looking forward to it and know you are as well!

This post is authored by Meet Bhagdev.

We are delighted to share the full release of the Microsoft ODBC Driver 13 for Linux –  (Ubuntu, RedHat and SUSE). The new driver enables access to SQL Server, Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL DW from any C/C++ application on Linux.

What’s new

• Native Linux Install Experience: The driver can now be installed with apt-get (Ubuntu), yum (RedHat/CentOS) and Zypper (SUSE). Instructions on how to do this is below.
• AlwaysOn Availability Groups (AG): The driver now supports transparent connections to AlwaysOn Availability Groups. The driver quickly discovers the current AlwaysOn topology of your server infrastructure and connects to the current active server transparently.
• TLS 1.2 support: The driver now supports TLS 1.2 connections to SQL Server.

Install the ODBC Driver for Linux on Ubuntu 15.04

1. sudo su
2. sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://apt-mo.trafficmanager.net/repos/mssql-ubuntu-vivid-release/ vivid main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mssqlpreview.list'
3. sudo apt-key adv --keyserver apt-mo.trafficmanager.net --recv-keys 417A0893
4. apt-get update
5. apt-get install msodbcsql
6. apt-get install unixodbc-dev-utf16 #this step is optional but recommended*

Install the ODBC Driver for Linux on Ubuntu 15.10

1. sudo su
2. sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://apt-mo.trafficmanager.net/repos/mssql-ubuntu-wily-release/ wily main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mssqlpreview.list'
3. sudo apt-key adv --keyserver apt-mo.trafficmanager.net --recv-keys 417A0893
4. apt-get update
5. apt-get install msodbcsql
6. apt-get install unixodbc-dev-utf16 #this step is optional but recommended*

Install the ODBC Driver for Linux on Ubuntu 16.04

1. sudo su
2. sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://apt-mo.trafficmanager.net/repos/mssql-ubuntu-xenial-release/ xenial main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mssqlpreview.list'
3. sudo apt-key adv --keyserver apt-mo.trafficmanager.net --recv-keys 417A0893
4. apt-get update
5. apt-get install msodbcsql
6. apt-get install unixodbc-dev-utf16 #this step is optional but recommended*

Install the ODBC Driver for Linux on RedHat 6

1. sudo su
2. yum-config-manager --add-repo https://apt-mo.trafficmanager.net/yumrepos/mssql-rhel6-release/
3. yum-config-manager --enable mssql-rhel6-release
4. wget "http://aka.ms/msodbcrhelpublickey/dpgswdist.v1.asc"
5. rpm --import dpgswdist.v1.asc
6. yum remove unixODBC #to avoid conflicts during installation
7. yum update
8. yum install msodbcsql
9. yum install unixODBC-utf16-devel #this step is optional but recommended*

Install the ODBC Driver for Linux on RedHat 7

1. sudo su
2. yum-config-manager --add-repo https://apt-mo.trafficmanager.net/yumrepos/mssql-rhel7-release/
3. yum-config-manager --enable mssql-rhel7-release
4. wget "http://aka.ms/msodbcrhelpublickey/dpgswdist.v1.asc"
5. rpm --import dpgswdist.v1.asc
6. yum remove unixODBC #to avoid conflicts during installation
7. yum update
8. yum install msodbcsql
9. yum install unixODBC-utf16-devel #this step is optional but recommended*

Install the ODBC Driver for SUSE12

1. zypper ar https://apt-mo.trafficmanager.net/yumrepos/mssql-suse12-release/ "mssql" #To add the repo
2. wget "http://aka.ms/msodbcrhelpublickey/dpgswdist.v1.asc"
3. rpm --import dpgswdist.v1.asc
4. zypper remove unixODBC #to avoid conflicts
5. zypper update
6. zypper install msodbcsql
7. zypper install unixODBC-utf16-devel #this step is optional but recommended*

Note: Packages for SQL Server command line tools will be available soon. The above mentioned packages only install the ODBC Driver for SQL Server that enable connectivity from any C/C++ application.

Try our Sample

Once you install the driver that runs on a supported Linux distro, you can use this C sample to connect to SQL Server/Azure SQL DB/Azure SQL DW. To download the sample and get started, follow these steps:

If you installed the driver using the manual instructions, you will have to manually uninstall the ODBC Driver and the unixODBC Driver Manager to use the deb/rpm packages. If you have any questions on how to manually uninstall, feel free to leave a comment below.

Please fill bugs/questions/issues on our issues page. We welcome contributions/questions/issues of any kind. Happy programming!

Survey and Future Plans

Please take this survey to help prioritize features and scenarios for the next release of the ODBC Driver for Linux. Going forward we plan to expand SQL Server 16 Feature Support (example: Always Encrypted), improve test coverage, and fix bugs reported on our issues page.

Please stay tuned for upcoming releases that will have additional feature support and bug fixes. This applies to our wide range of client drivers including PHP 7.0, Node.js, JDBC and ADO.NET which are already available.

The System Center Operations Manager product team wants to hear about your requirements on MongoDB monitoring.

To provide your feedback, please follow this link to the survey – https://microsoft.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_0JTRZrjCWlv0lmd

We at Microsoft are committed towards understanding and solving the problems of our customers. Your response to this survey will aid us in that endeavor. With your inputs we will be able to make the required improvements to Microsoft’s IT Operations Management solutions (such as SCOM, OMS, etc.), this will help us serve you better.

Hence, we request you to take 5 – 10 minutes out of your busy schedule to respond to this survey.

Follow this link to the Survey:

https://microsoft.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_a5A41w7hE94LLj7

If you have any query, please post it as a comment below.

This post is authored by Danil Kirsanov, Senior Developer at Microsoft.

Response time is one of the critical parameters of a deployed Azure Machine Learning web service (see this walkthrough for information on how to create an Azure ML experiment and deploy a web service). In this post, we discuss one of the ways to speed up an R or Python based web service – by making sure that key initialization steps (e.g. time consuming computations, loading variables from attached .zip files, installing additional packages, etc.) happen only at the very first web service call.

First, a brief review of R and Python execution in Azure ML web services:

• The web service is backed by multiple machines, with load balancing. There is no way for users to know which machine processes a particular incoming call.
• To save time, R and Python interpreters are reused between calls.
  • In particular, they might be shared between the multiple modules of the same experiment.
• All R user-defined variables and functions are cleared at the end of each call.
  • For Python, global variables are not cleared.

The latter difference is due to the execution pattern for R and Python modules in Azure ML – while the Execute Python Script module is based on a function call, the Execute R Script allows arbitrary scripts.

The idea behind “initialize once” is very simple and boils down to keeping a global state between the service calls. Nevertheless, this simple trick is very helpful for many customers in production, and, in one recent case, this process helped cut down the web service response time by the factor of 6!

Execute Python Script

In Execute Python, initializing the global state is exactly the same as in the regular Python module – just put the initialization code and global variables outside the azureml_main function; it is executed only once and global variables are retained between function calls (see this experiment).

Execute R Script

Persisting variables in R modules is a bit trickier as all variables and functions are cleared at the end of the service call (roughly speaking, we call rm(list = ls(all.names = TRUE)) after each call). The easiest way to persist variables between calls is to keep them in the attached environment, which is not cleared.

In this experiment, we create and attach the environment my_env only once and re-use it at every call. You have to be careful re-implementing this advanced maneuver though – attaching the environment at every call leads to a memory leak.

Conclusion

We suggest deploying the experiments provided here as web services and making several test calls to see the effect. The first “initialization” call takes much longer than subsequent calls to the service.

Some final notes:

• This technique is not suited for accumulating information between calls – the web service is usually backed by multiple machines that do not talk to each other.
  
• This technique is only efficient for speeding up deployed web services. Regular Studio experiments have separate clean R/Python interpreters for every module, so the “initialization” step is always evaluated.
  
• If you use this technique for multiple R or Python modules inside a single web service, make sure that the global variable names are different and do not collide, since the same interpreter could be reused for processing all modules in a given service.
  

If you do try out these techniques, do let us know how they worked out for you by sharing your feedback below.

Danil

With Windows 10, our goal is to have the effect of the Gutenberg Press on this next generation of computing, enabling 3D creativity, mixed reality, and eSports & game broadcasting for everyone.

At our core, we believe each of us are creators. I’m personally inspired by creators who use technology to build a better world for each of us, who build communities with technology, and who develop revolutionary new ways to educate all types of students. However you choose to create, we are building Windows for each of you. We want to help you make your mark on the world and for Windows to be the place you love to create and play.

New Surface Devices Designed for Creators

From the beginning, our Surface journey has been about empowering people to work and create in new ways. It led us to create the first tablet that could truly replace your laptop with Surface Pro and to redefine the ultimate laptop with Surface Book. We believe there is a special alchemy when a device and software pair perfectly to create something new – a profound experience that can create an entirely new category. Today, we unveiled our next new category – an all new Surface device, designed for creators and professionals.

With a 4.5k ultra HD screen, Surface Studio delivers 63% more pixels than a state-of-the-art 4K TV.

Surface Studio turns your desk into a creative studio. It is a new class of device that transforms from a desktop PC into a powerful digital canvas, unlocking a more natural and immersive way to create on the thinnest display ever built. With a 4.5k ultra HD screen, Surface Studio delivers 63% more pixels than a state-of-the-art 4K TV.  Surface Studio works beautifully with pen, touch, and the new Surface Dial.

Surface Dial is a new input device designed for the creative process, enabling you to work with both of your hands. It integrates with Windows 10 to work with any Surface device for a faster and more intuitive way to scroll, zoom, and navigate. It also enables a set of unique experiences exclusive to Surface Studio, such as app-specific digital tools that allow you to quickly access shortcuts and move seamlessly through your workflow.

Surface Book with Performance Base, the most powerful Surface Book yet, packs 16 hours of battery life into the same sleek, versatile design people love. It has more than twice the GPU processing power than the original Surface Book. No other laptop combines this combination of  battery life, performance and pixels, in as lightweight a package.

The new Surface devices will be available for pre-order starting today.

The Windows 10 Creators Update

Coming as a free update early next year to the more than 400 million devices running Windows 10 and available to Windows Insiders this week, the Creators Update will bring 3D and mixed reality to everyone, empower every gamer to be a broadcaster, connect people faster to those they care about most, and much more.

3D for Everyone

With the Creators Update, you and the millions of other Windows 10 users will turn on your laptop and be able to start capturing in 3D, printing in 3D, creating in 3D, sharing in 3D, and experiencing mixed reality.

With more than 100 million monthly users, Paint is one of the most popular creation tools today, and with Paint 3D, anyone can now create and build 3D objects. We also unveiled Remix 3D, a online community to connect creators and creations around the world and bring 3D content to the masses. Trimble’s 3D modelling program SketchUp – and their millions of creators and creations from 3D Warehouse will be part of Remix3D.com. Office will be adding native support for 3D content next year.

With Microsoft HoloLens, rich 3D content can break free from your screen and Microsoft Edge is the first browser to fully embrace 3D across devices. Showcasing the potential of this level of 3D immersion, we demo’d a prototype Houzz site where you can select furniture in the site and visualize it in your home before you buy it.

Powerful and affordable virtual reality is coming to everyone with the Creators Update. HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS, and Acer will ship the first VR headsets capable of mixed reality with the Windows 10 Creators Update. And these accessories will be the first and only with inside-out, six-degrees of freedom. Unlike every other virtual reality headset in the market today, there will be zero need for a separate room and complicated setup. While the less immersive VR accessories today cost more than $500, or require a new expensive device, these accessories will start at just $299 and work with affordable laptops and PCs.

The Best Experience in 4K Gaming and in Game Broadcasting

The Creators Update will make it easy for you to create and enjoy live game streams and customized eSports tournaments on Xbox Live.

Gaming is incredibly popular on Windows 10 – increasing 500% in the last year. The Creators Update will make it easy for you to create and enjoy live game streams and customized eSports tournaments on Xbox Live. Beam system integration will enable interactive broadcasting and viewing of gameplay on Xbox Live, so you can watch your favorite streamer play and interact with them in real time. The Creators Update will also bring user-generated tournaments via Arena on Xbox Live, so you can define the rules of competition, invite friends and track tournament progress seamlessly across devices.

Plus, with a Windows 10 gaming PC, you’re able to play games like “Forza Horizon 3,” “Gears of War 4,” and more in 4K, in the highest possible visual fidelity.

A Faster Way to Connect and Share with People who Matter Most

The common thread between our most productive and our most fun moments is our people, those we share these moments with. Yet today, they are confined within separate applications, social networking apps, and email.

With the Creators Update, we are placing people at the center of your Windows experience – right where they belong. Your most important friends, family, and co-workers will be instantly accessible. With Windows MyPeople, you can pin your favorite contacts to the Windows task bar and easily drag and drop any document, photo or video right on top of the contact for easy sharing. You can receive unique notifications, Shoulder Taps, and easily view and open emails, IMs, shared documents and more, all in one place. The Windows MyPeople experience is also integrated across universal Windows apps for easy sharing.

If you’d like to see a quick highlight of today’s announcements, check out the below.

We are excited for you to try the Creators Update and our expanded family of Surface devices, and we can’t wait to see what you’ll create.

Terry

Today, we unveiled our vision for bringing 3D to everyone— making it easy to capture, create and share in 3D. With the Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft introduced Paint 3D — your 3D art studio in Windows — and the online community Remix 3D, connecting creators and creations all over the world. Everyone is welcome to start creating and sharing in Paint 3D today by joining the Windows Insider Program at insider.windows.com. To learn more about 3D in Windows 10, go to www.Remix3D.com.

Ideas are always driven by a spark of inspiration.  Our spark began when my daughter Maddie — completely out of the blue — asked for a 3D printer as part of her Christmas wish list.  I was surprised and curious and so I asked, “Maddie, what would you do with a 3D printer?”  She responded with a wide range of ideas — from making tiny soaps to little creatures and even a dishwasher (ours was broken at the time)!  I was struck with how powerful it could be to enable not just Maddie but anyone to move their ideas from their imagination to their screen and out into the world.

Why 3D?

As humans, we have long used our creativity for expression. To communicate and connect with one another, to solve problems, to tell our stories and to stimulate our minds.  However, we’ve often been limited to a two-dimensional canvas and yet we live in a multi-dimensional world. 3D can better communicate ideas and expression, it accelerates comprehension because it’s much more representative of the world in which we live. It provides a richer canvas on which we can paint, and a bridge to connect our physical and digital worlds.

That’s an incredible capability that will be available for free to 400 million Windows 10 users with the Windows 10 Creators Update.

And here’s how it works 

Creating is easy with capture and Paint 3D 

We start by making creations as easy as taking a photo. The objects from our lives hold a special significance marking our history and memories. Capture objects from your world in 3D using the camera on your phone, available soon on Windows 10 Mobile devices, and coming to iOS and Android in the future.

We are also making it easy to create in 3D from scratch. If you’re one of the 100+ million people who use and love Paint every month, you already know how easy it is. The same simple ethos that has always characterized Paint runs through the all new Paint 3D experience – allowing anyone to quickly and easily create in a new dimension. Your brushes now work directly on 3D and even your favorite photos become stickers on 3D models.

All-new Paint 3D user interface

Connect with great content and community  

A big part of creativity is being inspired by the ideas of others. Remix 3D is a hub for connecting with content and creators including over a million 3D objects and models that you can repurpose for your own creations. Remix 3D will enable all new scenarios for creators, including the ability for Minecraft players to share their 3D creations broadly with the Remix 3D community in the future.

Take a 3D emoji for example. Want to add some personal flair? Remix it with a stylish hat or stamp your individuality with colors and stickers (and unicorn horns of course!). With the Remix 3D community also built directly into Paint 3D, it’s incredibly easy to find what you want, remix it to make it your own, and share it back out for others to see.

The all-new Community, www.Remix3D.com

Millions of creations and creators with SketchUp 

It’s important that Remix 3D be a source for inspiration, a place where you can extend your creativity. That’s why we’re also excited to announce we are partnering with Trimble to bring the 3D modelling program SketchUp – and their millions of creators and creations from 3D Warehouse – to be a part of Remix 3D.

Mixed-reality experiences across devices

Windows 10 allows your 3D content to seamlessly flow not only across your screens, but also out into your world. Take an object from the real world, capture it in 3D, edit it in Paint 3D, share it out to the web, bring it back into your world as a hologram or take it into a virtual world. The barriers between the physical and the digital worlds are removed.

In the apps you know and love

Over the next year, we will bring 3D to a range of Office applications including Word, Excel and PowerPoint expanding the creativity and visual impact you can bring to your documents, reports and presentations. Whether you’re adding one of your own creations or something from the Remix 3D community, 3D makes your content punchier and more persuasive.

Get started now.  Join the preview. 

You can be among the first to experience 3D in Windows 10 – and bring your ideas to life in 3D—by joining the Windows Insider Program at insider.windows.com. To learn more about 3D in Windows 10, visit Remix3D.com.

*Available in US, UK, CA, AU, NZ

Today’s post was written by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team.

Today, Microsoft announced the Windows 10 Creators Update coming in early 2017, as well as stunning new devices: Surface Studio, Surface Dial and Surface Book with Performance Base. At our event today, Satya Nadella, Terry Myerson and Panos Panay showcased innovations to the Office apps that are coming first to Windows and brought to life on Surface. These advances make using a digital pen even better than traditional pen and paper, offer new ways to interact with your documents, and expand your options for creating rich and interactive content.

Inking is more powerful in the Office apps

We’re continuing to expand what’s possible with digital ink in Office. This year, we’ve already released capabilities for instant inking, shape conversion and even learning with ink. Today, we introduced even more inking capabilities coming first to Windows touch-enabled devices and designed to work best with your Windows Ink enabled pen:

• Ink Editor—Originally shown by the Windows team at //build, we are now launching Ink Editor. This makes your pen a more powerful document editing tool than ever. Strike through words to delete them, circle text to select it and automatically snap highlighter ink to text. And this is just the beginning. We’re planning to add even more Ink Editor capabilities and extend the feature to other Office apps in the future. Get started with Ink Editor in a few easy steps.

Use your pen intuitively to make edits directly in Word.

• Ink Replay control with Surface Dial—In August, we introduced Ink Replay, which lets you rewind and replay ink you see in your document. Today, we announced tight integration with Surface Dial and Windows 10, making ink playback as natural to control as a spin of the device. This helps you effortlessly set the pace at which you review step-by-step instructions, reveal lesson ideas and more.

Effortlessly set the pace of Ink Replay when you use Surface Dial.

• Digital ruler—Also originally shown by the Windows team at //build, you’ll soon be able to draw straight lines and align objects with the help of a built-in digital ruler in PowerPoint. Only with Windows 10 technology can you use pen and touch simultaneously, allowing you to position the built-in software ruler with one hand while using your pen to draw with the other. We’ll add the built-in ruler to more apps, like Word, Excel and OneNote, in the future.

Use the built-in digital ruler to draw straight lines, and drag the Segment Eraser over excess bits of ink to create precise ink shapes and clean up your drawings.

• Segment Eraser in PowerPoint—Create precise ink shapes easily with the help of this new eraser that intelligently removes excess bits of ink, right up to the nearest line. It’s easy to drag the Segment Eraser over multiple bits of excess ink to remove them all at once. We’ll extend this capability to more apps, like Word and Excel, in the future. You really need to see Segment Eraser in action to understand what it can do—check out the video above!

Office innovations optimized for Surface Studio and Surface Dial

We’re excited to announce additional capabilities in the Office apps that uniquely and seamlessly integrate with Surface Studio and Surface Dial. This helps you work in an intuitive and optimized way using those devices.

• New large-screen page view in Word—Review and edit documents using a new page view specifically designed for large-screen devices such as Surface Studio and Surface Hub. Naturally swipe to flip through pages with a fluid two-page magazine-style layout, and pinch to zoom out to navigate longer documents in a grid view.

Word will provide a new reviewing and editing experience optimized for large-screen devices.

• Additional Office integrations with Surface Dial—Surface Dial is an entirely new class of device that enables people to interact with their apps and devices. In Office, you can use it to control capabilities such as Ink Replay (outlined earlier) as well as advance slides and animations in PowerPoint presentations. You can even use Surface Dial to navigate across on-screen elements when using Narrator, the screen-reading app built into Windows 10 that reads aloud and describes content on your PC screen if you’re blind or have low vision.

Office apps are adding support for new modern content types

We’re continuing to expand the modern types of content you can add and edit in the Office apps, coming first to Windows. This helps you present your ideas in more creative, interactive and polished ways.

• 3D in the Office apps—As showcased during today’s event, we’ll be adding support for 3D models in Word, Excel and PowerPoint over the next year for the Windows 10 Creators Update. 3D helps expand the creativity and visual impact you can bring to your documents, presentations and reports. Insert 3D models from Remix 3D (the new online community filled with millions of pieces of content) or your desktop. Easily change the perspective of 3D material with rotation handles for all three dimensions. Office features work seamlessly with 3D models. For example, in PowerPoint, effortlessly apply transitions like Morph to create cinematic 3D animation that brings your presentations to life and celebrates your content. Stay tuned for more.

3D in PowerPoint will help you bring your presentations to life and increase their visual impact.

• Icons and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs) in Office apps—Now you can insert and edit SVG icons and images in your documents. We’re adding a built-in library of professional, high-quality icons you can use to make your content more visual. Since these icons are vector-based, they look great at any size without getting pixelated. In addition to icons, you can add and format other SVG images such as company logos, graphics created in applications like Adobe Illustrator and many other types of high-end visuals.

Now you can add and edit SVGs in Office. An SVG icon library is coming soon.

It’s an exciting set of capabilities the Office apps are bringing first to Windows. Office will continue to fully support the latest innovations in Windows and on Microsoft devices, with more to announce in the future.

You can learn even more about what’s new for Office 365 subscribers this month at: Office 2016 | Office for Mac | Office Mobile for Windows | Office for iPhone and iPad | Office on Android. If you’re an Office 365 Home or Personal customer, be sure to sign up for Office Insider to be the first to use the latest and greatest in Office productivity. Commercial customers on both Current Channel and Deferred Channel can also get early access to a fully supported build through First Release. This site explains more about when you can expect to receive the features announced today.

Thanks for your continued feedback and support!

—Kirk Koenigsbauer

The post Office 365 October news—exciting new value coming to Windows 10 appeared first on Office Blogs.

Surface Studio turns your desk into a creative studio

Surface Studio is a new class of device that transforms from a workstation into a powerful digital canvas, unlocking a more natural and immersive way to create on the thinnest display ever built. With a 4.5k ultra HD screen, Surface Studio delivers 63 percent more pixels than a state-of-the-art 4k TV.

Surface Studio starts at $2,999 USD and is available for pre-order today.

Surface Dial – a new spin on creativity

Surface Dial is a new peripheral designed for the creative process. It integrates with Windows 10 to work with any Surface device for a faster and more intuitive way to scroll, zoom and navigate. The Dial also enables a set of unique experiences exclusive to Surface Studio.

The Surface Dial is available for pre-order today for $99 USD.

The most powerful Surface Book yet

We introduced Surface Book with Performance Base, making the most powerful laptop in its class even better.

The three new Surface Book models feature 6^th Generation Intel Core i7 processors and pack more than twice the graphics processing power as the original Surface Book. Plus, it brings 16 hours of battery life* into the same sleek, versatile design people love.

Surface Book with Performance Base starts at $2,399 USD and is available for pre-order today.

The Windows 10 Creators Update

The Windows 10 Creators Update is coming as a free update in early 2017.

The Creators Update will enable anyone to create, share and experience in 3D and mixed reality, connect people faster to those they care about most and empower every gamer to be a broadcaster. And with the Creators Update, Microsoft Edge will be the first browser to bring 3D to the web.

3D for everyone

We introduced a new way to bring your ideas to life with Paint 3D, your new 3D art studio.

We also introduced the new online community Remix3D.com, connecting creators and creations around the world. Remix 3D will enable all new scenarios for creators to share their 3D creations broadly with the Remix 3D community. Everyone is welcome to start creating and sharing in Paint 3D today by joining the Windows Insider Program at insider.Windows.com. You can learn more about 3D in Windows 10 in this blog post and at Remix3D.com.

Office apps to support 3D models and add new inking features

The Windows 10 Creators Update is bringing new features to Office apps, including support for 3D models and new inking capabilities.

With PowerPoint on Windows 10, you will be able to add 3D models to bring your presentations to life and you will be able to change perspectives of 3D models by rotating in three dimensions and apply transitions like Morph to apply cinematic 3D animation. The new inking capabilities announced today in Office include Ink Editor in Word, which lets you use your digital pen intuitively to make changes directly in Word, making your pen a more powerful editing tool than ever. To learn more about these new features, visit the Office Blog.

Bringing mixed reality to people everywhere

The Windows 10 Creators Update will be the most powerful and affordable way to experience mixed reality. Today we announced that HP, Lenovo, ASUS, Dell and Acer will ship the first VR headsets capable of mixed reality through the Creators Update. Coming in 2017, these accessories will contain built-in sensors to enable inside-out, six-degrees of freedom for simplified set-up and to more easily move around your home as you experience virtual worlds — no markers required.

Every gamer becomes an in-game broadcaster

We’re making it super easy for anyone to become a game broadcaster or watch live gameplay with Beam technology that we’re building into Windows 10 and Xbox One, and we’re adding custom, gamer-created tournaments to Arena on Xbox Live. So whether you’re playing on Xbox One or a Windows 10 PC, Xbox is bringing every player together to play, compete, and broadcast. You can learn more about today’s gaming news on Xbox Wire.

A faster way to connect and share with people who matter most

With the Windows 10 Creators Update, we are putting the people you care about most at the center of your experience — right where they belong — with Windows MyPeople. With MyPeople, you will be able to pin your favorite contacts to the Windows task bar, and easily drag and drop any document, photo or video right on top of the contact for easy sharing.

Stay tuned — this is just the beginning

3D and mixed reality for everyone, in-game broadcasting and MyPeople are just some of the new experiences coming to the Windows 10 Creators Update in early 2017. Additional productivity, creativity, security and gaming features will also be included and announced soon so stay tuned!

*Surface Book with Performance Base features 16 hours of battery life for local video playback

The October 2016 Azure Backup update for the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services Agent is now available for download. The new features, improvements, and fixes for Azure Backup that are provided in the October 2016 update for Microsoft Azure Recovery Services (MARS) agent are detailed in the following KB article:

3196148– Azure Backup Update for Microsoft Azure Recovery Services Agent: October 2016 (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3196148)

The MARS agent is used by both Microsoft Azure Backup and Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (ASR) to transfer data to Azure. Please note that this is the first update of the Microsoft Azure Backup for MARS agent that officially supports System Center 2016 Data Protection Manager (SC DPM). This update is required for several features of DPM 2016 such as Modern Backup Storage to work seamlessly together with Azure Backup.

J.C. Hornbeck, Solution Asset PM
Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Group