Today, the Halo Wars 2 Blitz Multiplayer Beta officially launches on Windows 10 PC and Xbox One! The Blitz multiplayer beta is open to anyone on Windows 10 PC in the Windows Store and for Xbox Live Gold members on Xbox One, and runs from today until Jan. 30.

Blitz offers a unique twist on Halo Wars 2 gameplay by replacing the traditional real-time strategy (RTS) aspects of resource collection, base building and tech tree planning with a streamlined way to build your armies and jump straight into the action.

Unlike a traditional RTS match, your entire army and Leader Powers are selected and built before a Blitz match even begins. Players will select a Leader and build a deck of 12 cards, with each card representing a type of unit or Leader Power. All units and Powers have an energy cost associated; finding the right balance of cheap and weak vs. expensive and high-tech units is all part of the deeper strategy.

For fans new to RTS, Blitz takes players straight into battle while RTS veterans will find opportunity for deeper strategy through deck building, army composition and counterplay. The beta is Player vs. Player only, but Blitz will also include a Player vs. Environment mode – Blitz Firefight – at launch.

Head over to Xbox Wire for more details, and download the beta today on either for your Windows 10 PC or Xbox One!

The post Play the Halo Wars 2 Blitz Multiplayer Beta on Xbox One and Windows 10 PC today appeared first on Windows Experience Blog.

Last year I went out and got an Alienware 13 laptop.  Later I got the Alienware Amplifier and put a NVidia 1070 GPU in it.  I have been really happy with this setup – as it is a powerful portable system.  I have only had one complaint: whenever I enabled Hyper-V on it the laptop screen would flicker randomly.

Now, I know that many people have experienced this over the last year – and it has been something that we on the Hyper-V team have been actively working with hardware vendors on.

Thankfully – last night I checked and saw that Dell had released an updated firmware and graphics driver for my laptop.  I installed it and am now completely flicker free!

Long story short: If you are seeing this problem – check with your laptop provider to ensure that you have the latest firmware and video drivers installed.

Cheers,
Ben

Hello everyone! We are happy to let you know that update 1701 for the Technical Preview Branch of System Center Configuration Manager has been released. Technical Preview Branch releases give you an opportunity to try out new Configuration Manager features in a test environment before they are made generally available. This months new preview features include:

• UEFI inventory data Hardware inventory can now determine whether the device is UEFI-enabled.
• Express files support for Windows 10 Cumulative Update– Configuration Manager can support Windows 10 Cumulative Update using Express files. This functionality is only supported in Windows 10 version 1607 with a Windows Update Agent update included with the updates released on January 10, 2017 (Patch Tuesday). For more information see https://docs.microsoft.com/sccm/core/get-started/capabilities-in-technical-preview-1612#express-installation-files-support-for-windows-10-updates.
• Validate Device Health Attestation Data via Management Point– You can now configure management points to validate health attestation reporting data for cloud or on-premises health attestation service.
• Updated Content Library Cleanup Tool– The command line tool (ContentLibraryCleanup.exe) used to remove content that is no longer associated with any package or application from a distribution point (orphaned content) has been updated with fixes for known issues.
• Host software updates on cloud-based distribution points– Beginning with this preview version, you can use a cloud-based distribution point to host a software update package.
• Support for Microsoft Azure Government cloud added to Operations Management Suite (OMS) Connectorfeature– You can now configure an OMS connector for the OMS workspace on Microsoft Azure Government cloud.
• Additional boundary groups improvements– Clients now find software update points using Boundary Group associations.

Weve also made several improvements to operating system deployment, many of which were the result of your User Voice feedback:

• Support for more applications for the Install Applications task sequence step
• Expire standalone media
• Support for additional content in stand-alone media
• Configurable timeout for Auto Apply Driver task sequence step
• Package ID is now displayed in task sequence steps
• Windows 10 ADK tracked by build version
• Default boot image source path can no longer be changed

Update 1701 for Technical Preview Branch is available in the Configuration Manager console. For new installations please use the 1610 baseline version of Configuration Manager Technical Preview Branch available on TechNet Evaluation Center.

We would love to hear your thoughts about the latest Technical Preview! To provide feedback or report any issues with the functionality included in this Technical Preview, please use Connect. If theres a new feature or enhancement you want us to consider for future updates, please use the Configuration Manager UserVoice site.

Thanks,

The System Center Configuration Manager team

Configuration Manager Resources:

Documentation for System Center Configuration Manager Technical Previews

Try the System Center Configuration Manager Technical Preview Branch

Documentation for System Center Configuration Manager

System Center Configuration Manager Forums

System Center Configuration Manager Support

Download the Configuration Manager Support Center

Author: Andy Atkinson

In the last Insiders build, we introduced Quick Create to quickly create virtual machines with less configuration (see blog).

We’re trying a few things to make it easier to set up a virtual machine, such as combining installation options to a single field for all supported file types, and adding a control to enable Windows Secure Boot more easily.

Quick Create can also help set up your network. If there’s no available switch, you’ll see a button to set up an “automatic network”, which will automatically configure an external switch for the virtual machine and connect it to the network.

To simplify the number of settings, we had to pick some good default settings for the virtual machine, which are currently:

• Generation: 2
• StartupRAM: 1024 MB
• DynamicRAM: Enabled
• Virtual Processors: 1

After the virtual machine is created, you will see the confirmation page with quick access to edit settings or to connect.

Are there other controls you want in Quick Create? Are we picking good defaults?

This is still a work in progress, so let us know what you think!

– Andy

This week we have updates for both new and experienced developers alike! Take a look below to see the latest news from the Windows Developer team.

New year, new dev: Developing your idea into a UWP app

With little or no prior experience, you’ll learn how to use XAML and C# to create amazing Windows 10 UWP applications, get those apps ready for publishing and see them run on UWP devices ranging from Xbox One and PC, to mobile and even Raspberry Pi. Get started here:

Announcing UWPDesktop Nuget Package 14393

The UWPDesktop NuGet package is here to improve the developer experience with Visual Studio when walking along the Desktop Bridge.

The Desktop Bridge allows you to call UWP APIs directly from your WinForms, WPF or VB application. You can use APIs such as Live tiles, notifications, App Services and many more!

MVP Updates

Your Windows Developer MVPs have been working on some pretty amazing things. Check out the two below tweets to get a glimpse into the MVP world.

The Windows Desktop Wallpaper Background!

And finally, in case you missed it last week, here is the Visual Studio Shortcuts desktop background we mentioned above. Download it here: http://wndw.ms/FkkoWL

Download Visual Studio to get started.

The Windows team would love to hear your feedback. Please keep the feedback coming using our Windows Developer UserVoice site. If you have a direct bug, please use the Windows Feedback tool built directly into Windows 10.

The post ICYMI – Tutorials, UWPDesktop Nuget, and MVP Updates appeared first on Building Apps for Windows.

Today’s post was written by Tim Richardson, lead program manager for School Data Sync.

We are excited to announce that School Data Sync (SDS), our online classroom automation solution, is moving from preview to general availability! Please fill out this request form to sign up, and we’ll help you to deploy it—for free.

SDS helps schools automatically create online classrooms in Office 365 from their Student Information System (SIS or MIS). SDS supports virtually every SIS on the market, and hundreds of customers in over 20 countries have already used it to sync over 100,000 teachers and 2 million students.

SDS imports user profiles and rosters from a SIS into Office 365 and automatically keeps them up to date. Schools often find it can be costly and time-consuming to maintain the online classrooms because rosters naturally change throughout the year. With SDS, IT admins can save time creating online classrooms, and teachers can enjoy online classrooms that are up and running with students on the first day of the term.

SDS also helps SIS and app partners to save time and money by integrating with each other through a single platform—Office 365. Customers with SDS enjoy the benefits of using Office 365 Education with partner applications Microsoft Classroom Preview, OneNote Class Notebooks and Office 365 Groups and Sites.

• See the School Data Sync Demo for a brief overview and demo of SDS.
• School IT admins can sign up for free deployment support (for a limited time).
• App, LMS and SIS partners can fill out the School Data Sync Partner Opportunity request form to learn how to integrate with SDS.

Global availability

SDS and Microsoft Classroom Preview can be used in nearly every country where Office 365 Education is available.^* Both SDS and Microsoft Classroom Preview are now localized for dozens of languages, with more coming soon.

Regional data storage—Many customers, especially customers in the United States and the European Union, have requirements for where cloud services can store student data. School districts in the U.S. and EU can rest assured that both SDS and Microsoft Classroom Preview now store data in their respective regions.

Supports your SIS—SDS is compatible with nearly every SIS. Customers have already deployed SDS with nearly 50 SIS/MIS vendors worldwide—including PowerSchool SIS, Capita SIMS, Infinite Campus, SunGard eSchoolPlus, Skyward, Trillium and more. Here is a list of some of the SISes that have been used with SDS.

A solution for customers AND partners

Schools save time—SDS was designed to make life easier for the entire Office 365 ecosystem. SDS saves time for IT admins and teachers, who get more time back for classroom instruction. For example, Riverview School District in western Washington wanted to deploy ClassPolicy—an app from our partner AssistX. Riverview and AssistX decided to integrate Riverview’s SIS with ClassPolicy through SDS rather than develop their own software to make the connection.

Christopher Collins, IT operations manager at Riverview School District, said, “With Microsoft School Data Sync, teachers have more time to develop a one-to-one relationship with a student and customize learning. What took 16 hours of manual data mining was reduced to four initial hours of working with ClassPolicy and getting SDS running—after that everything was synchronized and ready, taking no time at all… The fact that ClassPolicy and Microsoft Classroom work so well together is a testament to the effectiveness of both.”

App partners save time and money—Bob Chung, president of AssistX, said, “Being able to integrate SDS with the school’s Student Information System is huge for us. We wanted accurate roster data, and SDS does the heavy lifting. Now teachers at Riverview don’t have to spend hours manually creating rosters, and with SDS, they get automatic rosters and nightly updates.”

Read this case study to learn more about how School Data Sync helped Riverview SD and AssistX ClassPolicy save time and money.

Commitment to industry standards—SDS now also supports the IMS Global OneRoster 1.0 standard for roster data in CSV format. Customers and SIS vendors that generate files in the OneRoster format can easily import them into SDS.

Dr. Rob Abel, chief executive of IMS Global, said, “A large number of IMS school districts and suppliers have been absolutely thrilled with Microsoft’s leadership in helping to develop and adopt the IMS OneRoster^TM standard. The leadership of Microsoft in open standards is having a profound impact on making it easier for teachers and students to easily access innovative apps, content and tools from a wide range of suppliers around the world.”

Keeping students safe—Students with Office 365 Education can use Microsoft Classroom Preview and email to communicate with each other. Although most of our customers give students email access, some customers prefer not to give email accounts to students (especially young students). For these customers, we created a new deployment process that lets admins restrict students’ email access so they can only email their teachers and peer students. With this new process, customers can get the best of both worlds: students get the power of Microsoft Classroom Preview, mail and calendaring—but remain protected from outside influences.

Andrew Phillips, supervisor of technology for Cleveland City School District (CCSD) in Tennessee, said, “We wanted to control email for the students but still give teachers the technology tools to accomplish their goals. School Data Sync makes life easier for them.”

Read this case study to learn more about how SDS and Microsoft Classroom Preview helped CCSD to protect students using email.

Get started now

Here’s how to get started using SDS and Microsoft Classroom Preview:

School IT admins:

• Sign up to get free one-on-one deployment help directly from Microsoft or deploy SDS yourself using these instructions.
• Watch the SDS demo.
• Download the SDS sample data and scripts.
• Install the SDS toolkit.

School IT admins—additional resources:

• Watch the video about SDS and Microsoft Classroom Preview at the Omaha School District.
• Read the case study about SDS and partner AssistX ClassPolicy at the RiverSchool District.
• Read the case study about safe email options for the Cleveland School District.
• Give us feedback on our support site.
• View partners on the School Data Sync website.
• Visit our community forum.

App and LMS Partners:

• Sign up to learn more about SDS integration and co-marketing opportunities.
• Review the API documentation to enrich your apps with roster data from Office 365.
• Develop and test your application by downloading the sample code and documentation.

SIS/MIS and System Integration Partners:

• Sign up to learn more about SDS integration and co-marketing opportunities.

Teachers:

• Ask your IT department to set up these services. Point them to this blog post for details and instructions.
• Learn more on the Microsoft Classroom Preview website.
• Watch deep dive videos on Microsoft Classroom.
• See our interactive guides on Classroom Preview and other learning tools inside Office 365 Education:
  • Introducing Microsoft Classroom.
  • Engaging students with new learning tools.
  • Managing your assignments.

—Tim Richardson

*School Data Sync and Microsoft Classroom Preview may not be available to all customers in China or Germany.

The post Announcing School Data Sync general availability appeared first on Office Blogs.

We now have some quick demos (<5 minutes) published on Channel 9 which provide you with good insights of new features of Virtual Machine Manager 2016. They’re definitely worth checking out and you can find complete list below.

• Deploy Network Controller: In this video tutorial you will see how you can use the service template-based mechanism, provided by VMM 2016, for deployment and horizontal scaling of Software Defined Networking components – Network Controller, Gateway, and Software Load Balancer. Network Controller is a new server role in Windows Server 2016 that provides a centralized and programmable point to automate network configuration.
• Setup hyper-converged cluster: In this video, you will see how you can use VMM 2016 to seamlessly deploy hyper-converged Storage Spaces Direct cluster that provide highly available and scalable storage solutions using local disks. You will see how the existing cluster creation wizard is extended to deploy hyper-converged clusters by simply checking a check box.
• Create & set Port ACLs: In this video tutorial, you will see the how Port ACLs help you control the network traffic going in/out of your datacenter and will learn how you can create and set Port ACLs in VMM 2016. Port ACL serves as a collection of access control entries or ACL rules. An ACL can be attached to any number (zero or more) of VMM networking primitives, such as a VM network, VM subnet, virtual network adapter, or the VMM management server itself. An ACL can contain any number (zero or more) of ACL rules. Each compatible VMM networking primitive (VM network, VM subnet, virtual network adapter, or VMM management server) can have either one port ACL attached or none.
• Cluster Rolling Upgrade: Using Cluster Rolling Upgrade functionality in SCVMM 2016, you can now upgrade your Windows Server 2012 R2 clusters to Windows Server 2016 clusters with no downtime to running workloads. Watch this video to learn about the pre-requisites and the see how VMM automates the entire process of upgrading the nodes in the cluster.
• Increase memory of a running VM: With VMM 2016, you can now modify the memory configuration of a running VM that uses static memory. This functionality helps in eliminating downtime to running workloads due to memory reconfiguration. You can increase or decrease the memory allocation, or switch the virtual machine to dynamic memory. Watch this video to see how it can be done in VMM 2016.
• Create & set Storage QoS: With VMM 2016 you can set the quality of service (min or max IOPS, max bandwidth) for virtual machine storage so that applications running on the VMs receive the performance they require. This video tutorial provides a walkthrough of how you can create & set Storage Quality of Service policies in VMM 2016 which help you avoid noisy neighbor problems in your workloads.
• Bare Metal Deployment of Nano Server: With System Center 2016 Virtual Machine Manager you can now provision bare metal machines to Nano Server-based hosts/clusters. The Nano Server-based operating system deployment is very similar to a Full Server deployment. Watch this video tutorial to learn how you can do it in VMM 2016.
• Creating a Shielded VM using System Center 2016 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM): In this video, you will see the new Shielded VM feature. You can see how to create a shielded using System Center 2016 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) and how data at rest or in transit, cannot be snooped or tampered by malicious fabric admins.

Ashish Mehndi | Senior Program Manager | Microsoft

We are excited to announce that we have launched over 8.5 million square kilometers of fresh imagery for Brazil on Bing Maps. This imagery release covers the total area of Brazil, including land and water.

With stunning imagery of shores like those in Copacabana, you can just feel the ocean breeze on your face. Below is an aerial image of the Copacabana that has one of the most iconic beaches in the world. All year round people relax along the 4 kilometers of beautiful sand beach, play beach volleyball, soccer, party or just enjoy life. On New Year’s Eve the beach attracts millions of locals and tourists for a party without equal.

Below is another great scene from Brazil’s aerial imagery. This is a view of Third Bridge (Terceira Ponte) in Vitoria, which connects Vitoria to the city Vila Velha in the state of Espirito Santo, Brazil. Terceira Ponte is the second tallest bridge in Brazil.

Explore this unique place and many more marvels of Brazil on Bing Maps.

- Bing Maps Team

FastTrack for Windows 10 brings together the tools, resources and prescriptive guidance needed to help customers migrate to Windows 10 with confidence. Customers who use FastTrack for Windows 10 can get access to partner experts committed to helping them discover what is possible with Windows 10, plan for successful rollouts and deploy Windows 10 (and optionally together with Office 365 ProPlus) at their own pace.  Please read this blog for additional updates to FastTrack for Office 365, EMS and Dynamics 365.

Many organizations I have met with that have already started their migration to Windows 10 are realizing the process is easier and quicker than previous operating system upgrades.  At the same time, customers see value in working with Microsoft partners to ensure a smooth and less costly experience for IT organizations and end users.

When it comes to planning a Windows 10 deployment, the investments made in the development of the product has helped to ensure it is optimized for app compatibility (app compat).  In fact, Windows 10 is the most compatible Windows ever with 99%* compatibility.   In addition, a collection of resources, tools and guidance are highlighted in FastTrack for Windows 10, such as Windows Upgrade Analytics and Ready For Windows to help assess and address common app compat concerns.

Together, we believe FastTrack for Windows 10 and the latest app compat readiness resources will enable customers to deploy Windows 10 smoothly and with confidence, and more quickly realize the business values of Windows 10.

FastTrack for Windows 10

FastTrack has already helped thousands of customers move to Office 365 and EMS, and now with the introduction of Windows 10 to FastTrack customers will be able to leverage tools, resources and best practices to deploy quickly and efficiently, and increase the business agility of the organization. FastTrack consists of best practices, tools and resources available through a web experience fasttrack.microsoft.com with deployment guidance and services available through qualified partners.

Our FastTrack site helps customers plan and address each phase of the adoption lifecycle:

Envision—Through fasttrack.microsoft.com, we offer resources and tools to help customers define their vision and identify and prioritize resources for deployment. Customers can leverage these resources to be positioned for success by conducting a deployment assessment to understand the current environment and ensure a seamless transition. Explore the deployment options, become familiar with the latest deployment approaches, and assess the compatibility of hardware and software applications to balance the cost and risk of the deployment project.

Onboard—Once ready, customers can request engagement from a qualified partner who will help build a tailored success plan for Windows 10.  We recommend organizations to consider including Office 365 ProPlus alongside their Windows 10 rollout in order to provide a modern secure and productive computing experience.  FastTrack success plans included both technical implementation and user adoption strategies.  Partners will work with customer IT staff to ensure a smooth deployment and migration experience. Customers will also see eligible offers to support your Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus deployment.

Drive value—Our goal is to help businesses get the most out of their IT investments. To do that, we will provide customers with best practices, guidance and resources on Windows 10 adoption to help everyone understand the benefits of working in a new way and to drive adoption. Generate more value and transform existing practices with tools and guidance that help customer IT teams prepare, ensure a smooth transition to Windows, and measure how well Windows 10 has been received.

Onboarding guidance and deployment services for FastTrack for Windows 10 will be delivered through qualified partners (rather than the FastTrack Center), and will have streamlined access to offers, including Windows Accelerate engagements to help drive large scale deployments. While some offers require minimum qualifying licenses, customers of any size can use the FastTrack site to build success plans and gain access to deployment and adoption related resources. FastTrack resources, experts, and online tools, are also available globally and at scale, including the ability to create success plans in 21 different languages.

Windows 10 App Compat Readiness

Application compatibility is a topic that often comes up when talking about deployment. Even though most consider the compatibility of Windows 10 with existing apps to be extremely high, IT professionals have been on the lookout for information to give them an even higher level of confidence that business-critical applications will be compatible with Windows 10. Specifically, organizations want to know which apps (including traditional desktop apps, more modern or universal windows platform apps, and even web-based apps based on Internet Explorer or Edge) are supported, and how long these apps will be supported on Windows 10, and increasingly which servicing branch of Windows as a Service these solutions are supported on. With this in mind we’ve put together the following collection of resources, tools and guidance to help customers address common app compat concerns, and to find the best available business solutions that are compatible and supported on Windows 10.

The Microsoft Ready for Windows directory allows customers to search and source business solutions that are compatible and supported on Windows 10. The directory leverages Microsoft application insight data from hundreds of thousands of commercial devices running Windows 10 to provide a complete picture of the app ecosystem and to help plan Windows 10 upgrades with confidence. Ready for Windows provides adoption status for each version of the thousands of solutions listed within the directory which is based on information from commercial devices that share data with Microsoft. Ready for Windows has been live for a few months, is available in 23 languages, and can be used to find rich data on solutions that are compatible and supported on Windows 10 – including which branch of Windows as a Service is supported, and if the app has achieved the Windows 10 Compatible Logo. Windows 10 Compatible Logo solutions have undergone compatibility testing to help ensure they install readily and run reliably with the minimal number of hangs, crashes, or restarts, and are supported on Windows 10. I think customers will find the site useful to check how widely deployed and supported the software is in the organization on Windows 10, and to determine which apps to test and deploy.

The Windows Upgrade Analytics Service allows customers to get powerful upgrade readiness insights and recommendations about the computers, applications and drivers in the organization. Use this service as a guide through upgrade projects using a workflow based on Microsoft recommended practices.

The Windows Upgrade Analytics Service can be used to get:

• A visual workflow that guides customers from pilot to production
• Detailed computer and application inventory
• Powerful computer level search and drill-downs
• Guidance and insights into app and driver compatibility issues, with suggested fixes
• Data driven application rationalization tools
• Application usage information, allowing targeted validation; workflow to track validation progress and decisions
• Data export to commonly used software deployment tools, including System Center Configuration Manager

Up-to-date inventory data with the Windows Upgrade Analytics Service allows customers to balance cost and risk in upgrade projects. In short customers can identify compatibility issues that can block an upgrade and get fixes when they are known to Microsoft.

Next steps

These are exciting times for the Windows at Microsoft. The conversation around Windows 10 continues to accelerate and has shifted from “if”, to “when” and “how” to deploy. I believe FastTrack for Windows 10 will give customers and partners more confidence to deploy and benefit from the power of Windows 10.  So enroll in Microsoft FastTrack today, work with a partner to create a Windows 10 success plan, and leverage the Windows 10 app compat readiness resources to get started on the FastTrack to Windows 10.

*Based on analysis by Microsoft of millions applications on Windows, across information worker, consumer and games categories – 99% were inferred as compatible based on information customers opted to share with Microsoft.

The post Get on the FastTrack to deploy Windows 10 appeared first on Windows For Your Business.

Today’s post was written by Cyril Belikoff, senior director of Office Marketing.

Originally offered as a one-time onboarding benefit for Office 365 customers, Microsoft FastTrack has rapidly evolved over the past 18 months to become the customer success service that helps businesses onboard and drive adoption of Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS).

Today, we are announcing several enhancements to FastTrack for Office 365, as well as previews of FastTrack for Windows 10 and FastTrack for Dynamics 365. Just like FastTrack for Office 365 and EMS, FastTrack for Windows 10 and Dynamics 365 provides customers with resources and tools to support onboarding and user adoption. During the preview, eligible customers can request onboarding assistance through their certified Microsoft partner or their Microsoft account team at fasttrack.microsoft.com.

Our goal has always been to provide the best experience for our customers, so they can move to the cloud with confidence. Expanding FastTrack to Windows 10 and Dynamics 365 represents our commitment to supporting customer success service for the Microsoft Cloud.

FastTrack now serves more than 4,000 new customers every month. We’re working with thousands of partners and customers worldwide, enabled over 22,000 customers and migrated a total of 3.7 PB of customer data to date. Every day, we help organizations worldwide, from major retailers like Macy’s to consulting services like Mott MacDonald and non-profit organizations like The Global Fund, embrace digital transformation and make their experience with Office 365 and EMS a success.

What’s new in FastTrack for Office 365

In addition to the recently announced SharePoint 2013 migration offer, here’s a look at what’s new:

Microsoft Teams support

It’s exciting to see the response to Microsoft Teams since the preview was first announced in November. Today, we’re pleased to introduce new FastTrack resources for Microsoft Teams, including a new scenario, awareness kit and Productivity Library cards—plus remote onboarding and user adoption guidance from our FastTrack team. We are making this available in advance of Microsoft Teams general availability to allow you to begin planning and piloting Teams ahead of your organizational rollout.

Microsoft Teams is the chat-based workspace in Office 365 that brings together people, conversations and content.

Office 365 ProPlus deployment best practices

We’re adding new Office 365 ProPlus deployment best practices from FastTrack to the onboarding resources at fasttrack.microsoft.com. This guide for IT pros features actionable guidance and real-world scenarios. We’ll continue to update it as Microsoft releases new features and deployment capabilities, and refine it based on feedback from customers, partners and Microsoft deployment experts.

Office 365 user adoption best practices

Based on research and insights from thousands of engagements worldwide, the new Office 365 Adoption Guide provides an end-to-end methodology for driving user adoption, including best practices and prescriptive guidance on how to execute. As you plan for future rollouts, consider the four success factors (stakeholders, scenarios, awareness and training) impacting user adoption. Business scenarios are essential to envisioning and planning, so we’ve developed a Productivity Library with Office 365 scenarios available by industries, products and functions. Check it out and let us know what you think!

The Productivity Library allows you to discover Office 365 scenarios by roles, industries or products. You can also find short how-to videos and end-user training to help bring these scenarios to life.

ISO and HIPAA certifications

We’re pleased to announce that our tools and processes for FastTrack for Office 365 onboarding and migration scenarios are now compliant with the international technology security standard ISO 27001 and are covered in the Microsoft HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.

Expanded localization

As part of our localization services, FastTrack engineers already provide organizations worldwide with remote assistance in 12 languages. The resources on the FastTrack website are now available in a total of 27 languages, including six new languages we are adding today: Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Malay and Romanian.

Ask us anything!

The Microsoft Tech Community will host an “Ask Microsoft Anything” (AMA) in the FastTrack AMA group. Add the event to your calendar for January 26, 2017 from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. PST / 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. GMT.

Follow us on the Microsoft Mechanics YouTube channel, and if you are ready to engage with FastTrack, sign in at fasttrack.microsoft.com to create your personalized success plan and request FastTrack assistance. We look forward to helping you transition to Office 365, EMS, Windows 10 or Dynamics 365 in 2017.

The post FastTrack expands to support Windows 10, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams appeared first on Office Blogs.

The Xbox app brings together your gaming world across Xbox One and Windows 10 devices; that includes your friends, your games, your achievements, your avatar, access the Xbox and Windows Stores, and more. You can easily stay connected to the Xbox Live community, view your Gamerscore leaderboard across devices, view your GameDVR clips, start Party chats, launch into cross-device multiplayer with games like “Forza Horizon 3” and “Killer Instinct,” and stream your favorite games from Xbox One to any Windows 10 PC in your home while using your Xbox Wireless controller and more.

With a Windows 10 PC, you can easily game on-the-go and stay up to date with the Xbox Live community, and always be just a click away from your gaming world.

Here are three tips on how to get started with on-the-go gaming with the Xbox app:

Keep up with your Xbox community on the Xbox app

See what your friends are playing, share and watch game clips and access Game Hubs for your favorite titles. This all comes into play through the Activity Feed inside the Xbox app. Easily search for and add friends with the people search bar on the right side of the app. You can also link your Xbox Live account to your Facebook account to find Facebook friends who also game on Windows 10 or Xbox One.

Follow PC games on the Xbox app

Find top PC games on Xbox Live! After you’ve signed into the app with your Xbox Live account, or created a new, free Xbox Live account, it’s time to start personalizing and making it yours. On the left side, click Search, then type the name of your favorite game. From there, click into a game’s Game Hub to see the latest and also follow the game for updates added to your Activity Feed. You can also view GameDVR clips, and when you’re ready to publish your own epic moments, they’ll show up in your Activity Feed, too.

Find other Gamers Easily with Clubs

It’s easy to find other gamers who share similar interests with Clubs.  Choose by type of games or style of play, or join up with other fans of your favorite game… the possibilities are endless.  To find clubs, click the Clubs button on the left bar, and select from the clubs displayed or simply choose “Search” to find by game name or description.  Meet great new people to play with!

And don’t miss all these other awesome features:

• Record and capture screenshots with the Game bar by simply pressing Windows + G
• Pre-order games and purchase season passes, bundles and more with the now-unified Xbox Store and Windows Store
• Find Xbox Play Anywhere digital games – you buy an Xbox Play Anywhere digital game through the Xbox app (or the Windows Store or Xbox Store), it’s yours to play on both Windows 10 PC and Xbox One at no additional cost.

If you don’t already have the Xbox app on Windows 10, you can download it here. Have a great week!

The post Windows 10 Tip: Three tips for on-the-go gaming with the Xbox app appeared first on Windows Experience Blog.

This post is authored by Kristin M. Tolle, Director of Program Management for Advanced Analytics Ecosystem Development and Training at Microsoft.

Cortana Intelligence, Microsoft’s end-to-end platform for Advanced Analytics, offers a suite of services to solve real world customer problems. The suite has many moving parts – Data Lake, HDInsight (Hadoop), Event Hub, Machine Learning and R – just to name a few, and we realize it may be challenging for some of you to experience first-hand how all these services work together in concert.

My team, which is tasked with training our partners to use these services to address their customers’ needs, is keenly aware of the breadth of that knowledge surface area. In this blog post, I outline some of the best ways for you to learn about all things Big Data and Advanced Analytics from Microsoft, including many hands-on training options, and also how to stay in the loop on our future offerings.

Online Training

Our training offerings take many forms. Overviews can be found on Channel 9. For example, we published two new series recently, one on Azure SQL Data Warehousing by Chris Testa-O’Neill of SQLBits fame and another on Operationalizing Solutions with Azure Data Factory, by Ryan Swanstrom who, when he’s not training people for the Data Science team, runs Data Science 101, one of the most popular blogs for aspirant data scientists.

We’re also spending a lot of time working on massively open online courses (MOOCs). Microsoft partners can take Practical Data Analytics with Cortana Intelligence through the Cloud Platform University Online (CPO), with our very own Buck Woody. If you’re looking for a deep dive into Microsoft R there’s an EdX.org course, Analyzing Big Data with Microsoft R Server, presented by Data Scientist Seth Mottaghinejad.

Our MOOCs are not for the faint of heart – they’re close to the metal, the objective being to prepare you to become a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert or a Microsoft Certified Professional on our platform. In fact, we recently launched (currently in beta) a certification called Analyzing Big Data with Microsoft R (Exam 70-773). 

If you’re just getting started in Data Science, Microsoft Learning has an entire series of online classes, including ours, which teach you how to do real world data science using Microsoft platforms through the Data science track in the Microsoft Professional Program.

Training Materials, and Becoming a Training Partner

If you’re that type who just wants to figure it all out for yourself, we publish our training materials to a public GitHub repository where you’re welcome to access firsthand all the materials we use when we do in-person instruction. You can find us under Azure here: https://github.com/Azure/learnAnalytics-public.

These materials are open source and free for you to use to teach others about Advanced Analytics.

To become an Advanced Analytics training partner, please reach out to us here: http://learnanalytics.microsoft.com/home/trainingpartners– before long you’ll be publishing your classes on our LearnAnalytics@MS website!

In-Person Training

You’ll often find our team running classes at data science and machine learning events all over world – for instance at PASS, the Data Science Summit and many, many others.

We also deliver in-person “capstone” style classes around the world called the LearnAnalytics Series. These classes are very hands-on deep dives. You can learn Microsoft R with Spark and HDInsight, develop solutions using Cortana Intelligence and Microsoft R, and learn how to put Cognitive Services, Bot Framework and Deep Learning to use in the real world, just to cite some examples.

If Bots are your thing, register today for four upcoming classes on this topic in Houston, Chicago, Munich, and Madrid.

We’ve got an offering titled “Cortana Intelligence Suite Workshop – Foundations and SQL Data Warehousing” coming up in Copenhagen, with events in Madrid (Spain), Reading (UK), Sydney, Melbourne and Hong Kong to be scheduled soon after.

For those of you interested in a deep dive into Microsoft R, our course on “Microsoft R Server for Data Science with Spark and HDInsight” will be offered in Belgrade, Reading, Budapest, Istanbul and Dubai.

Stay in the Know

As you can tell, there’s just a lot going on in this space! Be sure to regularly visit the LearnAnalytics@MS portal to stay on top of everything Advanced Analytics from Microsoft.

What’s more, you may just find us offering a class in your own backyard in the near future!

Kristin
@Kristin_Tolle

This post was authored by Rahul Venkatraj, Program Manager, Data Platform Group

We continue to receive encouraging comments from the community on the Leaderboard. Thank you.
Many congratulations to the top-10 contributors featured on our December leaderboard!

Olaf Helper and Alberto Morillo top the Overall and Cloud database this month. Six of this month’s Overall Top-10 (including all of the top three) featured in last month’s Overall Top-10 as well, and four others are new entrants.

The following continues to be the points hierarchy (in decreasing order of points):

For questions related to this leaderboard, please write to leaderboard-sql@microsoft.com.

SQL Server was recently named DBMS of the Year by DB-Engines. DB-Engines is an initiative to collect and present information on database management systems, and provides a widely accepted popularity ranking of database management systems, and has been created and maintained by solid IT, an Austrian company with a special focus on database consulting and software development. In their award announcement recognizing SQL Server as the DBMS gaining the most popularity in 2016, DB-Engines cites the “release of SQL Server 2016 and the announcement to port SQL Server to Linux” and also highlights SQL Server’s strength in their ranking categories of job offers, LinkedIn profiles, and other ranking components.

We strive to deliver choice to our customers and to continually empower them to do more. SQL Server 2016 enables industry-leading performance and security [1] with built-in business intelligence on any device, as well as in-database advanced analytics, at industry-leading TCO. In 2016, we also made our fully-featured SQL Server Developer Edition free for development and testing. [2] With SQL Server 2016 Service Pack 1, we have made key innovations more accessible to developers and organizations across SQL Server editions, making it easier than ever to build advanced applications that scale across editions. Finally, the next release of SQL Server, currently in public preview, brings even more choice to developers, with the abilities to run SQL Server on Linux, Docker Engine, macOS on Docker for Mac, in addition to Windows.

Thank you to DB-Engines for this award, and to our customers for your continued support. We are grateful to have such a passionate user community. Please feel free to share your input about SQL Server using Microsoft’s Connect tool.

For those who haven’t used SQL Server 2016 or SQL Server v.Next yet, here are a few resources to learn more:

• Keep up with the latest news and information on the SQL Server webpage
• Get started today with public preview of next version of SQL Server on Linux or Windows
• Download SQL Server Developer Edition and our developer tools and build an app using SQL Server

[1] National Institute of Standards and Technology Comprehensive Vulnerability Database, 2016.

[2] Development and testing only; not for production or use with production data

Today we released the Team Foundation Server 2017 Update 1 Release Candidate.

• Release Notes
• Web Installer
• ISO Installer

This release can be used for a fresh install or to upgrade any supported previous version.  Here’s a chart showing the recommended upgrade paths from various TFS versions (you can substitute TFS 2017.1 in the rightmost column).  The upgrade from any of the more recent versions should be smooth but upgrades from 2017 should be particularly easy.

This release is English only.  We’ll provide the localized versions at RTM.

You can read the release notes for all the improvements (and it’s a crazy long list) but here are a few of my favorite highlights:

• New personalized account home page
• Tons of pull request improvements
• NPM support in package management
• Test impact analysis
• Versioning for build and release tasks
• and more…

We’re looking forward to any feedback you have.  At this point the feature set should be complete and we’re just refining it.  We should be starting to lock this release down in the next few weeks and will ship it as soon as it is ready.

Thanks,

Brian

Security threats are some of the leading concerns our customers have with technology today and that’s why we’ve built Windows 10 to be the most secure version of Windows ever. With comprehensive, built-in security features, Windows 10 provides protection from viruses and malware threats including ransomware, safer authentication with Windows Hello using your smile or fingerprint to login and ongoing security updates delivered monthly through Windows Update, to name a few.

But you don’t need to be a security expert to help secure your device and understand the protections you have in place.

In the Windows 10 Creators Update, we will introduce a new experience called the Windows Defender Security Center to make it is easier for you to view and control the security protections you choose and better understand the security features already protecting you on your Windows 10 device. Windows Insiders can explore this experience now under All Apps in the Start Menu and provide feedback through the Insider Feedback hub.  

Windows Defender program manager Shekhar Saxena explains the security features and controls available in the new Windows Defender Security Center app coming with the Windows 10 Creators Update.

The Windows Defender Security Center includes five pillars that give you control and visibility of your device security, health and online safety experiences.

Virus & threat protection provides a new view of your antivirus protection whether it’s Windows Defender Antivirus that comes free with Windows 10 or AV software from one of our ecosystem partners. If you’ve chosen Windows Defender Antivirus, your scan results and threat history will be displayed here, or you will be able to launch your 3^rd party AV protection app directly from this screen.

Device performance & health provides a single view of your latest Windows updates, drivers, battery life and storage capacity. Additionally, you have the option to start fresh with a clean install of Windows using the Refresh Windows feature. This option will keep your personal files and some Windows settings, and remove most of your apps for a fresh start that can help with performance improvements should your device need them.

Firewall & network protection provides information on the network connections and active Windows Firewall settings, as well as links to network troubleshooting information.

App & browser control allows you to adjust settings for SmartScreen for apps and browsers helping you be more informed and stay safer online by warning you of potential malicious sites, downloads and unrecognized apps and files from the Internet.

Family options gives you an easy way to connect to the family options available online. This page can link you to information about parental controls, options for setting up good screen time habits, setting up activity reports of your kids’ online activity and managing controls for purchasing apps and games. You can also view the health and safety of your family’s devices from this centralized location.

Our goal with the new Windows Defender Security Center is to help you become more informed and make safety simple.  It is equally important to us that you are protected by default and continuously protected – never giving the bad guys an opportunity to harm you. This new experience naturally supports customer choice in selecting an AV product. In addition, if your subscription or paid antivirus software should expire, Windows Defender Antivirus will kick in to provide protection by default until you take further action. Finally, it is important to ensure that you are in control of your PC.  Windows 10 respects your freedom to choose protection software and services that you like best.

We believe the new Windows Defender Security Center lives up to these principles and we are committed to working with you, as well as security experts and organizations throughout the technology industry to create safer experiences for everyone with Windows 10.

*Windows Hello requires specialized hardware, including fingerprint reader, illuminated IR sensor or other biometric sensors and capable devices.

The post Introducing Windows Defender Security Center appeared first on Windows Experience Blog.

Today, we’re announcing a brand new Visual Studio Team Services feature… Delivery Plans.

What are Delivery Plans?
When you’re planning and tracking work, it’s often necessary to see that work across Teams and Projects.  Visual Studio Team Services already provides customizable Kanban boards and Backlogs to help teams get their work done, but it’s often difficult to assemble the data from all those Boards and Backlogs into a comprehensive view.  Delivery Plans changes all that. A Delivery Plan is a view of the work from multiple teams (and multiple projects) laid out on a calendar with each team’s interations. Each row in the view represents the work from a team’s backlog, with each card corresponding to a work item — user story, feature, or epic. As you horizontally scroll through the calendar, work in future (or past) iterations comes into view.

Like the Kanban board, a Delivery Plan is an interactive work board, although one designed for multiple teams. You can add teams from across all the projects in your account.  If the plan needs updating, you can simply drag cards to update the iteration path. And, like the Kanban board, you can customize the card fields so that you can see relevant information for your work.

Delivery Plans in practice
Internally, we’ve been testing delivery plans for several months with a focus on sharing the schedule of new Features being added to Team Services. Every three weeks, we review our Delivery Plan to discuss whether we’ve set the right priorities and determine if dependencies exist.

Some of the questions that we ask of teams in our 3-sprint reviews are:

• How confident are the teams in meeting the deliverables scheduled for each sprint?
• Are dependencies across teams adequately addressed via the planned deliverables?
• Are there gaps in the schedule, where no deliverables are scheduled? What’s the cause? Can this be mitigated?

Next steps
Delivery Plans are available for public preview on all Team Services accounts. You begin by installing the Plans extension available from the Visual Studio marketplace.

We have additional features to add to Delivery Plans in the next few months. A few highlights are …

• Markers to highlight key dates (such as release dates and customer demonstrations) on the plan.
• Field Criteria which will allow you to tailor your plans to only show a subset of cards (such as work items with a certain tag or other field value)
• Dependency tracking. Highlighting dependency links between work items and whether they are scheduled to be resolved successfully.

Please install the extension and leave feedback on Uservoice about other views and additions that you would like to see on Delivery Plans.

To learn more about installing and using delivery plans, see Review team plans.

Derrick Fu
Program Manager, VSTS

This blog post brought to you by eighteen year veteran Microsoft Premier Field Engineer David Morgan.

Goal of this Post

In this post, I’ll be showing you one method you can build out an entire environment that you can use to deploy servers, clients, Microsoft and third party applications; i.e. anything that can be deployed on Windows Server Hyper-V on a single desktop class computer you might find on Craigslist or some other technology source. The only expense in this post will be purchasing a computer and not even that as you may already have an old desktop laying around that will work.

The tasks in this post require the user to have a minimum ~200 level knowledge of and experience with Windows Server products. The steps herein to attain the desired results are not exquisite in detail and may require some personal intuition and/or research. Also note that I’ve recommended a File-Share Witness configuration instead of the normal Disk Witness a two node cluster would be best suited for. The reason I’ve done so is this document does not go through the configuration of iSCSI or other methods for supplying storage to the cluster built here. (Sounds like another blog post opportunity.) For the widest clustering experience, you’ll want to learn how to use iSCSI. You can do so by configuring iSCSI Target on your Host machine or Domain Controller.

Once you have a suitable computer, all the Microsoft software you might wish to use is free by using evaluation versions of Windows Server, System Center, SQL, Exchange, etc. Many third party products also provide free evaluation software you can use as well.

First: Hardware

This is what this document will build:

You’ll need to make a decision on what versions of Windows Server Hyper-V you wish to use as a base platform; your Host machine. Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016 have slightly different hardware requirements; the biggest difference is 2012 R2 and below do not require SLAT and Windows Server 2016 does (there are additional requirements for 2016 if you wish to use some of the new advanced features; Nested Hyper-V, Hot Add NICs, Hot Add/Subtract Memory, etc.).

Here are the official requirements page for Servers 2012 R2 and 2016:

• Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V Hardware Requirements:
  
  • https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/jj647784(v=ws.11).aspx
    
• Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V Hardware Requirements:
  
  • https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/compute/hyper-v/system-requirements-for-hyper-v-on-windows
    

Out of all the requirements above the basic needs for this post are:

• Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V:
  
  • BIOS support for Virtualization
    
• Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V:
  
  • BIOS support for Virtualization
    
  • SLAT (Second-Level Address Translation)
    
• A minimum of 8 GB of system memory
  
• A minimum of three hard disks; one OS & two data
  
• A minimum of one network interface adapter
  
• As always, the more capabilities and capacity you have the better performing your system will be; multiple processors, faster storage and more memory will improve your experience but you can get by just fine with the basics above.
  

Here are the basic steps:

• Configure your hardware
  
• Install the Operating System and Hyper-V role
  
• Configure necessary Hyper-V networks
  
• Create a virtual machine with the Domain Controller role installed
  
• Create two virtual machines to be cluster nodes with Failover Cluster feature installed
  
• Configure your cluster
  
• Configure your desired clustered resources
  
• Go Play ……………….
  

Here are the steps in detail:

• Configure your host machine’s hardware
  
  • Verify or enable virtualization in the BIOS
    
  • If possible, place your disk drives on separate controllers
    
• Download the evaluation version of your desired operating system:
  
  • Windows Server 2012 R2
    
    • https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2012-r2
      
  • Windows Server 2016
    
    • https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2016
      
  • Burn this .iso to a DVD or a USB drive
    
• Boot your new server to the DVD or USB image you created above
  
  • Install the Operating System and Hyper-V role
    
  • The host server can remain in a workgroup
    
  • Configure necessary Hyper-V networks
    
    • Press Windows Key : Type Hyper-V Manager
      
      • Click : Virtual Switch Manager in the right Actions pane
        
        • Create a new External virtual switch named Internet
          
        • Create a new Private virtual network switch named Private
          
• Create a virtual machine with the Domain Controller role installed
  
  • In the Hyper-V console action pane:
    
    • Click : New : Virtual Machine
      
    • Name this machine DC1 (store this VM on your C: drive)
      
    • Next : Choose Generation 2
      
    • Next : Leave the memory settings as default
      
    • Next : Connect the Private network
      
    • Next : Accept the defaults for VHD
      
    • Next : Choose install and operating system from a bootable image file and point to the evaluation .iso you downloaded earlier
      
    • Next : Choose finish
      
    • Next : Start and Connect VM DC1
      
    • Next : Configure the IPv4 NIC to:
      
      • IP 192.168.16.1, Subnet 255.255.255.0, GW 192.168.16.1
        
    • Next : Install the Active Directory Domain Services feature
      
    • Next : After the feature install completes:
      
      • Configure your domain controller in a new Forest, I.e Demo.Local
        
      • Follow the prompts; allow DNS installation, etc., restart
        
• Create two virtual machine cluster nodes with Failover Cluster feature installed
  
  • Click : New : Virtual Machine
    
  • Name this machine Node1 (store this VM on a data disk)
    
  • Next : Choose Generation 2
    
  • Next : Set memory to 2048 and uncheck Dynamic Memory
    
  • Next : Connect the Private network
    
  • Next : Accept the defaults for VHD
    
  • Next : Choose install and operating system from a bootable image file and point to the evaluation .iso you downloaded earlier
    
  • Next : Choose finish
    
  • Next : Start and Connect VM Node1
    
  • Next : Configure the IPv4 NIC to:
    
    • IP 192.168.16.11, Subnet 255.255.255.0, GW 192.168.16.1
      
  • Next : Join Node1 to your domain
    
  • Repeat for the second node but:
    
    • Name the second Node2
      
    • Store Node2 on a separate data disk from DC1 & Node1
      
    • Next : Configure the IPv4 NIC to:
      
      • IP 192.168.16.12, Subnet 255.255.255.0, GW 192.168.16.1
        
• Configure your cluster
  
  • Validate your configuration:
    
    • Test-Cluster -Nodes Node1,Node2
      
  • Create the cluster:
    
    • New-Cluster -Name MyCluster -Nodes Node1,Node2 -StaticAddress 192.168.16.10
      

Conclusion:

• You are now ready to proceed with cluster & Hyper-V learning exercises, troubleshoot customer issues, explore, whatever. I’ve used failover clustering here just as an example; once you have the host server and the domain controller you can configure any supportable virtual machine and application resources you desire.
  
• Now; go have fun!