In this episode, Ben and Scott touched on some updates on their social media presence due to some recent happenings in the social media services space. As they transition into the Microsoft cloud world, they discuss updates to cloud computing software and user experience design. They also provided some insight into conditional access policies and break-glass accounts and examined strategies for managing these elements for optimal efficiency. They wrapped up their conversation on a contemplative ...
Dec 28, 2023•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 365, Ben and Scott break away from tech news to talk about some of their favorite gadget purchases in the past year. If you (or a geek in your life) are looking for ways to spend those Christmas gift cards or you need some last-minute ideas, give them a listen. It's also the season of giving and we're raising money for Girls Who Code. Donate today at https://give.girlswhocode.com/msclouditpro! Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Note...
Dec 21, 2023•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 364, Ben and Scott discuss the recently announced Microsoft Designer, cover a handful of updates to Azure including Azure Automation and Azure Container Storage. Then they close out with some updates to the licensing model for Enterprise IoT Security. It's also the season of giving and we're raising money for Girls Who Code. Donate today at https://give.girlswhocode.com/msclouditpro! Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes Microsof...
Dec 14, 2023•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 363, Ben and Scott talk through some new hibernation capabilities coming to an Azure VM near you and the announced retirement of SharePoint Add-Ins. It's also the season of giving and we're raising money for Girls Who Code. Donate today at https://give.girlswhocode.com/msclouditpro! Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes Hibernating virtual machines Hibernate a dev box in Microsoft Dev Box Microsoft adds Outlook to cloud.microsoft...
Dec 07, 2023•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 362, Ben and Scott get sidetracked with some of the announcements coming out of Microsoft Ignite. It's also the season of giving and we're raising money for Girls Who Code. Donate today at https://give.girlswhocode.com/msclouditpro! Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes Microsoft Ignite 2023: AI transformation and the technology driving change Microsoft Ignite 2023: all the AI news from Microsoft’s IT pro event Reduce Compute Cos...
Nov 30, 2023•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 361, Ben and Scott discuss how Ben solved a data analysis problem with Azure Data Explorer and Scott shares some tips and tricks for Kusto. It's also the season of giving and we're raising money for Girls Who Code. Donate today at https://give.girlswhocode.com/msclouditpro! Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes What is Azure Data Explorer? Get data from file Get-MessageTrackingLog Two The Cloud -�Azure Data Explorer - One-click I...
Nov 23, 2023•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 360, Ben laments about a change in the data processing for Azure Sentinel and Scott contributes some suggestions around Microsoft's data processing policies and how customers can keep up to date on them along with some suggestions for how to manage your personal data in Log Analytics and Application Insights. Then they close out the show talking about how to track resource ownership over time for your Azure resources. It's also the season of giving and we're raising money for Girls Wh...
Nov 16, 2023•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 359, Ben and Scott discuss Microsoft Applied Skills - a new skilling platform for Microsoft customers to get hands-on in a live, on-demand lab environment to validate their skills in a specific area and how Applied Skills compares to the existing role-based certification exams. Next up, it's a quick review of an upcoming roadmap item that impacts Microsoft-managed conditional access policies and how to monitor and keep up to date with Message Center messages that are applicable to you...
Nov 09, 2023•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 358, Ben and Scott talk about Ben's new Teams-certified Poly Sync, a new teleprompter Scott ordered, and Amazon's investment in Microsoft 365. It's also the season of giving and we're raising money for Girls Who Code. Donate today at https://give.girlswhocode.com/msclouditpro! Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes POLY - Sync 20+ USB-A Personal Bluetooth Smart Speakerphone (Plantronics) - Connect to Smartphones via Bluetooth-PC/M...
Nov 02, 2023•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 357, Ben and Scott run through the recently announced Community gallery capability that has been added to the Azure Compute Gallery service. They also take a few minutes to discuss the public preview of table-level RBAC read-access controls for your Log Analytics workspaces. Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes Microsoft Ignite Share images using a community gallery Create a VM from a generalized image version Direct shared gall...
Oct 26, 2023•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 356, Ben and Scott revisit the ROI of Microsoft 365 Copilot, discuss some methods for bulk restores from the SharePoint Online Recycle bin, and some upcoming changes to default outbound internet access for your Azure VMs. If you have a chance, nominate the show for Best Podcast at the ESPC Inspire Awards! Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes Microsoft 365 Copilot: Release Date, Price, Download & more Microsoft 365 CoPilot: Licen...
Oct 19, 2023•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 355, Ben and Scott sit down with SharePoint developer extraordinaire Andrew Connell from Voitanos to talk about SharePoint Server Subscription Edition and some changes in SharePoint Framework (SPFX) support. You'll definitely want to listen in to make sure that you're falling into the "Pit of Success" for developing SPFX solutions for your on-premises installations of SharePoint. `Note: We get into the weeds with things like version numbers between SharePoint Server Subscription Editi...
Oct 12, 2023•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 354, Ben and Scott catch up on news and the latest announcements starting with Cisco and Splunk merging. Then they discuss the Surface and AI event where we saw the latest Surface hardware and learned about the straight to GA release of Microsoft 365 and Windows Copilot. Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes Cisco to Acquire Splunk, to Help Make Organizations More Secure and Resilient in an AI-Powered World Cisco and Splunk: Driv...
Oct 05, 2023•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 353, Scott talks to Ben about how he's using Portainer for container management on his home network and some tips and tricks for managing apps on your Mac (sorry Windows users). Then they pivot to Microsoft's largest conference of the year - Microsoft Ignite - coming Nov 14-17, 2023 for in-person attendees and November 15-16, 2023 for virtual attendees. Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes AppCleaner CleanMyMac X Portainer Micro...
Sep 28, 2023•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 352, Ben and Scott discuss their workflow and approach for "Read it later" services and Scott introduces Ben to a new service he's started using called Omnivore. Then they discuss a new feature coming to a SharePoint site and e-mail inbox near you - newsletter publishing from SharePoint. Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes Raindrop.io Omnivore.app Lenny's Newsletter Introducing new SharePoint news for email feature SharePoint N...
Sep 21, 2023•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 351, Ben and Scott catch up on some of the latest news around Power Automate, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Excel. First, they discuss the Public Preview of Application Insights integration with Power Automate for debugging your cloud flows. Next, they break down the still in Private Preview features of platform SSO for macOS clients. And then they close on some exciting announcements around the addition of Python functions to Microsoft Excel. Like what you hear and want to support t...
Sep 14, 2023•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 350, Ben and Scott talk about some of the ambiguity in features between several types of Teams channels, a new model that includes access to Microsoft Learn for those taking role-based Microsoft certification exams, and a simplified experience for creating and managing CDN endpoints using Azure Front Door for Azure Storage customers. Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes Overview of teams and channels in Microsoft Teams Introduci...
Sep 07, 2023•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 349, Ben and Scott talk through considerations for working with Azure Policy to enable diagnostic settings at scale. Along the way they also talk about helpful tools that are available that can help you get your environment configured the way you need even quicker. Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes Create diagnostic settings at scale using Azure Policies and Initiatives Microsoft Sentinel content hub catalog Create-AzDiagPoli...
Aug 31, 2023•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 348, Ben and Scott start the discussion focusing on the shifting dynamics of open-source tool access for customers, particularly in light of HashiCorp's decision to transition to a Business Source License (BSL). This move essentially limits what competitors can do with their code, requiring them to acquire a commercial license from HashiCorp if developing. While the change doesn't significantly impact customers who primarily use Terraform for deploying and managing resources, it may h...
Aug 24, 2023•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 347, Ben and Scott sit down with Merill Fernando to discuss the tools and content Merill is building to support Microsoft Entra customers. Merill is a Principal Product Manager in the Microsoft CAT team with a focus on Microsoft Graph for Identity and brings his experiences working with Microsoft Entra customers to the masses. In the conversation, we explore Merill's various contributions to technical tools aimed at simplifying complex processes when working with the Microsoft Cloud. ...
Aug 17, 2023•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 346, Ben and Scott discuss how some of the recent attacks on Microsoft 365 customers have led to Microsoft, in partnership with CISA, offering expanded cloud logging capabilities to all customers for no additional charge. Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes Microsoft is shutting down Cortana, and Apple should do the same with Siri Types of Power Automate licenses CISA and Microsoft Partnership Expands Access to Logging Capabili...
Aug 10, 2023•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast In episode 345, Ben and Scott discuss the upcoming Microsoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Archive services, as well as the pricing and value of Microsoft Co-Pilot. Microsoft 365 backup and Microsoft 365 archive services will provide users with options for backing up data in Microsoft 365, including SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange. They also discuss the benefits this will have on purchasing backup service directly from Microsoft, as well as how third-party backup providers can take advantage o...
Aug 03, 2023•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 344, Ben and Scott invite Andrew Connell, SharePoint developer extraordinaire and founder of Voitanos on the show to talk about your options when it comes to developing modern web applications that interact with SharePoint and Teams. There's a lot to unpack here - when or even should you build a SharePoint app? Is it better to just build and deploy web apps that you can control end-to-end? Listen in to find out. Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership...
Jul 27, 2023•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 343, Ben and Scott start to tackle the great renaming of Azure Active Directory to Microsoft Entra ID (or MEID). Except for the places that it didn't get renamed. It's not confusing at all. They discuss the implications of the rename and the potential confusion it could cause, as well as explore new product announcements related to Microsoft's foray into the security service edge market. They also provide resources for understanding the rename and navigating Microsoft Intra. Overall, ...
Jul 20, 2023•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 342, Ben and Scott talk through how they manage access to the internet for the kids in their lives, Microsoft Edge Workspaces, and some of the frustrations with auto-generated documentation for the Microsoft Graph. Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes Using PiHole for parental control of your home network [GUIDE] How to Parental Controls - Options circle OpenDNS FamilyShield NextDNS Episode 341 – Our word of the day is “Notes” E...
Jul 13, 2023•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 341, Ben and Scott continue to dive into the confusion that is the note taking ecosystem in Microsoft 365 with the potential competition between OneNote and Loop, the formal retirement announcement for InfoPath Forms Services, and some more follow-up on Copilots and where you can use them in your day-to-day work. Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes Default Notes tab in Microsoft Teams for Enterprise customers Meeting Details in...
Jul 06, 2023•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 340, Ben and Scott talk about some of the takeaways from the recent DDoS attacks on the Azure Portal, a (new to them) Terraform module for working with Azure AD, and how to start preparing your Microsoft 365 tenant for Microsoft Copilot. Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes Microsoft Response to Layer 7 Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks AzCopy - Use multiple clients to run jobs in parallel Azure AD intro with Terrafor...
Jun 29, 2023•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 339, Ben and Scott get side railed with the current Redditt drama around their paid API and some of their favorite apps going away. They also cover and update on Azure AD Graph Retirement before they move on to some new sample scripts from the Intune team that demonstrate how to work with Intune and Microsoft Graph. Finally, they close out discussing the new public preview of collaborative notes in Microsoft Teams. Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our members...
Jun 22, 2023•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 338, Ben comes back from vacation which prompts Scott to start a discussion on mailbox management tips before they move on to some changes in the Apple Developer Program that could impact your users. Then they close out with some Azure announcements for AKS. Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes One Email Rule - Have a separate Inbox and an Inbox CC to reduce email stress. Guaranteed. End meetings early or start late Support Tip:...
Jun 15, 2023•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 337, Ben and Scott through recommendations for securing your Office 365 tenants and admin accounts. They also address a listener question on how you can address the disparities in logging and metrics collections when you're using multiple SaaS products. Like what you hear and want to support the show? Check out our membership options. Show Notes CollabCon Conference 2023 Manage emergency access accounts in Azure AD Securing privileged access for hybrid and cloud deployments in Azure A...
Jun 08, 2023•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
