Contact Us

July 2024 Newsletter

Table of Contents

What’s New at eGroup Enabling Technologies?

eGroup Enabling Technologies has been recognized as #1 in the U.S. for both Microsoft Cybersecurity Incentives Program (CSI) Workshops and the Copilot Adoption Factory Program. These achievements highlight our dedication to providing industry-leading solutions and exceptional service to our clients.

 ➡️ #1 in the U.S. for Microsoft CSI Workshops: Our top ranking reflects our expertise in delivering comprehensive security workshops that empower organizations to fortify their defenses and stay ahead of evolving cyber threats. Learn more about how our Microsoft Security Workshops can enhance your security posture.

➡️ #1 in the U.S. for Copilot Adoption Factory Program: We’re leading the way in helping businesses seamlessly integrate Copilot for Microsoft 365, driving productivity and collaboration across teams. Discover the transformative power of Copilot for Microsoft 365 and how it can revolutionize your work environment.

Thank you for your continued trust and partnership. We look forward to supporting your success with these industry-leading solutions!

What’s New in the Hybrid Data Center?

Cisco

  • Cisco has announced a new feature within Cisco Networking Cloud called Workflows, aimed at simplifying network automation. This service allows organizations to easily automate configuration tasks across various domains, using a low- to no-code interface. 
  • Benefits of Workflows:
    • Efficiency: Streamlines complex automation processes. 
    • Integration: Seamlessly connects with hybrid cloud environments. 
    • Security: Ensures secure operations across public and private assets. 
  • Key Features:
    • Low- to No-Code Customization: Offers drag-and-drop API tasks and data transformation. 
    • Real-Time Updates: Provides updates on workflow execution and audit logs. 
  • Cisco ISE 3.4 Update: Streamlining Network Security
    • The latest Cisco ISE 3.4 release introduces Common Policy, a unified strategy for consistent security policy enforcement across network domains. Cisco ISE acts as a central hub, integrating network and security domains with identity context to distribute policies effectively. 
  • Key Advantages:
    • Uniform Policies: Ensures consistent access across all network areas. 
    • Simplified Management: Allows PAC-less communication, reducing administrative tasks. 

Cohesity

  • It’s Epic, or EPYC! Cohesity is bringing even more options to the Cohesity DataCloud, enabling the AMD EPYC CPU-based all-flash and hybrid servers from Dell, HPE and Lenovo. (Commence the Faith No More music in the background… )

  • Make sure you catch this preview video from Cohesity on using DataProtectaaS with the Microsoft 365 Backup Storage Service.   

Nutanix

Pure Storage

  • An exciting announcement from Pure coming this month is the Secure Application Workspaces, or SAW. SAW enhances multitenancy by logically dividing storage to align with application demands, improving the performance and availability of SLAs, and isolating tenants to prevent noisy neighbor issues. A few key highlights:
    • Multitenancy Concept: This concept aligns with the application-focused, containerized approach, providing tenant isolation, faster service, and improved resource management. 
    • Realms: Logical constructs for managing storage objects, ensuring isolation and QOS, controlled by array admins. 
    • Use Case: Facilitates production and Test/Dev operations concurrently, mitigating resource constraints with QOS. 
    • Implementation: Available via Purity updates, simplifying configurations with 75% fewer parameters and better visibility. 
  • Pure wrapped up its Pure Accelerate 2024 conference last week, and with it came some exciting new announcements about the Evergreen program, AI, Security, and Hybrid Cloud.
    • Pure announced a new certification with NVIDIA, the Super Pod! The new NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD will combine the NVIDIA AIRI DGX BasePOD and Pure’s FlashStack for AI solutions to create a large-scale AI training inference platform.  
    • Pure continues to enhance its Evergreen//One capabilities, with new SLA’s designed to simplify and enhance storage management through AI-powered security assessments and enhanced anomaly detection.  Read more about the Cyber Recovery and Resilience SLA features on Evergreen//One here. 
    • Don’t miss all the updates from Accelerate here! 
  • But what excited our Field CTO for Hybrid Data Center, Mike Dent, and Director of Sales and Delivery Operations, Jeff Thomas, was the announcement that Rivian Automotive won the Cloud Champion award for their cloud strategy with the Pure Platform. As Jeff and Mike are both Rivian EV Truck owners, this one was a big internal hoorah! Read more about Rivian’s use of Pure Storage’s various platforms here. 

VMware

  • VMware recently announced 8.0 Update 3, which brought about a few exciting enhancements.
    • ESXi Live Patching now allows patching to the virtual machine execution environment, aka VMX, on hosts without the need to reboot or evaluate the host. This seems to be the second coming of the ESXi Quick Boot capabilities and is available to more than just specific HW vendors. The host enters a partial maintenance mode, and VMs are fast-suspend-resumed, which is non-disruptive to the VMs. This can be a big win for organizations that need help maintaining their lifecycle due to capacity or patch management! 
    • While still fairly new to the masses, with Update 3 VMware announced dual-DPU support to enhance security and resiliency of the environment within the VMware Distributed Services Engine.
      • If you’re not familiar with the VMware Distributed Services Engine, it was released in vSphere 8.0 allowing customers to take advantage of DPUs.  Read about it here. 
      • And if you’re not familiar with DPU’s and how it will change and enhance the landscape of virtualization and other environments, read up on it here. 

What’s New with Microsoft?

Azure

  • Windows Server 2025 preview is now available. Advanced security, performance increases, and modernized experience are in this newest version of Windows Server. 
  • The Azure Standard support offer ended on June 30, 2024. Customers without another paid support plan that need technical coverage should purchase support or discuss CSP with eGroup Enabling Technologies. 
  • Azure Site Recovery now supports Azure Trusted Launch VMs (for Windows OS). 
  • Azure ExpressRoute is rolling out several enhancements to help customers improve their multi-site and zonal resiliency posture with ExpressRoute deployments. 

Copilot for Microsoft 365

  • Restricted SharePoint Search for Copilot for M365 is available, allowing admins to limit search to selected SharePoint sites. The feature is off by default and requires admin roles to enable. Users can access content from allowed sites and personal files. 
  • Microsoft 365 admin center introduces a new people experiences category in Adoption Score to track the overall adoption of Copilot for Microsoft 365. The AI assistance category includes a score on a 100-point scale. 
  • Copilot is being integrated into SharePoint’s Rich Text Editor, enabling content authoring assistance. It’ll be to Copilot licensees, rolling out in early August. Admins can disable this feature. 
  • In Teams, watch for a ‘Catch up’ tab, which provides updates and action prompts. This is rolling out from early July to early August 2024, with no admin action needed.  
  • Now, in addition to referencing Word and PowerPoint files when using Copilot in Word, users can reference PDFs and specific emails and meetings.  
  • Users are no longer limited to using Copilot in Excel only in Excel tables, because Copilot in Excel now works on data ranges resembling tables with a single row of headers on top.  
  • PowerPoint and Word users can create the perfect AI-generated image with a simple prompt, or pull in an ideal stock photo. Prompt DALL-E 3 to “create an image” to “find an image” from Microsoft’s stock. When in PowerPoint, Designer will automatically add the image into a compelling slide design.   

Defender for Office 365

  • The new Take Action wizard in Threat Explorer allows multiple response actions simultaneously. This enhancement aids in efficient threat remediation, supporting actions like email purging, inline submissions, and tenant-level block actions for up to 100 messages. Rollout is complete, but admins need the Search and Purge role to perform email purge actions. 

Edge for Business

  • Admins can customize organizational branding assets onto Edge for Business through the Microsoft Edge management service. This branding can help users differentiate between multiple profiles and browser windows. Admins can control, preview, and customize the organization name, accent color, and logo. Default branding can be enabled through policies by admins via the Edge management service. 

Intune

  • A new Windows 11 feature is available to help you manage company policies using mobile device management (MDM). Starting with the May 2024 non-security update, you can now use Config Refresh to configure policy refresh timing to be as short as 30 minutes or as long as 24 hours. This helps improve security and compliance so that settings don’t drift from your intent.  
  • Intune will end support for Android device administrator on devices with GMS access on December 31, 2024. Users should stop enrolling devices with this method and migrate to alternative management methods. Intune will not update or support these devices after the end date. 
  • Intune will require iOS/iPadOS 16 and higher after the release of iOS/iPadOS 18 later this year.  
  • Intune will support macOS 13 and higher later this year, coinciding with the release of macOS 15 Sequoia. Devices on macOS 12.x or below will remain enrolled but won’t enroll new devices. 
  • Intune now supports corporate device identifiers for devices running Windows 11, version 22H2 and later so that you can identify corporate machines ahead of enrollment. When a device that matches the model, manufacturer, and serial number criteria enrolls, Intune will mark it as a corporate device and enable the appropriate management capabilities.  
  • End users can view the BitLocker recovery key for an enrolled Windows device and the FileVault recovery key for an enrolled Mac in the Company Portal app for iOS and Company Portal app for macOS. This capability will reduce helpdesk calls when they’re locked out of their corporate machines. 
  • Microsoft is replacing the role-based access control (RBAC) rights to endpoint security policies that are granted by the Security baselines permission with more granular permissions for specific tasks. This change can help assign the specific rights that Intune admins require to do specific jobs instead of relying on either the built-in Endpoint Security Manager role or a custom role. New roles include App Control for Business, Attack surface reduction, and Endpoint detection and response. 
  • Intune Suite’s Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) elevation rules now support the elevation of Windows Installer and PowerShell files in addition to executable files that were previously supported. The new file extensions that EPM supports include msi and ps1 files. 
  • The Remove apps and configuration (RAC) feature will solve the problem where removing settings involved excluding devices from policy assignments or removing users from groups, and then waiting for devices to check in. RAC allows Real-time monitoring of which policies and apps are removed/restored, and selective restore of individual apps and policies. 

OneDrive For Business

  • Microsoft OneDrive is updating its shared folder experience. Users will now access shared folders via the People view in their own OneDrive, organized by the sharer, starting late July. 

Outlook (Classic)

  • Legacy Outlook clients are retiring, affecting users with outdated versions on iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows Mail and Calendar applications. Starting in mid-August, outdated browsers will receive an error on Outlook web. Users must update to the latest versions for continued support. 

Outlook (New)

  • The new Outlook for Windows will open web links in Microsoft Edge side-by-side with the email. This feature will be rolled out through late September and applies to links from Entra ID and MSA accounts. Admins can configure this behavior using the Cloud Policy service or Administrative Templates for Microsoft 365 Apps. Users will be notified of this change and can manage preferences in settings. 

Planner

  • eDiscovery support for Microsoft Planner, including search and legal holds, will be generally available in early July 2024. This feature allows admins to search and hold Planner tasks, comments, and attachments in Purview, but only for tenants created before October 2022. 
  • The new Microsoft Planner app in Teams is rolling out, including Copilot for Microsoft 365 for premium users to manage plan data via language prompts. Users can access Copilot features without a specific license and admins will have a control to disable it. 

Power Apps

  • Microsoft is switching the tenant setting “disableShareWithEveryone” that was previously set to “off” by default, to now be “on” by default. This means that makers will not be able to share their canvas apps with the “Everyone” group without changing this setting.  

Power BI

  • Power BI is retiring support for older browsers on September 1st. Users should upgrade their browsers by August 31, 2024, to avoid any disruptions. 

Purview

  • The new Purview Portal is entering General Availability with a unified experience for data security, governance, and compliance, and will replace the classic portal by the end of 2024.  
  • The new Microsoft Purview portal will come with a modernized eDiscovery experience, unifying Content Search, eDiscovery Standard, and eDiscovery Premium with enhanced features for efficiency and data management. 
  • Microsoft Entra’s Insider Risk condition in Conditional Access is now generally available. Organizations with an Entra ID P2 license can set up Conditional Access policies using insider risk signals from Adaptive Protection to enforce actions based on user risk levels, after admins enable Adaptive Protection. 
  • By September, the Purview portal will introduce an enhanced global Search feature, allowing users to search for organizational profiles, including names, email addresses, role groups, and admin units.  
  • Purview’s Data Lifecycle Management integrates with Adaptive protection to automatically preserve items deleted by users at elevated risk levels. Public preview begins late June 2024, GA in December. 

SharePoint

  • SharePoint Online has a feedback button for users to submit compliments, problems, or suggestions about features and functionality. Collection is on by default, but can be turned off using the Cloud Policy service for Microsoft 365 in the admin center.  
  • A new content pane will appear for Pages and News, enhancing tools for authors with features like distribution channel selection and audience selection.   
  • The SharePoint News connector in Microsoft Teams will retire on July 22nd. Users should transition to alternatives like Viva Connections News notifications, Viva Amplify, or Teams Workflow.  
  • SharePoint eSignature is now integrated into the Teams Approvals app, allowing users to view, track, and sign requests. 

Teams

  • The classic Teams for VDI will reach end of support on October 1, 2024, and end of availability on July 1, 2025. For more information, see: End of availability for classic Teams client. 
  • Teams is releasing a new VDI solution that offers enhanced performance, reliability, security, and streamlined support. The release applies to Windows endpoints connecting to Azure Virtual Desktops, Windows 365, and Citrix VDI environments only, and requires the new Microsoft Teams client and the client-side plugin component. 

Teams Chats and Channels

  • The “Files” tab in Teams Chat will be renamed to “Shared” and will include files, links, and upcoming features like image previews and keyword search. 
  • To stay focused, you can now adjust the sound on notifications. Assign different sounds to different kinds of notifications, such as urgent messages, or mute notification sounds when busy.  
  • When you join a new team, you can see which channels the team owner recommends and choose to only see the channels relevant to you. 
  • If you have a link to a shared channel in your organization, you can request to join that channel. Channel owners will be able to view and respond to your request. 
  • Keep up with the latest in your channel with the new channels experience. Create and view new posts at the top of your page and switch to conversation view for more focused discussions. Pin important posts and see important channel details, like members and notifications, in the new info pane.  

Teams Meetings

  • Now, transcript owners can download or delete a transcript file while participants can only view the transcript. Owners can also manage which participants can download, view, and edit the transcript.  
  • All Teams transcripts are now stored in OneDrive for Business. Anytime you open a transcript in Teams, you’ll see the OneDrive transcript copy. Meeting transcripts will no longer be saved in Exchange Online. 
  • Intelligent recap is now supported after transcribed meetings that weren’t recorded (as part of the Copilot for Microsoft 365 license or Teams Premium). If your meeting was only transcribed, you’ll have access to name mentions and AI-generated meeting notes and tasks. Intelligent recap features are available as part of the Copilot for M365 license. To learn more, see Meeting recap in Microsoft Teams. 
  • Breakout rooms are now supported on Teams VDI. Use breakout rooms to split larger meetings into small groups for more focused discussions. To learn more, see Use Breakout Rooms in Teams Meetings.  
  • Live captions, which automatically create real-time subtitles from your meeting participants’ dialogue, can now be edited to remove profanity. To turn it on, go to Captions and transcripts in your Teams settings and turn the Filter profane words in meeting captions toggle on.  
  • Zoom in, zoom out, and restore the original size of content that you’re viewing in a Teams meeting. Just look for the button controls at the lower left of the meeting window when content is being shared.  
  • Speaker recognition is available on all Teams Rooms on Windows devices. Speakers can be recognized in Teams meetings transcripts even when joining from a meeting room. To be recognized, set up your voice profile in Teams.  
  • Teams will soon allow viewing of file attachments from Outlook meeting invitations directly in the Teams calendar for Desktop and Mac.  

Teams Phone

  • Microsoft Teams Android devices will migrate to the Android AOSP management platform in December. Eligible devices will receive a manual firmware update, others may stop working unless they’re reconfigured. IT admins need to create new policies in Intune to support the migration.  
  • On Windows devices, you can mute and unmute Teams audio by clicking the mic icon on the taskbar. 
  • Manage your business hours greeting, add on-hold music, and more by managing your call queue and auto attendant greetings in Teams settings. To make changes to your organization’s call queue and/or auto attendant, your IT admin must designate you as an authorized user and your org must have calling functionality set up. Then go to Settings > Calls > Call queue or auto attendant in Teams to make changes.  
  • If you’ve chosen a delegate to answer your Teams calls, you can now allow them to switch phone lines, join active calls, and view other delegates’ call history. To change delegate settings, go to Settings and More, then at the top of Teams, select Settings > General, and then select Manage delegates.  

Teams Admin

  • The Teams admin center will introduce app centric management and changes to app permission policies. Admins can control who can install Teams apps and manage access to the app individually.  
  • Admins can use the New-CsTeamsUpdateManagementPolicy command to control certain in-product messages in Teams, such as “What’s New” updates and training opportunities.  
  • Starting August 15th, Microsoft is retiring the Office 365 connectors feature from Teams. Power Automate workflows are the new solution to relay information into and out of Teams in a scalable, secure way. 

Teams Premium

  • Organizers with Teams Premium can now select the 10 translated caption languages from over 40 options for town hall meetings.  
  • The Queues app is now part of Teams Premium, enabling efficient call handling within Teams.  

Windows

  • Microsoft Defender Antivirus on Windows 10 and Windows 11 will be shipping with a new service called Microsoft Defender Core service. To prepare, users need to update the Platform Update to the latest version and allow specific URLs. If using an Application Control application or running a 3rd party AV and/or EDR, add the Microsoft Defender Core Service process to the allowed list. 
  • Windows 365 Cloud PCs will now have port 3389 closed by default to enhance security. Organizations are advised to keep it closed but can manage access via Windows 365 Security Baselines or Intune custom Firewall rules if necessary. Reprovisioning will close open port 3389 on existing Cloud PCs. 

Conclusion

If any of these updates or changes pose as a challenge for your team, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us! We will be happy to work with you to navigate these changes. Feel free to fill out the form below to get in contact with our team.

We Want to Hear From You!

Like any good partner, we’re listening! Since the latest advancements and announcements are coming in quickly, we’ve separated the list into subcategories below. Let us know what you’d like to see more of! 

Click Here To Tell Us What You'd Like To See In The Newsletter

Need Assistance with These Updates?

Contact our team today to get help with any of the changes mentioned above!

Page Links
Contacts
Facebook Twitter Instagram Linkedin