Category Archives: Uncategorized

New Phone System From SA User SL

Microsoft add a new Phone System From SA User SL to the January 2020 Product Terms. Available only in the EA, the usual From SA rules apply with the qualifying licences being Skype for Business Server Plus CALs or a Skype for Business Plus CAL User SL. You’ll find the new licence added to the table on page 69 and the qualifying licences detailed on page 100. Download the Product Terms document here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.

Power Apps Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (January 2020) Power Apps Licensing Guide. There’s some useful information added on page 3 detailing the licensing requirements for external users, and confirmation included on page 4 that if the same Power Apps app exists in two environments, a user would require two Per App SLs to access both. As usual there’s a detailed Change Log on page 25, and you can find the updated guide here: http://bit.ly/PowAppsLGJan2020.

Self-service purchase capability

14 January, 2020 is the day that Microsoft’s new self-service capability goes live for commercial customers in the US.

This functionality allows end-users to buy Power BI licences on their organisation’s tenant without going through the IT department. They pay with a credit card and get limited access to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center so that they can assign licences to other users as required. IT administrators can see any licences that have been purchased in this way through their view of the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, and can turn off users’ ability to self-serve using PowerShell if required. End users will be able to purchase licences for Power Apps and Power Automate soon, and the functionality will be available in other geographies through 2020. Find an FAQ here: http://bit.ly/2uNNQU3.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (January 2020) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide. The main change is an update for the recently announced Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service on page 18 – see our blog for more details: http://bit.ly/LSBlogD365VACS.

There’s also confirmation added on page 21 that Asset Management for up to 100 assets is included in the base Supply Chain Management capability. Find this guide here: http://bit.ly/D365LGJan2020.

Announcements for Dynamics 365 retail solutions

Microsoft make three announcements concerning their Dynamics 365 retail solutions:

  • Dynamics 365 Commerce (an evolution of Dynamics 365 Retail unifying back-office, e-commerce, in-store and call centre experiences) will be generally available on 3rd February, 2020
  • There will be two new capabilities for Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection (loss prevention and account protection) available for preview on 2nd March, 2020
  • Dynamics 365 Connected Store (which uses smart devices in-store to give customers real-time and predictive insights on, for example, the length of queues at the tills or traffic around product displays so that appropriate actions can be taken) will be in preview later in 2020

Find the announcement with links to further resources including case studies here: http://bit.ly/2QJLAFP.

Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service

Microsoft announce Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service. This offering combines Power Virtual Agents and Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights enabling organisations to create no-code chatbots having identified the most common support issues facing their customers. The announcement is here: http://bit.ly/2FFBDTp, and pricing at $1,100 per tenant per month is confirmed on the product page here: http://bit.ly/2RdCArs.

Power Platform Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (December 2019) Power Platform Licensing Guide. The main update is for the newly available Microsoft Power Virtual Agents – see our blog for an overview of the product and how it’s licensed: http://bit.ly/2rKcow9.

Other updates include the introduction of a Power Apps per App plan student licence, and name changes for PowerApps and Flow to Power Apps and Power Automate. Find this guide here:  http://bit.ly/PowAppsLGDec2019.

Preview of Azure Spot virtual machines

Microsoft announce the preview of Azure spot virtual machines. Azure Spot VMs let you access unused Azure compute capacity at large discounts compared to pay-as-you-go prices. These VMs are evicted when Azure no longer has available compute capacity and must reallocate its resources. At that point, the VM is deallocated and no additional VM-related changes are incurred, but other resources, such as disk or network, continue to run and accrue charges.

Ideal workloads for Azure Spot VMs include:

  • development and test
  • workloads that can recover from interruptions
  • short-lived jobs which can easily be run again if the virtual machine is evicted.

Azure Spot VMs are created in the same way as regular VMs, but a flag is set at the time of creation, designating it as a Spot VM. At this point in the preview the pricing is fixed for a Spot VM, but in the future the pricing will vary based on capacity for a particular VM in a particular region. You’ll be able to choose your eviction terms: when Azure needs the capacity, or when the variable pricing reaches a maximum price that you have set.

As a comparison of pricing, for an Fsv2 VM, the pay-as-you-go price per hour is $0.163, while the Spot price is $0.065 per hour, with 1-year and 3-year Reserved Instances at $0.142 and $0.1227 per hour respectively.

Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/36O659J and there’s a useful FAQ at the bottom of this page: http://bit.ly/2tsxXBO.