Enhancements to Azure Advisor

Azure Advisor helps customers to optimise their Azure deployments by analysing resource configuration and usage telemetry and then recommending solutions that can help improve (among other areas) the cost effectiveness of Azure resources.

There are recent enhancements to Azure Advisor including new right-size recommendations for underutilised MariaDB, MySQL, and PostgreSQL database server resources, and new Reservation recommendations for services such as Cosmos DB, SQL PaaS, Blog storage and Synapse analytics.

There’s also a new Quick Fix feature available which allows users to remediate recommendations for multiple resources simultaneously.

Find the two announcements covering these new enhancements here: https://bit.ly/2YxOUYc and here: https://bit.ly/3aU8l2k.

Advanced Communications is available

Microsoft announce that Advanced Communications is available from August 1, 2020.

This adds a new set of capabilities for Teams, costs $12 per user per month and may be added on to any licence that includes the Teams service.

It supports large meetings enhancing the standard Teams limits from 10,000 to 20,000 attendees, 15 to 50 concurrent events, and event durations from 4 to 16 hours. Note that these limits are already uplifted for all Teams users until 1 October, 2020 – find details of that here: https://bit.ly/3lf2fON.

It also supports integration with ISV compliance recording and contact centre solutions, and will support custom branded meeting lobbies in the near future.

Find details of what’s included here: https://bit.ly/31r24b8, the announcement itself here: https://bit.ly/3hsYl2l, and a useful FAQ here: https://bit.ly/34vzoQr.

Expansion of self-service purchase capability

Microsoft expand the capability for end users to purchase licences on their organisation’s tenant without going through the IT department.

From 15 September, 2020 users will be able to purchase Visio Plan 1 and Plan 2, and Project Plan 1 and Plan 3, as well as the currently available Power Apps per user, Power Automate per user and Power BI Pro products.

IT administrators can see any licences that have been purchased in this way through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, and can turn off self-service purchase on a product by product basis using PowerShell – find instructions here: https://bit.ly/2Eum8Am.

There’s also a useful FAQ to get an overview of the processes from both the end users’ and the IT administrators’ perspective here: http://bit.ly/2T034Pe.

Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (August 2020) Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing Guide.

The main change is additional clarification for the use of customisation when applied to Team Members scenarios.

Check out the Change Log on page 14 for details of the changes, and find the updated guide here: https://bit.ly/2DFopZC.

Power Apps Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (August 2020) Power Apps Licensing Guide.

The main change is clarification that the Power Apps per app/per user licences do not include RPA functionality for which a separate purchase of Power Automate per user with attended RPA plan is required.

As usual, find the details of all of the changes in the Change Log on page 24, and get the updated guide itself here: https://bit.ly/3kumMyF.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (August 2020) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide with two main changes.

The first is for the rebranding of Forms Pro to Dynamics 365 Customer Voice – find more info on our blog here: https://bit.ly/3abDtu0 – and the second is for the release of the new Dynamics 365 Sales Premium bundle, an offer combining Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Dynamics 365 Sales Insights at a price of $135 per user per month, a saving of $10 over buying the applications separately.

Find the updated Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/33L0IK4.

Dynamics 365 Sales Premium

Microsoft release a new offering called Dynamics 365 Sales Premium. It’s a single user licence for  Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Dynamics 365 Sales Insights at a price of $135 per user per month, a saving of $10 over buying the applications separately.

Find Dynamics 365 Sales Premium listed here with all of its fellow Dynamics 365 Sales family members: https://bit.ly/31yHuEO.

Forms Pro is rebranded as Dynamics 365 Customer Voice

Microsoft announce that Forms Pro is rebranded as Dynamics 365 Customer Voice, an enterprise feedback management solution. There are templates to help users get started on gathering feedback and the ability to analyse feedback and act on it.

There are no changes to the licensing – customers with Enterprise flavours of Dynamics 365 licences have 2,000 survey responses included per tenant per month, and Office 365 users can buy an add-on for the same capacity. Existing customers don’t need to do anything – current surveys in Forms Pro are moved to Dynamics 365 Customer Voice.

Find an overview of a Customer Voice solution here: https://bit.ly/2X3PZGj.