Dynamics 365 AI Apps

The Dynamics 365 AI apps build on the intelligent capabilities in Dynamics 365 to offer additional insights. Microsoft announce that Dynamics 365 AI for Sales is now available in the US (http://bit.ly/2JCVK69).

From a licensing perspective, it’s available for users already licensed with Sales Enterprise, Microsoft Relationship Sales Solution, Customer Engagement Plan, or Dynamics 365 Plan, as an add-on at $50 per user per month (http://bit.ly/2zoVQtg).

Dynamics 365 AI for Customer Service (http://bit.ly/2JCWNmB) and Dynamics 365 AI for Market Insights (http://bit.ly/2QfgNxP) are also available in public preview.

New SA Benefit: Access to Exchange Online Voice Mail Service

Microsoft add a new Software Assurance benefit to the November 2018 Product Terms. Customers with active SA for Exchange Server Standard/Enterprise 2019 may use the Exchange Online Voice Mail Service to access voice messages from Outlook.

The details are on page 25, and you can download the Product Terms every month here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.

Home Use Program: Office 2019

The Home Use Program is available to those customers who have active Software Assurance on their Office suite or applications licences, and it enables users of licensed devices to buy Office products at a heavily discounted price for home use. Office 2019 is now available through this program with a choice of Office Professional Plus 2019, Office Home and Business 2019, Visio Professional 2019 and Project Professional 2019.

They are all priced at $14.99, an increase from $9.99, and you can find out about the HUP program and order the products here: http://bit.ly/2Dd65VN.

Update on CSP Offerings

Microsoft update their page on Reservations and Server Subscriptions in CSP to reveal that there will be two new offerings available in the short term: Reservations for SQL Managed Instance, and Server Subscriptions for RDS CALs.

Find the page and its host of useful resources here: http://bit.ly/2NIC5n1.

Azure Reservations

Azure Reservations are a way of pre-paying for an Azure resource over a one or three-year term to get the most cost-effective pricing. The Reservations family continues to grow: it started with Reserved Instances, a way of pre-paying for Azure virtual machine base compute, and was extended with Reserved Capacity, a way of pre-paying for Azure SQL Database compute capacity. Today the family also includes Software Reservations for SUSE Linux software, and Reserved Capacity for Azure Cosmos DB throughput.

This page (http://bit.ly/2Q3vm7J) gives you an overview of Reservations and if you expand the “Buy a reservation” link at the left you can get details on the current four members of the Reservations family.

SharePoint Server 2019 Licensing

The SharePoint Server licensing page is updated for the 2019 version. And there’s good news – no changes to the licensing from the 2016 version.

Find the licensing page here for reference: http://bit.ly/2CGxy16.

Availability of Office 2019 Servers

Microsoft announce the release of Exchange Server 2019, Skype for Business Server 2019, SharePoint Server 2019, and Project Server 2019.

Find the announcement with links to more information on the new features of each product here: http://bit.ly/2Pqv4L3.

Dynamics 365 Update Policies

The update schedule for all of the Dynamics 365 products will soon be on a twice-yearly schedule with updates in April and October. Customers using Customer Engagement applications must have updated to the latest version of the apps by 31 January 2019, and Finance and Operations customers by 31 March, 2019. After that date, only the latest version of the online services will be supported. There’s no action for Business Central and the Talent app customers as these products are already on this update schedule.

Find an overview FAQ for Dynamics 365 Update Policies here (http://bit.ly/2yovuYF) with links to further information if required.

Retirement of System Center Global Service Monitor

Microsoft announce the retirement of System Center Global Service Monitor. Currently an SA benefit for System Center customers, this service will retire on 7 November, 2018 and customers are recommended to move to web application monitoring capabilities powered by Azure Application Insights. Current GSM customers will be notified of the retirement, and may migrate tests and alert rules to Azure Application Insights at no cost.

Find the announcement and some FAQs here: http://bit.ly/2JeRh9u.

Microsoft Learn

Microsoft announce that the E-Learning Software Assurance benefit is being replaced with Microsoft Learn, a completely free service for any customer to learn Microsoft products and services. Beginning 1st November 2018, current content and portals available to Software Assurance E-Learning customers will be retired, and access to current courses, transcripts, completion certificates and administrative tools residing on those sites will be unavailable.

Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/2OTERcb, with links to currently available courses and an FAQ.