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When using Azure services or products running on Azure like our Delegate365 it is important to place them in a datacenter near you to get a low latency. Currently Microsoft Azure is available in 17 regions worldwide, see Azure Regions. There are some websites performing speed tests and providing the necessary information for the decision where to locate Azure services for your location. The first speed test is https://azurespeedtest.azurewebsites.net (which is also available on github.com). ...

The licensing of Delegate365 is at user base for the number of users that are to be managed with Delegate365. So if f.e. there are 10,000 users in AAD and you want to manage 2,000 in D365, then a license for 2,000 users would be sufficient. Users are all active user in Office 365. This includes users, shared mailboxes and resources (rooms or equipment mailboxes). In order to make prices transparent also for larger packages up to 500,000 users we replaced the former static price information with an interactive price selector on the Delegate365 website. ...

In May Martina, I and our MVP colleague Sigi Jagott have been to Redmond and recorded some courses about Office 365 for Microsoft Virtual Academy. The recordings took two days for Martina and two days for Sigi. I had the pleasure to join Martina for the first day and two recordings. It’s quite an experience to come into the Microsoft Studio in Redmond Town Center and get a briefing about how it works, what to do (and what not to do). The recording was done and cutted by Danny who did a great job introducing us into the world of doing the webcasts. Many thanks for your patience and your support! ...

Ja, wir haben Sommer (und es ist richtig heiß in Mitteleuropa). Da hat Norbert Palecek (@Palenor) gerade passend auf einen aktuellen Artikel von Heise.de hingewiesen… heise.de: Ein Drittel aller Server im Koma – danke Norbert für den Tipp! Demnach sollen laut einer Studie der renommierten Stanford University rund ein Drittel aller Server in Rechenzentren eingeschalten sein … und nichts anderes tun, als Strom verbrauchen. Die durchschnittliche Auslastung der Rechner liegt bei nur rund 6 Prozent! Die Energie, die durch das Ausschalten nicht benötigter Server gespart werden könnte liegt bei 4 Gigawatt. Und das würde der Leistung von vier Kernkraftwerken entsprechen. ...

Wow, Microsoft is fast in delivering new versions of it’s Technical Preview of Windows 10. Today, Gabe Aul announced the availability of the next build of Win10 TP in “Welcome to the faster Fast ring”. “We have one more surprise for you this week – Build 10162, releasing to the Fast ring.” Microsoft did publish Build 10159 with the new wallpaper and logon UI on Tuesday, so Build 10162 was published right after… ...

Ganz neu und frisch gibt es seit wenigen Tagen eine Azure Billing API. Enterprise Agreement Kunden haben ja eine eigene Verwaltung ihrer Subscriptions im Microsoft Azure - EA Portal und eine eigne Schnittstelle. Alle anderen Azure Subscriptions und deren Verwendung und die angefallenen Kosten können nun seit kurzem mit der neuen Azure Billing API (Preview) abgefragt werden. Wozu? Das ist besonders für kleine Unternehmen sinnvoll, die kein Azure EA besitzen, aber dennoch mehrere Azure Subscriptions verwenden. So werden etwa oft mehrere eigene Unternehmens-MSDN Abos von unterschiedlichen Mitarbeitern verwendet, da macht es Sinn die “usage” und das “billing” automatisiert (oder in weiterer Folge gesammelt) abzufragen. ...

Delegate365 version 4.0.5 is out. The last automatic sync operations are now shown in the sync page and the lists show if objects are cloud or synced items. See the details here. Automatic Sync infos: For admins it’s essential to see when the last sync process was executed and if it the operations were successful. So we integrated a short history in the sync page showing the last 5 sync operations. Admins see when the automatic sync started and when it ended and if it finished successfully. As you can see the sync tries to use differential queries if possible to update only the changed objects quickly. As before Admins can run the manual Sync process anytime. ...

In Delegate365 version 4.0 we have made further improvements and some minor fixes. We introduced a new member picker with Auto-Suggest instead of the old dialog picker which now is accessible in the new Task Pane. The sync was updated to get the synced or cloud-information and some fixes for setting alias addresses and mailbox delegation. See the details here. New Member Picker: In all groups a new member picker came in. Members are managed by selecting the group and clicking “Manage Members” in the Task Pane like in this sample with a security group here. The usernames can be partly typed – one char is sufficient – and the Auto Suggest opens an shows all user names starting with that characters. The navigation can be done by mouse or with the cursor keys. Once the selection is made the admin still can remove items by clicking the “x” icon and the end of the users name or Apply the settings by clicking “Add”. The selected users are then added as members to that specific group. This concept was introduced in the administration / manage administrators page with version 3.9.5 (see here) and works now for all member pickers in D365: distribution groups, security groups, shared mailboxes and manage administrators (as before). ...

See the very interesting article “Upcoming changes to Windows 10 Insider Preview builds” by Gabe Aul in Blogging Windows for the latest details about Windows 10 and it’s official release in about one month. You can download the last version of Windows 10 technical preview – which is April Update (build 10130) - here for free: Download Windows 10 Insider Preview ISO June Update. The latest updates will automatically come via Windows Update. ...

In Teil 1 habe ich beschrieben, wie man Organisationskonten mit Visual Studio Online nutzen kann. Hierzu möchte ich noch einige weitere Infos anfügen, die für die Verwendung von VS Online im Unternehmen hilfreich sind. Konten mischen? Zunächst einmal wird oft die Frage gestellt, ob man in bestehende VS Online Services Benutzer mit Microsoft Konto UND Organisations-ID hinzufügen kann. Die kurze Antwort darauf lautet: Nein. Damit es simpel bleibt, nehme ich das Ergebnis hier gleich vorweg. Ob Organisations-IDs verwendet werden können hängt davon ab ob Visual Studio Online mit einer Org-ID erstellt wurde (denn nur dann können Org-ID’s verwendet werden). Zur Übersicht habe ich die folgende Tabelle mit dem aktuellen Status angelegt. ...