We are still seeing a lot of hybrid events, but with more people attending in-person it’s almost starting to feel like the former days.

Microsoft Build was held last month, and with AI being in the news a lot lately, Microsoft had a lot to share on the topic as well.

Some key Build announcements:

• Bing will be the default search engine for ChatGPT and power web browsing within OpenAI’s tool.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot gets plugin support enabling your developers to integrate their applications.
• AI will be built into Windows 11 with Copilot. Windows Copilot was announced as an application that uses modern AI, and has a conversational interface that assists you with cognitive tasks.

Personally, it’s always exciting to watch Mark Russinovich go over Azure Innovations. He spoke about the latest innovations in Azure architecture such as hollow-core fibre to optimise our WAN connections, and the AI workload-aware scheduler called Project Forge, a globally aware resource scheduler.

Kevin Scott, CTO & EVP of AI went over the Era of AI copilot and how Microsoft and the partnership with OpenAI’s platform can help develop the next generation of AI apps.

Microsoft’s Dev Box is bringing the tools your developers need to be ready to go with cloud computing.  In the age of hybrid work, a physical PC is no longer required.

We always encourage learning, and after Build there’s so much to catch up on. Be sure to check out this Microsoft Learn page to join the Learn Cloud Skills challenge and earn a free certification voucher and see the other Build Learn Collections.

Lastly, there is also the Book of News to follow all of the updates from Microsoft Build.  You can find information relevant to IT Pros despite this being a developer-focused event.

Until next time!

The post Microsoft Build announcements and beyond! appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

The event brought us many surprises, so just in case you couldn’t tune in live, let’s walk through some of the key announcements.

Azure AI

With the continual advancements being made in AI, solutions are rapidly changing to meet the needs of users. Microsoft Azure AI Service has several new capabilities to help customers increase productivity, efficiency and content safety for customers.

Updates to Azure OpenAI Service, now in preview, will include enhancements like Azure AI Studio, which will better enable organisations to combine Azure OpenAI Service with their data; a Provisioned Throughput Model, which will offer dedicated/reserved capacity; and plugins that will simplify integrating external data sources and streamline the process of building and consuming APIs.

Azure AI Content Safety, a new Azure AI service, will empower businesses to create safer online environments and communities. Models are designed to detect hate, violent, sexual and self-harm content across languages in both images and text. The models assign a severity score to flagged content, indicating to human moderators what content requires urgent attention.

Vector search for Azure Cognitive Search, the retrieval system for new large language models (LLM) apps, is coming soon in preview. Vector search allows developers to easily store, index and search by concept in addition to keywords, using organisational data including text, images, audio, video and graphs.

New capabilities, now in preview for Azure Cognitive Service for Language, will include the ability for developers to customise summarisation, in addition to the entity recognition, text classification and conversational language understanding (CLU) features already announced, and are all powered by Azure OpenAI Service.

Azure Machine Learning drastically improves machine learning professionals’ ability to operationalise responsible generative AI solutions by enabling evaluation at all phases of the model lifecycle. Updates to Azure Machine Learning include:

• Prompt flow, in preview soon, will provide a streamlined experience for prompting, evaluating and tuning large language models. Users can quickly create prompt workflows that connect to various language models and data sources and assess the quality of their workflows with measurements, such as “groundedness,” to choose the best prompt for their use case.
• Support for foundation models, in preview, will provide native capabilities to fine-tune and deploy foundation models from multiple open-source repositories using Azure Machine Learning components and pipelines.
• Responsible AI dashboard support for text and image data, now in preview, will enable users to evaluate large models built with unstructured data during the model building, training and/or evaluation stage. This helps users identify model errors, fairness issues and model explanations before models are deployed, for more performant and fair computer vision and natural language processing (NLP) models.
• Model monitoring, in preview, will enable users to track model performance in production, receive timely alerts and analyse issues for continuous learning and model improvement.

Azure Data

Microsoft Fabric, now in preview, delivers an integrated and simplified experience for all analytics workloads and users on an enterprise-grade data foundation. It brings together Power BI, Data Factory and the next generation of Synapse in a unified software as a service (SaaS) offering to give customers a price-effective and easy-to-manage modern analytics solution for the era of AI.

Power BI has several new updates that will empower organisations to turn data into insights immediately with an industry-leading BI platform and include:

• Copilot in Power BI, in preview, will infuse the power of large language models with an organisation’s data to help uncover and share insights faster.
• Power BI Direct Lake, in preview, is a new storage mode within Power BI datasets that will allow organisations to unlock massive data without having to replicate it, by seeing straight through to the data in the lake.
• Power BI Desktop Developer Mode, in preview, will enable developer-centric workflows through Git integration for Power BI datasets and reports.

Azure Cosmos DB is introducing a range of new enhancements to optimise costs, performance and developer productivity. These enhancements demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to improving the user experience for app developers.

Azure SQL Database Hyperscale elastic pools is introducing a shared resource model for Hyperscale databases, now in preview. This update will help developers build and manage new apps in the cloud and scale multiple databases that have varying and unpredictable usage demands.

Developer Community

Microsoft is launching a variety of training and documentation on Microsoft Learn to help people leverage the power of AI.

The newly released content helps technology professionals build expertise and gain new skills in the latest AI innovations, including how to:

• Use Azure OpenAI Service to summarise text, get code suggestions and generate images for a website.
• Add intelligence to apps – and find insights – by creating tailored AI models within Power Apps.
• Use Power Virtual Agents to build adaptable chatbots that use AI.
• Code suggestions with GitHub Copilot to take projects to the next level.

Power Platform

Next-generation AI in Power Pages is revolutionising how customers build and launch data-centric websites for their businesses. With Copilot in Power Pages, now in preview, users can increase productivity and speed up the website building process by generating text, creating complex forms, contextual chatbots and web page layouts and creating and editing image and site design themes for rapid visual setup and customisation. This is possible in minutes using natural language input and intelligent suggestions.

Power Virtual Agents continues to help developers create more intelligent chatbots using the latest AI capabilities. New features include the ability for Power Virtual Agents to generate dialogue and complete actions, Azure conversational language understanding (CLU) integration, and the expansion of previously announced features, including conversation boosters in Power Virtual Agents.

Catalog in Power Apps, a new feature within Power Platform now in preview, will give developers and makers a place to publish and share the building blocks that underlie their apps. With every new app that developers create, their organisation will enjoy the benefits of a robust catalog that reduces the time and cost of each new app.

With Power Virtual Agents (PVA), users can easily author an intelligent Microsoft Teams bot using natural language to build and point to any website available within the tenant and Teams users. This update, now in preview, will democratise building company-wide help desk bots, such as human resources bots, and department/team-wide bots, such as onboarding bots.

And more!

This is just a small selection of announcements from Build 2023! Be sure to check out the Book of News to see everything, which includes announcements on AI, Security, Windows and more.

Missed the show? Check out the sessions you might have missed in the Session Catalogue, and follow the conversation on the UK Twitter channel, @MSDevUK, as well as on the #MSBuild hashtag!

The post A look at the announcements from Microsoft Build 2023 appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

You will hear cutting-edge perspectives from across the developer industry, discussing the developer landscape and opportunities for the coming year and beyond. By registering, you’ll be automatically signed up for all global content.

Every developer is welcome

At Microsoft Build, you’ll leave a better developer than when you arrived. It’s where you can solve challenges, meet the engineers behind the Microsoft platforms you use every day, and connect with a diverse group of developers who want to hone their skills.

On the day, you can expect all of this and more:

• Keynotes: Headlines and announcements delivered by executives.
• Technical/Breakout Sessions: More in-depth coverage of keynote content.
• Ask the Experts: Sessions with experts in cloud, desktop, mobile, and web development for guidance specific to your project or interests.
• Table Topics: Gather the community for live discussion on camera, and in chat! Get inspired by community experts, learn best practices, and discover helpful resources with other attendees.
• Learn Live: Guided online with a subject matter expert to walk and talk through Microsoft Learn modules​.
• Partner Sessions: Connect with Microsoft Partners in either an Ask the Expert or Table Topics session.

On top of that, there are a variety of theme sessions for you to tune into, with topics from all over the developer ecosystem. Whether you want to learn about app development, AI or DevOps, there’s a session for you.

Register now!

In the coming weeks, you’ll be able to use the Microsoft Build session planner to sign up for these talks and more. It’s a great way to view all of the technical content on offer, while tailoring the event specifically to your interests.

Microsoft Build will provide the key developer content for which the event is known, while tailoring the event experience towards topics that developers the world over are looking for.

This digital event starts on May 23 at 8AM BST, at no cost, so register today to avoid disappointment!

Useful links

• Register for Build 2023 today!
• Follow the conversation on @MSDevUK, as well as on the #MSBuild hashtag!
• Check out Microsoft Learn TV

The post Microsoft Build returns May 23-25! appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Hello folks,

It’s been great to see in-person events take off again! Many events are working in a hybrid model, which seems to be working really well. It gives the opportunity for some people to appear in person and others to join remotely if they cannot make an in-person event.

A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft Build kicked off on a global scale. While it was streaming sessions around the clock, various locations held in person events: Japan, Germany, LATAM, UK, and France. There was a great in-person representation in the UK from various customers, partners and Microsoft MVPs, and it was great to see the amazing work that everyone has been doing in the community.

While Microsoft Build tends to be labelled as a ‘developer’ event, there was a large amount of announcements for the IT Pro community too.

Below is a list of some of the key announcements that targeted the IT Pro community:

• SQL Server 2022 has a load of new features with a focus of modernising your apps.
• Build and Deploy Containerised applications and databases for hybrid environments with Azure Arc. There is a lot of capability coming out for hybrid management.
• There was also another great session on Azure Arc using Kubernetes, check out this session from my very own teammates Orin Thomas and Viniscius Apolinario!
• Not only did PowerShell turn 15 years old recently, but there was a great session on how to deploy scripts from Azure AD PowerShell to Graph PowerShell.
• Mark Russinovich gave a great session on Azure Innovation.
• Accessibility is something that many don’t realise we need. Personally, I found I had ways of coping that I never even realised. This session shows how Microsoft has been enabling folks with hearing, vision, cognitive, learning, mobility disabilities and mental health conditions to do more. Learn how all of us can be more inclusive with the products we deliver from day 1.
• Microsoft Certifications are a hot topic with customers and the community alike. Check out the session with the latest updates on MS Certification exams!

You can check out all the updates via the Microsoft Build Book of News.

For those of you that don’t want to tirelessly read through the Book of News, I’d like to direct you to a drawing by our own Nitya Narasimhan, who has visually sketched out ALL of the announcements from Build in one awesome drawing. It can be found here.

Want to do some skilling up?

Check out the Azure Skills Navigator for System Administrators, look at where to start and where to go to get skilled up.

Upcoming in the month of July is a load of in-person events. I encourage everyone to check out some of the great conferences coming up and maybe even join a local (or global) meetup group. There are some great technical sessions from the community, and community is key to driving our success!

Learn more

• This article was written for the Monthly TechNet UK IT Pro Newsletter – sign up today!
• A look at the announcements from Microsoft Build 2022
• What to catch up on from Build 2022
• New Azure features and functionality for May​ 2022 – Microsoft Build edition

The post Microsoft Build announcements for IT Pros appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

This year’s Microsoft Build has come to a close, but despite the event being over there’s still plenty of content for you to enjoy. There are a wealth of on-demand sessions and supplemental content that cover everything from announcements to tech deep-dives, so it’s absolutely worth your time to dig into the session catalogue.

What our MVPs thought

With so many sessions available, it might be hard to know where to start. Fortunately, we had the perfect group of people to ask for pointers!

Following the conclusion of this year’s Microsoft Build, we spoke to some of the Microsoft MVPs in the UK about what they thought about the event, as well as their personal highlights.

Kevin McDonnell, Microsoft 365 Solutions Architect and co-host of the GreyHatBeard podcast, said:

Options are what helps us feel better mentally, and Build brought those in abundance. Whether it was to enjoy from the comfort of home or to head into TVP to attend in person (including a great choice of food). Whether it was to focus on dev in Azure, GitHub pipelines, the best of Graph or the magic of Power Platform. Whether it was tech content, how to build a community or the emotional Humans of IT track. There was content for all and how you wanted it. I learnt, I chatted with old friends and I met new people – exactly what I want from a conference!

Chris Hoard, Partner Education Lead at Vuzion, said:

This year’s Microsoft Build was the first major post-pandemic event which truly embraced hybrid, and one which I think will be the template for events moving forward. On the one hand, we had the digital core delivered out of the Microsoft Media Hub in Redmond, and on the other we had regional spotlights where you had the opportunity to meet up and attend sessions in person. Whether you want to watch remote, attend in real life or even watch sessions remotely whilst being there in real life: this event showed us that the choice is yours, which is far more inclusive and personalises how each of us like to consume content.

Attending in person, I met many of my friends and fellow MVPs, we enjoyed street food and had a great time delivering and supporting each other’s sessions. The hospitality was second to none, the atmosphere and organisation was second to none – and at the end of the day it was easy to be without – let’s admit – all the drawbacks and cost of the old events. Looking forward to Build 2023!

Thomas Thornton, Azure Technical Specialist at Kainos, said:

It was an awesome event for my first in-person event after two+ years! There was a great mixture of content for all, and a lot of getting to meet those who I have spoken to/communicated with for over two years and not met! A really great event – looking forward to the next!

It terms of being a hybrid event, it worked well. The expert sessions in particular had a good collaboration between both those online and in-person.

Marcel Lupo, Cloud Solutions and DevOps Architect at Avanade, said:

The event was awesome!! Great content and speakers, plus it was great to just get together and meet so many people from the community and other MVPs I’ve not spoken to in person. As a connection zone speaker at the event, I think the hybrid sessions went down really well. The event was super awesome and I’m looking forward to doing this again!

Thoughts from other viewers

During the two-day event, viewers from all over the world were sharing their thoughts on the #MSBuild hashtag on Twitter. Here’s a small selection of what sessions and announcements people were talking about:

#PowerPages the new hero in @MSPowerPlat! 🤩 Handy links:
1⃣Power Pages new docs site – https://t.co/PPCwmYX20C
2⃣Power Pages go live checklist – https://t.co/EloaRsgPJ5
3⃣New Power Pages community site – https://t.co/MqsOXfazH4
4⃣Watch #MSBuild session – https://t.co/Up3KRHorcS pic.twitter.com/JdISZuHeZj

— Elaiza Benitez #LetsAutomate (@benitezhere) May 24, 2022

This must be the coolest session from #MSBuild @stevensanderson teaches you about running .NET on WASM and WASI.
You can even run ASP .NET Core server apps, client side in the browser, not Blazor 🤯

Check it out here: https://t.co/DHWI9KuJt7 pic.twitter.com/yyIotMlQEJ

— Niels Swimburger.NET 🍔 (@RealSwimburger) May 26, 2022

My writeup of #MSBuild this week. I was particularly impressed by the #AI dev software, which comes from @OpenAI. Can see this eventually being used to create complex next-gen web software like metaverse. https://t.co/LWvOralKLu

— Richard MacManus (@ricmac) May 27, 2022

THE BEST video of #MSBuild I've seen so far is @danroth27 demo'ing a single C# based codebase running in Web, iOS, Android, PC, MacOS and then mixing in native controls. Blazor+MAUI=INSANE. https://t.co/CtQD2gpMBA

— Lee (P )?Richardson 🚨 (@lprichar) May 27, 2022

From developer flow to the metaverse, I highlighted 10 technologies at #MSBuild that are coming together as one powerful platform to help developers build what’s next. You can watch my keynote here: https://t.co/OWqPAGbfVL pic.twitter.com/46WqJ7m7I3

— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) May 24, 2022

With over 300 sessions it’s impossible for us to cast a spotlight over each and every one, however the session catalogue is a great way of finding the right talks for you. With filters for session language, type and solution area, you’ll be able to find sessions to boost your existing skills, as well as kickstart new ones. Be sure to check it out!

Useful links

• Watch Build 2022 on-demand today!
• A look at the announcements from Microsoft Build 2022
• New Azure features and functionality for May​ 2022 – Microsoft Build edition
• Catch-up on the conversation on @MSDevUK, as well as on the #MSBuild hashtag!
• Check out Microsoft Learn TV

The post What to catch up on from Build 2022 appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

It’s been a busy month as far as new Azure features and functionality go! Just in case you’ve missed something, we’ve collected all of the announcements from May 2022 in one place. Be sure to give this list a read through, as there’s a wealth of exciting new functions and updates to check out!

General Availability

• New portal experience for Microsoft Artifact Registry
• Enhanced IPv6 functionality for MultiValue profiles in Azure Traffic Manager
• Azure Backup supports backup of Write Accelerator enabled disks
• Microsoft Purview Data Estate Insights
• Ledger in Azure SQL Database
• Azure Cognitive Service for Language
• Azure Machine Learning managed endpoints and Command Line Interface v2
• Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server Business Critical service tier
• Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server 80 vCore Business Critical
• Azure Cosmos DB Python SDK async IO support
• Azure Communication Services sample app builder and Microsoft Teams support
• Azure Container Apps
• Azure Communication Services mobile UI library
• Dynamic concurrency in Azure Functions
• Azure Functions Kafka trigger support
• Azure Stack HCI single-node
• AKS: Subnet per node pool
• AKS cluster extensions
• Alias minor version support in AKS
• CIS benchmark for Linux containers
• Custom node configuration on AKS
• Dynamic IP allocation and enhanced subnet support in AKS
• Landing zone accelerator for Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes
• App Service enhancements for WordPress on App Service for Linux
• App Service landing zone accelerator
• GraphQL passthrough support in Azure API Management
• DCsv3 and DCdsv3 series Virtual Machines
• Azure Backup support for trusted launch Azure Virtual Machines
• Easily manage your Azure IoT Central dashboards using a catalog
• Open Service Mesh extension for Azure Arc
• Industrial IoT Connectivity Partners integrate with Azure IoT Central
• Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1 to Gen2 using Azure Portal
• IT Service Management Integration with secure webhook
• Azure Compute Gallery support for trusted launch Virtual Machines
• Azure IoT Edge supports Debian Bullseye on ARM32v7
• Azure Arc-enabled servers support for private endpoints
• Virtual Network NAT health checks available via Resource Health
• Enhancements to Azure Web Application Firewall

Updates

• Azure SQL – updates for early May 2022
• Azure Machine Learning announcements for March 2022

Misc

• Stream Analytics query development improvements
• Increased size of Stream Analytics jobs and cluster
• Updated extension defaults for new Azure Functions projects
• Draft 2: An open-source project for developers building apps on Kubernetes
• OCR supports 164 languages in the Cognitive Services Computer Vision
• Minor versions upgrade for Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server
• Object replication on premium blob storage and rule limit increased

Useful Links

• A look at the announcements from Microsoft Build 2022
• Get stuck into more Azure on Microsoft Learn
• New Azure features and functionality for April 2022
• View live and on-demand sessions on Azure and more on Microsoft Learn TV

The post New Azure features and functionality for May​ 2022 – Microsoft Build edition appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

This year’s edition of Microsoft Build has now wrapped up, but don’t worry if you missed it! The high-quality sessions and keynotes from across the two days are available to watch on-demand via the Microsoft Build Session Catalogue.

The event brought us many surprises, so just in case you couldn’t tune in live, let’s walk through some of the announcements.

Azure AI

Microsoft Azure AI is introducing two updates to Azure Cognitive Services to help developers deploy high-quality models as APIs and infuse language capabilities into their apps more efficiently and responsibly.

Azure OpenAI Service, an Azure Cognitive Service, is now available in preview. OpenAI Service helps customers enable new reasoning and comprehension capabilities for building cutting-edge apps for use cases such as writing assistance, code generation and making sense of unstructured data.

Azure Cognitive Service for Language now offers summarization for documents and conversations, a new capability that helps developers quickly surface key information in documents and contact center calls, such as the reason for the call and resolution.

The full list of updates is as follows:

• Azure OpenAI Service helps customers accelerate innovation with large AI models; Microsoft expands availability
• Azure Machine Learning responsible AI dashboard is now in preview
• Azure Form Recognizer has new capabilities in preview, including updates to Azure Bot Service, Power Virtual Agents and Azure Metrics Advisor.

Azure Cloud Native and Application Platform

The Azure Communication Services Mobile UI Library, now generally available, helps save time and reduce complexity for app developers by providing production-ready UI components for mobile apps. The release includes support for 13 languages, accessibility for UI components and the ability to view shared screen content – including pinch-to-zoom, a key feature for mobile users.

The full list of updates is as follows:

• Azure Container Apps, now generally available, enables customers to run microservices and containerized apps on a serverless platform.
• The Azure Communication Services Mobile UI Library, now generally available.
• To reflect the expanded scope of the service as a platform for all types of Spring apps, Microsoft is renaming Azure Spring Cloud to Azure Spring Apps.
• Several key enhancements have been made to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to aid the developer experience.
• Service Bus Explorer capabilities are now generally available in the Azure portal.
• Azure API Management provides a hybrid, multicloud management platform for APIs across all environments.
• Several updates to Microsoft Azure App Service are either generally available or in preview.

Azure Data

The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, now generally available, is a new, integrated platform that unifies databases, analytics and governance, empowering organizations to invest more time creating value rather than integrating and managing a fragmented data estate.

SQL Server 2022 is the most Azure-enabled release of SQL Server with improvements in performance, security and availability. You can try it out here.

The full list of updates is as follows:

• For the first time, anyone can download the SQL Server 2022 preview to test the new features in the release.
• New features for Azure Cosmos DB, now in preview, enable developers to build scalable, cost-effective cloud-native apps and add enterprise-grade features to their apps.
• Azure SQL Database is releasing new features that help simplify and expedite app development and reduce time to market.
• Azure Synapse Analytics has new updates to the service are now in preview.
• The Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server Memory Optimized service tier improves mission-critical workloads with lower input/output latency, higher availability service level agreements, higher resiliency and faster recovery from database failures.
• Microsoft Purview Data Policy for SQL DevOps roles is now in preview.
• Microsoft Purview’s multicloud and extensibility capabilities are expanding.

Azure Developer Tools and DevOps

Developers today face long onboarding times, conflicting development workstation settings and difficulty switching between tasks. It can also be difficult for IT admins to maintain secure, compliant and up-to-date dev environments while providing developers the flexibility needed to remain agile.

Microsoft Dev Box will give developers self-service access to high performance, cloud-based workstations that are preconfigured and ready-to-code for specific projects. Azure Deployment Environments will make it easy for developer teams to quickly spin up app infrastructure with project-based templates that establish consistency and best practices.

Both services will centralise management and governance, enabling developers to focus on coding while maximising security, compliance and cost efficiency.

The full list of updates is as follows:

• GitHub OpenID Connect (OIDC) with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) workload identity federation is now generally available.
• .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) is now generally available.
• Microsoft is sharing updates on the investments in large language models and is providing a glimpse into the next generation of AI capabilities.

Azure Hybrid

Azure Arc helps customers get the most from their hybrid environments by bringing the best of Azure to on-premises and multicloud environments. New features include the landing zone accelerator for Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes, which gives customers tools to accelerate and simplify hybrid and multicloud, and the Business Critical service tier for Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance, which delivers strong business continuity requirements, increased performance and continuous security to customers’ most database-intensive use cases. Learn more about these updates here.

The new single node Azure Stack HCI, now generally available, fulfills the growing needs of customers in remote locations while maintaining the innovation of native integration with Azure Arc. Specifically, it offers customers the flexibility to deploy the stack in smaller spaces and with less processing needs, optimizing resources while still delivering quality and consistency.

Azure Infrastructure

NGINX for Azure, in preview, is a natively integrated software as a service (SaaS) solution with advanced traffic management and monitoring. Customers can purchase this solution through the Azure Marketplace, get a unified bill for all services they use on Azure and leverage existing enterprise agreements.

Dynatrace for Azure is a natively integrated software as a service (SaaS) solution that will provide deep cloud observability for proactive identification and resolution of issues impacting mission-critical apps. Dynatrace for Azure will be available in preview in June.

The full list of updates is as follows:

• The Azure DCsv3 VMs with Intel Software Guard Extensions is generally available.
• AIOps powered Smart Maps in Application Insights is now in preview.

Power Platform

Microsoft Power Pages is a low code development and hosting platform ideal for building business-centric websites, allowing low code makers and professional developers to design, configure and publish sites for both desktop and mobile through a fluid, visual experience.

Previously, Power Pages existed as a feature within Power Apps called Power Apps portals. Power Pages will become the fifth member of the Power Platform family as a standalone offering within the Power Platform portfolio.

The full list of updates is as follows:

• Express design capability, now available to all Power Apps makers, leverages Azure Cognitive Services object detection models.
• Power Virtual Agent’s new intelligent bot authoring experience, in preview soon, will unify the sophistication of Azure Bot Framework Composer’s pro-code capabilities with the simplicity of Power Virtual Agent’s low code platform.
• Datamart in Power BI, now in preview, is a new Power BI Premium self-service capability that enables users to uncover actionable insights through their own independent and dependent data sets.
• Unattended robotic process automation (RPA) and virtual machines (VMs) in Power Automate are now in preview.
• Low-Code Trend Report 2022: Building a learning culture on a low-code platform

Windows

As an open platform, Windows welcomes developers and apps across platforms and coding languages, including .NET, web, Android, C++ and Linux. Developers can design app experiences for Windows with their technology of choice. This keeps costs low and allows them to build with tools and software they are familiar with.

Several updates and improvements have been made across Windows developer technologies and include:

• The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is available in the Microsoft Store.
• Windows Subsystem for Android is now running on Android Open Source Project (AOSP) 12.1.
• The latest Windows App SDK 1.1 update is currently in preview and will be generally available soon.
• Tooling updates include Template Studio for WinUI 3 to help build Windows apps, .NET Upgrade Assistant to migrate Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps to WinUI 3 and updated Edge developer tools.
• Widgets in Windows 11 provide a fresh, glanceable and useful view into app content for users.
• Hybrid Loop is a cross-platform development pattern for building AI experiences that span the cloud and edge.
• The new Microsoft Store on Windows was rebuilt from the ground up for developers because of the tremendous growth in the number of developers bringing their apps and games to the Microsoft Store.

Useful Links

• Tune into Microsoft Learn TV!
• Check out the sessions you might have missed in the Session Catalogue
• Follow the conversation on the UK Twitter channel, @MSDevUK, as well as on the #MSBuild hashtag!

The post A look at the announcements from Microsoft Build 2022 appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Microsoft’s huge developer conference, Microsoft Build, is back once again! Kicking off next week on May 24-26, it’ll be delivering the same high-quality sessions and keynotes from familiar faces at Microsoft, all at no cost to attendees. You just need to register! 

By registering, you’ll be able to take advantage of the Microsoft Build session planner, which allows you to pick out what talks and topics you want to focus on during the event. It’s an excellent way to customise your experience, while making sure you don’t miss out on any sessions you’re excited for.

This year the event features special Spotlight on the UK sessions in addition to the usual global sessions, where you will hear leading voices and cutting-edge perspectives from across the UK developer industry. By registering, you’ll be automatically signed up for it all!

Every developer is welcome

At Microsoft Build, you can meet the engineers behind the Microsoft platforms you use every day, learn more about a variety of tools and solutions, and connect with a diverse group of developers who want to hone their skills. We’ll also bring you a tailor-made experience with our UK regional digital event, with sessions from a variety of technical experts from Microsoft and GitHub.

You can learn about designing and running GitHub applications with Mark Harrison (Microsoft) and Nicholas Liffen (GitHub), how to deploy containers quickly using Azure Container Apps with Mark Whitby (Microsoft) and Senna Parsa (GitHub), and how you can visualise data with DevOps practices with Ian Pike (Microsoft) and Liping Huang (Microsoft). Of course, this is just a small sample of the talks we have in store!

You’ll also get access to technical breakout sessions, ask the expert opportunities, table topics and our partner sessions. Plus we have our event keynotes, which are headlined by familiar faces from Microsoft.

Register today!

Don’t just listen to us – we spoke to some of the Microsoft MVPs in the UK to hear what they like about Microsoft Build, and what they’re most looking forward to out of next week’s event.

Sarah Lean, Senior Solutions Architect at OctopusDeploy, said:

For me, Build is a chance to see the latest features that developers will be looking to utilise in their applications. It means I can get a head-start and look into what support from an infrastructure, operations and security perspective will be needed when those new features get rolled out to the production environment.

Mark Allan, Application Modernisation Consultant, said:

Long gone are the days when Build was restricted to Windows and .NET developers. These days there’s something for everyone, with content for everything from Visual Studio Code to GitHub, to Java to low-code, to cloud-native development to data science and AI. I’m particularly interested to find out more about the future of cloud developer environments, but I’ll still be keeping an eye on Windows and .NET!

Matt Lacey, Author & Independent Software Development Consultant, said:

Build is always an exciting event. The plethora of announcements can sometimes be overwhelming. However, the revelations about future technologies and the possibilities they create for building software to help more people in new ways are exciting. I see Build as a first look at what I’m likely to be working with in the years ahead.

Chris Hoard, Partner Education Lead at Vuzion, said:

For me, Build is the bellwether that sets out the direction of where both Microsoft and the tech community is headed over the coming year. It’s where we discover what’s top of mind, what’s imminent and what’s next. Here, you’ll find just how exciting development is, whether you are a developer, aspire to be a developer, or even if you have never been a developer. Now if Microsoft’s core mission is to empower every person on the planet it is here – at Build – where you get a sense of that happening. Great minds building and shipping the tools, the apps and the experiences which make it real and takes us all forward into the future. But it’s this optimism – the promise that the future will be better is what sets it apart from the rest.

Microsoft Build will provide the key developer content for which the event is known, while tailoring the event experience towards topics that developers the world over are looking for.

This digital event starts on May 24 at 8AM BST, at no cost, so register today to avoid disappointment!

Useful links

• Register for Build 2022 today!
• Follow the conversation on @MSDevUK, as well as on the #MSBuild hashtag!
• Check out Microsoft Learn TV

The post Join us for Microsoft Build next week, May 24-26! appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.