My software and services 2022

startup-photos

Here’s last year’s post for comparison:

My software and services – 2021

All my PC’s are running the latest version of Windows 10 (21H2) without any issues and none during the upgrade process either. I no longer run any Windows 10 Insider builds as I had trouble backing out of these when I needed to. I still have Office Insider builds happening in my environment. Most production machines I have are eligible for Windows 11 but none have been offered this upgrade as yet, however when it is I will be upgrading.

All Windows 10 Pro machines are directly joined to Azure AD and managed via Intune and Microsoft Endpoint Manager. Their configurations are based on the Windows MDM security baseline settings. All machines only use Windows Defender for security monitoring and management. Thanks to Microsoft E5 on my production tenant, I am also using Microsoft Defender For Endpoint at the back end for monitoring and investigation of endpoint threats.

The WD Sentinel DX4000 runs Windows Storage Server 2008 and is now effectively obsolete and only maintained for historical purposes and as an archive.

My two main tenants are an Office 365 E5 demo and Microsoft 365 production environments. A mix of Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise machines are all Azure AD joined to the Microsoft 365 production domain. The production Microsoft 365 tenant has Microsoft 365 Business for all users except myself. I have a Microsoft 365 E5 license on which I have configured all the services including integrated PSTN calling via Switch Connect.

I use Microsoft Sentinel to monitor threats across my environments via a single pane of glass.

I use the following major browsers:

– Edge – my primary browser across all my devices including iOS and Android. I have it locked down with baseline policies via Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

– Brave – I have become increasingly concerned about the surreptitious tracking that many sites perform, especially when it comes to social media sites. I therefore now do all my ‘random browsing’, searching and viewing of social media sites. I became aware of the extent of tracking when I was adjusting the security settings in Edge Insider and found the following:

Made me realise that I probably need to take this ‘do not track’ stuff more seriously!

– Firefox – I now only use this on my Surface Pro X because Brave doesn’t offer an ARM version.

I have now cranked Edge up to the maximum security level but wanted to isolate the most likely tracking culprits into another browser that was security focused. After some evaluation, I have chosen Brave to be this browser. This is now where I do all the stuff that is more likely to be tracked and now hopefully blocked or at least minimised. I have also set this browser up to use Duck Duck Go as the default search engine, otherwise I use Bing for my production Edge browser. I have completely eliminated Google Chrome off all my machines without any issues and recommend those who are becoming more concerned about their privacy, like me, do the same.

Services like SharePoint Online and OneDrive I use regularly both in the demo and production tenant. I have the OneDrive sync client installed, running and connected to various locations on my production and demo tenants. I can now sync across all my different tenants as well as my consumer OneDrive storage. We have come a long way with the sync client!

I regularly use Microsoft Teams which is now my main messaging application. All the CIAOPS Patron resources like the intranet, team, etc all reside in the Office 365 E5 demo tenant but I connect to it on my desktop normally via an Azure B2B guest account from my production tenant. Thus, I can admin the Patron resources in a browser if need be but I get the same experience on my desktop as any Patron would. Handy to know what works and doesn’t work with Microsoft Teams guest access. Thanks to Microsoft E5 and Switch Connect, I also have Teams connected as a phone.

I use Lastpass to keep my passwords and private information secure. It allows me to do things like generate and store unique passwords for each website that I sign up for. It is also available across all browsers on my machine (including Microsoft Edge). I also now also use Lastpass to store secure notes.

The extensions I run in all my browsers are:

– LastPass

– GetPocket

I use Microsoft Power Automate for automation as well as Azure Functions.

For my email newsletters I use Mailchimp.

My preferred public social networks for business, in order are:

1. Twitter

2. Linkedin

3. Facebook

I consume a lot of content from YouTube both for business and personal interest. I also also use YouTube extensively for my publicly available training video training.

Microsoft Office desktop software is still part of my everyday workday via applications such as Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. I use the desktop version of Outlook on my Surface Pro 7 which lives on my desk but I only use Outlook Web App on my travelling Surface Pro 6 device. I could happily not use Outlook on the desktop any more I believe but I still use so I understand the experience for most users. However, I do see the day when Outlook on the desktop begins to lose its appeal.

One of the things I have added to my desktop version of Outlook is a digital certificate that signs every email that I now send. This helps the receiver confirm that the message they have received is in fact from me and that it hasn’t been altered in any way. There are some issues when people attempt to reply to these emails from a mobile device but I believe a fix from Microsoft is coming..

The key application from the suite for me is OneNote. OneNote is my go to Swiss Army knife for just about everything digital. I use it to capture all sort of data. I even use it as a diary as I have detailed previous here:

One of the ways I use OneNote

The reason OneNote is key is because:

1. Just about everything I put in there us searchable

2. It is freely available across all platforms.

3. All my information is synced and accessible on all devices.

4. It is available on the web or offline if needed.

There are now two version of OneNote, the Windows store OneNote and OneNote 2016. I am a big user of OneNote on my iPad mini with the Apple pencil. This combination has allowed me to totally eliminate my paper notebooks for things such as journaling.

I use Pure Text to easily paste information, especially to and from OneNote as only text.

I am now a big Microsoft To-Do user. I use it to keep many tasks and items that I need to follow up. I love how it is available on all my devices and syncs across them all as well.

I use Windows terminal now for things like PowerShell execution and Microsoft Whiteboard for demonstrations and training.

Microsoft PowerToys allows me to customise my desktop layouts using FancyZones.

Another key service I use everyday along with Office 365 and OneNote is Azure. Typically, I use it for running up virtual machines that I test various things with but I also use it to backup my local data as well as that of other members of my family using Azure Backup.

Azure desktop backup

I have also now implemented an Azure site to site VPN as well as Azure SMB File storage to start moving my data into. I use Microsoft Sentinel to monitor all my services and machines in one single console and tell me about any incidents.

There is just so much that can be done with Azure and I pretty much use it everyday.

I still have a copy of some private data in Truecrypt but that is only as a backup. Nearly all of my data now lives in Microsoft 365 protected with things like Windows Information Protection and other Microsoft information protection options. All my Windows 10 machines run with full disk encryption thanks to Bitlocker, but stuff like financial and customer data live inside Microsoft 365..

In the last year I implemented Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC) to provide application control to improve security in my environment.

To capture my desktop for my online training academy or my YouTube channel I use Camtasia. I use SnagIt to capture screen shots and add highlights and emphasis to these. Snagit allows me to capture complete screens or specific areas quickly and easily.

I use Microsoft Teams to record my podcasts, which I then produce with Camtasia. These are uploaded to Podbean where they syndicated across various network.

To compose and publish blog articles I use Open Live Writer. My blog lives on WordPress.com.

My web site and Battlefields site live on Squarespace.

The majority of images I get, like the one at the top of this article, I get from Pexels. Pickit is also another great option.

For improved meeting management productivity I use Microsoft FindTime.

Having recently purchased a Duo 2 device I have it connected to my Surface Pro 7 using the Microsoft Your Phone app.

I use Visual Studio Code in which I do most of my PowerShell editing and publishing. The end result typically is my GitHub repository where you will find a range of scripts and other resources that I maintain regular. With Visual Studio Code I can edit publish and sync all my machines and my GitHub repository no matter where I am. Very handy.

Here are also a few of the other items I use regularly that are not for business:

Amazon Prime Video – only place to the latest The Grand Tour action. I also liked the Jack Ryan series and well as the Gymkana Files but most of this viewing is now on my iPad mini.

NetFlix – Seen a lot of great stuff this give all the time in lock down but most of this viewing is now on my iPad mini.

XBox Live Gold – access to all the online Xbox goodness.

Duolingo – language learning, Japanese and Italian at the moment but most of this access is now on my iPad mini.

I try and keep my production machines as ‘clean’ and free of unused software as possible. I ensure that they are updated regularly. Any software testing that I need to do is typically done on a virtual machine in Azure.

So there you have it, the major software and services that I use regularly. I continue to search out additional software that will improve my productivity. If you use something that you’ve found really handy, please let me know and I always keen to explore what works for others.

Power Automate ODATA filter failure when field named ‘Date’

So, I was doing some testing with a new Flow in Power Automate. What I wanted it to do was, at a recurring time each day, look for today’s date in a list of SharePoint items and then display other values from any matching record in a Team’s chat. To prototype this out I created a very simple list with two columns, as shown above, Title and Date. Remember, the Title field is generally created for you by default when you create a basic SharePoint List.

In Power Automate I used a SharePoint Get Items action as shown above to get the information I wanted. To filter down to the data I used on ODATA query like:

Date eq ‘2021-12-31’

to test. Problem was, as shown above, I was getting no results that were feeding through to the next Apply to each action that followed directly after.

There were no errors indicated in my Flow. I tried a number of different format options and so on, trying to work out what the issue was.

The issue turned out to be the name of the field – Date – I had created in my SharePoint List! Once I created a new column called Dateoption with the same format, and entered the same data into it and removed the offending Date column, it successfully filtered data as expected and passed the result to the following Apply to each action as you can see above.

The moral of the story is that you should probably avoid naming your fields with any ‘reserved’ programming commands like ‘Date’ as I did. Make it something unique like ‘Datefield’ or whatever. Just don’t use a common term like ‘Date’ as I did or you might struggle to troubleshoot as I did here.

Hopefully, this will save you wasting the amount of time I did to solve this that you can better spend on creating your Flow!

Need to Know podcast–Episode 281

In this last episode for 2021 I share my thoughts about what we have seen from the Microsoft Cloud this year and what we may see in the next. Love to hear what you think as well so please reach out.

Take a listen and let us know what you think – feedback@needtoknow.cloud

You can listen directly to this episode at:

https://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-281-review/

Subscribe via iTunes at:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/ciaops-need-to-know-podcasts/id406891445?mt=2

The podcast is also available on Stitcher at:

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ciaops/need-to-know-podcast?refid=stpr

Don’t forget to give the show a rating as well as send me any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show.

This episode was recorded using Microsoft Teams and produced with Camtasia 2020.

Brought to you by www.ciaopspatron.com

Resources

@directorcia

December Microsoft 365 Webinar resources

Slides from this month’s webinar are at:

https://www.slideshare.net/directorcia/december-2022-microsoft-365-need-to-know-webinar

If you are not a CIAOPS patron you want to view or download a full copy of the video from the session you can do so here:

http://www.ciaopsacademy.com.au/p/need-to-know-webinars

Watch out for next month’s webinar.

Power Platform Community December webinar

You can now view the recording of the Power Platform Community December webinar here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ6qdmY3prg

The slides are also available:

https://www.slideshare.net/directorcia/power-platform-community-monthly-webinar-december-2021

Watch out for the opportunity to register for the January 2022 webinar!

Adoption with fun

*** UPDATE April 2023 – Dilbert has moved behind a paywall and is no longer available. See my updated post Adoption with fun and astronomy for alternate engaging content.

The majority of IT products and services are not actually used by IT people (amazing eh?). They are in fact, used by ordinary people (aka Muggels) in businesses, trying to do their job. For these people, changing the way that they work is frustrating because they need to adopt new approaches and tools. Helping with this adoption is a key to the success of modern approaches to IT I believe.

A handy technique that I have found to work well is make using new systems fun. In the distant past, when I was implementing SharePoint on premises, I used to implement the Daily Dilbert web part to post a Dilbert cartoon onto the front page of the SharePoint Intranet each day. The idea was to help drive adoption by getting people to visit the company Intranet to read the Dilbert comic and then, hopefully, dive into the other content that was there.

Today, the technology has changed but the adoption challenge hasn’t. I thought that I’d therefore share with you a way to get a Dilbert comic into your Teams channel daily using Power Automate.

This is all made possible via APIs and a suitable one I found is:

https://dilbert-api.glitch.me/json

which will produce an output that looks like this:

{"title":"Simulation TestingElbonia University Partial Win","image":"https://assets.amuniversal.com/4f2025a02e0d013a8769005056a9545d.png"}

In here you’ll see an image link to the Dilbert Cartoon.

Step one is to create a new Flow that is triggered at a recurring time.

Next, you want to add the HTTP action. In here, use the GET method and the URI set to the above API link as shown above.

The HTTP action is actually a ‘premium’ connector and may not be available to you by default. Thus, you may need an upgraded Power Platform license to have this available. Remember however, you’ll only need that license for the user creating and running that Flow.

You’ll then need to the Parse JSON action as shown above. The content here will be the Body from the HTTP action above and simply copy and paste the output of the API above into the option Generate from sample.

Now add Post message in a chat or channel action.

Enter option to post into the Team and Channel of your choice as shown above.

For the Message field select the </> option from the menu bar across the top, as shown. This will allow you to use raw HTML code here.

Type the following:

<img src = ”

then select the option to insert dynamic content like so:

(the lightning bolt icon)

In this list that appears you should be able to select image as shown above.

add the following text after the dynamic field

” width=”738″ height=”229″>

so the completed Message field looks like:

It is important that the HTML formatting is correct, otherwise the image will not display.

If you now test your Flow you should see the cartoon appear in your Teams channel as shown above. If you have scheduled your Flow daily then you should see a new comic every day. Remember, there is only one cartoon every 24 hours! Rerunning the Flow before then will simply display the same strip.

When the daily comic is more than three frames then it is cut off by default like so:

However, clicking on the comic will enlarge it for full viewing. This limitation is due to the height and wide parameters the HTML code used inside the Flow. Most strips are only three frames, that is why I used those height and width defaults for most readability most of the time, but you can vary those parameter if you wish.

So, the idea is to make visiting a Team a more fun place to visit regularly, hopefully with people engaging about the content to help drive adoption.

This Flow/API method can be utilised with just about anything that supports an API. Another I have found (although somewhat more risqué) is a Chuck Norris API here:

https://api.chucknorris.io/

which can be moulded to give a similar result (be it text only).

The only limitation of all of this is the need for the premium Flow HTTP action, but as I said, it is well worth the investment and is only really necessary for the user creating the Flow. Having a premium license for Flow opens up so many more capabilities, so it is highly recommended if you want to get serious about automation inside your environment.

Happily, Daily Dilbert is back baby! And now in Microsoft Teams.

Power Platform Community Monthly Webinar – December 2021

Join us for our monthly Power Platform webinar where we share the latest news and updates from the Microsoft Power Platform plus a deeper dive into Power BI.

You can register at:

https://bit.ly/ppc1221

If you wish to join our community and be part of the regular discussion and participation on the Microsoft Power Platform, you can join via:

https://www.ciaopspatron.com

(look for the Power Platform option to join us).

We look forward to seeing you on the webinar.

Need to Know podcast–Episode 279

In this episode I speak with Modern Workplace and Security Specialist from Dicker Data Darren Bennett. Darren has unique insight across the partner ecosystem and shares with me how partners are adopting the modern approach. What approaches work, what don’t and how successful partners approach the ever-changing Microsoft Cloud, as well as best practice takeaways.

I head this episode with an update from the important stuff that’s happening in the Microsoft Cloud to keep you right up to date.