Latest News in the category AI
A news aggregator from various RSS feeds, like technology, gaming, development and general news sites.
From Fragmentation to Resilience: Why Next Gen “Whole of State” Is Future of Pub Sec Cybersecurity
That is why Microsoft is focused on a Next Gen Whole of State approach: a state-wide, coordinated model that brings together cyber defense, risk management, and workforce development into a unified strategy—designed for scale, resilience, and trust.A Next Gen Whole of State program is designed to address these challenges holistically.It is a state-wide shared services model that improves efficiency, strengthens critical infrastructure defense, and accelerates AI and cyber talent development—while respecting the autonomy of individual agencies.
3 hours ago
RightNow AI Releases AutoKernel: An Open-Source Framework that Applies an Autonomous Agent Loop to GPU Kernel Optimization for Arbitrary PyTorch Models
Researchers from RightNow AI want to automate it entirely.The RightNow AI research team has released AutoKernel, an open-source framework that applies an autonomous LLM agent loop to GPU kernel optimization for arbitrary PyTorch models.The approach is straightforward: give […]
6 hours ago
Private DNS and Hub–Spoke Networking for Enterprise AI Workloads on Azure
During a recent production deployment of a private, enterprise-grade AI workload on Azure, several issues surfaced that initially appeared to be platform or service instability.Closer analysis revealed the real cause: gaps in network and DNS design.This post shares a real-world technical walkthrough of the problem, root causes, resolution steps, and key lessons that now form a reusable blueprint for running AI workloads reliably in private Azure environments.
6 hours ago
Azure SQL Audit Columns missing? Understanding AzureDiagnostics 500-Column Limit and Spill
This is one of the more silent and confusing behaviors of the AzureDiagnostics table in Azure Monitor Log Analytics, and it doesn't just affect one specific column — it can affect any column, including commonly queried ones like data_sensitivity_information_s, deadlock_xml_s, query_hash_s, error_message_s, and others.Here's a real-world example from a customer case involving Azure SQL audit logs and data sensitivity classification.Because of this design, the AzureDiagnostics table enforces a hard limit of 500 columns per workspace.
7 hours ago
Building MCP servers with Entra ID and pre-authorized clients
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) gives AI agents a standard way to call external tools, but things get more complicated when those tools need to know who the user is.In this post, I’ll show how to build an MCP server with the Python FastMCP package that authenticates users with Microsoft Entra ID when they connect from a pre-authorized client such as VS Code."""Add a new expense to Cosmos DB."""
7 hours ago
Building Cost-Aware Azure Infrastructure Pipelines: Estimate Costs Before You Deploy
Step 2: Map Resources to Pricing with the Retail Prices API"""Query the Azure Retail Prices API for a Linux VM's pay-as-you-go hourly rate."""By integrating cost estimation into your pull request workflow, you give every developer on the team visibility into the financial impact of their changes — before a single resource is deployed.
8 hours ago
Meet MaxToki: The AI That Predicts How Your Cells Age — and What to Do About It
Most foundation models in biology have a fundamental blind spot: they see cells as frozen snapshots.Give a model a single-cell transcriptome — a readout of which genes are active in a cell at a given moment — and it can tell you a lot about what that cell is doing right now.The post Meet MaxToki: The AI That Predicts How Your Cells Age — and What to Do About It appeared first on MarkTechPost.
05/04/2026
How to Build a Netflix VOID Video Object Removal and Inpainting Pipeline with CogVideoX, Custom Prompting, and End-to-End Sample Inference
In this tutorial, we build and run an advanced pipeline for Netflix’s VOID model.We set up the environment, install all required dependencies, clone the repository, download the official base model and VOID checkpoint, and prepare the sample inputs needed for video object removal.The post How to Build a Netflix VOID Video Object Removal and Inpainting Pipeline with CogVideoX, Custom Prompting, and End-to-End Sample Inference appeared first on MarkTechPost.
05/04/2026
Meet ‘AutoAgent’: The Open-Source Library That Lets an AI Engineer and Optimize Its Own Agent Harness Overnight
There’s a particular kind of tedium that every AI engineer knows intimately: the prompt-tuning loop.You write a system prompt, run your agent against a benchmark, read the failure traces, tweak the prompt, add a tool, rerun.The post Meet ‘AutoAgent’: The Open-Source Library That Lets an AI Engineer and Optimize Its Own Agent Harness Overnight appeared first on MarkTechPost.
05/04/2026
Inside the Creative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stack: Where Human Vision and Artificial Intelligence Meet to Design Future Fashion
Today, it can be conveyed through algorithms, neural networks, and machine learning.Artificial Intelligence is no longer at the dregs, but very much at the […]The post Inside the Creative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stack: Where Human Vision and Artificial Intelligence Meet to Design Future Fashion appeared first on MarkTechPost.
05/04/2026
How we build Azure SRE Agent with agentic workflows
The Challenge: Ops is critical but takes time from innovationRather than treating AI as a bolt-on tool, Microsoft embedded specialized agents across the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC) to collaborate with developers, from planning through operations.Azure SRE Agent is one example of how agentic workflows can transform both product development and operations at scale.
05/04/2026
Vector Drift in Azure AI Search: Three Hidden Reasons Your RAG Accuracy Degrades After Deployment
What Is Vector Drift? Vector drift occurs when embeddings stored in a vector index no longer accurately represent the semantic intent of incoming queries. Because vector similarity search depends on relative semantic positioning, even small changes in models, data distribution, or preprocessing logic can significantly affect retrieval quality over time. Unlike schema drift or data corruption, vector drift is subtle: The syst...
04/04/2026
Netflix AI Team Just Open-Sourced VOID: an AI Model That Erases Objects From Videos — Physics and All
Video editing has always had a dirty secret: removing an object from footage is easy; making the scene look like it was never there is brutally hard. Take out a person holding a guitar, and you’re left with a floating instrument that defies gravity. Hollywood VFX teams spend weeks fixing exactly this kind of problem. […] The post
04/04/2026
How to Build Production-Ready Agentic Systems with Z.AI GLM-5 Using Thinking Mode, Tool Calling, Streaming, and Multi-Turn Workflows
In this tutorial, we explore the full capabilities of Z.AI’s GLM-5 model and build a complete understanding of how to use it for real-world, agentic applications. We start from the fundamentals by setting up the environment using the Z.AI SDK and its OpenAI-compatible interface, and then progressively move on to advanced features such as streaming […] The post
04/04/2026
Expanding Azure Arc SQL Migration with a New Target: SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines
Modernizing a SQL Server estate is rarely a single-step effort. It typically involves multiple phases, from discovery and assessment to migration and optimization, often spanning on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments. SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc simplifies this process by bringing all migration steps into a single, cohesive experience in the Azure portal. With the March 2026 release, this integrated experience is extended by adding SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines...
03/04/2026
Google DeepMind’s Research Lets an LLM Rewrite Its Own Game Theory Algorithms — And It Outperformed the Experts
Designing algorithms for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) in imperfect-information games — scenarios where players act sequentially and cannot see each other’s private information, like poker — has historically relied on manual iteration. Researchers identify weighting schemes, discounting rules, and equilibrium solvers through intuition and trial-and-error. Google DeepMind researchers proposes AlphaEvolve, an LLM-powered evolutionary coding agent […] The post
03/04/2026
Windows news you can use: March 2026
This month, our Windows team shared a candid update on how we're thinking about Windows quality, what's changing behind the scenes, and how your real-world feedback is shaping the platform. It's all in a post entitled Our commitment to Windows quality. Windows + Devices EVP Pavan Davuluri walks through how we identify issues, prioritize fixes, and how the Windows Insider commu...
03/04/2026
Introducing TSGen: Automated TSG Generation @ Scale – Built by AI
This post is a follow-up to the previous write-up at https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azure-ai-foundry-blog/the-future-of-ai-autonomous-agents-for-identifying-the-root-cause-of-cloud-servi/4412494?previewMessage=true. If you haven’t read it yet, it provides the backgr...
03/04/2026
Run the latest Azure Arc agent with Automatic Agent Upgrade (Public Preview)
Customers managing large fleets of Azure Arc servers need a scalable way to ensure the Azure Arc agent stays up to date without manual intervention. Per server configuration does not scale, and gaps in upgrade coverage can lead to operational drift, missed features, and delayed security updates. To address this, we’re introducing two new options to help customers enable Automatic Agent Upgrade at scale: applied as a built-in Azure Policy and a new onboarding CLI flag. The built-...
03/04/2026
Secure HTTP‑Only AKS Ingress with Azure Front Door Premium, Firewall DNAT, and Private AGIC
Reference architecture and runbook (Part 1: HTTP-only) for Hub-Spoke networking with private Application Gateway (AGIC), Azure Firewall DNAT, and Azure Front Door Premium (WAF) 0. When and Why to Use This Architecture Series note: This document is Part 1 and uses HTTP to keep the focus on routing and control points. A follow-up Part 2 will extend the same architecture to HTTPS ...
03/04/2026
Title Plan Update - April 3, 2026
📁April 3, 2026 - Title Plan Now Available Access the latest Instructor-Led Training (ILT) updates anytime at
03/04/2026
From Discovery to Executive Presentation: Plan Your Migration with Azure Migrate in Hours
The migration planning bottleneck Every migration starts with the same question: what do we have, and where should it go? Getting from that question to a clear, executive-ready answer has traditionally taken weeks. You scan the environment, export spreadsheets, manually classify workloads, run assessments and business case for cost analysis and readiness, and then stitch everything together into a deck that's outdated by the time you present it. Azure Migrate now collapses tha...
03/04/2026
MSLE Newsletter - April 2026
Welcome to your quarterly update—here’s what’s new and how you can get involved! 🚀 In This Issue 📣 Mic...
03/04/2026
Course Retirement Announcements
The following instructor‑led courses are scheduled to retire. You can find all past and upcoming retirements here: Course retirement | Microsoft Learn. Please note that it may take some time for newly announced courses to appear on the page. MS-4010: Extend Microsoft 365 Copilot with declarative agents by using Visual Studio Code
03/04/2026
Announcing general availability of Network Security Perimeter for Azure Service Bus
Today we are excited to announce the general availability of Network Security Perimeter (NSP) support for Azure Service Bus. Network Security Perimeter allows you to define a logical network boundary around your Service Bus namespaces and other Azure PaaS resources, restricting public network access and enabling secure communication between services within ...
03/04/2026
Demystifying On-Demand Capacity Reservations
About On-Demand Capacity Reservations Introducing the “parking garage” metaphor There are dozens of VM types available in Azure which span multiple generations of CPU across vendors and architectures. Within each Azure region are datacenters hosting pools of hardware which runs Azure services, such as virtual machines, of those types. As VMs are started and stopped by customers there is a constant ebb and flow of available capacity to run each type of VM within t...
03/04/2026
Build and Deploy a Microsoft Foundry Hosted Agent: A Hands-On Workshop
Agents are easy to demo, hard to ship. Most teams can put together a convincing prototype quickly. The harder part starts afterwards: shaping deterministic tools, validating behaviour with tests, building a CI path, packaging for deployment, and proving the experience through a user-facing interface. That is where many promising projects slow down. This workshop helps you close that gap without unnecessary friction. You get a guided path f...
03/04/2026
Connect to Azure SQL Database using a custom domain name with Microsoft Entra ID authentication
Many of us might prefer to connect to Azure SQL Server using a custom domain name (like devsqlserver.mycompany.com) rather than the default fully qualified domain name (devsqlserver.database.windows.net), often because of application-specific or compliance reasons. This article details how you can accomplish this when logging in with Microsoft Entra ID (for example, user@m...
03/04/2026
DevSecOps on AKS: Governance Gates That Actually Prevent Incidents
This article is for AKS platform/infra engineers, SREs, and security teams who want a practical, enforceable model for stopping common Kubernetes misconfigurations before they become incidents—without turning delivery into bureaucracy. Why incidents still happen after “adding security to the pipeline” Most teams do some of these: container image scanning secret scanning<...
03/04/2026
Azure SQL Managed Instance as an AI‑Enabled PaaS Platform
AI Capabilities Built into Azure SQL Managed Instance Azure SQL MI includes multiple intelligence layers by default: Intelligent Insights for anomaly detection Automatic tuning (recommend mode) Copilot‑assisted diagnostics Native vector data types for AI workloads These capabilities work together without requiring external services or agents. Why A...
03/04/2026
TII Releases Falcon Perception: A 0.6B-Parameter Early-Fusion Transformer for Open-Vocabulary Grounding and Segmentation from Natural Language Prompts
In the current landscape of computer vision, the standard operating procedure involves a modular ‘Lego-brick’ approach: a pre-trained vision encoder for feature extraction paired with a separate decoder for task prediction. While effective, this architectural separation complicates scaling and bottlenecks the interaction between language and vision. The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) research team is challenging […] The post
03/04/2026
AI‑Assisted Azure Infrastructure Validation and Drift Detection
Why Traditional Drift Detection Isn’t Enough Most teams already rely on: Terraform plan reviews Azure Policy compliance dashboards Azure Resource Graph queries Manual scripts and audits The problem isn’t missing data—it’s interpretation at scale. Validation outputs are: Verbose and noisy Spread across multiple tools Difficult to prioritize Dependent on human context
03/04/2026
Introducing Pacemaker HA Agent v2 for SQL Server on Linux (In Preview)
We are excited to introduce the next generation of High Availability (HA) Agent for SQL Server on Linux: Pacemaker HA Agent v2. This release is a major step forward, designed to reduce planned and unplanned failover times, compared to the previous agent, based on internal engineering improvements. Why Pacemaker Is Required for SQL Server HA on Linux For users new to Linux, it’s important to understand how high availability works on this platfor...
03/04/2026
Step by Step Guide to Build an End-to-End Model Optimization Pipeline with NVIDIA Model Optimizer Using FastNAS Pruning and Fine-Tuning
In this tutorial, we build a complete end-to-end pipeline using NVIDIA Model Optimizer to train, prune, and fine-tune a deep learning model directly in Google Colab. We start by setting up the environment and preparing the CIFAR-10 dataset, then define a ResNet architecture and train it to establish a strong baseline. From there, we apply […] The post
03/04/2026
🚀 General Availability of Private Application Gateway on Azure Application Gateway v2
🔍 What Is Private Application Gateway? Historically, Application Gateway v2 required a public IP address to communicate with the Azure control plane (GatewayManager). This requirement imposed several constraints: Mandatory public IP exposure Restricted Network Security Group (NSG) rules Limited route table flexibility No support for forced tunneling Private Application Gateway removes these limitations
03/04/2026
oBeaver — A Beaver That Runs LLMs on Your Machine 🦫
Hi there! I'm the creator of oBeaver. This project started from a pretty simple desire: I wanted to run large language models on my own computer. No data sent to the cloud. No API keys. No per-call charges. I'm guessing you've had the same thought. There are already great tools out there — Ollama being the most prominent. But in my day-to-day work, I spend a lot of time in the ONNX ecosystem — the cross-platform reach of ...
03/04/2026
Enterprise‑Scale Azure Subscription Vending Using Azure Verified Modules (AVM)
Why Subscription Vending Is Critical at Scale Azure subscriptions define the security, governance, and billing boundary for workloads. In large organizations, manual subscription creation often leads to: Inconsistent management group placement Delayed or missing policy enforcement Incorrect RBAC assignments Lack of cost controls Platform teams becoming a bottleneck Subscription vending st...
03/04/2026
Blue‑Green Strategy for Always‑On TCP Workloads on Azure Container Apps
Scenario: Always‑on workloads in Azure Container Apps continuously pull from a TCP source, process the stream, and push into Azure Managed Redis, which is then consumed by another always‑on Container Apps workload th...
03/04/2026
Bring Your Own Model (BYOM) for Azure AI Applications using Azure Machine Learning
Modern AI-powered applications running on Azure increasingly require flexibility in model choice. While managed model catalogs accelerate time to value, real-world enterprise applications often need to: Host open‑source or fine‑tuned models Deploy domain‑specific or regulated models inside a tenant boundary Maintain tight control over runtime environments and versions Integrate AI inference into existing application architectures This...
03/04/2026
MCP Apps on Azure Functions: Quick Start with TypeScript
Azure Functions makes hosting MCP apps simple: build locally, create a secure endpoint, and deploy fast with azd. What Are MCP Apps? MCP (Model Context Protocol) apps add new features to AI assistants and clients: MCP Tools: Remote functions that clients call to perform actions (for example, fetch data, update records, call APIs) MCP Resource...
03/04/2026
AKS cluster with AGIC hits the Azure Application Gateway backend pool limit (100)
I’m writing this article to document a real-world scaling issue we hit while exposing many applications from an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster using Application Gateway Ingress Controller (AGIC). The problem is easy to miss because Kubernetes resources keep applying successfully, but the underlying Azure Application Gateway has a hard platform limit of 100 backend pools—so once your deployment pattern requires the 101st pool, AGIC can’t reconcile the gateway co...
03/04/2026
Access fixes released in Version 2603 (Build 19822.20114)
Here's a summary of bug fixes in the latest version of Access: Bug NameIssue FixedEdge Browser Control didn't navigate from code when inside a tab control
03/04/2026
Arcee AI Releases Trinity Large Thinking: An Apache 2.0 Open Reasoning Model for Long-Horizon Agents and Tool Use
The landscape of open-source artificial intelligence has shifted from purely generative models toward systems capable of complex, multi-step reasoning. While proprietary ‘reasoning’ models have dominated the conversation, Arcee AI has released Trinity Large Thinking. This release is an open-weight reasoning model distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, positioning it as a transparent alternative for developers […] The post
02/04/2026
Bug fixes in Microsoft Access - Version 2603 (Build 19822.20114)
Here's a summary of bug fixes in the latest version of Access: Bug Name Issue Fixed
02/04/2026
An update to the active flow billing model for Azure SRE Agent
Earlier today, we announced that Azure SRE Agent now supports multiple AI model providers, starting with Anthropic. To support multi-model choice, and make active usage costs easier to understand, we’re updating how active flow usage is measured. At a glance What’s changing
02/04/2026
Give your Foundry Agent Custom Tools with MCP Servers on Azure Functions
This blog post is for developers who have an MCP server deployed to Azure Functions and want to connect it to Microsoft Foundry agents. It walks through why you'd want to do this, the different authentication options available, and how to get your agent calling your MCP tools. Connect your MCP server on Azure Functions to Foundry Agent If you've been following along with this blog series, you know that Azure Functions is a great place to host remote MCP servers. You get scalab...
02/04/2026
Azure SRE Agent now supports multiple model providers, including Anthropic Claude
Today, Azure SRE Agent adds model provider selection—choose between Azure OpenAI and Anthropic to match the right AI provider to your incident workflow. SRE Agent has saved over 20,000 engineering hours by pulling together logs, deployments, and signals into a single investigation thread, turning scattered data into clearer mitigation steps. Customers like Ecolab have seen daily alerts drop by up to 75%. Choose your model provider: Azure OpenAI or Anthropic Azure SRE Agent has...
02/04/2026
Accelerate Agent Development: Hacks for Building with Microsoft Sentinel data lake
As a Senior Product Manager | Developer Architect on the App Assure team working to bring Microsoft Sentinel and Security Copilot solutions to market, I interact with many ISVs building agents on Microsoft Sentinel data lake for the first time. I’ve written this article to walk you through one possible approach for agent development – the&...
02/04/2026
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Customer Newsletter
Kubernetes gated deployment is now generally available for AKS automatic clusters.Blogs of the monthWe greatly value your input on the types of content that enhance your understanding of our security products.
02/04/2026
Microsoft Entra expands SCIM support with new SCIM 2.0 APIs for identity lifecycle operations
Modern organizations rely on a growing ecosystem of applications, platforms, and services to run their business. Managing users and groups consistently across these systems is essential for security and operational efficiency. Many teams rely on the System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) standard to maintain predictable integrations, reduce custom provisioning work, and simplify lifecycle tasks across their environment. Microsoft Entra has long supported SCIM‑based provisio...
02/04/2026
Defeating the ‘Token Tax’: How Google Gemma 4, NVIDIA, and OpenClaw are Revolutionizing Local Agentic AI: From RTX Desktops to DGX Spark
Run Google’s latest omni-capable open models faster on NVIDIA RTX AI PCs, from NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano, GeForce RTX desktops to the new DGX Spark, to build personalized, always-on AI assistants like OpenClaw without paying a massive “token tax” for every action. The landscape of modern AI is shifting rapidly. We are moving away from […] The post
02/04/2026
Securing AI apps and agents on Microsoft Marketplace
Why security must be designed in—not validated later AI apps and agents expand the security surface beyond that of traditional applications. Prompt inputs, agent reasoning, tool execution, and downstream integrations introduce opportunities for misuse or unintended behavior when security assumptions are implicit. These risks surface quickly in production environments where AI systems interact with real users and data. Deferring security decisions until late in...
02/04/2026
Model Upgrade and Migration Strategy for Microsoft Foundry
Model upgrades in Microsoft Foundry are not a one‑time platform operation, they are an ongoing application lifecycle discipline. Microsoft documentation makes this explicit: models evolve continuously, older versions are eventually retired, and customers are expected to evaluate, migrate, and validate applications ahead of retirement deadlines. In addition, Microsoft clearly separates model versioning from API versioning, which means a safe upgrade strategy must vali...
02/04/2026
Handling Unique Constraint Conflicts in Logical Replication
Authors: Ashutosh Sharma, Senior Software Engineer, and Gauri Kasar, Product Manager Logical replication can keep your PostgreSQL environments in sync, helping replicate selected tables with minimal impact on the primary workload. But what happens when your subscriber hits a duplicate key error and replication grinds to a halt? If you’ve seen a
02/04/2026
Why I’m telling my team to stop asking permission and start building
Alfredo Ramirez is Vice President of Revenue Strategy at Microsoft, where his team runs sales planning, performance management, and commercial transformation across the Microsoft global sales organization. Many of the most impactful tools my team uses today weren’t built by engineers. They were instead built by operations leads, program managers, planning analysts, and business process owners, people who had never written a line of code in their lives. And they bui...
02/04/2026
Windows 365 + Intune Advanced Endpoint Management Capabilities: Better Together
Overview Windows 365 and Microsoft Intune form a tightly integrated solution for modern endpoint management. With Windows 365 delivering secure Cloud PCs (full Windows desktops hosted in the Microsoft cloud) and Intune’s recently extended advanced endpoint management capabilities, organizations can manage Cloud PCs and physical devices side-by-side in...
02/04/2026
Continuing our momentum: Expanding Microsoft 365 Copilot capabilities across U.S. Government clouds
In December we announced the availability of Microsoft 365 Copilot for customers in GCC‑High—an important milesto...
02/04/2026
Announcing Windows 365 connector for Microsoft Power Platform and Azure Logic Apps (Public Preview)
We are excited to announce the Public Preview of the Windows 365 connector for Power Platform and Azure Logic Apps! With prebuilt actions and triggers for Windows 365 built on top of Graph, IT and operations teams can: Use Power Automate and Azure Logic Apps to build Cloud PC workflows, such as sending emails to users when Cloud PCs are provisioned Use Copilot Studio to build agents to provide guided responses to common questions based on configured knowledge sour...
02/04/2026
How Do We Know AI Isn’t Lying? The Art of Evaluating LLMs in RAG Systems
🔍 1. Why Evaluating LLM Responses is Hard In classical programming, correctness is binary. InputExpectedResult2 + 24✔ Correct2 + 25<...
02/04/2026
Better contrast checking for slides in PowerPoint
Hi, Insiders! I’m Shireen Salma, a Product Manager on the Office Accessibility team. Today, I’m excited to share an update to Accessibility Assistant in PowerPoint for Windows that improves how we detect color contrast issues—especially when text appears on transparent backgrounds. This enhancement helps to ensure that contrast checks reflect what you can actually see, particularly in slides that use images, gradients, or layered design elements. Better contrast checking for slides in...
02/04/2026
Part 3: DSPM for AI: Governing Data Risk in an Agent‑Driven Enterprise
Why Agent Security Alone Is Not Enough? Foundry‑level controls are designed to prevent unsafe behavior and bound autonomy at runtime. But even the strongest preventive controls cannot answer key governance questions on their own: Where is sensitive data being used in AI prompts and responses? Which agents are interacting with high‑risk data—and how often? Are agents oversharing, drifting from expected behavior, or creating comp...
02/04/2026
Part 2: Securing AI Agents with Azure AI Foundry: From Abuse Patterns to Lifecycle Controls
Every agent abuse pattern we’ve explored points to a specific control gap, not a theoretical flaw. Across all patterns, one theme consistently emerges: agents behave logically according to how they are configured. When failures occur, it’s rarely because the model “got it wrong”—it’s because the surrounding system granted too much freedom, trust, or persistence without adequate guardrails. This is exactly the problem Azure AI Foundry is designed to address. Rath...
02/04/2026
Part 1: Understanding Agent Abuse Patterns: Designing Secure AI Agents from Day One
What Is Agent Abuse? Agent abuse is not about “bad models” or simple prompt hacking. It’s about how autonomy, tools, memory, identity, and data access interact—and how those interactions can be exploited when security and governance are not built in from the start. When does it occur? Agent abuse occurs when an AI agent operates outside its intended boundaries and: Deviates from its defined behavior or business inten...
02/04/2026
Introducing MAI-Transcribe-1, MAI-Voice-1, and MAI-Image-2 in Microsoft Foundry
Another Step Towards a Complete AI Platform Since inception, our goal with Microsoft Foundry has been to deliver the most complete AI and app agent factory; giving developers access to the latest frontier models, tools, infrastructure, security, and reliability to confidently build and scale their AI solutions. Today, we're taking another step towards that vision by announcing the public preview of three...
02/04/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: April 2, 2026
Learn about 130 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs. Get it now in our marketplace
02/04/2026
Microsoft AI Tour Helsinki – Digital 28.4.2026
Tekoäly ei ole enää kokeilu – se on keskeinen osa asiakkaidemme liiketoimintastrategiaa. Microsoft AI Tour Helsinki – Digital tuo 28.4.2026 yhteen liiketoiminnan ja teknologian asiantuntijat keskustelemaan siitä, miten generatiivinen AI ja agenttivetoiset ratkaisut muuttavat tapaa rakentaa sovelluksia, automatisoida prosesseja ja tuottaa mitattavaa asiakasarvoa. Tervetuloa seuraamaan maksutonta suoraa lähetystä Helsingin Veikkaus Arenalta klo 9.15–16.30. Tämä tapahtuma on suunnattu eri...
02/04/2026
VS Code Custom Agents: AI-Powered Terraform Security Scanning in the IDE
GitHub Copilot is already a powerful coding assistant, but out of the box it knows nothing specific about your project's conventions, security requirements, or operational processes. Custom agents change that. They let you define specialized AI assistants that live inside your repository, carry deep domain expertise, and behave consistently for every developer on your team. This blog explains what VS Code custom agents are, what they can do, and how to build...
02/04/2026
Build a Fully Offline AI App with Foundry Local and CAG
A hands-on guide to building an on-device AI support agent using Context-Augmented Generation, JavaScript, and Foundry Local. You have probably heard the AI pitch: "just call our API." But what happens when your application needs to work without an internet connection? Perhaps your users are field engineers standing next to a pipeline in the middle of nowhere, or your organisation has strict data privacy requirements, or you simply want to build something tha...
02/04/2026
One Script to Export All Azure SQL Whitelisted Public IPs Within Your Subscription
Recently, I worked on an interesting customer case where they had a requirement to export all the IP addresses that are whitelisted on the Azure SQL Servers within their subscription. Below is the script that helped customer to export all server-level (public) firewall rules (whitelisted IP ranges) for every Azure SQL logical server in a subscription into a single CSV file. Set-AzContext -SubscriptionId "sub_ID" # Ensure context exists $context = Get-AzContext if...
02/04/2026
IBM Releases Granite 4.0 3B Vision: A New Vision Language Model for Enterprise Grade Document Data Extraction
IBM has announced the release of Granite 4.0 3B Vision, a vision-language model (VLM) engineered specifically for enterprise-grade document data extraction.Departing from the monolithic approach of larger multimodal models, the 4.0 Vision release is architected as a specialized adapter designed to bring high-fidelity visual reasoning to the Granite 4.0 Micro language backbone.This release […]
02/04/2026
How to Build Production Ready AgentScope Workflows with ReAct Agents, Custom Tools, Multi-Agent Debate, Structured Output and Concurrent Pipelines
In this tutorial, we build a complete AgentScope workflow from the ground up and run everything in Colab. We start by wiring OpenAI through AgentScope and validating a basic model call to understand how messages and responses are handled. From there, we define custom tool functions, register them in a toolkit, and inspect the auto-generated […] The post
02/04/2026
SQL Server Integration Services Projects 2022+ GA
We're pleased to announce the General Availability release of SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) Projects 2022+, bringing full support for SQL Server 2025 and Visual Studio 2026. With this release, SSIS Projects now supports target server versions from SQL Server 2017 through SQL Server 2025 and works with both Visual Studio 2022 and V...
02/04/2026
Z.ai Launches GLM-5V-Turbo: A Native Multimodal Vision Coding Model Optimized for OpenClaw and High-Capacity Agentic Engineering Workflows Everywhere
In the field of vision-language models (VLMs), the ability to bridge the gap between visual perception and logical code execution has traditionally faced a performance trade-off.Many models excel at describing an image but struggle to translate that visual information into the rigorous syntax required for software engineering.Zhipu AI’s (Z.ai) GLM-5V-Turbo is a vision […]
01/04/2026
Announcing Private Preview: Deploy Ansible Playbooks using Azure Policy via Machine Configuration
By extending Azure’s control plane beyond the cloud, Azure Arc enables organizations to unify governance, compliance, security and management of servers across on‑premises, edge, and multicloud environments using a consistent set of Azure tools and policies.Building on this mission, we’re excited to announce the private preview of deploying Ansible playbooks through Azure Policy using Machine Configuration, bringing Ansible‑driven automation into Azure Arc’s policy‑based governance model for Azure and Arc‑enabled Linux machines.This new capability enables you to orchestrate Ansible playbook execution directly from Azure Policy (via Machine Configuration) without requiring an Ansible control node, while benefiting from built‑in compliance reporting and remediation.
01/04/2026
Announcing AWS with Azure SRE Agent: Cross-Cloud Investigation using the brand new AWS DevOps Agent
Overview Connect Azure SRE Agent to AWS services using the official AWS MCP server. Query AWS documentation, execute any of the 15,000+ AWS APIs, run operational workflows, and kick off incident investigations through AWS DevOps Agent, which is ...
01/04/2026
Ep 37 | How Microsoft Partners Can Maximize Valuation in 2026: Insights from Tim Mueller
In the latest episode of "Profiles and Partnership," hosts Anthony Carrano and Rudy Rodriguez sit down with
01/04/2026
Improving Sales Communication with AI – Turning Execution into Clearer, Stronger Conversations
Learn how to refine messaging, tighten positioning, and adjust outreach based on real feedback.How to use AI to refine outreach messagingDesigned for sales leaders, advisors, consultants, and IAMCP members — as well as non-members looking to improve practical AI-supported sales communication.
01/04/2026
Microsoft Partnership Multiplier Series for ISVs (SDCs) with Juhi Saha
Eighty percent of Azure Marketplace listings never generate meaningful revenue - this session reveals why and shows you how to be in the winning twenty percent.We'll move beyond basic listings to explore the monetization hierarchy: when contact-me offers work versus when transactability becomes essential, how private offers unlock enterprise opportunities, and advanced strategies like MACC consumption programs.You'll learn the pricing models that convert versus those that create friction, discover what truly drives marketplace visibility and field seller recommendations, and understand the co-marketing tactics that actually work.
01/04/2026
A third-party connector integrating Claude with Microsoft Sentinel is now available
Today, we’re sharing how Sentinel can securely support a third-party AI assistant like Claude through a new integration approach using Sentinel’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, while continuing to rely on Microsoft Entra ID for enterprise grade authentication and access control. This approach uses Microsoft Sentinel with Entra ID to let third-party AI tools access Sentinel data securely.Sentinel customers can explore security data using natural language to assist investigations, while preserving strict tenant isolation and access controls, without managing app registrations or shared secrets. AI third-party assistants like Claude can access Sentinel through Microsoft’s existing security infrastructure.Use the Microsoft Sentinel MCP connector in ChatGPT or Claude CodeUse the Microsoft Sentinel MCP connector in ChatGPT or Claude - Microsoft Security |
01/04/2026
Unlocking AI-Ready Unstructured Data at Scale with Komprise and Azure
Azure’s cloud-based storage platform enables organizations to right-size their environments through elastic scaling and Microsoft’s global economies of scale.Most enterprises operate in hybrid environments, balancing on-premises systems with cloud storage. Komprise and Microsoft address this reality by enabling intelligent tiering of unstructured data across environments.Using Azure Blob Storage, organizations can transparently move cold and infrequently accessed data to lower-cost cloud tiers while keeping frequently accessed data close to applications and users.
01/04/2026
Board and executive meeting management - Pervasent - SharePoint Partner Showcase
We are excited to share a new episode on our partner showcase series focused on SharePoint in Microsoft 365.In this brief discussion Nicklas Pernblad (CTO) from Pervasent, join Vesa Juvonen from Microsoft to showcase how Pervasent has created really polished and advance solution for board and executive meeting management using SharePoint Framework (SPFx).Pervasent's SharePoint-based Board Papers and Teams-based Team Papers board solutions are deployed in an organization’s Microsoft 365 tenancy and leverage all the security and user management tools provided by Microsoft 365.
01/04/2026
DPDK 25.11 Performance on Azure for High-Speed Packet Workloads
Technologies such as the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) play a key role in meeting these expectationsTo support customers running advanced network functions, we’ve released our latest performance report based on DPDK 25.11.The report provides a clear view of how DPDK performs on Microsoft-developed Azure Boost within Azure infrastructure, with detailed insights into packet processing across a range of scenarios, from small packet sizes to multi-core scaling.
01/04/2026
Microsoft Protection Plans now deliver more coverage
Microsoft Protection Plans now include unlimited mechanical breakdown coverage2 for the full duration of the plan.Previously, mechanical breakdowns and accidental damage claims were combined under a two‑claim limit.Microsoft Protection Plans5 now include battery degradation coverage.
01/04/2026
Sensitivity Labels Are Coming to Viva Engage Communities Here's What You Need to Know
Starting March 31, 2026 sensitivity labels will be available in Viva Engage community creation.Sensitivity labels for groups and sites have been supported in Teams, SharePoint, and M365 Groups for years.An Engage community's sensitivity label is shared with its linked M365 Group and SharePoint site.
01/04/2026
Partner Blog | Accelerating Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migrations: New tooling, proven patterns, and partner opportunities inspired by Apollo Hospitals
Enterprises around the world are rethinking their data strategy. Oracle remains foundational for many mission-critical applications, but licensing pressure, modernization priorities, and the need for faster innovation are driving customers to standardize on open-source databases. PostgreSQL continues to rise as a leading alternative: cloud-ready, enterprise-grade, and well suited for large, latency-sensitive workloads. For partners,...
01/04/2026
How to Build a Production-Ready Gemma 3 1B Instruct Generation AI Pipeline with Hugging Face Transformers, Chat Templates, and Colab Inference
In this tutorial, we build and run a Colab workflow for Gemma 3 1B Instruct using Hugging Face Transformers and HF Token, in a practical, reproducible, and easy-to-follow step-by-step manner. We begin by installing the required libraries, securely authenticating with our Hugging Face token, and loading the tokenizer and model onto the available device with […] The post
01/04/2026
How Goodwill Opens More Doors for Job Seekers with Barriers to Employment Using AI
Goodwill NYNJ’s mission has always been clear: help people with disabilities and other barriers to employment find meaningful work. But with resumes arriving in every format imaginable—and staff manually reformatting each one—the process often slowed down opportunities for qualified candidates. That changed when Goodwill partnered with Microsoft at Hack4Good. Together with GoodTemps, Microsoft, Redapt, and student technologists, they built Resume Builder
01/04/2026
Driving DevSecOps Standards: NIST’s Live Guidelines for Secure Software Development, Security, and Operations Practices
Microsoft appreciates the opportunity to participate in the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) effort to evolve the Live Guidelines for Secure Software Development, Security, and Operations (DevSecOps) Practices, building on the original NIST SP 1800-44 publication. This living guidance reflects ongoing, collaborative work to document practical approaches for securing the software development lifecycle,...
01/04/2026
Imagine Cup 2026 Semifinalist: Builder Series Judges
With submissions closing on January 9, selected startups advance into the semifinals and step into this experience. From meeting their mentors to participating in build labs and pitch clinics, founders sharpen their product, their story, and their readiness for the global stage.
01/04/2026
Proactive Reliability Series — Article 1: Fault Types in Azure
Welcome to the Proactive Reliability Series — a collection of articles dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of designing, implementing, and operating reliable solutions in Azure. Each article will focus on a specific area of reliability engineering: from identifying critical flows and setting reliability targets, to designing for redundancy, testing strategies, and disaster rec...
01/04/2026
Migrating Azure SQL Database Across Tenants Using Subscription Transfer
Moving an Azure subscription between Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) tenants is a common requirement during: Mergers and acquisitions Organizational restructuring Enterprise Agreement (EA) enrollment realignment Lighthouse or multi‑tenant operating model changes However, when that subscription hosts Azure SQL databases secured using Microsoft Entra ID authentication, the migration becomes identity‑depe...
01/04/2026
Announcing public preview of custom graphs in Microsoft Sentinel
Security attacks span identities, devices, resources, and activity, making it critical to understand how these elements connect to expose real risk. In November, we shared how Sentinel graph brings these signals together into a relationship-aware view to help
01/04/2026
Hunting Infostealers - macOS Threats
The “Hunting Infostealers” blog series covers the ever-evolving threat of infostealers. Infostealers have gone from simple credential theft to subscription-based threats (i.e., Malware-as-a-Service) driving modern cybercrime. Threat actors target sensitive information such as browser data, cookies, and session tokens that can later be used for account takeovers or to fuel data breaches, ransomware attacks, and supply chain attacks. In this blog series, Microsoft Defender Experts examine how m...
01/04/2026
From “Push the Patch” to “Prove the Patch”: Rethinking Windows Updating with Intune
For years, many of us have approached patching like we’re running a shipping dock: build the package, label the box, push it onto endpoints, and then chase down the ones that “didn’t get the memo.” SCCM (Configuration Manager) made that model powerful—deployments, collections, maintenance windows, retries, and all the knobs we learned to love. If you were like me, you built your entire understanding of software updates arou...
01/04/2026
A Recap of MVP Summit 2026
This year’s annual MVP Summit brought together several hundred Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and Regional Directors (RDs) in-person on the Microsoft Redmond campus and online to learn, connect, and share. MVP Summit 2026 delivered hundreds of technical sessions, Microsoft confidential previews of what’s coming next, and the chance for MVPs to provide direct feedback to the product groups building the tools communities rely on. Summit week blended deep technical content with plenty...
01/04/2026
Announcing GA: Advanced Resource Sets in Microsoft Purview Unified Catalog
The Microsoft Purview product team is constantly listening to customer feedback about the data governance challenges that slow teams down. One of the most persistent pain points — understanding the true shape of large-scale data lakes where thousands of files represent a single logical dataset — has driven a highly requested capability. We are pleased to announce that Advanced Resource Sets are now generally available for all Microsoft Purview Unified Catalog customers. <...
01/04/2026
Chaos Engineering vs. STAF for SAP: Resilience Validation vs. Functional Assurance
The short answer: STAF and Chaos Engineering serve different purposes and treating them as interchangeable can expose SAP production environments to unseen risk.Chaos Engineering for SAP and SAP Testing Automation Framework (STAF) help ensure mission-critical workloads remain robust.STAF focuses on automating high availability (HA) and configuration compliance testing for SAP clusters on Azure.
01/04/2026
Arrow x Microsoft Kumppaniarkkitehtiseminaari tulee 27.5.2026
Vuoden tärkein tekninen kumppanitapahtuma Arrow x Microsoft Kumppaniarkkitehtiseminaari 2026 kokoaa jälleen yhteen Microsoftin ja Arrow’n kumppanien tekniset päättäjät ja asiantuntijat – arkkitehdit, senior-kehittäjät ja tekniset konsultit – inspiroitumaan, oppimaan ja verkostoitumaan. Tapahtuma järjestetään 27.5.2026 klo 9.00–16.00 (aamiainen klo 8.15 alkaen) Hilton Kalastajatorpalla Helsingissä, ja se tarjoaa käytännönläheisen katsauksen tekoälyn, agenttien ja pilviratkaisujen uusimpiin keh...
01/04/2026
Microsoft 365 and Advanced Data Residency now available in Denmark
We are excited to announce that Microsoft 365 and the Microsoft 365 Advanced Data Residency add-on (ADR) are now available for commercial customers in our new cloud region in Denmark. Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo Capabilities for Denmark will be available soon. The Advanced Data Residency and Multi-Geo Capabilities add-ons offer customers provisioned in Denmark greater control over the location of their cloud data.
01/04/2026
Understanding and Monitoring Class 2 Transactions in Azure SQL Database
During a recent customer engagement, we investigated sustained transaction log growth in Azure SQL Database without obvious large user transactions. The customer was familiar with PostgreSQL diagnostics and wanted to understand how similar insights can be obtained in Azure SQL Database—especially around Class 2 (system) transactions. This post summarizes what we discussed, explains why Azure SQL behaves differently, and walks through <...
01/04/2026
How to revoke connection OAuth programmatically in Logic Apps
There are multiple ways to revoke the OAuth of an API Connection other than clicking on the Revoke button in the portal: For using the "Invoke an HTTP request": Get the connection name: Create a Logic App (Consumption), use a trigger of your liking, then add the “Invoke an HTTP request” A...
01/04/2026
Foundry Agents and Custom Engine Agents through the Corporate Firewall
When Foundry creates the Azure Bot for your published Agent, it Agent Blueprint and an Agent Identity.All calls to your Agent from Microsoft’s Bot Channel Adapters will have an ‘aud’ claim equal your Bot Client ID.When a Custom Engine Agent has something to say back, it doesn’t reply on the incoming HTTP connection.
01/04/2026
Azure Database Security Newsletter - April 2026
In this newsletter we highlight the importance of strong encryption for data security, and call out recent encryption, key management, and auditing enhancements designed to help you strengthen your security posture while simplifying operational management.Customer-Managed Keys in Fabric SQL DatabaseVersionless keys for Transparent Data Encryption in Azure SQL Database
01/04/2026
Hugging Face Releases TRL v1.0: A Unified Post-Training Stack for SFT, Reward Modeling, DPO, and GRPO Workflows
Hugging Face has officially released TRL (Transformer Reinforcement Learning) v1.0, marking a pivotal transition for the library from a research-oriented repository to a stable, production-ready framework. For AI professionals and developers, this release codifies the Post-Training pipeline—the essential sequence of Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT), Reward Modeling, and Alignment—into a unified, standardized API. In the early stages […] The post
01/04/2026
Agents League: Meet the Winners
Agents League brought together developers from around the world to build AI agents using Microsoft's developer tools. With 100+ submissions across three tracks, choosing winners was genuinely difficult. Today, we're proud to announce the category champions. 🎨 Creative Apps Winner: CodeSonify View project CodeSonify turns source code into music. As a genuinely thoug...
01/04/2026
Google AI Releases Veo 3.1 Lite: Giving Developers Low Cost High Speed Video Generation via The Gemini API
Google has announced the release of Veo 3.1 Lite, a new model tier within its generative video portfolio designed to address the primary bottleneck for production-scale deployments: pricing. While the generative video space has seen rapid progress in visual fidelity, the cost per second of generated content has remained high, often prohibitive for developers building […] The post
01/04/2026
Liquid AI Released LFM2.5-350M: A Compact 350M Parameter Model Trained on 28T Tokens with Scaled Reinforcement Learning
In the current landscape of generative AI, the ‘scaling laws’ have generally dictated that more parameters equal more intelligence. However, Liquid AI is challenging this convention with the release of LFM2.5-350M. This model is actually a technical case study in intelligence density with additional pre-training (from 10T to 28T tokens) and large-scale reinforcement learning The […] The post
01/04/2026
How to Add an Adaptive Card in Microsoft 365 Agent SDK
One of the most important UI capabilities is Adaptive Cards, which let your agent send structured, interactive content such as forms, inputs, buttons, and layouts.Adaptive Cards are sent in the Agent SDK using:Your bot is now fully capable of collecting structured user input using Adaptive Cards.
01/04/2026
Let's Create Our First Microsoft 365 Agent SDK using Python - For Single Tenant
I am using VS Code, so you don’t need to manually install Python on your system (unless you want to).Once done, your requirements.txt file will look like :You must expose your local bot over HTTPS.
01/04/2026
Resolving Weak SSL Ciphers in .NET Framework 4.5
Applications built on the .NET Framework 4.5 may fail to establish secure HTTPS connections or may default to outdated and insecure protocols.The most robust fix is to upgrade your application to .NET Framework 4.6, 4.7 or later, where TLS 1.2 is enabled by default.After installing the newer .NET Framework on your development or production environment, update your project’s target framework and recompile.
01/04/2026
Resolving MachineWithSameBiosIdAndFqdnAlreadyExists During Azure Migrate Mobility Agent Registration
While working on an Azure Migrate project, we encountered a failure during Mobility Agent registration with the error: <ErrorCode>MachineWithSameBiosIdAndFqdnAlreadyExists</ErrorCode> This error code is identified in C:\ProgramData\ASRSetupLogs\ASRUnifiedAgentConfigurator.log file on Source Server. This issue surfaced after a server was initially onboard...
01/04/2026
AWS to Azure Migration — From the Cloud Economics & FinOps Lens
“ROI fails when FinOps joins late.” That single pattern explains why many cloud migrations deliver technical success but financial disappointment. Workloads move. SLAs hold. Teams celebrate go‑live. Then the CFO asks: Where are the savings we modeled? In most cases, FinOps was engaged after architecture decisions were locked, licenses were double‑paid, and governance debt had already accumulated. This article frames AWS‑to‑Azure migration through a FinOps lens—not to...
01/04/2026
Windows 365 Frontline in shared mode now available in Brazil South, Italy North, and West Europe
We're pleased to announce that Windows 365 Frontline in shared mode continues its global expansion with availability in three new regions spanning Brazil and Europe.Beyond full desktop experiences, Windows 365 Frontline supports Cloud Apps delivery in shared mode.Remember: With ANC, the Azure virtual network's region determines where your Cloud PC is hosted.
31/03/2026
Partner Blog | March skilling update: The pathway to capability
March’s skilling update focuses on simplifying how you discover the right learning and progress through it with confidence. Our model is simple: discover the right pathway, then build capability through role-aligned learning, labs, and readiness experiences. This month, the Microsoft Partner Skilling Catalog is the discovery layer.LevelUp is where you go deeper with on-demand learning that supports certification prep, Project Ready execution, and pathways focused on small and medium-sized business (SMB) opportunities.
31/03/2026
Simplify troubleshooting at scale - Centralized Log Management for CycleCloud Workspace for Slurm
Training large AI models on hundreds or thousands of nodes introduces a critical operational challenge: when a distributed job fails, quickly identifying the root cause across scattered logs can become incredibly time-consuming.This is a turnkey, customizable log forwarding solution for CycleCloud Workspace for Slurm that centralizes all cluster logs into Azure Monitor Logs Analytic. The architecture uses Azure Monitor Agent (AMA) deployed on every VM and Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS) to stream logs defined by Data Collection Rules (DCR) to dedicated tables in a Log Analytics workspace where they can be queried from a single interface.The solution is purpose-built for CycleCloud Workspace for Slurm, but designed in a modular fashion to be easily extended for new data sources (i.e. new log formats) and processing (i.e. Data Collection Rules) to support log forwarding and analysis of other required logs.
31/03/2026
How Microsoft Marketplace and ecosystem partnerships are reshaping enterprise go-to-market
Author Juhi Saha is CEO at Partner1, a two-time Inc. Power Partner Award winner and an official Microsoft Partner Led Network. Partner1 helps B2B software and services companies maximize the value of their partner ecosystems and transform partnerships into scalable profit engines. Specializing in channel development and strategic alliances, Partner1 empowers organizations to unlock their partnership potential through expert guidance, partnership program design, and actionable growth strategies.Azure Managed Redis is a first-party Azure service that is becoming foundational for customers optimizing their data infrastructure for modern and agentic AI workloads.Eden and Datadog's autonomous migration service for Azure Managed Redis is now available on Microsoft Marketplace, making it easy for enterprises to get the most out of new Redis products.
31/03/2026
Agent Evaluation in Microsoft Copilot Studio is now generally available
As agents move into production, evaluations help take each build from experimentation to a reliable system. And they help answer the question that matters most in production: Can we trust this agent to behave correctly, consistently, and safely — every time? Manual testing simply can't scale to answer that question. Spot-checking responses one-by-one is slow, inconsistent, and not designed for agents that handle hundreds or thousands of interactions. Agent Evaluation in
31/03/2026
Agent Evaluation in Microsoft Copilot Studio is now generally available
Today, we are giving every maker a better way to assess agent behavior at scale—before launch and over the agent's lifecycle.Validate production readiness before launch and after every changeAgent Evaluation is built directly into Copilot Studio—there’s no separate tool to install and no integrations to configure.
31/03/2026
From Vulnerability Fatigue to Action: How SKF Operationalized MDVM with a Custom Dashboard
In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, organizations must proactively manage security risk and stay ahead of emerging threats to keep systems and data secure. However, many teams face “vulnerability fatigue”; remediation doesn’t get easier as environments grow, Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR) increases, and Mean Time to Exploit continues to shrink. (References: CyberMindr, “Avera...
31/03/2026
How to Build and Evolve a Custom OpenAI Agent with A-Evolve Using Benchmarks, Skills, Memory, and Workspace Mutations
In this tutorial, we work directly with the A-Evolve framework in Colab and build a complete evolutionary agent pipeline from the ground up. We set up the repository, configure an OpenAI-powered agent, define a custom benchmark, and build our own evolution engine to see how A-Evolve actually improves an agent through iterative workspace mutations. Through […] The post
31/03/2026
The best backup is the one you never think about
Today is World Backup Day, and nobody is celebrating. That's the point. If backup is doing its job, you never think about it. My name is Gaia Carini and I've been a Product Manager on the OneDrive team for over a decade. A big part of my job has been making backup invisible. Your stuff should just be safe. New laptop, same everything I got a new personal laptop last month. I have over half a terabyte of files in my personal OneDrive. Years of tax returns, downloaded cop...
31/03/2026
The AI job boom continues: Build the skills that move business forward
Gretchen LaBelle: Copilot + Agents Learning Portfolio Manager, Global Skilling Tarek Saleh Eldin: Content Publishing Manager, Global Skilling In Part 1 of this series, The AI job boom is here. Are you ready to showcase your skills?, we ex...
31/03/2026
What’s new in Microsoft Intune – March
In a typical week, IT admins are enrolling devices, deploying apps, enforcing policies, and making a hundred small decisions that keep their organizations running. This month’s updates focus on improving the experience around daily actions, compliance visibility, and management capabilities for Apple devices and mobile apps. More ...
31/03/2026
What's New in Excel (March 2026)
Welcome to the March 2026 update. This month brings meaningful updates across Excel, including new Edit with Copilot capabilities powered by Work IQ context, expanded language support, and Claude Opus 4.6. You’ll also notice a refreshed Office Scripts UI designed to streamline your experience, along with a faster, more intuitive way to find your Excel files on the web. Excel for Windows, Mac, and web:- New Edit with Copilot capabilities- Offic...
31/03/2026
March skilling update: The pathway to capability
March’s skilling update focuses on simplifying how you discover the right learning and progress through it with confidence. Our model is simple: discover the right pathway, then build capability through role-aligned learning, labs, and readiness experiences. This month, the Microsoft Partner Skilling Catalog is the discovery layer.LevelUp is where you go deeper with on-demand learning that supports certification prep, Project Ready execution, and pathways focused on small and medium-sized business (SMB) opportunities.
31/03/2026
Continued Investment in Azure App Service
Azure App Service Premium v4 delivers higher performance and scalability on newer Azure infrastructure while preserving the fully managed PaaS experience developers rely on.Deployment workflows across Azure App Service continue to evolve, with ongoing improvements to GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, and platform tooling.Ready to build on Azure App Service?
31/03/2026
Low code solutions at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference
Ryan Cunningham, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Power Platform, will take the M365 Community Conference audience inside how work is being reimagined in the age of AI.Build your next app or AI agent with Power Platform and Copilot StudioExperience low-code solutions for yourself at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference.
31/03/2026
Partner Case study | TD SYNNEX
As a global Microsoft distributor, TD SYNNEX equips Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners and resellers with the tools, programs, and expertise they need to deliver solutions to market.In a channel where devices, cloud, and security are often sold in silos, TD SYNNEX focuses on the connective tissue—helping partners position Microsoft as an ecosystem.Partners face fragmented adoption—devices, cloud, and security aren’t connected
31/03/2026
Microsoft 365 Fundamentals certification is now retired
As part of our regular review of skilling and certification requirements, we have retired the Microsoft 365 Fundamentals certification, effective March 31, 2026. This change reflects our ongoing alignment with customer and market demand.
31/03/2026
Seamless Marketplace private offers: creation to customer use
Private offers are a core mechanism for bringing negotiated commercial terms into Microsoft Marketplace.They allow publishers and channel partners to offer negotiated pricing, flexible billing structures, and custom terms;Join us April 15 for Marketplace Partner Office Hours, where Microsoft Marketplace experts Stephanie Brice and Christine Brown walk through how to execute private offers end to end—from creation to customer purchase and activation—across direct and partner‑led selling models.
31/03/2026
A Microsoft FTE’s Reflections from MVP Summit 2026: Deep Insights & Connections
Last week, March 24 to 26, 2026, Microsoft headquarters in Redmond played host to the annual Microsoft MVP Summit.It is where real-world challenges meet engineering priorities, and where MVPs can share the voice of the user directly with the people building the future of technology at Microsoft.What truly defines the MVP Summit is the people.
31/03/2026
What’s New in Microsoft 365 Copilot | March 2026
Welcome to the March 2026 edition of What's new in Microsoft 365 Copilot!Audio recap in more languages for Copilot in TeamsMicrosoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat is expanding to safeguard web searches containing sensitive data.
31/03/2026
High Volume Email reaches General Availability in Exchange Online
As we discussed High Volume Email (HVE) several times since it was in Public Preview, I wanted to make you aware that Exchange Online HVE now reached General Availability (GA).The announcement was made on the Microsoft 365 Blog here:High Volume Email Is Now Available in Exchange Online
31/03/2026
Microsoft Foundry: Unlock Adaptive, Personalized Agents with User-Scoped Persistent Memory
Most AI agents today are knowledgeable — they ground responses in enterprise data sources and rely on short‑term, session‑based memory to maintain conversational coherence.in enterprise environments, it introduces legitimate concerns around privacy, data isolation, governance, and compliance — especially when multiple users interact with the same agent.In this post, I’ll walk through a practical design pattern for user‑scoped persistent memory, including a reference architecture and a deployable sample implementation that demonstrates how to apply this pattern in a real enterprise setting while preserving isolation, governance, and compliance.
31/03/2026
High Volume Email Is Now Available in Exchange Online
High Volume Email (HVE) is now generally available in Exchange Online, delivering a purpose‑built, tenant‑native way for applications and devices to send large volumes of internal email reliably, securely, and at scale without impacting user mailboxes or Exchange Online service health.Why High Volume Email (HVE)Exchange Online is optimized for person‑to‑person communication.
31/03/2026
How to integrate your product into Microsoft 365 Copilot
Additionally, the custom engine approach is ideal for ISVs that already have their own agents and want to integrate them into the Copilot UI, making it easier for customers to access and interact with these agents directly within the Microsoft 365 environment.According to Microsoft’s official publishing guidance, agents built with Copilot Studio can be published to Microsoft 365 Copilot and Teams and can be shared with individuals, groups, or made available through the organization’s catalog, depending on how availability is configured and how the tenant is governed.The official Microsoft 365 Copilot publishing documentation states that, today, only declarative agents built with Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit and custom engine agents built with the same toolchain support submission to the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace. - Publish Agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot - Microsoft 365 Copilot agents admin guide
31/03/2026
No code left behind: How AI streamlines Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migration
The new AI-assisted Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migration tool, available in public preview via the PostgreSQL extension for Visual Studio Code, brings automation, validation, and AI-powered migration assistance into a single, user-friendly interface.The AI-assisted Oracle to PostgreSQL migration tool dramatically simplifies moving off Oracle databases.Accessible through VS Code, the tool uses intelligent automation, powered by GitHub Copilot, to convert Oracle database schemas and PL/SQL code into PostgreSQL-compatible formats.
31/03/2026
Microsoft Purview Data Quality Thresholds: More Control, More Trust
A data quality threshold defines the minimum acceptable score for a rule to pass.Align quality scores with business riskUsers can define data quality thresholds at the data asset level to measure how suitable a dataset is for specific business use cases.
31/03/2026
What’s New in Microsoft Teams | March 2026
Copilot in Teams Phone live calls, powered by Microsoft 365 Copilot ChatThe Copilot experience in Teams Phone on desktop and mobile is fully powered by Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat for a more unified experience across Teams and the Microsoft 365 Copilot app.Huddly C1 is an AI-driven videobar designed to deliver intelligent video and audio in small and medium meeting rooms.
31/03/2026
SharePoint Showcase: How SharePoint uses AI to strengthen Work IQ’s data layer
This month’s Showcase offers four AI capabilities in SharePoint that help strengthen how Copilot and agents reason over enterprise knowledge.The SharePoint Admin Agent applies generative AI to SharePoint Advanced Management insights.Learn more: Create document library with AI - SharePoint in Microsoft 365 |
31/03/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: March 31, 2026
Learn about 126 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs.Deploy the container image directly into your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster.AI-Driven Clinical Transcription: DataArt will implement its Clinical Session Transcription and Automated Medical Note Generation system, built using Microsoft AI technologies, so your psychologists and psychiatrists can effortlessly convert their therapy recordings into privacy-protected clinical notes.
31/03/2026
PostgreSQL Buffer Cache Analysis
At the heart of this memory usage lies shared_buffers—PostgreSQL’s primary buffer cache.In this post, we’ll walk you through a practical, data-driven approach to analyzing PostgreSQL buffer cache behavior using native statistics and the pg_buffercache extension.The pg_buffercache extension provides a real-time view into PostgreSQL’s shared buffers.
31/03/2026
The Durable Task Scheduler Consumption SKU is now Generally Available
Today, we're excited to announce that the Durable Task Scheduler Consumption SKU has reached General Availability.Developers can now run durable workflows and agents on Azure with pay-per-use pricing, no storage to manage, no capacity to plan, and no idle costs.In brief, the Durable Task Scheduler is a fully managed orchestration backend for durable execution on Azure, meaning your workflows and agent sessions can reliably resume and run to completion, even through process failures, restarts, and scaling events.
31/03/2026
Subscription Vending in Azure: An Implementation Overview
Subscription vending is a process that enables the creation of multiple Azure subscriptions using code, based on organizational segregation or workload-specific requirements.Subscription vending follows the concept of subscription democratization and applies it within the Azure Landing Zone (ALZ) model.Through subscription vending, multiple subscriptions can be deployed based on individual workload requirements
31/03/2026
Alibaba Qwen Team Releases Qwen3.5 Omni: A Native Multimodal Model for Text, Audio, Video, and Realtime Interaction
The landscape of multimodal large language models (MLLMs) has shifted from experimental ‘wrappers’—where separate vision or audio encoders are stitched onto a text-based backbone—to native, end-to-end ‘omnimodal’ architectures.Alibaba Qwen team latest release, Qwen3.5-Omni, represents a significant milestone in this evolution.Designed as a direct competitor to flagship models like Gemini 3.1 Pro, the Qwen3.5-Omni […]
31/03/2026
VS Code Extension
Uses the VS Code Extension API to interact with the editor .generator-code – the VS Code extension generator.Install the VS Code Extension CLI: npm install -g vsce
31/03/2026
Powering Event Driven Payments with Stripe and Azure Event Grid
With the new Azure Event Grid destination for events from Stripe, developers can now route those events directly into Azure and build scalable, event-driven architectures without managing webhook infrastructure or custom brokers.Azure Event Grid acts as a fully managed event broker between Stripe and Azure services.Beyond operational workflows, Stripe events can also power real-time analytics scenarios using Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Intelligence.
31/03/2026
How Veris AI and Lume Security built a self-improving AI agent with Microsoft Foundry
We show how a high-fidelity simulation environment built by Veris AI on Microsoft Azure can expand production failures into families of realistic scenarios, generating enough targeted data to optimize agent behavior through automated context engineering and reinforcement learning, all while not regressing on any previous issue.Microsoft Foundry and Veris AI together provide Lume with a secure, repeatable control plane that makes model iteration, safety, and simulation-driven evaluation practical.Lume unifies an organization’s fragmented data sources into a security intelligence graph.
30/03/2026
Microsoft SAP Partner Community Call on Wednesday, March 25 | 8:00- 8:30 AM PST
Key HighlightsLearn how to unify SAP and non-SAP security detections in Microsoft Sentinel.Discover how to build repeatable services with typical Sentinel for SAP implementations completed in 2–4 weeks.Understand the pathway to managed SOC services that drive recurring revenue.
30/03/2026
Microsoft AI Releases Harrier-OSS-v1: A New Family of Multilingual Embedding Models Hitting SOTA on Multilingual MTEB v2
Microsoft has announced the release of Harrier-OSS-v1, a family of three multilingual text embedding models designed to provide high-quality semantic representations across a wide range of languages.The release includes three distinct scales: a 270M parameter model, a 0.6B model, and a 27B model.The Harrier-OSS-v1 models achieved state-of-the-art (SOTA) results on the Multilingual MTEB […]
30/03/2026
Accelerate connectors development using AI agent in Microsoft Sentinel
Today, we’re excited to announce the public preview of a Sentinel connector builder agent, via VS code extension, that helps developers build Microsoft Sentinel codeless connectors faster with low-code and AI-assisted prompts. This new capability brings guided workflows directly into the tooling developers already use, helping accelerate time to value as the Sentinel ecosystem continues to grow.The new Sentinel connector builder agent, using GitHub Copilot in the Sentinel VS code extension, brings more of the connector development lifecycle -- authoring, validation, testing, and deployment into a single, cohesive workflow.The Sentinel connector builder agent for Visual Studio Code is designed to help developers move from API documentation to a working codeless connector more efficiently.
30/03/2026
Production ready architectures for AI apps and agents on Marketplace
Why “production‑ready” architecture matters for Marketplace AI apps and agentsThis post focuses on the architectural principles and patterns required to meet those expectations.This post is part of a series on building and publishing well-architected AI apps and Agents on Microsoft Marketplace.
30/03/2026
Using AI Agents to Protect Services from Zero-Day Attacks
This approach helps detect suspicious activity that may indicate exploitation of unknown vulnerabilities by focusing on expected behavior.To enable this, an AI-assisted agent analyzes the application’s code, dependencies, and documentation to produce an “expected behavior” profile for a given service.By using an AI-assisted agent to derive an application’s expected behavior from its code, dependencies, and documentation, we can generate draft “good behavior” detections for human review, and pair approved rules with on-the-box, real-time monitoring to help surface potential anomalies outside those rules for analyst review.
30/03/2026
Public Preview: Ephemeral OS Disk with full caching for VM/VMSS
Today, we’re excited to announce the public preview of Ephemeral OS disk with full caching, a new feature designed to significantly enhance performance and reliability by utilizing local storage.This feature is ideal for IO-sensitive stateless workloads, as it eliminates dependency on remote storage by caching the entire OS image on local storage.With Ephemeral OS Disk with full caching, the entire OS disk image is cached on local storage, removing the dependency on remote storage for OS disk reads.
30/03/2026
Check This Out! (CTO!) Guide (March 2026)
Summary: Azure Storage Actions is a fully managed, serverless automation platform that simplifies large-scale data management in Azure Blob and Data Lake Storage.Summary: The article discusses how agentic tools, such as those in Azure Copilot and GitHub Copilot, transform cloud migration and modernization from one-time projects into ongoing, autonomous systems.Summary: The article outlines how to integrate ReFrame HPC, a flexible high-performance computing testing framework, with Azure Log Analytics for centralized performance monitoring across diverse clusters and environments.
30/03/2026
Replicating solutions to Azure: The business case, the incentives and how to get there fast
When should Azure be part of your cloud strategy and what does Microsoft offer to help you get there?Understanding when and how to replicate your solution to Azure and add it to your strategy is increasingly a GTM decision, not just an infrastructure one.Use the technical advisory included in your program to scope your replication with Microsoft.
30/03/2026
Migrating frontline mobile devices: A frontline-first approach to moving to Microsoft Intune
Why mobile frontline device migrations are differentThe operational impact of failure is higher on the frontline because frontline devices operate in very different environments to knowledge worker devices.This series will explore the areas that consistently shape successful frontline mobile migrations the steps, patterns, and design decisions that matter most in real frontline environments.
30/03/2026
Windows App Updates: Reliability, Productivity, and Security Improvements
As more organizations continue to explore Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop to support flexible work, expectations for reliability, performance, and cross‑platform consistency are rising.Windows App for Android became generally available in April of 2025, ensuring access to remote resources from Windows App across most major platforms.Starting March 27, 2026, the Remote Desktop client for Windows (MSI) and the web-based Remote Desktop client will no longer be supported in commercial clouds.
30/03/2026
Now in Foundry: NVIDIA Nemotron-3-Super-120B-A12B, IBM Granite-4.0-1b-Speech, and Sarvam-105B
This week's Model Mondays edition highlights three models now available in Hugging Face collection on Microsoft Foundry: NVIDIA's Nemotron-3-Super-120B-A12B, a hybrid Latent Mixture-of-Experts (MOE) model with 12B active parameters and context handling up to 1 million tokens;and Sarvam's Sarvam-105B, a 105B Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model with 10.3B active parameters optimized for complex reasoning and 22 Indian languages, with comparable agentic performance compared to other larger proprietary models on web search and task-planning benchmarks.Models of the week
30/03/2026
Azure Speech – Neural HD Text to Speech: Recent Voice Updates
Neural HD Multi-Talker voices facilitate multi-speaker output within a unified voice family, thereby enhancing the efficiency of producing dynamic and immersive audio content without necessitating the management of numerous distinct voices.Neural HD Flash introduces a new class of HD voices optimized for speed and responsiveness, particularly beneficial for scenarios where low latency is essential.Starting in March 2026, Neural HD voices will be rolling out to even more locations!
30/03/2026
The moment AI skilling stopped being optional—and started being personal
AI Skills Navigator is designed for that reality.By combining structured paths with flexible ways to learn, and pairing AI support with human expertise, AI Skills Navigator helps individuals and teams build confidence, apply skills, and make progress together.AI Skills Navigator is designed to help people and teams build confidence, not by adding more noise, but by providing guidance that fits real work.
30/03/2026
Breached in 86 seconds: How AI Workloads Become Credential Dispensers
What makes AI inference pods uniquely valuable to attackers isn't just the managed identity, it's the credential density.A single compromised inference pod in a well-configured AKS cluster can surface: I presented this research live with Diwas Sedai at the Microsoft Defender Experts S.T.A.R. Forum Episode 7 on March 9 at 10AM ET. We walked through:
30/03/2026
File level archiving comes to Microsoft 365 Archive (public preview)
This new capability enables you to archive individual files moving them into a lower-cost, cold-storage tier in SharePoint.Microsoft 365 Archive helps improve Copilot results by removing archived files and sites from Copilot’s active index.File‑level archiving in Microsoft 365 Archive is now available in public preview for eligible Microsoft 365 tenants.
30/03/2026
Bidirectional Replication with pglogical on Azure Database for PostgreSQL - a VNET guide
This is a deep technical walkthrough for implementing bidirectional (active‑active) replication on private Azure Database for PostgreSQL Server using pglogical, with a strong emphasis on VNET‑injected architectures.It explains the underlying networking and execution model covering replication worker placement, DNS resolution paths, outbound connectivity, and conflict resolution mechanics to show why true private, server‑to‑server replication is only achievable with VNET injection and not with Private Endpoints.It also analyzes the operational and architectural trade‑offs needed to safely run geo distributed, multi write PostgreSQL workloads in production.
30/03/2026
Labeling Files is Worth It | Speed & Protection Benefits in Microsoft Purview
Matt McSpirit, Microsoft Mechanics expert, joins Jeremy Chapman to share how to turn scattered data into actionable security that moves as fast as your team and AI.Now to walk us through all of this, I’m joined by a Microsoft Mechanics expert, Matt McSpirit.In addition to your policy engines like DLP, it’s important to augment what you’re doing with unified data classification.
30/03/2026
How to Compute GPU Capacity for GPT Models (GPT‑4o and Later)
When deploying large language models like GPT‑4o, capacity planning is no longer about picking a GPU SKU.Instead, Azure abstracts GPU compute behind Provisioned Throughput Units (PTUs)—a model‑centric way to reason about GPU usage, throughput, and latency.This post explains how GPU capacity is computed for GPT‑4o‑class models, and how to translate your workload into the right number of PTUs.
30/03/2026
Configuring Noise Detection and Barge‑In with Azure Voice Live API
Azure Voice Live API addresses this by providing built‑in noise handling, server‑side Voice Activity Detection (VAD), and native barge‑in support—all configurable with a single session update.Voice Live performs server‑side speech detection on the incoming audio stream.Noise detection and barge‑in are configured using the session.update event, typically sent immediately after opening the Voice Live WebSocket session from client side such as ACA or Azure function.
30/03/2026
ProsperOps and Sensiple offer transactable partner solutions in Microsoft Marketplace
Microsoft partners like ProsperOps and Sensiple deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Microsoft Marketplace.ProsperOps: FinOps and cloud engineering teams use ProsperOps to reduce cloud costs across Microsoft Azure compute and other resources by continuously analyzing usage and executing commitment optimizations.tryvium: An AI-powered contact center platform built on Microsoft Teams and powered by Microsoft Copilot, Sensiple tryvium helps businesses modernize engagement while maximizing investments in Microsoft 365.
30/03/2026
Introducing multi-model intelligence in Researcher
Today, Researcher—Microsoft 365 Copilot's deep research agent for work—takes a significant step forward.Designed to tackle complex research in the flow of work, Researcher now goes further with two new multi-model capabilities that raise the bar for accuracy, depth, and confidence: Critique and Council.Critique is a new multi model deep research system designed for complex research tasks.
30/03/2026
Implementing Intune RBAC and Scope Tags for Zero Trust and Least Privilege
In this guide, you’ll learn how to use Intune RBAC and Scope Tags to enforce least privilege, build clear management boundaries by region/agency/environment, and pair device compliance with Entra Conditional Access to strengthen a Zero Trust posture—plus a practical RACI approach so ownership stays clear as your environment grows.Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) in Intune allows organizations to delegate administrative permissions based on roles, responsibilities, and scope.Migrating Group Policy Objects from on-premises Active Directory to Microsoft Intune represents a critical transformation requiring clear ownership and phased execution.
30/03/2026
CI/CD as a Platform: Shipping Microservices and AI Agents with Reusable GitHub Actions Workflows
We introduce evaluation as a deployment gate — a reusable workflow that scores agent behavior before any deployment is allowed.We integrate with Microsoft Foundry for agent runtime and observability.This workflow builds the Docker image, tags it with the Git SHA, and pushes it to Azure Container Registry.
30/03/2026
Understanding Azure SQL Data Sync Firewall Requirements
Azure SQL Data Sync is commonly used to synchronize data between on‑premises SQL Server databases and Azure SQL Database.This blog explains why Azure SQL Data Sync requires firewall exceptions, what type of IP addresses may appear in audit logs, and how to approach this topic from a security and documentation standpoint—based on real troubleshooting discussions within the Azure SQL Data Sync ecosystem.A frequently reported issue occurs when the Azure SQL Data Sync Agent (installed on an on‑premises server) fails to save its configuration.
30/03/2026
Troubleshooting Azure SQL Data Sync Groups Stuck in Progressing State
Azure SQL Data Sync is commonly used to synchronize data across Azure SQL Databases and on‑premises SQL Server environments.While the service works well in many scenarios, customers may occasionally encounter a situation where a Sync Group remains stuck in a “Progressing” state and cannot be started, stopped, or refreshed.This blog walks through a real-world troubleshooting scenario, highlights the root cause, and outlines practical remediation steps based on actual support investigation and collaboration.
30/03/2026
Salesforce AI Research Releases VoiceAgentRAG: A Dual-Agent Memory Router that Cuts Voice RAG Retrieval Latency by 316x
In the world of voice AI, the difference between a helpful assistant and an awkward interaction is measured in milliseconds.While text-based Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems can afford a few seconds of ‘thinking’ time, voice agents must respond within a 200ms budget to maintain a natural conversational flow.The post Salesforce AI Research Releases VoiceAgentRAG: A Dual-Agent Memory Router that Cuts Voice RAG Retrieval Latency by 316x appeared first on MarkTechPost.
30/03/2026
Why Long-Term Retention (LTR) Backups Don’t Attach After a PITR Restore in Azure SQL Database
Customers sometimes expect that after performing a Point‑in‑Time Restore (PITR) and renaming the restored database back to its original name, existing Long‑Term Retention (LTR) backups will automatically appear and continue from where they left off.This article explains why LTR backups do not attach to restored databases, even if the database name is reused, and what customers should expect instead.However, in newer Azure SQL Database deployments, the LTR backups are not visible after the restore and rename process.
30/03/2026
From Toil to Trust: How Azure SRE Agent Is Redefining Cloud Operations
Azure SRE Agent is designed to help infrastructure and SRE teams meet this challenge by bringing AI‑assisted diagnostics and remediation directly into Azure operations.For infrastructure and SRE teams managing large Azure estates, Azure SRE Agent provides a single, agentic reliability layer that unifies observability, incident management, and delivery workflows into a governed, intent‑driven operating model.Reduced Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR): By integrating natively with Azure Monitor and Log Analytics, the agent performs deep, multi‑signal investigation and root‑cause analysis without manual query building or correlation.
30/03/2026
Building Your First Local RAG Application with Foundry Local
A developer's guide to building an offline, mobile-responsive AI support agent using Retrieval-Augmented Generation, the Foundry Local SDK, and JavaScript.Just a local language model, a local vector store, and your own documents, all accessible from a browser on any device.With Foundry Local, Node.js, and SQLite, you can create a fully offline, mobile-responsive AI agent that answers questions grounded in your own documents.
30/03/2026
Getting Started with Foundry Local: A Student Guide to the Microsoft Foundry Local Lab
If you want to start building AI applications on your own machine, the Microsoft Foundry Local Lab is one of the most useful places to begin.Foundry Local is a local runtime for downloading, managing, and serving AI models on your own hardware.Part 12: Building a Web UI for the Zava Creative Writer
30/03/2026
Gain Visibility into Cloud Browser Usage with Browser Activity Logs in Playwright Workspaces
Today, we're announcing a new feature to view the usage metrics for a browser session using the Browser Activity Logs in Playwright Workspaces.To address this, Browser Activity Logs in Playwright Workspaces provide a centralized view of every cloud browser session provisioned by Playwright Workspaces.In this post, we’ll walk through what Browser Activity Logs are, what insights they offer, and how you can access them from the Azure portal.
30/03/2026
Zero Trust for data: Make Microsoft Entra authentication for SQL your policy baseline
U.S. federal guidance has now formalized this shift: Executive Order 14028 calls for modernizing cybersecurity and accelerating Zero Trust adoption, and OMB Memorandum M-22-09 sets a federal Zero Trust strategy with specific objectives and timelines.Why database authentication is a first‑order Zero Trust controlMicrosoft Entra authentication enables users and applications to connect to SQL using enterprise identities, instead of usernames and passwords.
30/03/2026
Agent-Infra Releases AIO Sandbox: An All-in-One Runtime for AI Agents with Browser, Shell, Shared Filesystem, and MCP
In the development of autonomous agents, the technical bottleneck is shifting from model reasoning to the execution environment.While Large Language Models (LLMs) can generate code and multi-step plans, providing a functional and isolated environment for that code to run remains a significant infrastructure challenge.Agent-Infra’s Sandbox, an open-source project, addresses this by providing an […]
30/03/2026
How to Build Advanced Cybersecurity AI Agents with CAI Using Tools, Guardrails, Handoffs, and Multi-Agent Workflows
In this tutorial, we build and explore the CAI Cybersecurity AI Framework step by step in Colab using an OpenAI-compatible model.We begin by setting up the environment, securely loading the API key, and creating a base agent.We gradually move into more advanced capabilities such as custom function tools, multi-agent handoffs, agent orchestration, input […]
29/03/2026
Event Recap - Experts Live US - New York City
On October 10 2025, Microsoft’s Times Square office hosted Experts Live US in New York City, bringing together IT pros, developers, and community leaders for a full day of insights on Microsoft technologies, AI, and modern workplace strategies.Adam Harmetz’s Keynote: The Future of Content Management with AIAdam Harmetz, VP of PM for Collaborative Apps & Platforms at Microsoft, opened the event with a visionary keynote on modernizing SharePoint and driving the next decade of content management innovation through AI and agents.
29/03/2026
Meet A-Evolve: The PyTorch Moment For Agentic AI Systems Replacing Manual Tuning With Automated State Mutation And Self-Correction
A team of researchers associated with Amazon has released A-Evolve, a universal infrastructure designed to automate the development of autonomous AI agents.The framework aims to replace the ‘manual harness engineering’ that currently defines agent development with a systematic, automated evolution process.The project is being described as a potential ‘PyTorch moment’ for agentic AI.
29/03/2026
Chroma Releases Context-1: A 20B Agentic Search Model for Multi-Hop Retrieval, Context Management, and Scalable Synthetic Task Generation
In the current AI landscape, the ‘context window’ has become a blunt instrument.We’ve been told that if we simply expand the memory of a frontier model, the retrieval problem disappears.The post Chroma Releases Context-1: A 20B Agentic Search Model for Multi-Hop Retrieval, Context Management, and Scalable Synthetic Task Generation appeared first on MarkTechPost.
29/03/2026
Google-Agent vs Googlebot: Google Defines the Technical Boundary Between User Triggered AI Access and Search Crawling Systems Today
As Google integrates AI capabilities across its product suite, a new technical entity has surfaced in server logs: Google-Agent.For software devs, understanding this entity is critical for distinguishing between automated indexers and real-time, user-initiated requests.Unlike the autonomous crawlers that have defined the web for decades, Google-Agent operates under a different set of rules […]
29/03/2026
A Coding Guide to Exploring nanobot’s Full Agent Pipeline, from Wiring Up Tools and Memory to Skills, Subagents, and Cron Scheduling
In this tutorial, we take a deep dive into nanobot, the ultra-lightweight personal AI agent framework from HKUDS that packs full agent capabilities into roughly 4,000 lines of Python.Rather than simply installing and running it out of the box, we crack open the hood and manually recreate each of its core subsystems, the agent […]The post A Coding Guide to Exploring nanobot’s Full Agent Pipeline, from Wiring Up Tools and Memory to Skills, Subagents, and Cron Scheduling appeared first on MarkTechPost.
29/03/2026
Mistral AI Releases Voxtral TTS: A 4B Open-Weight Streaming Speech Model for Low-Latency Multilingual Voice Generation
Mistral AI has released Voxtral TTS, an open-weight text-to-speech model that marks the company’s first major move into audio generation.Following the release of its transcription and language models, Mistral is now providing the final ‘output layer’ of the audio stack, positioning itself as a direct competitor to proprietary voice APIs in the developer ecosystem.The post Mistral AI Releases Voxtral TTS: A 4B Open-Weight Streaming Speech Model for Low-Latency Multilingual Voice Generation appeared first on MarkTechPost.
28/03/2026
NVIDIA AI Unveils ProRL Agent: A Decoupled Rollout-as-a-Service Infrastructure for Reinforcement Learning of Multi-Turn LLM Agents at Scale
NVIDIA researchers introduced ProRL AGENT, a scalable infrastructure designed for reinforcement learning (RL) training of multi-turn LLM agents.By adopting a ‘Rollout-as-a-Service’ philosophy, the system decouples agentic rollout orchestration from the training loop.This architectural shift addresses the inherent resource conflicts between I/O-intensive environment interactions and GPU-intensive policy updates that currently bottleneck agent development.
28/03/2026
Autonomous Self-Healing for Azure VMware Solution Private Clouds
Azure VMware Solution operates a global fleet of production private clouds, each running a full VMware NSX and vCenter Server control plane.Azure VMware Solution Private Cloud Autonomous Self-Healing system is a closed-loop control architecture built to address this class of failure directly.Rohan Bhosle is a Principal Software Engineering Manager within Microsoft Azure with more than 19+ years of experience leading deeply technical work in hyperscale cloud networking, distributed control planes, and large-scale AI infrastructure.
27/03/2026
Title Plan Update - March 27, 2026
📁March 27, 2026 - Title Plan Now AvailableAccess the latest Instructor-Led Training (ILT) updates anytime at http://aka.ms/Courseware_Title_Plan to ensure you're always working from the most current version.📌 Reminder: To help you stay informed more quickly and consistently, we’ve moved to a weekly publishing cadence for the title plan.
27/03/2026
Action required: Windows Kerberos hardening (RC4) may affect FSLogix profiles on SMB storage
Beginning with the April 2026 Windows cumulative update, Kerberos default behavior changes: when an Active Directory object’s encryption type is not explicitly set (null), Windows will default to AES-SHA1 instead of legacy defaults that often resulted in RC4.This may impact FSLogix customers (Azure Virtual Desktop and non-AVD) when FSLogix profile storage depends on SMB file shares integrated with Active Directory.April 2026: Enforcement Phase with manual rollback: Default Kerberos behavior changes so domain controllers use AES‑SHA1-only encryption for accounts without explicit encryption type settings, and Enforcement mode is enabled by default on Windows domain controllers.
27/03/2026
An Implementation of IWE’s Context Bridge as an AI-Powered Knowledge Graph with Agentic RAG, OpenAI Function Calling, and Graph Traversal
In this tutorial, we implement IWE: an open-source, Rust-powered personal knowledge management system that treats markdown notes as a navigable knowledge graph.We build a realistic developer knowledge base from scratch, wire up wiki-links and markdown links into a directed graph, and then walk through […]The post An Implementation of IWE’s Context Bridge as an AI-Powered Knowledge Graph with Agentic RAG, OpenAI Function Calling, and Graph Traversal appeared first on MarkTechPost.
27/03/2026
What AI Agents for Modernization Look Like in Practice
AI agents are helping teams unravel the modernization maze.GitHub Copilot modernization helps solve the problem of having to sort through several applications to modernize.GitHub Copilot modernization helps teams upgrade .NET projects and migrate them to Azure.
27/03/2026
openJiuwen Community Releases ‘JiuwenClaw’: A Self Evolving AI Agent for Task Management
Over the past year, AI agents have evolved from merely answering questions to attempting to get real tasks done.However, a significant bottleneck has emerged: while most agents may appear intelligent during a conversation, they often ‘drop the ball’ when it comes to executing real-world tasks.The post openJiuwen Community Releases ‘JiuwenClaw’: A Self Evolving AI Agent for Task Management appeared first on MarkTechPost.
27/03/2026
Explore updated performance requirements for the SMB Management specialization
Microsoft is updating performance criteria for the Small and Midsize Business (SMB) Management specialization to better align with how partners go to market.Starting March 27, 2026, we're reducing the monthly active user (MAU) growth requirement from 35% to 15% and increasing the deployment requirement from 10 to 15 deployments.The revised criteria, which are based on partner feedback, emphasize new customer deployments while maintaining a focus on overall performance.
27/03/2026
Explore curated Microsoft Partner Digital Skilling Journeys
Explore Microsoft Partner Digital Skilling Journeys (PDJs), curated presales, sales, and tech skilling experiences designed to enhance your knowledge aligned with partner strategic wins. First-time users may need to register—use your work email credentials to sign up. Curated journeys include: These journeys are tailored to your interests, needs, and role within your organization.Select the link relevant to the journey you're interested in, register today on the Skilling Hub using your organizational login, answer a few questions, and you'll receive tech and sales-ready skilling experiences customized to your interests and goals.
27/03/2026
Microsoft SharePoint Turns 25!
Today, it powers collaboration for organizations of all sizes and supports more than 1 billion users each year, with over 2 billion files uploaded and 2 million SharePoint sites created every day.As SharePoint turns 25, we’re taking a moment to look back at how far it’s come and share a preview of what’s ahead.From its earliest days as a portal and team collaboration product to today’s AI‑powered knowledge platform, SharePoint has evolved alongside the way we work.
27/03/2026
Shared Data and Collective Resolve Are Advancing ALS Research
That call helped spark the founding of Answer ALS, a nonprofit organization dedicated to understanding ALS at unprecedented depth.Today, that collaboration continues through Neuromine, the world’s largest ALS research hub, built in collaboration with Microsoft and powered by Microsoft Azure.Neuromine brings together anonymized biological and clinical data from more than 2,500 individuals who have chosen to share their information to accelerate progress.
27/03/2026
Crawl, Walk, Run: A Practitioner's Guide to AI Maturity in the SOC
Cloud Security Alliance research found that 38% of employees share confidential data with AI platforms without approval.The OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications (released December 2025) catalogs threats including agent goal hijacking, tool misuse, privilege abuse, memory poisoning, and cascading failures across multi-agent systems.Gartner projects that over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by 2027 due to unclear value or inadequate controls.
27/03/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: March 27, 2026
Learn about 282 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs. Get it now in our marketplace
27/03/2026
LlamaAgents Builder: From Prompt to Deployed AI Agent in Minutes
Creating an AI agent for tasks like analyzing and processing documents autonomously used to require hours of near-endless configuration, code orchestration, and deployment battles.
27/03/2026
Building the agentic future together at JDConf 2026
JDConf 2026 is just weeks away, and I’m excited to welcome Java developers, architects, and engineering leaders from around the world for two days of learning and connection.Now in its sixth year, JDConf has become a place where the Java community compares notes on their real-world production experience: patterns, tooling, and hard-earned lessons you can take back to your team, while we keep moving the Java systems that run businesses and services forward in the AI era.JDConf is built for community learning—free to attend, accessible worldwide, and designed for an interactive live experience in three time zones.
27/03/2026
Invoke SSIS Package Activity in Microsoft Fabric (Preview)
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) has been a cornerstone of enterprise data integration for decades, powering mission-critical ETL workloads across thousands of organizations worldwide.Now Invoke SSIS Package activity (Preview) in Data Factory in Microsoft Fabric, brings the power of your existing SSIS investments directly into Fabric's unified SaaS analytics platform.But the Invoke SSIS Package pipeline activity in Microsoft Fabric Data Factory changes this.
27/03/2026
Unit Testing Helm Charts with Terratest: A Pattern Guide for Type-Safe Validation
In this post, we'll walk through a better way: a render-and-assert approach to unit testing Helm charts using Terratest and Go.The result? Type-safe, automated tests that run locally in seconds with no cluster required.Through applying this approach across multiple charts, we've identified 16 test patterns that consistently catch real bugs.
27/03/2026
Building an Offline AI Interview Coach with Foundry Local, RAG, and SQLite
How to build a 100% offline, AI-powered interview preparation tool using Microsoft Foundry Local, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, and nothing but JavaScript.Interview Doctor's web UI, a polished, dark-themed interface running entirely on your local machine.In this post, I'll walk you through how I built an interview prep tool as a fully offline JavaScript application using:
27/03/2026
Meta Releases TRIBE v2: A Brain Encoding Model That Predicts fMRI Responses Across Video, Audio, and Text Stimuli
Researchers typically map specific cognitive functions to isolated brain regions—like motion to area V5 or faces to the fusiform gyrus—using models tailored to narrow experimental paradigms.While this has provided deep insights, the resulting landscape is fragmented, lacking a unified framework to explain how the […]The post Meta Releases TRIBE v2: A Brain Encoding Model That Predicts fMRI Responses Across Video, Audio, and Text Stimuli appeared first on MarkTechPost.
27/03/2026
Google Releases Gemini 3.1 Flash Live: A Real-Time Multimodal Voice Model for Low-Latency Audio, Video, and Tool Use for AI Agents
Google has released Gemini 3.1 Flash Live in preview for developers through the Gemini Live API in Google AI Studio.This model targets low-latency, more natural, and more reliable real-time voice interactions, serving as Google’s ‘highest-quality audio and speech model to date.’ By natively processing multimodal streams, the release provides a technical foundation for building […]The post Google Releases Gemini 3.1 Flash Live: A Real-Time Multimodal Voice Model for Low-Latency Audio, Video, and Tool Use for AI Agents appeared first on MarkTechPost.
27/03/2026
Azure Maps Adds Support to Private Endpoints (Preview)
Today, we’re announcing the Public Preview of private endpoint support for Azure Maps, bringing enterprise-grade network isolation and data privacy to your location-aware applications.With Azure Private Link, your applications can connect to Azure Maps over a private IP inside your virtual network, keeping traffic on the Microsoft backbone network instead of the public internet.Creating a Private Endpoint for your Azure Maps account
27/03/2026
Women’s History Millennia in Action: Community, Courage, and Collective Power 💜✨
Our recent MGCI General Session was one of those moments that reminds you exactly why community matters.This wasn’t just a conversation about women in tech.This isn’t just Women’s History Month.It’s Women’s History Millennia.
27/03/2026
A Coding Implementation to Run Qwen3.5 Reasoning Models Distilled with Claude-Style Thinking Using GGUF and 4-Bit Quantization
In this tutorial, we work directly with Qwen3.5 models distilled with Claude-style reasoning and set up a Colab pipeline that lets us switch between a 27B GGUF variant and a lightweight 2B 4-bit version with a single flag.We start by validating GPU availability, then conditionally install either llama.cpp or transformers with bitsandbytes, depending on […]The post A Coding Implementation to Run Qwen3.5 Reasoning Models Distilled with Claude-Style Thinking Using GGUF and 4-Bit Quantization appeared first on MarkTechPost.
26/03/2026
From access to adoption: Unlock the power of Microsoft 365
That is why you are invited to join us at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference, where you can connect with Microsoft leaders, product experts, and peers to drive adoption forward and deliver business results.Rolling out Microsoft 365 is only the beginning.Real success happens when people understand the value, adopt new ways of working, and feel confident using the tools every day.That’s why Adoption and Change Management sessions are a cornerstone of the Microsoft 365 Community Conference.At the Microsoft 365 Community Conference, adoption sessions go beyond theory.
26/03/2026
From Manual Vetting to Continuous Trust: Automating Publisher Screening with AI
Why publisher screening is suddenly a software supply chain problemAt Microsoft, Trust & Security Services runs automated publisher screening and continuous monitoring to help protect Microsoft-operated marketplaces and programs—as well as Microsoft more broadly—from fraudulent or compromised publishers.The approach we employ in Trust & Security Services is an automated, AI-driven system that evaluates trust at two points: during onboarding and after approval as new evidence emerges.
26/03/2026
Introducing Skills in Azure API Center
A Skill in Azure API Center is a reusable, registered capability that AI agents can discover and consume to extend their functionality.Think of skills as the building blocks of AI agent behavior, promoted into a governed inventory alongside your APIs, MCP servers, models, and agents.For teams managing skills in source control, API Center can integrate directly with a Git repository and synchronize skill information automatically.
26/03/2026
Secure AI Workloads in Azure: Join Our Next Azure Decoded Session on April 8th
In our next Azure Decoded session, we’ll focus on securing AI workloads in Azure with Microsoft Defender for Cloud.We’ll walk through where Microsoft Defender for Cloud fits into an end-to-end AI security strategy—and how discovery, posture management, and runtime protection work together to secure AI workloads built on Azure.The Microsoft Applied Skills credential, Secure AI Solutions in the Cloud, is a great next step after the Azure Decoded session.
26/03/2026
listent for macOS, ZoomIt, Sysmon, DebugView, NotMyFault, Procmon for Linux, and RAMMap
listent is a macOS command-line tool to discover and list code signing entitlements for executable binaries.This update to Sysmon, an advanced host security monitoring tool, improves the handling of the internal events queue, making the service more resilient to dropped events on high system load.Process Monitor for Linux, a convenient and efficient way for developers to trace the syscall activity on the system, updates to dependencies.
26/03/2026
PostgreSQL Query Rewriting and Subqueries
By rewriting queries in more optimizer‑friendly forms, we can drastically reduce the amount of data scanned, improve join efficiency, eliminate redundant operations, and enable PostgreSQL to choose faster, more scalable execution paths.The scenarios in this document demonstrate how simple transformations—such as replacing joins with semi‑joins, pre‑aggregating large tables, or converting correlated subqueries into set‑based joins—allow PostgreSQL to leverage more efficient physical operators and achieve significant performance gains.This document explains common PostgreSQL scenarios, where rewriting a query into a subquery (or rewriting a subquery into a different form) can significantly improve performance.
26/03/2026
Evolving Identity Security: How the Conditional Access Optimization Agent Helps You Adapt
With this latest set of enhancements, the Conditional Access Optimization Agent moves beyond static guidance to continuous, context-aware identity posture optimization.The agent now understands your organization’s business context, surfaces gaps that manual reviews miss, helps you act on insights safely, and proves the impact of your improvements—all as part of a new operating model for identity security.With context-aware policy recommendations, you can upload internal documentation directly to the agent.
26/03/2026
Copy dashboards from Dashboards with Grafana to Azure Managed Grafana
Azure Monitor Dashboards with Grafana provides an in‑portal Grafana experience optimized for Azure Monitor and managed Prometheus data.Customers can now copy dashboards from Dashboards with Grafana into Azure Managed Grafana directly from the Azure portal—without changing the original dashboard.Select “Copy to Managed Grafana” from your dashboard in Dashboards with Grafana.
26/03/2026
Windows 365 Frontline in shared mode expands to New Zealand North, Mexico Central, and Europe
We're excited to announce that Windows 365 Frontline in shared mode is now available in five new regions, expanding our global footprint and bringing Cloud PCs closer to organizations across Australasia, Central America and Europe.Starting today, customers can deploy Windows 365 Frontline shared mode Cloud PCs in:Remember: With ANC, the Azure virtual network's region determines where your Cloud PC is hosted.
26/03/2026
Four Best Practices for Leading Through AI Adoption
Microsoft refers to this broader shift as Frontier Transformation, where AI becomes a strategic priority and changes how intelligence operates inside the organization, not just which tools people use.Reframe: recognizing that AI is not just another tool rollout, but a shift in how work is structured, how decisions are made, and where intelligence shows up across the business.1. Reframing how to think about AI in the organization
26/03/2026
Advancing Windows driver security: Removing trust for the cross-signed driver program
This update will help protect our customers by ensuring that only kernel drivers that the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program (WHCP) have passed and been signed can be loaded by default. To raise the bar for platform security, Microsoft will maintain an explicit allow list of reputable drivers signed by the cross-signed program. The allow list ensures a secure and compatible experience for a limited number of widely used, and reputable cross-signed drivers.This new kernel trust policy applies to systems running Windows 11 24H2, Windows 11 25H2, Windows 11 26H1, and Windows Server 2025 in the April 2026 Windows update.All future versions of Windows 11 and Windows Server will enforce the new kernel trust policy. This update continues a long sequence of changes Microsoft has taken over the years to reduce the attack surface on Windows and reinforces our commitment to safeguarding customers. Drivers are a critical part of the Windows ecosystem, and ensuring their integrity is essential to providing a secure and trustworthy environment.
26/03/2026
Announcing the Microsoft Copilot Connector v2 for Veeva Vault
Preview expected June 2026 This release represents the next evolution of Microsoft’s connector for Veeva Vault and introduces two foundational upgrades—incremental crawling for faster content refresh and tight integration with Veeva’s Direct Data API—plus a standardized Graph Connector Agent (GCA) model across all current and future Copilot connector applications.The Microsoft Copilot Connector v2 for Veeva Vault release is targeted for Q2 2026, with preview expected in June 2026 and general availability to follow validation and customer feedback.
26/03/2026
Assess Azure DDoS Protection Status Across Your Environment
The Check-DDoSProtection.ps1 script provides a full view of DDoS Protection status across your Azure environment.Explanation: The Application Gateway’s Public IP inherits protection from the VNET which has a DDoS Protection Plan attached.This guide covered how to use the Check-DDoSProtection.ps1 script to identify unprotected Public IP addresses, determine which DDoS SKU (Network Protection vs. IP Protection) is in use, verify diagnostic logging configuration, and assess risk levels across all subscriptions.
26/03/2026
Cohere AI Releases Cohere Transcribe: A SOTA Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Model Powering Enterprise Speech Intelligence
In the landscape of enterprise AI, the bridge between unstructured audio and actionable text has often been a bottleneck of proprietary APIs and complex cascaded pipelines.Today, Cohere—a company traditionally known for its text-generation and embedding models—has officially stepped into the Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) market with the release of their latest model ‘Cohere Transcribe‘.The post Cohere AI Releases Cohere Transcribe: A SOTA Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Model Powering Enterprise Speech Intelligence appeared first on MarkTechPost.
26/03/2026
Vector Databases Explained in 3 Levels of Difficulty
Traditional databases answer a well-defined question: does the record matching these criteria exist?
26/03/2026
AI apps and agents: choosing your Marketplace offer type
Choosing your Marketplace offer type is one of the earliest—and most consequential—decisions you’ll make when preparing an AI app for Microsoft Marketplace.It defines the operating model of your AI app on Marketplace:This includes designing an architecture that aligns with your delivery model, establishing clear security and compliance boundaries, and preparing the operational foundations required to run, update, and scale your AI app or agent confidently in customer environments.
26/03/2026
Data Security Investigations in Microsoft Purview
Today we’re going to show you how the now generally available Microsoft Purview Data Security Investigations, or DSI, dramatically accelerates that process using AI to read and analyze and connect the dots fast at massive scale.In DSI, that level of insight comes from hybrid vector search and generative AI working together.While Microsoft Purview DLP protects credentials in real time as files are created or shared, the Data Security Posture Agent powered by Security Copilot helps security teams identify and prioritize credential-related risks across scope data allocations.
26/03/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: March 26, 2026
Learn about 236 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs.1-Degree Referral Intake for Home Health and Hospice: 1-Degree – Referral Intake automates referral processing by capturing, extracting, and integrating data into electronic health record (EHR) systems.Sales Oracle: Sales Oracle is an AI-powered price intelligence and sales forecasting tool that deploys natively into your Microsoft Azure environment.
26/03/2026
Copilot Notebooks: Enhancements to support creation, collaboration and learning
Create documents and presentations from your notebookCreate documents and presentations directly from your notebook with Word and PowerPoint agents that use references already in your workspace.Share Copilot Notebooks with individuals and groups
26/03/2026
Azure SQL Hyperscale: Understanding PITR Retention vs Azure Portal Restore UI
Customers using Azure SQL Database – Hyperscale may sometimes notice a discrepancy between the configured Point-in-Time Restore (PITR) retention period and what the Azure Portal displays as available restore points.And the restore UI may allow selecting dates earlier than the configured retention window without immediately showing an error.Azure SQL Hyperscale continues to provide robust, reliable backup and restore capabilities, even when the Azure Portal UI does not fully reflect the underlying state.
26/03/2026
Guardrails for Generative AI: Securing Developer Workflows
Generative AI is revolutionizing software development that accelerates delivery but introduces compliance and security risks if unchecked.Unchecked AI‑assisted development can lead to security vulnerabilities, data leakage, compliance violations, and ethical concerns.In this blog, we explore how to embed responsible AI guardrails directly into developer workflows using:
26/03/2026
Tencent AI Open Sources Covo-Audio: A 7B Speech Language Model and Inference Pipeline for Real-Time Audio Conversations and Reasoning
Tencent AI Lab has released Covo-Audio, a 7B-parameter end-to-end Large Audio Language Model (LALM).The model is designed to unify speech processing and language intelligence by directly processing continuous audio inputs and generating audio outputs within a single architecture.The post Tencent AI Open Sources Covo-Audio: A 7B Speech Language Model and Inference Pipeline for Real-Time Audio Conversations and Reasoning appeared first on MarkTechPost.
26/03/2026
Langchain Multi-Agent Systems with Microsoft Agent Framework and Hosted Agents
This post walks through how to combine LangChain with the Microsoft Agent Framework (azure-ai-agents) and deploy the result as a Microsoft Foundry Hosted Agent.We will build a multi-agent incident triage copilot that uses LangChain locally and seamlessly upgrades to cloud-hosted capabilities on Microsoft Foundry.Every agent should work locally with LangChain tools and on Foundry with the Microsoft Agent Framework.
26/03/2026
Build an Offline Hybrid RAG Stack with ONNX and Foundry Local
This sample shows a more practical pattern: combine lexical retrieval, ONNX based semantic embeddings, and a Foundry Local chat model so the assistant stays grounded, remains offline, and degrades cleanly when the semantic path is unavailable.This repository keeps the original lexical retrieval path, adds local ONNX embeddings for semantic search, and fuses both signals in a hybrid ranking mode.To run the sample, you need Node.js 20 or newer, Foundry Local, and a local ONNX embedding model.
26/03/2026
Announcing the winners of the SharePoint Hackathon 2026
We are excited to announce the winners of the SharePoint Hackathon 2026.SharePoint Hackathon was a two week long online event with 6 live streams.Most beautiful Intranet home page
26/03/2026
Shared Agent Context: How We Are Tackling Partner Agent Collaboration
The two agents talk to each other using protocols like MCP or directly via an API endpoint and come up with a remediation.Your cloud monitoring agent doesn't have access to your third-party observability stack.In this system the primary agent owns the full incident lifecycle: detection, triage, investigation, remediation, closure.
26/03/2026
How to Build a Vision-Guided Web AI Agent with MolmoWeb-4B Using Multimodal Reasoning and Action Prediction
In this tutorial, we explore MolmoWeb, Ai2’s open multimodal web agent that understands and interacts with websites directly from screenshots, without relying on HTML or DOM parsing.We set up the full environment in Colab, load the MolmoWeb-4B model with efficient 4-bit quantization, and build the exact prompting workflow that lets the model reason about […]The post How to Build a Vision-Guided Web AI Agent with MolmoWeb-4B Using Multimodal Reasoning and Action Prediction appeared first on MarkTechPost.
25/03/2026
"No-Ops" Kafka Experience: Why Event Hubs is Your Default Destination for Streaming on Azure
Event Hubs is the native, cloud-scale engine designed to be your default streaming destination.One-Click Archival: Use Event Hubs Capture to automatically batch and move streaming data into Azure Data Lake Storage for long-term cold storage or batch processing.Azure Event Hubs provides the reliability of a battle-tested cloud-native engine with the familiarity of the Apache Kafka® ecosystem.
25/03/2026
PowerPoint: Edit with Copilot, Brand Kit and Image Gen: Overview + demo- March 2026 M365 Champions Community call
Here’s a recap and top Q+A from our March M365 Champions monthly call of 2026, featuring PowerPoint: Edit with Copilot, Brand Kit and Image Gen with Anubhav Nigam and Khaleel Amarshi from the PowerPoint product team. Anubhav and Khaleel led the main sessions with a deep dive into what’s new in PowerPoint with Copilot, highlighting how presentation creation and editing are becoming significantly more intelligent and intuitive.Create and manage official Brand kits in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app - Microsoft Support
25/03/2026
Automate Data Security Triage & Posture | Agents in Microsoft Purview
Identify hidden passwords, API keys, and credentials buried in files with the Data Security Posture Agent credential scanning capability. Check it out.In the next few minutes, I’ll show you how to rapidly identify and reduce your data risks as information flows across more apps, agents, and workflows than ever using the power and speed of AI itself.So using the Data Security Triage Agent for Insider Risk saves time from manual investigations.
25/03/2026
AI apps and agents: choosing your Marketplace offer type
Choosing your Marketplace offer type is one of the earliest—and most consequential—decisions you’ll make when preparing an AI app for Microsoft Marketplace.It defines the operating model of your AI app on Marketplace:This includes designing an architecture that aligns with your delivery model, establishing clear security and compliance boundaries, and preparing the operational foundations required to run, update, and scale your AI app or agent confidently in customer environments.
25/03/2026
Preparing the Nonprofit Sector for the Next Era of Impact
As thousands of nonprofit leaders gather for Microsoft’s Global Nonprofit Leaders Summit, one theme is rising to the surface: nonprofits are ready to lead the next wave of AI transformation.To support this momentum, Microsoft is launching Elevate for Changemakers, a new initiative designed to help nonprofit professionals build the skills, confidence, and strategic capacity needed to guide responsible AI adoption.What Elevate for Changemakers Offers
25/03/2026
Redefining Database Maintenance after Migrating from Db2 on Mainframe to Azure SQL DB Hyperscale
Migrating from Db2 z/OS to Azure SQL Database Hyperscale is a major step toward modernizing your mainframe relational data infrastructure to Azure Data SQL managed relational database offering.In this post, to make migration easier we have provided the recommended mapping between Db2 zOS maintenance and Azure SQL DB Hyperscale maintenance tasks that shows:Automating Azure SQL DB index and statistics maintenance using Azure Automation : link
25/03/2026
Azure Managed Redis & Azure Databricks: Real-time Feature Serving for Low-Latency Decisions
Modern decisioning systems, fraud scoring, payments authorization, personalization, and step-up authentication, must return answers in tens of milliseconds while still reflecting the most recent behavior.This guide shows a pattern that keeps Azure Databricks as the primary system for building and maintaining features, while using Azure Managed Redis as the online speed layer that serves those features at memory speed for real-time scoring.The result is a shorter and more predictable critical path for your application: the Payment API (or any online service) reads features from Azure Managed Redis and calls a model endpoint;
25/03/2026
Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance: Secure and Manage Multi-Tenant Environments at Scale
Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance addresses this challenge by providing a centralized, risk-informed way to discover, govern, and continuously secure all related tenants—without relying on custom scripts or fragmented administrative models.From small tenant estates to large enterprises, Entra Tenant Governance enables least-privilege access, enforces configuration baselines, and maintains continuous visibility from a single control plane.Built on Microsoft’s own experience securing a large and complex tenant estate, Entra Tenant Governance is designed to make tenant relationships visible, governance enforceable, and security posture continuously verifiable—at scale.
25/03/2026
Microsoft 365 Copilot app learning series: Real‑world scenarios for your workday
That’s why we’re excited to introduce a new training video series designed to help you get started with the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, one step at a time.Run more focused meetings with Facilitator Agent in Microsoft TeamsLearn how to catch up with Microsoft 365 Copilot
25/03/2026
Advice for Startups: Build Without Waiting with Replit
For teams in the Microsoft Imagine Cup, that time matters.During the Builder Series, Horacio Lopez from Replit walked through how founders can move from idea to product faster, sharing a build approach centered on starting immediately and learning along the way.Early-stage founders often wait longer than they need to. They look for the right tools, the right language, or the right structure before taking action.
25/03/2026
Aspire on Azure App Service is now Generally Available
Today we are announcing General Availability of Aspire on Azure App Service, making it easier to take distributed applications from local development to a fully managed production environment on Azure App Service.With the Aspire.Hosting.Azure.AppService package, you can define your hosting environment in code and deploy to App Service using the same AppHost model you already use for orchestration.Aspire brings a code-first model for building, running, and deploying distributed applications, with AppHost as the place where services, dependencies, and topology are declared.
25/03/2026
5 Practical Techniques to Detect and Mitigate LLM Hallucinations Beyond Prompt Engineering
My friend who is a developer once asked an LLM to generate documentation for a payment API.
25/03/2026
Sulava – tekoälyä organisaatioiden arkeen rohkeus, uteliaisuus ja yhteistyö edellä
Sulava on tukenut muun muassa Copilot Adoption Service- ja Copilot Essentials -palveluillaan jo yli 2 400 organisaatiota ympäri maailmaa heidän matkallaan siinä, kuinka työelämä muuttuu, henkilöstö hyödyntää tekoälyä, kuinka tietoturvan ja tiedon suojauksen toimenpiteet varmistavat tekoälyn turvallisen käytön ja miten agentit muovaavat organisaatioita uudelleen.Sulavan kanssa tekoälyä eturintamassa hyödyntävien Frontier Firm -kärkiorganisaatioiden menestyksen taustalla on vahva johdon ymmärrys muutoksen laajuuteen, sen mahdollistaminen, rohkeus kokeilla uutta ja varmistaa henkilöstön osaaminen.Hyödyt näkyvät muun muassa tuottavuudessa, uusissa liiketoimintamahdollisuuksissa ja työn merkityksellisyydessä.
25/03/2026
🚀GitHub Copilot CLI: AI Assistance from the Command Line for Infrastructure Deployments
GitHub Copilot CLI is an AI-powered assistant that runs directly inside your terminal.Instead of manually writing commands, scripts, or debugging issues, you can simply describe what you want — and Copilot executes it.A POC for storage account with private endpoints:We simply enter a prompt to create the storage account; it will take all the details from its custom instructions file and generate a .sh file to execute the relevant cmds for the resource creation.
25/03/2026
Vibe Coding XR: Accelerating AI + XR prototyping with XR Blocks and Gemini
Human-Computer Interaction and Visualization
25/03/2026
NVIDIA AI Introduces PivotRL: A New AI Framework Achieving High Agentic Accuracy With 4x Fewer Rollout Turns Efficiently
Post-training Large Language Models (LLMs) for long-horizon agentic tasks—such as software engineering, web browsing, and complex tool use—presents a persistent trade-off between computational efficiency and model generalization.While Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) is computationally inexpensive, it frequently suffers from out-of-domain (OOD) performance degradation and struggles to generalize beyond its training distribution.Conversely, end-to-end reinforcement learning (E2E […]
25/03/2026
Google Introduces TurboQuant: A New Compression Algorithm that Reduces LLM Key-Value Cache Memory by 6x and Delivers Up to 8x Speedup, All with Zero Accuracy Loss
The scaling of Large Language Models (LLMs) is increasingly constrained by memory communication overhead between High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and SRAM.Specifically, the Key-Value (KV) cache size scales with both model dimensions and context length, creating a significant bottleneck for long-context inference.Google research team has proposed TurboQuant, a data-oblivious quantization framework designed to achieve near-optimal […]
25/03/2026
Microsoft Foundry Labs: A Practical Fast Lane from Research to Real Developer Work
Microsoft Foundry Labs is a place to explore early-stage experiments and prototypes from Microsoft, with an explicit focus on research-driven innovation.The announcement adds the operating idea: Labs is a single access point for developers to experiment with new models from Microsoft, explore frameworks, and share feedback.It is a developer-facing exploration surface for projects that are still close to research: models, agent systems, UX ideas, and tool experiments.
25/03/2026
Vectorless Reasoning-Based RAG: A New Approach to Retrieval-Augmented Generation
A new paradigm called Vectorless Reasoning-Based RAG is emerging to address these challenges.One framework enabling this approach is PageIndex, an open-source document indexing system that organizes documents into a hierarchical tree structure and allows Large Language Models (LLMs) to perform reasoning-based retrieval over that structure.Implementing Vectorless RAG with Azure AI Foundry
25/03/2026
🚀 Securing Enterprise AI: From Red Teaming to Risk Cards and Azure Guardrails
AI is not just another application layer—it’s a new attack surface.👉 Red Teaming = intentionally trying to break your AI system using prompts🔷 Secure AI Reference Architecture
25/03/2026
Your guide to the Microsoft 365 Community Conference
Register now and save your spot for the chance to ask questions and share feedback with hundreds of Microsoft executives, engineers, and product leaders. By making your voice heard, your feedback will help shape the technologies ...
25/03/2026
Rack-Local Reads in Storage Spaces Direct Campus Cluster / Rack Aware Cluster
With Windows Server 2025, Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) expanded its resiliency capabilities with support for Campus Clusters, allowing Failover Cluster deployments to span racks, chassis, and even sites using explicit fault‑tolerance domains.Building on that foundation, Windows Server 2025 introduces Rack‑Local Reads, a new optimization that allows S2D to use the cluster topology during read selection, ensuring mirrored reads are served from the closest healthy copy whenever possible.By incorporating topology awareness into the read path, Rack‑Local Reads keep steady‑state read traffic local whenever a healthy copy is available.
25/03/2026
Hyperscale Azure SQL database shrink process- Tips & Tricks
The shrink operation was aborted because a page to be moved by shrink is in use by an active transaction on the primary replica or on one or more secondary replicas. Retry shrink later. The following best practices are recommended when performing shrink operations on large Azure SQL Database Hyperscale databases: Shrink for Azure SQL Database Hyperscale is now generally available |
25/03/2026
Women are leading the future of intelligent work at Microsoft 365 Community Conference
At the Microsoft 365 Community Conference this April 21–23 in Orlando, we’re proud to spotlight a range of experiences created to support, connect, and celebrate women across the tech community—from leadership panels and networking opportunities to professional development sessions designed to help you grow your impact and your career.Join us for the Women in Tech & Allies Lunch on Wednesday, April 22 sponsored by AvePoint and explore Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Professional Development sessions throughout the week.Be sure to register for the conference so you can dive into all of these activations onsite!A big thank you to the women on the Microsoft 365 Community Conference Community Content Committee, Susan Hanley, Martina Grom who worked on the community session selection for the show.Women in Tech & Allies Lunch
24/03/2026
Children International: Turning time saved into lives changed
What happens when a nonprofit gives hours back to its people?Children International is using AI to reduce administrative work and reinvest that time into children, families, and communities.The impact is already clear — in Colombia, participation in educational programs rose from 33% to 95%.
24/03/2026
Paged Attention in Large Language Models LLMs
When running LLMs at scale, the real limitation is GPU memory rather than compute, mainly because each request requires a KV cache to store token-level data.In traditional setups, a large fixed memory block is reserved per request based on the maximum sequence length, which leads to significant unused space and limits concurrency.The post Paged Attention in Large Language Models LLMs appeared first on MarkTechPost.
24/03/2026
A Coding Implementation to Design Self-Evolving Skill Engine with OpenSpace for Skill Learning, Token Efficiency, and Collective Intelligence
In this tutorial, we explore OpenSpace, a self-evolving skill engine developed by HKUDS that makes AI agents smarter, more cost-efficient, and capable of learning from every task they perform.We walk through the complete lifecycle of OpenSpace: from installing and configuring an OpenAI model, to executing cold-start tasks where no prior skills exist, watching the […]The post A Coding Implementation to Design Self-Evolving Skill Engine with OpenSpace for Skill Learning, Token Efficiency, and Collective Intelligence appeared first on MarkTechPost.
24/03/2026
This AI Paper Introduces TinyLoRA, A 13-Parameter Fine-Tuning Method That Reaches 91.8 Percent GSM8K on Qwen2.5-7B
Researchers from FAIR at Meta, Cornell University, and Carnegie Mellon University have demonstrated that large language models (LLMs) can learn to reason using a remarkably small number of trained parameters.The research team introduces TinyLoRA, a parameterization that can scale down to a single trainable parameter under extreme sharing settings.The post This AI Paper Introduces TinyLoRA, A 13-Parameter Fine-Tuning Method That Reaches 91.8 Percent GSM8K on Qwen2.5-7B appeared first on MarkTechPost.
24/03/2026
HTTP Triggers in Azure SRE Agent: From Jira Ticket to Automated Investigation
HTTP Triggers make it easy to connect any of them to Azure SRE Agent—turning events from any platform into automated agent actions with a simple HTTP POST.In this blog, we'll demonstrate by connecting Jira to SRE Agent—so that every new incident ticket automatically triggers an investigation, and the agent posts its findings back to the Jira ticket when it's done.The Logic App automatically generates the visual workflow from the code — you'll see the Jira trigger ("When a new issue is created (V2)") connected to the HTTP action ("Call SRE Agent HTTP Trigger") as a two-step flow, with all the field mappings and authentication settings already configured
24/03/2026
Securing AI agents: The enterprise security playbook for the agentic era
The agent era is here — and most organizations are not readyThis post covers the specific attack vectors targeting AI agents today, why traditional security approaches fundamentally cannot keep up, and what a modern, proactive defense strategy actually looks like in practice.What is a prompt injection attack?
24/03/2026
Closing the Last Mile in Document AI: Improving Extraction Quality in Azure Content Understanding
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) promises to eliminate the manual work of reading, interpreting, and entering data from these documents.CU extends the document extraction capabilities of Azure Document Intelligence to unstructured and hybrid document types, as well as multimodal content including images, audio, and video.Azure Content Understanding is GA and available in Microsoft Foundry.
24/03/2026
Partner Case Study | DeepJudge
DeepJudge, a Microsoft partner, is helping legal teams bridge that gap with AI-powered search and workflow tools built on Microsoft Azure.DeepJudge specializes in enterprise search and agentic AI workflows tailored for legal professionals.Making internal knowledge accessible—and secure
24/03/2026
AI Is the Headline — but Readiness Is the Real Story for MSPs
That gap between AI ambition and operational reality is becoming one of the most important conversations MSPs can have today.AI doesn’t fail because of a lack of innovation.It fails because the fundamentals aren’t in place.AvePoint Elements acts as the MSP operating layer on top of Intune—helping partners standardize, automate, and manage Intune across multiple customer tenants from a single platform.
24/03/2026
Upcoming Breaking Changes to Modifying Sensitive Email Properties via Graph API
We are implementing a significant update in our service affecting applications that modify sensitive properties on non-draft email messages.To maintain the expected immutability of email messages during standard management operations, we will begin restricting applications from modifying sensitive message properties in non-draft messages unless they possess elevated permissions.Enforcement of the new restrictions in our service – blocking Graph API updates to sensitive email properties – will begin on 12/31/2026.
24/03/2026
Strengthen Identity Resilience: Recover with Confidence using Microsoft Entra Backup and Recovery
While service resilience keeps Microsoft Entra available, Microsoft Entra Backup and Recovery helps organizations recover when changes inside their environment introduce risk or disrupt users.Microsoft Entra Backup and Recovery now available in Public PreviewScenario 1: Recovering from an erroneous Conditional Access change that locks out users
24/03/2026
External MFA in Microsoft Entra ID is now Generally Available
Now, with the GA of external multifactor authentication (external MFA)—previously known as external authentication methods—you can integrate trusted third-party MFA providers while continuing to rely on Microsoft Entra ID as your central identity control plane.Built on the OpenID Connect (OIDC) standard, external MFA allows you to integrate your preferred MFA provider into Microsoft Entra ID without sacrificing security or policy enforcement.Integrating external MFA with Conditional Access allows administrators to align authentication prompts with their organization’s security and business objectives by using sign-in frequency and session controls.
24/03/2026
Microsoft 365 Copilot Declarative Agents Are Getting Smarter with GPT‑5.2
We’re continuing to improve the intelligence behind Microsoft 365 Copilot Declarative Agents.As part of this effort, Declarative Agents are being updated to use GPT‑5.2, a newer large language model designed to deliver higher‑quality responses across complex agent scenarios.Note: This update is gradually rolling out to all the tenants worldwide.
24/03/2026
Incentive guidance and activation at your fingertips: Explore the new digital incentives guide
Now delivered through an online experience on the Microsoft partner website, the Microsoft Commercial Partner Incentives Guide gives you clear navigation, direct paths to engagement, and faster access to the most up-to-date guidance—all in one place.Explore the new digital incentives guide experience and share your feedback as we continue to evolve it.Explore the incentives guide
24/03/2026
When Azure Portal/CLI Can’t Delete an Azure SQL DB: Check the Database Name (Unsupported Characters)
A customer reported a General Purpose (Gen5, 2 vCores) Azure SQL Database that was incurring charges but could not be deleted using Azure Portal or Azure CLI. CLI output showed two entries, including one whose database name included a forward slash (example display: xxxx-xxx-sql/xxx-xxx-db).We advised the customer to delete the database using T‑SQL, enclosing the database name in square brackets (delimited identifier). The customer confirmed the database was successfully dropped using this approach.If an Azure SQL Database becomes “undeletable” through portal/CLI and the name contains unusual characters (like '<,>,*,%,&,:,\,/,?'), it may still be fully manageable from T‑SQL using delimited identifiers—and that can be the cleanest way to unblock deletion and stop unexpected costs.
24/03/2026
How to Get Database‑Wise Session Details in an Azure SQL Elastic Pool Using T‑SQL
When you run multiple databases inside an Azure SQL Database elastic pool, it’s common to hit questions like:The DMV sys.dm_elastic_pool_resource_stats returns usage for the elastic pool that contains the current database, including concurrent session utilization, and it can be queried from any user database in the same elastic pool. With the queries in this post, you can troubleshoot elastic pool session behavior without relying on the Azure portal:
24/03/2026
More standards are coming to the Teach Module and Teams for Education!
That is why we are continuing to expand the standards experience across Microsoft Education.We are excited to share a new wave of international standards coming to the standards experience in Teach and in Teams for Education.These standards will support experiences in the Teach module across Lesson Plans, Quizzes, and Rubrics, and they are also coming to Assignments in Teams for Education.
24/03/2026
Automating Azure OpenAI Cost Control Using Budgets, Action Groups, and Automation Runbooks
As organizations increasingly adopt Azure OpenAI for use cases such as generative AI, analytics, and experimentation, cost governance becomes a critical operational concern.This blog describes a practical, enterprise-ready automation pattern to control Azure OpenAI costs by combining Azure Budgets, Action Groups, and Azure Automation Runbooks.The solution automatically enforces cost limits by disabling Azure OpenAI API access when a budget threshold is breached, while still providing a controlled and auditable manual recovery process.
24/03/2026
hyOffice, Neo4j, and Standss offer transactable partner solutions in Microsoft Marketplace
Microsoft partners like hyOffice, Neo4j, and Standss deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Microsoft Marketplace.Team Absence Pro: hyOffice's Team Absence Pro makes it easy to see who's off and when in Microsoft Teams.SendGuard now supports the Outlook mobile app for iOS and Android.
24/03/2026
Beyond the Vector Store: Building the Full Data Layer for AI Applications
If you look at the architecture diagram of almost any AI startup today, you will see a large language model (LLM) connected to a vector store.
24/03/2026
Synchronizing Azure Storage Across Isolated Private Endpoint Networks
In Azure repatriation programs, enterprises often need to migrate large volumes of blob data from a source Azure environment to a target Azure environment under strict security and network isolation constraints.A typical repatriation setup includes fully isolated source and target environments, each protected by private endpoints and independent DNS configurations.However, when both the source and destination storage accounts are protected by private endpoints and deployed in isolated virtual networks without shared DNS resolution or network connectivity, server‑side copy operations are not supported.
24/03/2026
News to Know – Volume 3, Edition 3, March 2026
Starting in March 2026, Viva Glint will use the Microsoft 365 admin center as the single control plane for Copilot access—consistent with other Microsoft Copilot experiences.AI Transformation & the Frontier Firm Playbook that highlights how Viva Glint and Viva Pulse and other tools can support becoming Frontier‑ready and sustaining value from AI investments.The Viva Customer Connection Program (VCCP) is now the Employee Experience Customer Connection (EECC) program — a name that reflects the expanded scope and value of this community as employee experiences continue to evolve with Viva and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
24/03/2026
CPU percentage vs SQL instance CPU percent: The Portal’s Favorite Misunderstanding
This metric shows CPU consumption toward the user workload limit of a database or an elastic pool, expressed as a percentage.Why you should care: If performance is slow and cpu_percent is high (especially near 100%), this is often the right place to look first for CPU pressure related to user workload.Now, the confusion is regarding – usually people interpret that since SQL Instance CPU is a combination of user + internal workload, it should always be higher than CPU percentage.
24/03/2026
Announcing Public Preview of Argo CD extension on AKS and Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes clusters
We are excited to announce public preview of the Argo CD extension for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters.The Argo CD extension integrates with Microsoft Entra ID to provide a secure, enterprise-ready experience for:Argo CD extension management via the Azure Portal will be available in a few weeks.
24/03/2026
New Oracle Autonomous AI Database - Dedicated option on Oracle AI Database@Azure
Today, we're thrilled to announce the general availability of Oracle Autonomous AI Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure on Oracle AI Database@Azure, giving enterprises a new level of infrastructure exclusivity and operational control on Microsoft Azure.Oracle Autonomous AI Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure on Oracle AI Database@Azure gives organizations exclusive cloud resources for their databases — with greater control over maintenance windows, resource allocation, security boundaries, and lifecycle management policies, while Oracle continues to handle database administration.Crucially, Oracle Database@Azure allows Activision Blizzard to extend the value of its EBS data using Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, and Copilot Studio—transforming traditional ERP data into AI‑ready intelligence.
24/03/2026
Hosted Containers and AI Agent Solutions
This post walks through why containers and managed hosting platforms like Azure Container Apps are an ideal fit for multi-agent AI systems, what practical benefits they unlock, and how you can get started with minimal friction.That is all it takes to package a six-agent AI system with a web frontend, a FastAPI backend, Git support, and all Python dependencies into a portable, production-ready image.Choose Azure Container Apps when you need a custom frontend, custom orchestration logic, real-time streaming, server-side processing beyond prompt-response patterns, or when your agent system is part of a larger application with its own web server and API surface.
24/03/2026
Step-by-Step: Deploy the Architecture Review Agent Using AZD AI CLI
In our previous post, we introduced the Architecture Review Agent, an open-source tool built on Microsoft Foundry that automatically converts messy architectural notes into structured risk assessments and interactive Excalidraw diagrams.Here is how you can set up, invoke, and deploy your own Architecture Review Agent, and even publish it to Microsoft Teams, without needing a tenant admin.You can publish this agent directly to Microsoft Teams and M365 Copilot natively from the Foundry portal.
24/03/2026
Yann LeCun’s New LeWorldModel (LeWM) Research Targets JEPA Collapse in Pixel-Based Predictive World Modeling
World Models (WMs) are a central framework for developing agents that reason and plan in a compact latent space.However, training these models directly from pixel data often leads to ‘representation collapse,’ where the model produces redundant embeddings to trivially satisfy prediction objectives.The post Yann LeCun’s New LeWorldModel (LeWM) Research Targets JEPA Collapse in Pixel-Based Predictive World Modeling appeared first on MarkTechPost.
24/03/2026
Take Control of Every Message: Partial Failure Handling for Service Bus Triggers in Azure Functions
When you use Azure Functions with a Service Bus trigger in batch mode, your function receives multiple messages at once for efficient, high-throughput processing.With Service Bus message settlement actions in Azure Functions, you can:For teams evaluating Azure or migrating from AWS, here's how per-message settlement in Azure Functions compares to AWS Lambda's partial batch failure support for SQS:
24/03/2026
Meta AI’s New Hyperagents Don’t Just Solve Tasks—They Rewrite the Rules of How They Learn
The dream of recursive self-improvement in AI—where a system doesn’t just get better at a task, but gets better at learning—has long been the ‘holy grail’ of the field.That changed with the Darwin Gödel Machine (DGM), […]The post Meta AI’s New Hyperagents Don’t Just Solve Tasks—They Rewrite the Rules of How They Learn appeared first on MarkTechPost.
24/03/2026
Caution When Using a Database in Single User Mode
By setting a database to single-user mode in SQL Server, you can make it accessible to only one user. The log shipping restore job sets the database to single-user mode before performing the restore. The restore job tries to acquire an exclusive lock to perform the restore, but is blocked by the session waiting for the exclusive lock, resulting in a deadlock.
24/03/2026
Luma Labs Launches Uni-1: The Autoregressive Transformer Model that Reasons through Intentions Before Generating Images
In the field of generative AI media, the industry is transitioning from purely probabilistic pixel synthesis toward models capable of structural reasoning.Luma Labs has just released Uni-1, a foundational image model designed to address the ‘intent gap” inherent in standard diffusion pipelines.By implementing a reasoning phase prior to generation, Uni-1 shifts the workflow […]
24/03/2026
In Case You Missed It: Frontier Transformation and Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot Announcements
March brought a major set of Frontier Transformation and wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot announcements across Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Chat, and agents—all focused on helping people move faster from intent to action and helping organizations scale AI responsibly.If you missed any of the updates, here’s a quick recap of what’s new and why it matters.Edit with Copilot in Word, Excel, and PowerPointCopilot Chat in Outlook enables users to draft and refine emails, manage calendars and RSVPs, and use the Outlook email widget to take action directly from chat, streamlining everyday communication and scheduling tasks.
23/03/2026
Ep 36 | Why Public Policy Is Now a Growth Lever for Microsoft Partners
From data privacy and cybersecurity to AI regulation, broadband access, and energy infrastructure, public policy decisions are rapidly redefining how partners operate, how customers buy, and how innovation scales.The key message is clear: engaging with public policy is now a critical growth strategy for Microsoft partners, not a distant or background concern.Voices for Innovation: Policy Education Built for Partners
23/03/2026
How to Design a Production-Ready AI Agent That Automates Google Colab Workflows Using Colab-MCP, MCP Tools, FastMCP, and Kernel Execution
In this tutorial, we build an advanced, hands-on tutorial around Google’s newly released colab-mcp, an open-source MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that lets any AI agent programmatically control Google Colab notebooks and runtimes.Across five self-contained snippets, we go from first principles to production-ready patterns.The post How to Design a Production-Ready AI Agent That Automates Google Colab Workflows Using Colab-MCP, MCP Tools, FastMCP, and Kernel Execution appeared first on MarkTechPost.
23/03/2026
Get started with NeuBird Hawkeye MCP server in Azure SRE Agent
Integrate NeuBird Hawkeye MCP with Azure SRE AgentAzure SRE Agent now integrates with NeuBird Hawkeye via Model Context Protocol (MCP), so you can investigate incidents across all of your clouds and monitoring tools from a single conversation.With the new Hawkeye MCP server integration, Azure SRE Agent leverages Hawkeye's autonomous investigation capabilities through natural language conversation.
23/03/2026
Windows 365 available in US Gov Texas for Government Community Cloud customers
Today, we’re pleased to announce that Windows 365 is now available in the US Gov Texas region for customers in the United States (US) Government Community Cloud (GCC & GCC-High).This new regional availability helps US government organizations deploy Cloud PCs closer to users while meeting data residency, compliance, and performance requirements in an Azure Government environment.GCC customers can begin provisioning Windows 365 Cloud PCs in US Gov Texas today by selecting the region when creating or updating provisioning policies in Microsoft Intune.
23/03/2026
Announcing Multi‑Region Selection for Windows 365 in Government Community Cloud
Following our recent announcement of resiliency improvements with Microsoft Hosted Network (MHN), we’re pleased to share that Multi-Region Selection is now available for Windows 365 in our Government Community Cloud (GCC & GCC-High). This capability extends Microsoft’s service managed resiliency investments to US government customers, helping improve Cloud PC availability while maintaining the simplicity and security expected from a SaaS solution.Multi‑Region Selection allows Windows 365 to automatically distribute Cloud PCs across multiple Azure regions within the US Government region group, rather than provisioning all Cloud PCs in a single region.
23/03/2026
Azure Event Grid MQTT Broker: Enterprise-Grade Messaging for the Connected World
From startup-scale prototypes to workloads with up to 5M+ concurrent device connections — Event Grid MQTT Broker grows with your ambitions.Route MQTT messages and CloudEvents directly from Event Grid Namespaces to Fabric Eventstreams — enabling real-time analytics, storage, and visualization of IoT data without an Event Hub intermediary.The industrial MQTT standard runs natively on Event Grid MQTT Broker — bringing real-time factory floor intelligence to Azure analytics pipelines.
23/03/2026
Azure Sphere is updating its Certificate and Trusted Key Stores
Every production software image on the device – including the bootloader, the Linux kernel, the OS, and customer applications, as well as any capability file used to unlock development on, or field servicing of devices – is signed by the Azure Sphere Security Service (AS3), based on image signing keys held by Microsoft.The next update to the image signing certificate is targeted for March 30th.If you update and re-sign the application image you use in manufacturing, but you are using an old OS image with an old TKS, then that OS will not trust the application.
23/03/2026
Celebrating 30 Years of Microsoft Exchange
A lot has changed since the first release of Exchange Server 4.0 in 1996: protocols, platforms, scale, and even what “email” means in the modern workplace.To commemorate this milestone anniversary, we want to pause and reflect on how Exchange has shaped enterprise email as we know it today.That changed when, after nearly four years of development, Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0 – “the e-mail server with integrated groupware that makes it easy to communicate” – was released on April 2, 1996.
23/03/2026
Migrating Ant Builds to Maven with GitHub Copilot app modernization
Many legacy Java applications still rely on Apache Ant for building, packaging, and dependency management.Migrating from Ant to Maven improves maintainability, build reproducibility, IDE compatibility, and enables modern Java workflows such as dependency upgrades, framework updates, and containerization.GitHub Copilot app modernization accelerates this transition by analyzing an Ant‑based project, generating a migration plan, and applying transformations to produce a Maven‑based build aligned with modern Java tooling.
23/03/2026
Announcing Priority Processing in Microsoft Foundry for Performance-Sensitive AI Workloads
Today, we are announcing Priority Processing is now generally available in Microsoft Foundry, a new capability designed to help organizations run latency-sensitive AI workloads with greater performance consistency and pay-per-call spending flexibility.Priority Processing is designed to address these deployment challenges by prioritizing latency‑sensitive inference requests with pay-per-call flexible spending, enabling SLA‑backed performance for interactive AI workloads without requiring provisioned throughput commitments.Organizations including Adobe and Harvey are using Priority Processing in Microsoft Foundry to support latency-sensitive AI experiences while maintaining throughput for background workloads.
23/03/2026
Stand out with designations, specializations, and badges introduced in recent months
Showcase your proven success and differentiate your solutions by taking advantage of the latest Solutions Partner designations, specializations, and badges, added since Microsoft Ignite 2025.The Frontier Distributor designation recognizes Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) distributors that have advanced distribution capabilities across cloud, AI, and security. It defines the Microsoft standard for modern distribution and signals to indirect resellers that you go beyond transactions to accelerate growth and improve customer outcomes. Review the qualification criteria and assess your readiness by connecting with your Microsoft contact and reviewing your distributor capability score. Find out more here. Agentic DevOps with Microsoft Azure and GitHub specialization (updated)
23/03/2026
Join Us at MVP Summit: Helping SMBs thrive through Teams
The Microsoft MVP Summit is just around the corner, and we’re excited to invite Microsoft MVPs to a Teams SMB–focused conversation designed specifically for you on March 24th at 11 am PDT.Engage directly with the Microsoft Teams product team focused on SMB.Attending MVP Summit in person?
23/03/2026
Success with AI apps and agents on Marketplace: the end-to-end
Preparing an AI app or agent for Microsoft Marketplace requires solving a broader set of problems—ones that extend beyond the model and into architecture, security, compliance, operations, and commerce.It brings together the decisions and requirements needed to build AI apps and agents that are not only functional, but Marketplace‑ready from day one.This post is part of a series on building and publishing well-architected AI apps and Agents on Microsoft Marketplace.
23/03/2026
OneDrive Photos Restyle with AI-now rolling out on mobile and web
With AI Restyle in OneDrive, you can reimagine them in fresh new styles-right where your photos already live.AI Restyle on OneDrive MobileAI Restyle is rolling out on OneDrive for iOS, Android, and web for customers with a Microsoft 365 Premium subscription.
23/03/2026
Building Tech for Good Means Building Health Equity for Everyone
But there’s another kind of access that often gets overlooked: access to equitable, high‑quality health care.For people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD), that access is still far from guaranteed.Through free screenings, education, and large‑scale training of health professionals, they’re proving that inclusive health isn’t a niche initiative — it’s a blueprint for equity.
23/03/2026
Move from idea to a Marketplace-ready app faster with the Quick-Start Development Toolkit
Software companies building applications and agents for Microsoft often face the same early challenge: getting from idea to a working build to get to market fast. The Quick-Start Development Toolkit focuses on streamlining that initial process with deployable code templates, architecture guidance, and development workflows, so teams can move forward with confidence and clarity toward a Marketplace-ready application.While the toolkit focuses on accelerating the build stage, it is designed with the full Marketplace journey in mind. By following these development patterns, you can build apps and agents that align with the requirements for publishing and selling through Microsoft Marketplace.
23/03/2026
Code Optimizations for Azure App Service Now Available in VS Code
Today we shipped a feature in the Azure App Service extension for VS Code that answers both questions: Code Optimizations, powered by Application Insights profiler data and GitHub Copilot.The Azure App Service extension now adds a Code Optimizations node directly under your .NET web apps in the Azure Resources tree view.This node surfaces performance issues detected by the Application Insights profiler - things like excessive CPU or memory usage caused by specific functions in your code.
23/03/2026
What Changed in RC4 with the January 2026 Windows Update and Why it is Important
In this article, I will discuss what changed with the January 2026 Windows Update and why it is important to start auditing and remediate RC4 usage is your environment.Starting with the January 13, 2026, Windows security updates, Microsoft began the first official phase of hardening Kerberos authentication by reducing reliance on RC4 encryption.Microsoft tied the January changes to a Kerberos information disclosure vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-20833, using this security update as the entry point to begin the RC4 deprecation process.
23/03/2026
How to get blob Total Blob Count and Total Capacity with Blob Inventory
Table of Contents Approach Introduction to the Blob Inventory Service Steps to enable inventory report Support Documentation
23/03/2026
From Public Folders to SharePoint: A Modern Approach to Shared Contact Management
For years, public folders have been the go-to solution for sharing contacts across teams and organizations - whether for maintaining client lists, managing shared employee directories, or keeping vendor information organized. But as the way we collaborate has evolved, so has the need for a more modern, integrated approach to shared contact management. SharePoint now provides a powerful, fully connected alternative that brings your shared contacts into the heart of your Microsoft 365 ecosystem...
23/03/2026
The New People Directory Search Experience in Outlook: Smarter, Faster, and More Connected Than Ever
Managing contacts has always been central to how we work - but the way we work has changed dramatically. Today, we're excited to unveil a completely reimagined People experience in Outlook that makes finding, organizing, and connecting with your contacts faster and smarter than ever before. Whether you're reaching out to a colleague across the globe or managing your most important business relationships, the new People in Outlook is designed to get you there in seconds, not minutes. I...
23/03/2026
Configuring Storage for Hyper-V Hosts in vMode
Aaaaaaand we’re back! Today, we’ll walk through the next step of onboarding Hyper-V (compute) systems to Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode (vMode) and give you a sneak peek at what’s coming for storage profiles. If you’ve b...
23/03/2026
Customer review: Ambience Healthcare delivers accurate, compliant health clinic documentation
Ambience Healthcare’s Ambient AI for Health Systems, a solution platform published to the Microsoft Marketplace, accurately transcribes patient and clinician conversations and summarizes encounters into...
23/03/2026
GraphRAG and PostgreSQL integration in docker with Cypher query and AI agents (Version 2*)
This is update from previous blog (version 1): GraphRAG and...
23/03/2026
7 Steps to Mastering Memory in Agentic AI Systems
Memory is one of the most overlooked parts of agentic system design.
23/03/2026
Reliable blob processing using Azure Logic Apps: Recommended architecture
Understanding the Limitations of In-App Blob Triggers The Logic App Blob - In-App trigger
23/03/2026
Building real-world AI automation with Foundry Local and the Microsoft Agent Framework
A hands-on guide to building real-world AI automation with Foundry Local, the Microsoft Agent Framework, and PyBullet. No cloud subscription, no API keys, no internet required. Why Developers Should Care About Offline AI Imagine telli...
23/03/2026
Securing Azure AI Agents: Identity, Access Control, and Guardrails in Microsoft Foundry
As AI agents evolve from simple chatbots to autonomous systems that access enterprise data, call APIs, and orchestrate workflows, security becomes non negotiable. Unlike traditional applications, AI agents introduce new risks — such as prompt injection, over privileged access, unsafe tool invocation, and uncontrolled data exposure. Microsoft addresses these challenges with built in, enterprise grade security capabilities across Azure AI Foundry and Azure AI Agent...
23/03/2026
Microsoft Olive & Olive Recipes: A Practical Guide to Model Optimization for Real-World Deployment
Why your model runs great on your laptop but fails in the real world You have trained a model. It scores well on your test set. It runs fine on your development machine with a beefy GPU. Then someone asks you to deploy it to a customer's edge device, a cloud endpoint with a latency budget, or a laptop with no discrete GPU at all. Suddenly the model is too large, too slow, or simply incompatible with the target runtime. You start searching for quantisation scripts, conversion t...
23/03/2026
Announcing public preview: Cilium mTLS encryption for Azure Kubernetes Service
We are thrilled to announce the public preview of Cilium mTLS encryption in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), delivered as part of Advanced Container Netwo...
23/03/2026
How BM25 and RAG Retrieve Information Differently?
When you type a query into a search engine, something has to decide which documents are actually relevant — and how to rank them. BM25 (Best Matching 25), the algorithm powering search engines like Elasticsearch and Lucene, has been the dominant answer to that question for decades. It scores documents by looking at three things: […] The post How BM25 and RAG Retrieve Informa...
23/03/2026
Implementing Deep Q-Learning (DQN) from Scratch Using RLax JAX Haiku and Optax to Train a CartPole Reinforcement Learning Agent
In this tutorial, we implement a reinforcement learning agent using RLax, a research-oriented library developed by Google DeepMind for building reinforcement learning algorithms with JAX. We combine RLax with JAX, Haiku, and Optax to construct a Deep Q-Learning (DQN) agent that learns to solve the CartPole environment. Instead of using a fully packaged RL framework, […] The post
22/03/2026
Meet GitAgent: The Docker for AI Agents that is Finally Solving the Fragmentation between LangChain, AutoGen, and Claude Code
The current state of AI agent development is characterized by significant architectural fragmentation. Software devs building autonomous systems must generally commit to one of several competing ecosystems: LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI, OpenAI Assistants, or the more recent Claude Code. Each of these ‘Five Frameworks’ utilizes a proprietary method for defining agent logic, memory persistence, and tool […] The post
22/03/2026
Run OpenClaw Agents on Azure Linux VMs (with Secure Defaults)
Many teams want an enterprise-ready personal AI assistant, but they need it on infrastructure they control, with security boundaries they can explain to IT. That is exactly where OpenClaw fits on Azure. OpenClaw is a self-hosted, always-on personal agent runtime you run in your enterprise environment and Azure infrastructure. Instead of relying only on a hosted chat app from a third-party provider, you can deploy, operate, and ...
22/03/2026
A Coding Implementation for Building and Analyzing Crystal Structures Using Pymatgen for Symmetry Analysis, Phase Diagrams, Surface Generation, and Materials Project Integration
In this tutorial, we explore the capabilities of the pymatgen library for computational materials science using Python. We begin by constructing crystal structures such as silicon, sodium chloride, and a LiFePO₄-like material, and then investigate their lattice properties, densities, and compositions. Also, we analyze symmetry using space-group detection, examine atomic coordination environments, and apply oxidation-state […] The post
22/03/2026
Using Failover Clustering Cloud Witness with Managed Identity in Windows Server 2025
Failover Clustering has a strong quorum model that is always used to prevent partition in space (AKA Split Brain, Network partition, Cluster partition). We require a cluster quorum resource (cluster witness) to be used on each failover cluster. Using a cluster quorum resource not only adds protection but also means that small two-node clusters can provide high availability for Hyper-V VMs, SQL Server Availability Sets, SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance, Scale-out File Serv...
22/03/2026
Safely Deploying ML Models to Production: Four Controlled Strategies (A/B, Canary, Interleaved, Shadow Testing)
Deploying a new machine learning model to production is one of the most critical stages of the ML lifecycle. Even if a model performs well on validation and test datasets, directly replacing the existing production model can be risky. Offline evaluation rarely captures the full complexity of real-world environments—data distributions may shift, user behavior can […] The post
21/03/2026
A Coding Implementation to Build an Uncertainty-Aware LLM System with Confidence Estimation, Self-Evaluation, and Automatic Web Research
In this tutorial, we build an uncertainty-aware large language model system that not only generates answers but also estimates the confidence in those answers. We implement a three-stage reasoning pipeline in which the model first produces an answer along with a self-reported confidence score and a justification. We then introduce a self-evaluation step that allows […] The post
21/03/2026
NVIDIA Releases Nemotron-Cascade 2: An Open 30B MoE with 3B Active Parameters, Delivering Better Reasoning and Strong Agentic Capabilities
NVIDIA has announced the release of Nemotron-Cascade 2, an open-weight 30B Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model with 3B activated parameters. The model focuses on maximizing ‘intelligence density,’ delivering advanced reasoning capabilities at a fraction of the parameter scale used by frontier models. Nemotron-Cascade 2 is the second open-weight LLM to achieve Gold Medal-level performance in the 2025 […] The post
20/03/2026
Access announces retirement of Database Compare tool in June 2026
MS Access currently ships a standalone Database Compare tool (DATABASECOMPARE.EXE) that enables comparison of two Access databases. As of June 2026, this tool will no longer be distributed and installed with Office. Access is retiring the Database Compare tool because it depends on com...
20/03/2026
Shaping the Next Era of Energy Decision Making with Geospatial Intelligence
Blog draft Shaping the Next Era of Energy Decision Making with Geospatial Intelligence By Yves Pitsch, GM, Azure Space, Microsoft
20/03/2026
Title Plan Update - March 20, 2026
📁March 20, 2026 - Title Plan Now Available Access the latest Instructor-Led Training (ILT) updates anytime at
20/03/2026
A Coding Implementation Showcasing ClawTeam’s Multi-Agent Swarm Orchestration with OpenAI Function Calling
In this comprehensive tutorial, we present the core architecture of ClawTeam, an open-source Agent Swarm Intelligence framework developed by HKUDS. We implement the fundamental concepts that make ClawTeam powerful: a leader agent that decomposes complex goals into sub-tasks, specialized worker agents that execute those tasks autonomously, a shared task board with automatic dependency resolution, and […] The post
20/03/2026
Course Retirement Announcements
The following instructor‑led courses are scheduled to retire. You can find all past and upcoming retirements here: Course retirement | Microsoft Learn. Please note that it may take some time for newly announced courses to appear on the page. AZ-2005: Develop Generative AI solutions using Azure OpenAI and the...
20/03/2026
Microsoft 365 Copilot Prompt a thon for Government is Coming to Ft. Lauderdale
On April 16, Microsoft is bringing the Microsoft 365 Copilot Prompt‑a‑thon – Government Roadshow to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, inviting all Government customers to experience Copilot in action through a hands‑on, in‑person session. This government‑focused Prompt‑a‑thon is designed to help public sector organizations move beyond AI awareness and into practical, responsible use of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Attendees will lear...
20/03/2026
Azure Sphere is Retiring in 2031 - What you need to know
On 20 March 2026, Microsoft publicly announced that the Azure Sphere service is retiring and will stop supporting customer application, OS, bug and security updates, along with DAA certificate issuance, on 31 July 2031. This date will also mark the end of extended support for the MT3620 microcontroller.
20/03/2026
Strengthening your Security Posture with Microsoft Security Store Innovations at RSAC 2026
Security teams are facing more threats, more complexity, and more pressure to act quickly - without increasing risk or operational overhead. What matters is being able to find the right capability, deploy it safely, and use it where security work already happens. Microsoft Security Store was built with that goal in mind. It provides a single, trusted place to discover, purchase, and deploy Microsoft and partner-built security agents and solutions that extend Mic...
20/03/2026
March update: What’s New in Azure for Partners
Navigate to:News and announcements | Incentives and offers | Skilling and events | As customers accelerate toward AI‑powered transformation, partners are being asked not only to deliver technology, but to&...
20/03/2026
How Granular Delegated Admin Privileges (GDAP) allows Sentinel customers to delegate access
Simplifying Defender SIEM and XDR delegated access As Microsoft Sentinel and Defender converge into a unified experience, organizations face a fundamental challenge: the lack of a scalable, comprehensive, delegated access model that works seamlessly across Entra ID and Sentinel’s Azure Resource Manage creating a significant barrier for Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) and large enterprises with complex multi-tenant structures. Extending GDAP beyond CSPs: a strategic...
20/03/2026
Agentic Use Cases for Developers on the Microsoft Sentinel Platform
Interested in building an agent with Sentinel platform solutions but not sure where to start? This blog will help you understand some common use cases for agent development that we’ve seen across our partner ecosystem. SOC teams don’t need more alerts - they need fast, repeatable investigation and response workflows. Security Copilot agents can help orchestrate the steps analysts perform by correlating across the Sentinel da...
20/03/2026
RSAC 2026: New Microsoft Sentinel Connectors Announcement
Microsoft Sentinel helps organizations detect, investigate, and respond to security threats across increasingly complex environments. With the rollout of the Micr...
20/03/2026
Microsoft Purview securing data and enabling apps and agents across your AI stack
AI is rapidly reshaping how organizations work. From AI apps embedded in everyday productivity tools to autonomous agents orchestrating complex, multi‑step workflows, AI is moving from experimentation to execution at enterprise scale. With that shift comes a fundamental change in the risk landscape: AI systems can access, reason over, and act on sensitive data faster and more broadly than ever before. According to the last Microsoft Data Security Index 2025 report, 73% of organizations alread...
20/03/2026
Extending App Assure’s Sentinel Promise through the Sentinel Advisory Service
At RSAC last year, we introduced the Microsoft Sentinel Promise with a straightforward commitment to our customers: that third-party data ingestion for Sentinel is reliable, predictable, and scalable without the ne...
20/03/2026
What’s new in Microsoft Sentinel: RSAC 2026
Security is entering a new era, one defined by explosive data growth, increasingly sophisticated threats, and the rise of AI-enabled operations. To keep pace, security teams need an AI-powered approach to collect, reason over, and act on security data at scale. At RSA Conference 2026 (RSAC), we’re unveiling the next wave of Sentinel innovations designed to help organizations move faster, see deeper, and defend...
20/03/2026
Microsoft Entra innovations announced at RSAC 2026
Agentic AI is reshaping how organizations work, and it is fundamentally changing how we must think about protecting identity and access. As AI accelerates innovation, the number of users, devices, apps, and agents is exploding, creating an unprecedented number of digital identities across disparate systems. Every new identity, whether human or non-human, represents another potential entry point for attackers and another potential gap in visibility. In the
20/03/2026
Redefining identity security for the modern enterprise
Every breach has one thing in common: an identity was exploited. Attackers have learned that identity is the fastest path to lateral movement and escalation. The challenge for defenders is that today's identity landscape is vast and fragmented — spanning hybrid environments, SaaS apps, cloud platforms, and autonomous agents. Protecting it demands more than point solutions. It requires continuous visibility, proactive posture reduction, and the ability to detect and disrupt identity threats ac...
20/03/2026
Secure apps: Where people, data, and AI intersect
At RSAC, Microsoft is highlighting a foundational truth: more and more AI interactions—whether through Copilot, an agent, or an automated workflow—ultimately run through an application on a device. As organizations adopt more AI-driven workflows, the application layer is becoming an increasingly important enforcement point in modern security architecture. Security teams are working to maintain visibility and contro...
20/03/2026
From alert overload to decisive action: How Security Copilot agents are transforming security and IT
Security and IT teams operate in a constant stream of alerts, incidents, and investigations. As environments expand across identities, endpoints, cloud, and data, the challenge becomes clear: identifying real risk quickly enough to act. Security Copilot agents bring AI directly into the flow of work, helping teams understand risk with greater context, investigate threats more efficiently, and take action sooner. Security Copilot is
20/03/2026
Stream data in near real time from SQL MI to Azure Event Hubs - Public preview
How do I modernize an existing application without rewriting it? Many business-critical applications still rely on architectures where the database is the most dependable integration point. These applications may have been built years ago, long before event-driven patterns became mainstream. Even after moving such workloads to Azure, teams are often left with the same question: how do we get data changes out of the database quickly, reliably, and without a...
20/03/2026
Defending the AI Era: New Microsoft Capabilities to Protect AI
As enterprises rapidly adopt AI to drive productivity, automate decisions, and power intelligent agents, a new attack surface is emerging—one that traditional security controls were never designed to protect. AI models, training pipelines, plugins, and autonomous agents now sit directly in the path of sensitive data, business logic, and critical workflows. Organizations must protect the AI supply chain from model development and deployment to runtime behavior, tool access, and downstream acti...
20/03/2026
From Impersonation Calls to Transparent Reporting: Defending the New Front Door of Attacks
Email is still a major entry point—but it’s no longer the only one that matters. Today’s attackers are increasingly shifting to collaboration channels like Microsoft Teams, where trust is implicit and interaction is real time. Decisions happen fast, and that changes the economics of attacks. Adversaries can pressure users, adapt on the fly, and accelerate their objectives before traditional controls have time to respond. They can then pivot laterally across identities, endpoi...
20/03/2026
RSA 2026: What’s new in Microsoft Defender?
Modern attacks increasingly exploit the sprawl of today’s digital environments. In the identity space alone, over half of today’s organizations say each person now has more than 21 distinct accounts. Each one of these accounts is a potential entry point that an attacker can exploit. As organizations adopt cloud, SaaS, AI, and autonomous agents, the rapid growth of non‑human identities accelerates sprawl, expanding the attack surface and increasing gaps in protection. At the s...
20/03/2026
Accessibility Assistant now flags inaccessible hyperlinks
Hi, Insiders! I’m Shireen Salma, a Product Manager on the Office Accessibility team. Today, I’m excited to share improvements coming to Accessibility Assistant in Microsoft Word and Excel for Windows that help identify hyperlinks that may be difficult to understand or use, especially for people relying on assistive technologies. Access...
20/03/2026
New innovations in Microsoft Defender to strengthen multi-cloud, containers, and AI model security
Cloud security today is no longer just about misconfigurations; it’s about keeping pace with cloud-native change, prioritizing risk before it becomes an incident, and securing AI as a new supply chain for applications. In modern environments, infrastructure and applications are rebuilt and redeployed constantly through CI/CD, containers, and managed services, which means the security posture can quickly change. That speed increases the chance that small gaps—overly permissive identities, risk...
20/03/2026
Microsoft Sentinel is now supported in Unified RBAC with row-level access
Enabling streamlined, granular, and scalable permissions We’re excited to announce the Public Preview of Unified Role Based Access Control (URBAC) for Microsoft Sentinel, together with row-level access. This new capability, available April 1st, extends the Microsoft Defender Unified RBAC model to Sentinel, enabling streamlined, granular, and scalable permissions management across your security workloads. With the addition of row-level scoping, multiple teams can operate se...
20/03/2026
Security Copilot in Defender: empowering the SOC with assistive and autonomous AI
Security operations centers are increasingly overwhelmed. Analysts must triage large volumes of alerts, investigate complex signals across multiple environments, and determine which threats require immediate action. Much of this work still involves manually gathering context, reconstructing timelines, and making decisions under time pressure. As Microsoft Ignite 2025, we introduced how Security Copilot is bringing agentic AI directly into Microsoft Defender to transform how SOC teams d...
20/03/2026
Secure data as AI scales: New Microsoft Purview innovations at RSA 2026
Data estates are expanding fast—across Microsoft 365, endpoints, cloud platforms, and AI apps and agents. As this footprint grows, so do the opportunities for sensitive information to be overshared or exposed, especially when protection spans many tools and environments. The 20...
20/03/2026
Heroku Entered Maintenance Mode — Here's Your Next Move
Heroku has entered sustaining engineering — no new features, no new enterprise contracts. If you're running production workloads on the platform, you're probably thinking about what comes next. Azure Container Apps is worth a serious look. Scale-to-zero pricing, event-driven autoscaling, built-in microservice support, serverless GPUs, and an active roadmap — it's a container p...
20/03/2026
Why Agents Fail: The Role of Seed Values and Temperature in Agentic Loops
In the modern AI landscape, an agent loop is a cyclic, repeatable, and continuous process whereby an entity called an AI agent — with a certain degree of autonomy — works toward a goal.
20/03/2026
Designing an Azure Disaster Recovery Strategy for Enterprise Workloads
Introduction As organizations accelerate their cloud adoption journey, ensuring resiliency and disaster recovery (DR) becomes a foundational requirement for maintaining business continuity. In large-scale Azure environments, customers often operate critical workloads in a primary region and later identify the need to establish a robust secondary region strategy. While Azure provides the building blocks for high availability and disaster recovery, defining an effective DR archi...
20/03/2026
Power Apps Vibe Experience: Build Business Apps at the Speed of Ideas
Power Apps Vibe Experience: Building Business Applications with AI in Minutes Organizations today operate in a fast-paced digital environment where new business challenges emerge constantly. Whether it’s managing internal workflows, tracking projects, or collecting customer feedback, businesses often require custom applications to support their processes. However, traditional application development—even with modern low-code tools—still requires time, technical ...
20/03/2026
LlamaIndex Releases LiteParse: A CLI and TypeScript-Native Library for Spatial PDF Parsing in AI Agent Workflows
In the current landscape of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), the primary bottleneck for developers is no longer the large language model (LLM) itself, but the data ingestion pipeline. For software developers, converting complex PDFs into a format that an LLM can reason over remains a high-latency, often expensive task. LlamaIndex has recently introduced LiteParse, an open-source, […] The post
20/03/2026
Centralized Monitoring in Azure
Centralized Monitoring in Azure: Automating Diagnostic Settings Across All Resources Introduction In modern cloud environments, observability is not optional—it’s foundational. As organizations scale their Azure footprint, ensuring consistent monitoring across hundreds (or thousands) of resources becomes a major operational challenge. Problem Statement Challenges Customers Face One of the most common gaps I’ve observed while wo...
20/03/2026
Heroku Set the Standard. We're Just Removing the Ceiling
For a generation of developers, Heroku was where it clicked — the moment you realized shipping software didn't have to mean fighting infrastructure. Push your code, get a URL, focus on your product. That idea changed an industry, and a lot of us built our first real apps on it. Now that Heroku has entered sustaining engineering — no new features, no new e...
20/03/2026
Setup Alert for Azure SQL DB database status
A few days ago, I was working on a customer case where their database went into inaccessible state due to Server level CMK TDE got expired. Though the database was brought back to online, customer wanted to know how they can set alert and get notified when the database status changes from online In this post, I want to share the steps to set an email alert when the database status becomes inaccessible. The same steps can be used to get notified for any different database status....
20/03/2026
Google Colab Now Has an Open-Source MCP (Model Context Protocol) Server: Use Colab Runtimes with GPUs from Any Local AI Agent
Google has officially released the Colab MCP Server, an implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) that enables AI agents to interact directly with the Google Colab environment. This integration moves beyond simple code generation by providing agents with programmatic access to create, modify, and execute Python code within cloud-hosted Jupyter notebooks. This represents a […] The post
19/03/2026
Partner Blog | Copilot monetization for SMBs: Build pipeline with readiness and repeatable plays
Small and medium-sized businesses are interested in AI, but they want a clear, practical path, without added complexity. They want proof that AI can fit how they work today, support governed use, and deliver results they can track. Your challenge is to translate curiosity into a practical starting point, anchored in outcomes. In the Microsoft Customer Engagement Methodology, Stage 1 is not about selling a product. It is about creating clarity on where AI can deliver value and establish...
19/03/2026
Introducing Azure Managed Grafana MCP: The Managed Telemetry Gateway for AI Agents
AI agents are rapidly becoming a core part of how teams build, operate, and improve cloud systems, from coding assistants to autonomous remediation workflows. To deliver on that promise in the enterprise, agents need a secure, governed way to access real production telemetry. Azure Managed Grafana MCP lets AI agents securely query the same production telemetry you already connect to Azure Managed Grafana, like Azure Monitor metrics and logs, Application Insights, and Kusto, using your existin...
19/03/2026
Governing AI Agent Behavior: Aligning User, Developer, Role, and Organizational Intent
Authors: Fady Copty, Principal Researcher Neta Haiby, Partner Product Manager Idan Hen, Principal Researcher AI agents increasingly perform tasks that involve reasoning, acting, and interacting with other systems. Building a trusted agent requires ensuring it operates within the correct boundaries and performs tasks consistent with its intended pur...
19/03/2026
Lessons Learned #539: Azure SQL DB Scale-Down from S3 to S2 Can Fail When Change Feed Is Enabled
Recently, I worked on a service request where a customer reported that an Azure SQL Database could not be scaled down from Standard S3 to Standard S2. The operation failed with the following message: "An unexpected error occurred while processing the request". During the troubleshooting process, we reviewed the database configuration to identify any setting that could prevent the scale-down operation. As part of that review, we executed the query select *...
19/03/2026
Give Us Feedback on Faster, Simpler Data Purging for Exchange Online
Priority Cleanup (Use priority cleanup to expedite the permanent deletion of sensitive information from mailboxes | Microsoft Learn) was introduced to provide administrators with a powerful tool for permanently deleting mailbox content, even when under retention or eDiscovery hold, to address scenarios such as data spillage and urgent removals. Purview team is working on
19/03/2026
Secure access in the age of AI: Key findings from our 2026 Report
As AI moves from experimentation into everyday workflows and AI agents begin operating more autonomously across systems, access environments are changing in scale, complexity, and speed. Our latest research, Secure access in the age of AI , looks at how security leaders are navigating one of the fastest shifts in enterprise technology adoption, and where existing access models are starting t...
19/03/2026
Building a Resilient Nonprofit: Practical Steps to Strengthen Your Digital Security
Nonprofits today operate in an increasingly complex digital landscape. Whether your organization supports humanitarian aid, education, animal welfare, climate action, or community health, one thing is true across the sector: security can no longer wait. According to the Microsoft Digital Defense Report, nonprofits and NGOs remain among the most frequently targeted sectors by nation‑state actors, largely because of the sensitive humanitarian, p...
19/03/2026
Securing the Browser Era - From Cloud to AI: A blog series on protecting the modern workspace
In today’s digital-first workplace, the browser has quietly become the new operating system for enterprise productivity. From accessing SaaS platforms and cloud-native applications to enabling real-time collaboration and now AI-assisted workflows, the browser is no longer just a window to the web—it is the primary interface for getting work done. As AI capabilities become embedded directly into browsers from copilots to autonomous agents, this evolution brings unprecedented convenience and eq...
19/03/2026
The Changing Role of Low-Fidelity (LoFi) Signals in the AI Era
Introduction Low-fidelity signals—heuristics that are cheap to compute but often ambiguous—have traditionally been viewed as a necessary annoyance in security operations. In high-volume pipelines, even a modest false-positive rate can translate into operational disruption: unnecessary blocks, costly recoveries, customer frustration, and analyst burnout from constant triage. In the supply chain scanning service, operated by the
19/03/2026
How equitable AI skilling takes shape inside a global organization
AI is rapidly becoming a baseline skill at work, shaping how we write, analyze, build, collaborate, and lead. Yet access to AI skill-building isn’t always evenly distributed. AI equity research by Randstad found that 71% of AI-skilled talent are men and 29% are women: a 42 percentage-point gap. This same research found that women are 5% less likely than men to be offe...
19/03/2026
Database DevOps (preview) in SSMS 22.4.1
Database DevOps tooling for Microsoft SQL brings the benefits of database-as-code to your development workflow. At its core are SQL database projects, which enable you to source control your database schema, perform reliable deployments to any environment, and integrate code quality checks into your development process. Whether you're managing a single database or orchestrating complex deployments across multiple environments, SQL projects in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) provide the fo...
19/03/2026
Aligning AI agent intent: A framework for secure and governable AI
AI agents increasingly perform tasks that involve reasoning, acting, and interacting with other systems. Building a trusted agent requires ensuring it operates within the correct boundaries and performs tasks consistent with its intended purpose. In practice, this requires aligning several layers of intent: User intent: The goal or task the user is trying to accomplish. Developer intent: The purpose for which the agent was designed and b...
19/03/2026
Azure Bastion: Enterprise-grade secure access made simple
Managing secure remote access to virtual machines traditionally means juggling public IP addresses, configuring jump boxes, deploying VPN infrastructure, and managing complex firewall rules. Each layer adds cost, complexity, and potential security vulnerabilities. Azure Bastion changes everything. It's a fully managed PaaS service that provides secure RDP/SSH connectivity to Azure VMs directly through the Azure portal, without exposing VMs to the public internet. No public IPs, no jump...
19/03/2026
Announcing Preview of bulkadmin role support for SQL Server on Linux
Bulk data import using operations like BULK INSERT and OPENROWSET(BULK…) BULK INSERT (Transact-SQL) - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn is fundamental to ETL and data inges...
19/03/2026
The Real Path to Microsoft MVP: Self-Doubt, Small Steps, and Consistency
By Guest Blogger Barret Blake Before I Tried for MVP I get asked a lot how I became a Microsoft MVP—and the honest answer is: I wasn’t chasing it. I was happy simply being part of the developer community: attending the occasional user group or conference, and writing a blog post now and then when something caught my interest. Over time, this care...
19/03/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: March 19, 2026
Learn about 157 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs. Get it now in our marketplace
19/03/2026
A Coding Guide to Implement Advanced Differential Equation Solvers, Stochastic Simulations, and Neural Ordinary Differential Equations Using Diffrax and JAX
In this tutorial, we explore how to solve differential equations and build neural differential equation models using the Diffrax library. We begin by setting up a clean computational environment and installing the required scientific computing libraries such as JAX, Diffrax, Equinox, and Optax. We then demonstrate how to solve ordinary differential equations using adaptive solvers […] The post
19/03/2026
Building Knowledge-Grounded AI Agents with Foundry IQ
Foundry IQ now integrates with Foundry Agent Service via MCP (Model Context Protocol), enabling developers to build AI agents grounded in enterprise knowledge. This integration combines Foundry IQ’s intelligent retrieval capabilities with Foundry Agent Service’s orchestration, enabling agents to retrieve and reason over enterprise data. Key capabilities include: Auto-chunking of documents <...
19/03/2026
ProvePresent: Ending Proxy Attendance with Azure Serverless & Azure OpenAI
Problem Most schools use a smart‑card‑based attendance system where students tap their cards on a reader. However, this method is unreliable because students can give their cards to friends or simply tap and leave immediately. Teachers cannot accurately assess real student performance—whether high‑performing students are genuinely attending class or whether poor performance is due to actual absence. Another issue is that even if students are physically present in a lecture, t...
19/03/2026
Meet Mamba-3: A New State Space Model Frontier with 2x Smaller States and Enhanced MIMO Decoding Hardware Efficiency
The scaling of inference-time compute has become a primary driver for Large Language Model (LLM) performance, shifting architectural focus toward inference efficiency alongside model quality. While Transformer-based architectures remain the standard, their quadratic computational complexity and linear memory requirements create significant deployment bottlenecks. A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Princeton University, Together […] The post
19/03/2026
Built on Trust: Microsoft’s Commitment to FedRAMP High and Federal Cloud Security
Microsoft builds cloud services for the U.S. government with one foundational principle: trust. For federal agencies, that trust is anchored in FedRAMP—a rigorous, government-led framework designed to ensure cloud services meet the highest security standards. The FedRAMP process plays a critical role in protecting government missions. It is a process Microsoft takes seriously, and we invest significant resources in building products that meet FedRAMP requi...
19/03/2026
Troubleshooting Azure SQL Managed Identity Authentication When SSMS Works but Applications Fail
Overview Managed Identity is a recommended and secure way to authenticate applications to Azure SQL Database using Microsoft Entra ID. However, customers sometimes encounter a confusing scenario: ✅ Connections from SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) work using Microsoft Entra authentication❌ The application suddenly fails to connect using Managed Identity❌ Switching back to SQL authentication immediately restores connectivity This blog walk...
19/03/2026
Introducing Azure Managed Grafana MCP: The Managed Data Gateway for AI Agents
AI agents are rapidly becoming a core part of how teams build, operate, and improve cloud systems, from coding assistants to autonomous remediation workflows. To deliver on that promise in the enterprise, agents need a secure, governed way to access real production telemetry. Azure Managed Grafana MCP lets AI agents securely query the same production telemetry you already connect to Azure Managed Grafana, like Azure Monitor metrics and logs, Application Insights, and Kusto, using your existin...
18/03/2026
Get personalized, fast recommendations for your Marketplace listing to boost your discoverability
First impressions matter on Microsoft Marketplace. In a growing and increasingly competitive catalog of apps and agents, the quality of your listing often determines whether a customer discovers, clicks, tries, or moves on.
18/03/2026
Top 5 Reasons to Attend the Microsoft 365 Community Conference
Between the inspiring keynotes and sessions, connection opportunities, and the chance to deepen your skills there are lots of reasons to attend the Microsoft 365 Community Conference in Orlando on April 21–23, 2026. This gathering of makers and inventors will illuminate the people, stories, and breakthroughs that are propelling our ecosystem forward. To help break down everything that’s happening, w...
18/03/2026
Tsinghua and Ant Group Researchers Unveil a Five-Layer Lifecycle-Oriented Security Framework to Mitigate Autonomous LLM Agent Vulnerabilities in OpenClaw
Autonomous LLM agents like OpenClaw are shifting the paradigm from passive assistants to proactive entities capable of executing complex, long-horizon tasks through high-privilege system access. However, a security analysis research report from Tsinghua University and Ant Group reveals that OpenClaw’s ‘kernel-plugin’ architecture—anchored by a pi-coding-agent serving as the Minimal Trusted Computing Base (TCB)—is vulnerable to […] The post
18/03/2026
ICYMI: Microsoft Agent 365 AMA
Watch the video of the live AMA to see experts from the Microsoft Agent 365 team answer questions from viewers. Recorded on March 18, 2026.
18/03/2026
Azure NCv6 Virtual Machines: Enhancements and GA Transition
NCv6 Virtual Machines are Azure's flexible, next generation platform enabling both leading-edge graphics and generative AI compute workloads. Featuring NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition (BSE) GPUs, Intel Xeon™ 6 "Granite Rapids" 6900P series CPUs, and a suit...
18/03/2026
Announcing Fabric Mirroring integration for Azure Database for MySQL - Public Preview at FabCon 2026
At FabCon 2026, we’re excited to announce the Public Preview of Microsoft Fabric Mirroring integration for Azure Database for MySQL. This integration makes it easier than ever to analyze MySQL operational data using Fabric’s unified analytics platform, without building or maintaining ETL pipelines. This milestone brings near real-time data replication from Azure Database for MySQL into Microsof...
18/03/2026
Announcing Preview of 160 and 192vCore Premium-series Options for Azure SQL Database Hyperscale
We are excited to announce the public preview of 160 and 192vCore compute sizes for Premium-series hardware configuration in Azure SQL Database Hyperscale. Since the introduction of Premium-series hardware configurations for Hyperscale in November 2022, many customers have successfully used larger vCore configurations to consolidate workloads, reduce shard counts, and improve overall application performance and stability. <...
18/03/2026
Announcing the New Home for the Azure Databricks Blog
We’re excited to share that the Azure Databricks blog has moved to a new address on Microsoft Tech Community Hub!
18/03/2026
Baidu Qianfan Team Releases Qianfan-OCR: A 4B-Parameter Unified Document Intelligence Model
The Baidu Qianfan Team introduced Qianfan-OCR, a 4B-parameter end-to-end model designed to unify document parsing, layout analysis, and document understanding within a single vision-language architecture. Unlike traditional multi-stage OCR pipelines that chain separate modules for layout detection and text recognition, Qianfan-OCR performs direct image-to-Markdown conversion and supports prompt-driven tasks like table extraction and document question […] The post
18/03/2026
Priority Cleanup V2: Faster, Simpler Data Purging for Exchange Online
Enhancements Achieved with Exchange Priority Cleanup V2 Priority Cleanup (Use priority cleanup to expedite the permanent deletion of sensitive information from mailboxes | Microsoft Learn) was introduced to provide administrators with a powerful tool for permanently deleting mailbox content, even when under retention or eDiscovery hold, to address scenario...
18/03/2026
The Swarm Diaries: What Happens When You Let AI Agents Loose on a Codebase
The Idea Single-agent coding assistants are impressive, but they have a fundamental bottleneck: they think serially. Ask one to build a full CLI app with a database layer, a command parser, pretty output, and tests, and it’ll grind through each piece one by one. Industry benchmarks bear this out: AIMultiple’s 2026 agentic coding benchmark measured Claude Code CLI completing full-stack ta...
18/03/2026
Introducing Teams optimizations for Windows App on iOS & Android — Now Generally Available
Today, we’re announcing the general availability of Teams optimizations (WebRTC Redirector Service) for Windows App on iOS and Windows App on Android, expanding support for optimized Microsoft Teams experiences when connecting to Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop from mobile devices.
18/03/2026
Skype for Business Basic Client Update – New Version Released
We’re pleased to announce the availability of a new Skype for Business Basic Client. The following notes are also presented in KB Article:
18/03/2026
Introducing Lakeflow Connect Free Tier, now available on Azure Databricks
We're excited to introduce the Lakeflow Connect Free Tier on Azure Databricks, so you can easily bring your enterprise data into your lakehouse to build analytics and AI applications faster. Modern applications require reliable access to operational data, especially for training analytics and AI agents, but connecting and gathering data across silos can be challenging. With this new release, you can seamlessly ingest all of your enterprise data from SaaS and database sources to unlock ...
18/03/2026
Near–Real-Time CDC to Delta Lake for BI and ML with Lakeflow on Azure Databricks
The Challenge: Too Many Tools, Not Enough Clarity Modern data teams on Azure often stitch together separate orchestrators, custom streaming consumers, hand-rolled transformation notebooks, and third-party connectors — each wi...
18/03/2026
Windows 365 Frontline in shared mode expands to Norway East, France Central and Spain Central
We're excited to announce that Windows 365 Frontline in shared mode is now available in three new regions, expanding our global footprint and bringing Cloud PCs closer to organizations across Europe. Starting today, customers can deploy Windows 365 Frontline shared mode Cloud PCs in: ...
18/03/2026
Turning historical patterns into actionable detection pipelines with Microsoft Sentinel data lake
This article is part of the Sentinel data lake practitioner series. In part 1, we introduced the Operationalization Framework — a structured way to turn exploratory notebooks into reliable, scheduled Spark jobs within the Microsoft Sentinel data lake. Now in Pa...
18/03/2026
Generate richer alt text in Word and PowerPoint for Mac
Hi, Insiders! I’m Shireen Salma, and I’m a Product Manager on the Office Accessibility team. I’m excited to share a major improvement to how alt text is generated in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint for Mac – now also available in over 80 languages. Generate richer alt text in Word and PowerPoint for Mac We know that many of you want to make your documents and presentations as accessible as possible, and that requires generating alt text for images that is rich, descriptive, and ...
18/03/2026
Advice for Startups: Building with Copilot
For student founders participating in the Microsoft Imagine Cup, that journey often unfolds while balancing classes, coding, and building a product at the same time. Teams are gathering user insights, testing assumptions, refining their solution, and preparing to explain their vision clearly to mentors, judges, and potential customers. Tools like Microsoft Copilot can help founders move through these ...
18/03/2026
Troubleshooting SQL Server Backup Failures to Azure Blob Storage
This document helps to Troubleshoot SQL Server Backup Failures to Azure Blob Storage. Backing up SQL Server databases directly to Azure Blob Storage using BACKUP TO URL is a common and recommended practice on Azure SQL Virtual Machines. However, we often encounter backup failures that are not caused by performance issues but by hard Azure Blob size limits. This article explains why SQL Server backups fail due to Page Blob or Block B...
18/03/2026
7 Readability Features for Your Next Machine Learning Model
Unlike fully structured tabular data, preparing text data for machine learning models typically entails tasks like tokenization, embeddings, or sentiment analysis.
18/03/2026
Uudet Azure-, AI- ja tietoturva -sertifikaatit tulevat ja vanhoja poistuu
Tekoäly ei ole enää vain yksittäinen teknologia tai erillinen rooli – se muuttaa perustavanlaatuisesti sitä, miten työtä tehdään lähes kaikilla toimialoilla. Markkinoinnista valmistavaan teollisuuteen, kehityksestä liiketoimintajohtamiseen, tekoäly nopeuttaa päätöksentekoa, automatisoi työnkulkuja ja synnyttää täysin uusia rooleja. Maailman talousfoorumin Future of Jobs Report 2025 ‑raportin mukaan tekoälyn ja teknologian kehitys voi luoda jopa 78 miljoonaa uutta työpa...
18/03/2026
Versionless keys for Transparent Data Encryption in Azure SQL Database (Generally Available)
With this release, you no longer need to reference a specific key version stored in Azure Key Vault or Managed HSM when configuring Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) with customer‑managed keys. Instead, Azure SQL Database now supports a versionless key URI, automatically using the latest enabled version of your key. This means: Simpler key management—no longer necessary to specify the key version. Reduced operati...
18/03/2026
Announcing savings plan for databases: flexible savings for modern, evolving workloads
As organizations modernize their data platforms, database environments are constantly changing. Teams migrate between services, scale across regions, and evolve architectures to support new applications and AI driven workloads. But optimizing costs in these environments can be challenging, especially when savings options require locking into specific services, regions, or configurations. To help with these challenges, we’re introducing savings plan for databases, a new...
18/03/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: March 18, 2026
Learn about 155 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs. Get it now in our marketplace
18/03/2026
Stop defragmenting and start living: introducing auto index compaction
Executive summary Automatic index compaction is a new built-in feature in the MSSQL database engine that compacts indexes in background and with minimal overhead. Now you can: Stop using scheduled index maintenance jobs. Reduce storage space consumption and save costs. Improve performance by reducing CPU, memory, and disk I/O cons...
18/03/2026
Microsoft Drivers 5.13.0 for PHP for SQL Server — We're Back!
Today we're announcing the release of Microsoft Drivers 5.13.0 for PHP for SQL Server, the first GA release of the sqlsrv and pdo_sqlsrv extensions in over two years. We're not going to bury the lede: the last GA release (5.12.0) shipped on January 31, 2024. That means 25 months passed between stable releases. During that stretch the repo went effectively silent, a series of build-script updates in September 2024, and then...
18/03/2026
Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 7.0 Is Here: A Leaner, More Modular Driver for SQL Server
Today we're shipping the general availability release of Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 7.0, a major milestone for the .NET data provider for SQL Server. This release tackles the single most requested change in the repository's history, introduces powerful new extensibility points for authentication, and adds protocol-level features for Azure SQL Hyperscale, all while laying the groundwork for a more modular driver architecture. If you take away one thing from this post:&nbs...
18/03/2026
Announcing the General Availability of Microsoft JDBC Driver 13.4 for SQL Server
We are excited to announce the General Availability (GA) of Microsoft JDBC Driver 13.4 for SQL Server. This release incorporates all improvements delivered across the 13.3.x preview cycle (13.3.0, 13.3.1, and 13.3.2) and represents a significant step forward in performance observability, AI/vector workload readiness, SQL Server 2025 compatibility, and security posture. You can download the driver from
18/03/2026
mssql-python 1.4: Bulk Copy Arrives - Load Millions of Rows at Native Speed
We're excited to announce the release of mssql-python 1.4.0, the latest version of Microsoft's official Python driver for SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, and SQL databases in Fabric. This release delivers one of our most-requested features, Bulk Copy (BCP), alongside spatial type support, important bug fixes, and developer experience improvements. pip install --upgrade mssql-python The headline: Bulk C...
18/03/2026
mssql-django 1.7: Django 6.0, SQL Server 2025, and a Lot of Catching Up
For years, Django developers who needed SQL Server have had to navigate a patchwork of community forks and half-maintained backends. mssql-django changed that — an official, Microsoft-supported backend that lets you point your Django app at SQL Server and have things just work. But we'll be honest: for a stretch there, we fell behind. Between the 1.5 release in April 2024 and 1.6 last August, over fifteen months passed with no new version — and during that time Django shipped both 5.1 ...
18/03/2026
NVIDIA AI Open-Sources ‘OpenShell’: A Secure Runtime Environment for Autonomous AI Agents
The deployment of autonomous AI agents—systems capable of using tools and executing code—presents a unique security challenge. While standard LLM applications are restricted to text-based interactions, autonomous agents require access to shell environments, file systems, and network endpoints to perform tasks. This increased capability introduces significant risks, as a model’s ‘black box’ nature can lead […] The post
18/03/2026
TCS palkittiin Microsoftin Vuoden kumppanina Azure‑AI‑ratkaisuissa
Globaali IT-palvelutalo Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on voittanut Microsoftin vuoden 2025 globaalin kumppanipalkinnon sarjassa Azure – Build and Modernize AI Apps. Merkittävä tunnustus korostaa TCS:n roolia Microsoft Azure -pohjaisten liiketoimintaa uudistavien tekoälyratkaisuiden rakentamisessa. TCS hyödyntää tekoälyä parantamaan tuottavuutta, uudistamaan arvoketjuja ja nykyaikaistamaan toimintaa. TCS auttaa yrityksiä uudistamaan niiden dataympäristöjä ja ottamaan tek...
18/03/2026
ServiceNow Research Introduces EnterpriseOps-Gym: A High-Fidelity Benchmark Designed to Evaluate Agentic Planning in Realistic Enterprise Settings
Large language models (LLMs) are transitioning from conversational to autonomous agents capable of executing complex professional workflows. However, their deployment in enterprise environments remains limited by the lack of benchmarks that capture the specific challenges of professional settings: long-horizon planning, persistent state changes, and strict access protocols. To address this, researchers from ServiceNow Research, Mila […] The post
18/03/2026
Learn how to build agents and workflows in Python
We just concluded Python + Agents, a six-part livestream series where we explored the foundational concepts behind building AI agents in Python using the Microsoft Agent Framework: Using agents with tools, MCP servers, and subagents Adding context to agents with database calls and long-term memory with Redis or Mem0...
18/03/2026
Azure Front Door: Resiliency Series – Part 2: Faster recovery (RTO)
In Part 1 of this blog series, we outlined our four‑pillar strategy for resiliency in Azure Front Door: configuration resiliency, data plane resiliency, tenant isolation, and accelerated Recovery Time Objective (RTO). Together, these pillars help Azure Front Door remain continuously available and resilient at global scale.
18/03/2026
Upcoming March 2026 Microsoft 365 Champion Community Call
Join our next community call on March 24, 2026, to dive into PowerPoint: creation in Copilot and agent mode. Reminder: Our community calls are in the Teams webinar format, so you must register to receive the link to join. The join link will be sent to you in email with your webinar registration confirmation. https://aka.ms/M365ChampionCallAM
18/03/2026
Unlock the Power of M365 Copilot: Government Prompt-a-thon Comes to Charlotte, NC
Government agencies are under growing pressure to do more with less—modernize operations, increase productivity, and deliver better services to citizens, all while maintaining trust, security, and compliance. On April 8 in Charlotte, North Carolina, government professionals will have the opportunity to experience how M365 Copilot can help meet those challenges head‑on. The M365 Copilot Prompt‑a‑thon – Government Roadshow is coming to C...
17/03/2026
Microsoft 365 Copilot Prompt-a-thon for Government Comes to Boston
On April 8, Microsoft is bringing the Microsoft 365 Copilot Prompt‑a‑thon – Government Roadshow to Boston, MA, inviting State and Local Government and Education customers to experience Copilot in action through a hands‑on, in‑person session. This government‑focused Prompt‑a‑thon is designed to help public sector organizations move beyond AI awareness and into practical, responsible use of Microsoft 365...
17/03/2026
Unsloth AI Releases Unsloth Studio: A Local No-Code Interface For High-Performance LLM Fine-Tuning With 70% Less VRAM Usage
The transition from a raw dataset to a fine-tuned Large Language Model (LLM) traditionally involves significant infrastructure overhead, including CUDA environment management and high VRAM requirements. Unsloth AI, known for its high-performance training library, has released Unsloth Studio to address these friction points. The Studio is an open-source, no-code local interface designed to streamline the […] The post
17/03/2026
Building production‑ready AI apps and agents for Microsoft Marketplace
What developers can learn from Microsoft and partner AI webinars As software companies race to build AI‑powered applications and agents, success in Microsoft Marketplace requires more than a compelling idea. Customers expect solutions that are secure, scalable, governed, and built on trusted Azure services. A recent set of Microsoft and partner webinars offer practical guidance for developers who are building AI apps or agent‑based solutions with the intent to commer...
17/03/2026
After Ingress NGINX: Migrating to Application Gateway for Containers
If you're running Ingress NGINX on AKS, you've probably seen the announcements by now. The community Ingress Nginx project is being retired, upstream maintenance ends in March 2026, and Microsoft's extended support for the Application Routing add-on runs out in November 2026. A requirement to migrate to another solution is inevitable. There are a few places you can go. This post focuses on Application Gateway for Containers: what it is, why it's worth the move, and how to actually do i...
17/03/2026
Don't Miss the Agent-a-thon Coming to Arlington, Virginia April 22!
Don’t Just Hear About AI at Work — Experience It Register now for the upcoming Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent-a-thon in Arlington, Virginia AI isn’t “coming someday.” It’s already reshaping how teams write, analyze, collaborate, and deliver outcomes—especially in environments where time, accuracy, and accountability matter. That’s why this upcoming Agent-a-thon is the one you’ll want on your calendar. This is your chance to move beyond the hype an...
17/03/2026
Orchestrating Intrusion Detection and Prevention Signature overrides in Azure Firewall Premium
Introduction: Azure Firewall Premium provides strong protection with a built-in Intrusion Detection and Prevention System (IDPS). It inspects inbound, outbound, and east-west traffic against Microsoft’s continuously updated signature set and can block threats before they reach your workloads. IDPS works out of the box without manual intervention. However, in many environments administrators need the flexibility to override specific signatures...
17/03/2026
Building an Enterprise Platform for Inference at Scale
Architecture Decisions With the optimization stack in place, the next layer of decisions is architectural — how you distribute compute across GPUs, nodes, and deployment environments to match your model size and traffic profile. GPU Parallelism Strategy on AKS
17/03/2026
Introducing OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 mini and GPT-5.4 nano for low-latency AI
Imagine you’re a developer building a research assistant agent on top of GPT‑5.4. The agent retrieves documents, summarizes findings, and answers follow‑up questions across multiple turns. In early testing, the reasoning quality is strong, but as the agent chains together retrieval, tool calls, and generation, latency starts to add up. For interactive experiences, those delays matter—so many teams adopt a multi‑model approach, using a larger model to plan and smaller models to execute subtask...
17/03/2026
Detect, correlate, contain: New Azure Firewall IDPS detections in Microsoft Sentinel and XDR
As threat actors continue to blend reconnaissance, exploitation, and post-compromise activity, network-level signals remain critical for early detection and correlated response. To strengthen this layer, we're introducing five new Azure Firewall IDPS detections, now available out of the box in the Azure Firewall solution for Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender XDR. See It in Action Th...
17/03/2026
Use Copilot in Excel to build your brackets
The matchups are finally set, and the annual question is back: how do you pick a bracket that’s fun and gives you a real shot at predicting the winner—whether you’re following the men’s tournament, the women’s tournament, or both?This year, you can use Copilot in Excel as your bracket sidekick—turning past tournament patterns into quick “what-if” scenarios, stress-testing upset paths, and sanity-checking your picks against historic data. Instead of manually buildi...
17/03/2026
Announcing three new partners for multi-tenant management with Microsoft Intune
The challenge: Scaling Intune across customer environments Managed service providers (MSPs) of all sizes are under pressure to manage an expanding portfolio of customer environments efficiently, securely, and pr...
17/03/2026
Action Required: Transition from HTTP Data Collector API in Microsoft Sentinel
Microsoft Sentinel continues to evolve to provide more secure, scalable, and reliable data ingestion experiences. As part of this evolution, we want to remind customers and partners of an important upcoming change that may impact custom data ingestion and integrations like detection rules, playbooks etc. HTTP Data Collector API will no longer be eligible for Incident Support after September 2026 Starting September 14, 2026, connectors and tabl...
17/03/2026
Unlocking Secure Agentic Productivity with Windows 365 for Agents
The future of enterprise automation isn’t just about building smarter agents, it’s about enabling you to do more with agents, across more of the organization, directly within environments companies already rely on. This means AI agents need access to enterprise applications, not just APIs. With our latest
17/03/2026
AI prompting tips & tricks for everyday tasks
In this second blog post in a series of three, Microsoft Senior Learning Manager Ashley Masters Hall shares her practical perspective on the small prompting choices that can make a big difference in Microsoft Copilot results. I’ve been at Microsoft nearly six years now—long enough to see AI go from interesting experiment to everyday tool. In my first post of this series,
17/03/2026
Act Now: Lock in Current Pricing on Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Bundles
If you’re considering Microsoft 365 Copilot Business, or planning your next renewal, now is the time to act. Starting July 1, 2026, Microsoft will update pricing for Microsoft 365 + Copilot Business bundles. Purchasing now lets you lock in today’s lower prices and take advantage of limited time promotional discounts available through June 30, 2026. Built for SMBs: Microsoft 365 + Copilot Business When w...
17/03/2026
Structured document generation with forms now in preview
We’re excited to announce the preview of structured document generation with forms, a new capability in Microsoft 365 that helps organizations generate consistent, structured documents directly from form-based inputs. Last year, we enhanced Microsoft ...
17/03/2026
The Techbayanihan Journey: From Discovery to Empowerment
By Guest Blogger MVP Doher Drizzle Pablo Introduction: A Community Vision Rooted in Bayanihan When Techbayanihan began as a community initiative, the vision was simple but ambitious: to make technology inclusive, approachable, and meaningful for Filipinos. As a
17/03/2026
Everything You Need to Know About Recursive Language Models
If you are here, you have probably heard about recent work on recursive language models.
17/03/2026
Google AI Releases WAXAL: A Multilingual African Speech Dataset for Training Automatic Speech Recognition and Text-to-Speech Models
Speech technology still has a data distribution problem. Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems have improved rapidly for high-resource languages, but many African languages remain poorly represented in open corpora. A team of researchers from Google and other collaborators introduce WAXAL, an open multilingual speech dataset for African languages covering 24 languages, with […] The post
17/03/2026
Resiliency Patterns for Azure Front Door: Field Lessons
Abstract Azure Front Door (AFD) sits at the edge of Microsoft’s global cloud, delivering secure, performant, and highly available applications to users worldwide. As adoption has grown—especially for mission‑critical workloads—the need for resilient application architectures that can tolerate rare but impactful platform incidents has become essential. This article summarizes key lessons from Azure Front Door incidents in October 2025, outlines how Microsoft is hardening the pl...
17/03/2026
Porting C++ from IBM Power to x86: Solving Silent Endianness Corruption with C++and Github Copilot
Migrating C++ applications from IBM Power Systems to Azure x86 involves a subtle but critical architectural difference that is the byte order. When legacy code compiled for Big-Endian hardware is recompiled for Little-Endian x86 without modification, multi-byte integers silently corrupt. There are no compile errors, no runtime exceptions, just wrong values in production. This guide walks through the endianness challenge, demonstrates a practical refactoring workflow using GitHub Copilot, and ...
17/03/2026
Announcing the IQ Series: Foundry IQ
AI agents are rapidly becoming a new way to build applications. But for agents to be truly useful, they need access to the knowledge and context that helps them reason about the world they operate in. That’s where Foundry IQ comes in. Today we’re announcing the IQ Series: Foundry IQ, a new set of developer-focused episodes exploring how to build knowledge-centric AI systems using Foundry IQ. The series focuses on the core ideas behind how modern AI systems work with knowl...
17/03/2026
Foundry IQ: Give Your AI Agents a Knowledge Upgrade
If you’re learning to build AI agents, you’ve probably hit a familiar wall: your agent can generate text, but it doesn’t actually know anything about your data. It can’t look up your documents, search across your files, or pull facts from multiple sources to answer a real question. That’s the gap Foundry IQ fills. It gives your AI agents structured access to knowledge, so they can retrieve, reason over, and synthesize information from real data sources instead of relying ...
17/03/2026
How to Build High-Performance GPU-Accelerated Simulations and Differentiable Physics Workflows Using NVIDIA Warp Kernels
In this tutorial, we explore how to use NVIDIA Warp to build high-performance GPU and CPU simulations directly from Python. We begin by setting up a Colab-compatible environment and initializing Warp so that our kernels can run on either CUDA GPUs or CPUs, depending on availability. We then implement several custom Warp kernels that demonstrate […] The post
17/03/2026
Mistral AI Releases Mistral Small 4: A 119B-Parameter MoE Model that Unifies Instruct, Reasoning, and Multimodal Workloads
Mistral AI has released Mistral Small 4, a new model in the Mistral Small family designed to consolidate several previously separate capabilities into a single deployment target. Mistral team describes Small 4 as its first model to combine the roles associated with Mistral Small for instruction following, Magistral for reasoning, Pixtral for multimodal understanding, and […] The post
16/03/2026
Building Production-Ready, Secure, Observable, AI Agents with Real-Time Voice with Microsoft Foundry
The world is moving from assistants that answer to agents that act. Systems can now plan, reason, and collaborate across data, tools, and people. The shift creates enormous opportunity and raises the bar for what “production-ready” truly means: agents that operate on your network, respect your security policies, feel natural and intuitive for your end-users, and give you full visibility into what they're doing in production. AI decision-makers cite security, privacy, ...
16/03/2026
NVIDIA’s Open Models on Microsoft Foundry:
As enterprises and governments move from AI experimentation to production, they face several structural challenges: fragmented AI stacks across environments, operational complexity in customizing models, and strict requirements around data sovereignty, privacy, and security that limit the use of proprietary models. These challenges often lead to long development cycles, duplicated engineering effort, and stalled AI adoption.
16/03/2026
Generally Available: Evaluations, Monitoring, and Tracing in Microsoft Foundry
If you've shipped an AI agent to production, you've likely run into the same uncomfortable realization: the hard part isn't getting the agent to work - it's keeping it working. Models get updated, prompts get tweaked, retrieval pipelines drift, and user traffic surfaces edge cases that never appeared in your eval suite. Quality isn't something you establish once. It's something you have to continuously measure. Today, we're making that continuous mea...
16/03/2026
Public preview: Voice-native agents in Microsoft Foundry
We’re excited to introduce the native support of Voice Live with the new Foundry Agent Service, making it dramatically easier to build real-time, speech-to-speech AI agents on Azure. This integration brings together agent orchestration and real-time voice interaction into a unified developer experience — helping you to easily build production-ready voice-native agents that delivers natural conversational AI experiences. Shift toward real-time A...
16/03/2026
Evaluating AI Agents: A Practical Guide with Microsoft Foundry
AI agents don't just generate text. They take actions, call tools, and make decisions across multiple steps. That makes them both powerful and harder to validate. A prompt change that improves one workflow can quietly break another. A model upgrade that boosts fluency could degrade tool selection. Without evaluations, those regressions typically surface only when users encounter them in production. Building agents in Microsoft Foundry, we've seen this firsthand: early demos look...
16/03/2026
Building Microsoft’s Sovereign AI on Azure Local with NVIDIA RTX PRO and Next Gen NVIDIA Rubin
Across governments, regulated industries, and critical infrastructure, organizations are moving quickly to adopt advanced AI but with a clear requirement: AI systems should be built and operated within Sovereign boundaries. The question is no longer whether to use advanced models, but where those models should run, who controls them, and how they can evolve over time without compromising sovereignty, resilience, or trust. Many of these customers are building Sovereign Private C...
16/03/2026
AI‑Powered Troubleshooting for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management now available
A really interesting post is now live on the Microsoft Purview Blog, describing a open‑source release of the DLM Diagnostics Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server – an AI‑powered diagnostic server that allows AI assistants to safely investigate Microsoft Purview DLM issues using read‑only PowerShell diagnostics. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) policies are critical for meeting compliance and governance requirements across Microsoft 365 workloads. However, when some...
16/03/2026
🚀 AI Toolkit for VS Code — March 2026 Update
March brings another milestone for AI Toolkit! Version 0.32.0 is packed with new capabilities designed to help you ship production ready AI agents. This release brings a unified tree view experience, Agent Builder enhancements, and streamlined GitHub Copilot integration for agent development. 🗂️ Streamlined User Experience across AI Toolkit and Foundry Extension
16/03/2026
OneDrive Office Hours | March 2026
OneDrive Consumer Office Hours are back! Creating space for open conversation around the latest updates and how they support the way you use your files every day. In this month’s session, we’ll walk through what’s new and open the floor for questions, feedback, and shared experiences. Register today-OneDrive Office Hours | March 2026
16/03/2026
Health-Aware Failover for Azure Container Registry Geo-Replication
Azure Container Registry (ACR) supports geo-replication: one registry resource with active-active (primary-primary), write-enabled geo-replicas across multiple Azure regions. You can push or pull through any replica, and ACR asynchronously replicates content and metadata to all other replicas using an eventual consistency model.
16/03/2026
New Microsoft Purview innovations for Fabric to safely accelerate your AI transformation
As organizations adopt AI, security and governance remain core primitives for safe AI transformation and acceleration. After all, data leaders are aware of the notion that: Your AI is only as good as your data. Organizations are skeptical about AI transformation due to concerns of sensitive data oversharing and poor data quality. In fact, 86% of organizations lack visibility into AI data flows, operating in darkness about what information employees share with AI...
16/03/2026
Now in Foundry: VibeVoice-ASR, MiniMax M2.5, Qwen3.5-9B
This week's Model Mondays edition features two models that have just arrived in Microsoft Foundry: Microsoft's VibeVoice-ASR, a unified speech-to-text model that handles 60-minute audio files in a single pass with built-in speaker diarisation and timestamps, and MiniMaxAI's MiniMax-M2.5, a frontier agentic model that leads on coding and tool-use benchmarks with performance comparable to the strongest proprietary models at a fraction of their cost; and...
16/03/2026
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super Now Available on Microsoft Foundry: Open, Efficient Reasoning for Agentic AI
Today, we’re announcing the availability of NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super NIM in Microsoft Foundry,
16/03/2026
AI‑Powered Troubleshooting for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management
Announcing the DLM Diagnostics MCP Server! Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) policies are critical for meeting compliance and governance requirements across Microsoft 365 workloads. However, when something goes wrong – such as retention policies not applying, archive mailboxes not expanding, or inactive mailboxes not getting purged – diagnosing the issue can be challenging and time‑consuming. To simplify and accelerate this process, we are excited to announce the...
16/03/2026
Announcing the RDP dynamic virtual channel plugin samples
Extending Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is one of those areas where the documentation technically explains everything, but the real-world picture can still be difficult to piece together. At its core, the concept is straightforward: an RDP plugin consists of two cooperating components:
16/03/2026
Safeguarding Trust: The Critical Role of Security in Today’s Nonprofits
Nonprofits run on something deeper than funding, programs, or technology — they run on trust. Communities trust you with their stories, their data, and their wellbeing. Donors trust you to steward resources responsibly. Staff and volunteers trust you to create a safe environment where they can do their best work. And in today’s digital world, protecting that trust starts with security. Digital Tools Are Now Essential — and So Is Security As nonprofits inc...
16/03/2026
Intent Matters: Configuring Network ATC in Windows Admin Center Virtualization Mode
Let's talk about networking. I know, I know—wouldn’t it be nice if there were just a big “EASY” button you could hit to make networking simple? You’ve got VMs to spin up, migrations to finish, and approximately one thousand other things on your plate. You don’t want to think about networking. You just want it t...
16/03/2026
4MINDS, JINETT, and Willow offer transactable partner solutions in Microsoft Marketplace
Microsoft partners like 4MINDS, JINETT, and Willow deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Microsoft Marketplace. Learn about these offers below: 4MINDS: Deve...
16/03/2026
Microsoft Foundry Model Router: A Developer's Guide to Smarter AI Routing
Introduction When building AI-powered applications on Azure, one of the most impactful decisions you make isn't about which model to use, it's about how your application selects models at runtime. Microsoft Foundry Model Router, available through Microsoft Foundry, automatically routes your inference requests to the best available model based on prompt complexity, latency targets, and cost efficiency. But how do you know it's actually routing correctly? And ...
16/03/2026
From Prototype to Production: Building a Hosted Agent with AI Toolkit & Microsoft Foundry
From Prototype to Production: Building a Hosted Agent with AI Toolkit & Microsoft Foundry Agentic AI is no longer a future concept — it’s quickly becoming the backbone of intelligent, action-oriented applications. But while it’s easy to prototype an AI agent, taking it all the way to production requires much more than a clever prompt. In this blog post - and the accompanying video tutorial - we walk through the end-to-end journey of ...
16/03/2026
Validating Azure Model Router: A Developer's Guide to Smarter AI Routing
Introduction When building AI-powered applications on Azure, one of the most impactful decisions you make isn't about which model to use — it's about how your application selects models at runtime. Azure Model Router, available through Microsoft Foundry, automatically routes your inference requests to the best available model based on prompt complexity, latency targets, and cost efficiency. But how do you know it's actually routing correctly? And how do you ...
16/03/2026
Remove Unnecessary Azure Storage Account Dependencies in VM Diagnostics
In a recent engagement with a customer willing to decrease Shared Access Signature (SAS) tokens usage in their Storage Accounts, we found out that a good amount of SAS token-based requests was associated with VM diagnostics. One practical way to reduce SAS token usage is to eliminate dependencies that require Storage Accounts in the first place, especially when Azure offers managed alternatives. This post focuses on two VM-level features that often introduce (or preserve)...
16/03/2026
Moonshot AI Releases 𝑨𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑹𝒆𝒔𝒊𝒅𝒖𝒂𝒍𝒔 to Replace Fixed Residual Mixing with Depth-Wise Attention for Better Scaling in Transformers
Residual connections are one of the least questioned parts of modern Transformer design. In PreNorm architectures, each layer adds its output back into a running hidden state, which keeps optimization stable and allows deep models to train. Moonshot AI researchers argue that this standard mechanism also introduces a structural problem: all prior layer outputs are […] The post
16/03/2026
IBM AI Releases Granite 4.0 1B Speech as a Compact Multilingual Speech Model for Edge AI and Translation Pipelines
IBM has released Granite 4.0 1B Speech, a compact speech-language model designed for multilingual automatic speech recognition (ASR) and bidirectional automatic speech translation (AST). The release targets enterprise and edge-style speech deployments where memory footprint, latency, and compute efficiency matter as much as raw benchmark quality. What Changed in Granite 4.0 1B Speech At the […] The post
16/03/2026
A Coding Implementation to Design an Enterprise AI Governance System Using OpenClaw Gateway Policy Engines, Approval Workflows and Auditable Agent Execution
In this tutorial, we build an enterprise-grade AI governance system using OpenClaw and Python. We start by setting up the OpenClaw runtime and launching the OpenClaw Gateway so that our Python environment can interact with a real agent through the OpenClaw API. We then design a governance layer that classifies requests based on risk, enforces […] The post
15/03/2026
Meet OpenViking: An Open-Source Context Database that Brings Filesystem-Based Memory and Retrieval to AI Agent Systems like OpenClaw
OpenViking is an open-source Context Database for AI Agents from Volcengine. The project is built around a simple architectural concept: agent systems should not treat context as a flat collection of text chunks. Instead, OpenViking organizes context through a file system paradigm, with the goal of making memory, resources, and skills manageable through a unified […] The post
15/03/2026
LangChain Releases Deep Agents: A Structured Runtime for Planning, Memory, and Context Isolation in Multi-Step AI Agents
Most LLM agents work well for short tool-calling loops but start to break down when the task becomes multi-step, stateful, and artifact-heavy. LangChain’s Deep Agents is designed for that gap. The project is described by LangChain as an ‘agent harness‘: a standalone library built on top of LangChain’s agent building blocks and powered by the […] The post
15/03/2026
Zhipu AI Introduces GLM-OCR: A 0.9B Multimodal OCR Model for Document Parsing and Key Information Extraction (KIE)
Why Document OCR Still Remains a Hard Engineering Problem? What does it take to make OCR useful for real documents instead of clean demo images? And can a compact multimodal model handle parsing, tables, formulas, and structured extraction without turning inference into a resource bonfire? That is the problem targeted by GLM-OCR, introduced by researchers […] The post
15/03/2026
How to Build Type-Safe, Schema-Constrained, and Function-Driven LLM Pipelines Using Outlines and Pydantic
In this tutorial, we build a workflow using Outlines to generate structured and type-safe outputs from language models. We work with typed constraints like Literal, int, and bool, and design prompt templates using outlines.Template, and enforce strict schema validation with Pydantic models. We also implement robust JSON recovery and a function-calling style that generates validated […] The post
15/03/2026
Best practices for securing Microsoft Intune
Microsoft Intune gives IT and security teams a powerful way to manage endpoints at scale - deploying apps, enforcing security baselines, and configuring the settings that keep users productive and your organization protected. That’s why strong admin protections matter, so the right people can make the right changes, in the right scope, with the right safeguards. In this post, we’ll walk through three practical approaches to strengthen Intune protections: Start with...
14/03/2026
Garry Tan Releases gstack: An Open-Source Claude Code System for Planning, Code Review, QA, and Shipping
What if AI-assisted coding became more reliable by separating product planning, engineering review, release, and QA into distinct operating modes? That is the idea behind Garry Tan’s gstack, an open-source toolkit that packages Claude Code into 8 opinionated workflow skills backed by a persistent browser runtime. The tookit describes itself as ‘Eight opinionated workflow skills […] The post
14/03/2026
Recovering Missing Rows (“Gaps”) in Azure SQL Data Sync — Supported Approaches (and What to Avoid)
Azure SQL Data Sync is commonly used to keep selected tables synchronized between a hub database and one or more member databases. In some cases, you may discover a data “gap”: a subset of rows that exist in the source but are missing on the destination for a specific time window, even though synchronization continues afterward for new changes. This post explains supported recovery patterns and what not to do, based on a real support sce...
14/03/2026
Google DeepMind Introduces Aletheia: The AI Agent Moving from Math Competitions to Fully Autonomous Professional Research Discoveries
Google DeepMind team has introduced Aletheia, a specialized AI agent designed to bridge the gap between competition-level math and professional research. While models achieved gold-medal standards at the 2025 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), research requires navigating vast literature and constructing long-horizon proofs. Aletheia solves this by iteratively generating, verifying, and revising solutions in natural language. […] The post
13/03/2026
New AI-900 Lab Simulations
We’re excited to announce the launch of new AI-900 lab simulations, designed to help educators deliver more interactive, scalable, and learner-friendly AI experiences. As part of Microsoft Learn for Educators (MSLE), eligible educators can access lab seats to provision Azure-based labs for students—supporting interactive learning and skills validation in a guided, low-risk environment. Important
13/03/2026
Title Plan Update - March 13, 2026
📁March 13, 2026 - Title Plan Now Available Access the latest Instructor-Led Training (ILT) updates anytime at
13/03/2026
Monday Masterclass Season 2 – Week 4 Designing Events Employees Remember
Great events don’t just deliver information — they create moments people remember, return to, and build on. In Week 4 of the Viva Engage Monday Masterclass Season 2, we wrapped up the series by focusing on how to design events that drive participation, trust, and momentum before, during, and after the moment. This session brought together product insights...
13/03/2026
Best practices for scaling channel-led growth in Microsoft Marketplace
Vathsalya Senapathi leads Partner GTM at Tackle, blending co-sell, co-marketing, and operations to drive top of funnel revenue and customer value through cloud and ecosystem partnerships _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________...
13/03/2026
Introducing the Windows NVMe-oF Initiator Preview in Windows Server Insiders Builds
What Is NVMe-over-Fabrics? NVMe-over-Fabrics (NVMe-oF) extends the NVMe protocol—originally designed for local PCIe-attached SSDs—across a network fabric. Instead of using legacy SCSI-based protocols such as iSCSI or Fibre Channel, NVMe-oF allows a host to communicate directly with remote NVMe controllers using the same NVMe command set used for local devices. In this Insider build, Windows Server supports: NVMe-oF over TCP (NVMe...
13/03/2026
Security Review for Microsoft Edge version 146
We have reviewed the new settings in Microsoft Edge version 146 and determined that there are no additional security settings that require enforcement. The Microsoft Edge version 139 security baseline continues to be our recommended configuration which can be downloaded from the Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit. Microsoft Edge version 146 introduced 9 new Computer an...
13/03/2026
Introducing Azure Managed Grafana 12
In this release, Azure Managed Grafana makes it easier to tighten access with current-user Entra authentication, speed up Azure Monitor logs exploration, and level up Prometheus and database monitoring experiences. What’s new in Azure Managed Grafana 12 Use current-user Entra authentication for supported Azure data sources to query with the signed-in user’s permissions. Analyze Azure Monitor logs faster with a new query builder and improved visualization and Exp...
13/03/2026
A Practical Path Forward for Heroku Customers with Azure
On February 6, 2026, Heroku announced it is moving to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, reliability, and ongoing support. Many customers are now reassessing how their application platforms will support today’s workloads and future innovation. Microsoft is committed to helping customers migrate and modernize applications from platforms like Heroku to Azure. <...
13/03/2026
Enterprise Identity Meets Secure File Transfer: Entra ID Public Preview on Azure Blob Storage SFTP
We are excited to announce the public preview of Entra ID-based access for Azure Blob Storage SFTP. This new capability enables you to use Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) identities (including guest users via Entra Extern...
13/03/2026
Model Context Protocol (MCP) vs. AI Agent Skills: A Deep Dive into Structured Tools and Behavioral Guidance for LLMs
In recent times, many developments in the agent ecosystem have focused on enabling AI agents to interact with external tools and access domain-specific knowledge more effectively. Two common approaches that have emerged are skills and MCPs. While they may appear similar at first, they differ in how they are set up, how they execute tasks, […] The post
13/03/2026
Google AI Introduces ‘Groundsource’: A New Methodology that Uses Gemini Model to Transform Unstructured Global News into Actionable, Historical Data
Google AI Research team recently released Groundsource, a new methodology that uses Gemini model to extract structured historical data from unstructured public news reports. The project addresses the lack of historical data for rapid-onset natural disasters. Its first output is an open-source dataset containing 2.6 million historical urban flash flood events across more than 150 […] The post
13/03/2026
Azure Arc Server Feb 2026 Forum Recap
Please find the recording for the monthly Azure Arc Server Forum at YouTube! During the February 2026 Azure Arc Server Forum, we discussed: Arc Server Reporting & Dashboard (Jeff Pigot, Sr. Solution Engineer): Check out this awesome visual reporting bringing together different management services and experiences across Azure Arc-enabled servers...
12/03/2026
Proactive Health Monitoring and Auto-Communication Now Available for Azure Container Registry
Today, we're introducing Azure Container Registry's (ACR) latest service health enhancement: automated auto-communication through Azure Service Health alerts. When ACR detects degradation in critical operations—authentication, image push, and pull—your teams are now proactively notified through Azure Service Health, delivering better transparency and faster communication without waiting for manual incident reporting. For platform teams, SRE organizations, and ente...
12/03/2026
How to Build an Autonomous Machine Learning Research Loop in Google Colab Using Andrej Karpathy’s AutoResearch Framework for Hyperparameter Discovery and Experiment Tracking
In this tutorial, we implement a Colab-ready version of the AutoResearch framework originally proposed by Andrej Karpathy. We build an automated experimentation pipeline that clones the AutoResearch repository, prepares a lightweight training environment, and runs a baseline experiment to establish initial performance metrics. We then create an automated research loop that programmatically edits the hyperparameters […] The post
12/03/2026
Level up your data security at Microsoft 365 Community Conference
Technology is evolving at a startling rate, and it’s no longer enough for an organization to maintain their security measures, they must evolve along with it. Don’t let your data, employees, or clients become another headline. Join us in Orlando on April 21–23 for the Microsoft 365 Community Conference, where you’ll learn how to safeguard your most valuable data during expert-led discussions and hands-on s...
12/03/2026
Security Community Spotlight: Luca Romero Arrieche Heller
Meet Luca, Modern Workplace and Cloud Consultant at SoftwareOne Iberia, a Microsoft Partner. Luca has been working with Microsoft Security and cloud technologies for over a decade, closely following the evolution of the Microsoft Security ecosystem. Today, Luca focuses on Modern Work and security transformation projects, including large-scale Microsoft 365 migrations, enterprise messaging moderniz...
12/03/2026
Stanford Researchers Release OpenJarvis: A Local-First Framework for Building On-Device Personal AI Agents with Tools, Memory, and Learning
Stanford researchers have introduced OpenJarvis, an open-source framework for building personal AI agents that run entirely on-device. The project comes from Stanford’s Scaling Intelligence Lab and is presented as both a research platform and deployment-ready infrastructure for local-first AI systems. Its focus is not only model execution, but also the broader software stack required to […] The post
12/03/2026
Cumulative Update #3 for SQL Server 2025 RTM
The 3rd cumulative update release for SQL Server 2025 RTM is now available for download at the Microsoft Downloads site. Please note that registration is no longer required to download Cumulative updates. To learn more about the release or servicing model, please visit: CU3 KB Article: https://learn.microsoft.com/troubleshoot/sql/releases/sqlserver-2025/cumulativ...
12/03/2026
Cumulative Update #24 for SQL Server 2022 RTM
The 24th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2022 RTM is now available for download at the Microsoft Downloads site. Please note that registration is no longer required to download Cumulative updates. To learn more about the release or servicing model, please visit: CU24 KB Article: https://learn.microsoft.com/troubleshoot/sql/releases/sqlserver-2022/cumula...
12/03/2026
Accelerating AI adoption through Microsoft Marketplace
AI is no longer an emerging conversation—it has become the defining priority shaping how organizations approach cloud strategy, investment, and innovation. During our February Microsoft Marketplace Customer Office Hours session, our team shared insights into current AI adoption trends, why AI has risen to the top of enterprise priorities, and how Microsoft Marketplace provides a practical, governed path for customers to move faster with confidence. Below is a summary of the key themes ...
12/03/2026
Bulk enable Azure Arc Connected Machine Agent Automatic Upgrade (Tag Scoped) with Azure Cloud Shell
Overview Keeping the Azure Arc Connected Machine agent current is a foundational hygiene task for any hybrid server estate, especially when you’re operating at scale and onboarding hundreds (or thousands) of machines into Arc. The good news: Azure Arc supports an automatic agent upgrade (preview) capability that can be enabled per Arc machine by setting the agentUpgrade.enableAutomaticUpgrade property via Azure Resource...
12/03/2026
Scaling Copilot adoption with the Copilot Adoption Community in Viva Engage
Organizations everywhere are embracing AI, but getting value takes more than turning on a tool. It takes shared learning, practical examples, and a place where people can build confidence over time. The Copilot Adoption Community in Viva Engage is an out-of-the-box template that helps people learn and use Copilot together, whether they are using Microsoft 365 Copilot or Copilot Chat. The best way for employees to learn to use AI is by seeing coworkers like ...
12/03/2026
Empowering.Cloud Community Update – March 2026
The latest Microsoft Teams and Microsoft365 expert community briefings, podcasts and upcoming community events. Expert Briefings Real AI Use Cases in the Contact Centre with Luware Nimbus - Costs, Risks and Benefits https://empowering.cloud/real-ai-use-cases-in-the-contact-centre-...
12/03/2026
Get to know these Agent 365 community all-stars
With the announcement that Agent 365 will be generally available on May 1, 2026 and included in Microsoft 365 packages with and without Teams, many of our community members are eager to learn more about the new control plane for agents. Hopefully you've heard about the upcoming live AMA with the Agent 365 team on March 18, 2026; but meanwhile, we're highlighting a few folks who are creating helpfu...
12/03/2026
Partner Blog | Rising together, leading forward
March gives us an opportunity to reflect on progress, leadership, and the responsibility we carry forward. Women’s History Month is a moment to recognize the women who have shaped our industry and examine the role we play in building what comes next. This week, The WIT Network brought partners and leaders together in San Diego for its International Women’s Day conference,
12/03/2026
Unlock 5 powerful App Advisor capabilities to sell faster on Microsoft Marketplace
Software companies building apps and agents move quickly. But speed alone isn’t enough. Teams also need clear guidance on development decisions, publishing steps, and how to bring solutions to Microsoft Marketplace. App Advisor helps streamline that process. App Advisor helps streamline the process for anyone, with no barriers to start. However, when you sign in and authenticate, the experience becomes even more powerful. Here are 5 reasons to authenticate in Ap...
12/03/2026
Meet the updated Copilot Notebooks experience: Your home for understanding work, projects, and more
Work today isn’t short-lived or linear. Projects span months, inputs come from everywhere across files, meetings, and conversations, and real progress depends on how well teams understand evolving information while turning all of it into clear decisions, updates, and deliverables. That’s why we’re excited to announce the general availability of the refreshed Copilot Notebooks experience across Microsoft 365 Copilot app and OneNote. With an updated three-column layout and powerful Copilot feat...
12/03/2026
Comprehensive Security in the Era of AI: What Nonprofits Need to Know Now
Artificial intelligence is transforming the nonprofit landscape, opening new doors for impact while also introducing new responsibilities. As organizations work tirelessly to support communities, protect vulnerable populations, and steward limited resources, it’s more important than ever to ensure AI is used safely, ethically, and securely. Microsoft’s guide, Comprehensive Security in the Era of AI, offers nonprofits a clear, compassionate roadmap for navigati...
12/03/2026
Image Search Series Part V: Building Histopathology Image Search with Prov-GigaPath
@Alberto Santamaria-Pang, Principal AI Data Scientist, Healthcare ISE and Adjunct Faculty, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine @Asma Ben Abacha, Senior Applied Scientist, HLS AI
12/03/2026
ITAR Compliance in the Microsoft Cloud: Navigating GCC, Azure Commercial, and Azure Government
Why ITAR Compliance Matters in the Cloud The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) govern the export, temporary import, re-export, and transfer of defense articles, services, and related technical data documented on the United States Munitions List (USML). Administered by the United States’ Department of State's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), the ITAR imposes strict requirements on manufacturers, exporters, and brokers of defense-related items - and those re...
12/03/2026
Introducing VibeVoice ASR: Longform, Structured Speech Recognition At Scale
Speech recognition technology continues to make enormous strides—but most systems still struggle with real-world audio: long meetings, multi-speaker conversations, domain-specific terminology, and multilingual discussions that don’t fit neatly into short audio chunks. Today, we’re excited to announce VibeVoice ASR, now available through
12/03/2026
New Microsoft Certified: SQL AI Developer Associate Certification
AI is transforming how data-driven applications are built, and SQL professionals are at the center of this new era. Whether you're a database developer, administrator, analyst, or architect, your SQL expertise is more critical than ever. With the rise of AI, quality data and secure, optimized queries are foundational to building intelligent, scalable solutions. We’re introducing the Microsoft Certified: SQL AI Developer Associate Certification to help you validate your...
12/03/2026
Introducing the Startup-Scale Landing Zone: Get Azure right from day one
If you've been following this blog, you may recall the post
12/03/2026
Changes to Project Web App site creation and unused sites effective April 1, 2026
Microsoft Project Online will be retired on September 30, 2026. As part of this process, starting April 1, 2026, the creation of new Project Web App (PWA) sites will be blocked, and existing tenants without projects across their PWA sites will be blocked from accessing Project Online. What is changing on April 1, 2026...
12/03/2026
Microsoft at NVIDIA GTC 2026: Powering the AI Ecosystem
This year, the Microsoft presence at GTC highlights a simple but powerful idea: AI transformation does not happen alone. It happens through ecosystems. Through a curated series of partner demonstrations and industry conversations, we will showcase how organizations are designing, building, and scaling AI solutions on Microsoft Azure accelerated by NVIDIA. The result is a connected story about how enterprise AI becomes production-ready and delivers measurable business value.
12/03/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: March 12, 2026
Learn about 157 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs. Get it now in our marketplace
12/03/2026
Is the Microsoft MVP Program for You? A Love Letter to Community Builders
Most Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals remember the moment they realized they were already doing the work. Writing that blog post late at night because someone, somewhere, might find it helpful. Answering questions in a forum long after an event ended. Organizing a meetup with no guarantee anyone would show up. Long before the title, the badge, or the email arr...
12/03/2026
Building a Multi-Agent On-Call Copilot with Microsoft Agent Framework
Four AI agents, one incident payload, structured triage in under 60 seconds powered by Microsoft Agent Framework and Foundry Hosted Agents. Multi-Agent Microsoft Agent Framework Foundry Hosted Agents Python SRE / Incident Response
12/03/2026
How to Design a Streaming Decision Agent with Partial Reasoning, Online Replanning, and Reactive Mid-Execution Adaptation in Dynamic Environments
In this tutorial, we build a Streaming Decision Agent that thinks and acts in an online, changing environment while continuously streaming safe, partial reasoning updates. We implement a dynamic grid world with moving obstacles and a shifting goal, then use an online A* planner in a receding-horizon loop to commit to only a few near-term […] The post
11/03/2026
Microsoft Marketplace Partner Digest
March marks a strong quarter of momentum across the Microsoft Marketplace ecosystem, with partners scaling their businesses while delivering high quality customer experiences—directly, through the channel, and alongside Microsoft. From monetizing AI innovation to streamlining post purchase workflows and co-selling motions, partners continue to turn Marketplace readiness into real, repeatable growth. This month’s digest highlights the insights, updates, and opportunities helping software compa...
11/03/2026
Microsoft Teams Takes Center Stage at the 2026 Microsoft 365 Community Conference
Microsoft Teams is where people, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and agents come together to collaborate, communicate, and get work done—before, during, and after every interaction. Contributing to and benefiting from Work IQ, Copilot in Teams understands the context, relationships, and signals behind real work, bringing meetings, calling, chat, and collaboration into a single, connected experience across Microsoft 365. At the 2026 Microsoft 365 Community Conference, Teams will be fro...
11/03/2026
NVIDIA Releases Nemotron 3 Super: A 120B Parameter Open-Source Hybrid Mamba-Attention MoE Model Delivering 5x Higher Throughput for Agentic AI
The gap between proprietary frontier models and highly transparent open-source models is closing faster than ever. NVIDIA has officially pulled the curtain back on Nemotron 3 Super, a staggering 120 billion parameter reasoning model engineered specifically for complex multi-agent applications. Released today, Nemotron 3 Super sits perfectly between the lightweight 30 billion parameter Nemotron 3 […] The post
11/03/2026
Modern Database Protection: From Visibility to Threat Detection with Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Databases sit at the heart of modern businesses. They support everyday apps, reports and AI tools. For example, any time you engage a site that requires a username and password, there is a database at the back end that stores your login information. As organizations adopt multi-cloud and hybrid architectures, databases are generated all the time, creating database sprawl. As a result, tracking and managing every database, catching misconfigurations and vulnerabilities, knowing where sensitive...
11/03/2026
Azure Copilot Migration Agent
Migration and modernization are complex, involving multiple decisions that determine cost, risk, and long‑term success. The timelines stretch and momentum is lost due to fragmented tools and manual planning. For most organizations, this is a continuous motion driven by shifting demands, security pressures, and the need to innovate faster without disrupting what already works. With the release of Azure Copilot Migration Agent, this process is now guided and accelerated with insight‑driv...
11/03/2026
February 2026 Recap: Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Hello Azure Community, We’re excited to share the February 2026 recap for Azure Database for PostgreSQL, featuring a set of updates focused on speed, simplicity, and better visibility. From Terraform support for Elastic Clusters and a refreshed VM SKU selection experience in the Azure portal to built‑in Grafana dashboards, these improvements make it easier to build, opera...
11/03/2026
Save the date: Windows Server Summit – May 11-13, 2026
Windows Server Summit 2026 builds on the strong momentum of last year's event—where you told us you want less marketing and more practical, engineering‑led guidance. If you're responsible for keeping Windows Server environments secure, resilient, and up to date, this year's summit is designed with you in mind. What you'll learn
11/03/2026
Check This Out! (CTO!) Guide (February 2026)
Member: TysonPaul | Microsoft Community Hub Secure DNS with DoH: Public Preview for Windows DNS Server
11/03/2026
Advice for Startups: Build with Confidence Using GitHub
During the Imagine Cup Builder Series, GitHub Developer Advocate Kedasha Kerr shared practical insights on how teams can use GitHub and
11/03/2026
Spotlight On... AI Transformation & the Frontier Firm Playbook
Introduction AI transformation is not a single launch – it’s a multi‑phase journey that blends strategy, change management, and measurable business outcomes. The Frontier Firm Playbo...
11/03/2026
A faster way to find your Word, Excel and PowerPoint files online
Hi, Insiders! My name is Sonia Kulkarni, and I’m a Principal Product Manager on the Office Shared Services and Experiences team. I’m excited to share with you a new feature on Word for the web, Excel for the web, and PowerPoint for the web that allows you to easily...
11/03/2026
Microsoft partners with DataBahn to accelerate enterprise deployments for Microsoft Sentinel
Enterprise security teams are collecting more telemetry than ever across cloud platforms, endpoints, SaaS applications, and on-premises infrastructure. Security teams want broader data coverage and longer retention without losing control of cost and data quality.
11/03/2026
Introducing Agentic Secret Finder: Finding Real Credentials Where Traditional Tools Fail
Agentic Secret Finder (ASF) is an AI-powered capability in Microsoft Security Copilot that detects leaked credentials in unstructured content, such as emails, chat logs, documents, and screenshots, where traditional pattern-matching tools struggle. Agentic Secret Finder (ASF) is “agentic” because it relies on a multi‑step, multi‑agent reasoning workflow rather than a single pass detector. Detection, verification, and contextual analysis ...
11/03/2026
From Single Apps to Scale Solutions: How AI Agents Scale Modernization
AI is rewriting the modernization playbook. Over the past few years, AI has changed software development faster than anything we’ve seen in decades. And it’s not just about writing code faster. AI is reducing the day-to-day friction that slows teams down: upgrades, migrations, test failures, brittle pipelines, incident response, and the ever-growing backlog of technical debt. That operational drag keeps teams stuck maintaining systems instead of building what’s next. Agentic D...
11/03/2026
Segurança Corporativa no Azure VMware Solution (AVS): Como Inspecionar o Tráfego com Firewall NVA
Muitas vezes faz sentido usar uma NVA (Network Virtual Appliance) como firewall dentro do AVS, porque permite reaproveitar a solução de firewall já existente (Palo Alto, Check Point, etc..) e manter a proficiência do time de segurança, evita parte da complexidade de roteamento que pode surgir ao forçar o tráfego passar por um firewall “fora” do AVS . Além disso, administrar esse firewall dentro do AVS continua familiar para quem já opera VMware,...
11/03/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: March 11, 2026
Learn about 128 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs. Get it now in our marketplace
11/03/2026
February 2026 Recap: Azure Database for MySQL
We're excited to share a summary of the Azure Database for MySQL updates from the last couple of months. Extended Support Timeline Update Based on customer feedback requesting additional time to complete major version upgrades, we have extended the grace period before
11/03/2026
Google AI Introduces Gemini Embedding 2: A Multimodal Embedding Model that Lets Your Bring Text, Images, Video, Audio, and Docs into the Embedding Space
Google expanded its Gemini model family with the release of Gemini Embedding 2. This second-generation model succeeds the text-only gemini-embedding-001 and is designed specifically to address the high-dimensional storage and cross-modal retrieval challenges faced by AI developers building production-grade Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems. The Gemini Embedding 2 release marks a significant technical shift in how […] The post
11/03/2026
Implementing the Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) / Curated API Pattern Using Azure API Management
Modern digital applications rarely serve a single type of client. Web portals, mobile apps, partner integrations, and internal tools often consume the same backend services—yet each has different performance, payload, and UX requirements. Exposing backend APIs directly to all clients frequently leads to over-fetching, chatty networks, and tight coupling between UI and backend domain models. This is where a Curated API or Backend for Frontend API design pattern becomes useful. ...
11/03/2026
Announcing Fireworks AI on Microsoft Foundry
We’re excited to announce that starting today, Microsoft Foundry customers can access high performance, low latency inference performance of popular open models hosted on the Fireworks cloud from their Foundry projects, and even deploy their own customized versions, too! As part of the Public Preview launch, we’re offering the most popular open models for serverless inference in b...
11/03/2026
Fish Audio Releases Fish Audio S2: A New Generation of Expressive Text-to-Speech (TTS) with Absurdly Controllable Emotion
The landscape of Text-to-Speech (TTS) is moving away from modular pipelines toward integrated Large Audio Models (LAMs). Fish Audio’s release of S2-Pro, the flagship model within the Fish Speech ecosystem, represents a shift toward open architectures capable of high-fidelity, multi-speaker synthesis with sub-150ms latency. The release provides a framework for zero-shot voice cloning and granular […] The post
11/03/2026
How to Build a Self-Designing Meta-Agent That Automatically Constructs, Instantiates, and Refines Task-Specific AI Agents
In this tutorial, we build a Meta-Agent that designs other agents automatically from a simple task description. We implement a system that analyzes the task, selects tools, chooses a memory architecture, configures a planner, and then instantiates a fully working agent runtime. We go beyond static agent templates and instead build a dynamic, self-configuring architecture […] The post
11/03/2026
Announcing the Microsoft AI Power Days Agent-a-thon winners
The February 2026 Microsoft AI Power Days Agent-a-thon brought together builders from around the world with one shared goal—to turn ideas into working AI agents that solve real problems. From first-time builders to advanced practitioners, the creativity, ambition, and practical impact on display exceeded all expectations. Over the course of the Agent-a-thon, participants explored what’s possible with agentic AI—learning, building, and iterating using M...
11/03/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2025 RTM CU2
The Security Update for SQL Server 2025 RTM CU2 is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites. This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2025 RTM CUs, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article. Security Bulletins:
10/03/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2025 RTM GDR
The Security Update for SQL Server 2025 RTM GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites. This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2025 RTM, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article. Security Bulletins:
10/03/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2022 RTM CU23
The Security Update for SQL Server 2022 RTM CU23 is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites. This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2022 RTM CUs, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article. Security Bulletins:
10/03/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2022 RTM GDR
The Security Update for SQL Server 2022 RTM GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites. This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2022 RTM, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article. Security Bulletins:
10/03/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2019 RTM CU32
The Security Update for SQL Server 2019 RTM CU32 is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites. This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2019 RTM CUs, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article. Security Bulletins:
10/03/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2019 RTM GDR
The Security Update for SQL Server 2019 RTM GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites. This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2019 RTM, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article. Security Bulletins:
10/03/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2017 RTM CU31
The Security Update for SQL Server 2017 RTM CU31 is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites. This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2017 RTM CUs, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article. Security Bulletins:
10/03/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2017 RTM GDR
The Security Update for SQL Server 2017 RTM GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites. This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2017 RTM, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article. Security Bulletins:
10/03/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2016 SP3 Azure Connect Feature Pack
The Security Update for SQL Server 2016 SP3 Azure Connect Feature Pack is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites. This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2016 SP3 Azure Connect Feature Pack, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article. Security Bulletins:
10/03/2026
Security Update for SQL Server 2016 SP3 GDR
The Security Update for SQL Server 2016 SP3 GDR is now available for download at the Microsoft Download Center and Microsoft Update Catalog sites. This package cumulatively includes all previous security fixes for SQL Server 2016 SP3, plus it includes the new security fixes detailed in the KB Article. Security Bulletins:
10/03/2026
Purview Community: Call for Sessions!
Microsoft Purview Community Lighting Talks is a virtual event series featuring real-world demos, tips, and solutions directly from you, the Purview Community!The goal of these short, fluff-free lighting sessions is to foster authentic knowledge sharing, community connection, and highlight real experiences to empower others who use Microsoft Purview. The virtual events will be held in a simu-live format across multiple time zones and will include subject-matter experts and the spea...
10/03/2026
Announcing SMTP DANE & MTA STS Connector Modes in Exchange Online
We’re excited to announce the release of SMTP DANE and MTA‑STS connector modes in Exchange Online. This update gives administrators explicit control over how strictly Exchange Online enforces modern mail flow security standards when sending email over outbound connectors. This capability builds on our offerings for SMTP DANE with DNSSEC and
10/03/2026
NVIDIA AI Releases Nemotron-Terminal: A Systematic Data Engineering Pipeline for Scaling LLM Terminal Agents
The race to build autonomous AI agents has hit a massive bottleneck: data. While frontier models like Claude Code and Codex CLI have demonstrated impressive proficiency in terminal environments, the training strategies and data mixtures behind them have remained closely guarded secrets. This lack of transparency has forced researchers and devs into a costly cycle […] The post
10/03/2026
Partner Case Study | EPAM
What does it take to move from AI experimentation to enterprise-wide scale? For EPAM, the answer emerged from a year of foundational work—helping customers fix data estates, aligning stakeholders, and building repeatable engineering practices. As a Microsoft Global Systems Integrator (GSI), EPAM supports customers preparing for scalable adoption, with a focus on agentic AI and production-grade deployments. The company’s long-standing partnership with Microsoft includes 17 specializatio...
10/03/2026
Setting Up a Google Colab AI-Assisted Coding Environment That Actually Works
This article focuses on Google Colab , an increasingly popular, free, and accessible, cloud-based Python environment that is well-suited for prototyping data analysis workflows and experimental code before moving to production systems.
10/03/2026
My MVP Story: Finding My Way Into Data and Community - Deborah Jones’ Journey
In the world of data, some people learn tools - and some turn them into superpowers. Microsoft MVP Deborah Jones is firmly in the second category. She’s self-taught across Power BI,
10/03/2026
Understanding the Standard HDD I/O unit size update and what it means for your workloads
As Azure continues to evolve to support modern workload patterns, we are refining how transactions are measured for Standard HDD managed disks. This update helps align billing more closely with actual I/O behavior while maintaining predictable cost controls for customers.
10/03/2026
Publish to web delivers polished files externally with one click
Hi, Insiders! I am Ekta Dwivedy, a Product Manager on the PowerPoint team. I'm excited to introduce the new Publish to web feature, available in Excel for the web and PowerPoint for the web, and coming soon to Word for the web. It makes it easy for enterprise users to share clean, polished documents with external clients and stakeholders without revealing internal edits, comments, or version history. Publish to web delivers polished files externally with one click You’ve share...
10/03/2026
Sign with a personal touch with eSignature for Microsoft 365
We’ve heard your feedback: you want more personal and natural signing experiences with eSignature for Microsoft 365. Now you can draw your signature directly on PDF files using a stylus, touch, or mouse. No more printing, signing, and scanning; no more settling for typed signatures. Whether you’re approving an official company policy or signing a sales contract, you can now add y...
10/03/2026
What's New in Microsoft EDU - March 2026
Join us on Wednesday, March 25th, 2026 for our latest "What's New in Microsoft EDU" webinar! We will be covering all of the latest product updates from Microsoft Education. These 30-minute webinars are put on by the Microsoft Education Product Management group and happen once per month, this month both 8:00am Pacific Time and 4:00pm Pacific time to cover as many global time zones as possible around the world. And don’t worry – we’ll be recording these and posting on our Microsoft Educat...
10/03/2026
Partner Blog | Azure updates for partners: February 2026
AI is shifting quickly from experimentation to measurable impact. Customers are moving faster and asking for AI that scales profitably, reliably, and globally, without added risk or complexity. With the latest platform investments, Microsoft Azure provides a strong foundation for AI at scale, creating an opportunity for you to differ...
10/03/2026
No Exchange Server Security Updates for March 2026
Although Exchange 2016 and 2019 are now out of support, some customers have purchased the Exchange 2016 and 2019 Extended Security Update (ESU). We have therefore decided that un...
10/03/2026
RSAT capabilities arrive on Arm-based Windows 11 PCs
Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) are now officially supported on Arm-based Windows 11 PCs. You can now remotely manage Windows server roles and features using Windows devices built on Arm processors, just as you would with traditional x64-based PCs. Supporting RSAT on Windows 11 on Arm marks a significant milestone and addresses one of your top requests for enterprise management.
10/03/2026
How Microsoft Marketplace is accelerating AI adoption: Key takeaways from the London AI Tour 2026
London AI Tour 2026 made a double stop in late February—and I had the opportunity to be there for both events. Over two energizing days, thousands of customers and partners came together for immersive AI learning, and across every conversation, session, and demo, one unifying theme stood out: Microsoft Marketplace and its growing channel ecosystem. On 24 Feb at ExCeL London, I joined more than 6,000 business and IT leaders for AI Tour: Customer Day, headlined by Microsoft CEO Satya Nad...
10/03/2026
New Microsoft Certified: Azure Databricks Data Engineer Associate Certification
As a data engineer, you understand that AI performance depends directly on the quality of its data. If the data isn’t clean, well-managed, and accessible at scale, even the most sophisticated AI models won’t perform as expected. Introducing the Microsoft Certified: Azure Databricks Data Engineer Associate Certification, designed to prove that you have the skills required to build and operate reliable data systems by using Azure Databricks. ...
10/03/2026
When Trust Becomes the Attack Vector: Analysis of the EmEditor Supply-Chain Compromise
Attackers compromised the upstream distribution mechanism for EmEditor, a widely used Windows text editor. Instead of delivering malware through phishing or malicious domains, the attackers manipulated server-side logic on the official download site to selectively serve a trojanized installer to public users while preserving legitimate content for administrators. This campaign highlights two recurring challenges in defending modern environments: Up...
10/03/2026
What's new in Azure SRE Agent in the GA release
Azure SRE Agent is now generally available (read the GA announcement). . After months in preview with teams across Microsoft and early customers, here's what's shipping at GA. We use SRE Agent in our team We built SRE Agent to solve our own operational problems first. It investigates our regressions, triages errors daily, and tu...
10/03/2026
Research Drop: Evolving Transformational Leadership in the Age of AI
Research Drop in Brief: Employees who feel supported to integrate agentic AI are 1.8x as likely to be high-frequency AI users (use AI at least daily), yet there is a 28-percentage point gap in perceived support between leaders and ICs, a potential sign that substantive elements of support are getting lost in the rush to adopt AI. Transformational leadership remains a strong foundation, but effective AI leadership requires evolving how these behaviors show up in practice<...
10/03/2026
Azure SRE Agent is Generally Available — What's New
Azure SRE Agent is now generally available (read the GA announcement). . After months in preview with teams across Microsoft and early customers, here's what's shipping at GA. We use SRE Agent in our team We built SRE Agent to solve our own operational problems first. It investigates our regressions, triages errors daily, and tu...
10/03/2026
AI for Communicators: What Copilot Adoption Actually Looks Like
Next month, we’re looking at what Copilot adoption success means and how communicators can lead, not just support it. Join Sarah Lundy (Microsoft Viva Engage) and Alex Snyder (Foot Locker) for a practical, communicator‑focused look at Copilot adoption in the real world, on Thursday April 2nd at 8 am PT. Drawing from the journeys at Foot Locker and Microsoft, this session explores how human‑led change, communities,...
10/03/2026
What It Takes to Give SRE Agent a Useful Starting Point
In our latest posts, The Agent that investigates itself and Azure SRE Agent Now Builds Expertise Like Your Best Engineer Introducing Deep Context, we wrote about a moment that changed how we think abo...
10/03/2026
The Agent that investigates itself
Azure SRE Agent handles tens of thousands of incidents each week for internal Microsoft services and external teams running it for their own systems. Last month, one of those incidents was about the agent itself. Our KV cache hit rate alert started firing. Cached token percentage was dropping acros...
10/03/2026
Migrating On-prem Windows & Linux VMs to Azure Confidential Virtual Machines via Azure Migrate
1. Executive Summary Enterprise cloud adoption increasingly prioritizes trust boundaries that extend beyond traditional infrastructure isolation. While encryption at rest and in transit are foundational, modern organizations must also ensure that data in use (data actively processed in CPU or system memory) remains protected.Azure Confidential Computing (ACC) mitigates emerging threats by enabling hardware-backed Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). These environments isolate...
10/03/2026
Agent Hooks: Production-Grade Governance for Azure SRE Agent
Introduction Azure SRE Agent helps engineering teams automate incident response, diagnostics, and remediation tasks. But when you're giving an agent access to production systems—your databases, your Kubernetes clusters, your cloud resources—you need more than just automation. You need governance. Today, we're diving deep into Agent Hooks, the built-in governance framework in Azure SRE Agent t...
10/03/2026
Azure SRE Agent Now Builds Expertise Like Your Best Engineer Introducing Deep Context
What if SRE Agent already knew your system before the next incident? Your most experienced SRE didn't become an expert overnight. Day one: reading runbooks, studying architecture diagrams, asking a lot of questions. Month three: knowing which services are fragile, which config changes cascade, which log patterns mean real trouble. Year two: diagnosing a production issue at 2 AM from a single alert because they'd built deep, living context about your systems...
10/03/2026
Announcing general availability for the Azure SRE Agent
Today, we’re excited to announce the General Availability (GA) of Azure SRE Agent— your AI‑powered operations teammate that helps organizations improve uptime, reduce incident impact, and cut operational toil by accelerating diagnosis and automating response workflows. This GA release represents a fundamental leap forward—shaped by feedback from hundreds of preview customers—in how agentic AI can be applied to cloud operations, so teams...
10/03/2026
Building Reusable Custom Images for Azure Confidential VMs Using Azure Compute Gallery
Overview Azure Confidential Virtual Machines (CVMs) provide hardware-enforced protection for sensitive workloads by encrypting data in use using AMD SEV-SNP technology. In enterprise environments, organizations typically need to: Create hardened golden images
10/03/2026
From Text to Tables: Feature Engineering with LLMs for Tabular Data
While large language models (LLMs) are typically used for conversational purposes in use cases that revolve around natural language interactions, they can also assist with tasks like feature engineering on complex datasets.
10/03/2026
Using Different Azure Key Vault Keys for Azure SQL Servers in a Failover Group
Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) in Azure SQL Database encrypts data at rest using a database encryption key (DEK). The DEK itself is protected by a TDE protector, which can be either: A service-managed key (default), or A customer-managed key (CMK) stored in Azure Key Vault. Many enterprises adopt customer-managed keys to meet compliance, key rotation, and security governance requirements. When configuring Geo-replication or Failover Groups, Azure ...
10/03/2026
Microsoft Azure at KubeCon Europe 2026 | Amsterdam, NL - March 23-26
Microsoft Azure is coming back to Amsterdam for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026 in two short weeks, from March 23-26! As a Diamond Sponsor, we have a full week of sessions, hands-on activities, and ways to connect with the engineers behind AKS and our open-source projects. Here's what's on the schedule: Azure Day with Kubernetes: 23 March 2026 Before the main conference begins, join us at
10/03/2026
How to Create a Harness Pipeline and integrate with Azure
Building reliable, automated CI/CD pipelines is crucial for modern cloud applications. Harness — with its powerful pipeline orchestration — integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Azure, enabling teams to deploy applications faster, with stronger governance, security, and visibility. In this blog, you’ll learn how to create a Harness pipeline and integrate it with Azure services. We will walk through: Introduction to Harness and its role in CI/CD High-level explanati...
10/03/2026
Getting Started with Behave: Writing Cucumber Tests in VS Code
What is Behave? Behave is a BDD test framework for Python that allows you to write tests in plain English using Given–When–Then syntax, backed by Python step definitions. Key benefits: Human‑readable test scenarios using Gherkin Strong alignment between business requirements and test automation Easy integration with CI/CD pipelines Lightweight and IDE‑friendly Prereq...
10/03/2026
Build a Fully Offline RAG App with Foundry Local: No Cloud Required
A practical guide to building an on-device AI support agent using Retrieval-Augmented Generation, JavaScript, and Microsoft Foundry Local. The Problem: AI That Can't Go Offline Most AI-powered applications today are firmly tethered to the cloud. They assume stable internet, low-latency API calls, and the comfort of a managed endpoint. But what happens when your users are in an environment with zer...
10/03/2026
How to Build a Risk-Aware AI Agent with Internal Critic, Self-Consistency Reasoning, and Uncertainty Estimation for Reliable Decision-Making
In this tutorial, we build an advanced agent system that goes beyond simple response generation by integrating an internal critic and uncertainty estimation framework. We simulate multi-sample inference, evaluate candidate responses across accuracy, coherence, and safety dimensions, and quantify predictive uncertainty using entropy, variance, and consistency measures. We implement risk-sensitive selection strategies to balance confidence […] The post
10/03/2026
ByteDance Releases DeerFlow 2.0: An Open-Source SuperAgent Harness that Orchestrates Sub-Agents, Memory, and Sandboxes to do Complex Tasks
The era of the ‘Copilot’ is officially getting an upgrade. While the tech world has spent the last two years getting comfortable with AI that suggests code or drafts emails, ByteDance team is moving the goalposts. They released DeerFlow 2.0, a newly open-sourced ‘SuperAgent’ framework that doesn’t just suggest work; it executes it. DeerFlow is […] The post
10/03/2026
Securing devices faster with hotpatch updates on by default
Windows Autopatch is enabling hotpatch security updates by default to help secure devices even faster.This change in default behavior comes to all eligible[i] devices in Microsoft Intune and those accessing the service via Microsoft Graph API starting with the May 2026 Windows security update.Starting with the May 2026 Windows security update, Windows Autopatch is enabling hotpatch updates by default to help your organization get more secure, quicker.
09/03/2026
Andrew Ng’s Team Releases Context Hub: An Open Source Tool that Gives Your Coding Agent the Up-to-Date API Documentation It Needs
In the fast-moving world of agentic workflows, the most powerful AI model is still only as good as its documentation.Today, Andrew Ng and his team at DeepLearning.AI officially launched Context Hub, an open-source tool designed to bridge the gap between an agent’s static training data and the rapidly evolving reality of modern APIs.The post Andrew Ng’s Team Releases Context Hub: An Open Source Tool that Gives Your Coding Agent the Up-to-Date API Documentation It Needs appeared first on MarkTechPost.
09/03/2026
Anthropic Introduces Code Review via Claude Code to Automate Complex Security Research Using Advanced Agentic Multi-Step Reasoning Loops
Today, Anthropic is double-downing on a more ambitious vision: the AI agent that doesn’t just write your boilerplate, but actually understands why your Kubernetes cluster is screaming at 3:00 AM.With the recent launch of Claude Code […]The post Anthropic Introduces Code Review via Claude Code to Automate Complex Security Research Using Advanced Agentic Multi-Step Reasoning Loops appeared first on MarkTechPost.
09/03/2026
March update: What’s new in Security for partners
Introducing Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite— The next challenge is not building agents, it is operating them with trust at scale. Microsoft 365 E7 brings together Microsoft 365 E5, Entra Suite, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Agent 365 to enable a human-led, agent-operated enterprise.Microsoft is launching “Cyber Pulse,” a new Microsoft Security thought leadership series, starting with Issue 1: An AI Security Report.Submit your partner success story to showcase your impact, highlight your expertise, and demonstrate the measurable success you’re delivering to customers.
09/03/2026
Honoring Women Innovators: How Marisa Redd Is Expanding Childcare Access Through Technology
In Austin, access to childcare remains one of the biggest challenges facing working parents—and Marisa Redd, Senior Director at the Greater Austin YMCA, is helping reshape what’s possible.With Marisa's help, the YMCA introduced Tomorrow Academy, a forward‑thinking early learning model built to increase the availability of high‑quality, affordable childcare across the region.Supported by digital tools like Microsoft Teams, the organization has transformed how staff connect, coordinate, and share expertise.
09/03/2026
March update: What’s new for partners in AI Business Solutions
Microsoft 365 E7 brings together Microsoft 365 E5, Entra Suite, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Agent 365 to enable a human-led, agent-operated enterprise.Save up to 35% with these Microsoft 365 Copilot Business promotional offers, available to all CSP partners on annual commitments (monthly or annual billing) through June 30.Lead a 90-minute interactive Security Immersion Briefing on Microsoft Defender for Business Premium and Microsoft Purview for Business Premium (50–300 licenses) to serve as a trusted security advisor and empower customers to tackle rising cybersecurity threats. We’ve removed execution caps, so partners can now run unlimited briefings with up to 20 open at a time. With new delivery options, distributors and resellers can collaborate or deliver directly—creating more flexibility and scale.
09/03/2026
Learning Zone spotlight: How women won the vote
Women’s History Month: How voting rights were wonWomen’s History Month invites us to look back at the women who pushed boundaries and helped change the course of history.How women won the vote in Microsoft Learning Zone provides a structured, interactive way to explore this history in class. Students examine the contrasting approaches to the fight, analyze key figures, and compare British and American campaigns over time.
09/03/2026
Microsoft Agent Framework, Microsoft Foundry, MCP, Aspire を使った実践的な AI アプリを構築するサンプルが登場
その声に応え、私たちはオープンソースのサンプルアプリ『Interview Coach (面接コーチ)』を作りました。模擬就職面接を行う AI チャット web アプリです。完全なソースコードは GitHub で公開されています： Azure-Samples/interview-coach-agent-framework
09/03/2026
Microsoft Agent Framework, Microsoft Foundry, MCP, Aspire를 활용한 실전 예제 만들기
Microsoft Agent Framework과 Microsoft Foundry, MCP(Model Context Protocol), Aspire등을 어떻게 프로덕션 상황에서 조합할 수 있는지를 보여주는 오픈소스 Interview Coach 샘플입니다.AutoGen의 에이전트 추상화와 Semantic Kernel의 엔터프라이즈 기능(상태 관리, 타입 안전성, 미들웨어, 텔레메트리 등)을 하나로 통합했습니다. 또한 멀티 에이전트 오케스트레이션을 위한 그래프 기반 워크플로우도 추가했습니다.익숙한 패턴. 에이전트는 의존성 주입, IChatClient, 그리고 ASP.NET 앱과 동일한 호스팅 모델을 사용합니다.
09/03/2026
Partner Blog | Introducing Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite
Microsoft 365 E7 is the Frontier Suite, designed for a human-led, agent-operated enterprise, turning human intent into AI action that functions securely and at scale.Microsoft 365 E7 bundles Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Entra Suite, and Agent 365 to serve customers who are ready to scale AI with governance and security.Starting on April 1, 2026, to accelerate Microsoft 365 E5 to Microsoft 365 E7 upsell and Agent 365 adoption, Copilot + Power Accelerate will include Agent 365 across Immersion Briefings, Envisioning and proof of concept (PoC) engagements, and Deployment Accelerators. Microsoft 365 E7 and Agent 365 will also be included as eligible workloads for core tier one strategic product accelerators and growth levers in Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) incentives.
09/03/2026
Frontline shared mode expands to Germany West Central & Switzerland North
Today, I’m pleased to announce that Windows 365 Frontline in shared mode is now available in Germany West Central and Switzerland North within the Europe geography, bringing Cloud PCs even closer to customers across Europe.With Germany West Central and Switzerland North now supported, customers can place Cloud PCs closer to users to realize lower latency and local data residency through the Microsoft Cloud.Windows 365 Frontline in shared mode is built for workers who need short, task-based access to a Cloud PC and don’t require data persistence.
09/03/2026
Bringing AI assistance to basic plans in Microsoft Planner
Today, we are excited to announce that the Project Manager Agent in Microsoft Planner has been officially renamed to "Planner Agent," and its powerful AI-driven features will be generally available across both plan types.This means that basic and premium plan users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will have access to intelligent Planner Agent capabilities that help streamline project management and task work.These two features — status report generation and task execution — are the first Planner Agent skills for basic plans.
09/03/2026
Introducing effective settings: See security configurations enforced on your device
See exactly which security configurations are enforced on your deviceWith effective settings, administrators can see the effective value of each security setting on a specific device—along with the configuration source—and quickly identify configuration attempts that didn’t take effect.The effective settings tab is available as a new tab under the configuration management tab on the device page.
09/03/2026
Assigning Process Accountability to Group Policy Refreshes
Gaurav and Itay here with some updates to the Group Policy Service debug logging.Remote GP Update through GPMC and Invoke-GPUpdate, both leverage Scheduled Tasks to trigger a policy refresh on the target machine(s).Modifications to the Advanced Audit Policy configuration via the Local Security Policy console (SecPol) also triggers a GP Refresh.
09/03/2026
Upcoming Compute API Change: Always return non-null securityType
Starting with Azure Compute API version 2025‑11‑01, responses for Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) and Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) will include a non‑null securityType value in all operations.With Azure Compute API version 2025‑11‑01, all VM and VM Scale Set operations—including create, update, and GET—will always return a populated securityType field in the response.If you will be using Azure Compute API version 2025‑11‑01, review and update any code that assumes securityType may be null.
09/03/2026
Understanding Hash Join Memory Usage and OOM Risks in PostgreSQL
work_mem is commonly assumed to be a hard upper bound on per‑query memory usage.So, same amount of data being handled by the query in terms of shared memory, but totally different work_mem usage pattern due to the low cardinality and the join method (Hash Join) that put most of those rows in a single bucket and that is not limited by default, so, it can cause OOM errors at any time.Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server Query Store aggregates runtime and (optionally) wait stats over time windows and stores them in azure_sys, with views under query_store.*.
09/03/2026
A closer look at Work IQ
Work IQ is the intelligence layer that personalizes Microsoft 365 Copilot to you and your organization.It is the “brain” behind Copilot that understands context, relationships, and work patterns, so Copilot and agents can be faster, more accurate, and more secure than model companies that are built on connectors alone.Work IQ is comprised of three tightly integrated layers – data, context, and skills & tools. We’ll examine the components in each of these layers, highlight some of what’s coming to make Work IQ even better in the coming months, and share example prompts you can try to see the power of Work IQ in action.
09/03/2026
Enable agents to bring apps into the flow of work—while keeping IT in control
All pre-built partner app experiences will be available via the Microsoft 365 Agent Store by mid-April.MCP Apps and Apps SDK will roll out to GA on web and desktop later this month, with mobile following this spring.All agents can be monitored end‑to‑end using Agent 365—a unified control plane that gives IT a single place to see which agents are live, where they can act, and how they're being used.
09/03/2026
From draft to done: agentic Copilot in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint
Copilot in Word helps you turn working drafts into review-ready documents. It works in the same document your team is editing, so you can coauthor and iterate without creating—or reconciling—copies.Availability: Generally available today in Word on Windows, web, and Mac for Microsoft 365 Copilot users.Availability: PowerPoint is rolling out to web for Microsoft 365 Copilot users.
09/03/2026
Copilot in Outlook: New agentic experiences for email and calendar
Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot marks a shift from single-shot tasks to agentic experiences embedded in the apps where work happens.Copilot in Outlook is grounded in Work IQ—drawing on relevant emails, meetings, calendar preferences, and relationships so the output helps you get work done.Copilot in Outlook now helps you write your first draft directly in the canvas – then iterates with you to get it right. Instead of generating a one-off draft, Copilot writes in place and asks you clarifying questions (goal, audience, tone) and updates the email in place as you respond—so you can refine the message in a few quick turns until it’s ready to send—with every change visible in Outlook, no copy/paste or formatting surprises.
09/03/2026
Check Point and LoadSpring offer transactable solutions in Microsoft Marketplace
Microsoft partners like Check Point Software Technologies and LoadSpring Solutions deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Microsoft Marketplace.Learn about these offers below:Check Point Cloud Firewall as a Service: With AI-powered prevention, auto-scaling, and integration with Azure-native tools like Microsoft Sentinel, Check Point Cloud Firewall as a Service delivers comprehensive protection for applications, workloads, and data.
09/03/2026
Resource onboarding using Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode
Managing hosts and clusters at scale means understanding what role each system plays and ensuring the right tools are available for that role.Note: The Storage and Networking profile view are still in progress and planned for the general availability release of vMode.Start by creating a resource group to organize your hosts and clusters.
09/03/2026
AI Inferencing in Air-Gapped Environments
In this post we will explore how to deploy in a Kubernetes cluster a Hugging Face-hosted model and a NVIDIA NIM™ microservice, a prebuilt, optimized inference container for rapidly deploying the latest AI models, and at the same time protect your infrastructure against data theft.We will outline the process for deploying a Kubernetes cluster in Azure with the highest level of network security to prevent data exfiltration, and we will also demonstrate the deployment of container images and required model parameters for both optionsThis document presents a practical guide for deploying LLM inferencing solutions in isolated Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters.
09/03/2026
CPOR, DIPOR with a bit of DIOR - Microsoft Cloud usage attributions for Partners - EXPLAINED
As a valued Microsoft Partner you most likely noticed, that there are several types of options (CPOR, CUA, DPOR, MBS, PAL and PRACR) to get recognized and rewarded for your impact in the Microsoft ecosystem. Given their different purpose, you should always choose the option which suits your business needs best and represent the impact recognition you want to drive most. This article intends to provide clarity on the best possible usage for your scenario, so you are backed by a data driven approach.CPOR is a claims‑based model where one or more partners can claim servicing ownership of a Modern Work or Dynamics 365 subscription/workload via Partner Center.What it isPRACR is a KPI where partners report Azure consumption on behalf of a customer for workloads which run in the partners Azure tenant, but utilized by an end customer.
09/03/2026
The ‘Bayesian’ Upgrade: Why Google AI’s New Teaching Method is the Key to LLM Reasoning
Large Language Models (LLMs) are the world’s best mimics, but when it comes to the cold, hard logic of updating beliefs based on new evidence, they are surprisingly stubborn.A team of researchers from Google argue that the current crop of AI agents falls far short of ‘probabilistic reasoning’—the ability to maintain and update a […]The post The ‘Bayesian’ Upgrade: Why Google AI’s New Teaching Method is the Key to LLM Reasoning appeared first on MarkTechPost.
09/03/2026
Can Your M365 Copilot Offer Actually Win Customer Deals?
Note: This tool is designed for Microsoft partners operating within the AI Business Solutions commercial solution area who are building or publishing Microsoft 365 Copilot consulting service offers on the Microsoft Marketplace.M365 Copilot Offer Validation Assessment eliminates guesswork from marketplace offer development.M365 Copilot Offer Validation Assessment provides the objective, guidance-driven analysis you need to create marketplace listings that communicate your expertise, align with Microsoft co-sell priorities, and convert customer interest into engagement.
09/03/2026
The Nightmare of renewing NDES Enrollment Agent Certificates
By default, three version 1 certificate templates are assigned to your Certification Authority by the configuration routine of the NDES service:Provide a name for the new certificate template.NDES Enrollment Agent certificates are highly privileged and should never rely on legacy version 1 templates.
09/03/2026
A Coding Guide to Build a Complete Single Cell RNA Sequencing Analysis Pipeline Using Scanpy for Clustering Visualization and Cell Type Annotation
In this tutorial, we build a complete pipeline for single-cell RNA sequencing analysis using Scanpy.We start by installing the required libraries and loading the PBMC 3k dataset, then perform quality control, filtering, and normalization to prepare the data for downstream analysis.We then identify highly variable genes, perform PCA for dimensionality reduction, and construct […]
09/03/2026
Stop Burning Money in Azure Storage
Azure offers five access tiers — each with a different storage vs. access cost trade-off:Upload directly to the tier that matches the data's actual use.Moving or deleting blobs before the minimum retention period incurs prorated charges.
09/03/2026
Microsoft 365 Copilot can replace Power BI optimization experts today
Slow and inefficient Power BI reports are a widespread cause of low customer satisfaction, bloated costs, wasted compute capacity, and increased total cost of ownership.But what if you could save thousands of dollars in person-hours (often spent on external consultants) by using Microsoft 365 Copilot to analyze your Power BI Desktop files and generate a step-by-step mitigation plan for slow and inefficient reports?In this video, I’ll walk through my methodology for enabling M365 Copilot to read your Power BI Desktop files, produce a consultant-grade 20‑page assessment, and deliver a clear, actionable mitigation plan in less than 20 minutes.
09/03/2026
Andrej Karpathy Open-Sources ‘Autoresearch’: A 630-Line Python Tool Letting AI Agents Run Autonomous ML Experiments on Single GPUs
Andrej Karpathy released autoresearch, a minimalist Python tool designed to enable AI agents to autonomously conduct machine learning experiments.The project is a stripped-down version of the nanochat LLM training core, condensed into a single-file repository of approximately ~630 lines of code.It is optimized for execution on a single NVIDIA GPU.
09/03/2026
Modernizing On‑Prem File Servers: Azure Storage Mover and File Sync
Azure File Sync is a hybrid cloud storage service that centralizes on-premises file shares into Azure Files while preserving the experience of a local Windows file server.Azure Storage Mover is a fully managed migration service used to transfer file data into Azure Storage (Azure Blob containers or Azure file shares) with minimal downtime.In summary, Azure File Sync is an ongoing hybrid file service, and Azure Storage Mover is a one-time (or scheduled) migration service.
08/03/2026
Beyond Accuracy: Quantifying the Production Fragility Caused by Excessive, Redundant, and Low-Signal Features in Regression
At first glance, adding more features to a model seems like an obvious way to improve performance.In practice, however, this instinct often introduces hidden structural risks.The post Beyond Accuracy: Quantifying the Production Fragility Caused by Excessive, Redundant, and Low-Signal Features in Regression appeared first on MarkTechPost.
08/03/2026
Building Next-Gen Agentic AI: A Complete Framework for Cognitive Blueprint Driven Runtime Agents with Memory Tools and Validation
In this tutorial, we build a complete cognitive blueprint and runtime agent framework.We define structured blueprints for identity, goals, planning, memory, validation, and tool access, and use them to create agents that not only respond but also plan, execute, validate, and systematically improve their outputs.The post Building Next-Gen Agentic AI: A Complete Framework for Cognitive Blueprint Driven Runtime Agents with Memory Tools and Validation appeared first on MarkTechPost.
08/03/2026
How to Build Progress Monitoring Using Advanced tqdm for Async, Parallel, Pandas, Logging, and High-Performance Workflows
In this tutorial, we explore tqdm in depth and demonstrate how we build powerful, real-time progress tracking into modern Python workflows.We begin with nested progress bars and manual progress control, then move into practical scenarios such as streaming downloads, pandas data processing, parallel execution, structured logging, and asynchronous tasks.The post How to Build Progress Monitoring Using Advanced tqdm for Async, Parallel, Pandas, Logging, and High-Performance Workflows appeared first on MarkTechPost.
08/03/2026
Yann LeCun’s New AI Paper Argues AGI Is Misdefined and Introduces Superhuman Adaptable Intelligence (SAI) Instead
What if the AI industry is optimizing for a goal that cannot be clearly defined or reliably measured?That is the central argument of a new paper by Yann LeCun, and his team, which claims that Artificial General Intelligence has become an overloaded term used in inconsistent ways across academia and industry.The post Yann LeCun’s New AI Paper Argues AGI Is Misdefined and Introduces Superhuman Adaptable Intelligence (SAI) Instead appeared first on MarkTechPost.
08/03/2026
Google Launches TensorFlow 2.21 And LiteRT: Faster GPU Performance, New NPU Acceleration, And Seamless PyTorch Edge Deployment Upgrades
The most significant update in this release is the graduation of LiteRT from its preview stage to a fully production-ready stack.Moving forward, LiteRT serves as the universal on-device inference framework, officially replacing TensorFlow Lite (TFLite).This update streamlines the deployment of machine learning models to mobile and edge […]
07/03/2026
Microsoft Releases Phi-4-Reasoning-Vision-15B: A Compact Multimodal Model for Math, Science, and GUI Understanding
Microsoft has released Phi-4-reasoning-vision-15B, a 15 billion parameter open-weight multimodal reasoning model designed for image and text tasks that require both perception and selective reasoning.It is a compact model built to balance reasoning quality, compute efficiency, and training-data requirements, with particular strength in scientific and mathematical reasoning and understanding user interfaces.What the model […]
06/03/2026
The LLM Inference Optimization Stack: A Prioritized Playbook for Enterprise Teams
vLLM supports disaggregated prefill and decode and Ray Serve can orchestrate separate worker pools for each phase.The open-source model ecosystem has matured to the point where self-hosted inference on open-weight models - running on AKS with Ray Serve and vLLM - is a viable and often preferable alternative to proprietary API access.Part three covers the architecture decisions, security controls, and operational metrics that make enterprise inference deployable — and auditable.
06/03/2026
A Production-Style NetworKit 11.2.1 Coding Tutorial for Large-Scale Graph Analytics, Communities, Cores, and Sparsification
In this tutorial, we implement a production-grade, large-scale graph analytics pipeline in NetworKit, focusing on speed, memory efficiency, and version-safe APIs in NetworKit 11.2.1.We generate a large-scale free network, extract the largest connected component, and then compute structural backbone signals via k-core decomposition and centrality ranking.We also detect communities with PLM and quantify […]
06/03/2026
Available today: GPT-5.4 Thinking in Microsoft 365 Copilot
Today, we’re bringing OpenAI’s GPT‑5.4 Thinking to Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot Studio—available in addition to the recent GPT-5.3 Instant update.GPT-5.4 Thinking is now available in Copilot Studio early release cycle environments and begins rolling out today to Microsoft 365 Copilot users with priority access and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat users with standard access.Learn more about Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot Studio and start transforming work with Copilot today.
06/03/2026
OpenAI Introduces Codex Security in Research Preview for Context-Aware Vulnerability Detection, Validation, and Patch Generation Across Codebases
OpenAI has introduced Codex Security, an application security agent that analyzes a codebase, validates likely vulnerabilities, and proposes fixes that developers can review before patching.The product is now rolling out in research preview to ChatGPT Enterprise, Business, and Edu customers through Codex web.The product is designed for a […]
06/03/2026
Microsoft Pre-Day: Your first look at what’s next in Security
Kick off RSAC 2026 on Sunday, March 22 at the Palace Hotel for Microsoft Pre‑Day, an exclusive experience designed to set the tone for the week ahead.Hear keynote insights from Vasu Jakkal, CVP of Microsoft Security Business and other Microsoft security leaders as they explore how AI and agents are reshaping the security landscape.The experience concludes with opportunities to connect, including a networking reception and an invite-only dinner for CISOs and security executives.
06/03/2026
Title Plan Update - March 6, 2026
📁March 6, 2026 - Title Plan Now AvailableAccess the latest Instructor-Led Training (ILT) updates anytime at http://aka.ms/Courseware_Title_Plan to ensure you're always working from the most current version.📌 Reminder: To help you stay informed more quickly and consistently, we’ve moved to a weekly publishing cadence for the title plan.
06/03/2026
Microsoft Global Community Initiative Newsletter (Feb/Mar)
We are actively looking for Community Events to feature in upcoming General Sessions.In honor of Women’s History Month, join us for a special MGCI General Session spotlighting the incredible impact of Women in Tech and Allies communities across the Microsoft ecosystem.The Microsoft Solutions Women in Tech speaker directory on Sessionize is a go‑to resource for discovering talented women across the Microsoft ecosystem—and you can be part of it too.
06/03/2026
Google AI Releases Android Bench: An Evaluation Framework and Leaderboard for LLMs in Android Development
Google has officially released Android Bench, a new leaderboard and evaluation framework designed to measure how Large Language Models (LLMs) perform specifically on Android development tasks.The dataset, methodology, and test harness have been made open-source and are publicly available on GitHub.Benchmark Methodology and Task Design General coding benchmarks often fail to capture the […]
06/03/2026
Where Microsoft MVP Impact Meets Innovation: Microsoft 365 Community Conference 2026
Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) are the heartbeat of the Microsoft ecosystem—and at Microsoft 365 Community Conference 2026, your impact takes center stage.Join us April 21–23 in Orlando, Florida for the Microsoft 365 Community Conference, where innovation, community, and real-world expertise come together.Use discount code MVPS to save $200 on your conference pass.
06/03/2026
Advice for Startups Series: Microsoft for Startups
You can build something impressive and still struggle to get it adopted.regardless of how technically impressive the product is.When you build on familiar infrastructure and align with the broader Microsoft ecosystem, you remove friction from the buying process.
06/03/2026
Powerful image editing, now in PowerPoint
I am Rachelle Dong, a Product Manager on the PowerPoint team.You can now edit images directly inside PowerPoint for Windows, Mac, or the web, saving you the time and the hassle required to switch to a separate image-editing app.Select an image in your PowerPoint slide.
06/03/2026
MCP vs mcp-cli: Dynamic Tool Discovery for Token-Efficient AI Agents
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for connecting AI agents and applications to external tools, APIs, and data sources.MCP (Model Context Protocol) defines the standard for tool sharing and discovery. mcp-cli is the practical tool that makes MCP efficient for AI agents by implementing dynamic context discovery.For AI agent systems, dynamic discovery via mcp-cli is becoming the standard.
06/03/2026
Decision Matrix: API vs MCP Tools — The Great Integration Showdown 🥊
Audience: Engineers + Stakeholders (and anyone who's ever argued about API architecture at lunch)Date: March 2026Author: Sabyasachi Samaddar Purpose Somewhere, right now, two engineers are arguing about the "right" way to call an API. One swears by raw HTTP. The other just discovered MCP and thinks it's the greatest thing since 'git b...
06/03/2026
Liquid AI Releases LocalCowork Powered By LFM2-24B-A2B to Execute Privacy-First Agent Workflows Locally Via Model Context Protocol (MCP)
Liquid AI has released LFM2-24B-A2B, a model optimized for local, low-latency tool dispatch, alongside LocalCowork, an open-source desktop agent application available in their Liquid4All GitHub Cookbook.The release provides a deployable architecture for running enterprise workflows entirely on-device, eliminating API calls and data egress for privacy-sensitive environments.The post Liquid AI Releases LocalCowork Powered By LFM2-24B-A2B to Execute Privacy-First Agent Workflows Locally Via Model Context Protocol (MCP) appeared first on MarkTechPost.
06/03/2026
From Manual Document Processing to AI-Orchestrated Intelligence
Building an IDP Pipeline with Azure Durable Functions, DSPy, and Real-Time AI ReasoningWe use Azure Document Intelligence with the prebuilt-layout model to convert uploaded PDFs into structured Markdown — preserving tables, headings, and reading order.The third option is key: instead of routing through a third-party service, you deploy open-weight models directly on Azure as serverless API endpoints through Azure AI Foundry.
06/03/2026
Agents: Snack Pack
This Agents Snack Pack contains easy‑to‑digest content designed to help you understand agents, one piece at a time.Drill in the fundamentals: What are Microsoft 365 Copilot agents and how to use them |
06/03/2026
Rethinking “Allow my organization to manage my device” Why opt‑in enrollment works better for Intune
A new public preview feature in Microsoft Intune, we’ve introduced a toggle that allows admins to block automatic mobile device management (MDM) enrollment during the modern app sign-in flow on Windows.Keep “MDM user scope” set to All so enrollment is available when needed, but configure the new toggle “Disable MDM enrollment when adding a work or school account on Windows” to Yes so MDM enrollment is not automatically selected by default during app sign in.The new setting“Disable MDM enrollment when adding a work or school account on Windows”:
06/03/2026
Join the Agent 365 'Ask Microsoft Anything' session on March 18
Sign up and participate in the March 18 Agent 365 AMALearn more about the capabilities of Agent 365 in this live 'Ask Microsoft Anything' with product and engineering team experts!Meet the panel of Agent 365 experts
06/03/2026
Security in the agentic era: A new paradigm
Trust is the new control plane: A security leader's guide to the age of AI agentsBy 2027, Microsoft projects that more than 1.3 billion AI agents will be deployed globally — a number that rivals the entire US population.The Microsoft Work Trend Index reinforces the urgency: 95% of organizations are already using AI in some form.
05/03/2026
A Coding Guide to Build a Scalable End-to-End Machine Learning Data Pipeline Using Daft for High-Performance Structured and Image Data Processing
In this tutorial, we explore how we use Daft as a high-performance, Python-native data engine to build an end-to-end analytical pipeline.We start by loading a real-world MNIST dataset, then progressively transform it using UDFs, feature engineering, aggregations, joins, and lazy execution.Also, we demonstrate how to seamlessly combine structured data processing, numerical computation, and […]
05/03/2026
Google AI Releases a CLI Tool (gws) for Workspace APIs: Providing a Unified Interface for Humans and AI Agents
Integrating Google Workspace APIs—such as Drive, Gmail, Calendar, and Sheets—into applications and data pipelines typically requires writing boilerplate code to handle REST endpoints, pagination, and OAuth 2.0 flows. Google AI team just released a CLI Tool (gws) for Google Workspace. The open-source googleworkspace/cli (invoked via the gws command) provides a unified, dynamic command-line interface to […] The post
05/03/2026
Even simpler to Safely Execute AI-generated Code with Azure Container Apps Dynamic Sessions
AI agents are writing code. The question is: where does that code run? If it runs in your process, a single hallucinated import os; os.remove('/') can ruin your day. Azure Container Apps dynamic sessions solve this with on-demand sandboxed environments — Hyper-V isolated, fully managed, and ready in milliseconds. Thanks to your feedback, Dynamic Sessions are now easie...
05/03/2026
Process Explorer v17.1, SDelete v2.06, and Sysmon 1.5.1 for Linux
Process Explorer v17.1 This update to Process Explorer, an advanced process, DLL, and handle viewing utility, fixes a crash generated by processes with long names. SDelete v2.06 This update to SDelete, a command line utility for secure file deletion, adds suppo...
05/03/2026
How Netstar Streamlined Fleet Monitoring and Reduced Custom Integrations with Drasi
When a high-value container goes silent between waystations, logistics teams lose critical visibility, risking delays that can cascade into port congestion and missed connections. Netstar, a connected fleet solutions provider supporting customers like Maersk, faced this challenge as its operations scaled. Timely notifications of delays, arrivals, and status changes became critical to keeping cargo moving efficiently through port systems...
05/03/2026
Introducing GPT-5.4 in Microsoft Foundry
Today, we’re announcing OpenAI’s GPT‑5.4 to be generally available soon in Microsoft Foundry: a model designed to help organizations move from planning work to reliably completing it in production environments. As AI agents are applied to longer, more complex workflows; consistency and follow‑through become as important as raw intelligence. GPT‑5.4 combines stronger reasoning with built in computer use capabilities to support automation scenarios, and dependable execution across tools, files,...
05/03/2026
New Certification for machine learning operations (MLOps) engineers
Do your co-workers rely on you to deploy, operationalize, and maintain machine learning and generative AI solutions in production? Are you working at the intersection of data science, DevOps, and generative AI? If so, the Microsoft Certified: Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) Engineer Associate Certification is designed for you. This Certification validates your ability to operationalize not only traditional machine learning but also generative AI solutions on Azure,...
05/03/2026
OpenAI Releases Symphony: An Open Source Agentic Framework for Orchestrating Autonomous AI Agents through Structured, Scalable Implementation Runs
OpenAI has released Symphony, an open-source framework designed to manage autonomous AI coding agents through structured ‘implementation runs.’ The project provides a system for automating software development tasks by connecting issue trackers to LLM-based agents. System Architecture: Elixir and the BEAM Symphony is built using Elixir and the Erlang/BEAM runtime. The choice of stack focuses […] The post
05/03/2026
Simplify cross-tenant user migrations with Microsoft 365 orchestrator
Hi, Insiders! I am Rebecca Wood, a Product Manager on the Enterprise and Cloud team. I’m excited to tell you about cross-tenant orchestrated user data migration in Microsoft 365, our new product for moving user data and workloads between separate Microsoft 365 tenants. Simplify cross-tenant user migrations with Microsoft 365 orchestrator The orchestrator, also known as cross-tenant orchestrated user data migration, is a self-service product for customers undergoing mergers, ac...
05/03/2026
How to Design an Advanced Tree-of-Thoughts Multi-Branch Reasoning Agent with Beam Search, Heuristic Scoring, and Depth-Limited Pruning
In this tutorial, we build an advanced Tree-of-Thoughts (ToT) multi-branch reasoning agent from scratch. Instead of relying on linear chain-of-thought reasoning, we design a system that generates multiple reasoning branches, scores each branch using a heuristic evaluation function, prunes weak candidates, and continues expanding only the strongest paths. We combine an instruction-tuned transformer model with […] The post
05/03/2026
Sensitivity Labels in OneNote Now Generally Available
We’re excited to announce that sensitivity labels in OneNote have reached General Availability (GA)! This milestone marks a significant step forward in helping organizations protect sensitive information while enabling seamless collaboration across Microsoft 365. Why This Matters Sensitivity labels help organizations control how sensitive data is handled where work happens, including OneNote. Enterprise customers have consistently asked...
05/03/2026
Building a modern, secure, and seamless print experience for Windows
For more than three decades, printing has been an essential, but often fragmented, part of how people work. In every industry, across every type of business, printing is woven into daily workflows: reports sent to office printers, shipping labels generated on shop floors, contracts finalized for signature, and countless documents for routine tasks in between. Yet the underlying print experience has historically been compl...
05/03/2026
The Future of Identity: Self-Service Account Recovery (Preview) in Microsoft Entra
In the modern enterprise, the "Help Desk" is paradoxically both a vital resource and a massive security liability. As organizations move toward phishing-resistant, passwordless environments using passkeys and FIDO2 tokens, a critical question remains: What happens when a user loses their only authentication device? Historically, this required a phone call to a support agent. However, in an era of sophisticated social engineering and AI-generated deepfakes, a human agen...
05/03/2026
Unified AI Weather Forecasting Pipeline thru Aurora, Foundry, and Microsoft Planetary Computer Pro
Weather shapes some of the most critical decisions we make, from protecting our critical infrastructure and global supply chains, to keeping communities safe during extreme events. As climate variability becomes more volatile, an organization’s ability to predict, assess, and plan their response to extreme weather is a defining capability for modern infrastructure owners & operators. This is especially true for the energy and utility sector — even small delays in preparations and r...
05/03/2026
Announcing Public Preview: New Microsoft Teams VDI Optimization for Omnissa
Today, we’re excited to announce the tech preview of the new Microsoft Teams VDI optimization for Omnissa Horizon environments, bringing a modern, high-performance collaboration experience to customers running Teams in virtual desktops. This milestone, achieved in close collaboration with our counterparts from Omnissa’s engineering team, marks the next step in Microsoft’s broader journey to deliver feature parity, reliability, and performance consistency betwee...
05/03/2026
How the latest frontier models unlocked AI in SharePoint: Technical deep dive
Over three years, the SharePoint engineering team iterated through five major architectures for AI-powered page authoring. We over-constrained early models, underestimated discoverability, were delighted by new language model capabilities every few months, and learned to pivot fast when emerging approaches leapfrogged what we already had in flight. This post documents what worked, what didn't, and what we changed at each generation. If you're building AI features, or interested in the ...
05/03/2026
The Practical Path to Tech Leadership: How Women Can Turn Expertise Into Influence
By Guest Blogger Sucheta Gawade In recognition of International Women’s Day, I’d like to share practical, experience-based strategies women in tech can use to accelerate career growth, increase visibility, and overcome common advancement barriers. I’m a U.S.-based technology and thought leader with nearly tw...
05/03/2026
Bringing Organizational Knowledge into the Clinical Workflow
Every day, clinicians spend valuable time looking for information that lives in different places. An email thread from a specialist colleague. A Microsoft Teams discussion about a complex case. Updated organizational processes buried in SharePoint or OneDrive. This information provides context that could be critical to their workflows or help inform their decisions. But that context is not part of their clinical workflow. The result? Clinicians are forced to break their clinical workfl...
05/03/2026
Dragon Copilot centralizes trusted medical content and relevant contextual information in-workflow
Dragon Copilot delivers medical intelligence from trusted sources directly within clinical workflows for healthcare organizations in one solution. We are pleased to announce that we are expanding those knowledge sources with additional best‑in‑class content providers and enabling broader access to your organization’s internal sources with Microsoft 365 Copilot integration. Access information from new credible medical content...
05/03/2026
Why nursing needs a different kind of AI—and how Dragon Copilot delivers
The Dragon Copilot experience for nurses was made generally available (GA) in December 2025 with a clear mission: help nursing staff focus on care, not the computer. From the start, the goal was to create a comprehensive AI clinical assistant—one that works alongside nurses throughout their shift, reduces cognitive load, captures the full scope of care delivered, and translates real clinical work into automated next steps, including documentation—fundamentally transforming workflows to...
05/03/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: March 5, 2026
Learn about 154 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs. Get it now in our marketplace
05/03/2026
From dictation to intelligence at the cursor with Dragon Copilot Desktop
Today’s patient encounters are packed with friction that breaks clinicians’ flow, clouds clinical thinking, and drains the joy from practice. Instead of focusing on patients, listening, assessing, and collaborating on care, clinicians spend visits staring at a screen, wrestling with bloated EHRs, and acting as data entry clerks. They type into endless fields, check boxes, click buttons, and memorize arcane text shortcuts and key sequenc...
05/03/2026
Guide to Upgrade Azure Database for MySQL from 8.0 to 8.4
This guide merges Azure official documentation and best practices from real-world upgrades. Always refer to the latest Azure documentation and portal/CLI for any updates or discrepancies. 1. Background Why Upgrade? MySQL 5.7 reached end of community support in October 2023, and will enter extended support in August 2026. MySQL 8.0 will reach end of community support in April 2026 and will enter extended support in January 2027. <...
05/03/2026
Dragon Copilot brings AI into revenue cycle workflows
Many health systems treat revenue cycle performance solely as a downstream problem. Clinicians complete documentation, teams send notes to coders, queries follow, and everyone works backward to recover what was missed. In some cases, recovery isn’t even possible in this model. With the rise and pervasiveness of AI, there is an opportunity to rethink the model by improving documentation quality and comprehensiveness at the point of care. In this new model, reimbursem...
05/03/2026
Product suite on top of SharePoint - Intelligent Decisioning - SharePoint Partner Showcase
We are excited to share a new episode on our partner showcase series focused on SharePoint in Microsoft 365. In this brief discussion Tony Pounder (CTO), Andy Smith (Director) and
05/03/2026
Building High-Performance Agentic Systems
Most enterprise chatbots fail in the same quiet way. They answer questions. They impress in demos. And then they stall in production. Knowledge goes stale. Answers cannot be audited. The system cannot act beyond generating text. When workflows require coordination, execution, or accountability, the chatbot stops being useful. Agentic systems exist because that model is insufficient. Instead of treating the LLM as the product, agentic architecture embe...
05/03/2026
Troubleshooting Intermittent Query Failures on Azure SQL DB Read Replicas (Error 3947)
Recently, I worked on an interesting customer case involving intermittent query failures while fetching reporting data from a read replica. The customer was running their database on the Azure SQL Database Hyperscale service tier, utilizing the read scale-out replica to offload reporting traffic from the primary compute node. However, while loading reports, the application occasionally took longer than usual and then failed with the following error:<...
05/03/2026
YuanLab AI Releases Yuan 3.0 Ultra: A Flagship Multimodal MoE Foundation Model, Built for Stronger Intelligence and Unrivaled Efficiency
How can a trillion-parameter Large Language Model achieve state-of-the-art enterprise performance while simultaneously cutting its total parameter count by 33.3% and boosting pre-training efficiency by 49%? Yuan Lab AI releases Yuan3.0 Ultra, an open-source Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) large language model featuring 1T total parameters and 68.8B activated parameters. The model architecture is designed to optimize performance […] The post
05/03/2026
Can you use AI to implement an Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI)?
The Short Answer: Yes. And It's Better Than You Think. If you've worked in healthcare IT for any length of time, you've dealt with this problem. Patient A shows up at Hospital 1 as "Jonathan Smith, DOB 03/15/1985." Patient B shows up at Hospital 2 as "Jon Smith, DOB 03/15/1985." Patient C shows up at a clinic as "John Smythe, DOB 03/15/1985." Same person? Probably. But how do you prove ...
05/03/2026
Evaluating AI Agents: Techniques to Reduce Variance and Boost Alignment for LLM Judges
In an ideal world, an LLM judge would behave like an experienced Subject Matter Expert (SME). To achieve this, we must align the judge with SME preferences and minimize any systematic biases it exhibits. (See our
05/03/2026
🚀 The Great Foundry Shift: Microsoft Foundry New vs Classic Explained
Introduction If you've been working in the Azure AI ecosystem, you've likely noticed a seismic shift happening at ai.azure.com. What was once Azure AI Studio, then became Azure AI Foundry, and has now been rebranded as Microsoft Foundry — but the rebrand is the least interesting part. The architecture, portal experience, agent capabilities, and developer workflows have been fundamentally redesigned.<...
05/03/2026
How to Build an EverMem-Style Persistent AI Agent OS with Hierarchical Memory, FAISS Vector Retrieval, SQLite Storage, and Automated Memory Consolidation
In this tutorial, we build an EverMem-style persistent agent OS. We combine short-term conversational context (STM) with long-term vector memory using FAISS so the agent can recall relevant past information before generating each response. Alongside semantic memory, we also store structured records in SQLite to persist metadata like timestamps, importance scores, and memory signals (preference, […] The post
04/03/2026
From Guesswork to Clarity: GPP Diagnostics Improve in Windows Server 2025 and Windows 11 24H2
Hello AskDS readers! Sagi and Adesh here. Today we’re excited to talk about a change that finally closes one of the longest‑standing troubleshooting gaps in Group Policy Preferences (GPP). GPP ...
04/03/2026
Advancing Windows on Arm in Japan
Worldwide, customers are adopting Arm-powered Copilot+ PCs for the many benefits they provide over traditional PCs. These devices deliver industry-leading performance, outpacing competitors in both every day and demanding workloads, while offering breakthrough battery life that keeps users productive and creative for hours longer than before. With advanced AI acceleration built into every Copilot+ PC, users experience a new level of responsiveness and c...
04/03/2026
Vibe Coding for the NPU
If you just bought a Copilot+ PC and want to know what that NPU can actually do, this is for you. If you manage a fleet of them and need workload placement guidance, this is for you too. Cloud doesn’t have to be the default anymore. The NPU (Neural Processing Unit) is now a practical and accessible development target, making it possible to run advanced AI workloads directly on your device. This means you can take advantage of your PC’s local hardware to get fa...
04/03/2026
LangWatch Open Sources the Missing Evaluation Layer for AI Agents to Enable End-to-End Tracing, Simulation, and Systematic Testing
As AI development shifts from simple chat interfaces to complex, multi-step autonomous agents, the industry has encountered a significant bottleneck: non-determinism. Unlike traditional software where code follows a predictable path, agents built on LLMs introduce a high degree of variance. LangWatch is an open-source platform designed to address this by providing a standardized layer for […] The post
04/03/2026
What’s New in Microsoft Sentinel: March 2026
March brings a set of updates to Microsoft Sentinel focused on helping your SOC automate faster, onboard data with less friction, and detect threats across more of your environment. This month's updates include natural-language playbook generation for more flexible SOAR workflows, streamlined real-time data ingestion with CCF Push, and expanded Kubernetes visibility with a dedicated GKE connector. Together, these innovations help security teams simplify operations, move faster, and str...
04/03/2026
How to streamline Microsoft Marketplace private offers and IP co-sell with AI-powered automation
Kyle Heisner is a veteran GTM and Cloud Marketplace leader at Suger with extensive experience helping software companies scale through strategic partnerships and co-sell programs. He is known for transforming complex cloud ecosystems into clear, repeatable revenue motions.__________...
04/03/2026
Introducing Phi-4-Reasoning-Vision to Microsoft Foundry
Vision reasoning models unlock a critical capability for developers: the ability to move beyond passive perception toward systems that can understand, reason over, and act on visual information. Instead of treating images, diagrams, documents, or UI screens as unstructured inputs, vision reasoning models enable developers to build applications that can interpret visual structure, connect it with textual context, and perform multi-step reasoning to reach actionable conclusions. Today, w...
04/03/2026
Phi-4-Reasoning-Vision-15B: Use Cases In-Depth
Phi-4-Reasoning-vision-15B is Microsoft's latest vision reasoning model released on Microsoft Foundry. It combines high-resolution visual perception with selective, task-aware reasoning, making it the first model in the Phi-4 family to simultaneously achieve both "seeing clearly" and "thinking deeply" as a small language model (SLM). Traditional vision models only perform passive perception — recognizing "what's in"...
04/03/2026
Announcing the General Availability of the Azure Maps Geocode Autocomplete API
It was just last September that we were Introducing the Azure Maps Geocode Autocomplete API but now we’re excited to announce the general availab...
04/03/2026
Become a Microsoft Q&A Product Champion
The Microsoft Q&A Product Champions Program is a community-driven initiative created to recognize and support people who help others by sharing their knowledge across Microsoft Q&A product forums. If you’re already contributing—or want to start—this is your sign. Every question answered, every tip shared, and every problem solved has real impact. In the P...
04/03/2026
Make spring gardening simple with help from Microsoft Copilot
Spring is inching closer, and for many of us, that means it’s time to dust off the gardening gloves and give our outdoor spaces a fresh start. Whether you're nurturing a long‑loved garden or finally committing to planting something, Copilot can help you ease into the season with confidence. With a few well‑crafted prompts, you can turn Copilot into your personal landscape architect. Below are three spring‑ready prompts and what they can help you accomplish. Kickstart yo...
04/03/2026
Why Nonprofit Security Needs Urgent Attention
Nonprofits are facing a rapidly evolving security landscape. Cyberattacks are becoming faster, more targeted, and more sophisticated—driven in part by AI tools that make it easier for threat actors to automate reconnaissance, personalize phishing, and exploit vulnerabilities. Many nonprofits don’t discover breaches for months, leaving sensitive data and mission‑critical operations at risk. At the same time, nonprofits working in humanitarian aid, human rights, health, and advocacy are ...
04/03/2026
Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse sub-item metadata in Microsoft Purview
Working at the intersection of data security, engineering, and governance, the Microsoft Purview product team continually explores capabilities that reshape how organizations understand and manage their data estate. One such capability—the ability to scan and extract metadata from Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse—has generated genuine excitement and strong customer demand. We are pleased to announce the GA of Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse sub‑item metadata in Microsoft Purview. The Pro...
04/03/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: March 4, 2026
Learn about 107 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs. Get it now in our marketplace
04/03/2026
Defending Container Runtime from Malware with Microsoft Defender for Containers
In cloud-native environments, malware protection is no longer traditional antivirus — it is runtime workload security, ensuring containerized applications remain safe throughout their lifecycle. Many organizations focus on scanning container images before deployment. While image scanning is important, this does not stop runtime attacks. Image scanning protects be...
04/03/2026
Building Generative Pages in Power Platform
Artificial Intelligence is now embedded across the Power Platform, and Generative Pages are among its most significant innovations. Instead of manually arranging controls, configuring forms, linking views, or writing Power Fx expressions, creators can now describe their requirements in plain language. Power Apps then converts those instructions into a complete, responsive, and data-enabled page. This article explains how to build Generative Pages step by step, explores the technology b...
04/03/2026
Physical Intelligence Team Unveils MEM for Robots: A Multi-Scale Memory System Giving Gemma 3-4B VLAs 15-Minute Context for Complex Tasks
Current end-to-end robotic policies, specifically Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models, typically operate on a single observation or a very short history. This ‘lack of memory’ makes long-horizon tasks, such as cleaning a kitchen or following a complex recipe, computationally intractable or prone to failure. To address this, researchers from Physical Intelligence, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and MIT have […] The post
04/03/2026
Partner Case Study | Cognizant
Cognizant, a 2025 Microsoft Partner of the Year award winner and global services company, is redefining enterprise transformation across industries. By democratizing AI and embedding intelligent automation, Cognizant helps organizations modernize systems, reduce costs, and accelerate growth. Their unique approach—combining deep Microsoft expertise, strategic change management, and a culture of innovation—delivers measurable results, including millions in savings, productivity boosts, and reco...
03/03/2026
Meet SymTorch: A PyTorch Library that Translates Deep Learning Models into Human-Readable Equations
Can symbolic regression be the key to transforming opaque deep learning models into interpretable, closed-form mathematical equations? or Say you have trained your deep learning model. It works. But do you know what it has actually learned? A team of University of Cambridge researchers propose ‘SymTorch’, a library designed to integrate symbolic regression (SR) into […] The post
03/03/2026
The Rise of vLLM in Modern Cloud Development: Revolutionizing AI Inference
Introduction to the AI Cloud BottleneckThe emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) has revolutionized cloud applications, from universal chatbots to automated programming assistants. However, hosting these models in the cloud is notoriously expensive due to the massive computational and memory requirements of hardware accelerators like GPUs. During text generation, models autoregressively produce tokens one at a time, relying on a dynamically growing Key-Value (KV) cache that acts ...
03/03/2026
Announcing the General Availability of the Azure Arc Gateway for Arc-enabled Kubernetes!
We’re excited to announce the General Availability of Arc gateway for Arc‑enabled Kubernetes. Arc gateway dramatically simplifies the network configuration required to use Azure Arc by consolidating outbound connectivity through a small, predictable set of endpoints. For customers operating behind enterprise proxies or firewalls, this means faster onboarding, fewer change requests, and a smoother path to value with Azure Arc. What’s new: To Arc‑en...
03/03/2026
How to Build a Stable and Efficient QLoRA Fine-Tuning Pipeline Using Unsloth for Large Language Models
In this tutorial, we demonstrate how to efficiently fine-tune a large language model using Unsloth and QLoRA. We focus on building a stable, end-to-end supervised fine-tuning pipeline that handles common Colab issues such as GPU detection failures, runtime crashes, and library incompatibilities. By carefully controlling the environment, model configuration, and training loop, we show how […] The post
03/03/2026
Introducing GPT-5.3 Chat in Microsoft Foundry: A more grounded way to chat at enterprise scale
OpenAI’s GPT‑5.3 Chat marks the next step in the GPT‑5 series, designed to deliver more dependable, context‑aware chat experiences for enterprise workloads. The model emphasizes steadier instruction handling and clearer responses, supporting high‑volume, real‑world conversations with greater consistency. GPT‑5.3 Chat is coming soon to Microsoft Foundry, where teams will be able to deploy production‑ready chat and agent experiences that are standardized, governed, and built to scale acr...
03/03/2026
Modify Content in Teach: AI-powered tools to adapt your lessons in minutes
Already have great lesson materials? Now you can instantly align them to standards, differentiate for every learner, adjust reading levels, and add real-world examples — all without starting from scratch. Hi everyone! As educators, you have told us that some of your most time-consuming work is not creating lessons — it is adapting them. Adjusting a reading passage for different grade levels, aligning an existing activity to new curriculum standards, or adding scaffold...
03/03/2026
The Story of an Accidental MVP
By Guest Blogger Scott Helmers How I Became Microsoft MVP by Accident I became a Microsoft MVP by accident. In the early 2000s I was part of a team of three people who were designing a new, data-focused style of business process map. We decided to build our software as an add-in to Microsoft V...
03/03/2026
Legacy SharePoint Authentication (IDCRL) Is Retiring — What to Do Before May 1, 2026
Audience: SharePoint admins, M365 admins, and anyone running automations that access SharePoint Online/OneDrive. This post explains what’s changing, how to detect legacy sign-ins, and the practical steps to move to modern authentication (OAuth) before the cutoff dates. Microsoft is turning off a legacy SharePoint sign-in m...
03/03/2026
Available today: GPT-5.3 Instant in Microsoft 365 Copilot
Today, we’re excited to announce the addition of OpenAI’s GPT‑5.3 Instant to Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot Studio. Building on GPT‑5.2 Instant, GPT‑5.3 Instant improves the quality of everyday conversations with more reliably accurate responses, stronger and more expressive writing, and more direct, useful answers—helping Copilot provide a useful response when appropriate, rather than defaulting to disclaimers or declining to proceed. For questions that draw on informatio...
03/03/2026
How to build a Microsoft Marketplace channel practice
Over the past several years, I’ve worked closely with Microsoft channel partners around the world who are navigating one of the biggest route‑to‑market shifts our ecosystem has seen in decades. In a recent Microsoft Marketplace Partner Office Hour,
03/03/2026
Google Drops Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite: A Cost-efficient Powerhouse with Adjustable Thinking Levels Designed for High-Scale Production AI
Google has released Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, the most cost-efficient entry in the Gemini 3 model series. Designed for ‘intelligence at scale,’ this model is optimized for high-volume tasks where low latency and cost-per-token are the primary engineering constraints. It is currently available in Public Preview via the Gemini API (Google AI Studio) and Vertex AI. […] The post
03/03/2026
What’s New in the AI Curriculum for Instructor-Led Training
With the recent announcement of changes to the AI certification paths {The AI job boom is here. Are you ready to showcase your skills?}, we also have several updates coming to Microsoft's AI instructor‑led training (ILT) portfolio over the next few months. As part of the broader curriculum refresh across Mi...
03/03/2026
Managed Identity Support for Azure SQL Database Import & Export services (preview)
Today we’re announcing a public preview that lets Azure SQL Database Import & Export services authenticate with user-assigned managed identity. Now Azure SQL Databases can perform import and export operations with no passwords, storage keys or SAS tokens.
03/03/2026
The AI job boom is here. Are you ready to showcase your skills?
AI isn’t just changing jobs descriptions, it’s redefining how work gets done across every industry, role, and skill level. From marketing to manufacturing, AI is reshaping workflows, speeding up decisions, and opening entirely new career paths. And the impact is massive. According to the World Economic Forum The Future of Jobs Report 2025, advances in AI and tech could cr...
03/03/2026
SharePoint and OneDrive Site User ID Mismatch Explored
SharePoint / OneDrive request access dialog In this post, we walk through why users who look ‘healthy’ on the surface can still experience issues, and we cover practical ways to prevent and fix them across identity lifecycle management, rehire scenarios, tenant changes, and operational hygiene. Who this is for Microsoft 365 / SharePoint admins troubleshooting unexpected Access denied issues in SharePoint or O...
03/03/2026
Implementing / Migrating the BizTalk Server Aggregator Pattern to Azure Logic Apps Standard
While the article focuses on the migration path from BizTalk Server, the template is equally suited for new (greenfield) implementations any team looking to implement the Aggregator pattern natively in Azure Logic Apps can deploy it directly from the Azure portal without prior BizTalk experience. The template source code is open source and available in the
03/03/2026
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Customer Newsletter
Check out monthly news for the rest of the MTP suite here! What's new in Defender for Cloud? Now in public preview, Defender for Cloud provides threat protection for AI agents built with Foundry, as part of the Defender for AI Services plan. Learn more about this in our documentation. De...
03/03/2026
Malware scan results now in blob tags (ADLS Gen2 HNS | Public Preview)
If you’ve been using Defender for Storage malware scanning with ADLS Gen2 storage accounts that have Hierarchical Namespace (HNS), you probably know that the scan happens, but the result isn’t easy to see right where the file lives.
03/03/2026
Getting Started with the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace (for SaaS and AI Agents)
If you build software—whether you’re an early‑stage startup or a seasoned ISV—the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace is one of the fastest ways to reach millions of customers globally, simplify procurement, and enable transactable offers directly inside Microsoft purchasing channels. This post is a simple, public guide to help you understand what the Marketplace is, why it matters, and how to get your first offer live—whether that’s a SaaS app or an AI agent. Why the Microsoft Co...
03/03/2026
Deploying AI Agents to Production: Architecture, Infrastructure, and Implementation Roadmap
You've built an AI agent that works well in development.
03/03/2026
Migrating to the next generation of Virtual Nodes on Azure Container Instances (ACI)
As a quick recap, Virtual Nodes lets Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) burst pods onto Azure Container Instances (ACI) on‑demand, without managing or scaling extra VM nodes. In this article I will demonstrate how you can migrate an existing AKS cluster using the Virtual Nodes managed add-on (legacy), to the new generation of Virtual Nodes on ACI, which is deployed and managed via Helm. More information about Virtual Nodes on Azure Container Instances can be found
03/03/2026
Alibaba Releases OpenSandbox to Provide Software Developers with a Unified, Secure, and Scalable API for Autonomous AI Agent Execution
Alibaba has released OpenSandbox, an open-source tool designed to provide AI agents with secure, isolated environments for code execution, web browsing, and model training. Released under the Apache 2.0 license, the proposed system targets to standardize the ‘execution layer’ of the AI agent stack, offering a unified API that functions across various programming languages and […] The post
03/03/2026
Giving Your AI Agents Reliable Skills with the Agent Skills SDK
AI agents are becoming increasingly capable, but they often do not have the context they need to do real work reliably. Your agent can reason well, but it does not actually know how to do the specific things your team needs it to do. For example, it cannot follow your company's incident response playbook, it does not know your escalation policy, and it has no idea how to page the on-call engineer at 3 AM.
03/03/2026
The Hidden Architecture of Nano Architectures
Why does the same prompt, on the same checkpoint, with temperature set to zero, sometimes produce a different answer only when the system is under real load?If you have ever watched token three flip and then watched the whole completion diverge, you already know this is not a product bug. It is a systems fact. Here is the thing. In pr...
03/03/2026
Transparent and customizable onboarding for modern and legacy Windows devices
Onboarding all devices in your estate is paramount for strong security posture. In fact, Microsoft Threat Intelligence research shows that in the majority of ransomware attacks, the spreader machine was a device that was not yet onboarded. But customers often struggle to follow complex steps that differ by OS, accidentally duplicate devices because they can’t tell whether onboarding is in progress or failed, or have incorrect initial configuration settings causing system incompatibility. That...
03/03/2026
A Coding Guide to Build a Scalable End-to-End Analytics and Machine Learning Pipeline on Millions of Rows Using Vaex
In this tutorial, we design an end-to-end, production-style analytics and modeling pipeline using Vaex to operate efficiently on millions of rows without materializing data in memory. We generate a realistic, large-scale dataset, engineer rich behavioral and city-level features using lazy expressions and approximate statistics, and aggregate insights at scale. We then integrate Vaex with scikit-learn […] The post
03/03/2026
Alibaba just released Qwen 3.5 Small models: a family of 0.8B to 9B parameters built for on-device applications
Alibaba’s Qwen team has released the Qwen3.5 Small Model Series, a collection of Large Language Models (LLMs) ranging from 0.8B to 9B parameters. While the industry trend has historically favored increasing parameter counts to achieve ‘frontier’ performance, this release focuses on ‘More Intelligence, Less Compute.‘ These models represent a shift toward deploying capable AI on […] The post
03/03/2026
ExpressRoute Gateway Microsoft initiated migration
Objective The backend migration process is an automated upgrade performed by Microsoft to ensure your ExpressRoute gateways use the Standard IP SKU. This migration enhances gateway reliability and availability while maintaining service continuity. You receive notifications about scheduled maintenance windows and have options to control the migration timeline. For guidance on upgrading Basic SKU public IP addresses for other networking services, see
03/03/2026
Access fixes released in version 2602 (Build 19725.20126)
Here's a summary of bug fixes in the latest version of Access: Bug NameIssue FixedMonaco query editor applied unwanted autoformatting to passthrough queriesThe ...
02/03/2026
Part 1: Inference at Enterprise Scale: Why LLM Inference Is a Capital Allocation Problem
Part I: The Challenges — Why Inference Is Hard Challenge 1: The Pareto Frontier — You Cannot Optimize Everything Simultaneously Enterprise inference teams run into the same constraint regardless of stack: accuracy, latency, and cost are interdependent. Improving one almost always pressures the others. A larger model improves accuracy but increases latency and GPU costs. A smaller model reduces cost...
02/03/2026
Sunderland City Profile: Frontier transformation in practice
Download the SmartCitiesWorld City Profile – Sunderland Cities everywhere are facing the same pressure: modernize infrastructure, grow the economy, and improve quality of life, without widening inequality. Sunderland offers a credible path forward. Once defined by shipbuilding and coal minin...
02/03/2026
GA of update policy SQL Server 2025 for Azure SQL Managed Instance
We’re happy to announce that the update policy SQL Server 2025 for Azure SQL Managed Instance is now generally available (GA). SQL Server 2025 update policy contains all the latest SQL engine innovation while retaining database portability to the recent major release of SQL Server. Update policy is an instance configuration option that provides flexibility and allows ...
02/03/2026
Windows news you can use: February 2026
Welcome to the February 2026 edition of Windows news you can use. Today marks the start of Microsoft Technical Takeoff—four Mondays of demos, deep dives, and live Q&A for the IT pro community. If you're not tuning in live, all sessions will be recorded, so definitely bookmark any topics of interest and catch up on demand. Speaking of events, we're hosting another Se...
02/03/2026
Azure Databricks Lakebase is now generally available
Modern applications are built on real-time, intelligent, and increasingly powered by AI agents that need fast, reliable access to operational data—without sacrificing governance, scale, or simplicity. To solve for this, Azure Databricks Lakebase introduces a serverless, Postgres-compatible database architecture that separates compute from storage and integrates natively with the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform on Azure. Lakebase is now generally available in Azure Databricks enab...
02/03/2026
Claude in Copilot? Excel on Steroids!!
If you’ve been paying attention to Claude lately, you’ve probably noticed one thing. It’s really good at Excel. Not formulas.Not basic charts. I mean understanding structured data. Reasoning across multiple sheets. Spotting correlations. Pulling out insights. The kind of work that usually takes a data analyst or data scientist a lot of time. Here’s the part most people miss. You already get that capability inside Microsoft 365 Copilot. Let me sh...
02/03/2026
Accelerating SaaS success with reference code for Marketplace fulfillment API integration
Boost your growth and reach more customers by replicating your AWS app to Azure to sell through Microsoft Marketplace. This guide will introduce the essential building blocks required for a smooth replication experience and highlight how Marketplace Fulfillment APIs streamline and automate critical post‑purchase workflows. Future posts in this series will explore each topic in more depth to help streamline your multicloud strategy. This post is part of a series on repli...
02/03/2026
People Skills: Expanding skills intelligence to more users and surfaces across Microsoft 365
Since launching in June 2025, People Skills has become foundational within Microsoft 365—powering Copilot, a new generation of Copilot agents, and experiences across M365 that help employees and leaders make better decisions about work, learning, and talent. People Skills is core to
02/03/2026
Inference at Enterprise Scale: Architecting for Cost, Latency, and Efficiency
Part I: The Challenges — Why Inference Is Hard Challenge 1: The Pareto Frontier — You Cannot Optimize Everything Simultaneously Enterprise inference teams run into the same constraint regardless of stack: accuracy, latency, and cost are interdependent. Improving one almost always pressures the others. A larger model improves accuracy but increases latency and GPU costs. A smaller model reduces cost but risks quality degradation. Aggressive optimizati...
02/03/2026
Meet NullClaw: The 678 KB Zig AI Agent Framework Running on 1 MB RAM and Booting in Two Milliseconds
In the current AI landscape, agentic frameworks typically rely on high-level managed languages like Python or Go. While these ecosystems offer extensive libraries, they introduce significant overhead through runtimes, virtual machines, and garbage collectors. NullClaw is a project that diverges from this trend, implementing a full-stack AI agent framework entirely in Raw Zig. By eliminating […] The post
02/03/2026
Now in Foundry: Qwen3.5 Medium Model Series
This week's spotlight focuses on the Qwen3.5 Medium Model Series, now available in Microsoft Foundry. All three models are Vision Language Models (VLMs) built with early-fusion multimodal training, a 262K native context window, and support for 201 languages, released under Apache 2.0. They range from a 27B dense model optimized for latency-sensitive deployments to a 122B sparse Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model that activates only 10B parameters per inference call, deliver...
02/03/2026
Prepare for the retirement of the Microsoft 365 Fundamentals certification
To ensure our program offerings align with customer and market demand, we regularly review our applied skilling and certification requirements for Solutions Partner designations and retire certain certifications and skilling requirements. As part of that review, we're retiring the Microsoft 365 Fundamentals certification on March 31, 2026. As of this date, partners will no longer be able to obtain this certification. For partners who were certified before the retirement, the certificat...
02/03/2026
Windows Autopatch update readiness brings insights to IT
We’re excited to announce the general availability (GA) of Windows Autopatch update readiness, bringing a new level of clarity, control, and confidence to your update management experience. This release is designed to help you anticipate issues, streamline deployments, and maintain organizational resilience, all within your existing Windows Autopatch license. Windows Autopatch is available for customers with Windows Enter...
02/03/2026
Introducing new agentic building in SharePoint and more updates
Today, we celebrate SharePoint’s 25th birthday and kick off a 2-week global SharePoint hackathon, an open invitation for our entire community to build, experiment, and help shape what’s next. A huge thank you for being part of the best community in tech! We are grateful for the trust customers have placed in SharePoint to sto...
02/03/2026
The Next Chapter of Microsoft Teams in Virtualized Environments
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) has long been a critical deployment model for Microsoft Teams, especially for organizations that rely on centralized desktops for security, compliance, and scale. Over the past six years, Microsoft has invested heavily in improving the Teams experience in VDI—listening to customer feedback, addressing operational pain points, and rethinking how collaboration workloads should run in virtualized environments. That journey has now reached an important ...
02/03/2026
Logic Apps Aviators Newsletter - March 2026
In this issue: Ace Aviator of the Month News from our product group News from our community Ace Aviator of the Month March 2026's Ace Aviator:
02/03/2026
Departmental billing for Microsoft 365 Backup is now available!
As organizations continue to scale Microsoft 365, protecting data has become a technical and operational requirement. Microsoft 365 Backup delivers fast, native recovery for SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange—helping organizations respond quickly to accidental deletion, ransomware, and other disruptive events. Today, we’re excited to announce the general availability...
02/03/2026
AiCarpus and CallMiner offer transactable partner solutions in Microsoft Marketplace
Microsoft partners like AiCarpus and CallMiner deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Microsoft Marketplace. Learn about these offers below:
02/03/2026
Build Semantic Search with LLM Embeddings
Traditional search engines have historically relied on keyword search.
02/03/2026
Monthly news - March 2026
Microsoft DefenderMonthly news - March 2026 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from February 2026. We are now including news related to Defender for Cloud in the Defender portal. For all other Defender for Cloud news, have a look at the dedicated Defender for Cloud Monthly News <...
02/03/2026
Why Developers and DBAs love SQL’s Dynamic Data Masking (Series-Part 1)
Dynamic Data Masking (DDM) is one of those SQL features (available in SQL Server, Azure SQL DB, Azure SQL MI, SQL Database in Microsoft Fabric) that both developers and DBAs can rally behind. Why? Because it delivers a simple, built-in way to protect sensitive data—like phone numbers, emails, or IDs—without rewriting application logic or duplicating security rules across layers. With just a single line of T-SQL, you can configure masking directly at the column level...
02/03/2026
Demystifying the Client Repeatable Feature in Edge
Autofill behavior in modern browsers can sometimes feel confusing—especially when suggestions suddenly stop appearing even though data is still being entered correctly. In Microsoft Edge, this behavior is often caused by a feature called the Client Repeatable Feature. This article explains how Autofill works in Edge, how Frequently Saved Data (FSD) and Parsable Name are used, why Autofill suggestions get blocked, and how this behavior ...
02/03/2026
FireRedTeam Releases FireRed-OCR-2B Utilizing GRPO to Solve Structural Hallucinations in Tables and LaTeX for Software Developers
Document digitization has long been a multi-stage problem: first detect the layout, then extract the text, and finally try to reconstruct the structure. For Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs), this often leads to ‘structural hallucinations’—disordered rows, invented formulas, or unclosed syntax. The FireRedTeam has released FireRed-OCR-2B, a flagship model designed to treat document parsing as a […] The post
02/03/2026
How to Build an Explainable AI Analysis Pipeline Using SHAP-IQ to Understand Feature Importance, Interaction Effects, and Model Decision Breakdown
In this tutorial, we build an advanced explainable AI analysis pipeline using SHAP-IQ to understand both feature importance and interaction effects directly inside our Python environment. We load a real-world dataset, train a high-performance Random Forest model, and then apply the SHAP-IQ interaction index to compute precise, theoretically grounded explanations of model predictions. We extract […] The post
02/03/2026
Google AI Introduces STATIC: A Sparse Matrix Framework Delivering 948x Faster Constrained Decoding for LLM Based Generative Retrieval
In industrial recommendation systems, the shift toward Generative Retrieval (GR) is replacing traditional embedding-based nearest neighbor search with Large Language Models (LLMs). These models represent items as Semantic IDs (SIDs)—discrete token sequences—and treat retrieval as an autoregressive decoding task. However, industrial applications often require strict adherence to business logic, such as enforcing content freshness or […] The post
01/03/2026
Foundry Local Web UI for IIS
If you've been exploring local AI with Microsoft Foundry Local, you've learned that running a chatbot frontend on Windows Server or Windows Client that you can access over the network comes with a challenging set of dependencies. FoundryLocalWebUI is a simple, self-contained web frontend for Foundry Local that runs on IIS, works on both Windows Server and Windows Clien...
01/03/2026
How to Design a Production-Grade Multi-Agent Communication System Using LangGraph Structured Message Bus, ACP Logging, and Persistent Shared State Architecture
In this tutorial, we build an advanced multi-agent communication system using a structured message bus architecture powered by LangGraph and Pydantic. We define a strict ACP-style message schema that allows agents to communicate via a shared state rather than calling each other directly, enabling modularity, traceability, and production-grade orchestration. We implement three specialized agents, a […] The post
01/03/2026
Alibaba Team Open-Sources CoPaw: A High-Performance Personal Agent Workstation for Developers to Scale Multi-Channel AI Workflows and Memory
As the industry moves from simple Large Language Model (LLM) inference toward autonomous agentic systems, the challenge for devs have shifted. It is no longer just about the model; it is about the environment in which that model operates. A team of researchers from Alibaba released CoPaw, an open-source framework designed to address this by […] The post
01/03/2026
A Complete End-to-End Coding Guide to MLflow Experiment Tracking, Hyperparameter Optimization, Model Evaluation, and Live Model Deployment
In this tutorial, we build a complete, production-grade ML experimentation and deployment workflow using MLflow. We start by launching a dedicated MLflow Tracking Server with a structured backend and artifact store, enabling us to track experiments in a scalable, reproducible manner. We then train multiple machine learning models using a nested hyperparameter sweep while automatically […] The post
01/03/2026
Claude in Copilot? Excel on Steriods!!
If you’ve been paying attention to Claude lately, you’ve probably noticed one thing. It’s really good at Excel. Not formulas.Not basic charts. I mean understanding structured data. Reasoning across multiple sheets. Spotting correlations. Pulling out insights. The kind of work that usually takes a data analyst or data scientist a lot of time. Here’s the part most people miss. You already get that capability inside Microsoft 365 Copilot. Let me sh...
28/02/2026
GenRec Direct Learning: Moving Ranking from Feature Pipelines to Token-Native Sequence Modeling
Authors: Chunlong Yu, Han Zheng, Jie Zhu, I-Hong Jhuo, Li Xia, Lin Zhu, Sawyer Shen TL;DR Most modern ranking stacks rely on large generative models as feature extractors
28/02/2026
Google DeepMind Introduces Unified Latents (UL): A Machine Learning Framework that Jointly Regularizes Latents Using a Diffusion Prior and Decoder
Generative AI’s current trajectory relies heavily on Latent Diffusion Models (LDMs) to manage the computational cost of high-resolution synthesis. By compressing data into a lower-dimensional latent space, models can scale effectively. However, a fundamental trade-off persists: lower information density makes latents easier to learn but sacrifices reconstruction quality, while higher density enables near-perfect reconstruction but […] The post
28/02/2026
Grok 4.0 Goes GA in Microsoft Foundry and Grok 4.1 Fast Arrives with Major Enhancements
We first brought Grok 4.0 to Microsoft Foundry in September 2025, marking an important milestone in expanding Foundry’s multi-model ecosystem with frontier reasoning models from xAI. Since then, customer interest and usage have continued to build as developers explored Grok’s strengths in fast reasoning, sense-making, and interpretation of complex, ambiguous information. Today, we’re excited to announce that Grok 4.0 is now gen...
28/02/2026
A Coding Implementation to Build a Hierarchical Planner AI Agent Using Open-Source LLMs with Tool Execution and Structured Multi-Agent Reasoning
In this tutorial, we build a hierarchical planner agent using an open-source instruct model. We design a structured multi-agent architecture comprising a planner agent, an executor agent, and an aggregator agent, where each component plays a specialized role in solving complex tasks. We use the planner agent to decompose high-level goals into actionable steps, the […] The post
28/02/2026
Part 2: Safely Cleaning Orphaned Records in Change Tracking Side Tables
Applies to: Azure SQL Database (Change Tracking enabled) Recap (Part 1) In Part 1, we covered how to detect “orphaned” records in Change Tracking (CT) side tables — rows whose sys_change_xdes_id no longer has a matching transaction entry in the commit table (sys.syscommittab). This situation often leads to unexpected CT growth and “stuck cleanup” symptoms because the mapping data required for normal cleanup is missing...
28/02/2026
Troubleshooting Change Tracking cleanup growth and orphaned rows in Azure SQL Database
Applies to: Azure SQL DatabaseScenario: Change Tracking (CT) side tables grow unexpectedly, and “orphaned” rows appear after switching between auto-cleanup and custom/scheduled manual cleanup. The problem (what we observed) In the case tracked, the discussion focused on Change Tracking cleanup behavior—including unexpected growth in CT side tables and orphaned records. The customer also ...
28/02/2026
Cannot enable Change Data Capture (CDC) on Azure SQL Database: Msg 22830 + Error 40529 (SUSER_SNAME)
Issue While enabling CDC at the database level on Azure SQL Database using: EXEC sys.sp_cdc_enable_db; GO the operation fails. Error The customer observed the following failure when running sys.sp_cdc_enable_db: Msg 22830: Could not update the metadata that indicates the database is enabled for Change Data Capture. Failure occurred when executing drop user cdc ...
28/02/2026
DORA exit planning for Azure SQL Database: a practical, “general guidance” blueprint
Why this matters: Under the EU Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), many financial entities are strengthening requirements around ICT risk management, third‑party risk oversight, and—critically—exit planning / substitutability. Microsoft provides resources to help customers navigate DORA, including a DORA compliance hub in the Microsoft Trust Center. This post distills general guida...
28/02/2026
Offline vs. Immutable Backups for Azure SQL Database (General Guidance)
Security and compliance teams often ask for “offline backups” and “immutable backups” as part of ransomware resilience, audit readiness, and recovery strategy. In Azure SQL Database, these terms map to different capabilities and operating models. Immutable backups (WORM) are supported natively for Long-Term Retention (LTR) backups in Azure SQL Database, using time-based and ...
28/02/2026
How to Build Interactive Geospatial Dashboards Using Folium with Heatmaps, Choropleths, Time Animation, Marker Clustering, and Advanced Interactive Plugins
In this Folium tutorial, we build a complete set of interactive maps that run in Colab or any local Python setup. We explore multiple basemap styles, design rich markers with HTML popups, and visualize spatial density using heatmaps. We also create region-level choropleth maps from GeoJSON, scale to thousands of points using marker clustering, and […] The post
27/02/2026
Running Text to Image and Text to Video with ComfyUI and Nvidia H100 GPU
This guide provides instructions on how to set up and run Text to Image and Text to Video generation using ComfyUI with an Nvidia H100 GPU on Azure VMs. ComfyUI is a node-based user interface for Stable Diffusion and other AI models. It allows users to create complex workflows for image and video generation using a vi...
27/02/2026
Unlocking High-Performance Inference for DeepSeek with NVFP4 on NVIDIA Blackwell
Summary We partnered closely with NVIDIA to unlock high-performance single-node inference for DeepSeek-V3.2 on NVIDIA Blackwell. By leveraging NVIDIA’s new NVFP4 checkpoint for DeepSeek-V3.2 combined with NVIDIA TensorRT LLM on NVIDIA Blackwell, we achieved breakthrough inference performance. These experiments were performed on a single node (2 Grace Blackwell s...
27/02/2026
Title Plan Update - February 27, 2026
📁February 27, 2026 - Title Plan Now Available Access the latest Instructor-Led Training (ILT) updates anytime at
27/02/2026
Agent mode in Excel now works with your local files
Hello Insiders! I am Prash Shirolkar, a Product Manager on the Excel team. I am thrilled to announce that Agent mode in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat now enables you to query modern (.xlsx, .xlsb, .xlsm) locally stored Excel workbooks on Windows and Mac desktop. Agent mode in Excel now works with your local files Previously, insights and analysis from Excel Agent mode were limited to Excel workbooks stored in the cloud. With this new feature, analyzing your locally saved Excel wo...
27/02/2026
Unlocking NVIDIA Blackwell for DeepSeek: A Collaborative Breakthrough in High-Performance Inference
Summary We partnered closely with NVIDIA to unlock high-performance inference for DeepSeek-V3.2 on the NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 platform. By leveraging NVIDIA’s new NVFP4 checkpoint for DeepSeek-V3.2 combined with TensorRT-LLM on Blackwell GPUs, we achieved breakthrough inference performance. Using an aligned apples-to-apples benchmark met...
27/02/2026
Sakana AI Introduces Doc-to-LoRA and Text-to-LoRA: Hypernetworks that Instantly Internalize Long Contexts and Adapt LLMs via Zero-Shot Natural Language
Customizing Large Language Models (LLMs) currently presents a significant engineering trade-off between the flexibility of In-Context Learning (ICL) and the efficiency of Context Distillation (CD) or Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT). Tokyo-based Sakana AI has proposed a new approach to bypass these constraints through cost amortization. In two of their recent papers, they introduced Text-to-LoRA (T2L) and […] The post
27/02/2026
Ask Microsoft Anything: Data & AI Security in the Real World
At RSA this year, we’re hosting Ask the Experts: Data & AI Security in the Real World a live, unscripted conversation with Microsoft Security engineers and product leaders who are actively building and securing AI systems on a scale. And if you’re not attending in person, you can join the conversation online through Tech Community.
27/02/2026
Microsoft Foundry: An End-to-End Platform for Building, Governing, and Scaling AI
Microsoft Foundry: What It Is and How to Get Started As organizations accelerate their adoption of AI, one challenge consistently emerges: how to move from experimentation to production at scale in a secure, responsible, and efficient way. Microsoft Foundry exists to address exactly that challenge. What Is Microsoft Foundry? Microsoft Foundry is an end-to-end platform experience that brings together Microsoft’s AI development, deployment, and governance capabilities i...
27/02/2026
Microsoft at NVIDIA GTC 2026
Microsoft returns to NVIDIA GTC 2026 in San Jose with a strong presence across conference sessions, in‑booth theater talks, live demos, and executive‑level ancillary events. Together with NVIDIA and our partner ecosystem, Microsoft is showcasing how Azure AI infrastructure enables AI training, inference, and production at global...
27/02/2026
Copilot can reschedule conflicting events in Outlook
Hi, Insiders! I’m Julia Foran, a Principal Product Manager on the Microsoft Time and Places team. I’m excited to share with you a new Microsoft 365 Copilot capability in new Outlook for Windows and Outlook for the web that can help you manage conflicting meetings and appointments in your busy calendar. Copilot can reschedule conflicting events in Outlook You can now have Copilot in Outlook reschedule personal appointments and one-on-one meetings if a conflicting event arises t...
27/02/2026
What’s New in Microsoft 365 Copilot | February 2026
Welcome to the February 2026 edition of What's New in Microsoft 365 Copilot! Every month, we highlight new features and enhancements to keep Microsoft 365 admins up to date with Copilot features that help your users be more productive and efficient in the apps they use every day. Also new this month—the Microsoft Agent 365 blog and discussion space on Microsoft Tech Community. We recommend fol...
27/02/2026
Top 5 Microsoft Sentinel Queries for Threat Hunting
Threat hunting in Microsoft Sentinel goes beyond relying on scheduled analytics rules. It’s about proactively asking better questions of your data to uncover stealthy or emerging attacker behavior before it turns into an incident. Effective hunting helps security teams spot activity that may never trigger an alert but still represents meaningful risk. Over time, these proactive hunts strengthen overall detection coverage and improve SOC maturity. In this post, I’ll walk through five hi...
27/02/2026
Top 5 Microsoft Sentinel Queries for Threat Hunting
Threat hunting in Microsoft Sentinel goes beyond relying on scheduled analytics rules. It’s about proactively asking better questions of your data to uncover stealthy or emerging attacker behavior before it turns into an incident. Effective hunting helps security teams spot activity that may never trigger an alert but still represents meaningful risk. Over time, these proactive hunts strengthen overall detection coverage and improve SOC maturity. In this post, I’ll walk through five hi...
27/02/2026
Can LLM Embeddings Improve Time Series Forecasting? A Practical Feature Engineering Approach
Using large language models (LLMs) — or their outputs, for that matter — for all kinds of machine learning-driven tasks, including predictive ones that were already being solved long before language models emerged, has become something of a trend.
27/02/2026
What’s New in Windows Group Policy Preferences Debug Logging
Hello again — this is Potti Tagore Nadh from Directory Services team. When troubleshooting Windows components, administrators often rely on enhanced logging to diagnose issues quickly and accurately. Group Policy Preferences (GPP) provide verbose debug logging capabilities for each client-side extension (CSE). Traditionally, these settings were available only through domain-based Group Policy Objects (GPOs). With the release of February 2026 preview updates on Windows 11 24H2 an...
27/02/2026
Optimising AI Costs with Microsoft Foundry Model Router
Microsoft Foundry Model Router analyses each prompt in real-time and forwards it to the most appropriate LLM from a pool of underlying models. Simple requests go to fast, cheap models; complex requests go to premium ones, all automatically. I built an interactive demo app so you can see the routing decisions, measure latencies, and compare costs you...
27/02/2026
Creating a Fun Multi-Agent Content Strategy System with Microsoft Agent Framework
That's what we're building in this tutorial. Using Microsoft Agent Framework, we'll create a multi-agent system where three specialised AI agents collaborate to help gaming content creators craft posts that actually perform. One agent generates platform-native content. Another evaluates it the way TikTok's, Twitter's, or YouTube's recommendation algorithm would. A third reacts as a real audience member, complete with the slang, biases, and short attention span of an actual person scrolling th...
27/02/2026
Perplexity Just Released pplx-embed: New SOTA Qwen3 Bidirectional Embedding Models for Web-Scale Retrieval Tasks
Perplexity has released pplx-embed, a collection of multilingual embedding models optimized for large-scale retrieval tasks. These models are designed to handle the noise and complexity of web-scale data, providing a production-ready alternative to proprietary embedding APIs. Architectural Innovations: Bidirectional Attention and Diffusion Most Large Language Models (LLMs) utilize causal, decoder-only architectures. However, for embedding tasks, […] The post
27/02/2026
Building AI Agents That Wait For Humans
The Problem You have an AI agent that's brilliant at analyzing production incidents. It can examine logs, correlate metrics, identify root causes, and propose remediation steps in seconds. But here's the thing -- you don't want it executing changes to production without human oversight. So you build a workflow: Agent analyzes the incident Human reviews the analysis
27/02/2026
Announcing ReFS Boot for Windows Server Insiders
We’re excited to announce that Resilient File System (ReFS) boot support is now available for Windows Server Insiders in Insider Preview builds. For the first time, you can install and boot Windows Server on an ReFS-formatted boot volume directly through the setup UI. With ReFS boot, you can finally bring modern resilience, scalability, and performance to your server’s most critical volume — the OS boot volume. Why ReFS Boot? Modern workloads demand more from ...
27/02/2026
Word, Excel and PowerPoint Agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot: Overview + live demo- February 2026 M365 Champions Community call
Hello Champions! Here’s a recap and top Q+A from our February M365 Champions monthly call of 2026, featuring Word, Excel and PowerPoint Agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot with Alex Yang, Chelsea Fesik and Sangeeta Kul...
27/02/2026
Microsoft Research Introduces CORPGEN To Manage Multi Horizon Tasks For Autonomous AI Agents Using Hierarchical Planning and Memory
Microsoft researchers have introduced CORPGEN, an architecture-agnostic framework designed to manage the complexities of realistic organizational work through autonomous digital employees. While existing benchmarks evaluate AI agents on isolated, single tasks, real-world corporate environments require managing dozens of concurrent, interleaved tasks with complex dependencies. The research team identifies this distinct problem class as Multi-Horizon Task […] The post
27/02/2026
USB Driver Documentation Updates on UCSI, USB4 Testing
Over the past few months, we've been running a freshness pass across the USB driver documentation on Microsoft Learn and the
27/02/2026
🎟️ Backstage Pass to CommunityDays.org
Ever wondered what really happens behind the scenes at CommunityDays.org? The February Microsoft Global Community Initiative (MGCI) General Session pulled back the curtain and delivered a true backstage pass - complete with a hands‑on walkthrough of the platform. Led by
26/02/2026
Accelerate massive growth by co-selling through Microsoft Marketplace with App Advisor guidance
Co-selling with Microsoft is one of the most powerful growth levers available to software companies to sell to enterprises. But on its own, co-sell is not a strategy. The real acceleration happens when you combine them. When you publish a transactable offer in Microsoft Marketplace and make it Azure IP co-sell eligible, you unlock joint selling with...
26/02/2026
Unlocking value with Microsoft Sentinel data lake
As security telemetry explodes and AI‑driven defense becomes the norm, it is critical to centralize and retain massive volumes of data for deep analysis and long‑term insights. Security teams are fundamentally rethinking how they manage, analyze, and act on security data. The Microsoft Sentinel data lake is a ...
26/02/2026
Finding and Remediating EWS App Usage Before Retirement
In this post, we wanted to share a practical walk-through of discovering which Azure AD app registrations are still using Exchange Web Services (EWS), plus what the Kiosk/Frontline license changes mean as you plan your move to Microsoft Graph. Microsoft has announced that Exchange Online EWS blocking with start on October 1, 2026. If you have line-of-business apps, third-party tools, or automation that still depends on EWS, you need two things: (1) an inventory of what’s using EWS toda...
26/02/2026
Viva Engage masterclass season 2—Session 3: Campaigns and storytelling
When communication is intentional, it doesn’t just inform. It creates clarity and connection. In Session 3 of the Viva Engage Masterclass (season 2), we covered practical ways to build that impact with Storylines, Campaigns, and series-based storytelling.
26/02/2026
Oracle Database@Azure Is Now Generally Available in West Europe (Amsterdam)
As organizations across Europe accelerate their cloud modernization and AI adoption, data locality, compliance, and performance remain critical decision factors. Over the past year, Microsoft and Oracle have worked closely to rapidly expand the global footprint of Oracle Database@Azure, bringing Oracle’s enterprise‑grade database services natively into Azure datacenters around the world. Today, we are excited to announce that Oracle Database@Azure is now g...
26/02/2026
Azure Container Registry Premium SKU Now Supports 100 TiB Storage
Today, we're excited to announce that Azure Container Registry Premium SKU now supports up to 100 TiB of registry storage—a 2.5x increase from the previous 40 TiB limit, and a 5x increase from the original 20 TiB limit just two years ago. We've also improved geo-replication data sync speed, reducing data sync times for new replicas. We're also introducing an updated Portal experience
26/02/2026
From ESPN to the Spreadsheet Arena: How Excel MVPs Powered the Microsoft Excel World Championship
If you’ve ever watched someone do serious data work in Excel - building a model that feels like magic or using a perfectly crafted LAMBDA to do in one line what used to take a page of helper columns - you already understand the spirit...
26/02/2026
From AI pilots to public decisions: what it really takes to close the intelligence gap
Across the public sector, the conversation about AI has shifted. The question is no longer whether AI can generate insight—most leaders have already seen impressive pilots. The harder question is whether those insights survive the realities of government: public scrutiny, auditability, cross‑department delivery, and the need to explain decisions in plain language. That challenge was recently articulated by
26/02/2026
Dashboards with Grafana - Now in Azure Portal for PostgreSQL
Monitoring Azure Database for PostgreSQL just got significantly simpler. With the new Azure Monitor Dashboards with Grafana, you can visualize key metrics and logs directly inside Azure Portal - no Grafana servers to deploy, no configuration to manag...
26/02/2026
Azure SRE Agent Architecture and Creation: Practical Benefits for SAP on Azure Customers
Introduction: SRE Agent is an AI-powered service designed to support site reliability engineering practices through automation and intelligent decision-making. It reduces operational toil, improves uptime, and delivers consistent results by seamlessly integrating with Azure services and external systems to perform operational tasks wit...
26/02/2026
What's New in Microsoft Intune – February
Every IT environment has workarounds. Policies are duplicated instead of edited because there's no approval process. Apple software updates are pushed to every device because Declarative Device Management (DDM) policies couldn't filter by ownership type. Workarounds aren't just inconvenient. They can increase risk. Duplicate policies, broad software updates, and unchecked changes expand the attack surface ...
26/02/2026
Partner Blog | Build customer trust at scale with role-based certifications
As AI moves from experimentation to production, customers are raising the standard for what “ready” looks like. They want partners who can design and deliver solutions with security and responsible AI in mind, scope work accurately, and execute reliably across geographies and teams. In this environment, certifications are no longer a nice-to-have. They are a signal of capability and a practical way to build consistency at scale. A
26/02/2026
Google AI Just Released Nano-Banana 2: The New AI Model Featuring Advanced Subject Consistency and Sub-Second 4K Image Synthesis Performance
In the escalating ‘race of “smaller, faster, cheaper’ AI, Google just dropped a heavy-hitting payload. The tech giant officially unveiled Nano-Banana 2 (technically designated as Gemini 3.1 Flash Image). Google is making a definitive pivot toward the edge: high-fidelity, sub-second image synthesis that stays entirely on your device. The Technical Leap: Efficiency over Scale The […] The post
26/02/2026
Announcing Public Preview: Simplified Machine Provisioning for Azure Local
Deploying infrastructure at the edge has always been challenging. Whether it’s retail stores, factories, branch offices, or remote sites, getting servers racked, configured, and ready for workloads often require skilled IT staff on-site. That process is slow, expensive, and error-prone, especially when deployments need to happen at scale. To address this, we’re introducing Public Preview of Simplified Machine Provisioning for Azure Local - a new way to provision...
26/02/2026
Don’t Get Locked Out: Why Every Organization Needs Emergency Access Accounts
When systems fail—or when administrators suddenly lose access—the ability to regain control quickly can determine whether your nonprofit continues delivering essential services or faces major disruption. Emergency Access Accounts (also known as break‑glass accounts) give you a crucial safety net, ensuring your team can restore services, manage users, and adjust security settings even when normal admin access is unavailable. This updated guide explains
26/02/2026
Introducing a faster, more intelligent, end-to-end insider risk investigation experience
Modern insider risk investigations succeed or fail based on how quickly teams can move from signal to clarity. That’s why the latest Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management (IRM) investigation enhancements are designed as a progressive 3-step acceleration model, starting with AI‑driven prioritization, followed by faster validation, and easier escalations. Step 1: Accelerat...
26/02/2026
Announcing general availability of Azure Intel® TDX confidential VMs
We’re excited to announce the general availability of Azure’s next generation of confidential virtual machines, powered by 5th Gen Intel® Xeon® processors with Intel® Trust Domain Extensions (Intel® TDX). These new confidential VMs make it easier than ever for organizations to move their most sensitive workloads to the cloud—without requiring any ...
26/02/2026
Microsoft Credentials roundup: February 2026 edition
February 2026 brings major updates to Microsoft Credentials—four new Microsoft Certifications and six new Microsoft Applied Skills now generally available (GA). Designed to help you keep your skills current in today’s AI-powered workplace, they demonstrate the AI abilities that employers need in not only technical but also business roles. In this roundup, we cover what’s new, what’s changing, and what’s coming up. What’s new: Certifications We’ve introduced four ne...
26/02/2026
Announcing extended support for Fine Tuning gpt-4o and gpt-4o-mini
At Build 2025, we announced post-retirement, extended deployment and inference support for fine tuned models. Today, we’re excited to announce we’re extending fine-tuning training for current customers of our most popular Azure OpenAI models: gpt-4o (2024-08-06) and gpt-4o-mini (2024-07-18). Hundreds of customers have pushed trillions of tokens through fine-tuned versions of these models and we’re happy to provide even more runway for ...
26/02/2026
New Azure API management service limits
Azure API Management operates on finite physical infrastructure. To ensure reliable performance for all customers, the service enforces limits calibrated based on: Azure platform capacity and performance characteristics Service tier capabilities Typical customer usage patterns Resource limits are interrelated and tuned to prevent any single aspect from disrupting overall service performance. Changes to service limits - 2026 update S...
26/02/2026
What’s New in Microsoft Teams | February 2026
Welcome to the February edition of What’s new in Microsoft Teams. This month’s updates are all about helping you stay in flow: getting the most useful information to you faster, and reducing a few everyday frictions. Take custom meeting recap templates: now you can choose from a few different preset formats, or prompt Copilot to shape your AI-generated notes to match your work style. Recaps also now feature visual references, so you can see the images that wer...
26/02/2026
Windows Server 2025 Remote Desktop Session Host Capacity Planning Whitepaper
The Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) is a role service available on Windows Server 2025, which allows multiple users to access desktops and applications hosted on a single machine simultaneously. This document serves as a guide for capacity planning of Remote Desktop Session Host servers running Windows Server 2025.
26/02/2026
Public Preview: Restrict usage of user delegation SAS to an Entra ID identity
Shared access signatures (SAS) grant time-bound, scoped access to Azure Storage resources without sharing account keys. Over time, Azure Storage has continued to strengthen SAS security, moving from account keys to user delegation (UD) SAS secured by Microsoft Entra ID. Today, we’re taking the next step forward by announcing pu...
26/02/2026
KV Caching in LLMs: A Guide for Developers
Language models generate text one token at a time, reprocessing the entire sequence at each step.
26/02/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: February 26, 2026
Learn about 204 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs. Get it now in our marketplace
26/02/2026
Luo agentteja! Microsoft EMEA Partner Hackathon 26.3.2026
Kaikki Microsoft‑kumppanit ovat lämpimästi tervetulleita osallistumaan energiseen ja innovatiiviseen Microsoft EMEA Partner Hackathoniin 26.3.2026 klo 11 alkaen! Tämä tapahtuma tarjoaa ainutlaatuisen mahdollisuuden oppia uutta ja rakentaa konkreettisia tekoälypohjaisia liiketoimintaratkaisuja modernien Microsoft-teknologioiden avulla oikein skenaarioiden pohjalta. Tapahtuma kestää enintään 6 tuntia. Kerro online-tapahtumasta myös kollegoillesi ja voitte tehdä haasteen vaikkap...
26/02/2026
Exploring Azure Face API: Facial Landmark Detection and Real-Time Analysis with C#
In today’s world, applications that understand and respond to human facial cues are no longer science fiction—they’re becoming a reality in domains like security, driver monitoring, gaming, and AR/VR. With Azure Face API, developers can leverage powerful cloud-based facial recognition and analysis tools without building complex machine learning models from scratch. In t...
26/02/2026
Nous Research Releases ‘Hermes Agent’ to Fix AI Forgetfulness with Multi-Level Memory and Dedicated Remote Terminal Access Support
In the current AI landscape, we’ve become accustomed to the ‘ephemeral agent’—a brilliant but forgetful assistant that restarts its cognitive clock with every new chat session. While LLMs have become master coders, they lack the persistent state required to function as true teammates. Nous Research team released Hermes Agent, an open-source autonomous system designed to […] The post
26/02/2026
Building a Privacy-First Hybrid AI Briefing Tool with Foundry Local and Azure OpenAI
Introduction Management consultants face a critical challenge: they need instant AI-powered insights from sensitive client documents, but traditional cloud-only AI solutions create unacceptable data privacy risks. Every document uploaded to a cloud API potentially exposes confidential client information, violates data residency requirements, and creates compliance headaches. The solution lies in a hybrid architecture that combines the speed and privacy of on-device AI with the...
26/02/2026
Stop Drawing Architecture Diagrams Manually: Meet the Open-Source AI Architecture Review Agents
Hey everyone! I am Shivam Goyal, a Microsoft MVP, and I am super excited to share a project that is going to save you a massive amount of time. Designing software architecture is arguably one of the most creative and enjoyable parts of engineering. Documenting it, reviewing it for security flaws, and keeping the diagrams updated as the system evolves? Not so much. <...
26/02/2026
Building a Dual Sidecar Pod: Combining GitHub Copilot SDK with Skill Server on Kubernetes
Why the Sidecar Pattern? In Kubernetes, a Pod is the smallest deployable unit — a single Pod can contain multiple containers that share the same network namespace and storage volumes. The Sidecar pattern places auxiliary containers alongside the main application container within the same Pod. These Sidecar containers extend or enhance the main container's functionality without modifying it.
26/02/2026
Cybersecurity in the Age of Digital Acceleration: Securing Intelligence, Assets, and Trust
Over the past four decades, Information Technology has evolved from modest on-premise systems with limited storage to a boundless, cloud-driven ecosystem that powers global commerce, governance, defense, and daily life. What began in the mid-1980s as hardware-centric computing has transformed into an intelligent, distributed, always-on digital universe. Today, storage is virtually infinite. Processing is instantaneous. Markets operate 24/7. Transactions occur across continents in milliseconds...
26/02/2026
How to Access a Shared OneDrive Folder in Azure Logic Apps
What is the problem? A common enterprise automation scenario involves copying files from a OneDrive folder shared by a colleague into another storage service such as SharePoint or Azure Blob Storage using Azure Logic Apps. However, when you configure the OneDrive for...
26/02/2026
Tailscale and LM Studio Introduce ‘LM Link’ to Provide Encrypted Point-to-Point Access to Your Private GPU Hardware Assets
For the modern AI developer productivity is often tied to a physical location. You likely have a ‘Big Rig’ at home or the office—a workstation humming with NVIDIA RTX cards—and a ‘Travel Rig,’ a sleek laptop that’s perfect for coffee shops but struggles to run even a quantized Llama-3 variant. Until now, bridging that gap […] The post
26/02/2026
How to Build an Elastic Vector Database with Consistent Hashing, Sharding, and Live Ring Visualization for RAG Systems
In this tutorial, we build an elastic vector database simulator that mirrors how modern RAG systems shard embeddings across distributed storage nodes. We implement consistent hashing with virtual nodes to ensure balanced placement and minimal reshuffling as the system scales. We visualize the hashing ring in real time and interactively add or remove nodes to […] The post
26/02/2026
New ETH Zurich Study Proves Your AI Coding Agents are Failing Because Your AGENTS.md Files are too Detailed
In the high-stakes world of AI, ‘Context Engineering’ has emerged as the latest frontier for squeezing performance out of LLMs. Industry leaders have touted AGENTS.md (and its cousins like CLAUDE.md) as the ultimate configuration point for coding agents—a repository-level ‘North Star’ injected into every conversation to guide the AI through complex codebases. But a recent […] The post
26/02/2026
Microsoft Marketplace at Channel Partners Conference & Expo 2026
If you’re a channel partner, you’ve probably felt the shift: customers are relying on trusted advisors like you now more than ever as they transition to an AI-first world. As part of this change, channel‑led sales through Microsoft Marketplace have grown rapidly over the past year, fueled by new offer constructs and simplified procurement paths that make it easier for partners to source, bundle, and deliver the cloud and AI solutions customers need, while accelerati...
26/02/2026
Announcing new public preview capabilities in Azure Monitor pipeline
Azure Monitor pipeline, similar to ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) process, enhances traditional data collection methods. It streamlines data collection from various sources through a unified ingestion pipeline and utilizes a standardized configuration approach that is more efficient and scalable. As Azure Monitor pipeline is used in more complex and security‑sensiti...
25/02/2026
Meet FLUX.2 [flex] for Text‑Heavy Design and UI Prototyping Now Available on Microsoft Foundry
Within the FLUX.2 family, FLUX.2 [flex] is the specialist for text and graphic design production, while FLUX.2 [pro] is optimized for photorealistic and cinematic-quality outputs. Use FLUX.2 [flex] when typography, logos, UI copy, or on-brand visual accuracy is the priority
25/02/2026
Renaming an Azure SQL DB encrypted with DB level-CMK can render it Inaccessible
Issue An issue was brought to our attention recently by a customer where we noticed that the cx DB was Inaccessible. On further investigation, it was concluded that the database was encrypted with DB level CMK & the DB was renamed, which had made it inaccessible. Here’s the error message you may get:
25/02/2026
Automating Large‑Scale Data Management with Azure Storage Actions
Azure Storage customers increasingly operate at massive scale, with millions or even billions of items distributed across multiple storage accounts. As the scale of the data increases, managing the data introduces a different set of challenges. In a recent episode of Azure Storage Talk, I sat down with S...
25/02/2026
Cloud cost optimization and performance in a transition to AI-first
AI is reshaping how organizations build, deploy, and scale technology—and it is dramatically changing how cloud investments are evaluated. As AI workloads increase cloud consumption, organizations are under growing pressure to balance innovation with cost control, performance, and governance. Cloud cost optimization is no longer a periodic exercise. It is an ongoing, cross-functional discipline that spans development, IT, finance, and procurement. Microsoft Marketplace plays a critical...
25/02/2026
Imagine Cup 2026 Semifinalist: Builder Series Mentors
For semifinalists, this stage is about depth. Sharpening your architecture. Pressure-testing your assumptions. Strengthening your path to scale. The mentors joining this year’s Builder Series have walked that road themselves and are stepping in to help teams think bigger, build smarter, and move forward with clarity. Neil Roodlyn Ne...
25/02/2026
Partner Blog | Copilot monetization for SMBs: Start with Copilot Chat, scale with agents
This post kicks off a five-part series for Microsoft partners on the Copilot monetization opportunity for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Each post follows a repeatable approach aligned to the Microsoft Customer Engagement Methodology (MCEM) and the Win Formula—from building credibility as Customer Zero to driving adoption and measurable outcomes, then extending value with agents and specializations. If you’re looking for practical...
25/02/2026
Reading GPSVC Like a Crime Novel
Hello again — this is Adesh Prabhu from Directory Services team. A long time ago (and we mean a long time ago), we published a deep dive explaining how to troubleshoot Group Policy by reading the Group Policy Client Service (GPSVC) debug log. That post, A Treatise on Group Policy Troublesh...
25/02/2026
Accelerating AKS Upgrades with Fleet Manager: Finding the Right Balance
At the heart of AKS Fleet Manager upgrades are three foundational concepts: update runs, update stages, and update groups.
25/02/2026
Authorization and Identity Governance Inside AI Agents
Designing Authorization‑Aware AI Agents Enforcing Microsoft Entra ID RBAC in Copilot Studio As AI agents move from experimentation to enterprise execution, authorization becomes the defining line between innovation and risk. AI agents are rapidly evolving from experimental assistants into enterprise operators—retrieving user data, triggering workflows, and invoking protected APIs. While many early implementations rely on prompt‑level ...
25/02/2026
Get started with PagerDuty MCP server in Azure SRE Agent
Get started with PagerDuty MCP server in Azure SRE Agent Connect Azure SRE Agent to PagerDuty's incident management platform using the official PagerDuty MCP server for incidents, on-call schedules, services, escalation policies, and more. Overview The PagerDuty MCP server is a cloud-hosted bridge between your PagerDuty account and Azure SRE Agent. Once configured, it enables real-time interac...
25/02/2026
Get started with Datadog MCP server in Azure SRE Agent
Get started with Datadog MCP server in Azure SRE Agent Connect Azure SRE Agent to Datadog's observability platform using the official Datadog MCP server for logs, metrics, traces, incidents, and more. Overview The Datadog MCP server is a cloud-hosted bridge between your Datadog organization and Azure SRE Agent. Once configured, it enables real-time interaction with logs, metrics, APM traces, mon...
25/02/2026
Get started with Atlassian Rovo MCP server in Azure SRE Agent
Get started with Atlassian Rovo MCP server in Azure SRE Agent Connect Azure SRE Agent to Jira, Confluence, Compass, and Jira Service Management using the official Atlassian Rovo MCP server. Overview The Atlassian Rovo MCP server is a cloud-hosted bridge between your Atlassian Cloud site and Azure SRE Agent. Once configured, it enables real-time interaction with Jira, Confluence, Compass, ...
25/02/2026
The JavaScript AI Build-a-thon Season 2 starts March 2!
Most applications used by millions of people every single day are powered by JavaScript/TypeScript. But when it comes to AI, most learning resources and code samples assume you're working in Python and will leave you trying to stitch scattered tutorials together to build AI into your stack. The JavaScript AI Build-a-thon is a free, hands-on program designed to close that gap. Over the course of four weeks (March 2 - March 31, 2026), you'...
25/02/2026
Stop Writing Plumbing! Use the New Logic Apps MCP Server Wizard
As part of our continued investment in making Logic Apps a first‑class platform for providing AI agents with connectivity, we’ve introduced the new Logic Apps MCP server configuration experience—a guided, in‑portal workflow that lets you turn any existing Standard logic app into a fully functional MCP server. With just a few clicks, you can configure authentication, generate API keys, create or manage MCP servers, and convert workflows into discoverable MCP tools that agents can call securely...
25/02/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: February 25, 2026
Learn about 119 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs. Get it now in our marketplace
25/02/2026
How to Combine LLM Embeddings + TF-IDF + Metadata in One Scikit-learn Pipeline
Data fusion , or combining diverse pieces of data into a single pipeline, sounds ambitious enough.
25/02/2026
Liquid AI’s New LFM2-24B-A2B Hybrid Architecture Blends Attention with Convolutions to Solve the Scaling Bottlenecks of Modern LLMs
The generative AI race has long been a game of ‘bigger is better.’ But as the industry hits the limits of power consumption and memory bottlenecks, the conversation is shifting from raw parameter counts to architectural efficiency. Liquid AI team is leading this charge with the release of LFM2-24B-A2B, a 24-billion parameter model that redefines […] The post
25/02/2026
Best Practice: Using Self-Signed Certificates with Java on Azure Functions (Linux)
If you are developing Java applications on Azure Functions (Linux dedicated plan) and need to connect to services secured by self-signed certificates, you have likely encountered the dreaded SSL handshake error: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target By default, the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) only trusts certificates signed by well-k...
25/02/2026
Rethinking Background Workloads with Azure Functions on Azure Container Apps
Objective The blog explores background workload use cases where Azure Functions on Azure Container Apps provide clear advantages over traditional Container App Jobs. Here is an overview of Azure functions and Container App Jobs on Azure Container Ap...
25/02/2026
Nasdaq builds thoughtfully designed AI for board governance with PostgreSQL on Azure
Authored by: Charles Federssen, Partner Director of Product Management for PostgreSQL at Microsoft and Mohsin Shafqat, Senior Manager, Software Engineering at Nasdaq When people think of Nasdaq, they usually think of markets, trading floors, and financial data moving at extraordinary speed. But behind the scenes, Nasdaq also plays an equally critical role in how boards of directors govern, deliberate, and make decisions. Nasd...
25/02/2026
ICYMI : Behind the Build with RSA: Identity Resilience in the Age of AI
Behind the Build is an ongoing series spotlighting standout Microsoft partner collaborations. Each edition dives into the technical and strategic decisions that shape real-world integrations—highlighting engineering excellence, innovation, and the shared customer value created through partnership. RSA and Microsoft share a long, multiyear partnership shaped not by a single product or integration, but by shared customers grappling with some of today’s most complex security chal...
25/02/2026
Meta AI Open Sources GCM for Better GPU Cluster Monitoring to Ensure High Performance AI Training and Hardware Reliability
While the tech folks obsesses over the latest Llama checkpoints, a much grittier battle is being fought in the basements of data centers. As AI models scale to trillions of parameters, the clusters required to train them have become some of the most complex—and fragile—machines on the planet. Meta AI Research team just released GCM […] The post
25/02/2026
New Azure Open AI models bring fast, expressive, and real‑time AI experiences in Microsoft Foundry
Modern AI applications, whether voice‑first experiences or building large software systems, rarely fit into a single prompt. Real work unfolds over time: maintaining context, following instructions, invoking tools, and adapting as requirements evolve. When these foundations break down through latency spikes, instruction drift, or unreliable tool calls, both user conversations and developer workflows are impacted. OpenAI’s latest models address this shared challenge by prioritizing cont...
24/02/2026
A Coding Implementation to Simulate Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance with Asyncio, Malicious Nodes, and Latency Analysis
In this tutorial, we implement an end-to-end Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) simulator using asyncio. We model a realistic distributed network with asynchronous message passing, configurable delays, and Byzantine nodes that intentionally deviate from the protocol. By explicitly implementing the pre-prepare, prepare, and commit phases, we explore how PBFT achieves consensus under adversarial conditions while […] The post
24/02/2026
OneDrive Sync Up Episode 22: File Archive with Trent Green
If you've been using site archive to manage cold data, you know the value of moving inactive content to cheaper storage. But sometimes you don't want to archive an entire site — you just need to archive specific files that haven't been touched in years. That's exactly what file archive lets you do. On this month's episode of Sync Up, Trent gave us a live demo showing how simple the experience is: Select your files, click archive, done. He also walked through the 7-day instant undo window (in ...
24/02/2026
Build Sensitivity Label‑Aware, Secure RAG with Azure AI Search and Purview
Introduction: Why This Matters Now Most developers building solutions with Azure AI Search haven’t had to think about Microsoft Purview sensitivity labels before. Sensitivity labels are applied at the source—SharePoint, OneLake, O...
24/02/2026
HLK Testing Updates for Software and Filter Drivers
All drivers that participate in the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program (WHCP) are expected to meet Microsoft’s baseline quality, reliability, and security requirements before they are signed and distributed. These requirements are enforced through Hardware Lab Kit (HLK) testing and certification workflows. Historically, HLK testing coverage was most consistently applied to hardware device drivers. As a result, software drivers and filter drivers did not always receive the s...
24/02/2026
Microsoft Partners: Accelerate Your AI Journey at AgentCon 2026 (Free Community Event)
Recently, a customer asked me a question many Microsoft partners are hearing right now: “We have Copilot — how do we actually use AI to change the way we work?” That question captures where we are in the AI journey today. Organizations have moved past curiosity. Now they’re looking for trusted partners who can turn AI into real business...
24/02/2026
What's New in Excel (February 2026)
Welcome to the February 2026 update. This month we are excited to announce expanded availability for Agent Mode in Excel, as well that you can now query modern Excel workbooks (like .xlsx, .xlsb, .xlsm, .ods) stored locally on your device using Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, on Windows and Mac.In addition, we've heard your feedback that working across multiple Copilot entry points can feel fragmented; and to address this, the editing...
24/02/2026
Alibaba Qwen Team Releases Qwen 3.5 Medium Model Series: A Production Powerhouse Proving that Smaller AI Models are Smarter
The development of large language models (LLMs) has been defined by the pursuit of raw scale. While increasing parameter counts into the trillions initially drove performance gains, it also introduced significant infrastructure overhead and diminishing marginal utility. The release of the Qwen 3.5 Medium Model Series signals a shift in Alibaba’s Qwen approach, prioritizing architectural […] The post
24/02/2026
App Skills is evolving with Copilot in Excel
We are continuing to streamline the ways people engage with Copilot in Excel, and we've heard your feedback that working across multiple Copilot entry points can feel fragmented. To address this, Copilot in Excel is transitioning toward a more unified experience so users can easily choose between conversational assistance and direct editing capabilities.As part of this effort, the editing capabilities that App Skills provided will be integrated into
24/02/2026
Spotlight: Top 10 MVP Theater Sessions from Microsoft Ignite
The Top 10 MVP Theater Sessions — Now On Demand Every year, Microsoft Ignite brings together some of the brightest minds in our global community and our Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) continue to play a major role. This year, MVPs once ...
24/02/2026
Windows first sign-in restore experience now available
The first sign-in restore experience is now generally available as part of Windows Backup for Organizations! This means that the restore functionality is now available beyond Microsoft Entra joined devices, expanding to support the needs of hybrid-managed environments. Help employees at your organization get productive faster on a new or reimaged Windows 11 device—witho...
24/02/2026
Partner Case study | Insight
As organizations and leaders race to embrace the potential of AI, sometimes, the hardest part of the transformation isn’t choosing the right technology—it’s getting people to use it. Employees may hesitate to modify established workflows, feel resistant to new technology, or simply not know how or where to start. This can stall even the most ambitious AI strategies. Insight Enterprises—a Fortune 500 solutions integrator and longtime Microsoft partner—deeply understands this challenge. ...
24/02/2026
Microsoft at PGConf India 2026
I’m genuinely excited about PGConf India 2026. Over the past few editions, the conference has continued to grow year over year—both in size and in impact—and it has firmly established itself as one of the key events on the global PostgreSQL calendar. That momentum was very evident again in the depth, breadth, and overall quality of the program for PGConf India 2026. Microsoft is proud to be a
24/02/2026
AI Security in Azure with Microsoft Defender for Cloud: Learn the How, Join the Session
As organizations accelerate AI adoption, securing AI workloads has become a top priority. Unlike traditional cloud applications, AI systems introduce new risks—such as prompt injection, data leakage, and model misuse—that require a more integrated approach to security and governance. To help developers and security teams understand and address these challenges, we are hosting Azure Decoded: Ki...
24/02/2026
Protect browser-based work on agency-managed Windows PCs
From SaaS apps and internal web portals to AI-powered tools, the browser is now a major workspace for many employees and contractors alike. This shift has introduced new opportunities for organizations to enable an extended workforce. At the same time, it creates new data protection complexities for IT administrators. Securing corporate data has traditionally relied on full device management. However, when work occurs on a Wi...
24/02/2026
Build Sensitivity Label‑Aware, Secure RAG with Azure AI Search and Purview
1. Introduction: Why This Matters Now Many Azure AI Search developers have no visibility into Microsoft Purview sensitivity labels, since labeling and encryption happen at the document source (SharePoint, On...
24/02/2026
Behind the Build with RSA: Identity Resilience in the Age of AI
Behind the Build is an ongoing series spotlighting standout Microsoft partner collaborations. Each edition dives into the technical and strategic decisions that shape real-world integrations—highlighting engineering excellence, innovation, and the shared customer value created through partnership. RSA and Microsoft share a long, multiyear partnership shaped not by a single product or integration, but by shared customers grappling with some of today’s m...
24/02/2026
Disrupt AWS attacks automatically in Microsoft Sentinel
Attacks move faster than security teams can react. They spread across identities, endpoints, and SaaS apps in minutes, overwhelming analysts with signals and leaving little time to act. By the time an incident is investigated, the attacker has often already moved on escalating impact and business continuity. Organizations need a way to respond and get ahead of these attacks. That’s why we built
24/02/2026
Akkodis and Microsoft share field‑tested tips for your AI skilling program
Generative AI technology is creating unprecedented opportunities to improve your business efficiency, fuel innovation, and gain a competitive edge. Given these benefits, equipping your workforce with the skills to effectively use AI-powered tools is a high priority. At the same time, the rapid evolution of AI technology, along with the potential impacts on your established processes, means that matching people with the right skills requires a deliberate approach. Akkodis and Microsoft...
24/02/2026
Query your local Excel files with Copilot Chat
Hi, Insiders! I am Prash Shirolkar, a Product Manager on the Excel team. I’m excited to share that you can now query modern Excel workbooks (like .xlsx, .xlsb, .xlsm, .ods) stored locally on your device using Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, on Windows and Mac. Now you have the flexibility to query Copilot Chat wherever your Excel files are located. Query your local Excel files with Copilot Chat Previously, insights and analysis from Copilot Chat were limited to...
24/02/2026
SharePoint Showcase: Using SharePoint Embedded to create AI-ready infrastructure
Across industries like financial services, healthcare, government, and legal, some of the most critical business processes still rely on documents trapped in legacy systems; isolated from Microsoft 365, disconnected from collaboration, and invisible to AI. As organizations embrace Copilot and AI‑assisted workflows, that disconnect is no longer just inconvenient. It’s a blocker. That’s why SharePoint Embedded (SPE) is taking center stage in this month’s Share...
24/02/2026
The Safest Way for Nonprofits to Validate Conditional Access Policies Before Enforcing Them
Nonprofits rely on secure, reliable access to Microsoft 365 to serve communities, support staff and volunteers, and protect sensitive data. Conditional Access (CA) in Microsoft Entra ID is one of the strongest tools available to safeguard identities—but a misconfigured policy can unintentionally block staff, volunteers, donors, or even your entire organization. That’s why Report‑Only Mode is essential. It allows nonprofits to test Conditional Access policies safely, wi...
24/02/2026
Introducing Run Oracle Your Way on Oracle Database@Azure – a new technical webinar series
Oracle Database@Azure was purpose-built to enable enterprises to bring Oracle databases to Azure. With this jointly engineered solution, customers can:
24/02/2026
Learning Zone spotlight: Ace your note-taking skills
A monthly spotlight from the Learning Zone collection, featuring ready-to-use lessons that bring timely classroom topics and practical learning skills into your teaching. Strengthen habits that make learning last By this time of the semester, the early energy of a new term has settled, content is getting denser, and assessments are already visible on the horizon. It is a good moment to ask a simple question: Are your students’ notes helping them, or jus...
24/02/2026
Evolving the Network Operations Agent Framework: Driving the Next Wave of Autonomous Networks
The original announcement of the Network Operations Agent (NOA) Framework outlined a bold mission: provide telecom operators with a modular, multiagent foundation to accelerate the journey toward autonomous networks. NOA combined intelligent agents, unified data acc...
24/02/2026
Multi-tenancy in Agentic AI – session recap
Software as a Service (SaaS) enables software development companies (SDCs) to deliver their products as managed services to customers. Whether offered business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C), the way a product—new or existing—is designed to support multiple tenants (such as customers, user groups, or internal departments) can vary based on many factors. ‑to‑business (B2B) or business‑to‑consumer (B2C), the way a product—new or existing—is designed to support multiple tenants ...
24/02/2026
Google DeepMind Researchers Apply Semantic Evolution to Create Non Intuitive VAD-CFR and SHOR-PSRO Variants for Superior Algorithmic Convergence
In the competitive arena of Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL), progress has long been bottlenecked by human intuition. For years, researchers have manually refined algorithms like Counterfactual Regret Minimization (CFR) and Policy Space Response Oracles (PSRO), navigating a vast combinatorial space of update rules via trial-and-error. Google DeepMind research team has now shifted this paradigm with […] The post
24/02/2026
RAG vs. Context Stuffing: Why selective retrieval is more efficient and reliable than dumping all data into the prompt
Large context windows have dramatically increased how much information modern language models can process in a single prompt. With models capable of handling hundreds of thousands—or even millions—of tokens, it’s easy to assume that Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is no longer necessary. If you can fit an entire codebase or documentation library into the context window, […] The post
24/02/2026
On-Premises Manufacturing Intelligence
Manufacturing facilities face a fundamental dilemma in the AI era: how to harness artificial intelligence for predictive maintenance, equipment diagnostics, and operational insights while keeping sensitive production data entirely on-premises. Industrial environments generate proprietary information, CNC machining parameters, quality control thresholds, equipment performance signatures, maintenance histories, that represents competitive advantage accumulated over decades of process optimizati...
24/02/2026
Composio Open Sources Agent Orchestrator to Help AI Developers Build Scalable Multi-Agent Workflows Beyond the Traditional ReAct Loops
For the past year, AI devs have relied on the ReAct (Reasoning + Acting) pattern—a simple loop where an LLM thinks, picks a tool, and executes. But as any software engineer who has tried to move these agents into production knows, simple loops are brittle. They hallucinate, they lose track of complex goals, and they […] The post
24/02/2026
Upcoming IT Management and Security in the AI Era events on Tech community!
We’re excited to invite you to IT Management and Security in the AI Era, on Thursday, February 26th, from 8:00AM to 10:30 AM Pacific.<...
24/02/2026
Beyond Simple API Requests: How OpenAI’s WebSocket Mode Changes the Game for Low Latency Voice Powered AI Experiences
In the world of Generative AI, latency is the ultimate killer of immersion.Until recently, building a voice-enabled AI agent felt like assembling a Rube Goldberg machine: you’d pipe audio to a Speech-to-Text (STT) model, send the transcript to a Large Language Model (LLM), and finally shuttle text to a Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine.The post Beyond Simple API Requests: How OpenAI’s WebSocket Mode Changes the Game for Low Latency Voice Powered AI Experiences appeared first on MarkTechPost.
23/02/2026
How to Build a Production-Grade Customer Support Automation Pipeline with Griptape Using Deterministic Tools and Agentic Reasoning
In this tutorial, we build an advanced Griptape-based customer support automation system that combines deterministic tooling with agentic reasoning to process real-world support tickets end-to-end. We design custom tools to sanitize sensitive information, categorize issues, assign priorities with clear SLA targets, and generate structured escalation payloads, all before involving the language model. We then use […] The post
23/02/2026
Introducing the next generation of SOC automation: Sentinel playbook generator
Security teams today operate under constant pressure. They are expected to respond faster, automate more, and do so without sacrificing precision. Traditional security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) approaches have helped, but they still rely heavily on rigid templates, limited action libraries, and workflows stretched across multiple portals. Building and maintaining automation is often slow and constrained at exactly the time organizations need more flexibility. Something nee...
23/02/2026
Building MCP Apps with Azure Functions MCP Extension
Today, we are thrilled to announce the release of MCP App support in the Azure Functions MCP (Model Context Protocol) extension! You can now build MCP Apps using the Functions MCP Extension in Python, TypeScript, and .NET. What are MCP Apps...
23/02/2026
Accelerating revenue in telecommunications through Agentic Sales Processes
Executive Summary Telecommunications providers are under unprecedented pressure to reignite revenue growth amid market saturation, commoditization of core services, rising infrastructure costs, and intensifying competition from digital‑native players. At the same time, customers demand seamless, personalized, digital‑first experiences—while regulatory constraints, legacy systems, and talent gaps limit agility and innovation. These forces require a fundamental shift in how telecoms ge...
23/02/2026
Introducing a refreshed design, task chat, and more in Microsoft Planner
We’re excited to announce that a modernized user interface and new features are now rolling out to basic plans in both Planner in Teams and Planner for the web. The updated design offers enhanced navigation, responsive layouts, a new goals view for setting objectives and priorities, and task chat—one of your most requested features—to enable real-time collaboration and @ mentioning team members. This release aims to make planning easier for everyday users while preparing for future AI-...
23/02/2026
Windows Server Secure Boot playbook for certificates expiring in 2026
This guidance describes the tools and options available to help organizations update Secure Boot certificates on Windows Server before the certificates begin expiring in June 2026. Note: This guidance does not apply to Azure Local hosts, Windows PCs or Generation 1 Hyper-V VMs. For Azure Local information, see
23/02/2026
YellowHat 2026: the ultimate Defender’s gathering
By Guest Blogger: Marteen Goet Level 400+ content: no fluff, just tech With 250 attendees in person and thousands more tuning in worldwide, we explored the absolute cutting edge of Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Entra. True to the mission, YellowHat skipped the basics to tackle the most advanced ...
23/02/2026
Building Knowledge-Grounded Conversational AI Agents with Azure Speech Photo Avatars
From Chat to Presence: The Next Step in Conversational AI Chat agents are now embedded across nearly every industry, from customer support on websites to direct integrations inside business applications designed to boost efficiency and productivity. As these agents become more capable and more visible, user expectations are also rising: conversations should feel natural, trustworthy, and engaging. While text‑only chat agents work well for many scenarios, voice‑enabled agents t...
23/02/2026
Introducing the next generation of SOC automation: Sentinel SOAR playbook generator
Security teams today operate under constant pressure. They are expected to respond faster, automate more, and do so without sacrificing precision. Traditional security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) approaches have helped, but they still rely heavily on rigid templates, limited action libraries, and workflows stretched across multiple portals. Building and maintaining automation is often slow and constrained at exactly the time organizations need more flexibility. Something nee...
23/02/2026
Mastering gin_pending_list_limit: How This parameter shapes GIN index insert performance
GIN (Generalized Inverted Index) indexes are a cornerstone of PostgreSQL when working with JSONB, arrays, and full-text search. They provide excellent read performance, but their write behavior—especially under sustained insert workloads—can vary dramatically depending on how data is primarily written and how GIN index maintenance is configured. One often-overlooked configuration in this space is the interaction between the fastupdate and gin_pending_list_limit se...
23/02/2026
What’s trending on Hugging Face: PubMedBERT Base Embeddings, Paraphrase Multilingual MiniLM, BGE-M3
The embedding model landscape has evolved beyond one-size-fits-all solutions. Today’s developers navigate a set of deliberate trade‑offs: domain specialization to improve accuracy in vertical applications, multilingual capabilities to support global use cases, and retrieval strategies that optimize performance at scale. Once a model demonstrates strong semantic performance, predictable behavior, and broad community support, it often becomes a trusted reference baseline that developers build a...
23/02/2026
Turn Your ECM/DMS into AI Infrastructure with SharePoint Embedded
TL;DR: SharePoint Embedded helps customers easily bring their legacy ECM/DMS apps into the modern era, delivering Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Purview security and compliance, and Microsoft 365 Office collaboration capabilities automatically, as part of the project. Across a range of industries including healthcare, manufacturing, government, financial services, and legal, organizations face a common reality: vital business operations depend on documents w...
23/02/2026
Security baseline for Windows Server 2025, version 2602
Microsoft is pleased to announce the February 2026 Revision (v2602) of the security baseline package for Windows Server 2025! You can download the baseline package from the Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit, test the recommended configurations in your environment, and customize / implement them as appropriate. Summary of Changes in This Release This...
23/02/2026
Create an Organizational Assets Library (including Multi-Geo & Information Barriers guidance)
Overview This guide walks through a practical approach to setting up SharePoint Online (SPO) Organizational Assets Libraries (OAL). It includes optional guidance for more complex tenants—such as Multi-Geo and Information Barriers (IB) - because those scenarios are often under-documented. What you’ll accomplish: Create and register Organizational Assets Libraries so templates, fonts, and brand images are available in Office apps, with notes for Multi-Geo,...
23/02/2026
Notes From the Field: Finding and Remediating EWS App Usage Before Retirement
In this post, we wanted to share a practical walk-through of discovering which Azure AD app registrations are still using Exchange Web Services (EWS), plus what the Kiosk/Frontline license changes mean as you plan your move to Microsoft Graph. Microsoft has announced that Exchange Online EWS blocking with start on October 1, 2026. If you have line-of-business apps, third-party tools, or automation that still depends on EWS, you need two things: (1) an inventory of what’s using EWS toda...
23/02/2026
Unlock AI Agent communication, enhance customer engagement with MCP servers in Microsoft Marketplace
In this guest blog post, Josip Antoliš, Senior Principal Engineer at Infobip, discusses how MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers available in Microsoft Marketplace empower organizations to connect AI agents across multiple communication channels, driving richer customer engagement and operational efficiency. As organizations race to become AI-first enterprises, a critical question emerges: How do you break your AI agents out of the prison of a chat box in a sidebar of your web...
23/02/2026
Installing Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode
So far, we’ve introduced Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode (vMode) and discussed the architectural changes in Windows Admin Center necessary to implement both virtualization and...
23/02/2026
Managed Identity on SQL Server On-Prem: The End of Stored Secrets
The Problem with Credentials in SQL Server For an On-Premises SQL Server to access Azure services, you traditionally need to store secrets: Common Scenarios Requiring Credentials Scenario Required Credential Backup to URL (Azure Blob) Storage account key or SAS token
23/02/2026
Beyond Accuracy: 5 Metrics That Actually Matter for AI Agents
AI agents , or autonomous systems powered by agentic AI, have reshaped the current landscape of AI systems and deployments.
23/02/2026
Introducing Data Series Colors: tell clearer stories with ADX Dashboards
A frequent request we receive from dashboard editors is the ability to have control over color settings. Until now, color assignments in ADX dashboards were largely automatic. While this worked for basic scenarios, it often fell short in operational and reporting use cases where color isn’t decoration - it’s meaning. Today, we’re introducing Data Series Colors, a new capability that gives editors direct control over how colors are applied to their visuals. ...
23/02/2026
Rethinking Ingress on Azure: Application Gateway for Containers Explained
Introduction Azure Application Gateway for Containers is a managed Azure service designed to handle incoming traffic for container-based applications. It brings Layer-7 load balancing, routing, TLS termination, and web application protection outside of the Kubernetes cluster and into an Azure-managed data plane. By separating traffic manage...
23/02/2026
Integrating Microsoft Foundry with OpenClaw: Step by Step Model Configuration
Step 1: Deploying Models on Microsoft Foundry Let us kick things off in the Azure portal. To get our OpenClaw agent thinking like a genius, we need to deploy our models in Microsoft Foundry. For this guide, we are going to focus on deploying gpt-5.2-codex on Microsoft Foundry with OpenClaw. Navigate to your AI Hub, head over to the model catal...
23/02/2026
Taalas is replacing programmable GPUs with hardwired AI chips to achieve 17,000 tokens per second for ubiquitous inference
In the high-stakes world of AI infrastructure, the industry has operated under a singular assumption: flexibility is king. We build general-purpose GPUs because AI models change every week, and we need programmable silicon that can adapt to the next research breakthrough. But Taalas, the Toronto-based startup thinks that flexibility is exactly what’s holding AI back. […] The post
23/02/2026
How to Troubleshoot Azure Functions Not Visible in Azure Portal
How to Troubleshoot Azure Functions Not Visible in Azure Portal Overview Azure Functions is a powerful serverless compute service that enables you to run event-driven code without managing infrastructure. When you deploy functions to Azure, you expect to see them listed in the Azure Portal under your Function App. However, there are situations where your functions may not appear in the portal, even though they were successfully depl...
23/02/2026
VectifyAI Launches Mafin 2.5 and PageIndex: Achieving 98.7% Financial RAG Accuracy with a New Open-Source Vectorless Tree Indexing.
Building a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline is easy; building one that doesn’t hallucinate during a 10-K audit is nearly impossible. For devs in the financial sector, the ‘standard’ vector-based RAG approach—chunking text and hoping for the best—often results in a ‘text soup’ that loses the vital structural context of tables and balance sheets. VectifyAI is […] The post
23/02/2026
A Coding Guide to Instrumenting, Tracing, and Evaluating LLM Applications Using TruLens and OpenAI Models
In this tutorial, we focus on building a transparent and measurable evaluation pipeline for large language model applications using TruLens. Rather than treating LLMs as black boxes, we instrument each stage of an application so that inputs, intermediate steps, and outputs are captured as structured traces. We then attach feedback functions that quantitatively evaluate model […] The post
23/02/2026
Forget Keyword Imitation: ByteDance AI Maps Molecular Bonds in AI Reasoning to Stabilize Long Chain-of-Thought Performance and Reinforcement Learning (RL) Training
ByteDance Seed recently dropped a research that might change how we build reasoning AI.For years, devs and AI researchers have struggled to ‘cold-start’ Large Language Models (LLMs) into Long Chain-of-Thought (Long CoT) models.Most models lose their way or fail to transfer patterns during multi-step reasoning.
22/02/2026
A New Google AI Research Proposes Deep-Thinking Ratio to Improve LLM Accuracy While Cutting Total Inference Costs by Half
For the last few years, the AI world has followed a simple rule: if you want a Large Language Model (LLM) to solve a harder problem, make its Chain-of-Thought (CoT) longer. But new research from the University of Virginia and Google proves that ‘thinking long’ is not the same as ‘thinking hard’. The research team […] The post
22/02/2026
How to Design an Agentic Workflow for Tool-Driven Route Optimization with Deterministic Computation and Structured Outputs
In this tutorial, we build a production-style Route Optimizer Agent for a logistics dispatch center using the latest LangChain agent APIs. We design a tool-driven workflow in which the agent reliably computes distances, ETAs, and optimal routes rather than guessing, and we enforce structured outputs to make the results directly usable in downstream systems. We […] The post
21/02/2026
Is There a Community Edition of Palantir? Meet OpenPlanter: An Open Source Recursive AI Agent for Your Micro Surveillance Use Cases
The balance of power in the digital age is shifting. While governments and large corporations have long used data to track individuals, a new open-source project called OpenPlanter is giving that power back to the public. Created by a developer ‘Shin Megami Boson‘, OpenPlanter is a recursive-language-model investigation agent. Its goal is simple: help you […] The post
21/02/2026
A Coding Guide to High-Quality Image Generation, Control, and Editing Using HuggingFace Diffusers
In this tutorial, we design a practical image-generation workflow using the Diffusers library. We start by stabilizing the environment, then generate high-quality images from text prompts using Stable Diffusion with an optimized scheduler. We accelerate inference with a LoRA-based latent consistency approach, guide composition with ControlNet under edge conditioning, and finally perform localized edits via […] The post
21/02/2026
Regional Endpoints for Geo-Replicated Azure Container Registries (Private Preview)
Imagine you're running Kubernetes clusters in multiple Azure regions—East US, West Europe, and Southeast Asia. You've configured ACR with geo-replication so your container images are available everywhere, but you've noticed something frustrating: you can't control which replica your clusters pull from. Sometimes your East US cluster pulls from West Europe, and you have no way to pin it to the co-located replica or troubleshoot why routing behaves unexpectedly.
21/02/2026
Title Plan Update - February 20, 2026
📁February 20, 2026 - Title Plan Now Available Access the latest Instructor-Led Training (ILT) updates anytime at
20/02/2026
How to enable HTTPS support for Microsoft Connected Cache for Enterprise and Education
Starting on June 16th, 2026, or soon after, Intune will enforce HTTPS content delivery for customers using Microsoft Connected Cache for Enterprise and Education. To continue using Microsoft Connected Cache to localize Intune Win32 app downloads and reduce the bandwidth impact on your network, you’ll need to configure HTTPS on Connected Cache nodes. Without this configuration, devices will still fetch the requested content, but they’ll fall back to the Content Deli...
20/02/2026
HLS Copilot Use Case Webinar Series
Friday 2/27 - Taming the Excel Jungle of Clinician SchedulingNurse clinicians face enough pressure without spending hours wrestling with six‑week schedules in Excel. Even with time‑tracking systems in place, many teams still export schedules, staff details, and skills into spreadsheets to manually resolve conflicts and coverage gaps—adding frustration and stress to an already demanding role. In this HLS webinar on February 27 at 12:00 PM ET
20/02/2026
How to Design a Swiss Army Knife Research Agent with Tool-Using AI, Web Search, PDF Analysis, Vision, and Automated Reporting
In this tutorial, we build a “Swiss Army Knife” research agent that goes far beyond simple chat interactions and actively solves multi-step research problems end-to-end. We combine a tool-using agent architecture with live web search, local PDF ingestion, vision-based chart analysis, and automated report generation to demonstrate how modern agents can reason, verify, and produce […] The post
20/02/2026
Plan for Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 2016 LTSB end of support
Three Windows products first released in 2016 are close to reaching end of support (EOS) on the following dates: Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB 2016: October 13, 2026
20/02/2026
NVIDIA Releases DreamDojo: An Open-Source Robot World Model Trained on 44,711 Hours of Real-World Human Video Data
Building simulators for robots has been a long term challenge. Traditional engines require manual coding of physics and perfect 3D models. NVIDIA is changing this with DreamDojo, a fully open-source, generalizable robot world model. Instead of using a physics engine, DreamDojo ‘dreams’ the results of robot actions directly in pixels. Scaling Robotics with 44k+ Hours […] The post
20/02/2026
What to Expect from the Copilot & AI Sessions at Microsoft 365 Community Conference
AI isn’t a side conversation at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference—it’s at the center of how work is changing.The Copilot, Agents, & Copilot Services Sessions are designed for anyone who wants to move beyond curiosity and into real-world application.One of the biggest themes across the sessions are the evolution from AI as a helper to AI as an active participant in work.
20/02/2026
Skype for Business for Mac Client Update – Version 16.31.31 Released
We’re pleased to announce the availability of Skype for Business for Mac client version 16.31.31, the latest update for customers who continue to rely on Skype for Business in their daily communications.Customers using Skype for Business on Mac are encouraged to move to this latest version to benefit from the most up‑to‑date client build and to ensure continued supportability.Note that for the time being, we have left the previous Skype for Business on Mac download (Version 16.31.11) as an available download in case you still need it during your upgrade process.
20/02/2026
Learn to maximize your productivity at the proMX Project Operations + AI Summit 2026
As organizations accelerate AI adoption across business applications, mastering how Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions, Copilot, and agents work together is becoming a strategic priority. Fortunately, businesses no longer need to rely on speculation — they can gain practical insights with fellow industry professionals during a unique two-day event: On April 21-22, 2026, Microsoft and
20/02/2026
When Group Policy Goes Haywire: Spotting registry.pol Corruption Fast
If you’re in charge of Group Policy settings, you know how critical the registry.pol file is and how nerve-wracking it can be when things go awry. Luckily, Windows now provides much more actionable insight when corruption is detected in this vital file. Rather than introducing a new event or log, the existing Group Policy error, Event ID 1096 in the System event log...
20/02/2026
🚀 Git-Driven Deployments for Microsoft Fabric Using GitHub Actions
👋 Introduction If you've been working with Microsoft Fabric, you've likely faced this question: "How do we promote Fabric items from DEV → QA → PROD reliably, consistently, and with proper governance?" Many teams default to the built-in Fabric Deployment Pipelines — and they work great for simpler scenarios. But what happens when your enterprise demands: 🔒 Centralized governance across all pla...
20/02/2026
Empowering.Cloud Community Update – February 2026
The latest Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 expert community briefings, podcasts and upcoming community events. Expert Briefings: Microsoft Places in 2026: APIs, Desk Booking, and Copilot Context https://empowering.cloud/microsoft-places-in-2026-apis-desk-booking-and-copilot-context/
20/02/2026
Learning Cost Efficient AI Agents Development on Azure
The Maximize the Cost Efficiency of AI Agents on Azure webinar is designed to help answer these questions.This session provides practical guidance on designing and scaling AI agents on Azure while keeping cost efficiency in mind.Rather than focusing only on tools and services, the webinar helps learners and educators understand how architectural decisions, model choices, and usage patterns directly impact cost, performance, and outcomes.
20/02/2026
Building an AI Study Agent - How GitHub Copilot CLI & SDK helped Reimagine LMS
This is what the Model Context Protocol provides, a standard that connects AI native apps/ agents to data and tools dynamically.In the steps above, Copilot CLI uses this very same protocol to pull data from external sources, accessing documentation on how the MCP architecture works and how to build and connect to MCP servers, and in a single prompt, is able to extend my existing backend (API Layer) into an MCP server with tools that will allow the agent to perform actions dynamically.Enter GitHub Copilot SDK
20/02/2026
Seamless Migrations From Self Hosted Nginx Ingress To The AKS App Routing Add-On
The Kubernetes Steering Committee has announced that the Nginx Ingress controller will be retired in March 2026.Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) offers a managed routing add-on which also implements Nginx as the Ingress Controller.There is also an updated version of the App Routing add-on in the works, that will be based on Istio to allow for transition off Nginx Ingress.
20/02/2026
Using Azure API Management with Azure Front Door for Global, Multi‑Region Architectures
Azure provides two complementary services that help achieve this: Azure API Management (APIM) as the API gateway and Azure Front Door (AFD) as the global entry point and load balancer.That led us to design the solution detailed in this article which explains how to configure multi‑regional, active‑active APIM behind Azure Front Door using Custom origins and regional gateway endpoints.To make your APIM publicly accessible, you need to front it with both an Application Gateway and an Azure Front Door because:
20/02/2026
NVIDIA Releases Dynamo v0.9.0: A Massive Infrastructure Overhaul Featuring FlashIndexer, Multi-Modal Support, and Removed NATS and ETCD
This is the most significant infrastructure upgrade for the distributed inference framework to date.This update simplifies how large-scale models are deployed and managed.The release focuses on removing heavy dependencies and improving how GPUs handle multi-modal data.
20/02/2026
How to Build Transparent AI Agents: Traceable Decision-Making with Audit Trails and Human Gates
In this tutorial, we build a glass-box agentic workflow that makes every decision traceable, auditable, and explicitly governed by human approval.We design the system to log each thought, action, and observation into a tamper-evident audit ledger while enforcing dynamic permissioning for high-risk operations.By combining LangGraph’s interrupt-driven human-in-the-loop control with a hash-chained database, we […]
20/02/2026
Beautifully invisible: The engineering intelligence behind Surface for Business displays
Open a Surface Copilot+ PC, and the display just feels right. Whites look clean, text is sharp, and colors stay true and consistent in varied lighting conditions. Move from a bright office to a dim café and the screen keeps pace, adjusting as the light around you changes. That sense of ease is deliberate. It comes from years of engineering designed to make the display feel natural in any setting, with work that is meant to be invisible rather than attention-grabbing. In this blog post, we’ll ...
20/02/2026
Build a Custom SSL Certificate Monitor with Azure SRE Agent: From Python Tool to Production Skill
TL;DR Expired SSL certificates cause outages that are 100% preventable. In this post, you’ll learn how to create a custom Python tool in Azure SRE Agent that checks SSL certificate expiry across your domains, then wrap it in a skill that gives your agent a complete certificate health audit workflow. The result: your SRE Agent proactively flags certificates expiring in the next 30 days and recommends renewal actions , before they become 3 AM pages. <...
20/02/2026
Host Declarative Markdown-Based Agents on Azure Functions
Like many of you, the Azure Functions team and others at Microsoft have been building agents for our day-to-day work using mostly markdown and configuration: like AGENTS.md instructions, skills, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools. These sophisticated and powerful agents run locally right in VS Code or the Copilot CLI. But inevitably, the question comes up: "How do I share this agent with my team by running it in the cloud?" <...
20/02/2026
Cross Forest Enrollment – PKISync.PS1
Here is the link: Cross Forest - Certificate Enrollment | Microsoft Community Hub PKIsync.ps1 script At this time, we’re going to keep things simple. The goal is to create an Active Directory resource Forest (Source Forest) that will host an Enterprise CA; it will be responsible for issuing all certificates.
19/02/2026
Google AI Releases Gemini 3.1 Pro with 1 Million Token Context and 77.1 Percent ARC-AGI-2 Reasoning for AI Agents
Google has officially shifted the Gemini era into high gear with the release of Gemini 3.1 Pro, the first version update in the Gemini 3 series. This release is not just a minor patch; it is a targeted strike at the ‘agentic’ AI market, focusing on reasoning stability, software engineering, and tool-use reliability. For devs, […] The post
19/02/2026
Copilot adoption: Move your org from pilot to production with this guide
Are you an IT admin or Copilot adoption lead ready to safely start or scale your rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot? Piecing together the right guidance can be something of a treasure hunt so we created a trusted, single starting point for you: 8 Copilot & agent hubs every adoption leader should bookmark. This guide is organized around the typical adoption lifecycle (plan → b...
19/02/2026
A Coding Implementation to Build Bulletproof Agentic Workflows with PydanticAI Using Strict Schemas, Tool Injection, and Model-Agnostic Execution
In this tutorial, we build a production-ready agentic workflow that prioritizes reliability over best-effort generation by enforcing strict, typed outputs at every step. We use PydanticAI to define clear response schemas, wire in tools via dependency injection, and ensure the agent can safely interact with external systems, such as a database, without breaking execution. By […] The post
19/02/2026
The Copilot resource guide to share with your employees
From customers driving Microsoft Copilot adoption, one request we hear a lot is: “Can you send me to a simple starting place?” Now we can. Essential Copilot resource hubs for employees is a trusted, easy-to-share guide that rounds up key Microsoft-owned Copilot learning and support hubs. It's designed to help you speed up Copilot onboarding and get your employees buil...
19/02/2026
Personalize your Message center experience for Windows news
Did you know that you can filter and focus Message center in the Microsoft 365 admin center to prioritize Windows changes? While there's a lot going on in the world of Windows management every day, you don't need to feel overwhelmed. Message center in the Microsoft 365 admin center exists to help keep you and your organization informed of the latest Windows updates, new features, hardening changes, and more. Let's review a few tools that can make it a lot more...
19/02/2026
OneDrive on Mac gets Liquid Glass with an All-New Activity Center
OneDrive on macOS is a core part of the OneDrive ecosystem, designed to deliver a great experience for working with your files directly on your Mac. Over the years, we’ve continued to improve OneDrive for Mac, and we’ve also listened closely to your feedback. We want OneDrive to feel truly native on macOS, with a fast, reliable sync experience you can count on every day.
19/02/2026
Large Mailbox Migration to Exchange Online
Migrating large mailboxes is challenging for enterprise Exchange teams, especially when mailboxes are over 100 GB or contain extensive recoverable items. Using Exchange Messaging Records Management (MRM) to reduce mailbox size before migration can speed up moves to Exchange Online. Why Use MRM Before a Large Mailbox Migration? Many organizations place mailboxes on litigation hold or in-place hold, causing the recoverable items in these mailboxes to grow significantly, often ex...
19/02/2026
Bringing AI fluency to every corner of the organization (even yours!)
The real question is, “Are you fluent enough to lead with it?”Regardless of your role or team, AI is likely already part of your world. In this blog post, the first in a series of three, I share practical tips, including six easy steps, that turn AI from a buzzword into your work GPS. In fact, according to the January 2025 LinkedIn Economic Graph Work Change Report: AI Is Coming to Work, “By 2030, 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change, with AI emerging as a catalyst.”
19/02/2026
Accelerate Your UEBA Journey: Introducing the Microsoft Sentinel Behaviors Workbook
In our recent announcement, we introduced the UEBA Behaviors layer - a breakthrough capability that transforms noisy, high-volume security telemetry into clear, human-readable behavioral insights.The Behaviors layer answers the critical question: "Who did what to whom, and why does it matter?" by aggregating and sequencing raw events into normalized, MITRE ATT&CK-mapped behaviors.Today, we announce the Microsoft Sentinel Behaviors Workbook (part of the “UEBA essentials solution” in the content hub) - a purpose-built, interactive analytics workbook that helps you extract maximum value from the Behaviors layer across your investigation, hunting, and detection workflows.
19/02/2026
Three ways to run KQL on Microsoft Sentinel data lake: Interactive, Async, or Jobs
With Microsoft Sentinel data lake, you can run KQL directly on data in the lake, unlocking flexibility for investigations and hunting.We'll explain how these options work in real SOC workflows and guide you in selecting the right KQL execution mode, so you can avoid unnecessary frustration and re-runs.Microsoft Sentinel data lake gives security teams flexibility at scale, when the right query mode is used at the right time.
19/02/2026
Announcing general availability for Microsoft Teams optimization in Amazon WorkSpaces
This release introduces the first-ever Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) optimization for Microsoft Teams on Amazon WorkSpaces for Windows endpoints, delivering a seamless, high-performance collaboration experience.With this release, AWS environments now offer VDI support for Teams, bringing long-requested capabilities to both Personal and Pool Windows WorkSpaces client configurations.Multimedia Offloading: Audio and video processing are now offloaded from the virtual desktop to users’ endpoint devices, resulting in smoother, more responsive calls and meetings.
19/02/2026
Data Quality (DQ) for Standalone Data Assets at Microsoft Purview
A standalone data asset is a dataset that is not linked to any data product.To start measuring and monitoring the data quality of a standalone data asset, first add the asset from the data map to a governance domain.You can also associate a standalone data asset—along with its data quality scores and rules—to a data product.
19/02/2026
The Rise of Agentic BSS in the IQ Era: from Systems of Record to Systems of Outcome
Authors: Rode Kirk and Rick Lievano Telecom Business Support Systems (BSS) are entering their most consequential transformation since digital billing. As networks become programmable, products become composable, and customers expect real‑time, personalized experiences, the traditional BSS stack—designed fo...
19/02/2026
New in Microsoft Marketplace: February 19, 2026
Learn about 240 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs. Get it now in our marketplace
19/02/2026
Monetize your AI apps and agents on Marketplace to realize growth
Ready to stop guessing how to monetize your offer? Skip right to App Advisor Software development companies are building faster than ever. But when it comes to sales, the key to monetization happens early. Monetization, packaging, and operational execution helps determine whether your AI solution becomes a growth engi...
19/02/2026
Azure Database Migration Service Expands to New Azure Regions
As organizations continue to modernize their data estates and migrate to Azure, regional availability plays a critical role in meeting data residency, compliance, and performance requirements. We’re excited to announce the expanded regional availability of Azure Database Migration Service (DMS), making it easier for customers to migrate their databases to Azure closer to where their applications and users reside.Azure Database Migration Service is now generally available in the following Azure regions as part of our latest regional expansion: In these newly available regions, Azure Database Migration Service supports key migration scenarios, including migrations:
19/02/2026
Windows Hello for Business - Registered Methods and Last-used Method
Hi folks – Mike Hildebrand here! Today, I bring you a short post about gaining more awareness of Windows Hello for Business (WHFB) configuration information from across your fleet of Windows PCs. A while back, after being asked by numerous customers for a way to get more details about their WHFB deployment, I published a post about using Entra sign-in log data and a custom Log Analytics Workbook to obtain that information. NOTE: In my 12 days of Christmas blog-a-thon, I posted about creative uses of Intune Proactive Remediations.
19/02/2026
Building a Simple MCP Server in Python
Have you ever tried connecting a language model to your own data or tools? If so, you know it often means writing custom integrations, managing API schemas, and wrestling with authentication.
19/02/2026
Celebrating Community and Curiosity at Swetugg Stockholm 2026
Every February, Swetugg transforms Stockholm into a vibrant gathering place for developers, architects, cloud practitioners, and community builders from across the Nordics and beyond. The 2026 edition continued that tradition with even more energy, deeper technical conversations, and an unmistakable sense of belonging—one that mirrors the very...
19/02/2026
Agentic Code Fixing with GitHub Copilot SDK and Foundry Local
Introduction AI-powered coding assistants have transformed how developers write and review code. But most of these tools require sending your source code to cloud services, a non-starter for teams working with proprietary codebases, air-gapped environments, or strict compliance requirements. What if you could have an intelligent coding agent that finds bugs, fixes them, runs your tests, and produces PR-ready summaries, all without a single byte leaving your machine? The
19/02/2026
Building HIPAA-Compliant Medical Transcription with Local AI
Building HIPAA-Compliant Medical Transcription with Local AI Introduction Healthcare organizations generate vast amounts of spoken content, patient consultations, research interviews, clinical notes, medical conferences. Transcribing these recordings traditionally requires either manual typing (time-consuming and expensive) or cloud transcription services (creating immediate HIPAA compliance concerns). Every audio file sent to external APIs exposes Protected Health Informati...
19/02/2026
Migrating Workloads from AWS to Azure: A Structured Approach for Cloud Architects
The foundation of a successful migration is maintaining a like-for-like architecture during the transition.A principle often violated in practice: the workload team currently responsible for the workload in AWS and who will ultimately own it in Azure should perform the migration.Read the full series and share it with cloud architects, IT leaders, and DevOps teams in your network who are planning or executing migrations:
19/02/2026
Reactive Incident Response with Azure SRE Agent: From Alert to Resolution in Minutes
SRE Agent portal overview with incident list The Reactive Incident Challenge Your monitoring is solid. Alerts fire when they should. But then what? Alert lands in Teams/PagerDuty On-call engineer wakes up, logs in Starts investigating: "What's broken? Why? How do I fix it?" 20 minutes later, they're still gathering context The alert was fast. The human response? Not so much....
19/02/2026
Zyphra Releases ZUNA: A 380M-Parameter BCI Foundation Model for EEG Data, Advancing Noninvasive Thought-to-Text Development
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are finally having their ‘foundation model’ moment.Zyphra, a research lab focused on large-scale models, recently released ZUNA, a 380M-parameter foundation model specifically for EEG signals.ZUNA is a masked diffusion auto-encoder designed to perform channel infilling and super-resolution for any electrode layout.
19/02/2026
[Tutorial] Building a Visual Document Retrieval Pipeline with ColPali and Late Interaction Scoring
In this tutorial, we build an end-to-end visual document retrieval pipeline using ColPali.We focus on making the setup robust by resolving common dependency conflicts and ensuring the environment stays stable.We render PDF pages as images, embed them using ColPali’s multi-vector representations, and rely on late-interaction scoring to retrieve the most relevant pages for […]
19/02/2026
From "Maybe Next Quarter" to "Running Before Lunch" on Container Apps - Modernizing Legacy .NET App
In early 2025, we wanted to modernize Jon Galloway's MVC Music Store — a classic ASP.NET MVC 5 app running on .NET Framework 4.8 with Entity Framework 6. The goal was straightforward: address vulnerabilities, enable managed identity, and deploy to Azure Container Apps and Azure SQL. No more plaintext connection strings. No more passwords in config files.
18/02/2026
Tavus Launches Phoenix-4: A Gaussian-Diffusion Model Bringing Real-Time Emotional Intelligence And Sub-600ms Latency To Generative Video AI
The ‘uncanny valley’ is the final frontier for generative video. We have seen AI avatars that can talk, but they often lack the soul of human interaction. They suffer from stiff movements and a lack of emotional context. Tavus aims to fix this with the launch of Phoenix-4, a new generative AI model designed for […] The post
18/02/2026
Azure Recognized as an NVIDIA Cloud Exemplar, Setting the Bar for AI Performance in the Cloud
As AI models continue to scale in size and complexity, cloud infrastructure must deliver more than theoretical peak performance. What matters in practice is reliable, end-to-end, workload-level AI performance—where compute, networking, system software, and optimization work together to deliver predictable, repeatable results at scale. This directly translates to business value: efficient full-stack infrastructure accelerates time-to-market, maximizes ROI on GPU and cloud investments, and enab...