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Microsoft announces that it will pause Windows 10 optional updates starting in May and extend security updates for some Windows 10 version 1709 SKUs to October. There are also details on new features coming to Edge, an update to Microsoft Emulator for Windows 10X, and news that Microsoft Search integration with Windows 10 is being delayed until Q4 2020. Additionally, I provide some tips on working at home.

Slack has revealed its add-on for Teams calling to dispel the mystery (at least in my mind) for how they would create a calling integration without Microsoft’s help. As it turns out, Slack has taken some work they already had and the fact that Teams has URIs for meetings and combined them together to get their integration done. Very smart|

The Slack CEO says that the company is working on a calling integration with Teams. Slack hasn’t released any technical information, which leads to a certain amount of speculation as to how such an integration might happen. Slack’s previous attempts to integrate with Office 365 applications haven’t been too successful, but perhaps a federated hook-up like the one between Skype consumer and Teams might work.

This year has been a rough one for the event industry with nearly all in-person events being canceled. Microsoft has already canceled its in-person MVP summit, Build, and partner summit called Inspire and it’s not surprising to hear that the company is also altering its Ignite conference as well.

What’s changed in PowerShell 7 to enhance support for JSON? There are no new cmdlets, but there have been some functionality changes to the existing cmdlets.

Although Teams has seen a spike in usage due to more people working at home, the view of participants in Teams video meetings is not as good as competitors such as Zoom. Basically, the 2 x 2 view used by Teams isn’t as visually attractive or useful as the gallery views supported by other video conferencing systems. Microsoft says they have elevated the priority of the work necessary to increase the number of participants in the meeting window. They don’t say when this will happen.

If you were to point to one software-as-a-service product inside of Microsoft that has been a pillar of the company’s growth, Office 365 would be it.

As expected, Microsoft is rolling out later this year a Teams update that will enable functionality for families (and friends) to create a Teams hub for communication, document sharing, calendaring, and password management.

Seemingly overnight, a sizeable portion of the global workforce moved to being a remote operation. While everyone is looking for new options about how to try and keep operations running as smooth as possible, cloud vendors are seeing a significant spike in usage.

Microsoft announced that Teams now supports a maximum of 10,000 users in the membership of an individual team. The new limit is rolling out to Office 365 tenants in April and should be available worldwide in May. The need for increased membership is likely driven by large enterprise deployments of Teams who find the previous 5,000 limit just too small for their discussions.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft made a significant announcement regarding several of its popular certifications. The company announced that Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA), Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD), Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE) certifications would be retired on June 30, 2020.

Because it’s such a great time to be alive, this edition of Short Takes looks at a ton of Coronavirus-related news, including Azure capacity issues, Microsoft/Office 365 service throttling, certification retirement extensions, unprecedented Xbox Live demand, and much, much, more.