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There have always been a few options for running background asynchronous tasks within PowerShell. Traditionally, PowerShell (PS) Jobs was the go to method as a job could be started and then control returned to the console. PS Jobs were always heavy, in regards to resource usage, and depending on what needed to be run, this…

Some Azure customers complaining that they can’t start virtual machines in several European regions due to lack of capacity.

Microsoft will remove the Search-Mailbox cmdlet from Exchange Online on July 1, but that doesn’t mean you can’t purge bad messages from user mailboxes. Office 365 content searches and content search actions can hard- or soft-delete messages. Some limitations exist, but not enough to be worried. And we include a PowerShell script to show how to get the job done.

At times like this, chatting about cool new features in Azure is a lot less important than what’s surrounding us all, and impacting some of us either directly or indirectly, now. But you know what? A distraction from the fear, worry, or self-imposed incarceration can be a good thing. So let’s crack on with it, and let’s talk about the cool new IaaS features that Azure launched during the last month.

Teams, Teams, and more Teams – Sorry kids, but this month I feel like the whole update is about Teams. Why? Because all of a sudden half the world is work from home and it turns out collaboration platforms like Teams are pretty helpful.

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.