Microsoft Teams is now Free - Can it be the Game Changer

Microsoft Teams is a platform that combines workplace chat, meetings, notes, and attachments. The service integrates with the company's Office 365 subscription office productivity suite, including Microsoft Office and Skype, and features extensions that can integrate with non-Microsoft products.

Microsoft initially released in 2017, but recently Microsoft announced a free version of it, which could be very useful for new startups or educational groups which want to collaborate for free with lots of features.

So what does the free version of Microsoft teams allows you to do:

• Add up to 300 members to collaborate with 2GB free space per user.
• 10 GB shared storage
• Unlimited messaging and search.
• Secure File Sharing
• One on one Meetings with audio and video facilities.
• Channel Meetings for Multiple People in team
• Screen Sharing
• MS word, PowerPoint, excel and One Note
• Access to 140+ other apps and services
• All this is available over cloud, which means it is not device specific. Just login with your account and you got all you work saved using other machines.

API and powershell for Power Bi Administrators

Power Bi enables organisation to be more data driven by empowering every business user build there own reports. But organisations must be capable to govern this self service BI boom. So the IT administrators must be capable of handling Licencing, Capacity, Security, Governance and Regulatory requirements.

To help achieve this, last week Microsoft released  APIs, power shell and .Net sdk for power bill admins.

A general scenario: Consider you have a database which is being used by many users and is under heavy load. Obviously there would some reports which could be optimised to reduce query size. As an admin if you could trace which are these reports you could then ask the users to optimise. This can be achieved by enumerating through resources under your tenant. Click here to read about how can we enumerate and identify.

This is just one example, but you could achieve a lot more. Below are some more related resources.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/power-bi/overview?view=powerbi-ps
https://github.com/Microsoft/powerbi-powershell
https://github.com/Microsoft/PowerBI-CSharp
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/power-bi/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-admin-reference

Windows 7 is dangerous to use, Warns Microsoft

Microsoft recently published a post(in German) warning customers to move from Windows 7 to windows 10. The official new room warns that the ageing platform suffers from various failings including security issues and lack of hardware support.
Microsoft further added that windows 7 has an outdated security architecture, and people using it are more susceptible to cyber attacks.

Is there a real threat or it is just a scare tactic

• Let me say it clearly, Windows 7 is totally safe and users should not panic. Is seems like a desperate attempt to push people to upgrade.
• Provided, system is upgraded with latest updates, you their is nothing to worry.
• Windows 7 supports ends officially in 2020, so you have ample time to move at your pace for upgradation.

Conclusion: windows 10 security architecture is better than windows 7, but there is no hurry to upgrade. Windows 7 was one of the best version of Windows, so you can comfortably take your time de-addict your self.