Suggested Replies started Showing up in the Teams Desktop App?
The Suggested Replies started Showing up in the Teams Desktop Application as well. This feature was already rolled out to the mobile version of the Teams application. The Teams mobile version suggested replies feature was already updated in the Microsoft documentation Use suggested replies to respond to messages without typing (microsoft.com). The desktop version documentation is still not updated even though Microsoft enabled this feature for the desktop version. As per the M365 roadmap, it's already rolling out. Microsoft 365 Roadmap - See What's Coming | Microsoft 365. Suggested replies in Teams chat uses assistive AI to create short responses based on the context of the previous message. Suggested replies present users with up to three recommended responses to choose from. Feature ID: 92674 Added to the roadmap: 3/16/2022 Last modified: 4/18/2022 Product(s): Microsoft Teams Cloud instance(s): GCC High, DoD, GCC, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Platform(s): Desktop Release phase(s): General Availability I have created a quick post on how to turn off or on the Suggested Replies feature from the Teams application (desktop and mobile). You can deploy Teams using SCCM or Intune on managed Windows 11 or Windows 10 devices.How managed identities work on Azure resources
Managed Identities are a great way to eliminate the need to store credentials in the source code, and retrieve token from Azure AD while abstracting the entire process for apps running on Azure resources. Learn how it works and what magic happens on the backend!
A Deep Dive into Serverless Applications on Power Apps and Azure
This is a monthly blog series highlighting different the capabilities of Azure and Power apps together. Read this blog to learn how Low-code application development on Azure enables you to build serverless applications faster. After reading, scan through the resources section for additional information on serverless applications and Low-code development on Azure.Modern Application Development Overview
This blog will provide an overview of Modern application development. I will first define the modern application development approach. Then delve into the ‘7 building blocks’ of the approach starting with cloud native architecture, followed by AI, Integration, Data, Software delivery, Operations, and Security. Each segment will define and explain the ‘building block’ and how the modern application development approach leverages the ‘building blocks’ to produce more robust applications. What is Modern Application Development (MAD)? Modern application development is an approach that enables you to innovate rapidly by using cloud-native architectures with loosely coupled microservices, managed databases, AI, DevOps support, and built-in monitoring. The resulting modern applications leverage cloud native architectures by packaging code and dependencies in containers and deploying them as microservices to increase developer velocity using DevOps practices. Subsequently modern applications utilize continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) technologies and processes to improve system reliability. Modern apps employ automation to identify and quickly mitigate issues applying best practices like infrastructure as code and increasing data security with threat detection and protection. Lastly, modern applications are faster by infusing AI into native architecture structures to reduce manual tasks, accelerating workflows and introducing low code application development tools to simplify and expedite development processes. Cloud-native architectures According to The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), cloud native is defined as “Cloud-native technologies empower organizations to build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds. Containers, service meshes, microservices, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs exemplify this approach. These techniques enable loosely coupled systems that are resilient, manageable, and observable. Combined with robust automation, they allow engineers to make high-impact changes frequently and predictably with minimal toil.” Utilizing that definition, what are the key tenants of a cloud-native approach, and how does each tenant benefit you? As stated above, cloud-native architectures center on speed and agility. That speed and agility are derived from 6 factors: 1. Cloud infrastructure 2. Modern design 3. Microservices 4. Containers 5. Backing services 6. Automation. Cloud infrastructure is the most important factor that contributes to the speed and agility of cloud-native architecture. 3 Key Factors 1. Cloud-native systems fully leverage the cloud service model using PaaS compute infrastructure and managed services. 2. Cloud-native systems continue to run as infrastructure scales in or out without worrying about the back end because the infra is fully managed. 3. Cloud-native systems have auto scaling, self-healing, and monitoring capabilities. Modern Design is highly effective in part due to the Twelve-Factor Application method, which is a set of principles and practices that developers follow to construct applications optimized for modern cloud environments. Most Critical Considerations for Modern Design 1. Communication — How front ends communication with back-end services, and how back-end services communicate with each other. 2. Resiliency — How services in your distributed architecture respond in less-than-ideal scenarios due to the in-process, out-process network communications of microservices architecture. 3. Distributed Data — How do you query data or implement a transaction across multiple services? 4. Identity — How does your service identify who is accessing it and their allotted permissions? What are Microservices? Microservices are built as a distributed set of small, independent services that interact through a shared fabric. Improved Agility with Microservices 1. Each microservice has an autonomous lifecycle and can evolve independently and deploy frequently. 2. Each microservice can scale independently, enabling services to scale to meet demand. Those microservices are then packaged a container image, those images are stored in container registry. When needed you transform the container into a running container instance, to utilize the stored microservices. How do containers benefit cloud native apps? Benefits of Containers 1. Provide portability and guarantee consistency across environments. 2. Containers can isolate microservices and their dependencies from the underlying infrastructure. 3. Smaller footprints than full virtual machines (VMs). That smaller size increases density, the number of microservices, that a given host can run at a time. Cloud native solutions also increase application speed and agility via backing services. Benefits of Backing Services 1. Save time and labor 2. Treating backing services as attached resources enables the services to attach and detach as needed without code changes to the microservices that contain information, enabling greater dynamism. Lastly, cloud-native solutions leverage automation. Using cloud-native architectures your infrastructure and deployment are automated, consistent, and reputable. Benefits of Automation 1. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) avoids manual environment configuration and delivers stable environments rapidly at scale. 2. Automated deployment leverages CI/CD to speed up innovation and deployment, updating on-demand; saving money and time. Artificial Intelligence The second building block in the modern application development approach is Artificial intelligence (AI). What comprises artificial intelligence? How do I add AI to my applications? Azure Artificial Intelligence is comprised of machine learning, knowledge mining, and AI apps and agents. Under the apps and agent’s domain there are two overarching products, Azure Cognitive Services and Bot Service, that we’re going to focus on. Cognitive services are a collection of domain specific pre-trained AI models that can be customized with your data. Bot service is a purpose-built bot development environment with out-of-the-box templates. To learn how to add AI to your applications watch the short video titled “Easily add AI to your applications.” Innate Benefits User benefits: Translation, chatbots, and voice for AI-enabled user interfaces. Business benefits: Enhanced business logic for scenarios like search, personalization, document processing, image analytics, anomaly detection, and speech analytics. Modern Application Development unique benefit: Enable developers of any skill to add AI capabilities to their applications with pre-built and customizable AI models for speech, vision, language, and decision-making. Integration The third building block is integration. Why is integration needed, and how is it accomplished? Integration is needed to integrate applications by connecting multiple independent systems. The four core cloud services to meet integration needs are: 1. A way to publish and manage application programming interfaces (APIs). 2. A way to create and run integration logic, typically with a graphical tool for defining the workflow’s logic. 3. A way for applications and integration technologies to communicate in a loosely coupled way via messaging. 4. A technology that supports communication via events What are the benefits of Azure integration services and how do they translate to the modern app dev approach? Azure meets all four needs, the first need is met by Azure API management, the second is met by Azure Logic Apps, the third is Azure Service Bus, and the final is met by Azure Event Grid. The four components of Azure Integration Services address the core requirements of application integration. Yet real scenarios often require more, and this is where the modern application development approach comes into play. Perhaps your integration application needs a place to store unstructured data, or a way to include custom code that does specialized data transformations. Azure Integration Services is part of the larger Azure cloud platform, making it easier to integrate data, APIs, and into your modern app to meet your needs. You might store unstructured data in Azure Data Lake Store, for instance, or write custom code using Azure Functions, to meet serverless compute tech needs. Data The fourth building block is data, and more specifically managed databases. What are the advantages of managed databases? Fully managed, cloud-based databases provide limitless scale, low-latency access to rich data, and advanced data protection — all built in, regardless of languages or frameworks. How does the modern application development approach benefit from fully managed databases? Modern application development leverages microservices and containers, the benefit to both technologies is their ability to operate independently and scale as demand warrants. To ensure the greatest user satisfaction and app functionality the limitless scale and low-latency access to data enable apps to run unimpeded. Software Delivery The fifth building block is software delivery. What constitutes modern development software delivery practices? Modern app development software delivery practices enable you to meet rapid market changes that require shorter release cycles without sacrificing quality, stability, and security. The practices help you to release in a fast, consistent, and reliable way by using highly productive tools, automating mundane and manual steps, and iterating in small increments through CI/CD and DevOps practices. What is DevOps? A compound of development (Dev) and operations (Ops), DevOps is the union of people, process, and technology to continually provide value to customers. DevOps enables formerly siloed roles — development, IT operations, quality engineering, and security — to coordinate and collaborate to produce better, more reliable products. By adopting a DevOps culture along with DevOps practices and tools, teams gain the ability to better respond to customer needs, increase confidence in the applications they build, and achieve development goals faster. DevOps influences the application lifecycle throughout its plan, develop, deliver, and operate phases. Plan In the plan phase, DevOps teams ideate, define, and describe features and capabilities of the applications and systems they are building. Creating backlogs, tracking bugs, managing agile software development with Scrum, using Kanban boards, and visualizing progress with dashboards are some of the ways DevOps teams plan with agility and visibility. Develop The develop phase includes all aspects of coding — writing, testing, reviewing, and the integration of code by team members — as well as building that code into build artifacts that can be deployed into various environments. To develop rapidly, they use highly productive tools, automate mundane and manual steps, and iterate in small increments through automated testing and continuous integration. Deliver Delivery is the process of deploying applications into production environments and deploying and configuring the fully governed foundational infrastructure that makes up those environments. In the deliver phase, teams define a release management process with clear manual approval stages. They also set automated gates that move applications between stages until they’re made available to customers. Operate The operate phase involves maintaining, monitoring, and troubleshooting applications in production environments. In adopting DevOps practices, teams work to ensure system reliability, high availability, and aim for zero downtime while reinforcing security and governance. What is CI/CD? Under continuous integration, the develop phase — building and testing code — is fully automated. Each time you commit code, changes are validated and merged to the master branch, and the code is packaged in a build artifact. Under continuous delivery, anytime a new build artifact is available, the artifact is automatically placed in the desired environment and deployed. With continuous deployment, you automate the entire process from code commit to production. Operations The sixth building block is operations to maximize automation. How do you maximize automation in your modern application development approach? With an increasingly complex environment to manage, maximizing the use of automation helps you improve operational efficiency, identify issues before they affect customer experiences, and quickly mitigate issues when they occur. Fully managed platforms provide automated logging, scaling, and high availability. Rich telemetry, actionable alerting, and full visibility into applications and the underlying system are key to a modern application development approach. Automating regular checkups and applying best practices like infrastructure as code and site reliability engineering promotes resiliency and helps you respond to incidents with minimal downtime and data loss. Security The seventh building block is multilayered security. Why do I need multi-layered security in my modern applications? Modern applications require multilayered security across code, delivery pipelines, app runtimes, and databases. Start by providing developers secure dev boxes with well-governed identity. As part of the DevOps lifecycle, use automated tools to examine dependencies in code repositories and scan for vulnerabilities as you deploy apps to the target environment. Enterprise-grade secrets and policy management encrypt the applications and give the operations team centralized policy enforcement. With fully managed compute and database services, security control is built in and threat protection is executed in real time. Conclusion While modern application development can seem daunting, it is an approach that can be done iteratively, and each step can yield large benefits for your team. Access webinars, analyst reports, tutorials, and more on the Modern application development on Azure page.
Get ready for Microsoft Build 2025
Microsoft Build is just a few weeks away. To celebrate, we’re highlighting resources that will help you get ready for the big event. Explore some of the exciting sessions you can join in-person or online, learn new skills before jumping into live deep-dive sessions, brush up on best practices, and get up to speed on the latest developer tools so you can hit the event ready to take your knowledge (and your applications) to the next level. Connect, code, and grow at Build It’s almost time for Microsoft Build! Can’t join the event live in-person? No problem. You can still experience the event streaming live online for free (May 19-22). Watch the keynote, join live sessions, learn new skills, and watch in-depth demos. Join the .NET & C# teams at Microsoft Build 2025 Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with the .NET and C# teams at Microsoft Build. There are more than 75 .NET sessions planned for this year’s event. Check out this blog post for highlights of some of the .NET sessions to watch for. How Microsoft developers use AI in real-world coding Tired of the AI hype? Watch this Microsoft Build session to see how real developers at Microsoft use GitHub Copilot in their own coding workflows, with live coding demos. Leave with practical tips for applying AI to your coding. What's next in C# This Microsoft Build session will provide a demo-rich tour of upcoming features in C# 14 and beyond. See what’s next in C# and discover how C# keeps making your code clearer, cleaner, and more expressive. Python meets .NET: Building AI solutions with combined strengths Python and .NET are a great combination! Join this Microsoft Build session where Scott Hanselman and Anthony Shaw will discuss and demo how Python can help spice up your .NET applications. Under the hood and into the magic of GitHub Copilot Have you ever wondered how GitHub Copilot turns prompts into code suggestions? In this Microsoft Build session, the GitHub Copilot team will look at how they built this tool, how it works, and how it keeps up in a quickly evolving landscape. VS Code, Live! at Microsoft Build VS Code, Live! is doing a special in-person session—and you’re invited. Join the session at Microsoft Build (or stream it online) to watch interactive demos, see some sneak peeks, and get a behind-the-scenes look at the latest announcements. Which AI model should I use with GitHub Copilot? If you’ve ever wondered which AI model is the best fit for your GitHub Copilot project, you’re not alone. Each model has its own strengths and picking the right one can feel mysterious. This blog post outlines things to consider when deciding. Elevate your AI skills today Unlock the power of AI and prepare for the upcoming Microsoft Build event. Visit the AI learning hub on Microsoft Learn to explore innovative technologies, learn new skills, and improve your developer productivity. Top 12 scenarios to streamline Azure tasks in VS Code using GitHub Copilot GitHub Copilot for Azure can help streamline your Azure workflows. This collection of videos explores 12 scenarios where GitHub Copilot can accelerate your cloud projects and developer tasks. VS Code agent mode just changed everything Can Visual Studio Code agent mode build an entire app for you complete with a database? Burke Holland demonstrates how. But will it work? You’ll have to watch the video to find out. .NET Conf: Focus on Modernization Missed the .NET Conf: Focus on Modernization event? Catch up on all the sessions with the on-demand playlist. Inside Microsoft Dev Box: Scalable cloud development Microsoft Dev Box provides secure, ready-to-code cloud development environments that help teams move faster and stay secure. Watch a demo of how a company would set up Microsoft Dev Box for their developers in Seattle and Berlin. AI Skills Fest Challenge: Extend Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Teams with agents and apps Join the challenge and learn how to extend Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Microsoft Teams with custom apps and agents. This challenge will guide you through modules that help you learn along the way. Developer focused how-tos, use cases, and solutions on Microsoft Azure Want a dive into developer focused “How To” content, explore use cases, and learn about solutions? Check out the All Things Azure blog. Learn how to build multi-agent AI apps, understand how GitHub Copilot works under the hood, and more. Sip & Sync with Azure Watch the Sip & Sync with Azure video series to get up to speed on the latest Azure and AI information. Episodes explore topics like GenAI on Azure and quickly building AI agents with Azure AI Foundry. Season of Agents: Find an event near you Find a local event to dive into agents and learn new skills. Watch JDConf 2025 on demand JDConf 2025 is over but you can still watch the sessions on demand. Learn about building modern apps in the cloud, integrating AI, using AI-assisted dev tools, and other critical skills for Java developers. From prompt to production: Build a landing page with Copilot agent mode See how you can build a developer-focused landing page in under 30 minutes using GitHub Copilot agent mode and Claude 3.5 Sonnet—with just screenshots and prompts.Introducing Microsoft Power Fx: the low-code programming language
Today the Power Platform introduces its open-source language for low-code, Microsoft Power Fx. This formula-based language originates from Microsoft Excel and is already the foundation of the Microsoft Power Apps canvas. You may wonder, why does the world need a low-code programming language? Point-and-click tools are great for quickly assembling experiences and workflows, but many apps need a layer of logic that goes beyond what is practical to drag and drop, for example: Show a list of customers who signed up in the last 7 days within 15 miles of this location. Highlight the newest entries in green. When a user clicks for more details, if the record has outstanding action items associated with it, pop those to the top of the screen. Custom logic traditionally needed to solve such problems is where low-code platforms have “hit a cliff” requiring traditional code, where the Low-code application development on Azure solution has stepped in. Power Fx enables many millions of people globally who build with Microsoft Excel syntax to build custom logic, reducing much of the “cliff”. However, this does not reduce the integration capabilities of Azure and Power Apps but enhances them. Additionally, developers can use Power Fx with tools they are familiar with such as VS (Visual Studio) Code, GitHub, Azure DevOps, and it works with “pro-code” components created in JavaScript, C#, or other professional languages. Developers can cut development time and costs using Power Fx. The complexities of asynchronous coding are taken care of, Dataverse entities and data types are first class objects, and guardrails prevent run away code and other common pitfalls. Read the entire Power Fx announcement here.
