Partner Blog | Partner Center Technical Corner: December 2024 edition
Welcome to the December edition of Partner Center Technical Corner. This month’s highlights include a closer look at the new Partner Center AI assistant, important security updates, and a recap of recently released capabilities. As always, you can find the most up-to-date technical roadmap and essential Partner Center resources at the end of the blog. Spotlight: Partner Center AI assistant (preview) Partner Center AI assistant(preview) enhances your Partner Center experience with the power of generative AI, offering tailored insights and intelligent suggestions to transform your everyday tasks in Partner Center into opportunities for growth and innovation. This feature is currently available in preview to partners using the English version of Partner Center. AI assistant (preview) is continually being enhanced to dive deeper into workspaces and provide an individualized experience. It is seamlessly integrated into your experience, continuing your conversations as you navigate through Partner Center. You can ask the AI assistant for help with details on a customer’s Microsoft Azure usage estimate, earnings insights over a given period, or assistance with the various memberships we offer, among many other capabilities. Responses are pulled from a rich array of sources, including Microsoft product documentation, partner program guides, and partner-specific information in Partner Center. For example, on membership queries, the AI assistant answers specific questions around the Solutions Partner designation by reviewing program rules, analyzing underlying metrics, and providing a detailed, data-driven response. The assistant can also troubleshoot missing attribution of employees in skilling scores or provide contextual recommendations to help you qualify for a Solutions Partner designation. Partner feedback: One of our preview users shared, “This is really helpful! And I am very glad to see that our AI friend will know the payment status of claims IDs now.” As needed, partners can initiate thesupport ticket creation process through the AI assistant panel. Continue reading hereOvercoming fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the era of AI transformation
Resistance to adopting AI in the workplace is real. For many, it’s not due to an unwillingness to change but rather from a genuine sense of “FUD”—that is, fear, uncertainty, and doubt—around AI. Constructively addressing FUD is essential to fostering a supportive learning culture that empowers people to thrive in the era of AI transformation so that you and your entire organization can thrive, too. At Microsoft, we’re the first to use and test our own AI technologies internally before releasing them to customers, so we recognize the need to understand the underlying causes of FUD, find positive ways to address them, and provide helpful solutions. We’ve also found that skilling up on AI and learning how it can streamline our workloads, improve our decision-making, and increase our productivity can reduce concerns and boost enthusiasm around this cutting-edge technology. Transforming fear into opportunity Probably the biggest fear in the workplace is that AI adoption might lead to job loss, but the reality is that a number of experts are optimistic. In Generative AI likely to augment rather than destroy jobs, the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) predicts that AI “is more likely to augment than destroy jobs by automating some tasks rather than taking over a role entirely.” Many job roles will likely evolve to become hybrid—using AI to complement human work. Given this evolution of work, AI skills are in high demand, and this presents an opportunity for employees in nearly every discipline, field, industry, and role. Proactively building AI skills equips workers to adapt to the transforming workplace. And skilling up provides a meaningful way for them to overcome their fears and develop confidence in their capabilities and in the technology. Organizations that provide skill-building opportunities thus help not only their workers but also the organizations themselves. For details on resources, opportunities, and solutions for acquiring AI skills and competencies, read Get AI ready: Build skills with Microsoft Learn. Dispelling AI uncertainty with a learning culture The AI transformation is happening so fast that uncertainty is sometimes seen as the baseline, not the outlier. We’re all learning right now, in real time. As we test Microsoft AI apps and services, we’re actively figuring out what AI can do. Practically speaking, everyone in the workforce needs to put AI to work and see what it can do. An organizational learning culture can support these efforts and help dispel uncertainty. Ethan Mollick, Professor of Management at the Wharton School and a noted authority on AI and entrepreneurship, has found that the biggest gains come in organizations that encourage cooperative learning. In the Beyond the Prompt podcast episode titled What everybody’s missing about AI in business, he points out, “It starts with culture.” The episode also encourages listeners with this key takeaway: “Use AI for everything you can: The only way to truly understand AI's capabilities is to use it for as many tasks as possible.” Empowering your teams with AI training on Microsoft Learn for Organizations The consensus on overcoming AI FUD in organizations is that skills training and a learning culture are key, and a team training environment can greatly support this growth. Microsoft Learn for Organizations curates Microsoft Learn training for teams and organizations, including offerings to help build AI skills and confidence: Microsoft Learn for Organizations Playbook: A guide to skill up your team for AI and beyond. The playbook helps you to develop an AI skill-building plan, with resources to maximize your impact at the individual, team, and organizational levels. Links to AI skill-building for your organization, live webinars, and insights and strategies on building a learning culture. Links to the Copilot learning hub on Microsoft Learn, the AI learning hub on Microsoft Learn, and the Security hub on Microsoft Learn. Official Plans that cover the latest Microsoft AI apps and services, including “Build, test, and deploy applications securely with GitHub and Microsoft Azure,” “Implementing data integration and model grounding with Azure AI Studio and Microsoft Fabric,” and “Accelerate app development by using GitHub Copilot.” The latest Microsoft Credentials. These industry-trusted and Microsoft-verified credentials give learners the flexibility to grow the AI and cloud skills needed for critical roles or projects. Microsoft Certifications validate a wide range of skills required to be successful in a job role. Learners earn a Certification by passing an exam. AI-focused Certifications include “Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals” and “Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Scientist Associate,” among others. Microsoft Applied Skills validate skill sets specific to real-world technical scenarios. Learners earn them by passing interactive lab-based assessments on Microsoft Learn. More than half of the Applied Skills portfolio is focused on AI, including “Build a natural language processing solution with Azure AI Language,” “Create an intelligent document processing solution with Azure AI Document Intelligence,” and many more. Get started on your AI journey at Microsoft Learn for Organizations, and make the most of the many team training opportunities available there. As you and your teams begin to put newly acquired AI skills to use streamlining workloads, increasing collaboration, adding productivity, and more, we hope that the fear, uncertainty, and doubt around AI begin to fade and are replaced by enthusiasm for the many possibilities that the future of AI in the workplace presents.IA y NET LATAM - Episodio 6
Buenas, Es un placer para nosotros, Bruno y Pablito Piova compartir con ustedes nuestras impresiones sobre el episodio 6 de la serie AI + .NET LATAM que tuvimos el honor de presentar el 6 de Diciembre junto con Jose Luis Latorre y Luis Beltran En el episodio número 6 de nuestra serie en Microsoft Reactor, exploramos cómo la inteligencia artificial (IA) está transformando el panorama tecnológico a través de herramientas innovadoras como Agentes autónomos,Semantic Kernel y otras tecnologías avanzadas. Además, discutimos las tendencias clave de IA que marcarán el 2025 y pudimos revisar algunas noticias frescas posteriores al gran eventoMicrosoft Ignite 2024. A continuación, destacamos algunos de los puntos más interesantes que se mencionaron en la charla y compartimos los enlaces de referencia: 6 AI trends you’ll see more of in 2025 Un repaso a las tendencias que marcan la hoja de ruta de la IA para el futuro próximo, desde modelos más potentes y accesibles, hasta el auge de los agentes inteligentes. Microsoft Ignite 2024 Book of News Un resumen completo de todos los anuncios más relevantes presentados en Ignite, incluyendo nuevos servicios, herramientas y mejoras para desarrolladores y profesionales de TI. Introducing Microsoft Copilot actions, new agents, and tools to empower IT| Microsoft 365 Blog Copilot va más allá del simple chat; ahora incluye agentes y acciones que automatizan tareas y mejoran la productividad empresarial. Ignite 2024: Announcing the Azure AI Foundry SDK Un nuevo SDK que unifica y facilita el despliegue y la orquestación de soluciones de IA en Azure, acelerando los ciclos de desarrollo. Introducing Azure AI Agent Service Nuevas funcionalidades que facilitan la creación y administración de agentes de IA capaces de interactuar con otras herramientas y servicios. New Copilot Prompt Gallery helps you discover, save, and share your favorite prompts | Microsoft Community Hub Una galería para descubrir, guardar y compartir prompts, facilitando el trabajo con modelos generativos. Ideal para estandarizar y reutilizar buenas prácticas. Unlocking the Power of Memory: Announcing General Availability of Semantic Kernel’s Memory Packages Una galería para descubrir, guardar y compartir prompts, facilitando el trabajo con modelos generativos. Ideal para estandarizar y reutilizar buenas prácticas. eShopLite-SemanticSearch | eShopLite-SemanticSearch-AzureAISearch Ejemplos prácticos sobre cómo incorporar búsqueda semántica e IA en aplicaciones, utilizando .NET y Azure. Azure AI Content Understanding Servicio en vista previa para procesar y comprender contenidos complejos (texto, imágenes, audio, video) y extraer información relevante. Estamos muy entusiasmados con la creciente participación e interés de la comunidad. Seguiremos comprometidos en ofrecer contenido de alta calidad que promueva el conocimiento y la innovación. Los invitamos a dejar sus comentarios, compartir sus opiniones y contarnos qué más les gustaría ver en futuros episodios. Agradecemos su apoyo y esperamos verlos en el próximo episodio, el 10 de enero de 2025. Registro:https://aka.ms/IAyNET-LATAM Redes de LinkedIn de Microsoft-Reactor: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/microsoft-reactor/ Un saludo, Bruno y PablitoEffective Safety Measures in Peer Evaluation with Azure AI Content Safety
Developing mechanisms for peer evaluation comments requires a strong focus on safety and ethical considerations. Drawing from experiences in AI application development, we highlight actionable strategies that can be applied to improve the safety of peer feedback systems in one of our learning and teaching modules in the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow: Professional Software Development and Team Project.
Getting Started with the AI Dev Gallery
The AI Dev Gallery is a new open-source project designed to inspire and support developers in integrating on-device AI functionality into their Windows apps. It offers an intuitive UX for exploring and testing interactive AI samples powered by local models. Key features include: Quickly explore and download models from well-known sources on GitHub and HuggingFace. Test different models with interactive samples over 25 different scenarios, including text, image, audio, and video use cases. See all relevant code and library references for every sample. Switch between models that run on CPU and GPU depending on your device capabilities. Quickly get started with your own projects by exporting any sample to a fresh Visual Studio project that references the same model cache, preventing duplicate downloads. Part of the motivation behind the Gallery was exposing developers to the host of benefits that come with on-device AI. Some of these benefits include improved data security and privacy, increased control and parameterization, and no dependence on an internet connection or third-party cloud provider. Requirements Device Requirements Minimum OS Version: Windows 10, version 1809 (10.0; Build 17763) Architecture: x64, ARM64 Memory: At least 16 GB is recommended Disk Space: At least 20GB free space is recommended GPU: 8GB of VRAM is recommended for running samples on the GPU Visual Studio 2022 You will need Visual Studio 2022 with the Windows Application Development workload. Running the Gallery To run the gallery: Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/microsoft/AI-Dev-Gallery.git Run the solution: .\AIDevGallery.sln HitF5 to build and run the Gallery Using the Gallery The AI Dev Gallery has can be navigated in two ways: The Samples View The Models View Navigating Samples In this view, samples are broken up into categories (Text, Code, Image, etc.) and then into more specific samples, like in the Translate Text pictured below: On clicking a sample, you will be prompted to choose a model to download if you haven’t run this sample before: Next to the model you can see the size of the model, whether it will run on CPU or GPU, and the associated license. Pick the model that makes the most sense for your machine. You can also download new models and change the model for a sample later from the sample view. Just click the model drop down at the top of the sample: The last thing you can do from the Sample pane is view the sample code and export the project to Visual Studio. Both buttons are found in the top right corner of the sample, and the code view will look like this: Navigating Models If you would rather navigate by models instead of samples, the Gallery also provides the model view: The model view contains a similar navigation menu on the right to navigate between models based on category. Clicking on a model will allow you to see a description of the model, the versions of it that are available to download, and the samples that use the model. Clicking on a sample will take back over to the samples view where you can see the model in action. Deleting and Managing Models If you need to clear up space or see download details for the models you are using, you can head over the Settings page to manage your downloads: From here, you can easily see every model you have downloaded and how much space on your drive they are taking up. You can clear your entire cache for a fresh start or delete individual models that you are no longer using. Any deleted model can be redownload through either the models or samples view. Next Steps for the Gallery The AI Dev Gallery is still a work in progress, and we plan on adding more samples and features to take the experience even further. If you have feedback, noticed a bug, or any ideas for features or samples, head over to the issue board and submit an issue. We also have a discussion board for any other topics relevant to the Gallery. The Gallery is an open-source project, and we would love contribution, feedback, and ideation! Happy modeling!Dive into these new Copilot agent development tools
Are you already building Copilot agents/extensions for your marketplace apps, or planning to soon? Check out these resources to help support you along your journey: Developer’s guide to building your own agents: Watch our Microsoft 365 Copilot extensibility session on demand to deep dive into the pro-code development tools for building agents for Copilot and beyond. Learn how you can build agents on Microsoft 365 Copilot or your custom AI engine with our new Microsoft 365 Agents SDK. Watch now. Introducing the Microsoft 365 Agents SDK Learning path: Extend Microsoft 365 Copilot with declarative agents using Visual Studio Code Learning path: Build custom agents for Microsoft TeamsLoop governance, lifecycle, manageability for IT Admins – Nov 2024
Dive into our latest update on Loop governance, lifecycle, and manageability tailored just IT admins! Discover how Loop's seamless integration with Microsoft 365 can transform your team's productivity with real-time co-authoring, versatile components, and enhanced security features. From Copilot Pages to comprehensive manageability roadmap items, this blog has everything you need to confidently pilot and fully enable Loop in your organization.
Purple CTO Shares His Azure Communication Services Experience for a Secure Contact Center
In2022, we knew legacy on-premise systems were not going to sustain us as a fully independent contact center solution for the dozens of customers we serve. At Purple, we needed a cloud-based solution that enabled us to deliver better customer support and engagement—and allowed us to stay competitive in the market. We looked at four options, but it was an easy decision for us: Azure Communication Services bridges the gap between outdated infrastructure and a secure, scalable platform, enabling our entire business to expand its services while ensuring data is securely managed and compliant with regulatory standards. How we transformed Purple’s technological base with Azure Communication Services Our previous investments in Microsoft Teams and Teams Direct Routing for PSTN connectivity aligned seamlessly with Azure Communication Service’s interoperable framework. By adopting ACS, we modernized our technological stack and expanded our service capabilities to include reception and delegation services. Azure Communication Service’s efficiency has allowed us to develop a cost-effective, reliable solution with minimal development effort while also addressing data storage and compliance requirements. Sensitive customer data is now stored securely within customers’ Azure tenants, enhancing security and regulatory compliance. The seamless integration and robust features of ACS have significantly enhanced our product offerings, making a complex system feel intuitive and easy for our users. This is exactly what we need to stay ahead in a competitive market. Integrating AI for enhanced contact center capabilities The migration and integration processes presented logistical and technical challenges, particularly in transferring large volumes of PSTN minutes and seamlessly transitioning services for existing customers without disrupting their operations. But our team at Purple did a great job integrating ACS into client operations, which has bolstered our position in the contact center market. Leveraging ACS features—such as call automation, direct routing, job router, call recording, transcription, and media functionalities—we enhanced our communication capabilities to support chat, email, and SMS services. We also tap into several Microsoft AI technologies to improve our contact center capabilities. Services like speech-to-text (STT), text-to-speech (TTS), transcription, summarization, and sentiment analysis provide actionable insights for businesses and agents. For optimized performance, planned integrations with Copilot studio let managers and customers query specific contact center metrics, such as agent availability and peak interaction times. Flexibility and scalability translate to cost-effectiveness for customers With ACS’s flexibility and scalability, we've developed a business model centered around cost-effectiveness and reliability. Its pay-as-you-go structure supports unlimited agents and queues, charging customers based on usage, which has reduced our costs by up to 50% and improved stability by 83% compared to older solutions. At Purple, we offer granular billing that differentiates costs for VoIP minutes, call recordings, and transcriptions. Integration with platforms like Salesforce, Jira, and Dynamics365 further streamlines operations, and helps us deliver a seamless, high-quality, cost-effective experience for all of our clients. We are excited about the AI-driven collaboration with Microsoft, which enhances our voice, chat, and CRM integration services, delivering significant value to our customers. This partnership will optimize the end-user experience, seamlessly integrate existing customer data, and provide a more cost-effective solution for businesses to scale and elevate their customer interactions. - Purple Chief Technology Officer Tjeerd Verhoeff
