3D Printers are really getting interesting...

Some of our techs have started using 3D printers for creationg some interesting end results and some that are getting more and more practical as they keep giving you more options on the media that you can use in the printing process. The more this guys play the more ideas we are getting for replacement parts and specialized designs to enhance some of the products that we are already selling. 

One of our phones has a very poor design for a wall mount and this is something that we are considering to produce. In fact, for us, specialized mounts seem like a very practical implementation of this process and price competitive. 

This Christmas I gave my grandson a hand printer that allows him to sculpt designs with a pen like device. It will be his first foray into this technology.

Down the road, who know what we will want to create and what devices will available to us use to do it!

CES: Infinity Gaming Table

Again, not here yet but wish it was. Originally brought to market as a Kickstarter campaign, with pledges exceeding $1 million. Arcade 1Up is planning on releasing soon so if this is something that looks interesting to you, you may not have long to wait...

It looks like Hasbro is getting in on the action making available some of its popular games in digital format. One of the neat things with this table design i some fo the feed back and the ability to program in interesting graphics to make the games more fun and interactive.

Of course you lose the ability to touch real cards, dice and tokens but the possibilites of the what can be designed into the games. The tables are networkable in that they can interact with other players playing on remote tables. Nothing has been said about an ability to integrate with other devices types other than tables made by his manufaturer but there is no saying that this cannot be a future addition. 

The cost of the table is $600 so considering its capabilities and the size of the touch screen sounds like a reasonable purchase. See this direct link of a video showing it's capabilities from CNET.

Best private search engines that won’t track you in 2021

Had a customer that is trying to get off of the grid and asked what search engine they could use that won't track them...

Here is a posting I found that lists a couple of options.

CES: Cadillac Air Taxi

One of the problems with shows like CES is that vendors and manufacturers are showing off a lot of prototype sysetems that we still have to wait for. One of those that I wish was here now is Cadillac's eVTOL Air Taxi. I have linked the CNET Road Show posting describing this neat product that has a unique and curiously practical design for a personal aircraft that GM is working to bring to fruition.

The version that they are showing is a single person design but supposedly a two person version is also in the works. Take a look at the Video that is attached to the posting. It will leave you wanting it to be available today!

Microsoft Teams Dynamic View Feature coming in March

At a theater near you, just kidding. Thursday I highlighted the new December release from Microsoft with the Microsoft Teams Feature of Breakout Rooms. Today, I am looking towards the future release of a new Teams feature that allows you to dispaly content side by side with your participant's windows do be able to see content at the same time you are talking to your meeting participants. 

This new feature provides more control over your display view during meetings to enhance the entire experience. Microsoft's intent is to make meeting feel more connected and create better engagement during the meeting. 

In July, Microsoft posted an update of new feature updates and if you want to see the entire list jump over to this posting.

Microsoft Breakout Rooms

We have been doing so much work using Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other remote connectivity software that it is exciting to see that the software manufacturers are continuing to upgrade their products to make them even more capable as time goes.

One of Microsoft's flagship product's is Microsoft Teams and they have added the ability to use breakout rooms in their software. Here's an article on how to use that new feature.

Sophos Managed Threat Response (MTR)

We have added Sophos Managed Threat Response to our Premium Security Package and it has been working out great for everyone that has had us install it for them. What is included in this package. We start with our base package which includes Patch Management, Asset Management, Remote Access/Support and Intercept X Advanced as your AV Protection Software. With the addition of the MTR Service you also get:

•  24/7 Lead-Driven Threat Hunting - Confirmed malicious artifacts or activity (strong signals) are automatically blocked or terminated, freeing up threat hunters to conduct lead-driven threat hunts. This type of threat hunt involves the aggregation and investigation of causal and adjacent events (weak signals) to discover new Indicators of Attack (IoA) and Indicators of Compromise (IoC) that previously could not be detected.
• Adversarial Detections - Most successful attacks rely on the execution of a process that can appear legitimate to monitoring tools. Using proprietary investigation techniques, our team determines the difference between legitimate behavior and the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by attackers.
• Security Health Check - Keep your Sophos Central products, beginning with Intercept X Advanced with EDR, operating at peak performance with proactive examinations of your operating conditions and recommended configuration improvements.
• Activity Reporting - Summaries of case activities enable prioritization and communication, so your team knows what threats were detected and what response actions were taken within each reporting period.
• 24/7 Leadless Threat Hunting
• Applying data science, threat intelligence, and the intuition of veteran threat hunters, we combine your company profile, high-value assets, and high-risk users to anticipate attacker behavior and identify new Indicators of Attack (IoA).
• Dedicated Threat Response Lead - When an incident is confirmed, a dedicated threat response lead is provided to directly collaborate with your on-premises resources (internal team or external partner) until the active threat is neutralized.
• Direct Call-In Support - Your team has direct call-in access to our security operations center (SOC). Our MTR Operations Team is available around-the-clock and backed by support teams spanning 26 locations worldwide.
• Enhanced Telemetry - Threat investigations are supplemented with telemetry from other Sophos Central products, extending beyond the endpoint to provide a full picture of adversary activities.
• Proactive Posture Improvement - Proactively improve your security posture and harden your defenses with prescriptive guidance for addressing configuration and architecture weaknesses that diminish your overall security capabilities.
• Asset Discovery - For both managed and unmanaged assets, we provide valuable insights during impact assessments, threat hunts, and as part of proactive posture improvement recommendations.

This is an amazing amount of support that becomes available at a very affordable cost. Call our Sales team to find out how you can take advantage of this great product  line up.

Naked Security Topic: Phishing tricks that really work – and how to avoid them

We are seeing quite a few more Phishing Scams the past couple of months and some of them are really hard to tell if they are the real thing or just another SCAM!

This article in Naked Security from Sophos approaches this discussion from a different direction because it comes from some of the Phish Threat creators over at Sophos. Take a look!

Bookbub

I posted an article Last Thursday discussing a site that provides discounted audio books has an alternative to audible.com. The site that introduced me to Chirp.com Is one that my wife loves called BookBub.  This site provides discounted Ebooks for most of the major ebook readers. You can read these on Kindles, IPad, Kobo, your smart phone, in other words any kind of eReader device. you will see recommendations for all kinds of books from up to the minute popular artists and blogs that you might find very interesting. There are so many different things available at the site it is well worth your taking a moment to take a walk.

How long does an external hard drive really last?

ioSafe is one of our vendors that we use for onsite safe storage and one of their techs posted a great article on hard drive life expectancies for both spinning (HDD) and solid state (SSD) drives. It is worth a few minutes to learn what you can expect from each kind of drive and how the environment and use of the drive will effect the drive's life expenctancy.

Have a look!

Belated Christmas Gift - Chirp

There are a lot of special deal sites out their for purchasing things on the cheap, but this one I have really begun to enjoy. I am a big audo book listener fan, currently my library over at Audible is over 1500 strong, and this is a new upcomer that also offers an inexpensive method for obtaining your very own audiobook library. 

You can find this site at: www.chripbooks.com and begin your seach for bargain basement books to listen to. They have a wide variety that will open up your listening options. They have their own book listening control app for iOS and Android or you can listen to your selection through a browser as well. The app is not as extensive as Audible's but is quite functional. 

So, if you are well versed in listening to books or just thinking about trying it out, this is a great way to get started.

Wow - No Posts for Eight Months! Bad Bob...

We are approaching the end of year and

I cannot believe I have not posted anything since August. Bad Bob!

Well, this will not do at all. So, my new commitment to you is to try to do a lot better as of 1st so that is my New Year's resolution. Expect to see more from this site starting after the 1st of the year.

Happy New Year's Everyone!

Microsoft reissued statement of Support for Office 365 Apps

Office versions and connectivity to Office 365 services

Hope everyone is well. Please note the bellow communication from Microsoft regarding Office versions that will be supported for connecting to Office 365/Microsoft 365 services. Older versions than Office 2016 will not be blocked, but upgrades are recommended over time.

Starting on October 13, 2020, only these versions of Office will be supported for connecting to Office 365 (and Microsoft 365) services:

• ·         Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise (previously named Office 365 ProPlus)
• ·         Microsoft 365 Apps for business (previously named Office 365 Business)
• ·         Office 2019, such as Office Professional Plus 2019
• ·         Office 2016, such as Office Standard 2016

Examples of Office 365 services include Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business.

 Important

We won’t take any active measures to block other versions of the Office client, such as Office 2013, from connecting to Office 365 services, but these older clients may encounter performance or reliability issues over time.

Impact of using older Office clients to connect to Office 365 services

After October 13, 2020, ongoing investments to our cloud services will not take into account older Office clients. Over time, these Office clients may encounter performance or reliability issues. Organizations that use these older clients will almost certainly face an increased security risk and may find themselves out of compliance depending upon specific regional or industry requirements.

Therefore, administrators should update older Office clients to versions of Office supported for connecting to Office 365 services.

Upgrade resources available to administrators

We recommend that you upgrade older Office clients to a subscription version of the Office client, such as Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise. The most up-to-date subscription versions of the Office client are always supported connecting to Office 365 services.

We provide various services to help you upgrade to subscription versions of the Office client. The following list provides some examples of resources that are available:

• ·        
• ·        
• ·        
• ·         Product lifecycle dashboard and upgrade readiness dashboard, for users of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (current branch).
• ·        

Upcoming changes related to connectivity to Office 365 services

Retirement of TLS 1.0 and 1.1

After October 15, 2020, you must be using at least TLS 1.2 to connect to Office 365 services. For more information, see TLS 1.0 and 1.1 deprecation for Office 365 and Preparing for TLS 1.2 in Office 365 and Office 365 GCC.

Basic authentication with Exchange Online

There are some changes planned related to the use of Basic Authentication with Exchange Online. For more information, see Basic Authentication and Exchange Online – April 2020 Update.

Microsoft Support for Office 2010 and Mac version 2016 ending

Microsoft's support for Office 2016 for Mac and Office 2010 will reach their end of support on October 13, 2020. After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide technical support, bug fixes, or security updates for Office 2016 for Mac and Office 2010. You will still be able to use these versions of Office, but over time, organizations may face an increase in security risks and compliance issues.

Also, as previously announced, after October 13, 2020, customers will need to be running Microsoft 365 Apps, Office 2019 or Office 2016 to connect to Office 365 services. Microsoft will not take any active measures to block legacy versions of the Office client from connecting to Office 365 services, but these older clients may encounter performance and/or reliability issues over time. For related Office client support timelines, see the Microsoft 365 and Office system requirements matrix.

Key Points:

• Major: Retirement
• Timing: October 13, 2020
• Action: review and assess

What you need to do to prepare:

Because of the changes listed above, we strongly recommend that you upgrade to one of the latest versions of Office as soon as possible:

• Microsoft 365 Apps, the subscription version of Office that comes with most Office 365 enterprise plans. Microsoft 365 Apps can be installed on up to five PCs or Macs, five tablets, and five mobile devices.
• Office 2019, which is a one-time purchase and available for one PC or Mac per license.

A key difference between Microsoft 365 Apps and Office 2019 is that Microsoft 365 Apps is updated on a regular basis with new features. Office 2019 has the same set of features that it had when it was released in October 2018. Prior to deploying either version, please check the System requirements for Microsoft 365 and Office as well as the Microsoft 365 and Office system requirements matrix to ensure that the version you choose is supported on the operating system you are using.

In order to identify users on Office 2010 and Office 2013 clients, deploy Microsoft 365 Apps or a supported non-subscription version of Office to those desktops, and ensure that they will have supported access to Office 365 services after October 13, 2020, there are two Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager dashboards (updated as part of version 1902) that you can use:

• the Configuration Manager Product Lifecycle dashboard allows you to see which versions of Office are running on your desktops, to determine which will need updated Office apps to help ensure a seamless connection to Office 365 services
• the Microsoft 365 Apps Upgrade Readiness report on the Office 365 client management dashboard helps to identify desktops in your organization that are ready to upgrade to Microsoft 365 Apps.

Additional information:

• Office 2010 end of support roadmap.
• End of Support for Office 2016 for Mac
• Deployment guide for Office for Mac
• Office versions and connectivity to Office 365 services
• Microsoft 365 and Office system requirements matrix
• Microsoft Office End of Support Tech Community

Microsoft Teams for Android will be getting a Walkie Talkie Feature

MC216749, Stay Informed, Published date: Jun 18, 2020

Updated July 24, 2020: We have updated this post with Additional Information to provide clarity on how to get started with Walkie Talkie.

Walkie Talkie, which provides instant push-to-talk communication, will soon be available in Public Preview on Teams for Android.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 57157.

When this will happen

We will begin the rollout in mid-July and expect to be complete by end of July.

How this will affect your organization

During Public Preview, you need to enable Walkie Talkie using the Teams Admin Center to provide access to people in your organization. Once enabled, Walkie Talkie will become available on the Android app within 48 hours. Walkie Talkie allows users to connect with their team using the same underlying channels they are members of. Only users who connect to Walkie Talkie in a channel become participants and can communicate with each other using push-to-talk. 

Users experiencing Outlook connection issues and crashes

We had several clients call in yesterday telling us that their Outlook application was crashing when it was launched. It appears from Microsoft's post that it was caused by a forced update to the Outlook client. See information provided by Microsoft below:

EX218604, Exchange Online, Last updated: July 15, 2020 7:24 PM

Start time: July 15, 2020 11:12 AM, End time: July 15, 2020 6:35 PM

Status

Service restored

User impact

Users may have experienced crashes or may have been unable to access Exchange Online via Outlook.

Title: Users experiencing Outlook connection issues and crashes User Impact: Users may have experienced crashes or may have been unable to access Exchange Online via Outlook.

More info: Users may need to restart their Outlook client for the fix to take effect.

Our analysis indicates that Outlook on the web and mobile clients were unaffected. Users may have been able to leverage those protocols as an alternative means to access email and service features while we remediated this problem.

Affected users would have received an error message that stated: "Outlook couldn't start last time. Safe mode could help you troubleshoot the problem, but some features might not be available in this mode. Do you want to start in Safe Mode?"

Further information on what admins were able to see in event viewer for this crash event could have been found here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/active-investigation-into-outlook-crashing-on-launch-9c59ad4b-813c-432a-afdc-f14717a4528d?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us   

Final status: We've confirmed that the issue has been successfully resolved after extended monitoring of our telemetry. If users are continuing to see impact, please restart your Outlook client for the changes to take effect.

Scope of impact: This issue may have potentially affected any of your users attempting to use Outlook.

Start time: Wednesday, July 15, 2020, 11:12 AM (3:12 PM UTC)

End time: Wednesday, July 15, 2020, 6:35 PM (10:35 PM UTC)

Root cause: A recent change to the Outlook client inadvertently resulted in this issue.

Next steps:

• We're reviewing our update procedures to isolate these issues prior to our deployment cycle.
• We're analyzing our telemetry data to better identify these issues before they impact our customers.

We'll publish a post-incident report within five business days.

TechSmith's Camtasia

With all of the changes that have occured in the past 6 months one of the biggest is providing different methods of providing information to our clients and employees. While you may have become a master of using online video conferencing like Zoom and Teams, being able to create presentations that are more on-demand may be something that you want to have available to share.

You have probably dabbled with PowerPoint presentations and while they can be good live making them into on-demand content may be more desirable. A product that I like to use is Camtasia by TechSmith. This product is used by thousands of presenters, trainers and teachers to capture screens, present ideas and automate/capture your presentation. 

See Video Overview Below:

Retiring SharePoint 2010 Workflows

Major Update Announcement from Microsoft:

Since the release of SharePoint workflows, Microsoft has evolved workflow orchestration to not only encompass SharePoint, but all the productivity services you use with Microsoft 365 and beyond. With the continued investment in Power Automate as the universal solution to workflow, Microsoft is retiring SharePoint 2010 workflows.

Key Points:

• Major: Retirement
• Timeline:
  • Starting August 1st, 2020, SharePoint 2010 workflows will be turned off for any newly created tenants. 
  • Starting November 1st, 2020, Microsoft will remove the ability to run, or create, and or execute SharePoint 2010 workflows from existing tenants.
• Action: Review and assess impact

[How this will affect your organization]

If your organization still uses SharePoint 2010 workflows, they will no longer function after November 1st, 2020. SharePoint 2013 workflows will remain supported, although turned off by default for new tenants starting November 1st, 2020. We recommend customers to move to Power Automate or other supported solutions.  

[What you need to do to prepare]

You will want to notify your users, workflow developers and site owners. Update your user training and prepare your help desk.  

For admins:  

• Use the SharePoint Modernization Scanner tool to scan your tenants for legacy workflow usage. 
• Review the guidance for migrating from classic workflows to Power Automate flows.  
• Review the Power Automate resources as a solution to legacy workflows. 

Learn more 

• Support update for the retirement of SharePoint 2010 workflows in Microsoft 365.  
• Detailed support article and with additional resources.  

Updating Microsoft Edge Legacy to the new Microsoft Edge browser for Windows

Major update: Announcement started

We’re making some changes to the Microsoft Edge Legacy application for Windows 10 devices in education and business that are updated by Windows Update. This change will not impact devices that are updated by Windows Update for Business (WUfB) or Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). Key Points: Timing: No sooner than July 30, 2020 beginning with Windows Update-connected education devices. Post to be updated for business timing. Roll-out: Tenant level Action: To block this update, you must download and deploy the Blocker Toolkit before Thursday, July 30, 2020 [How this will affect your organization] This update provides your organization with our latest Microsoft-recommended browser security features. The new Microsoft Edge is a modern browser with more frequent updates—-targeted at every 6 weeks-—to provide the latest protections for your users and data. This update will respect your previously established default browser choice. In addition, we will not uninstall, or change settings for, Internet Explorer 11. [What you need to do to prepare] No immediate action is required unless you would like to block this update. Once delivered, the new Microsoft Edge will update to the most recent version (no additional action required). To block this update, you must download and deploy the Blocker Toolkit before Thursday, July 30, 2020. Microsoft Edge requires steps to configure for K-12 education; review these requirements and how to enable specific features. Additional Information If you’d like help to upgrade all your organization’s devices to the new Microsoft Edge, FastTrack can help with deployment and configuration at no additional charge for customers with eligible Microsoft 365 subscriptions. For help with web app and site compatibility, learn more about the App Assure program. Our blog provides more information about this change and the benefits of the new Microsoft Edge. We always value feedback and questions from our customers. Please feel free to submit via Message Center.

Microsoft Mechanics - Building Power Apps

If you haven't discovered Microsoft Mechanics you really need to create a link to their publications on YouTube. They are full of insightful hints on how to use Microsoft products and might give you a leg up on developing a new program for your company.

In this episode, you will see a brief overview of the changes to the Power Apps application and also how to incorporate it back into your Teams environment. Take a look!