Microsoft held its annual Ignite event digitally for the first time on September 22-24, 2020. Microsoft has many interesting announcements and changes coming soon. Below we have listed the highlights from Microsoft Ignite.

SharePoint Syntex
Microsoft’s ‘Project Cortex’ has been talked about for the last three years and was hoped to have been released this summer – a new knowledge management service. It is now going to be released in parts with different branding. The first release will be Sharepoint Syntex on 1 October. SharePoint Syntex is based on machine learning technology and will allow processes, routing and metadata to be automated. Once using SharePoint Syntex, it will learn how you work and how you need your documents to be handled.

Power Platforms and Azure
Microsoft has heavily boosted how developers can extend and build apps within Microsoft. Power Platforms give the ability for developers to add Azure functions and use Azure API management within apps they have built.

Developers can pull in data from Azure into Power apps for no extra cost, bringing more control and security. With Private Endpoints, indexers now can connect to a data source behind Azure Virtual Network (VNet). Users also can request Azure Cognitive Search to create an outbound private endpoint connection to securely access data from data sources via indexers. Also Managed Identities provides role-based access control (RBAC) assignments, enabling a secure connection between an indexer and the data source. It also enables you to connect to a data source without having to enter credential information as part of the configuration.

There is also an integration with Github (now also owned by Microsoft), allowing developers to work and collaborate on projects together. See here for more about Power Platforms.

Teams
Power Platforms will also give the ability to build apps and embed them into Teams. To read more about this see here.

Teams will be having new features added later this year, such as new scenes and backgrounds. Custom layouts will also be available so hosts can control how the content is presented during the meeting. Finally, Breakout Rooms will be enabled, which will allow hosts to split up participants within a meeting into smaller groups for different sessions – for example for group activities and brainstorming sessions.

Video Conferencing
The Microsoft Stream video service is being rebuilt and will be moving to use SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, for storing and managing videos across Microsoft 365.

New Edge browser on Linux
Microsoft is releasing a preview to Edge Insider testers of the new version for Linux starting in October.

Power BI
Power BI, Microsoft’s business analytics platform, will soon be available on a per-user basis, at what the company promises will be an affordable price. Until now, the Premium subscription was only available by “capacity”, meaning dedicated infrastructure, and for an entire organization., With a pricing entry point of about $5,000/month. New features are also being brought to Power BI such as “smart narratives,” augmented analytics, usability in Microsoft Teams, and a new visual interface.

Microsoft Defender and Azure Defender
The Microsoft 365 Defender line will change to:

• Microsoft 365 Defender (previously Microsoft Threat Protection)
• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (previously Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection)
• Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (previously Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection)
• Microsoft Defender for Identity (previously Azure Advanced Threat Protection)

The Azure Defender line will change to:

• Azure Defender for Servers (previously Azure Security Center Standard Edition)
• Azure Defender for IoT (previously Azure Security Center for IoT)
• Azure Defender for SQL (previously Advanced Threat Protection for SQL)

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