高原 伸城

Support Escalation Engineer

皆さん、こんにちは。 BI Data Platform サポートチームの 高原 です。

今回は、Azure 仮想マシン上にインストールする SQL Server のライセンスに関するお問い合わせ窓口 を紹介します。

Azure 仮想マシン上にインストールする SQL Server のライセンスに関するお問い合わせを 技術サポート窓口 にお問い合わせをいただくことがありますが、ライセンスに関するお問い合わせを承る専門の窓口があります。

Azure 仮想マシン上にインストールする SQL Server のライセンスに関する内容については、Clould Direct にお問い合わせ下さい。

Cloud Direct

https://www.microsoft.com/ja-jp/cloud-platform/Cloud-Direct

[参考情報]

既存の SQL Server ライセンスを使用し、Azure 仮想マシン上に SQL Server をインストールするためには。

[FAQ] Azure 管理ポータルのギャラリーからデプロイした Azure 仮想マシン上の SQL Server に対する構成変更 について

※ 本Blogの内容は、2018年2月現在の内容となっております。

When talking about app development today, the cloud is almost always part of the conversation. While many developers have an idea of the benefits that cloud can offer them – scalability, ready-to-use functionality, and security, to name a few – it’s sometimes hard to figure out where to start for the specific scenario you have in mind. Luckily, our mobile developer tools docs team has you covered!

Today, we’re happy to announce the availability of the “Mobile apps using Xamarin + Azure” poster. This poster serves as your one-stop guide to the most relevant cloud services that Azure has to offer to you as a mobile developer with Visual Studio and Xamarin.

Download Your Poster Here

We’re excited to hear your feedback on the poster and how we can make it even better for you to get the most out of Azure services for your mobile apps built with Xamarin. Leave us a comment below with what you think and happy coding!

	Craig Dunn, Principal Program Manager @conceptdev Craig works on the Mobile Developer Tools documentation team, where he enjoys writing cross-platform code for iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows platforms with Visual Studio and Xamarin.
	Rajen Kishna, Sr. Product Marketing Manager @rajen_k Rajen does product marketing at Microsoft for Visual Studio for Mac, as well as mobile and game developer tools, focusing on .NET

Всем привет, начинаем блок видео по тому как работать с Azure сервисами в направлении IoT. Первое видео я показываю как использовать Azure Container Registry.

Final Update: Wednesday, February 21st 2018 13:20 UTC

We’ve confirmed that all systems are back to normal as of February 21st, 13:13 UTC. Our logs show the incident started on February 21st, 2:30 UTC and that during the 11 hours and 13 minutes that it took to resolve the issue. A subset of Customers may have experienced performance degredation in the South Central US region. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

• Root Cause: Initial investigation shows that there was an issue with a SQL database that we depend on. We are working with the partner team to fully understand root cause of this issue.
• Chance of Re-occurrence: Medium
• Lessons Learned: We are working on better monitoring to catch these issues faster in the future.
• Incident Timeline: 11 hours & 13 minutes – February 21st, 2:30 UTC through February 21st, 13:13 UTC

Sincerely,
Randy

Initial Update: Wednesday, February 21st 2018 12:45 UTC

We're investigating Performance Degredation in South Central US. A subset of customers may experience slow or failed commands in this region. We have engaged a partner team to help us further investigate this issue.

We appologize for any issue that this might have caused.

• Next Update: Before Wednesday, February 21st 2018 13:20 UTC

Sincerely,
Randy

Cross post with http://aka.ms/sqlserverteam

As I mentioned on yesterday’s post, with the recent release of SQL Server 2017 CU3, we released yet more showplan enhancements: you can see other posts related to showplan enhancements here.

In this article I’ll talk about the second showplan improvement we worked on, to assist in the discoverability of UDF usage impact on query execution.

The scenario is that if a query uses one or more user-defined scalar functions (such as T-SQL functions or CLR functions), a significant portion of query execution time may be spent inside those functions, depending on the function definition. And this may be not immediately obvious by looking at the query execution plan.

Recently, we added information on overall query CPU and elapsed time tracking for statistics showplan xml (both in ms), found in the root node of an actual plan (on which I blogged about here). We now added two new attributes: UdfCpuTime and UdfElapsedTime. These provide the total CPU and elapsed time (again, both in ms) that is spent inside all scalar user-defined functions, during the execution of a query.

Below, observe how the UDF is responsible for most of the query's CPU usage and almost half of the execution time.

These will also be available in the upcoming SQL Server 2016 SP2.

For the metrics above I used the following example:

-- Create UDF
CREATE FUNCTION ufn_CategorizePrice(@Price money)
RETURNS NVARCHAR(50)
AS
BEGIN
    DECLARE @PriceCategory NVARCHAR(50)

    IF @Price < 100 SELECT @PriceCategory = 'Cheap'
    IF @Price BETWEEN 101 and 500 SELECT @PriceCategory =  'Mid Price'
    IF @Price BETWEEN 501 and 1000 SELECT @PriceCategory =  'Expensive'
    IF @Price > 1001 SELECT @PriceCategory =  'Unaffordable'
    RETURN @PriceCategory 
END
GO

-- Execute
SELECT dbo.ufn_CategorizePrice(UnitPrice), 
    SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID, CarrierTrackingNumber, 
    OrderQty, ProductID, SpecialOfferID, UnitPrice, UnitPriceDiscount, 
    LineTotal, rowguid, ModifiedDate 
FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail
GO

Pedro Lopes (@sqlpto) – Senior Program Manager

There is a performance issue in SQL Server 2016 and SQL Server 2017 where the processor utilization will run very high for certain queries  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3216543/fix-many-consecutive-transactions-inserting-data-into-temp-table-in-sq

The queries that will experience this higher utilization are queries that insert many records into a table or temp table OUTSIDE of a transaction.  Not starting your own BEGIN/COMMIT transaction is the key to the issue.  There is a security feature called Common Criteria Compliance that will execute for every record that is inserted outside of a transaction causing the CPU to go higher on the SQL Server.  The CCC feature is disabled by default on the installation of SQL Server but has some additional CPU overhead  even when disabled unless the patch is installed.

The following are the fixes for SQL Server 2016 and 2017:

SQL Server 2017 Cumulative update 4 - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4056498

SQL Server 2016 SP1 Cumulative update 2 - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4013106

SQL Server 2016 requires that you enable Trace Flag 3427 in addition to installing the patch.

This issue is more likely to arise in reports where developers tend to avoid using Transactions when creating Temp tables for reports.  This is done to avoid blocking with reports. But any code that inserts a significant volume of records outside of a BEGIN/COMMIT Tran will experience the high CPU utilization.

To validate that you are experiencing the error or have it fixed if you have the patch installed test using the following code:

Query 1:

SET NOCOUNT ON
declare @nmbr int
set  @nmbr = 1
IF OBJECT_ID(N'tempdb..#tmp') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE #tmp;
create table #tmp (id int)
while @nmbr < 1000001 -- 1 million rows
begin
insert into #tmp (id) values (@nmbr)
set @nmbr = @nmbr + 1
END

Query 2:

SET NOCOUNT ON
declare @nmbr int
set  @nmbr = 1
IF OBJECT_ID(N'tempdb..#tmp') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE #tmp;
create table #tmp (id int)
Begin Tran

    while @nmbr < 1000001 -- 1 million rows
     begin
     insert into #tmp (id) values (@nmbr)
     set @nmbr = @nmbr + 1
     END
Commit tran

The two queries will have a difference in total time. The second query will execute faster.  BUT, the CPU on the server should be the same for both of these queries if you have the fix installed listed above.

This is to make you aware that we have removed East US as an option for the regions to execute Load tests. Users are advised to follow the workaround mentioned below.

Workaround : We recommend Load Test users to choose a location other than 'East US' when triggering a load run. See 'Run and Analyze your load test' section in this  document for instructions on how to choose a location.

Customers can also use their own agents (documentation here) to perform load generation in this region.

Sincerely,
Randy

If you hit issues using the Gallery runbooks (like StopAzureV2Vm seen below), you may need to add a value to the environment name.  Just like when connecting to Azure Government via Azure PowerShell or CLI, you need to specify the environment name. 

Add the value per the screenshot below and you should be fine!

As you progress through your SharePoint career you may be starting to wonder what’s next from technical perspective.  You may be a developer and want to start writing code, or the thought of writing code makes your hair curl.  As I’ve progressed through my SharePoint career and worked with many customers on how to structure their SharePoint environment,  I developed the following illustration to help understand what level you may be currently at and what may lie ahead.

As you start to look through the pyramid to see where you might be or aspire to be, lets break down each slice of the pyramid.

• Configuration – often times this will be the introductory level of your SharePoint career and are able to effectively work with the businesses power user audience.  To do this you should be very familiar with not only what a content type is but the details on how to configure it and use it throughout your site collection.  This foundation will lead you to creating browser based workflows and using all the tools in the SharePoint browser experience to create solutions.
• Customization – Now that you have mastered the SharePoint browser experience and your information architecture (content types and list/library structure) has been configured,  you are ready to extend SharePoint.  Customizing the forms using InfoPath form Services,  SharePoint designer for list or libraries and PowerApps/Flow is probably your next step.  Within this level of expertise you start to really leverage SharePoint designer and some of the advanced web parts that SharePoint has to offer.
• Admin/Developer – This is where you typically reach a fork in the road.  It takes a unique person to really want to master the administration side of SharePoint (IE become a PowerShell guru and hang out in Central Administration more than anywhere else) and the development platform (IE Visual studio and the ability to create web parts and custom workflows).  This direction can come from personal interest or from a business need.
• Architect –  After years of working with everything in SharePoint and possessing the ability to configure just about anything using the SharePoint platform you have the experience and skills necessary to call yourself and architect.  Not only do you have a keen understanding of the features and functionality of SharePoint but you also recommend one approach over another because of performance implications, scalability or knowing the recommended thresholds of SharePoint.  Architects often possess experience in “supportive” technologies such as being a seasoned .NET developer, a system admin for the domain or a SQL Server DBA.  I’ve seen many times where this title is mis-interpreted as someone who understands the core features of SharePoint.  Yes this is a pre-requisite but you also need to have a solid understanding of how to get the requirements out of business users so you can apply the proper components or technologies to solve the problem.

Like all technologies that are complex, the ability to specialize in what interests you the most is what will drive not only personal satisfaction but your success with that chosen technology.  Hopefully this will position you for that succes

The Azure Government team continually strives to bring the latest Azure platform features to Azure Government.  In this post I highlight networking features that have recently been made generally available in Azure Government.

Network Watcher

Network Watcher is a regional service that enables you to monitor and diagnose conditions at a network scenario level in, to, and from Azure. Network diagnostic and visualization tools available with Network Watcher help you understand, diagnose, and gain insights to your network in Azure.

Virtual Network Service Endpoints and Firewalls for Azure Storage

Virtual Network Service Endpoints for Azure Storage allows administrators to create network rules that permit traffic only from selected VNets and subnets, creating a secure network boundary for their data. This enhances both security and performance by extending the VNet private IP space and identity directly to Azure Storage without leaving the Azure Government data center infrastructure.

As part of Firewalls for Azure Storage we enable network-based access control for Azure Storage. Network-based access control enables customers to define access control based on IP, ensuring that only requests coming from customer specified Azure VNets or public IP ranges or addresses will be allowed reachability to a specific storage account.

Azure DNS

Azure DNS is a hosting service for DNS domains, providing name resolution using Microsoft Azure infrastructure. By hosting your domains in Azure, you can manage your DNS records using the same credentials, APIs, tools, and billing as your other Azure services.

Accelerated Networking for Windows Virtual Machines

Accelerated Networking enables single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) to a VM, greatly improving its networking performance. This high-performance path bypasses the host from the data path, reducing latency, jitter, and CPU utilization, for use with the most demanding network workloads on supported VM types. (Accelerated Networking for Linux is in preview and will GA soon!)

IPv6 for Azure Load Balancer

Once IPv6 for Azure Load Balancer is deployed, an IPv4 or IPv6-enabled Internet client can communicate with the public IPv4 or IPv6 addresses (or hostnames) of the Azure Internet-facing Load Balancer. The Load Balancer routes the IPv6 packets to the private IPv6 addresses of the VMs using network address translation (NAT).

IPv6 over ExpressRoute Microsoft Peering

ExpressRoute Microsoft peering now supports IPv6.  Customers can connect to Office 365 and IPv6 supported Azure PaaS services using IPv6 through Microsoft peering.

Azure PaaS Services Through ExpressRoute Microsoft Peering

All Azure PaaS services are now accessible through Microsoft peering.  Not only does this remove the need for Public peering, it also opens the door to using the native Azure VPN to secure connectivity over ExpressRoute.  It is Microsoft’s recommendation going forward that customers connect to Azure PaaS services through Microsoft peering.

Route Filters for ExpressRoute Microsoft Peering

In addition to adding the PaaS routes to Microsoft peering, route filters have also been added.  A route filter provides customers the ability to identify services they want to consume through their ExpressRoute circuit's Microsoft peering.

Learn More About Azure Government

Microsoft is committed to providing the most trusted, comprehensive cloud for mission-critical workloads so that our nearly 6 million government users across 7,000-plus federal, state, and local organizations can achieve more in carrying out their mission-critical workloads.

We welcome your comments and suggestions to help us continually improve your Azure Government experience. To stay up to date on all things Azure Government, click "Subscribe by Email!" on the Azure Government Blog. To explore Azure Government, request your free 90-day trial today. Or, check out purchasing options to get started now.

Today we are releasing our new Messaging Extension to add to the integrations between Microsoft Teams and Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS). The messaging extension allows you to search, find, and discuss specific work items in your channel or private chats. It is great way to have a group conversation about your work, without leaving Microsoft Teams.

Instructions on how to set up the Microsoft Teams integrations can be found on the Team Services marketplace.

Give it a try and let us know what you think. In the meantime we will continue to invest in our collaboration efforts with Microsoft Teams. If you have ideas for new integrations between VSTS and Microsoft teams - just leave a comment below or send me an email.

The post RichEdit 8.0 Image Support describes how RichEdit supports popular image formats, such as jpeg’s, png’s and GIF’s. RichEdit 8.1 added direct support for jpeg’s and png’s in the Rich Text Format (RTF) instead of using RichEdit’s proprietary blob format. Even so, GIFs were treated as second-class images in two ways. First, they were converted to png’s when persisted in RTF. Since png’s are limited to a single frame, only the initial frame of a multiframe GIF was saved. Second, only the initial frame was displayed, so the animated GIFs that are seen frequently on the web and in texting programs weren’t animated. This post describes how the current RichEdit image facility fixes both problems.

Persisting multiframe GIFs in RTF

The RTF specification doesn’t have a control word for GIF images, although it has jpegblib for jpeg’s and pngblip for png’s. One way to persist GIFs would be to define a gifblip. But this approach has the disadvantages that RTF readers that don’t recognize gifblip would either discard the image altogether or fall back to an alternate format if one is included in the RTF stream. RichEdit’s earlier choice of converting the GIF to a png saves only the initial frame. A simple observation reveals how to solve both problems: the RTF reader isn’t, and furthermore shouldn’t be, responsible for the image format. Instead the program that interprets the image binary data should recognize the image format and validate the data. This is essential for security reasons. Accordingly, RichEdit just uses the pngblip control word for a GIF even though the binary data defines a GIF! This interoperates with Word, older RichEdit clients, etc. Human readers of RTF can know the difference if they want to by looking at the image data, which starts with “PNG” for a real png and “GIF” for a GIF. The decoding of the images on Microsoft and Android operating systems is performed by the Windows Imaging Component (WIC), which also validates the images. Currently the RichEdit image facility isn’t supported on Apple platforms, but that may change.

When reading a GIF from RTF or via one of the APIs, RichEdit calls WIC to convert the image to a WIC bitmap. RichEdit saves memory space by not storing the original image data, since that data can be faithfully recovered from the WIC bitmap including all metadata.

Animated GIFs vary appreciably in size, ranging from 50 kilobytes for simple cartoon animation like

to several megabytes, such as this 1-megabyte GIF from the movie Singin’ in the Rain

When exported in RTF files, the size doubles since each binary byte is represented by two hexadecimal bytes. So, it’s wise not to insert animated GIFs excessively.

Multiframe GIFs

The GIF format is described very well on the web, but here are a few quick thoughts before explaining how GIF animation works in RichEdit. First, GIF metadata is essential for animation. It controls the frame rate on a per-frame basis, the color palette(s) and how the current full image is used in composing the next image. In fact, several partial frames along with the current full image may be combined to create the next displayed frame. Such intermediate frames have “0-delay”, that is, they are included in the composition without being displayed. Some programs display them anyway (see the Windows photo viewer and the animated GIF sample), but I, at least ☺, think that’s misunderstanding the purpose of 0-delay intermediate frames. In fact as discussed further below, some multiframe GIFs use the extra frames purely for refining the image colors, since a single frame is limited to 8-bit color and one color palette.

RichEdit implementation

Each animated GIF gets its own timer in this model since use of a shared timer ends up slowing down the animations. The time delays between frames may be the same or they can vary substantially, such as in the GIF

Animation is enabled/disabled via calling ITextDocument2::SetProperty(tomAnimateImages, Value), where tomAnimateImages is given by 0x95 and Value = tomTrue/tomFalse, respectively. A client that enables animation guarantees that the ID2D1RenderTarget supplied in the call to ITextServices2::TxDrawD2D() remain valid between calls.  By default, animations are disabled since previous clients don’t know about this requirement.

Animations only work in Direct2D/DirectWrite mode. Initial attempts to get them running in GDI/Uniscribe mode display the animated images correctly except with a black background. This could be fixed if there is a need for animations in GDI mode.

Animations are disabled for selected images. This allows the user to recognize when images are selected. They are also disabled when the RichEdit control loses the focus. If a GIF has a maximum loop count, the animation stops after reaching that count.

Getting images from RichEdit

Clients can get an image IStream by calling ITextRange::GetEmbeddedObject() to get the image’s IUnknown interface, then calling IUnknown::QueryInterface for an IServiceProvider interface and finally calling IServiceProvider::QueryService() to get the image IStream. This works for all kinds of images, not just GIFs.

Stationary multiframe GIFs

GIFs with frames that all have zero frame delays display only the composite final frame. The multiple frames are typically used to get a composite image that has higher-resolution color than possible with a single 8-bit color palette. The Windows photo viewer nevertheless tries to animate such GIFs so the user sees fluctuating colors. PowerPoint presentation mode displays the correct composite image after one animation sequence, but Word only shows the first frame. See High-Color GIF Images for a detailed discussion of the following stationary multiframe GIF with high-resolution color.

The Microsoft Innovation Educator (MIE) Expert program connects high-potential teachers across Australia – and from around the world – to share their vision and expertise in applying technology to the classroom. We caught up with Jarrad Strain, Maths Teacher at Perth Modern School, to hear about how digital technology has helped extend his gifted and talented pupils–and prepare them for a high-performing future in STEM.

Jarrad, how have you used technology to engage your students in the maths curriculum?

Perth Modern is an academically selective school, so most of our students already have a pretty high level of motivation when it comes to their studies. When I introduce digital technology to my classes, I try to do so in a way that’s both creative and open-ended. Last year, for example, we designed sets of “misleading graphs” using Excel, which gave the kids a hands-on experience of how certain charts or visuals in the media can be designed to give a less-than-honest impression of the facts. The students also got together in small teams to create a class mascot using (3D design software) TinkerCAD, then vote on their favourite submissions through a combination of Forms and Excel. A lot of the time, I’ll give them a project and they’ll take it to lengths that surprise even us teachers!

It sounds like your lessons teach more than just mathematical principles as well.

I’d have to agree. Our students tend to excel in their academic abilities, but they need training in collaboration and critical thinking as much as anyone of their age. With our mascot-designing project, for example, each group presented using either PowerPoints or videos that they recorded, then shared with the rest of the class via URL. Not only did it encourage them to receive feedback on, and improve, their designs, it also meant far less “dead time” spent passively listening to everyone else’s presentations! You could just click on the link, watch, and comment in your own time. At the same time, I have visibility over all the feedback between groups, which lets me guide them on how to provide constructive feedback…and why some suggestions may not be so appropriate.

And in terms of critical thinking?

I try to align my lessons with the real world as much as possible. A lot of our students are doing maths at levels beyond their current year, so more advanced tools like 3D modelling come in handy for testing skills. With one class, I challenged their trigonometric skills to find the height of the belltower in one of our old buildings: you couldn’t just do it by measuring the base and angle of inclination. They ended up using isometric and orthogonal drawings of the structure, modelling the building, and finally demonstrating their thought process through a combination of PowerPoint and Morph. In fact, 3D models had just become available in Morph, and the kids jumped on the update as soon as they realised what it could do.

Do you ever find it challenging to keep up with such avid learners?

I think the secret is admitting that you don’t know everything. In fact, I often use my mistakes as a teaching tool! In my OneNote notebooks, I share various exercises with my senior students that not only show my work, but also errors that I’ve made, as well as the corrections and how I’ve improved on my own processes. My “whiteboard” now is my screen-casted Surface, which lets the kids see everything I write down in real time, including any uncensored slips that I make. Sometimes I stage these mistakes so students have an example to learn from, but at other times I’ve genuinely overlooked something.

When as a teacher, you admit you’re not infallible, you also give your students a healthier perspective on failure. Showing them my mistakes helps them see that what matters isn’t so much getting the right answer every time, but constantly learning and refining our approach to the problem at hand. And none of us will ever know everything! Ironically enough, I discovered OneNote after several Year 10 students introduced it to me, and now I’m one of its biggest proponents in the school.

How are you using OneNote in the classroom?

I’m encouraging other teachers to adopt class-based notebooks to share their notes and work more closely together. Not just in Perth Modern, but throughout Western Australia. Being part of the MIE Expert program has proven to me the value of close digital collaboration–bringing the keenest, most enthusiastic teachers together to pool their expertise. For example, I’ve been trying to encourage the girls in our school to take up STEM projects, but it’s been hard getting equal gender representation in projects.

I’m also extremely excited about using OneNote to help our students build up their electronic portfolios. We’ve been encouraging them to not only capture their final designs or innovations, but the entire process of problem solving and prototyping that goes on behind the scenes.

Why is it valuable? This sounds like it has implications well beyond high school exams.

The real goal is to prepare them for future STEM study. Some of our highest-performing students, they apply for scholarships at international universities and run up against requests for a portfolio of work. If we can use OneNote to prepare them now, they’ll have no issues later. Even in Australia, some universities now say that if you miss your ATAR cut-off, show your portfolio and you’ll still be considered. But the key to a successful portfolio isn’t the work you capture, it’s the thinking you show behind it. OneNote has made capturing those processes much simpler for me, and I’m hoping my experience will help many of our kids find their highest calling in STEM as well.

Connect with Jarrad Strain on Twitter | LinkedIn

For more information on Perth Modern School, visit http://www.perthmodern.wa.edu.au/

Our mission at Microsoft is to equip and empower educators to shape and assure the success of every student. Any teacher can join our community and effort with free Office 365 Education, find affordable Windows devices and connect with others on the Educator Community for free training and classroom resources. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for our latest updates.

Aussie Science Teachers - it's your time to shine in Minecraft: Education Edition!

With the recent introduction of the Chemistry Update for Minecraft: Education Edition, there has been no better time to expose your Chemistry students to a new dimension of learning. Discover the building blocks of matter, combine elements into useful compounds and Minecraft items, and conduct amazing experiments with new lessons and a downloadable worlds from the Minecraft: Education Edition Community.

With a global focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in schools, the Minecraft Education Team have been inspired to integrate Chemistry features and functions into Minecraft: Education Edition. In this update, students can experiment with materials using the Lab Table, Compound Creator and Element Constructor. These features offer a new space to inquire, through questioning and predicting, planning and conducting their own safe chemistry investigations in Minecraft.

"The Minecraft Education Team utilised advisors from Secondary and University Chemistry Educators and Chemical Engineers to represent accurate science while also creating engaging in-game experiences for learners." Neal Manegold, Director, Minecraft Education

So how does this stack up in the Australian Context?

In Australian Science classrooms, students will navigate, discover and learn science through Science Inquiry, Science Understanding and Science as a Human Endeavour. Minecraft: Education Edition and the new Chemical Update can support Australian Science teachers and engage students across three of these key ideas of the Australian Science Curriculum.

Chemistry in Minecraft allows teachers to introduce chemistry concepts without the costs of lab equipment in the engaging Minecraft world that will inspire more girls and boys to explore the subject. The Chemical Science Resource Pack found at the Minecraft Educator Community is a great place to start. It provides a number of predesigned lesson plans and downloadable worlds to support students in developing their understanding of key Chemistry ideas that can applied to the real world.

Science Inquiry

Safety in the Science Lab:

In Australian schools students are typically introduced to 'real' chemistry labs when they start Secondary school. When inquiring in science and planning/conducting investigations, safety and risk assessments are of the highest priority. Students in a Chemistry lesson are at a higher risk of danger and we certainly don't want our students learning from their mistakes.

Immerse your students in a fun and engaging Minecraft world where learning about science safety and safe lab practices and protocols. The  Minecraft Science Lab will have students presented with a lab filled with dangers (from water on the floor, poisons lets on surfaces and edible materials out in the open). Working collaboratively in the Chemistry Lab students can use Chalk Boards to design safety protocols and create safe workspaces before conducting their science experiments.

10 x chemistry lessons in one Minecraft World - starting with creating a safe science lab. Download the world and start creating a safe chemistry lab here.

Planning & Conducting Scientific Investigations:

When planning and conducting scientific investigations, from Year 3 to Year 10 students are deciding variables to be changed and measured in fair tests, and observe measure and record data using digital technologies (ACSIS055). Students can use the new Minecraft Lab Table to design fair tests and observe, measure and collect data. Have your students use Minecraft blocks to create visual representation of their findings, take a snap shot using the in-game camera/portfolio tools to process and analyse their data, evaluate their evidence and communicate their findings using a range text types and modes (ACSIS110)

Scientific Method:

Exploration in Minecraft can lead students to developing big questions around Chemistry, Biology and Physics. When creating in Minecraft students build a broad set of integrated thinking skills through experimentation and play, trial and error, testing and hypothesising, analysis and evaluation. The scientific Method consists of a continuous cycle and through  The Scientific Method lesson, students will design experiments in Minecraft and keep accurate records.

Science Understanding:

In Chemistry, we help student make connections between the composition and behaviour of substances and how new substances are produced. They build an understanding that all natural and synthetic materials are composed of chemicals, be they elements, molecules or compounds. Matter in our world can be categorised into states of matter and changes in state can be reversible and irreversible.

States of Matter:

In year 5, students understand how solids, liquids and gases have different observable properties and behave in different ways (ACSSU077). What is the World Made of? is a Minecraft lesson that can help students understand natural and synthetic objects are all made of elements and chemicals can be made from natural resources. Through Minecraft students can explore liquids, solids and gases and use the Material Reducer to expose what Minecraft Materials and Matter is made out of. The Material Reducer reduces a block to its component elements, providing a useful way to explore the elements that make up our environment.

Chemical Compounds and Mixtures:

In Year 8, students will explore properties of different states of matter (ACSSU151) and explain the differences between elements, compounds and mixtures (ACSSU152). Use the Compound Creator and the outline in the Properties of Matter lesson found at http://education.minecraft.net encourages students to experiment by combine elements into over 30 compounds.

Elements and Isotopes:

The Element Constructor is one of the new crafting tools included in the Chemistry Resource Pack. In Year 9 students develop a deeper understanding of atom structure and the composed of protons, neutrons and electrons (ACSSU177). In Minecraft, Students can use the Elements Constructor to build 118 elements based on the number of protons, neutrons and electrons.

For a full list of elements and isotopes available in Minecraft: Education Edition click here.

The Periodic Table:

The Chemistry Update allows students to build their own periodic table or use their imagination to come up with a new way to arrange the elements based on the elements characteristics.

Endless Experiments and a world of science ready to be created:

Minecraft: Education Edition is not just a game. It's a platform that can ignite curiosity and have students critically think to solve complex problems and make connections to what they learn with the real world. The only limited is your imagination.

Your Windows 10 version of Minecraft Education Edition will automatically update to include the chemistry features, and for MacOS, please head to Education.minecraft.net  to get the latest update.

Get started and try out the new Chemistry Update for Minecraft: Education Edition now!

Download your free copy of the Minecraft: Education Edition LAB guide: https://education.minecraft.net/wp-content/uploads/ChemistryLab_Journal.pdf

We are happy to announcement that Azure US Government regions are now listed on Azure Status page. Microsoft Azure Government customers can now visit the page to view the availability status of various services and also get the latest status on any ongoing service interruption incidents. Status information on the page is near real time and users can configure refresh rate between every 2 and 30 mins with RSS feed support.

Users can also configure personalized dashboards and alerts on the Azure Portal using the Service Health blade. This provides targeted alerts to show when service events directly impact your resources.

This is another key update in our continued efforts to bring more services and functionalities to our Azure Government customers.

A longstanding issue is the need for more women to become involved in STEM, with hosts of research finding a lack of uptake from girls for a career in STEM not just in the UK but around the world. So with this issue in mind, we focus on Technology and EdTech to see how this fits into the skills gap. Is there a reason so many girls shy away from careers in Technology? Is this perhaps fostered by the lack of Women prominent in these fields to provide good role models? Interesting questions which could initiate many debates.

Introducing #WomenEd, a grassroots network composed of women leaders across all education sectors. #WomenEd empowers women leaders to choose their next leadership step by connecting existing and aspiring women leaders to run regional, national and international events. #WomenEd develops teams of leaders, celebrates the successes of women leaders and works collaboratively with key partners.

Following on from this, we have the #WomenEd and Microsoft UK Partnership, cultivated to help bridge the gender gap between women and technology. Microsoft as a company recognises the need to do more in Education and already hosts a whole range of CPD resources and initiatives which tackle the challenges of involving women in EdTech. #WomenEd provides a voice to spread the word about the use of Microsoft technologies in Education, focusing on  four opportunities for digital learning.

Visit the WomenEd page on the Microsoft Educator Community to find out more. 

Kirsty Tonks & Vivienne Porritt spoke about women and their opportunities in the education sector at Bett 2018 on behalf of Microsoft, see the highlights video below.

Get involved in the #WomenEdTech movement by following on Twitter and celebrating your use of technology in Education!

Tweets by WomenEd_Tech

Microsoft and the Department for Education (DfE) have recently collaborated to showcase how open data published by the UK government can be modelled and visualised with Power BI to bring their data to life and make it more engaging.

School Workforce Census

Since 2010, the DfE has published their annual School Workforce Census data. This includes statistics on the number and characteristics of teachers, teaching assistants and other non-classroom-based school support staff in all schools in England. The data is published as part of their Open Data Strategy and includes a copy of the raw data as spreadsheets in ODS or Microsoft Excel format. This is accompanied with a static PDF report, prepared by the DfE's statisticians, that summarises and describes the key findings.

To understand why we undertook this project and the benefits we wanted to achieve, let's briefly consider the current state of Open Government Data in the UK.

What is Open Government Data?

The UK government is a strong advocate and practitioner of making public sector information available to the public as open data. This means that it is: accessible to all at no more than the cost of reproduction; available in a digital, machine readable format; and free of restriction on its use or redistribution (under the Open Government Licence terms).

A key driver for publishing this data is transparency. This includes making data available to allow members of the public to make informed choices about public services, holding central and local government accountable for spending and outcomes, and enabling the private sector to develop innovative new services.

In their 2012 Open Data Whitepaper, The government "committed to making open data an effective engine of economic growth, social wellbeing, political accountability and public service improvement". To date, they have published over 40,000 datasets on the Data.Gov.UK site, adopted the principles of the Open Data Charter, and the UK is now ranked first in the world by The Open Data Barometer for readiness, implementation and impact, and 2^nd in the Global Open Data Index.

Who uses Open Government Data?

The government provides statistics on the number of views and downloads for published datasets and views for the publishers of that data. This provides us with some insights, but it cannot tell us anything about the profiles of the persons or organisations accessing the data or what they did with it.

The government's open data principles focus on the quality, consistency, availability and open access of data. Open data should be in a re-usable format, which means it is structured and stored in a machine-readable form based on open standards. This is typically one or more CSV files depending on the volume of the data, which restricts its usage to those with the tools and skills to analyse the data. Alternatively, it is made available through Applications Programming Interfaces (APIs). It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that the primary users are predominately government departments themselves, researchers, journalists, commercial organisations, or software developers.

Most individuals and organisations are dependent on the private sector to develop services and applications on top of open data to make it easy to use and relevant for their needs. There is a growing industry of organisations and start-ups building these solutions and the government will actively promote apps that utilise open data on its open data portal. Transport for London is a great example of the impact that open data can have, while also recognising that this success has been built on a determined effort over 10 years.

What were the objectives of this project?

In the words of Isi Avbulimen, Statistical Officer at the DfE, who worked on the project…

"The School Workforce Power BI dashboard is a joint project between Teachers Analysis Division at the Department for Education and Microsoft. It is an interactive dashboard that will allow users to visualise National, Regional and LA Level data in a colourful, interactive, and graphic form utilising a user-friendly format.

The dashboard is based entirely on published data from the School Workforce Census (SWC). The data is currently published within a large, complex non-machine readable Excel file comprising of over 20,000 rows, making the data largely inaccessible to the general public who do not have expertise in data manipulation. This dashboard will allow users to pull out the information they are interested in and perform their own analysis.

The dashboard will allow users to examine time series data for a range of different measures at the click of a button, e.g. users can easily examine how the headcount of teachers within the schools of York has varied over time."

How did we prepare the data for analysis?

We performed several steps in Power BI to get the data into the correct shape before we created the visualisations. These included loading and consolidating multiple year files into single tables, joining it with additional school data from 'Get Information About Schools', conforming the data to ensure consistency, converting the flat files back into a data model with dimension and fact tables, and adding some calculated measures and shape map files.

Screenshot of one of the source files downloaded from Data.Gov.UK

We also scaled back the scope of the project. A decision was taken to exclude all data for 2010 because there were too many structural differences with other years. We also removed the school level data because it is subject to data suppression to prevent the identification of individuals. This meant that school level aggregations could be slightly different from local authority level aggregations and might lead to confusion. An extension of the project could be to republish this data separately.

Screenshot of one of the Power BI report pages

What lessons did we learn?

The opportunity to analyse trends and changes over time are key insights would not have been possible without going through the process of consolidating multiple files.

Combining data from multiple sources (e.g. Get Information About Schools) would not have been practical without transforming the data into a related data model. Conversely, building data models provides the opportunity to combine data sources from multiple public sector bodies, a key objective of the Government Transformation Strategy.

The latest UK assessment by the European Data Portal identified issues with users' awareness of open data and understanding the value of these datasets. This project took a single dataset and reimagined how it could have been presented (alongside the open data) to lower the barriers to its use.

There are real opportunities to make open data easier to find, access and use. These include: predesigned reports that allow people to get started immediately and interactively query the data; agile tools that empower analysts to explore the data and build their own reports; and natural language interfaces and AI-powered agents that will query the data on your behalf.

The latest generation of self-service visualisation and analytics tools, such as Power BI, will provide all these capabilities. For many requirements this will be a more cost-effective and viable option than directly analysing the open data files or developing an application to do it.

Finally…

Click here to try the report for yourself

Applies to: Field Service for Dynamics 365, Project Service Automation for Dynamics 365, and Universal Resource Scheduling (URS) solution on Dynamics 365 9.0.x

We’re pleased to announce the latest update to the Field Service and Project Service Automation applications for Dynamics 365. This release includes improvements to quality, performance, and usability, and is based on your feedback and requests.

This release is compatible with Dynamics 365 9.0.x. To update to this release, visit the Admin Center for Dynamics 365 online, solutions page to install the update. For details, refer How to Install, Update a Preferred Solution

Field Service enhancements (v7.4.0.74)

Bugs

• Fixed: Error message editing any field on Product Receipt when changing PO status to Products Received
• Fixed: Purchase Order Product Price calculation wrong by factor of 10000 when using standard Euro currency format settings
• Fixed: End Date on Agreement is incorrectly updated when start date is in DST but end date is not
• Fixed: Address Suggestion dialog shows up after save of User record on D365 online org
• Fixed: Address Not Found error when selecting address from suggestion popup
• Fixed: [French/iPhone] [Mobile Offline]: Duration field is not getting auto-populated after filling the Start time and End time fields on Resource booking form
• Fixed: [iPhone] [Mobile Offline]: Pricing tab shows blank form while creating a work order product
• Fixed: [Offline only] - "Estimation Duration" is not set to default value "zero" on Work Order Incident form
• Fixed: [Unified Client] Documents not available under related even when entity is document management-enabled

Project Service Automation (v2.4.0.48) Enhancements

Bugs

• Fixed: [Unified Client Only] Not able to Add Products to Invoice when all solutions are installed
• Fixed: Upgrade Project Service solution to version 2.2.0.76 on D365 9.0 org leaving below 3 attributes of msdyn_approval entity incorrect
  • regardingobjectypecode,
  • regardingobjectidname,
  • regardingobjectidyominame
• Fixed: Contract confirmation is not correctly processing unbilled actuals coming from journals; the expected behavior is that when an actual is from a journal line, there should be no reversal of the actual when the contract is confirmed
• Fixed: Contract confirmation is not correctly processing unbilled actuals created after a credit note is processed
• Fixed: Estimated cost on project entity page is not taking expense estimates into account
• Fixed: Resource Requirement created from the Generate Project team with tasks with decimal hours have off-by-one end date
• Fixed: [DKK currency issue] The Total Sales Price does not appear accordingly with the decimal precision

Universal Resource Scheduling Enhancements

NOTE: Improvements and bug fixes for Universal Resource Scheduling apply to Field Service and Project Service Automation, as well as to other schedulable entities in the Sales or Service applications.

Improvements 

• New User Experience for Resource Sorting on Schedule Board
• Added Day of week to horizontal hourly Schedule Board
• Added date to hourly vertical Schedule Board
• Substitute onsite intraday bookings
• Option to remove hatch design from partially available cells
• Automatically slide up booking requirement grid when user clicks book on schedule board toolbar
• Inform user when there are overlapping bookings when using Schedule Assistant
• Automatically calculate travel using mathematical calculation if default mapping service (Bing) cannot be reached
• Specify Pattern UI now uses the same design as the demand panel on schedule board
• UI improvements in top section of specify pattern experience
• Change the column width in specify pattern experience

 Bugs 

• Fixed: Lack of format validation on the time window start and time window end fields on the resource requirement and work order entities
• Fixed: Issues when switching between horizontal and vertical hourly schedule boards, when a resource name is populated in the schedule board resource search box
• Fixed: Schedule Board error messages displayed on Schedule Assistant toolbar now fade if there are multiple errors
• Fixed: Issues creating booking alerts if user is under a child business unit
• Fixed: When creating bookings from booking form, if a booking rule is triggered and the user opts not to create booking, booking is no longer created
• Fixed: Schedule Board colors now fallback to use the colors of the default Schedule Board if there is no color set
• Fixed: Issues with loading default saved filters on Schedule Board.
• Fixed: Expand all and collapse all resource button no longer remains in a selected state after being clicked
• Fixed: When creating a time off record in the calendar for a few days, and then adding a one-day schedule with working hours on top of one of those days, resource availability will now be properly reflected
• Fixed: When in Specify Pattern experience, if user changes the first or last requirement detail to be earlier or later, but it still falls within the original requirement dates, the requirement from and to dates are now properly updated
• Fixed: Multiple localization fixes
• Fixed: In the booking requirements grid, users can now filter to show requirements that do not have a value in the territory field
• Fixed: Issues opening booking requirements panel on Schedule Board when using touchscreen devices on Firefox
• Performance Improvement: Improved performance when expanding multiple resources at once on the Schedule Board
• Usability Improvement: Tooltip no longer shows if the entire error message fits in the error notification bar

For more information:

• Release Notes for Field Service and Project Service Automation Update 3
• Release Notes for Field Service and Project Service Automation Update 2
• Release Notes for Field Service and Project Service Automation Update 1
• What's new in Dynamics 365 for Field Service and Project Service Automation
• Dynamics 365 for Field Service - User's Guide
• Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation - User's Guide

Feifei Qiu

Program Manager

Dynamics 365, Field & Project Service Team