Smarter AI Workflows in Microsoft 365 Copilot has been announced on the roadmap: Tools, Source Control, and Agents

Tool Selection in Copilot Chat: Making AI Features More Discoverable One of the most helpful updates in my opinion, is the introduction of the new “Tools” button in Copilot Chat. Users will soon see this button directly in the chat prompt box, offering quick access to a curated set of Copilot features such as Researcher, Analyst, Pages, and image generation.  This will hopefully help users with an easier path to the different tools at their disposal. The feature is turned on by default, with no admin configuration required. This feature is associated with Roadmap ID 497298 , and is expected to roll out in the last weeks of August. Source Control in Copilot Chat: Scoped Responses for Greater Relevance Another user-friendly enhancement coming up, is the ability to scope Copilot Chat responses to specific content sources. This feature will allow users to define exactly which documents, folders, or repositories Copilot should reference when generating responses. It’s a subtle but power...

Backing up your Lync 2010 Standard edition

When it comes to Lync 2010 Backup and restore, there are a lot of good articles out there to help you one your way. But none of these examples really satisfied my needs.
And as the Lync 2013 Preview has been released, backing up your existing Lync environment before installing the preview is a really smart thing to do.

I am not going to pretend I wrote all of this, as much of it is almost copy/paste from other posts. But I have been tweaking what others have done before me, and added elements I wanted in my script.

I would like to send a great thank you to  Traci Herr, who did most of the job for me over at: http://bit.ly/eGjGrl

In addition to the original script, I have altered the SQL backup to run within the PS script based on this Wiki post: http://bit.ly/ROnG6v So a great thank you to the contributors there is also in order.

Lastly, I have added a send to .zip file and a clean up routine. This way, I have it all in a singe zip file (which can then be backed up by the system file backup), and I will not run out of disk space (You have no idea how much data you might end up with after a few backups)

The script itself can be downloaded here. And will be posted on my script page shortly.

Here are a few things to consider before you run this on your own servers.

  • This script is for a Standard Edition Server (I will look into a Enterprise edition shortly).
  • The script must be run on a server where Lync PS is available, and this must be imported if you are to run this as a scheduled task (See the script for details).
  • If you want to backup your RGS information, you will have to install reskit tools as well (and import the script commands as I do in my script)
  • My script creates a directory C:\lyncbackup\, this may be edited if you like.
  • I have not been able to enumerate the filepath for a local share on a STD Lync server. This must be edited for autpmation (See script for details)
  • Certificates will only be backed up if you allowed for this when requesting and creating certificates.
  • The creation of the zipfile can take a while. The script finishes before the zipfile is finished (If anyone know how to wait for this task before quitting the script, please let me know).
That's all there is to it.

As always, I appreciate feedback or suggestions on improvements.