Copilot: Self-Service Purchase coming soon

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According to the message center Microsoft will roll out the new license request feature and self-service purchase option for Microsoft 365 Copilot by the end of March. These features will be available to users with various Microsoft 365 plans, including E1, E3, E5, and standalone products. Both features will be integrated within Microsoft 365 apps, such as Copilot Chat. The License Request feature I find quite beneficial, as it empowers end-users to justify their usage and request access. At least as long as the organization is already rolling out Copilot to their employees. However, the Self-Service Purchase option may raise concerns for organizations that are not yet prepared to deploy Copilot. It is advisable for all organizations to review their self-purchase settings and make decisions to allow or deny access based on their readiness state. License Request: This feature allows users to request a Microsoft 365 Copilot license directly from their admin. It helps efficiently assign ...

Normalization rules order

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I was troubleshooting a customer's normalization rules for international dialing, when I came the following conclusion: The order of the normalization rules in the DialPlan is important when you have more than one possible match.

In my setup, I was trying to accommodate how users might possibly try to dial an international number in different ways. Some users might have figured out how to use the + in their contact cards, or when dialing, and those are of no concern. But others will still tend to use "old-style" with a prefix, or forget the "+" all together.

For this I "always" create two simple rules:
One matching any number string longer than 8 digits (No extension in Norway is longer than 8 digits), and adding a + to it. This will Normalize any international number not beginning with a "+" and adding the "+" before routing.
New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "Global/NO_INT_Digits" -Pattern '^(\d{8}\d+)$' -Translation '+$1'
The second rule was made to accommodate those who were dialing with the international prefix in front of the number (00)
New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "Global/NO_INT_Digits00" -Pattern '^00(\d{8}\d+)$' -Translation '+$1'

What I have not considered before, is the order of which these commands are written. If you enter them in the order I have shown you here, the first rule will always take effect, and the stripping of 00 in the second rule, will never work.

So from now on, I will always add the most specific rule first, then the general rule.

Here's the "complete" list I usually use here in Norway:

New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "Global/NO_3_Digits" -Pattern '^(1\d{2})$' -Translation '+47$1'
New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "Global/NO_4_Digits" -Pattern '^(18\d{2})$' -Translation '+47$1'
New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "Global/NO_5_Digits" -Pattern '^(0\d{4})$' -Translation '+47$1'
New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "Global/NO_8_Digits" -Pattern '^(\d{8})$' -Translation '+47$1'
New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "Global/NO_INT_Digits00" -Pattern '^00(\d{8}\d+)$' -Translation '+$1'
New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "$Global/NO_INT_Digits" -Pattern '^(\d{8}\d+)$' -Translation '+$1'

Hope this saves you from some troubleshooting: Plan your Normalization rules carefully :)