Two new updates to Microsoft 365 Copilot for Word: Smarter Creation and Researcher agent

on
What’s New in Microsoft 365 Copilot for Word Microsoft continues to evolve its Copilot capabilities in Word, bringing powerful new features that enhance productivity and streamline workflows. Two newly announced updates are rolling out this fall: First out of the gate is the integration of the Researcher Agent, allowing great content generation within Word itself. The second update is bringing more of the search and creation capabilities we have in Chat directly into Word. These updates represent a meaningful step toward closing the functionality gap between Copilot in Word and Copilot Chat. For me, this is a most welcomed improvement, making it easier for end users to get the results they want even faster, with less friction and more flexibility. Deep Research with the New Researcher Agent in Word Not too long ago, Microsoft introduced the Researcher agent in Copilot Chat, but moving and editing that content required copy/paste and jumping between applications. With this coming update...

Backup Skype for Business script is coming soon

on
The release of Skype for Business Server for On-Premise is just around the corner, and as a preparation for the release, I am going through my Lync 2013 backup script and verifying the commands and version checking for SfB.

As I am upgrading the script for SfB, I am also introducing a couple of new features. Here is a sneak peak of what to expect in the new version.

Select you own password for Private Key protection
When the script is run, the previous version set the password of all certs to "secret". This is now a parameter which you may (and should) change. Simply run the script with the -CertPass option


Send an Email report after the script has been run
Although the script can be run manually, I usually configure a scheduled task to do it for me every (day, week, month or what you prefer). I have now added a function which will send you an email with a brief transcript of the backup. This requires an available SMTP server, and valid to/from addresses.

Running the script with the -SendEmailOnComplete switch trigges the required mandatory parameters: EmailFrom, EmailTo and SMTPServer


This will send an email looking like this to the desired mailbox


The attached log file should look like something like this. And I would like to highlight:
1) A notification regarding Log backup
2) A notification if there are Cs-Certificates in the store where priv-key is not exportable



A shortcut to more information
I have included a switch which should launch your preferred browser and take you to my blog, and display the posts with the Backup-SfB tag. Use the -OnlineInfo to invoke

I have a working beta version of the Backup-SfB.ps1 in our own deployment, and awaiting some feedback from other beta testers. So please let me know what you think of these new features, and if there are others you would like to see in an upcoming release. The release will be announced at Ignite ;)