These days, Microsoft tends to announce products as they begin development; so they have fewer big announcements at their large events like Microsoft Ignite. Nevertheless, yesterday's 2.5 hour keynote did include some interesting information and announcements.

The two things that interested me the most were:

Azure OpenAI Service - a new addition to Microsoft's powerful Cognitive Services suite that allows you to create models that understand the context of text. The demo showed a transcript of a basketball game in which OpenAI was able to summarize the game's action into a brief paragraph. You can watch that demo here.

Microsoft Teams Connect should make it easier to collaborate in Teams with members from different organizations. This has been a pain point on some of my recent projects, so I look forward to seeing how this affects my work.

Microsoft Loop appeared in my build of Teams a few days ago, so my teammates and I have been playing with its collaborative features, which allow us to quickly add things like tables and to-do lists and edit them simultaneously.

While watching videos, I sometimes learn about things that are not new, but are new to me. Copilot is a plug-in for Visual Studio Code that automatically generates code, based on comments you add. I was unfamiliar with it, but I will be trying it out this week. It looks very cool!

Below are my raw notes, taken while watching the keynote:

New: Azure OpenAI Service

Customize models. Add context

Summarize text

Summary of summaries

 

Co-Pilot VS Code plug-in

Creates code based on comments

 

Teams Connect

Collaboration: Chat, call, meet, etc.

 

Metaverse

Digital representation of the world

Dynamic 365 Connected Spaces

Microsoft Mesh

Mesh for Microsoft Teams

Avatars with facial expression

Shared whiteboard

 

Judson A: Sustainability case study

 

Teams

Loop

Pages with flexible canvases

Loop components: Pull in content

Keep in sync

Multiple users can edit in Teams, Outlook, Word, or Teams mobile

 

Outlook

@ mentions

Automatically create meeting

 

Clip Champ

All your video needs in one place | Clipchamp

 

Teams Connect

External shared channels alongside internal channels

Collaborate with those outside company

Public Preview 2022Q1

 

Webinar

Virtual Green Room for presenters to prep

Curated attendee: Attendees see only shared content and guests invited to speak

ISV

Bring your apps into Teams

Bring Teams into your org

 

Viva Insights

Meeting suggestions provided to organizer

Create a meeting plan

"Send praise" feature

 

Dynamics 365

Supply Chain Insights

provide risk scores

Projected delivery dates

Storm surge risk

 

Power Automate

Process step map

Add comments to apps

 

Azure Arc

Hybrid and multicloud management

Virtual desktop in Azure Stack

 

SQL Server 2022 Preview announced

 

Azure Container Apps

Fully-managed and serverless platform

Does not use Kubernetes. Focus on apps

Upgrade path to Kubernetes

 

GitHub Codespaces

Create development machines in the cloud in <15 seconds

Access via web browser

 

New: Power Apps pay-as-you-go pricing model

Distribute Power Apps as native iOS and Android apps