The content below is taken from the original (Another day, another cloud price cut – from partly free to all free), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The content below is taken from the original (7 musts for any successful BYOD program), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The content below is taken from the original (How to automatically delete Microsoft Edge browsing history on exit), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The content below is taken from the original (Considering SD-WAN? Key questions to address before making the leap), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The content below is taken from the original (How to extend Email Retention Policy for Deleted Items in Office 365), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The content below is taken from the original (How Background Office 365 Processes Cause Confusion), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

Some Fraying Edges in the Office 365 service

Typically, system designers attempt to keep background processing hidden from end users. No need exists for a user to understand how server maintenance happens or what needs to be done to ensure databases stay in good health. Office 365 usually delivers service with no fuss to its users, but recently I have noticed some instances when background processes have made themselves felt. Although these are not serious issues, they are a worrying sign of a lack of attention to detail.

SharePoint’s App

Since mid-November, I have been complaining to Microsoft about the way that “app@sharepoint” shows up in Delve as the author of many documents (Figure 1). I was told that the problem was fixed in early December, but it came back and has remained constant since.

Figure 1: Odd app@sharepoint document owners – at least, according to Delve (image credit: Tony Redmond)

What Microsoft Support Says

My tenant is not the only one affected by the problem. I have heard from many others who experience the same issue, including several who have reported the issue to Microsoft Support. One response received from Microsoft Support and reported on the Microsoft Tech Community is:

“The Account app@sharepoint is related to the SharePoint Applications (Auditing logs/Virus), it is a system account, belongs to the SharePoint Farms infrastructure, it was created to run on all Site Collections/Personal sites to collect auditing information. When the user provides some changes for his own Site Collection, or enables features or activates the site Auditing logs, his own account does not have the write permissions on the SharePoint Farm and this account it will be used to run and collect all the necessary information to be provided to the customer. Microsoft has set up a few security accounts to run in all Farms, in order for our customer to do some tasks, and get the required information. Also it is necessary for user security, for these accounts to always track the Site Collection searching for viruses that can be uploaded into SharePoint. Microsoft will not change that, all Farms have the same configuration and this same system account, and all Site Collections will use this account if they need to do it.”

The answer reveals that app@sharepoint is a system account. System accounts should stay invisible to users because users do not care what system accounts do. We learn that the account is used when specific administrative operations need elevated permissions. OK, but that is not a reason to replace document authors with a system account. Finally, app@sharepoint appears to be used by processes that check for viruses that might be uploaded to SharePoint site collections. It is still no reason to hijack documents.

Keep Maintenance Hidden

The point is that Microsoft should be able to hide the seamy side of datacenter operations from the sight of normal users. It is one thing when tenant administrators get sight of stuff that they should not see; it is quite another when Delve presents users with a view appearing to tell them that their documents are now under the control of a random app. What is worrying is that Microsoft has not been able to fix the problem in over two months. That is simply unacceptable.

Perhaps the coming move to the http://bit.ly/2kmaA4h root will make Delve work properly. That move is supposed to free Delve and give the application a distinct identity of its own. We shall see whether the new identity discards some of the rubbish of the past.

Strange Accounts Show Up in Audit Events

It would be nice if strange Delve names were the only thing to worry about, but they are not. I have configured activity alerts to report any time that a user account is added to my tenant. An alert fired yesterday and reported that an account called [email protected] added a user. Further investigation via the audit log proved that the added account was valid, but I had added it (for a shared mailbox), not that strange account.

Diving deeper into the audit log, I established that this was not the only time that exo_evo_migration had added an account. Indeed, the activities of this account were joined by another called fim_password_service from the same support.onmicrosoft.com domain (Figure 2), this time to update my own account a few days ago.

Figure 2: Odd account names show up in the Office 365 Audit log (image credit: Tony Redmond)

I checked with Microsoft and discovered that the mysterious accounts are system accounts that should not turn up in audit events, especially when they replace the name of the real person who executes the action. Although I do not know for certain, it seems likely that these system accounts are used to synchronize updates between Azure Active Directory and the set of workload directories running inside Office 365. Pure speculation on my part – or a reasonable guess.

A Need for Clean-Up

Office 365 is a huge and complicated infrastructure that depends on many automated background processes to keep all the parts moving together. Anyone who has built computer systems realizes the need for system or service accounts to get things done and it is unsurprising to discover that Microsoft uses such accounts inside Office 365. In fact, I would be shocked if no system accounts were used.

But that is no reason to cause tenant administrators to worry when strange and unexplainable events show up. Who is this app@sharepoint person and why do they own user documents? Why are accounts in another Office 365 tenant adding and updating users in my domain? The fear of data loss or compromise is intense today and seeing odd things show up where they should not occur is always likely to cause concern.

Generally, Microsoft does a good job of drawing a veil across the messy bits of Office 365 to present an image of calm serenity to the world. Losing control over details like this does not help customers have confidence in cloud operation. After all, if this kind of obvious issue gets through the cracks, what else might happen?

Connect with Tony on Twitter @12Knocksinna

Want to know more about how to manage Office 365? Find what you need to know in “Office 365 for IT Pros”, the most comprehensive eBook covering all aspects of Office 365. Available in PDF and EPUB formats (suitable for iBooks) or for Amazon Kindle.

The post How Background Office 365 Processes Cause Confusion appeared first on Petri.

The content below is taken from the original (Bat Bot is an autonomous drone that mimics a bat’s flight), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

For roboticists working in the field of biomimetics, copying a bat’s complex flight patterns has been a difficult problem to solve. Or, as Caltech professor and Jet Propulsion Laboratory researcher Soon-Jo Chung put it during a press conference, "bat flight is the holy grail of aerial robotics." And according to a new research paper published by Chung and his JPL colleagues in the journal Science Robotics this week, that holy grail has officially been discovered.

Robotic birds and winged insects are relatively easy to create, but with over 40 joints in their wings, bats offer a new level of intricacy. By simplifying that wing structure into just nine key joints covered by a flexible membrane, however, the team successfully created the first Bat Bot. Built from carbon fiber bones and 3D-printed socket joints, Bat Bot weighs just 93 grams and the silicon-based wing membrane is only 56 microns thick with a roughly one-foot wingspan. "Our work demonstrates one of the most advanced designs to date of a self-contained flapping-winged aerial robot with bat morphology that is able to perform autonomous flight," Alireza Ramezani, one of the paper’s co-authors said.

Like a real bat, Bat Bot can move each wing independently and constantly change each wing’s shape to perform complex maneuvers that would be impossible otherwise. The flapping motion also conserves battery power, making it both quieter and more efficient than its fixed-wing or quadcopter counterparts.

Although the battery technology is still too clunky to allow for long flights, the research team believes Bat Bot’s agility would make it ideal for search and rescue operations or other applications in tight, urban environments. For now, however, the team is working on their next major milestone: teaching Bat Bot how to perch like its SCAMP cousin.

Via: CNET

Source: Science Robotics, Caltech

The content below is taken from the original (Sega adds ‘OutRun’ and other classic soundtracks to Spotify), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

If you need a distraction from the stress of our new Orwellian order, why not take a trip back to a simpler time with Sega? It just released nearly 20 classic soundtracks from the ’80s and ’90s onto streaming site Spotify, including OutRun, Virtua Fighter, Fantasy Zone and NiGHTS. OutRun is probably the standout, as many of us wasted a good chunk of our youth (and quarters) racing in the multiplayer arcade version.

The new releases join other Sega classics, including Sonic the Hedgehog, Golden Axes, Skies of Arcadia and Jet Set Radio. If you’re looking for something else, Spotify is one of the more gaming-oriented streaming services out there. It recently created a dedicated portal where you can find game-inspired playlists curated by PlayStation Music, EA Sports and even Engadget. However, it’s still difficult to stream soundtracks directly from developers and gaming companies — perhaps Nintendo and others could take a page from Sega.

Via: Destructoid

Source: Sega

The content below is taken from the original (Shell to start installing EV chargers in UK petrol stations), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The UK’s EV charging infrastructure continues to grow thanks to a few dedicated players, but the likes of Tesla and nemesis Ecotricity will be joined by an unlikely newcomer later this year. Petrol pusher Shell has confirmed plans to add EV charging points to some UK filling stations — a move the company has been thinking about since last year. Speaking to the Financial Times, Shell director John Abbott implied denser, urban areas were highest on the to-do list, and a spokesperson told us specific info on sites will be shared ahead of the first installations, which are expected before summer this year.

With these first steps towards creating an EV charging network of its own, Shell is preparing for a future where emissions-free vehicles outnumber today’s gas-guzzlers — quite the statement for the oil giant and one of the world’s biggest companies. Shell will still make money from filling cars up with electricity instead of petrol, of course, but savvy Abbott has spotted a bonus revenue stream: Selling coffee and sandwiches to drivers waiting around for enough juice to get home.

Via: Gizmodo

Source: The Financial Times

The content below is taken from the original (Electronic glasses auto-focus on what you’re looking at), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

They’re not very pretty, but prototype eyeglasses from University of Utah scientists could make progressive lenses obsolete for older people. Using electronically activated lenses and infrared distance meters, they can focus automatically on whatever you’re looking at, whether it’s far or close up. Once perfected, the device could eliminate the need for multiple pairs of reading or driving glasses for folks with presbyopia or farsightedness.

Age-related far- or nearsightedness happens when the lenses in your eyes can no longer change focus between objects. As a result, many people between their 40s and 50s have to wear progressive-lens eyeglasses divided into small focal zones depending on object distance. One company called Deep Optics has pursued an auto-focusing solution using see-through liquid-crystal lenses, but is still working on a practical prototype. Google is also working on an auto-focus contact lens with startup Novartis, but recently said that it wouldn’t be testing them anytime soon.

To make the lenses adjustable, the University of Utah team placed glycerine — a thick, clear liquid — within membranes on the front and back. The chunky frame, meanwhile, holds electronics, a battery and an infrared distance meter. When you look at something, the meter gauges the distance and sends a signal to a mechanical actuator on the rear membrane. Within 14 milliseconds, it switches focus from one object to another, giving you clear vision without the need to look up or down.

Users can upload their prescriptions to the glasses by pairing them with a smartphone over Bluetooth. That means that, in theory, you could keep the same pair of glasses forever, even if your eyesight changes. You’d need to recharge them like a smartphone, but that could be less of a hassle than packing multiple pairs around. "Most people who get reading glasses have to put them on and take them off all the time," says research lead Carlos Mastrangelo. "You put these on, and it’s always clear."

The current prototype, which first debuted at CES 2017, is obviously something nobody would want to wear in public. The goal now, then, is to make the whole package smaller and lighter via some serious miniaturization. The team has created a startup company to commercialize the smart glasses and, hopefully, get them on the market in as little as three years.

Via: Presse Citron (translated)

Source: University of Utah

The content below is taken from the original (Using the Office 365 Connector Incoming WebHook to Post Service Health Information), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

Exploiting Office 365 Connectors for Groups and Teams

Office 365 Groups and Microsoft Teams both support Connectors, which allow cards representing information drawn from a wide range of network data resources to be created in group conversations or team chats.

A card holds a snippet of information extracted from a network data source, like Twitter or an RSS feed for a blog. They’re not intended to be full extracts, such as the complete text of a blog post. Instead, cards are there to notify users about events. Some cards include methods, like a hyperlink, to bring users to the original source.

Connector sources

The set of network sources that Connectors support is now over 90, including those featured on project activities (Trello, Asana, and Wunderlist), customer relationships (Salesforce, Dynamics 365, and Zendesk), news (Bing News, Twitter, and RSS feeds), and developer tools (GitHub and Visual Studio). In addition, an “Incoming Webhook” connector is available as a generic link to allow developers to fetch data from other services to an Outlook group. Programmers can use the webhook to create a link to a group for a company-specific system or some other network data source for which a connector does not currently exist.

Connecting one of these sources to a group or team is simple. Use OWA or a Teams client to select the source to which you want to connect, give the necessary credentials to authenticate to the data source, find the data you want to extract, and let the data flow.

It’s also worth noting that Microsoft is working on “actionable messages” that leverage a subset of the connectors available for groups and teams. The same idea applies in that items from a network source flow from the source to a destination (in this case, a user’s Inbox) and are created there as cards. The cards are “actionable” because the user can interact with the content. For example, an actionable card created from a tweet allows you to retweet or like the tweet while cards created through the Twitter connector for a group are read-only. The feature is now in preview.

Creating Your Own Source for Connectors

Nice as it is to have so many out-of-the-box connectors, it’s always interesting to be able to link up your own data source. Microsoft makes this straightforward by providing the Incoming Webhook connector.

The function of the Incoming Webhook connector is to receive incoming HTTP requests containing simple JSON-format payloads. Once received, the connector routes the information to a destination Office 365 Group or Microsoft Team (the webhook address) where the information is created as a new card. If the connector links to a team, a new chat is created using the inbound information.

Therefore, to connect a data source to a group or team, all you need to do is:

1. Identify the data source to use. Any data source is acceptable if you can extract relevant information from it.
2. Decide on the destination – an Office 365 group or a team.
3. Create an Incoming Webhook connector for the destination.
4. Extract data from the source and format the data as a JSON payload.
5. Post the data to the webhook address.

Sounds easy enough. Let’s figure out what needs to be done to get something going.

Identify a Data Source

I decided to use the Office 365 Service Communication API as a data source, mostly because it can be used with PowerShell. Microsoft is currently previewing V2 of the API, so the PowerShell code to interrogate service health is likely to change when V2 is generally available. However, it works for now and that’s enough for test purposes.

Create an Incoming Webhook Connector

Before we can create a new connector, we need an Office 365 Group to host the cards that we’re going to create. I created a new group from OWA and then selected the Connectors option in the toolbar. I then selected Incoming Webhook from the list of available connectors and then Add to arrive at the screen shown in Figure 1. Here we decide what to call the webhook and whether to replace the default icon with a different image. Although I uploaded an image, OWA had the good taste to ignore it thereafter when displaying cards. The image appears in Outlook, so that is a little bug.

Figure 1: Creating a new Incoming Webhook Connector (image credit: Tony Redmond)

When you click Create, Office 365 responds with a URL. This is the webhook address that you need to specify to route information to the connector. The webhook address is of the form:

http://bit.ly/2kOcWvR

The webbook address is a critical piece of information because without it you can’t route items to the destination group or team. Copy it to the clipboard and store it for use. If you forget to do this, you can always access the webhook address by managing the connector.

Extract Data

Now the fun part begins because we have to write some code to extract the data from the source that we want to use. For this example, we’re going to import the Office 365 Service Communications module into a PowerShell session that is already connected to Exchange Online. We then fetch details about current service incidents using the API to create a set of objects. Before you can use the Office 365 Service Communications module, you’ll have to fetch and install it using an administrator account:

[PS] C:\> Find-Module O365ServiceCommunications | Install-Module -Scope CurrentUser

After the module is installed, we can connect and use it to fetch service information.

[PS] C:\> Import-Module O365ServiceCommunications
$O365ServiceSession = New-SCSession -Credential $O365Cred
$Incidents = Get-SCEvent -EventTypes Incident -PastDays 2 -SCSession $O365ServiceSession | Sort StartTme -Descending | Select-Object Id, Status, StartTime,
@{n='ServiceName'; e={$_.AffectedServiceHealthStatus.servicename}},
@{n='Message';e={$_.messages[0].messagetext}}

Formatting Payloads

Payloads enable us to transmit information through the connector to end up in the group. The important things to remember are that:

• Some practice is needed to master the creation of the JSON content using PowerShell. It is best to start with a basic card and then gradually build up the full content for the cards you want to create.
• Full information about how to format the JSON payload is available in the Office 365 Connectors API Reference.
• Posting to the connector depends on proper formatting of the payload. You might be able to convert your payload to JSON successfully using the ConvertTo-JSON cmdlet only to find that the payload is rejected when it is submitted to the connector using the Invoke-RestMethod All of which leads to hours of fun debugging payloads.

So here goes. First, we put the webhook address into a variable to make it easier to handle. We also create some other variables to use in the card.

$InfoFeed = " http://bit.ly/2kOcWvR”

Now we build the JSON payload in a PowerShell variable. For this example, we extract details of the latest service incident from the set retrieved from the Service Communications API. Note how different elements of a service incident are formatted in name-value pairs.

$InfoBit = ConvertTo-Json -Depth 4 @{
Text = "Office 365 Service Update"
Title = "New Office 365 Service Information at " + (Get-Date -Format U)
Summary = $Incidents.ServiceName[0] + " incident"
sections = @(
  @{
  facts = @(
     @{
     name = "Incident Number"
     value = $Incidents.ID[0]
     },
     @{
     name = "Affected Service:"
     value = $Incidents.ServiceName[0]
     },
     @{
     name = "Current Status:"
     value = $Incidents.Status[0]
     },
     @{
     name = "Start date:"
     value = Get-Date $Incidents.StartTime[0] -Format u
     },
     @{
     name = "Information:"
     value = $Incidents.Message[0]
     }
   )
  }
 )
}

Submitting the Payload

The Invoke-RestMethod cmdlet submits the payload to the connector, which is identified by the webhook address.

Invoke-RestMethod -ContentType "Application/Json" -Method Post -Body $InfoBit -Uri $InfoFeed

If everything goes well, the cmdlet will respond with 1 (one) to indicate that the post was successful. And of course, a new card should appear in the target group (Figure 2).

Figure 2: A service incident posted via the Incoming Webhook connector (image credit: Tony Redmond)

No Checking

One thing you’ll have noticed about this code is that it features no error checking. We grab the latest service incident and use it. No validation is present to see if any service incidents are present (a simple check against $Incidents.Count would be enough) nor do we verify whether the service incident has already been posted to the group. But the joy of PowerShell is the speed in which you can prove that something works. Adding the code normally found in operational-quality scripts can be left to later.

Connectors are Fun

It’s surprising just how much value can be extracted through Office 365 Connectors for both Office 365 Groups and Microsoft Teams. The out-of-the-box connectors are very functional, but it’s great to be able to use the Incoming Webhook connector to grab information from other systems and post that data too.

Follow Tony on Twitter @12Knocksinna.

Want to know more about how to manage Office 365? Find what you need to know in “Office 365 for IT Pros,” the most comprehensive eBook covering all aspects of Office 365. Available in PDF and EPUB formats (suitable for iBooks) or for Amazon Kindle.

The post Using the Office 365 Connector Incoming WebHook to Post Service Health Information appeared first on Petri.

The content below is taken from the original (5 AWS limitations every CEO needs to be aware of), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

The content below is taken from the original (Ireland votes to stop investing public money in fossil fuels), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

Ireland just took a big step toward cutting coal and oil out of the picture. Its Parliament has passed a bill that stops the country from investing in fossil fuels as part of an €8 billion ($8.6 billion) government fund. The measure still has to clear a review before it becomes law, but it would make Ireland the first nation to completely eliminate public funding for fossil fuel sources. Even countries that have committed to ditching non-renewable energy, like Iceland, can’t quite make that claim. The closest is Norway, which ditched some of its investments back in 2015.

The bill was put forward by Deputy Thomas Pringle, who sees this as a matter of "ethical financing." It’s a message to energy companies that both deny human-made climate change and lobby politicians to look the other way, he says.

Ireland’s decision won’t have the greatest environmental impact given its relative size, but this is still an aggressive move when many other countries aren’t ready or willing to drop their support for conventional energy. It’s a particularly sharp contrast to the US, whose new leadership is already going to great lengths to suppress climate change science and protect the fossil fuel industry.

Source: Independent

The content below is taken from the original (How to Reset Default Security ACLs in Windows), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

In today’s Ask the Admin, I’ll show you how to reset security ACLs in Windows to their defaults using the secedit tool.

If you’ve ever been in a situation where Windows Server exhibits strange behavior, or even worse, something has stopped working completely, you might have traced the issue to changes in security permissions on files, folders, or registry keys. Access control lists (ACLs) determine access to the filesystem and registry and can be changed manually, using Group Policy, or other tools, and untested modifications to default security settings can prove catastrophic.

Prevention is better than cure, so adhering to security best practices is the best way to ensure that unwanted changes don’t cause any nasty surprises in your production environment, such as not granting IT staff permanent administrative access to servers and implementing a solid change control process. But in cases where those measures have either failed or were not present to protect your systems, it might be necessary to reset permissions to their out-of-the-box defaults.

The method I’m going to show you in this article resets filesystem and registry ACLs to their defaults. Production systems are rarely configured without significant changes to the OS defaults, so applying a mass rollback of ACLs is likely to cause some issues. But in a lab environment, you might decide it’s worth the risk.

Back up and test a restore operation of your server before following the instructions below. You might also consider using secedit’s /generaterollback switch to create a template that would allow you to restore the security ACLs to their current state. For more information about backing up Windows Server, see Back Up a Windows Server 2012 R2 Domain Controller on the Petri IT Knowledgebase.

Reset Default Security ACLs

Before using the secedit tool to reset permissions, you might consider using the Security Configuration and Analysis Tool instead, as it allows you to compare current settings against those in a template. Also, bear in mind that custom security settings you’ve defined in areas not covered by the security template won’t be rolled back. For more information about using secedit and the GUI Security Configuration and Analysis Tool, see Using the Windows Server 2012 Security Configuration and Analysis Tool on Petri.

To perform the steps below, you’ll need to log in to Windows Server with an account that has local administrative permissions. The default permissions that I’m going to apply using the command below are for servers that are not domain controllers (DCs). If you want to reapply default security settings to a DC, use the defltdc.inf template instead.

• Log in to Windows Server.
• Press WIN+R to open the Run dialog box.
• Type cmd into the Run dialog box and then press ENTER.
• In the command prompt window, type the following command and then press ENTER.

secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\inf\defltsv.inf /db defltbase.sdb /verbose

Note that the defltsv.inf template is part of a standard Windows Server install and is located in the Windows directory.

In this article, I showed you how to reset Windows security to settings to their defaults.

The post How to Reset Default Security ACLs in Windows appeared first on Petri.

The content below is taken from the original (Amazon Cloud Directory – A Cloud-Native Directory for Hierarchical Data), to continue reading please visit the site. Remember to respect the Author & Copyright.

Our customers have traditionally used directories (typically Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service or LDAP-based) to manage hierarchically organized data. Device registries, course catalogs, network configurations, and user directories are often represented as hierarchies, sometimes with multiple types of relationships between objects in the same collection. For example, a user directory could have one hierarchy based on physical location (country, state, city, building, floor, and office), a second one based on projects and billing codes, and a third based on the management chain. However, traditional directory technologies do not support the use of multiple relationships in a single directory; you’d have to create and maintain additional directories if you needed to do this.

Scale is another important challenge. The fundamental operations on a hierarchy involve locating the parent or the child object of a given object. Given that hierarchies can be used to represent large, nested collections of information, these fundamental operations must be as efficient as possible, regardless of how many objects there are or how deeply they are nested. Traditional directories can be difficult to scale, and the pain only grows if you are using two or more in order to represent multiple hierarchies.

New Amazon Cloud Directory
Today we are launching Cloud Directory. This service is purpose-built for storing large amounts of strongly typed hierarchical data as described above. With the ability to scale to hundreds of millions of objects while remaining cost-effective, Cloud Directory is a great fit for all sorts of cloud and mobile applications.

Cloud Directory is a building block that already powers other AWS services including Amazon Cognito and AWS Organizations. Because it plays such a crucial role within AWS, it was designed with scalability, high availability, and security in mind (data is encrypted at rest and while in transit).

Amazon Cloud Directory is a managed service; you don’t need to think about installing or patching software, managing servers, or scaling any storage or compute infrastructure. You simply define the schemas, create a directory, and then populate your directory by making calls to the Cloud Directory API. This API is designed for speed and for scale, with efficient, batch-based read and write functions.

The long-lasting nature of a directory, combined with the scale and the diversity of use cases that it must support over its lifetime, brings another challenge to light. Experience has shown that static schemas lack the flexibility to adapt to the changes that arise with scale and with new use cases. In order to address this challenge and to make the directory future-proof, Cloud Directory is built around a model that explicitly makes room for change. You simply extend your existing schemas by adding new facets. This is a safe operation that leaves existing data intact so that existing applications will continue to work as expected. Combining schemas and facets allows you to represent multiple hierarchies within the same directory. For example, your first hierarchy could mirror your org chart. Later, you could add an additional facet to track some additional properties for each employee, perhaps a second phone number or a social network handle. After that, you can could create a geographically oriented hierarchy within the same data: Countries, states, buildings, floors, offices, and employees.

As I mentioned, other parts of AWS already use Amazon Cloud Directory. Cognito User Pools use Cloud Directory to offer application-specific user directories with support for user sign-up, sign-in and multi-factor authentication. With Cognito Your User Pools, you can easily and securely add sign-up and sign-in functionality to your mobile and web apps with a fully-managed service that scales to support hundreds of millions of users. Similarly, AWS Organizations uses Cloud Directory to support creation of groups of related AWS accounts and makes good use of multiple hierarchies to enforce a wide range of policies.

Before we dive in, let’s take a quick look at some important Amazon Cloud Directory concepts:

Directories are named, and must have at least one schema. Directories store objects, relationships between objects, schemas, and policies.

Facets model the data by defining required and allowable attributes. Each facet provides an independent scope for attribute names; this allows multiple applications that share a directory to safely and independently extend a given schema without fear of collision or confusion.

Schemas define the “shape” of data stored in a directory by making reference to one or more facets. Each directory can have one or more schemas. Schemas exist in one of three phases (Development, Published, or Applied). Development schemas can be modified; Published schemas are immutable. Amazon Cloud Directory includes a collection of predefined schemas for people, organizations, and devices. The combination of schemas and facets leaves the door open to significant additions to the initial data model and subject area over time, while ensuring that existing applications will still work as expected.

Attributes are the actual stored data. Each attribute is named and typed; data types include Boolean, binary (blob), date/time, number, and string. Attributes can be mandatory or optional, and immutable or editable. The definition of an attribute can specify a rule that is used to validate the length and/or content of an attribute before it is stored or updated. Binary and string objects can be length-checked against minimum and maximum lengths. A rule can indicate that a string must have a value chosen from a list, or that a number is within a given range.

Objects are stored in directories, have attributes, and are defined by a schema. Each object can have multiple children and multiple parents, as specified by the schema. You can use the multiple-parent feature to create multiple, independent hierarchies within a single directory (sometimes known as a forest of trees).

Policies can be specified at any level of the hierarchy, and are inherited by child objects. Cloud Directory does not interpret or assign any meaning to policies, leaving this up to the application. Policies can be used to specify and control access permissions, user rights, device characteristics, and so forth.

Creating a Directory
Let’s create a directory! I start by opening up the AWS Directory Service Console and clicking on the first Create directory button:

I enter a name for my directory (users), choose the person schema (which happens to have two facets; more about this in a moment), and click on Next:

The predefined (AWS) schema will be copied to my directory. I give it a name and a version, and click on Publish:

Then I review the configuration and click on Launch:

The directory is created, and I can then write code to add objects to it.

Pricing and Availability
Cloud Directory is available now in the US East (Northern Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), EU (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Asia Pacific (Singapore) Regions and you can start using it today.

Pricing is based on three factors: the amount of data that you store, the number of reads, and the number of writes (these prices are for US East (Northern Virginia)):

• Storage – $0.25 / GB / month
• Reads – $0.0040 for every 10,000 reads
• Writes – $0.0043 for every 1,000 writes

In the Works
We have some big plans for Cloud Directory!

While the priorities can change due to customer feedback, we are working on cross-region replication, AWS Lambda integration, and the ability to create new directories via AWS CloudFormation.

— Jeff;

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Microsoft’s OneDrive storage platform has become a critical component for the company’s Office 365 service and today the company is announcing several new features coming to OneDrive that will enhance collaboration and management of content. Specifically, these new features will make it easier to sync, share, and collaborate with the content that you are storing in OneDrive.

If you use SharePoint Online team sites and OneDrive, Microsoft is enabling the ability to sync content between the two services. This sync includes files inside of Teams, OneDrive, folders that are shared, and this service works across both PC and Mac. This feature is a huge improvement for companies that use both services as it finally bridges the gap between these two online repositories of content.

When it comes to syncing files, Microsoft is adding a new ‘Activity Center’ that will provide visibility into the process. This feature is coming to both PC and Mac; in addition, there is a new stand-alone Mac OneDrive client that works outside of the app store.

To help IT admins manage their content, sync, and sharing capabilities, Microsoft is releasing an updated OneDrive admin center. This updated control center has several improvements including a new dashboard for more granular control for sharing, syncing, and storage.

As Office 365 continues to expand, so will the usage of OneDrive for Business and these new features will enhance compatibility with older services like SharePoint. You can read more about the updates to the platform, here.

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