Posts

Introducing Webinars in Microsoft Teams: Easy, professional webinars to engage customers

/in /by

Over the last year, we have found new ways to create engaging virtual experiences at work. We’ve transformed spaces in our homes to offices, developed new skillsets for remote collaboration, and in some cases, adopted new technology to get work done. I often hear from our customers about the burden of using different tools to accomplish similar tasks at work. This is one of the reasons I’m excited to announce new innovations in Microsoft Teams that give you more ways to use the tool you rely on every day for internal collaboration and meetings, now for webinars and external events. 

Beginning this week, Webinars and PowerPoint Live are generally available in Microsoft Teams. Additionally, Presenter mode will begin to roll out later in May. With these capabilities, you have new ways to deliver polished, professional presentations in meetings of all sizes, from small internal meetings to large customer-facing webinars and events—all from a single application. 

What’s even better? You don’t need to purchase a new license or product. These new capabilities are included in many of the Office and Microsoft 365 plans your organization uses today1. There are no hidden costs or charges for overage fees with plans that include these capabilities—period. 

Full-featured webinars for rich customer engagements 

Now you can organize and hold interactive webinars for up to 1,000 attendees with Teams. Use end-to-end webinar support that’s as simple as setting up a Teams meeting—including custom registration pages and attendee emails, rich presentation options, host controls, such as the ability to disable attendee chat and video, and post-event reporting to understand participation and to follow up with attendees. 

Attendee registration page inside of Teams

If you need to reach more than 1,000 attendees, Teams meetings can seamlessly scale to accommodate a 10,000-person view-only broadcast experience. During this time of increased remote work, we’ve expanded the attendee limit to 20,000 through the end of this year. 

Everyone can present like a pro 

With PowerPoint Live and Presenter mode in Microsoft Teams, anyone can deliver more impactful and engaging presentations to show up in a more polished and professional way with your audience. 

By bringing together Microsoft’s rich history with presenter experiences in PowerPoint and the collaboration power of Teams, presenters can feel more confident and capable during online presentations. You can view upcoming slides, notes, meeting chat, and the audience in a single view while presenting. 

PowerPoint slide presenter view shown during a Teams meeting

Meanwhile, attendees can personalize their experience by privately navigating the content at their own pace or using high contrast mode and screen readers to make content accessible. Coming soon, slide translation capabilities allow attendees to select their native language and automatically have slides translated for them—without changing the view for other attendees. 

Slide translation capabilities

Presenter mode empowers presenters to customize how their video feed and content appear to the audience. The first of three options, Standout mode, shows the speaker’s video feed as a silhouette in front of the shared content; Reporter mode shows content as a visual aid above the speaker’s shoulder, similar to a news broadcast; and Side-by-side mode shows presenter’s video feed alongside their content as they present. Standout mode will be available later in May, and Reporter and Side-by-side will roll out shortly after. 

Speaker shown in three layouts view with content

Continue to engage with attendees after your webinar 

A webinar is just one touchpoint in your customer engagement efforts. After the event ends, easily access reporting to bring attendee information into your customer relationship management (CRM) applications for lead management and follow-up. 

And, beginning this month, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing customers can export attendee data directly from Teams to automatically create campaigns and customer journeys for ongoing nurture streams. The Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing integration gives webinar hosts more ways to drive engagement, increase conversion, and build loyalty with your attendees. 

Export contacts from Teams to Dynamics 365 Marketing

Not sure how to deliver your next webinar or event? We can help 

Customers like Junior Achievement, Coldwell Banker, and the Consumer Technology Association are using Teams for virtual events—from community building townhalls, to state-of-the-market webinars, to the world’s largest tradeshow. 

We know that technology is just one piece of the solution. Microsoft services like the Live Events Assistance Program help customers set up, manage, and deliver events spanning from townhalls to webinars and everything in between. Microsoft Consulting Services for Virtual Events provide strategy and delivery support for organizations that want to move their large conferences and custom events online. And Microsoft trusted partners provide solutions to envision, develop, integrate, and deliver your virtual event at any size. 

Get started with Webinars in Microsoft Teams today 

Since the new webinar capabilities are already included in many of the Office and Microsoft 365 plans your organization uses today1, there’s no reason to not start using them now. 

Learn more about how to use these new capabilities in Microsoft Teams with this Webinars quick start guide and PowerPoint Live overview. 

1These new capabilities will be available in Microsoft 365 E3/E5, Microsoft 365 A3/A5, and Microsoft 365 Government G3/G5 plans. Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Microsoft 365 Business Premium plans will include all the features above for up to 300 attendees. And for the rest of 2021, we are offering a promotional period where all Teams users can try the features with their existing subscription. 

7 tips for safe online meetings and collaboration with Microsoft Teams

/in /by

Remote and hybrid work has become the new norm for many employees across the globe as day-to-day collaboration continues to be accomplished virtually. With this shift to online communication, how can you ensure that you’re collaborating safely? 

Queue Microsoft Teams! Whether you’re hosting virtual meetings, carrying out daily group and 1:1 chat, sharing documents, or coauthoring in a document in real-time – Teams enables safe and secure collaboration! 

Tip 1: Control who can join your Microsoft Teams meetings directly and present 

Meeting organizers can change participant settings for a specific meeting through the Meeting options web page. In Teams, go to your Calendar, select a meeting, and then select Meeting options. From here you can determine settings like who needs to be admitted to the meeting and who can bypass the lobby to join it directly. Additionally, you can decide which participants are able to join with the presenter role to present out content and who should join as standard attendees. Another helpful control for large meetings is the ability to prevent attendees from unmuting themselves – this is particularly useful when the meeting will be led by specific participants while the rest of the audience will be listening in. Note that your organization controls the default participant settings. 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/videoplayer/embed/RE4MfGE?autoplay=false

Tip 2: Minimize Teams meeting disruptions by muting individual or all meeting attendees 

In order to prevent meeting disruptions, intentional or accidental, as a meeting organizer you have the ability to mute individual attendees or all meeting attendees. If an attendee happens to leave their microphone unmuted while being away, you can easily mute that participant from the participant pane. During large meetings led by designated speakers, such as a town hall or lecture, the ability to mute all attendees ensures your presenters won’t be accidentally interrupted. 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/videoplayer/embed/RE4MfGF?autoplay=false

Tip 3: Determine who can present content or share their screen in your Teams meeting 

As the meeting organizer, you can determine who has the ability to present out content or share their screen within the meeting. Prior to the meeting start, we discussed above how this can be accomplished via Meeting options. Once your meeting has begun, you can select a participant via the participant pane to determine whether they have the presenter role or are a standard attendee. This can be especially useful when you have outside participants attending your meeting who may only need the presenter role temporarily. 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/videoplayer/embed/RE4MjIm?autoplay=false

Tip 4: End your Teams meeting for everyone in attendance at once 

As the meeting organizer, sometimes the meeting needs to end at your discretion without allowing participants to remain. Ending a meeting for all attendees is often applicable in large-meeting settings such as a town hall, lecture, or webinar class to ensure attendees don’t remain in the meeting. Once a meeting has wrapped up, instead of clicking Leave, select the dropdown located next to it and click End Meeting. You can also access this by going into your meeting controls, click more options (…) , and select End Meeting. This will end and close the meeting for everyone in attendance. 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/videoplayer/embed/RE4MfGG?autoplay=false

Tip 5: Create a team with increased security 

If any of the content stored or discussed within the team may be considered business sensitive, such as financial details or classified project information, it’s best practice to apply increased protections to that team to ensure the content security. This can be accomplished by creating a new team and applying an IT-created sensitivity label. When applying a sensitivity label to your team, it automatically applies the configured protections to the team. 

When creating a new team, on the sensitivity and privacy pane select the dropdown under Sensitivity to select an IT-created sensitivity label to apply to the team. As a reminder, it’s always best to check with your organization or IT department on how sensitive business information should be stored. 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/videoplayer/embed/RE4MfGQ?autoplay=false

Tip 6: Create a private channel 

Sometimes you need to share sensitive information within a team to specified team members only, such as project details or strategic planning, that doesn’t require holistic team protection. Rather than creating a new team, you can create a private channel within an existing team that is only accessible to designated members. This is a great way to provide a security layer to protect sensitive business information without creating a new team. 

thumbnail image 1 of blog post titled 7 tips for safe online meetings and collaboration with Microsoft Teams

To create a private channel, go to the team and choose more options (…) and select Add channel. After providing a name and description, under Privacy select the dropdown arrow to specify the channel is Private – Accessible only to a specific group of people within the team. Once created, you can add additional private channel owners and up to 250 members. As a reminder, it’s always best to check with your organization or IT department on how sensitive business information should be stored. 

Tip 7: Help protect sensitive data in Teams 

Microsoft Teams supports data protection policies to help protect sensitive information from being accidentally or inadvertently shared. When collaborating in a Teams 1:1 or channel chat, you may have a message return as blocked if that message contains information that meets your organization’s sensitive information policy. 

thumbnail image 2 of blog post titled 7 tips for safe online meetings and collaboration with Microsoft Teams

If your message is blocked, within that blocked message you may see a clickable link that says What can I do? If you click that link, a helpfully policy tip created by your organization will display educating you on why content within that message is considered business sensitive. Policy tips are designed to help the sender understand why certain content is considered business sensitive or is best practice not to share. 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/videoplayer/embed/RE4MfH9?autoplay=false

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/videoplayer/embed/RE4McRq?autoplay=false

We hope that these safe online collaboration tips will help you remain productive while having the confidence you’re remaining secure. 

Three ways your SMB customers are more secure with Microsoft 365 Business

/in /by

We all read about the big data breaches – the ones that hit major corporations, with millions of personal records compromised. But today’s cybercriminals aren’t picky. Their nets catch businesses of any size, from the newest garage startup to well-established organizations with several hundred employees. Those are the businesses with perhaps the most to lose from a successful attack, whether from an interruption in business service or outright theft of customer or product information. 

Statistics bear this out: 

  • Surveys show that 58 percent of business-related cyberattacks are directed at small- to medium-sized business.[1] 
  • Average cost of a data breach to these businesses: $120,000.[2] 
  • And yet, 62 percent of SMBs lack effective digital protection.[3] 

But we get it. We know your customers probably feel overwhelmed with just running a business, let alone installing protection against digital thieves. That’s why showing your clients the benefits of the modern security built into Microsoft 365 Business helps you build a thriving practice. At the same time, you’ll give your SMB customers the ability to simplify their security strategy and confidently embrace new technology. 

Here are three reasons why your customers will thank you for helping them adopt the modern productivity cloud solution with leading security: Microsoft 365 Business. 

  1. Defend against cyber-attacks: Your customers will get protection from sophisticated, external cyber threats hidden in email attachments and links, and get cutting-edge defenses against phishing and spoofing attacks, ransomware, and other advanced malware attempts. These attacks are becoming more sophisticated every day, and the SMB space is a frequent target. 
  2. Retain control over their company data and documents – This is something that will give your customers peace of mind. Protection from data leaks will help them protect sensitive information such as Social Security numbers and credit card numbers. They also can control access to important company documents, even after those documents have been shared outside your company. 
  3. Manage apps, data, and documents on any device: Customers have full control over their company data. Regardless of the device type or operating system, iOS, macOS, Android, or Windows, Microsoft 365 Business helps you manage mobile devices. 

Plus, when you sell your customers on the security benefits of Microsoft 365 Business, you have the backing of Microsoft’s industry-leading experience protecting people and data. Microsoft is a serious security vendor, with a ton of experience in this space and the numbers to back it up. For example, each month our Outlook.com and Office 365 emails services analyze some 400 billion emails for security threats. We provide enterprise security for 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and operate more than 200 global cloud, consumer, and commercial services – all of which require advanced security. 

Best of all, moving customers to Microsoft 365 Business increases your value to customers. You can support one integrated solution across productivity, security, and device management while simplifying your customer’s technology investment and enabling them to operate more efficiently, cost-effectively, and securely. It also creates room for you to earn with managed services and Modern Workplace incentives. 

Visit the US SMB Modern Workplace landing page for resources related to starting a security practice and GTM assets to win new customers. Be sure to also watch this Advanced Security Opportunity webinar to learn more about the partner opportunity around Microsoft 365 Business that will increase your revenue and provide a stronger connection with your customers. 

[1] Verizon 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report 

[2] Kaspersky Lab study, 2018 

[3] Underserved and Unprepared: The State of SMB Cyber Security in 2019. 

Connect people across the entire organization through communities in Microsoft Teams

/in /by

With a global health crisis compelling so many of us to work remotely, it’s more important than ever for leaders and communications to connect people across teams and organizations. Last November at Ignite, we unveiled the new Yammer, with a beautiful new design that powers community, knowledge-sharing, and employee engagement. The new Yammer includes a fully interactive Yammer app called “Communities” that brings your communities and conversations directly into Microsoft Teams. Put simply, it’s Yammer—in Teams. 

Starting today, this app is available in the Microsoft app store. Here, I’ll go over how your team can use it for company-wide communication, knowledge-sharing, and employee engagement, as well as how to install it and where to find it. By offering the full Yammer experience right inside Teams, we want to help you keep everyone at your organization engaged, informed, and moving forward. Let’s get into it. 

Animated image of the Microsoft Teams app.

The new Yammer app for Teams keeps everyone connected to what’s happening in their communities conversations, share announcements, attend live events, and connect with coworkers just as you would in the Yammer web or mobile apps. 

How to use the new Yammer app 

More than 44 million people are now using Teams every day to get work done. And while many of us spend more time than ever collaborating with our own teams, we also often need to reach beyond our core work groups to chase down information, share experiences and expertise, and voice feedback. 

With the Yammer app in Teams, customers can: 

Communicate broadly 

Leaders and communicators need modern solutions to ensure people have the information they need, wherever they are. The Yammer app enables them to share a poll or question at scale, and instantly notify people of important news by sharing an announcement targeted to the entire organization or specific communities. And the app offers easy visibility into the reach and impact of those communications, too. 

Image of a remote worker community in Microsoft Teams.

Announcements and pinned posts increase visibility for important messages. 

Connect with experts and answers 

The familiar social experiences of Yammer make it easy to discover valuable conversations, ask questions, loop in experts with at-mentions, and mark best answers. 

Image of a remote worker community member asking for resources in Microsoft Teams.

The personalized feed is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to show conversations and content that are relevant to you. 

Host company-wide events 

Leaders can use live events in Yammer to broadcast company-wide, town hall–style meetings with video, interactive conversation, and Q&A sessions to share vision, drive culture, and engage employees. 

Image of a company meeting in Microsoft Teams.

Users can attend company-wide live events in Yammer in the app. 

How to install it 

Starting today, admins and users can install the Yammer app, named “Communities,” from the Teams App store. Then, it can be pinned to the Teams app bar on the left. IT Admins can choose to deploy and pin the app for all users or particular departments through custom policies. Meanwhile, individual users can install and pin the app themselves using the options in the app bar. 

Image of the Yammer app being searched for in Microsoft Teams.

Install the Yammer app, called “Communities,” from the app store in Microsoft Teams. 

Further questions 

Now, you may have some questions on where this app will be available in Teams and whether it will impact the places you use Yammer today. For instance, you be wondering if the new app will be in Teams for iOS and Android. The answer: not quite yet! But while it’s currently available today for Teams desktop and web clients only, we’ll be bringing it to mobile soon, too. Meanwhile mobile users can enjoy the new Yammer mobile apps today. And you can also continue using Yammer for Windows and Mac and Yammer on the web (currently in preview, due for worldwide release soon). The new “Communities” app is available to all Teams customers today, even if they haven’t used the preview of the new Yammer experience. 

Looking forward 

By bringing Yammer into Teams, we want to make it easier for leaders and communicators to quickly and effectively communicate with their teams and organizations, even when they need to work apart. We’ll continue to create a more seamless Yammer communities experience within Teams, including unifying notifications and search and bringing the Yammer app to Teams mobile. We hope you find them useful as you navigate your organization’s remote work experience. 

4 Tips for working from home with Microsoft Teams

/in /by

There are many reasons to work remotely and Microsoft Teams is here to help you stay connected with your teammates wherever they are. IT admins, don’t miss Support remote workers using Teams. 

4 best practices for working from home 

  1. Make the most of meetings 
    • Meetings are about the people in them, not the technology. The most effective meetings have a clear purpose. Use your meeting description to detail what the meeting is for. Learn more about driving great teamwork with our Art of Teamwork materials. 
    • Use chat to share reminders or pre-read documents to your audience before the meeting. 
    • Record the meeting if that’s acceptable in your organization.   
  2. Be inclusive and use your video 
    • When you’ve got robust bandwidth, turn on your video Tip: Use background blur if you don’t want your background to be a distraction. Video really amps up collaboration in meetings (but if you’ve got limited bandwidth, turn off video to maintain high-quality audio). Make sure you know how to join a meeting in Teams before the meeting starts. 
    • Practice inclusion – ask everyone for their input. If someone’s audio is too low, or if their device is causing problems, deal with it at the start of the meeting so that person won’t be excluded. 
    • Don’t forget to keep track of your mute button!  :smile:
  3. Track notes and action items, share frequently used documents 
    • Take notes and share follow-ups in chat. It’s harder to get a casual recap in the hallway when there is no hallway. Use an app like Planner, Asana, or Trello to track tasks. 
    • For something that you usually handle with one meeting and informal, hallway catch-ups, schedule a 15-minute follow-up meeting a few days later. Be sure to include prep work in the meeting invitation. 
    • In channels, create tabs for important files, websites, or dashboards so the content is available to everyone on the team.
  4. Customize your virtual workspace

Whether you’re new to remote work, temporarily working from home, or on an extended leave, Teams is there to help you be productive from anywhere. Learn more in one of our quick online courses or from our help content at https://aka.ms/TeamsHelp. Share your tips below or online with the #TeamsTips hashtag.  

5 steps for boosting your digital transformation with Microsoft 365

/in /by

So how can we help bring your vision of the world’s productivity cloud—Microsoft 365—to life? 

Step 1: Get industry-specific guidelines with the Productivity Library 

Start with understanding how Microsoft 365 can improve productivity in your specific role or industry using scenarios and best practices with the Productivity Library. The Productivity Library is available for a wide range of industries including financial services, retail, and healthcare and gets granular for roles like operations, sales, and human resources. 

Step 2: Develop a plan with the Microsoft 365 Adoption Guide 

The Microsoft 365 Adoption Guide helps you to not just identify and prioritize key scenarios, but also helps you understand how to best build and launch your adoption plan with your stakeholders. The Microsoft 365 Adoption Guide will help you drive business value by showing you how to monitor and track adoption and usage. 

Step 3: Create your advocates and champions 

When you’re ready to start training your users, we recommend leveraging the power of the Office 365 Champions program. This program is designed to help you create a circle of influence for those early adopters or go-to people in your organization and empower them to become your Office 365 Champions. This program provides support and resources to help these users find a more efficient way to tackle everyday tasks and then share those learnings with their peers. 

Step 4: Build your own learning portal 

Did you know you can build a custom training portal with just a few clicks? Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways is a customizable, on-demand learning solution designed to increase usage and adoption of Microsoft 365 services in your organization. This includes on-demand custom training, SharePoint Online portal provisioning, and straightforward steps to provision, customize, and share your new portal with users. 

Step 5: Track users progress 

Once you implement some of these learning resources you’ll need some tools to help you to track your software adoption progress. The new Microsoft Productivity Score—currently in private preview—will provide you with visibility into how your organization works, insights that identify where you can enable improved experiences so people can reach their goals, and actions to update skills and systems so everyone can do their best work. 

For companies who want to help their employees better understand how they spend their time and guide them to better work habits and team norms, we encourage you to turn on MyAnalytics. This tool helps users improve their focus, wellbeing, network, and collaboration. 

MyAnalytics is available to Microsoft 365 and Office 365 Enterprise and Business suite users. 

Finally, for a top-down view, we offer Workplace Analytics. Workplace Analytics provides more advanced tools to discover and analyze the business impact of the way people work and help drive change through MyAnalytics. It gives you a view into collaboration patterns that empowers organizations to act with agility, improve employee experience, and sharpen customer focus. 

Workplace Analytics is available as a Microsoft 365 add-on service. 

Check out the Microsoft 365 Knowledge podcast 

To help you better understand why Microsoft 365 is the world’s productivity cloud, I encourage you to check out the Microsoft 365 Knowledge podcast. Hosted by veteran IT blogger Paul Thurrott, this podcast series digs into the features and functionality across the products that make up Microsoft 365. We also share real-world tips and tricks to help you get the most out of the product. The first two episodes are available on demand. 

Every company’s path to digital transformation is different. Over the next few months we’ll bring you more resources, as well as interviews with organizations who share their tips and secrets on their own successful transformations and their learnings from these projects on how they harnessed the transformative power of Microsoft 365—the world’s productivity cloud. 

5 steps to prepare your business for Windows 7 end of support

/in /by

It’s official: Microsoft is soon retiring support for its Windows 7 platform. Windows 10 has been slow to gain popularity with Windows users since its release in 2015, and even now, just under 40% of these users still run Windows 7.

If you’re still holding on to Windows 7 and wonder what its End of Life means for your business, here’s everything you need to know — including why you should upgrade to Windows 10 sooner rather than later. 

Windows 7 End of Life — when it’s happening

Microsoft has announced that it’s withdrawing support for Windows 7 from January 14, 2020, but what does this mean?

  • You can still use Windows 7, if you want to. Your OS won’t simply stop working
  • Microsoft will no longer offer tech support for Windows 7
  • There won’t be any more security upgrades or patches developed for Windows 7

The good news is that you can run Windows 7 for as long as you want to. But the question is: do you want to?

Keeping Windows 7 versus Upgrading to Windows 10

You’re probably wondering if it’s really worth the upheaval of installing new software, and maybe even buying new hardware, when Windows 7 still works from January 15, 2020. Here’s why it’s worth the upgrade.

Reduced cybersecurity

Since Microsoft won’t provide Windows 7 users with cybersecurity support from January 15, 2020, you’re more at risk. Hackers may well take advantage of these unsupported systems and target confidential data contained in the connected devices.

Loss of revenue

System downtime, particularly downtime caused by cybersecurity issues, costs money. On average, just one breached record costs SMBs $148 and 69 days’ worth of downtime.

Without the latest security patches available, Windows 7 devices will be especially vulnerable.

Inefficiency

If your OS crashes more frequently because it’s unsupported, then the workplace is less efficient. What’s more, you’ll miss out on any new efficiency features that Windows 10 has to offer.

Preparing for Windows 7 End of Life: A 5 Step Guide

If you’re making the switch to Windows 10, here are 5 tips to get you started.

1. Plan to succeed

Set out a timeline for phasing out Windows 7 and introducing Windows 10. Take an inventory of your current infrastructure and set a budget for making changes. Stagger the replacements by, say, only upgrading a handful of devices at a time. That way, there’s a chance to sort out teething problems without causing much downtime.

2. Identify what can’t be upgraded

It might not be financially or commercially possible to upgrade all your hardware at one time, or install Windows 10 on every device. Prioritize what must be upgraded and enlist the help of IT specialists to keep your Windows 10 devices running on a separate server from Windows 7 models. 

3. Backup your files

There’s always a chance you’ll experience compatibility issues or a technical error when switching software. Before you make any changes, backup your existing files and store them somewhere safe. The cloud is a convenient and scalable storage option that’s compatible with Windows 10.

4. Change your hardware

If your hardware is between 3-5 years old, it’s probably worth switching replacing them with newer models so they have the space and tech specifications to handle Windows 10. You can always keep some Windows 7 computers as backups.

5. Train your staff

Since it’s a new OS, there will inevitably be staff training needs. Start the process as soon as possible so that staff have time to learn the new hardware and software. This is also a great time to ask IT service providers for help with managing the transition.

If you’re still unsure how Windows 7 End of Life planning affects your business, we’re here to help. Contact us today for more information and advice on Windows 10 integration.

The potential of Project Kinect for Azure

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , /by

When Microsoft first debuted its Kinect hardware in 2010, the product had nothing to do with edge computing, AI or machine learning. The Kinect served as a controller interface for Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game console. (Later versions were released for Windows PC and Xbox One.) Using cameras and sensors, it registered a player's body movements and inputted these gestures as controls. While it was innovative, Kinect struggled to gain a footing.

Despite going through various upgrades, it was fully discontinued as a consumer project in 2017. However, Microsoft did not fully abandon its Kinect hardware. At this year's Build developer's conference the company revealed a new use for its one-time video game accessory: edge computing.

Specifically, the new Kinect project factors into the greater themes of Build 2018, namely combining cognitive computing, AI and edge computing. 

"Microsoft has ambitious plans to bring its Cognitive Services software to Azure IoT Edge."

Microsoft at Build 2018
Edge computing is at the forefront of technological innovation. Capitalizing on the internet of things, this method of data processing de-emphasizes a central hub. Remote sensors receive computer processing power to analyze the data near its source before sending it back, greatly reducing bandwidth needs. This system is also more dependable because the sensors store the data, at least for a limited time span. Network outages or dropped connections won't result in lost or fragmented information.

However, these sensors are, at the moment, fairly basic equipment. Microsoft aims to change that. At Build 2018, the company announced ambitious plans to bring its Cognitive Services software to its edge computing solution, Azure IoT Edge. According to TechCrunch, the first of these programs will be the Custom Vision service.

Implementation of this software with Azure IoT Edge can allow unmanned aerial vehicles, such as drones, to perform more complex tasks without direct control from a central data source. It will give these devices the ability to "see" and understand the environment around them, analyzing new visual data streams. This technology can also be used to improve advanced robotics, autonomous vehicles and industrial machines.

This advanced method of machine learning can increase productivity because all of these devices will be able to continue to perform complicated, vision-based tasks even with network connection disruptions.

Microsoft has also partnered with Qualcomm to bring cognitive vision developer's tools to devices like home assistants, security cameras and other smart devices.

However, this technology, Qualcomm and its Custom Vision service, while useful only work with devices equipped with sensors and cameras that can process visual data. To increase the variety of edge sensors that can benefit from these new tools and software services, Microsoft resurrected the Kinect. 

Allowing advanced robotics to "see" will enable them to perform far more complex actions, even without a constant relay of instructions. Allowing advanced robotics to "see" will enable them to perform far more complex actions, even without a constant relay of instructions.

The power of the Kinect 
In an introduction on LinkedIn, Microsoft Technical Fellow Alex Kipman discussed Project Kinect for Azure. In his piece, Kipman outlined the company's reasoning for opting to return to the commercial failure. First, Kinect has a number of impressive features that make it ideal as a sensor.

These benefits include its 1024×1024 megapixel resolution, which is the highest among any sensor camera. Kinect also comes with a global shutter that will help the device record accurately when in sunlight. Its cameras capture images with automatic per pixel gain selection. This functionality allows the Kinect to capture objects at various ranges cleanly and without distortion. It features multiphase depth calculation to further improve its image accuracy, even when dealing with power supply variation and the presence of lasers. Lastly, the Kinect is a low-power piece of hardware thanks to its high modulation frequency and contrast.

Utilizing the Kinect sensors for cognitive computing makes sense. When looking at the product history, Microsoft had already developed more than half the specifications needed to create an effective sensor. The Kinect was designed to track and process human movement, differentiate users from animals or spectators in the room and operate in numerous real-world settings. It was also made to endure drops and other household accidents. Essentially, the Kinect was a hardy specialized sensor interface a market where it had to compete with precise button pressing.

In an industrial space, Kinect can fair far better. Augmenting existing data collection sensors with this visual aid will increase the amount of actionable data that is recorded. The Kinect brings with it a set of "eyes" for any machine. This advantage will let developers and engineers get creative as they seek to create the advanced edge computing networks of the future.