We Ve Switched to Skype Broadcast!

We’ve switched to Skype Broadcast!

We have now made the change to move over to Skype Broadcast. You’ll need to download the new invite located here: This new invitation will have the new link to join AFF. We’ll also join the old meeting just to make sure that everyone makes the switch over to Skype Broadcast with no problems.

With Skype Broadcast, you’ll be able to rewind to catch something you missed and see AFF later in the day if you can’t make it to the Friday morning broadcast. Nice!

Up-Coming Events

Omaha Azure User Group
On Winter Break
Location and Topics TBD
For more information:

Minneapolis Azure User Group
3/2/2017
Speaker: TBD
@Microsoft Office 3601 W 76th, Edina, MN
For more information:

SQL Database Query Editor available in Azure Portal

We are excited to announce the availability of an in-browser query tool that provides you an efficient way to execute queries on your Azure SQL Databases and Azure SQL Data Warehouses without leaving the Azure Portal.

New in Azure Stream Analytics: Geospatial functions, Custom code and lots more!

Today, we are pleased to announce the roll-out of several compelling capabilities in Azure Stream Analytics. These include native support for geospatial functions, custom code with JavaScript, low latency dashboarding with Power BI and preview of Visual Studio integration and Job diagnostic logs. Additionally, effective today there will be no more ingress data throttling.

Enhanced Automated Backup for SQL Server 2016 in Azure Virtual Machines

We are excited to announce some great enhancements to our Automated Backup feature, which greatly extends your control over backups when running SQL Server 2016 in Azure Virtual Machines. You can now control the schedule of your backups and backup system databases. You can easily enable this feature through the Azure Portal or PowerShell on Azure Virtual Machines running SQL Server 2016 Enterprise, Standard, or Developer.

For those of you not familiar with Automated Backup, this feature allows you to automatically backup all the databases in a SQL Server VM running in Azure to one of your storage accounts. Automated Backup ensures a consistent backup chain at all times, so you can always recover your databases to any point in time. Even better, it manages the desired retention for the backups, keeping them only for the time you specify. If you’re curious, Automated Backup is implemented on top of the SQL Server IaaS Agent Extension and the SQL Server Managed Backup feature.

Announcing the new Azure Marketplace experience

Azure Marketplace provides a rich catalog of thousands of products and solutions from independent software vendors (ISVs) that have been certified and optimized to run on Azure. While customers love the breadth of our offerings, which range from open source to enterprise applications, one piece of feedback we’ve heard consistently was that navigating through such a huge catalog is difficult. Today, we are excited to announce a new interactive experience for the Azure Marketplace that makes it easy to navigate the product catalog and find the right solution for your cloud application without having to login to the Azure portal.

Azure IoT Hub message routing dramatically simplifies IoT solution development

IoT solutions can be complex, and we’re always working on ways to simplify them.

As we work with customers on real-world, enterprise-grade IoT solutions built on Azure IoT, one pattern we’ve noticed is how businesses route inbound messages to different data processing systems.

Imagine millions of devices sending billions of messages to Azure IoT Hub. Some of those messages need to be processed immediately, like an alarm indicating a serious problem. Some messages are analyzed for anomalies…

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