Azure Sentinel Fortinet Connection

Hello everybody! As you know we had the chance to talk about Azure Sentinel before. In this article I want to take a look at the integration with agent, the most important one of the Azure Sentinel Data Connectors. As you might remember, we mentioned that we need to use the integration with agent in order for the Forti Firewall logs to be taken on Azure Sentinel.

We need a linux server on our existing Azure subscription for integration with agent on Azure Sentinel. Python should be installed on the server before setting up agent on the relevant server. I don’t want to lose time on the steps of creating linux server so I will assume that you have set up the linux server and connected with Putty. After we connect with Putty we can move on to the steps of installing python. After setting up the linux server and python, we can move on to the steps necessary for collecting logs in CEF Format.

Command We Need to Run on the Linux Server:

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/Azure-Sentinel/master/DataConnectors/CEF/cef_installer.py&&sudo python cef_installer.py de8f7beb-7100-4d76-a8e1-3d25537a985f dGVvuS4ixQxJhn+R9L0aKep4VpTXinjoBZwNWVqeitXNwYxW485TfZVNvsoVOe0o/mJOzSJ7ivSN0fY8GaTOzw==

 

Strengthen Your Communication with the Right Infrastructure

During these times we see the world from a different window. When we look through this window, which companies are the ones that will maintain their strength, quality and economy? Actually, the answer is pretty simple, each company that managed to play its role in digitalization well will be able to take advantage of the change. It is easy to be one of them by benefiting from the blessings of easy adaptation, practical and fast technological solutions. So, how can we do it and what are these applications? 

Velocity for Teams

Since strengthening communication with a right infrastructure is the most important thing, having Microsoft Teams and Velocity will be enough for you.  While Microsoft Teams, actively used chat-based teamwork platform with Over 70 million users,  shows its features from working on a shared file together to sharing ideas and socializing; from doing group conferences to sharing meeting notes; using Velocity, Intranet Communication Portal, in your Teams gets ahead of all the other portals with its successful integration structure.  

Make tracking your work easier with hundreds of application cards  

Velocity enables the HR to give the most correct information about Carrier, Performance and all the procedures the most practical way possible while the announcements you make about LPPD, OHS and other topics reach out to all your workers and off day for birthday-advances can be created with work flow applications on the same channel. Corners exported from external sources like weather forecast, exchange rates, news and twitter will enable you to get informed while staying in the portal. Velocity also supports integration to a lot of applications that are used by HR, Finance and other departments with the infrastructure it has. On top of that, with Velocity that you can customize however you want with its design suitable for the corporate identity, you create an amazing connection between your workers and the identity of your company.  

How Can you Access Velocity? 

When it comes to accessing the indispensable pair Velocity for Teams, let us tell you that it is very easy. There are tabs for Activity, Chat, Teams, Calendar, Files on the left navigation bar of Microsoft Teams Apps. When you search Velocity on Global Store on the Apps section below, it will appear on the corner you added the app on.  

Moreover, another amazing news for Velocity&Teams is that it is among the best 8 applications in the world in Global. Velocity was chosen among the first 8 applications in all the applications that can be integrated to Microsoft Teams in global. In the evaluation that has been conducted, the first 8 applications were identified and the statute they all have is the same.  

We would like to walk with you on your way to digitalization, to have the best application in global by planning an online demo.  

Office Insider Program – How to Join

What is the Windows Insider Program?

Microsoft Insider

was created for all Microsoft 365 users.

  • Office insider participants are granted first-hand access to new features and updates.
  • You can access dynamic array formulas.
  • In addition to this, you can share your comments about developments with the developers.

Click here to become an Office Insider member.


Access to the Insider Program

The procedure below is the simplest and most complete one.
For a long time it was blocked to go back to “standard” Excel version after you became an Insider .

But with this method you can change between channels anytime you want. smiley

When you go to File> Account menu and want to see information about Microsoft Account like synchronized files, you will see that there are 3 standard buttons that enable you to know your software version number and Office news. If you cannot see the Office Insider button there, follow the steps below.

1st Step: Add Office Insider Button to your Account

After yo do the settings below, you will see that the 4th button is added too. Click on the Insider button.
To do it you need to add a key into registry.  To open your registry type regedit on your Windows taskbar.

Normally Office, 16.0 and Common arrays are not on registry, you need to create them.

Path : HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftOffice16.0Common
Key Name: insiderslabbehavior
Value type : REG_DWORD
Value : 1

After you restart Office you will see that on the File > Account menu you have the Office Insider button.

 

2nd Step: Changing Office Channel 

Then, to see both of the recommended levels click on the Insider > Modification Level button.

You can see 2 levels of the available update by clicking on the popup menu: Monthly Channel or Insider.
Needless to say you need to accept terms of use to change the channel of your application.

3rd Step: Differences between the Two Programs

 

Insider Channel
This is the level that open the latest Office updates. Some of them didn’t have the chance to be tested by the developers or to be completed. Thus, it carries a risk to fail your Excel functions and collapse your workbooks (it is pretty common). However, it is the only way to access latest features like XLOOKUP.

My recommendation: Don’t set up this version on a professional environment. Would be better in a test machine.

Monthly Channel
This channel is not for test users, it is for very advanced level Excel users. This version opens up persistent features that are usually non-existent in Office standard version (six month channel). For example, to be able to use dynamic array functions you need to subscribe to one of the 2 levels of Insider. If not, you cannot use them.

For this, if some of your employees want to access features that require Insider, this channel is the one that needs to be set up.

4th Step: Update Office

Whatever Office level you choose, it is a must to update your Office.
Single selection of Office channel is not enough to open the Insider program.

After you choose one of the insider levels and click on update button, upgrade will start automatically.

 

5th Step: Restarting Excel

It is enough to restart your Office apps once or twice to see the changes.

 

Going back to the Six Month Channel (standard version)

The only thing you need to go back to the six month channel which is Office’s basic version:

  • Click on the Insider icon.
  • Uncheck Save to Preview new versions of Office option
  • Update Office again.

 

Don’t forget to check other articles on our blog.
You can share this article and make sure that many other people get informed as well.okay

Bye. 🙋🏻‍♂️

Enterprise Video Portal, Task and Feedback Management

We divided the 3rd week of our Working from Home Practices event into 3 main sections: Stream & Forms & Planner and Teams collaboration functions.

We started our video portal Stream with a general view of easy but very effective features like searching in the portal, uploading videos, adding videos to “Watchlist” and being able to watch them later. Cutting and sharing a video, editing sharing permissions, making the videos interactive by adding polls and quizzes to the minutes we want on Stream we can find our meeting videos is very useful.  Moreover we can obtain integrity by viewing our portal’s channels or videos within Teams.

In the second part we took a look at question types, theme settings for personalizing, sharing options by digitalizing our form and quizzes with our survey application Forms. It is possible to edit questions together by sharing a link to work together, enable one person to answer only or in a certain period of time, register names in answers or answer anonymously with Forms. Also, you can transfer the results to Excel and zeroize the error margin and connect to different reporting tools. These surveys can be used under one app only like Stream by publishing within Teams.

Our last topic the Planner application is our task management tool where we can assign tasks to people and get graphic reports. You can categorize tasks with this tool and filter by these categories or assigned people, and transfer it to Excel. We can add our tasks to Outlook calendar and receive reminders. We included this app as well under the roof of Teams and finished this week’s event.

 

Let PowerAutomate Do All your Routine Work

This week’s Working From Home Practices topic was the PowerAutomate application  on which you can create work flows. While you can create a new work flow from scratch with PowerAutomate, you can also utilize templates in the application. For the work flows to be created there must be a Trigger and an Action in consequence.  PowerAutomate automatizes your work by connecting to 3rd party applications (Google Sheets, Jira, Twitter, SalesForce etc.) with connectors. So this week we created work flows by utilising templates like receiving approval from specified people for a file added to SharePoint Online, notifying when a task is created on Planner by sharing a post on Teams, automatically saving e-mail attachments from Outlook to any area we want on OneDrive and reporting our location with one click. Also it is as easy to create a work flow from scratch without using templates!

NOVA IoT Platform Online Press Launch

NOVA that is a completely domestic and national platform developed by Turkish Engineers in the PEAKUP technology laboratories has been introduced with an online press launch.

Brilliant Invention from Turkish Engineers: Now you can control an office with just one click

“Technology”, the lead actor of the changing world order, is digitalizing everything rapidly. Digitalization that has gotten even faster with the Covid-19 pandemic has surrounded us, so to speak. Our offices where we spend most of our time get their shares from this change as well. But most of us are still worried. The biggest question we have in our minds is if the precautions taken in the offices against pandemic are enough or what awaits people who work from home in the new order… Thanks to the IoT app developed in PEAKUP technology labs, an invention answering all these questions has been made. The era of minimum physical contact in the offices will begin with the IoT platform called NOVA.

Model of working from home that has been tried out for years but got faster with the pandemic is full of unknowns both for the employers and the employees. Even though some of the workers are back at their offices, the old way of working is going to change for sure. PEAKUP that develops technology for the offices of future with products like digital workplace platform Velocity, digital signature application Sign&Go and cyber security solution PassGate brought the IoT Platform NOVA into life, and integrated all these products to the same platform. NOVA that has been introduced by PEAKUP COO Kadircan Toprakçı and Head of Labs Emrah Uslu in the press conference held on Microsoft Teams, turns offices into safer environments, increases efficiency and  savings by minimizing physical contact.

Ahmet Toprakçı who gave the opening speech of the meeting stated that he is proud of the inventor team of NOVA and that their goal now is to export this domestic and national technology to the world. He also reported that their England office might sign a major agreement. Here are the merits of NOVA…


NOVA, welcomes at the office door

NOVA takes the lead starting from the entrance to the office. The biggest benefit is decreasing physical contact in the environment. You will not need to touch the door handle everyone touches, you will not need to touch the remote controller for ac or a button for lighting. Opening a door with fingerprint ends with NOVA as well. All these can be done with just one button on a mobile phone or on a computer screen. Taking someone’s temperature is going to be contact-free and in a risky situation the person is not going to be let in. Warning and guidance systems will kick in by detecting with heat detectors  if someone’s temperature gets high during the day and in which parts of the office this person walked around and with who he/she has been in contact with.

Regulates the air inside, prevents crowdedness 

Air density quality and calorific values in the environment are important values when it comes to the health and motivation of office workers. NOVA analyzes all the changes in the air and sends notifications to the system in an adverse condition. Traditional air conditioning systems don’t have any functions other than measuring the environment temperature and automatically turning on and off. NOVA, in addition to these, offers an automatic system management to optimize the conditions by tracking the environment conditions like sufficient lightning, density of carbon dioxide and similar gases, and air flow. System can take the decision of turning on and off in accordance with the conditions that can be defined. It warns the crowded areas by detecting the number people per square meter, plays a determining role in putting specific people into quarantine in cases of risk rather than shutting the whole office down. NOVA that detects people who have been in contact with the person with risk, analyzes and reports it, is the safest and most advanced way of keeping track.

Meetings are in control of NOVA 

While the digital meetings are becoming more efficient with the functions that Microsoft Teams offers to the workers, online meetings are being done in a shorter period of time and they are more target-driven. While physically it is not possible to have more than 3 meetings a day, the number triples when it comes to online meetings. On top of it, you don’t have to take notes thanks to being able to record the meetings as a video. The number of minutes of online meetings that were 900 million on March, 19 Monday had reached 4.1 billion minutes on April 29, Wednesday. The number of users increased to 75 million from 44 million in the same period of time. All these changes lead to serious expectations on both efficiency and security in physical meeting rooms.  NOVA, by means of the devices placed in the meeting rooms, measure the air quality, crowdedness, time management and organizes the room reservation in compliance with the social distance rules. While entrance of a risky amount of people to the meeting rooms is monitored by NOVA, safer and more target-driven meetings  from the meeting notes to the meeting statistics are possible via the mobile app.

Savings of 11 thousand dollars in a year increased the attention on the digital workplaces 

PEAKUP COO KadirCan Toprakçı who put emphasis on the fact that even though the offices are enhanced thanks to the advanced technologies, running the business on digital platforms is easier and more efficient  contrary to the popular belief said: “Even though the number of workers working at the office is pretty low right now, it is certain that it will increase over time. But it is estimated that around 30% of the workforce will be done from home a few days a week by the end of 2021 in the whole world. This rate right now is 3.6%. It is a must for the people who cannot  let go of working at the office to redesign their office with regards to the pandemic rules. This means extra costs for a business. NOVA makes the life of both the employers and the employees easier without the need of redesigning the office with its online and offline integration.

Toprakçı who mentioned that the demand for digital workplaces has increased 70% in 3 days with most companies changing to working from home because of corona virus pandemic commented: “A worker working from home provides the employer a saving of 11 thousand dollars a year in average. Interest of businesses that want to carry out the digitalization parallel with the pandemic in change management service given by PEAKUP has increased by 15 times on a monthly basis. This means that our country is going through change parallel with the world trends and that we are on good terms with technology at least as much as the other developed countries.

Power BI – Our 2020 June Favorites

Hello there dear reader!  As much as the weather has different opinions on this subject, according to the seasons calendar they taught us in the 1st grade,  summer is here! This month even if we write about just one of the updates, it would be enough. What an update! Come on, lets start analyzing Power BI June updates right away.

Without keeping you waiting for too long, here is the superstar of the Power BI June updates:

1- Enhancements to mobile authoring

We always liked the fact that Power BI had mobile authoring. Of course it lacked some stuff. For example the squares were too big. Not being able to change the background, not being able to place, not being able to put objects on top of each other could be a bit of a pain in the neck. We got rid of all of them with just one update! Now, isn’t that amazing?

We don’t have to display expressions with low values in huge areas anymore, we can place them to an empty part of a graph. Thus we obtain a mobile layout fully matched with the design of the report. We can easily find images by their names.

There is one more thing that I am still waiting for:  Images that are not displayed on page view can be displayed on mobile layout. For example I use a slicer on page view but it is not useful on mobile layout. I need another slicer special for mobile layout. I hide these slicers or any image that I will be using behind the other graphs. I wish it was not necessary, but i do believe that it will not be in the near future. 😁

2-Automatic Page Refresh

It was a feature that made Pro users on Premium cry out “Aren’t we gonna have automatic page refresh too?” Finally it is released for Pro as well. Now Pro users too can enjoy instant refresh. To enable this feature you have to connect to a Direct Query source with this method. After that you can see this feature in page properties.

3-Enhancements to Hierarchical Slicer

In February hierarchical slicer was introduced to us. We had some issues since then, like issues with icons and font size. It is indicated that with this month’s update we got a new slicer cleared off these issues completely. Now we have more options for expand/collapse icons. Now we are able to customize indentation for child items -we had too seek it in the space back in the day as you know. Also the icons are scaled with the font size.

 

4-RLS is now supported for Featured Tables in Excel’s Data Types gallery

The matter of connecting to Power BI datasets from Excel is developing rapidly. Now, when you mark a table as featured and then publish to the Power BI service, that table will appear in Excel’s data types gallery even if it has RLS rules applied. Previously, these tables were not shown in Excel. This new enhancement means that users in Excel will only see the rows of data they have access to.

5-Line chart dot formatting options

Sometimes we realized that something was not quiet right, that something was missing in this line chart. But what?  We found the missing point, or shall we say the missing dot. Now we can color the dot corresponding to the related title on the X axis in the line chart. We can do it on the Data colors tab in the formatting pane.

6-Data Connectivity

Palantir Foundry Connector

Palantir Foundry is a platform that reimagines how people use data by removing the barriers between back-end data management and front-end data analysis. Foundry enables users with varying technical ability and deep subject matter expertise to work meaningfully with data. With Foundry, anyone can source, connect, and transform data into any shape they desire, then use it to take action.

This connector will soon be available in the Online services section of the Get data dialog.

 

You can click here to go to the download page of Power BI June updated version. And to take a look at out other articles on Power BI you can click here.

 

Wish you all a great month. Take care!

Good game well played.

How to Add a Poll to a Stream Video

You are at the right place if your organization has educational/informative videos for your users to watch and you want to do polls/tests or collect feedback during videos. It is possible to insert polls that you created in Forms to certain minutes of your videos on Stream. This way while watching the videos people will come across a form and keep watching from where they left after answering. Now let’s take a look at how it is done. 

1. Upload a video on Stream and click on the “Add New” option under “Interactivity”. 

In this step stop the video at the minute you want your poll to appear and continue with the “Add New” option.  

Stream video Interactivity tab ready to add a new form

2. Choose the poll to be added from the Forms app and copy the share link. 

The poll to be added should be created in the “Microsoft Forms” app. Copy the share link of your poll like in the image below. Microsoft Forms screen for getting the URL of the form to copy to Stream

3. Paste the poll link to “Form URL” field. 

Paste the share link of the poll you want to have on your video to the “Form URL” text box and name your poll. Then end your action with the “Add to timeline” option below.  Interactivity tab showing where to paste the URL

4. Job Done! Now your viewers can continue their videos after they reply the poll that comes across them.  

Stream video Interactivity tab showing a new form called Feedback

A Deep Insight into Guest Access

Guest access allows users outside your organization to access your existing teams and channels and cooperate with the people in your organization.  

Guests are people like partners, suppliers, and consultants that are not workers or members of your organization. Anyone who is not a part of your organization can be added to Teams as a guest. Which means that anyone that has a business (I.e. an Azure AD account) or a consumer e-mail account (Outlook.com, Gmail.com etc.) can join your teams and channels with full access as a guest. All guests in Teams are covered by the same compliance and auditing protection with the rest of Microsoft 365 and can be managed securely within Azure AD.  

Guest Access is a tenant-level setting that is turned off by default on the Admin Center and when it is turned on everyone in your organization can add guests to Microsoft 356 Groups. Guest Access includes a lot of Microsoft 365 subscriptions without the need of an extra license.  


There are two different options as Guest Access and External Access for communication with people outside your organization in Organization-wide Settings of Teams Admin Center . Guests access allows people outside your organization to reach your teams and channels while External Access allows communication by entering their e-mail into the Search Box in Teams. Most importantly, WHILE EXTERNAL ACCESS GIVES ACCESS PERMISSION TO AN ENTIRE DOMAIN, GUEST ACCESS GIVES ACCESS PERMISSION TO INDIVIDUALS!

You can see the guest access diagram below: 

Managing Guest Access 

Guest Access can be managed at 4 main levels: 

  1. Azure Active Directory
  2. Microsoft Teams
  3. Microsoft 365 Groups
  4. SharePoint Online & OneDrive for Business

Azure Active Directory

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 Groups

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-dependencies

Ideal Office Environment During the “New Normal”

Workplaces have started to gradually go back to work life with the normalization process.  Terms that we didn’t use 3 months ago like social distance, face shield, 3 mm mask have come into our lives. We have to learn how to live with the new normal until we go back to the “normal” that we are used to. But how is our new normal going to be when we go back to our offices? Here are the precautions we have to take against Covid-19 that has a very high spreading rate: 

Inside the office:

  • We should disinfect our offices with a special team and equipment in a way that will provide 2 months of protection, 
  • Common use area should be reorganized in accordance with social distance rules; warnings and guidelines to inform people should be placed, 
  • Maintenance of air conditioners that we use for in-office air conditioning and ventilation should be carried out regularly. To fight Covid-19, disinfectants that provide long term protection should be applied to air conditioners and our equipment should be made safer, 
  • Masks and face shields should be provided to be used while coming to work and going from work, and at work. 
  • Hand sanitizers should be handed out to workers, 
  • Trash cans special for throwing used masks and gloves should be placed at the door entrances, 
  • It is a must to take and record every workers temperature while they are entering the office every day, 
  • Sitting arrangement of workers should be reorganized with regards to social distance rules, 
  • Offices, meeting rooms and restrooms, elevator, hand rails of the stairs, door handles, equipment like tools with screens that are frequently touched, computer keyboards, mouses and phones should be disinfected regularly. 

Services:

  • Capacity of all service vehicles should be redetermined with regards to social distance rules. 
  • Hand sanitizers and disposable masks should be provided in vehicles. 
  • To prevent possible overcrowdedness, service timetables should be rescheduled.  

Keep in mind that we can prevent this pandemic by taking personal measures and keeping social distance.  We all have to take a responsibility in this new normal period. Just like authorities mention all the time, social distance and wearing masks are our most important weapons against the virus.  

Wish you a healthy day!