Browse All Posts (122)

Allison announces updates to GitHub Copilot for JetBrains, including enterprise-managed sandbox policies, cross-file cursor jumps for next edit suggestions, global project context in chat, and enterprise policy diagnostics. The release also adds a preview integration that connects Copilot CLI terminal sessions to IDE context and improves reliability across MCP and agent sessions.

MarkRussinovich lays out a practical decision framework for choosing between two availability zones, three zones, or service-managed zone redundancy in Azure, focused on meeting single-zone failure objectives while balancing capacity, durability, and operational complexity.

bharadwajr explains how the Azure team built GEM (Great Experiences Matter), an AI-enabled “feedback-to-fix” loop that aggregates customer feedback at scale, turns it into prioritized insights, and creates actionable Azure DevOps work items with an auditable evidence trail and human review.

Jon Galloway, Daniel Roth, Mads Torgersen, Chet Husk, and Drew Noakes host a .NET Unboxed release party focused on .NET 11 Release Candidate 1, highlighting favorite features and what developers should pay attention to as .NET 11 approaches release.

Allison announces GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) 3.22 general availability, highlighting updates for enterprise administration and collaboration, including Copilot CLI support for disconnected environments, enterprise teams, improvements to repository rulesets and required reviewers, and UI enhancements for issues and pull requests.

sbaynes announces codename MDASH, Microsoft’s multi-model agentic code-scanning system now deployed in Azure Government, aimed at finding and validating exploitable vulnerabilities across software supply chains with fewer false positives and more actionable results for security teams.

.NET Team announces .NET 11 Release Candidate 1, highlighting runtime, SDK, MSBuild, NuGet, and language updates, plus ASP.NET Core, .NET MAUI, and Windows Forms improvements. The post links to detailed release notes and includes download and tooling guidance for trying RC1 in production.

Javier Lozano, Chris Sfanos, and Jon Galloway announce that the call for presenters is open for .NET Conf 2026 Community Days, with session proposals accepted from September 8 through October 6, 2026, and a separate volunteer opportunity for helping run the event.

Rahul Bhandari and Tara Overfield recap the September 2026 servicing releases for .NET and .NET Framework, highlighting security and non-security fixes, the list of addressed CVEs, and where to find release notes, installers, container images, Linux packages, and known issues for supported versions.

salilkanade1 announces updates to the Microsoft Fabric SQL Query Editor, focused on scaling web-based SQL development for large warehouses with a faster results grid, improved object exploration and IntelliSense, better query management, and tighter connections to OneLake analytics, semantic models, and operational workflows.

pratikpanda explains a practical way to make shared Azure DevOps pipeline templates easier to adopt by replacing long parameter lists with a manifest object built at pipeline-assembly time, then validating that manifest with versioned JSON Schema checks so deployments fail fast when the contract is broken.

kshatzkamer outlines a reference architecture for “orchestrated media intelligence”: an orchestration layer that connects trusted data, specialized AI models/agents, cloud infrastructure, and governance across end-to-end media workflows. The post uses Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Speech, and Azure AI Foundry examples to show how to keep humans accountable while scaling automation.

Justin Yoo walks through a practical profiling workflow for distributed .NET apps, showing how to identify which process owns a slow user interaction, use Visual Studio CPU profiling to rule out CPU-bound work, and then measure hidden async waiting that doesn’t show up in CPU samples.

GitHub explains how to make GitHub Copilot work better in a real project by giving it durable context about your repo. It covers adding custom instructions under .github, defining repeatable “skills” for tasks like testing, using custom agents for bigger workflows, and connecting MCP servers such as Playwright.

Visual Studio Code highlights how to get a new set of file icons in VS Code quickly, pointing viewers to the Catppuccin icon theme link for a fast editor refresh.

Matt Stratton talks with Naga Sujitha Vummaneni and Sundeep Bobba about reframing CI/CD pipelines as control systems, using feedback signals, constraints, and bounded automation to keep delivery stable—especially as AI-driven changes increase the pace and volume of deployments.

Thomas Maurer shares takeaways from a discussion at the HPE Customer Innovation Center on Azure Local and Microsoft’s Sovereign Private Cloud vision, focusing on how organizations can meet data residency, compliance, and operational control requirements while still using Azure-consistent capabilities in hybrid and edge environments.

davidwright walks through a practical, staged path for turning an Azure-hosted SaaS app into a transactable Azure Marketplace offer, using Git-Ape “skills” to generate version-controlled decision records for offer selection, multi-tenancy, landing zones, fulfillment/metering, security evidence, deployment blueprints, and Partner Center onboarding.

newmancheng explains how Microsoft Discovery combined agentic AI, computational predictors, and wet-lab feedback to design and validate a novel organic negolyte for redox flow batteries, with a focus on preserving negative results as durable knowledge that improves subsequent design rounds.

GitHub highlights research by Louis Abraham on how AI tools are influencing the language developers use in GitHub pull request descriptions, based on analysis of more than 460,000 PR descriptions and the rise of distinctive AI-associated terms and punctuation patterns.

Maddy Montaquila explains how a “Aspire-ified” .NET app can give a coding agent more context and control, including a single command to start containers, processes, and the debugger, plus the ability to manage resources and view logs from one place.

Andrea Griffiths and Meagan Cojocar demonstrate GitHub Copilot Cloud Agent running inside Slack and Microsoft Teams, showing how teams can create issues, review diffs, preview HTML, and analyze repository data directly from chat, plus what admins need to enable it safely in enterprise environments.

Visual Studio Code announces “MCP Live” (September 9, 9 AM PT), a live event with experts from Microsoft, GitHub, Anthropic, Okta, Prefect, and Amazon focused on updates across the Model Context Protocol (MCP) ecosystem.

John Edward explains Microsoft Edge’s plan to retire Manifest V2 extensions for enterprises starting in early 2027, what the rollout timeline looks like, and what it means for extension developers and IT admins managing allow-lists and force-installed extensions.

John Savill recaps the major Microsoft AI updates from August 2026, including new and updated models, routing and content-understanding changes, and a set of Copilot and Azure Copilot improvements that affect how teams use AI features across developer and enterprise environments.

This week in Security, the throughline is pushing enforcement into identity, networking, and auditable runtime controls as AI agents move from demos to deployable systems. GPT-6 Astra reached GA in Microsoft Foundry with enterprise deployment choices (throughput, region, residency) and governance hooks like Entra ID, RBAC, private networking, and monitoring that mirror how you secure other workloads. Guidance also sharpened around end-to-end agent hardening (egress containment, mediated tool use, Kubernetes policy layers, and OpenTelemetry-based evidence), while supply chain and CI/CD updates tightened provenance with key rotations, stronger OIDC-based publishing, and improved scanning and Actions permissions. Threat reports rounded out the week with practical detections for phishing evasion, helpdesk impersonation via Teams, and counterfeit installers, reinforcing the need for normalization, monitoring, and response-ready telemetry.

This week's AI roundup is about taking agentic systems from demos to production: GPT-6 Astra is now generally available in Microsoft Foundry and selectable in GitHub Copilot, while Copilot's roadmap shifts from choosing a single model to orchestrating multiple models at runtime. On the platform side, the focus is operational engineering (context control, durable memory, and observability) so agents stay predictable in cost and behavior as they run longer and use tools. Security guidance adds a reality check on egress control, attestation, and text normalization, and Copilot features like PR approvals and content exclusions raise the stakes for governance, identity, and auditability across IDE, CLI, and app workflows.

Welcome to this week's Azure roundup, where the story centers on making AI agents and hybrid fleets operable, governable, and cost-aware. GPT-6 Astra reached general availability in Microsoft Foundry with production-ready deployment and governance options, while multiple guides dug into context engineering, egress lockdown, and secure agent infrastructure patterns for Kubernetes and edge. On the platform side, Azure Firewall explicit proxy went GA, Azure Arc shipped GA improvements for Arc-enabled Kubernetes certificates and Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid, and API Management advanced GitOps workflows plus preview spend controls and OTLP telemetry for AI gateways.

This week in the Weekly GitHub Copilot Roundup, the model lineup expanded (GPT-6 Astra GA, plus Gemini 3.8 Flash and Claude Fable 5.1) while deprecations and policy updates made it clear that model choice is now an admin and billing decision as much as a developer preference. At the same time, Project HydraFusion signaled a shift from picking one model to routing work across multiple models, with early experiments showing how orchestration can balance quality, latency, and spend. Governance also tightened across agent workflows, with content exclusions reaching the Copilot app and CLI, clearer identity constraints for cloud agents in Actions, and new budget expiration controls. On the workflow side, VS Code kept making agent sessions more reviewable, and Copilot code review entered a new phase with optional approvals that can satisfy branch protection rules if you choose to enable them.

This week in Machine Learning, the focus shifts from prototypes to production guardrails, with Fabric data agents now generally available in Copilot Studio and new preview work on advanced DAX generation for semantic models. Fabric governance tightened with workspace outbound access controls, tenant-wide networking policy auditing, and connection recency signals that help reduce stale and single-owner risk. On data movement and interoperability, teams get clearer paths for private connectivity (Snowflake, Eventstream) and a GA transition from ODBC to ADBC that is worth validating early, while platform operations mature through capacity telemetry in Real-Time Hub and new CI/CD guidance to standardize deployments.

This week's .NET roundup connects two practical threads: testing under real deployment constraints and building agent-style workflows you can run in production. MSTest 4.4 brings Native AOT test publishing so you can catch trimming and reflection issues earlier, while new .NET agent building blocks (Copilot SDK, lightweight harnesses, and MCP servers on Azure Functions) push tool calling and orchestration toward repeatable, auditable runs. On the day-to-day side, Visual Studio 2026 and VS Code updates focus on reducing context mistakes (scoped settings, worktrees, clearer Copilot context), and ecosystem updates like CodeQL 2.26.4 and Azure SDK releases highlight where CI and dependencies can shift under your feet.

This week in DevOps, the theme is clear: reduce friction while tightening control across collaboration, CI/CD, and governance. GitHub CLI takes a step toward fully terminal-first workflows (including inline media), while enterprise teams get practical tooling for live GHES-to-cloud migrations, runner lifecycle planning, and more precise token permissions. Supply-chain hardening continues with npm OIDC improvements, CodeQL updates for pipeline security, and concrete guidance for trusting third-party Actions, and on the ops side, agents and Azure governance move closer to production patterns with clearer boundaries, auditable workflows, and more "as code" outputs.

Topi Nuotos explains why his team replaced a shared Excel tracker with a Microsoft Fabric App, and how Fabric Apps adds an application layer on top of Fabric for building data-driven web apps with preconfigured infrastructure.

Authorised Territory demonstrates how to build an AI agent with the .NET Microsoft Agent Framework using a local Ollama model, then evaluate the agent locally with built-in checks to confirm response quality and that required tools were actually invoked.

GitHub explains why newer, larger AI models don’t automatically make better code reviewers, highlighting benchmark results where highly formatted, verbose reviews can still miss fundamental bugs.

Cameron Tomisser shares a weekly Microsoft developer news roundup covering the Azure Developer CLI extension framework reaching GA, new CI/CD options to connect to Azure Cosmos DB without storing secrets, and progress on making agent security more production-ready.

GitHub shows how to attach images and videos to pull requests, issue comments, and issues directly from the terminal using the GitHub CLI. It highlights the new --attach flag, including how to provide a file path plus alt text so screenshots and recordings stay accessible in GitHub discussions.

John Savill runs through the Azure Weekly Update for 4th September 2026, covering a set of platform changes across compute, AKS, networking, monitoring, security, and Azure AI Foundry, with quick pointers to what’s new and where the updates land in the Azure stack.

Allison’s weekly Copilot changelog highlights new model options (Claude Fable 5.1 and Gemini 3.8 Flash), stronger content protection via honored content exclusions in Copilot app/CLI, and VS Code 1.136 updates aimed at managing agent sessions and getting pull requests ready to merge.

Visual Studio Code highlights Emmet, a built-in VS Code feature that speeds up writing HTML (and related markup) using short abbreviations and expansions.