StorSimple announcements

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  StorSimple 8000 series available only in the Azure portal from October 2017
  Anoob Backer Wednesday, September 27, 2017 6:41 AM

  In July 2017, we announced the general availability of the Microsoft Azure StorSimple 8000 series in the new Azure portal. Beginning October 2017, you need to use the new Azure portal to manage your StorSimple 8000 series devices. The Azure classic portal is no longer supported.

  • Starting October 5, 2017, your classic StorSimple device managers will automatically move to the new Azure portal. This is a phased rollout, and we will update you about the move via email and portal notifications. For more information about the move, see Move your service to Azure portal.
  • The new Azure portal supports devices running Update 3.0 or later. If your device is not up to date, we strongly recommend that you apply Update 5 as soon as possible. For more information, see Install Update 5 on your StorSimple device.
  • The existing Azure Service Management (ASM) PowerShell cmdlets are not supported after the transition to the new portal. Update the scripts to manage your devices through the Azure Resource Manager SDK. For more information, see the script samples that use the Resource Manager SDK.

  If you have any questions, see FAQ: Move to Azure portal. To familiarize yourself with the new Azure portal, please refer to the product documentation.

  Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/updates/storsimple-8000-series-is-available-only-in-the-azure-portal-from-october-2017/ 

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  Announcing StorSimple 8000 series in the new Azure portal!
  Anoob Backer Monday, July 10, 2017 7:11 PM

  StorSimple 8000 series device management is generally available in the Azure portal. This means that you can use the portal and Azure Resource Manager to unlock deep personalization and role-based access control, and have a single portal to manage all your apps.

   

  What does this change mean for you?

  • Using Resource Manager, you can now manage 8000 series devices.
  • You can leverage the Resource Manager SDK for automating the 8000 series device management.
  • The Azure portal supports devices running Update 3.0 or later.

   

  What actions do you need to take?

  • Your existing StorSimple Physical Device Series resources in the classic portal can be transitioned to the new Azure Portal in the coming weeks. The transition from the classic portal to the Azure portal is quick, easy, and non-disruptive.
  • If your device is not up to date, we strongly recommend that you apply Update 4 as soon as possible.

   

  For more information about the Azure portal experience, please visit the Azure Blog. 

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  Expanded subscription offers for StorSimple Virtual Array
  Anoob Backer Monday, February 6, 2017 6:45 AM

  To leverage the StorSimple Virtual Array hybrid cloud offering, we are now expanding this solution to customers who are on MSDN, Pay-as-you-go, and other subscriptions.

  For more details, check out Expanded subscription offers for StorSimple Virtual Array.
  

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  Transitioning your StorSimple Virtual Array to the Azure portal
  Anoob Backer Monday, February 6, 2017 6:42 AM

  Your existing StorSimple Virtual Device Series managers in the Azure Classic portal will be transitioned to the new Azure portal. Please note this migration is seamless and there will be no downtime to your virtual arrays. Upon completion of this migration, you may still see your StorSimple Virtual Device Series resources within the Classic portal, however you will be directed to manage them within the Azure portal.

   

  More information is available at StorSimple Virtual Device Series transitioning to the new Azure portal.

  
  

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  Managing StorSimple virtual arrays in the new Azure portal
  Anoob Backer Wednesday, November 30, 2016 7:34 PM

  We’re happy to announce the management of the StorSimple Virtual Device Series is now available in the new Azure portal. You can use the StorSimple extension in the new portal to create Azure Resource Manager based StorSimple managers to manage your virtual arrays.

  For more information, check out Managing StorSimple virtual arrays in the new Azure portal.

Submitting and Publishing Apps announcements

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  Update: Windows Store price tier value updates complete
  Marisa [MSFT] Thursday, April 16, 2015 9:28 PM

  The price tier value updates for Windows Store are now complete.  We recommend that you review the updated prices for your paid apps and in-app products.  You can make any desired price changes in Dev Center.

  For additional information on pricing:

  •	Windows Store: Accounts types, locations, and fees
  •	Windows Phone Store: Define market pricing and selection

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  Update: Windows Store price tier value updates begin today (April 13)
  Marisa [MSFT] Monday, April 13, 2015 8:59 PM

  The price tier value updates for Windows Store are underway and all paid items will be updated over the course of this week.  The initial maintenance was shorter than expected and app ingestion is operational again. 

  You can see the updated prices reflected in Windows Phone Dev Center now.  We will confirm when updated prices are also available in Windows Dev Center. 

  For additional information on pricing:

  •	Windows Store: Accounts types, locations, and fees
  •	Windows Phone Store: Define market pricing and selection

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  Reminder: Windows Store price tier value updates begin Monday, April 13
  Marisa [MSFT] Friday, April 10, 2015 5:19 PM

  Further to the email sent to all developers on March 20, 2015, a reminder that next Monday (April 13) the 96 Windows Store price tiers will be updated with new values.  These price tier values are updated periodically to maintain consistency across currencies, accounting for changes in foreign exchange rates, taxes, and other geographic pricing considerations.  With this update, the US Dollar (USD) price in each tier will remain the same, with the prices in all other currencies adjusted relative to the USD price. 

  Here is an example of a price update for a paid app published in the United States and China:

  Before update                  After update

  Product Price in     US Dollars (USD)         Equivalent Product     Price in Chinese Yuan (CNY)                   Product Price in     US Dollars (USD)         Equivalent Product     Price in Chinese Yuan (CNY)         2.99 USD         18     CNY                   2.99 USD         18.50     CNY

  The price tier value changes will take place automatically, there is no action required on your part.  After April 13, the price tier values will be updated in Dev Center, and all paid items in the Store will be updated over the course of the week.  We recommend that you review the updated prices for your paid apps and in-app products in Dev Center after April 13 and make any desired changes.

  To support the updates on April 13, app ingestion will be stopped from approximately 11AM to 3PM Pacific Time.  During this time newly published apps and apps updates will be queued.  App ingestion will resume immediately following this maintenance window. 

  For additional information on pricing:

  •	Windows Store: Accounts types, locations, and fees
  •	Windows Phone Store: Define market pricing and selection

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  Windows Phone Store Badge- Get More Exposure for your App!
  Jo T Smith Friday, February 1, 2013 6:20 PM

  Hello all,

  You can now display a badge to let your customers know that your Windows Phone app is available in the Windows Phone Store! 

  Use this link to get all the details and download the Windows Phone Store badge. 

  The Windows Phone Store badge is intended to provide a clear way to communicate the availability of your app on the Windows Phone Store. The badge can be used in your print or digital media, and is made available in a number of colors, sizes, and digital formats. The following shows some examples of the badge.

  

  

Suggestions and Feedback for the Forums announcements

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  What is this forum for? Please read before posting!
  Bryant Hawthorne - MSFT Monday, October 11, 2010 5:07 PM

  What is the purpose of this forum?

  The purpose of this forum is to give users a voice on Forums. Users can give suggestions for improvements or vote up suggestions and know that the Forums team is listening. If you have a specific question regarding Forums please post questions to Forums Redesign – Q&A / Discussions. If you are encountering a Forums bug please post this in the Forums Issues forum.

  
  

  Best Practices

  • Only post suggestions
  • Only post one suggestion per thread, this will provide clarity to the suggestion and allow users to know what they are voting up
  • We encourage you to vote! Voting allows the Forums team to know what users want the most
  • Use Questions and not Discussion thread types, this will allow us to “close” suggestions once they are no longer relevant or have been addressed.

  Who reads these suggestions?

  As previously stated this is a place to be heard by directly by the Forums team. Although we may not respond to every post, we are actively reading through each suggestion. We will not implement every suggestion, however, we release once a month and commit to consider suggestions from the community every release. 

Surface Application Design and Development announcements

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  New Microsoft Surface controls available from Infragistics
  AdamW - Surface Wednesday, November 18, 2009 6:30 PM

  Infragistics*, a Microsoft Surface partner, has developed and released a set of controls that it has released to the Microsoft Surface community of partners and customers. These controls are optimized to run on Microsoft Surface and help create engaging multitouch applications. They include the following:

  • The xamSurfaceMap control allowss users to rotate, zoom, and pan the map using contact-hand gestures. It also allows the end user to select and drag elements from the map.
  • The xamSurfaceChart control is a 2-D and 3-D chart control which supports more than 50 variations of charts.
  • The xamSurfaceCarouselPanel, xamSurfaceCarouselListBox, xamSurfaceDataCarousel controls include read-only grid views of data along a carousel path and carousel scrolling.

  You can find these controls and more information about them on the Infragistics Web site.

  *Infragistics is providing these controls at no cost to Microsoft Surface customers and is responsible for any support of these controls. Microsoft is not responsible for these controls, and is providing a link to this resource for the benefit of the Microsoft Surface community. Downloading and using these controls is at your own risk.

SyncFx - General [ReadOnly] announcements

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  This forums is moving Jan 23, 2010
  Liam Cavanagh - MSFT Thursday, January 21, 2010 4:27 PM

  One piece of feedback we receive fairly frequently is that given the number of Sync Framework forums, it is confusing, where to best find answers and ask questions relating to specific components of the Sync Framework.  For that reason, we have created a new single (unified) forum for you to use for anything relating to the Microsoft Sync Framework:

   

  SyncFx - Microsoft Sync Framework Developer Discussions
  

  http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/syncdevdiscussions/threads
  
  As a result, as of Jan 23^rd, 2010 this forum will be locked and will only be available in read mode to allow you to search and read archived questions.  Any questions that were submitted since Jan 1, 2010 in the below forums will be moved to this new location and will continue to be active in their new location.  So please start tracking them in their new location.
   

  SyncFx - General

  SyncFx - Technical Discussion

  SyncFx – Feedback

  SyncFx - Microsoft Sync Framework Database Providers

   

  Liam Cavanagh

SyncFx - Microsoft Sync Framework Developer Discussions announcements

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  Sync Framework Toolkit now available for download (Updated on 9/9/2011)
  Mahesh Dudgikar Friday, October 7, 2011 1:21 AM

  The Sync Framework Toolkit extends the Sync Framework capabilities for building offline applications, making it easier to expose data for synchronization to applications running on any client platform. Sync Framework 2.1 required clients to be based on Windows. This toolkit allows other Microsoft platforms to be used for offline clients such as Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, and Windows Mobile; in addition non-Microsoft platforms such as iPhone, Android, and Blackberry can be utilized as well as HTML.

  The Sync Framework Toolkit provides all the features enabled by the Sync Framework 4.0 October 2010 CTP. We are releasing the toolkit as source code samples on MSDN with the source code utilizing Sync Framework 2.1. Source code provides the flexibility to customize or extend the capabilities we have provided to suit your specific requirements. The client-side source code in the package is released under the Apache 2.0 license and the server-side source code under the MS-LPL license.

  The toolkit is available for download on MSDN at: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Sync-Framework-Toolkit-4dc10f0e.

  We will keep the forum used for Sync Framework V4 CTP available for community discussion and community support.
  
  Thanks,
  Sync Framework Team
  

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  Sync Framework 2.1 is available for download!
  Nina H Thursday, August 19, 2010 12:51 AM

  Sync Framework 2.1 includes all the great functionality of our 2.0 release, enhanced by several exciting new features and improvements. The most exciting of these lets you synchronize data stored in SQL Server or SQL Server Compact with SQL Azure in the cloud. We’ve added top customer requests like parameter-based filtering and the ability to remove synchronization scopes and templates from a database, and of course we’ve made many performance enhancements to make synchronization faster and easier.

   

  Read our blog for more detail,

  Or start downloading now!

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  Important SQL Compact Hotfix for SyncFx v2
  Sean_Kelley Friday, March 5, 2010 4:20 AM

  The following SQL Compact hotfix addresses an issue that is commonly encountered when syncing tables with foreign key constraints:
  
  FIX: Error message when an application inserts a value into a foreign key column in SQL Server Compact 3.5: "No key matching the described characteristics could be found within the current range"
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974068

  ---

  Sean Kelley
  Senior Program Manager
  Microsoft
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  Sync Services for ADO.NET for Devices performance Hotfix is now available
  Liam Cavanagh - MSFT Sunday, January 24, 2010 6:06 PM

  We are happy to announce that a hotfix for Sync Services for ADO.NET for Devices is now available which resolves some of the performance issues in the RTM version of the release.  With this hotfix, the initial sync and subsequent sync for downloading INSERTs performance has been significantly improved as some performance related issues have been fixed at the client.
  
  Please contact Microsoft Customer Support Service team to request the HotFix  if needed.
  
  Thanks
  Yunwen
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  Welcome to the NEW unified Sync Framework Forum
  Liam Cavanagh - MSFT Thursday, January 21, 2010 7:45 PM

  Hello and Welcome to this forum.  

  This forum has been created to provide a place where developers can discuss these APIs with members of the Sync Framework Product Group in Microsoft as well as other developers in the community.  Discussions in this fourm include Microsoft Sync Framework Core Runtime, Sync Framework Database Providers, SQL Azure Data Sync and the Sync Framework File Provider

  Liam Cavanagh

  Program Manager,

  Microsoft Sync Framework and SQL Azure
  Microsoft Corporation

SyncFx - SyncToy-File Synchronization announcements

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  SyncToy 2.1 Available for Download!
  Nina H Wednesday, November 11, 2009 7:15 PM

  We are happy to announce the availability of SyncToy 2.1. SyncToy 2.1 is a free application that synchronizes files and folders between locations. SyncToy2.1 is powered by the latest synchronization engine from Microsoft Sync Framework 2.0 and provides better performance and robustness.
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  Important NAS and SyncToy 2.0 Information
  Liam Cavanagh - MSFT Monday, April 20, 2009 10:00 PM

  Please note that there are known issues when using SyncToy 2.0 with a Home NAS.  When using a NAS, there is a chance of file corruption.  We have found this to be the case across the board for all NAS configurations.  We highly recommend that users avoid using SyncToy 1.x and 2.0 with NAS configurations.
  
  This issue will be fixed in an upcoming release.  Unfortunately there are no known workarounds for this issue with SyncToy 2.0 and previous builds.
  
  Liam
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  Windows 7 & SyncToy 2.0
  Liam Cavanagh - MSFT Friday, March 13, 2009 5:34 PM

  We have just completed a test pass on SyncToy 2.0 running on Windows 7 and am happy to announce that we have not found any issues.  Ultimately, SyncToy is provided “as is,” and Microsoft does not actually provide official support services for it.   However, for those of you that have started to use Windows 7, you should expect to have a similar experience to that of other platforms such as Windows XP and Vista and if issues arise please let us know on this forum.

SyncFx – Microsoft Sync Framework Toolkit announcements

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  Sync Framework Toolkit now available for download (Updated on 9/9/2011)
  Nina H Saturday, September 10, 2011 7:38 AM

  The Sync Framework Toolkit extends the Sync Framework capabilities for building offline applications, making it easier to expose data for synchronization to applications running on any client platform. Sync Framework 2.1 required clients to be based on Windows. This toolkit allows other Microsoft platforms to be used for offline clients such as Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, and Windows Mobile; in addition non-Microsoft platforms such as iPhone, Android, and Blackberry can be utilized as well as HTML.

  The Sync Framework Toolkit provides all the features enabled by the Sync Framework 4.0 October 2010 CTP. We are releasing the toolkit as source code samples on MSDN with the source code utilizing Sync Framework 2.1. Source code provides the flexibility to customize or extend the capabilities we have provided to suit your specific requirements. The client-side source code in the package is released under the Apache 2.0 license and the server-side source code under the MS-LPL license.

  The toolkit is available for download on MSDN at: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Sync-Framework-Toolkit-4dc10f0e.

  We will keep the forum used for Sync Framework V4 CTP available for community discussion and community support.
  
  Thanks,
  Sync Framework Team
  

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  Sync Framework V4 Update
  Mark Scurrell - MSFT Wednesday, March 30, 2011 5:41 PM

  At PDC 2010 we announced and released Sync Framework V4 CTP.  The main capability available in the CTP was greatly enhanced support for offline clients.  In particular, we added the ability to easily create web services to synchronize data from SQL Server or SQL Azure databases with offline clients built on any platform - Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, iPhone or any client platform with any local client store.  The final release of V4 was planned for 2011 and we were targeting the first half of this year for general availability.

   

  This post is to inform you that we have updated our plans and postponed the V4 release for the time being.  We do expect to release Sync Framework V4 in the future and will let you know the new release date when available, but it is unlikely the release will be available in 2011.

   

  There has been a great deal of interest in our V4 release, with lots of participation in the CTP.  In lieu of a formal release, we are planning to make the V4 CTP functionality available as source code samples on MSDN Code Gallery in the next few months – server code, client code and client samples.  The source code samples will utilize and depend on Sync Framework V2.1 (on the server), as was the case for the CTP.  UPDATE: We will make the code available by end August 2011.

   

  This was a difficult decision for the team.  We are currently focusing on the delivery of SQL Azure Data Sync which is a service providing data synchronization capabilities for SQL Azure that will be released later this year.  SQL Azure Data Sync heavily utilizes Sync Framework internally.

   

  Here are a few common questions we’ve received:

   

  ·         Q: Will you stop supporting Sync Framework V2.1?

  ·         A: No.  Sync Framework V2.1 is a released product and will continue to be supported, both formally and via the MSDN forums.

   

  ·         Q: Does this mean that the Sync Framework is being phased out?

  ·         A: No.  We expect to provide future versions of the synchronization developer platform.  SQL Azure Data Sync is built on top of Sync Framework and we continue to invest in data synchronization capabilities.  We believe that both end-user services and development platform are important to provide a complete stack for customers.  With Sync Framework V2.1 being available we are currently focusing on the delivery of the end-user service.

   

  ·         Q: When do you expect Sync Framework V4 will be released?

  ·         A: A potential release date has not been set.

   

  ·         Q: How do the offline capabilities of Sync Framework V4 relate to the recently announced “reference data caching” capabilities for OData?

  ·         A: “Reference data caching” is being proposed as a future additional capability of the OData protocol.  It specifically targets the one-way download scenario for reference data.  We believe this is a common scenario and is sufficiently straightforward to integrate directly into the OData protocol.  We are exploring how far to integrate sync capabilities into the OData protocol vs. potentially layering more sync capabilities on top of OData, which is the approach we took with the Sync Framework V4 CTP.  We look forward to your feedback in this area as we explore together with the OData community.

   

  Regards,

  Sync Framework team

Testing with Visual Studio Test Manager (MTM) announcements

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  "Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2" is now available to MSDN subscribers
  niveditabawa_MSFT Tuesday, November 16, 2010 7:18 AM

  Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 is now available to MSDN subscribers.

  • Use Microsoft Test Manager to capture and playback action recordings for Silverlight 4 applications.
  • Create coded UI tests for Silverlight 4 applications with Visual Studio 2010 Premium or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.
  • Edit coded UI tests using a graphical editor with Visual Studio 2010 Premium or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.
  • Use action recordings to fast forward through manual tests that need to support Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and 3.6.
  • Run coded UI tests for web applications using Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.

  For more details, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=192777

The Forum of Sho announcements

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  Welcome to the Forum of Sho!
  Sho Team Wednesday, January 26, 2011 1:57 AM

  Hello and welcome to the Forum of Sho!

   

  This forum is meant to be a community for Sho users where you can share knowledge, get questions answered, and learn from others using Sho. Feel free to post questions about any and all aspects of Sho, and we (as well as other community members) will do our best to get you some answers. We hope that as your expertise in Sho grows, you'll also take the time to answer questions from folks who could benefit from your knowledge and experience.

   

  For more information about Sho, including the latest installer and documentation, check out http://research.microsoft.com/sho