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Hey everyone — it’s John from On The Pulse.
How are you all doing this week?
In this week’s edition of On The Pulse, we’re discussing the new Copilot+ PCs now available for preorder. We’ll also talk about the tracking feature for frontline teams, and new functions in Excel!
This week’s topics include:
The “most intelligent PCs” ever built.
Frontline team tracking feature.
New Excel functions.
Exclusive workflow to make Planner tasks from a Teams chat.
Let’s Go!👇
Also — I’d love to hear what you think of On The Pulse. Whether you love it or hate it, or there’s something new you’d like to see included, hit “reply” and share your thoughts!
✉️ TOP STORIES (WITH OUR INSIGHTS)
🤖 Microsoft Release the “Most Intelligent PCs” Ever Built!
This week, Microsoft unveiled their new lineup of "Copilot+ PCs," touted as the most intelligent Windows PCs ever built. These devices are essential for businesses looking to stay at the forefront of technology.
Full Story and Our Insights:
Copilot+ PCs are cutting-edge Windows PCs featuring 40+ TOPS (trillion operations per second) silicon, providing powerful AI capabilities and all-day battery life. Key features include:
Recall: Easily find and remember past activities on your PC using cues and snapshots stored locally.
Cocreator: Generate and refine AI images in near real-time directly on the device.
Live Captions: Translate audio from 40+ languages into English captions in real time.
These PCs are available from brands like Microsoft Surface, Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung, starting at $999. They offer enhanced performance, up to 22 hours of battery life, and improved efficiency, making them up to 20x more powerful for AI workloads and 100x more efficient than previous models. They outperform the MacBook Air 15” by up to 58% in sustained multithreaded performance.
Every Copilot+ PC comes with a dedicated Copilot key, providing quick access to advanced AI models, including the latest from OpenAI, for natural voice conversations and enhanced productivity.
Apps and Features:
Microsoft 365: Native Arm64 experiences with fast performance for Teams, PowerPoint, Outlook, Word, Excel, OneDrive, and OneNote.
Adobe: Photoshop, Lightroom, and Express available today; Illustrator and Premiere Pro coming soon. Optimized for NPU performance.
DaVinci Resolve Studio: NPU-accelerated Magic Mask for visual effects.
CapCut: Auto Cutout feature removes video backgrounds instantly using the NPU.
Cephable: NPU-powered camera pipeline for adaptive input controls like head movement or facial expressions.
LiquidText: On-device AI features for smart document annotations, ensuring data privacy.
djay Pro: NeuralMix™ feature exclusive to NPU for high-quality music remixing.
These PCs also come with enhanced security through the Microsoft Pluton Security processor and personalized privacy controls. Pre-orders start today, with availability beginning June 18th.
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🔄 New Frontline Teams Tracking Feature
A recent update to Teams allows Frontline teams’ usage to be tracked in the Teams Admin Center.
Full Story and Our Insights:
Microsoft has released a new feature for Microsoft Teams that allows administrators to track the usage of frontline teams and their associated apps directly in the Teams Admin Center.
Designed to enhance oversight and efficiency, the feature provides detailed usage tracking for frontline apps such as Shifts, Tasks, and Walkie Talkie. It supports a wide range of platforms, including Android, Mac, iOS, Linux, and Desktop, ensuring broad accessibility.
This feature is now available globally across all standard multi-tenant cloud instances, marking a significant step in optimizing the deployment and management of frontline teams via the Deploy Teams at Scale (DTAS) initiative.
With this enhancement, businesses can better monitor and manage their frontline operations, ensuring that resources are utilized effectively and team productivity is maximized.
📊 Three new “REGEX” functions for Excel
Microsoft are introducing three new REGEX functions for Excel, now available to Beta Channel users: REGEXTEST, REGEXEXTRACT, and REGEXREPLACE.
Full Story and Our Insights:
Microsoft Excel has added new regular expression (regex) functions, expanding its capabilities for text searching and parsing. Regex, a powerful tool for defining search patterns, is widely used to verify strings, extract substrings, and replace parts of text. The newly introduced regex functions are REGEXTEST, REGEXEXTRACT, and REGEXREPLACE.
Overview of New Regex Functions:
REGEXTEST: Checks if any part of the supplied text matches a regex pattern, returning TRUE or FALSE.
Example:
=REGEXTEST("abc123", "[0-9]")returns TRUE if the text contains numerical digits.Syntax:
=REGEXTEST(text, pattern, [case_sensitivity])
REGEXEXTRACT: Extracts substrings from the text that match a regex pattern, with options to return the first match, all matches, or specific capture groups.
Example:
=REGEXEXTRACT("John Doe", "[A-z]+ [A-z]+")extracts names that fit the pattern of alphabet characters separated by a space.Syntax:
=REGEXEXTRACT(text, pattern, [return_mode], [case_sensitivity])
REGEXREPLACE: Searches for a regex pattern within the text and replaces it with specified text.
Example:
=REGEXREPLACE("123-456-7890", "[0-9]{3}-", "***-")replaces the first three digits of each phone number with ***.Syntax:
=REGEXREPLACE(text, pattern, replacement, [occurrence], [case_sensitivity])
Upcoming Features: Regex functionality will soon be integrated into XLOOKUP and XMATCH, allowing regex patterns to be used as lookup values.
Tips for Writing Regex Patterns:
[0-9]Matches any numerical digit.[a-z]Matches any character from a to z..Matches any character.aMatches the character "a".a*Matches zero or more "a".a+Matches one or more "a".
Availability: These functions are available to Beta Channel users running:
Windows: Version 2406 (Build 17715.20000) or later
Mac: Version 16.86 (Build 24051422) or later
How to Join the Insider Program:
Windows:
Open Excel and go to File > Account.
Click Microsoft 365 Insider.
Choose Beta Channel to access the latest features.
Mac:
Open Excel and go to Help > Check for Updates.
Select Advanced.
Choose “Beta Channel” In the “Update channel” select box.
By joining the Insider Program, users can access the latest Excel features and provide feedback to help improve the software.
🕟 EASILY MAKE PLANNER TASKS FOR ANYONE FROM A MICROSOFT TEAMS CHAT
Do you frequently use Planner but want a more efficient way to create tasks without accessing Planner every time? If so, this workflow could be a game-changer!
Example usage:
tasks: John Gleave, task1, task2, task3
Ensure the name is their full Teams display name, and list as many tasks as you want, separated by commas.
You will receive a confirmation message in Teams, listing the tasks, and the person you assign the tasks to will receive an email alert.
Required Apps: Microsoft Teams, Planner, PowerAutomate
Step 1: Download the zip file from our website.
Step 2: Open Microsoft Planner, click “+ New plan,” and add your organization as a group.
Step 3: Open PowerAutomate and head to “My Flows” in the left menu.
Step 4: Click “Import” at the top and choose “Import Package.”
Step 5: Click the “Upload” button and select “TeamsTasks.zip."
The zip file will be located in your default save location, typically the “Downloads” folder.
Step 6: Click “Select during import” next to “Microsoft Teams Connection.”
If you have a connection available, select it, then click “Save.”
Otherwise, click “+ Create new” then “+ New connection” at the top.
Use the search box in the top right to find “Microsoft Teams.”
Once you’ve located and clicked the Microsoft Teams connection, choose to “Create.”
Choose an account to sign into, then head back to PowerAutomate and click “Refresh list.”
Now select your Teams connection and hit “Save.”
Step 7: Repeat the process in step 6 for the Office 365 Outlook, Office 365 Users, and Planner connections.
Step 7: Click “Import” at the bottom.
Step 8: Edit the “Teams Tasks” workflow, then head down to the “Create a task” action, click it, and change the “Group Id” and “Plan Id” to your plan.
Step 9: Click “Save” at the top.
Step 10: Click the three dots (…) next to the “Teams Tasks” flow in “My Flows” and choose “Turn on” in the popup list.
To start using the workflow, type “Tasks, Display Name, Task1, Task2, …” into any Teams chat!
The person you assign the tasks to can then view them in Planner by viewing the “Assigned to me” tasks.
✅ WRAPPING UP!
That’s all for this edition of On The Pulse.
Thanks for reading and see you soon! 👋