All news with #product update tag

🤖 Microsoft has added the "Hey Copilot" wake word to Windows 11, letting users initiate conversations with the AI-powered Copilot assistant hands-free. The feature is opt-in and must be enabled in the Copilot app's Settings under Voice mode; when active a chime sounds and a microphone icon appears above the taskbar. Wake word detection uses an on-device 10-second audio buffer stored locally and never recorded, while request processing requires internet access. Copilot Vision can analyze screen content for troubleshooting and guidance, and optional connectors let Copilot generate Office documents and access third-party accounts.

🚀 AWS has expanded Amazon WorkSpaces Core Managed Instances to five regions — US East (Ohio), Asia Pacific (Malaysia and Hong Kong), Middle East (UAE), and Europe (Spain) — with partner support from Citrix, Workspot, Leostream, and Dizzion. Managed Instances provision compute resources in customers' AWS accounts while AWS handles the infrastructure lifecycle for persistent and non-persistent VDI workloads, enabling highly customizable CPU, memory, and graphics configurations, including accelerated graphics instances. Customers can continue to use Savings Plans, discounts, and On-Demand Capacity Reservations and will incur standard compute costs plus an hourly WorkSpaces Core fee.

🔧 AWS Serverless Application Model CLI (SAM CLI) now supports Finch as an alternative to Docker for local container-based development and testing. Developers can continue to build, test, debug, and package serverless applications locally using the same SAM CLI workflows, including sam build, sam local invoke, sam local start-api, and sam local start-lambda. SAM CLI will automatically detect and use Finch when Docker is not available, and you can also set Finch explicitly as your preferred container tool. Finch is an open-source, AWS-supported project that offers an additional choice for local serverless tooling.

🔓 Amazon Bedrock now automatically enables access to all serverless foundation models by default in all commercial AWS regions. This removes the prior manual activation step and lets users immediately use models via the Amazon Bedrock console, AWS SDK, and features such as Agents, Flows, and Prompt Management. Anthropic models remain enabled but require a one-time usage form before first use; completing the form via the console or API and submitting it from an AWS organization management account will enable Anthropic across member accounts. Administrators continue to control access through IAM policies and Service Control Policies (SCPs).

🚀 Amazon Bedrock has expanded regional access to several foundation models, adding DeepSeek-V3.1, OpenAI open-weight models (20B, 120B), and multiple Qwen3 variants. The update makes DeepSeek-V3.1 and Qwen3 Coder-480B available in US East (Ohio) and Asia Pacific (Jakarta), and brings OpenAI open-weight and additional Qwen models to US East (Ohio), Europe (Frankfurt), and Asia Pacific (Jakarta). Customers can deploy these models locally to meet data residency needs, reduce latency, and enable faster AI-powered experiences.

🔍 AWS has integrated Amazon Q's AI diagnostics into the AWS Step Functions console to provide context-aware troubleshooting for workflow errors. Users can click the Diagnose with Amazon Q button in error alerts and the console notification area to receive tailored remediation steps for state machine execution failures and Amazon States Language (ASL) syntax errors and warnings. Troubleshooting recommendations appear in a dedicated window showing remediation steps, analysis of relevant state, input, and logs, and suggested fixes to reduce manual investigation. The feature is automatically enabled in commercial AWS Regions where Amazon Q is available to help teams accelerate resolution and lower operational overhead.

🗓️ AWS Backup now provides a schedule preview for backup plans, displaying the next ten scheduled backup runs and showing when features such as continuous backup, indexing, or copy settings take effect. The preview consolidates all backup rules into a single timeline so you can quickly identify overlaps, gaps, or configuration conflicts. This capability is available in all AWS Regions and accessible from the AWS Backup console, API, or CLI without additional configuration.

🔍 AWS Backup now returns more detailed metadata in job APIs and Backup Audit Manager reports to improve visibility into backup configuration and compliance. New fields in backup, copy, and restore job APIs expose retention settings, vault lock and type, encryption details, plan and rule names, schedules, and vault access policies. Delegated administrators can view job details across an organization. These fields are available today in supported Regions at no extra charge.

🔁 With the new URL and Host Header rewrite capability for Application Load Balancer, AWS lets customers modify request URLs and Host headers using regex-based pattern matching before routing to targets. You can rewrite paths (for example, transform "/api/v1/users" to "/users"), standardize URL patterns, remove or add path prefixes, and modify the Host header for internal service routing. Configurable via the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, SDKs, and APIs, the feature incurs no extra charge beyond ALB usage and is available in all AWS commercial regions.

🔍 Cloudflare investigated an independent October benchmark comparing server-side JavaScript performance between Cloudflare Workers and Vercel, which initially showed Workers up to 3.5x slower. The company found multiple causes — scheduling heuristics, outdated V8 garbage-collector tuning, and framework-level inefficiencies in OpenNext/Next.js — and implemented fixes. Most changes are live and yield parity with Vercel across nearly all tested cases, with further work planned to close the remaining Next.js gap.

⚠️ Microsoft notified administrators that Exchange Server 2016 and Exchange Server 2019 reached end of support on October 14, 2025, and will no longer receive security patches or time zone updates after the October 2025 security releases. The company strongly advises migrating to Exchange Online or upgrading to Exchange Server Subscription Edition (SE). In-place upgrades from Exchange 2019 to SE follow the same process as installing a Cumulative Update. Customers still on Exchange 2016 or 2013 should upgrade to SE or first move to Exchange 2019.

📈 Amazon Connect now supports configurable thresholds for schedule adherence, enabling contact center managers to set allowable early and late windows for shift starts, shift ends, and individual activities. Administrators can apply defaults and customize thresholds at the team level—for example, allowing a 5-minute early start, a 10-minute late end, or a 3-minute late break—so minor timing differences don’t hurt adherence scores. This reduces false violations, helps managers focus on real adherence issues, and improves agent satisfaction and productivity.

🚀 Amazon MSK Connect is now available in ten additional AWS Regions — Jakarta, Hong Kong, Osaka, Melbourne, Milan, Zurich, Bahrain, UAE, Cape Town, and Tel Aviv. MSK Connect provides fully managed Kafka Connect clusters for deploying, monitoring, and scaling connectors to move data between Apache Kafka/Amazon MSK and external systems without provisioning infrastructure. The service supports both managed and self-managed Kafka clusters and is accessible via the MSK console and CLI.

🔧 Microsoft details OCP contributions to accelerate open-source infrastructure for frontier-scale AI, focusing on power, cooling, networking, security, and sustainability. It highlights innovations such as solid-state transformers, a power-stabilization paper with OpenAI and NVIDIA, and a next-generation HXU for liquid cooling. Networking efforts include ESUN and scale-up Ethernet workstreams, while security contributions introduce Caliptra 2.1, Adams Bridge 2.0, and L.O.C.K. The post also advances fleet lifecycle management, carbon accounting, and waste-heat reuse for globally deployable AI datacenters.

🔤 Amazon QuickSight now extends font customization to data labels and axes across supported charts, complementing existing controls for titles, subtitles, legends, and table headers. Authors can set font family, pixel size, color, and styling such as bold, italics, and underline for analyses, dashboards, reports, and embedded scenarios. The update improves branding alignment and readability on large displays and is available in all supported regions.

🛠️ Amazon Web Services announced that SageMaker AI Projects can now provision custom ML project templates stored in Amazon S3. Administrators can define and manage standardized end-to-end project templates in SageMaker AI Studio so data scientists can create projects that follow organizational patterns and automated workflows. The feature is available in all AWS Regions where SageMaker AI Projects is offered.

🔍 AWS Resource Explorer now provides immediate access to resource search within each AWS Region without requiring prior activation. To start searching you need, at minimum, permissions granted by the AWS Resource Explorer Read Only Access or AWS Read Only Access managed policies, and you can discover resources via the Resource Explorer console, Unified Search, or AWS CLI/SDKs. To index the full inventory, including historical backfill and automatic updates, complete Resource Explorer setup so it can create a service-linked role. You can also enable cross-Region search with a single console click or the new CreateResourceExplorerSetup API, and the feature is available at no additional cost in supported Regions.

📢 AWS is updating the availability status of a range of services and features across three lifecycle categories: moving to Maintenance, entering Sunset, and reaching End of Support. Services moving to maintenance will stop accepting new customers on Nov 7, 2025, while current customers can continue using them as they evaluate alternatives. Several services, including Amazon FinSpace, AWS IoT Greengrass v1, and AWS Proton, are entering sunset with documented timelines (typically ~12 months). AWS Mainframe Modernization App Testing has reached end of support as of Oct 7, 2025. AWS provides migration guides and support resources to help customers transition.

🔁 Amazon Connect now supports copy and bulk edit for agent scheduling configuration, making it faster to create and maintain schedules. Administrators can copy existing scheduling configurations—such as a weekday shift profile to create a weekend variant—or clone a full schedule from one agent to multiple new hires. Bulk edits allow selective updates to fields like time zone and start date without altering weekly working hours, reducing manager time spent on configuration and improving operational efficiency.

🔔 Amazon Connect now supports agent schedule adherence notifications, enabling supervisors to receive automated alerts by email or text (via EventBridge) when agents fall outside defined adherence thresholds. You can create rules—such as alerting when adherence drops below 85% in a trailing 15‑minute window—to notify supervisors proactively. These automated notifications remove the need for constant dashboard monitoring and help teams intervene before service levels decline.