Microsoft MVP / Microsoft 365

Everything I work out about Microsoft 365, written down.

Software developer and M365 specialist. Notes on .NET, Azure, Intune and Copilot rollouts that survive contact with real tenants, plus reviews of the hardware and software I actually run.

Microsoft MVP.NET / AzureIntune / Exchange Online
Start reading Browse reviews
a tenant, end to end tracing
  1. 01 Identity and devices Entra ID / Intune / 1,842 devices compliant
  2. 02 Data and labels Purview / SharePoint / Exchange 4 tiers
  3. 03 Services I build .NET 10 / Graph / Azure traced
  4. 04 Copilot on top Grounding scoped to labelled content ring 2
Writing on
.NET, AI, M365
Reviews
Hardware + software
Lab
4U / 48 cores / 10GbE
Based in
United Kingdom
  • Microsoft MVP / Microsoft 365 Apps and Services
  • 4 devices and services tested
  • lab-01 / 48 cores / 256 GB / 10GbE
  • Book: 4 of 14 chapters drafted
  • Writing from United Kingdom

Browse by service

What is on fire today?

Latest writing

Notes from real tenants

All posts
  1. 106

    Purview audit log: why events are late, missing or already gone

     Purview & Compliance 28 Sep · 6 min
  2. 105

    Intune troubleshooting: what to check first, by symptom

     Intune & Endpoint 27 Sep · 13 min
  3. 104

    Intune filters: what breaks when you swap groups for filters

     Intune & Endpoint 27 Sep · 6 min
  4. 103

    Intune firewall rules: why they silently fail to apply

     Intune & Endpoint 26 Sep · 8 min
  5. 102

    SCEP vs PKCS Intune: which certificate profile to use, and where each breaks

     Intune & Endpoint 25 Sep · 10 min

Hardware and software

Tested, then written up

All reviews
Mudita Harmony 2 on a bedside table beside a bed, E Ink display showing the time

Hardware · Endpoint In daily use

Mudita Harmony 2 E Ink alarm clock

The best executed bedside clock you can buy, and the only one whose design actually assumes the phone has left the room. The constraint is not the hardware, it is that a gradual alarm on an invisible display asks more of you than a supermarket LED does, and at 143 dollars it only pays for itself if the phone genuinely goes.

Display
2.84 inch E Ink, 600 x 480, 270 DPI, 16 levels of grey
Front light
2700 K, multiple brightness levels
Processor
Arm Cortex-M7 600 MHz, 4 GB storage
Battery
2600 mAh Li-ion, up to 45 days claimed
UPERFECT GR16HQ review: the 16 inch 3K OLED portable monitor on its folio stand

Hardware · Endpoint In testing

UPERFECT GR16HQ 16 inch 3K OLED portable monitor

A superb OLED panel wrapped in a sloppy EDID. The hardware is wide-gamut, 10-bit, HDR10 and FreeSync capable, but a false sRGB flag, a fake 27 inch size and 120 Hz modes hidden in the DisplayID block mean it needs two minutes of Windows settings and a capable GPU to show what it can do.

Display
16 inch OLED, 2880 x 1800, 16:10, 212 PPI, 10 bit per colour (EDID)
Advertised modes
3K at 60, 100, 120 Hz; 2560 x 1600 at 60, 100, 120 Hz; 1920 x 1200 at 60, 100, 120 Hz
Pixel clock, 3K 120 Hz
671.23 MHz, 16.11 Gbps at 8 bit, 20.14 Gbps at 10 bit
Variable refresh
AMD FreeSync block, 48 to 120 Hz

The lab

Where the numbers come from

Three compute nodes, one storage node and a switch that has never needed a reboot. Hardware runs the same workload set for at least ninety days, power logged at the wall. Software gets tested in a tenant with real users in it, not a demo tenant.

6
Devices and services tested
90d
Minimum soak before a score
48
Cores in the rack
107
Notes published
How I testRack tour

Books

What I am writing, and how much of it you can read

Two titles in progress. How much of each one you can read before it ships depends on who is publishing it, and each book says so on its own page.

See the shelfProgress log
Writing now Apress Sample chapter

Enterprise Copilot Architecture with .NET

3 of 14 chapters drafted 21%

Chapter 4 is readable here. The rest ships with the book.

Next up

  • 04 Extending Copilot with .NET
  • 05 Grounding, retrieval and the data boundary
  • 06 Identity, consent and least privilege

Read what is public