Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Microsoft 365 Backup, M365 Archive, Purview retention, EOA, and inactive mailbox - what each one actually does, and where third-party archivers fit.

We’re excited to announce expanded functionality for the StatusGator Boards API. You can now create new boards, update existing boards, and delete boards directly through the API. Previously, the Boards API only supported listing boards and retrieving board details. With these new capabilities, you can automate the complete board lifecycle – from provisioning new boards to managing ownership and cleaning up boards that are no longer needed.

We’re excited to introduce monitor metadata, a new feature available in the General tab of monitor settings. You can now add custom key/value metadata to monitors, making it easier to organize resources and add operational context to alerts and integrations.

Previously, I described some core approaches to validating agent written code: feedforward and feedback techniques. Feedforward techniques are about avoiding errors up front, for example by coming up with better prompts and planning strategies. Feedback gives agents a signal that they have actually achieved a task. Feedback is a key part of common agentic patterns like Ralph loops or the /goal commands in Codex and Claude Code: keep working until some known condition passes.

From July 2026 Microsoft will put OneDrive users over their licensed quota into read-only state. What MC1310684 means and how to prepare before the cutover.

Sometime in the last two years your repos quietly filled up with a new category of file. Not code, not config exactly: prompts. A.claude/skills/ directory here. A.cursor/rules/ folder there. A CLAUDE.md at the root, an AGENTS.md next to it, a.mcp.json listing the servers your agent is allowed to call. These are the things that make a coding agent useful on your codebase, and they're sprawling.

When should I reach for a log, a trace, or a metric? I hit that question constantly when I instrument code, and I watch coding agents hit it too. It sounds like it should be obvious. Errors, traces, logs, and metrics are the four kinds of telemetry most apps run on, four tools in one box, and they overlap enough that the honest answer is every developer’s favourite: it depends. You can stuff context into span attributes instead of logging it. You can count log events instead of emitting a metric.

In manufacturing environments, keeping accurate records of physical assets is harder than it sounds. Equipment moves between shifts, changes hands without notice, and ends up somewhere different from where it was last logged. QR code asset tracking for manufacturing solves that problem with a lightweight, low-cost method. Each asset gets a printed label. Any team member with a smartphone can scan it, pull up the full asset profile, and update information on the spot.

Progress has been named a winner at this year's Network Computing Awards, earning industry recognition for its ongoing commitment to innovation and delivering real-world value to customers. A standout event in the UK technology calendar, the Network Computing Awards celebrate organizations and solutions that are driving measurable impact across the industry.

At least 30 minutes disappear before the average field technician can begin the actual repair. That time goes into searching for part numbers, procedures, and documentation across fragmented systems. Across 1,000 technicians and 250 working days, even this conservative estimate adds up to at least 125,000 hours of productive capacity lost to lookup activity. Yet this loss rarely appears as a separate line item on any field service P&L. This is a critical information architecture problem.