The 3rd Lock-Down is more or less over. Restaurants and Bars are still closed. Kids are allowed to go to school but are separated in shifts. Also mandatory self-tests are required to attend a class. If for what reason parents don’t wont to get their kids tested they have to attend via Home-Schooling. Retail shops will open as well but require 20 m² per customer. FPP2 mask are now also mandatory in shops and public transport. If you wan’t to get your hairs cut, you have to have a negative Covid-19 not older than 48 hours.
However, there is great concern about the end of the lock-down. The South-African Covid-19 mutation is now established (mainly in Tirol). The British mutation is becoming mainstream. The self-service tests at School seam to be not very effective.
Since a very long time the traffic-light encoded map doesn’t only show everything at high-risk red but Vienna is now displayed as still very-risky orange. However, there is still not distinguishing between districts within a state.
The Stopp-Corona App by the Austria Red Cross is now compatible with 11 other EU countries. Users can now use the App to warn people from other EU countries using their foreign App. The app has been developed during the first Lock-Down in spring 2020 but isn’t so popular in Austria.
Stopp-Corona App
COVID-19 in Computer Games
Corona can also be found in actual PC Games like Euro Truck Simulator and American Truck Simulator. SCS has set up a 0-damage vaccine delivery challenge in both games. The goal is to deliver 7 times the Covid-19 vaccines without any damage to the cargo.
We’are in the fifth week in the third Lock-Down in Austria. Better called a not-so-lock-down because a recent study conducted by Invenium shows that the actual lock-down reduces the mobility of people only by 20 percent. While in at the first Lock-Down in Spring 2020 the travelling behavior decreased by 75 percent. In general, the actual Lock-Down from 26th December 2020 till today isn’t very effective any more. Schools are (more or less) closed. There is no education on site but families can bring their kids for day care and in some schools this are 2/3 of the regular class.
This week the period for support on three popular petitions ended. The first petition want’s to establish ethic education at school for all students no matter if they attend any religious education as well. The second petition addresses the well-being of animals, especially those in the food industry. The last one requests a law in the constitution that vaccination must not be mandatory. All petitions can be signed online if you are using the governments mobile signature app
Popular petitions can be signed online using the signature app
Fun fact, two other petitions can be supported. One for Mandatory-Vaccination No! and another for Mandatory-Vaccination Yes! If you like trolling, you can support both 🙂
Mandatory vaccination yes ! no ! .. whatever
Vaccine Information Registration Form
The government has put up a web site to get informed about vaccinations. <sarcasm>Because Austria is such a huge country, each state has now its own information registration platform.</sarcasm> You have to provide name, age, contact information, preconditions (sometimes depending on your state), etc. You don’t get an appointment, but you will be informed if you can apply for an appointment or if something in the vaccination plan is changing.
Online Exams
The second semester under Covid-19 restrictions is coming to an end. Like in summer there is no education at the university campus. Lectures are done remote and exams as well. In most cases you have to attend a Zoom meeting and present an ID card. The exam itself is an online test. Sometimes you have to write and upload a PDF document, sometimes you can put your answers direct into a questionnaire. It is said that the university management is not so happy with this online exams. But for me its very convenient to take the exam at home. Hopefully we can keep this modus operandi in the future for exams.
We’re still in Lock-Down since Christmas and the actual Lock-Down has been extended at least till 8th February. The number of daily new infections is stable at under 2000. This is way too much but is not decreasing. So we keep lock-down for weeks and weeks now.
Masks: Scarf Early 2020 – Face-Mask Mid / End 2020 – FFP2 2021
Starting January 25th, it is mandatory to wear a FFP2 mask in stores and public transport. An FFP2 mask provides a better filtration effect. This shall help to fight the new Corona mutations from Britain and South-Africa which seam to be more infectious.
Remote Monitoring for Covid-19 patients
A corona infection can turn into a sever problem very quickly. However, it not feasible to keep every positive tested patient at the hospital. The Medical University of Innsbruck is remote monitoring Covid-19 patients using skin sensors and apps. The sensors keep track of temperature, O² saturation, breathing and pulse. This system was already in use for patients with heart problems and was now adapted for Corona. Therefore, patients can stay at home as long as possible but if the situation becomes critical the medical staff gets informed.
Vaccines: Mayors push themselves forward
Austria started to vaccinate people. Because only a very limited amount of vaccines are available. Approximately 1/3 of all Corona deaths in Austria were at retirement homes. Therefore, the governments plan states that high-risk people 80+ in retirement homes shall be vaccinated first. However, many mayors found a way to get a shot although they are not old or high-risk. In many cases the mayors are also the head of the retirement homes in their city. Many argue they have been on site “by accident” and didn’t want to let the vaccine go to waste.
Corona Map Paused
Since Summer 2020 the Austrian government is maintaining a traffic-light color encoded map to visualize the Covid-19 situations in parts auf Austria. Green stands for low risk, yellow medium risk and red high risk. A committee is evaluating the situation every Thursday and presents the new map in Friday. However, since the beginning of the second wave in later autumn 2020 the map is deep red for all parts of Austria. Because the number of infections per day remains at a very high level for weeks, it was decided to pause the map.
We are in the third week of the third lock-down in Austria. Mass-testing to end lock-down for negative tested people has been canceled and we are at least under lock-down till 24th. However, with the increased distribution of the more infectious British COVID-19 strain it is not sure if the lock-down will end or be continued. We are looking at the situation in Ireland where the infections are skyrocketing because of the new COVID-19 strain.
Due to the insolvency of PASS head organization this was the last PASS SQL Saturday in Vienna. The local chapters can operate independently and PASS Austria may exist as Data Community Austria. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic this SQL Saturday was held virtual via Teams. Hopefully we will have a similar event with great content in the future.
Attending the virtual SQL Saturday Vienna 2021 from my home office
Announcement: Global Azure Bootcamp 2012
The Global Azure Bootcamp 2012 will be held virtual this year as well. GAB was one of the first events last year that decided to switch to an virtual form. This years GAB will be virtual as well.
Mandatory Pre-Registration for visiting Austria
Anyone who is coming to Austria has to fill out a registration form. This applies also to Austrians coming back home. You have to provide personal information like name, nationality, etc, where you will stay and where are you coming from. Nevertheless, the 10 day quarantine with an option to test free after 5 days is still mandatory (with some exceptions)
Since 26.12 we are still under lock-down. It looks like Christmas didn’t cause a rapid spike of infections. However, the goal from the second lock-down to reduce the second wave under 1000 infections per day is still not reached. The actual situation, restaurants and retail closed but offices allowed keeps the curve constant at ~ 2000 infections a day. After the holidays, today is the first “real” working day.
The third lock-down is scheduled until 24th January. The government wanted to provide the option get tested on 15th, 16th and 17th of January and again provided a website to register for a test. With a negative COVID-19 test it should have been possible to access restaurants and events. However, it was not clear who would have been be responsible to check if a customer has a valid negative test and for how long a negative test result would be valid. So the opposition parties threatened to slow down the process at the Bundesrat (second chamber of parliament) by a one-time veto and the government decided to drop the earlier mass test.
COVID-19 Mass-Test canceled
SQL Saturday virtual Event
COVID-19 killed another organization, PASS (professional associates for SQL Server) is insolvent. However, the local chapters like PASS Austria are still operable. This years SQL Saturday Vienna will be held online. Following a good tradition, SQL Saturday will be held on Friday 15th January.
Labor Minister resigned
CTRL+C and CTRL+V are very helpful shortcuts, but if you write a academic document you need to cite. The labor minister is accused of plagiarism and resigned on Saturday.
We’re back in a hard lock-down. In contrast to the second lock-down in November and December 2020 this one is a proactive lock-down to keep the infections after Christmas under control. Started on 26th December we are under an all-day curfew and non-essential business are closed. Up to now, the impact of the new GB mutation which is more infectious is unclear. Hopefully this will prevent uns from a third wave.
The last year was very challenging for all of us. COVID-19 killed approximately 1.8 million people, and many suffer from severe consequences of a COVID-19 infections. Actions taken to get the pandemic under control brought us into a economic and social crisis. However, from an IT perspective the good news are that COVID-19 boosted Digitization.
Something good in 2020
Microsoft Teams: 2020 was the year of Teams. Never ever was a Microsoft Product adopted so quickly by so many people and organizations. Thanks to the (very) hard lock-downs in Europe in spring, Teams was one of the few products that kept many organizations operable.
2020 – The year of Teams
The Cloud: Those who didn’t understand the benefit of the cloud have learned it the hard way this year. The only way to scale up in a very short time is the cloud. No matter if it’s in a public or private cloud. But the situation in early 2020 showed that only the public cloud like Azure could handle the situation. When millions of people are forced to work from home, classic on-premises installations and VPN Gateways collapse.
Azure Region Austria: Microsoft announced to build two data centers in Austria. We will get our own Azure region. Typically our customers host their Azure Workloads in the West-Europe region. In the future we will be able to place the cloud workloads closed to the our customers.
E-Health: Digitalization and health care has never been a big issue in Austria and Digitalization projects like ELGA (electronic health file) was not very widely used. But COVID-19 boosted Digitalization in health care. We’ll get an electronic vaccination pass next year and e-prescription.
Home / Distance Schooling: It is said that the Austrian Education system is very old fashioned and stuck in traditions over decades. Over the last centuries E-Learning was explored from time to time but never ever taken serious. COVID-19 forced the education system to adapt to the situation. Universities also struggled to make exams remote compatible and came up with modern, naive and lazy solutions: The closest solution to a normal exam are Zoom-Meeting based exams, where you have to be online including audio and being watched through the webcam. Some Law-Schools found another way without all the fancy technology stuff. You get the exam online and have to upload the results within a given time, including a sworn declaration that you didn’t cheat. And some other lecturers replaced the classic exam by letting the students write an essay about some textbooks.
Bitcoin: Lucky you if you are a Bitcoin hodler 😉
Bitcoin skyrocketing in 2020
“A very merry Christmas and a happy New Year Let’s hope it’s a good one” – John Lennon, Merry Christmas
Three weeks of hard lock-down have passed and we are about to switch back to lock-down “light”. Stores will re-open on Monday 7th, but hotels, restaurants, bars and ski lifts remain closed. The curfew will be reduced from all-day to 18:00 – 06:00. Home-office has never been mandatory but recommended and will be recommended in the future.
Data shows that both lock-down “light” and “hard” lock-down were successful and infection rate is going down to high but stable niveau. Question is how will Christmas and New Year impact? We are eagerly watching the data from US and how Thanksgiving impacted the number of infections.
Austria is staring voluntary free mass-testing. The army is organizing hundreds of testing sites all over the country. Anti-Gen quick tests are used to identify infectious people. These test have a very low false-negative rate. In case someone is identified as positive, a PCR test is done. Hopefully many non-symptomatic infections people can be found and isolated before Christmas to avoid a third wave and a third lock-down in January. While the registration was a digital disaster the testing itself was easy. Make an appointment and fill out a form. Bring the form and an ID card to the test site. If you have no printer at home it will be printed for you. Get tested and leave the test site. The result is sent to your mobile phone after aprox. 15 minutes.
Negativ Covid-19 test result 🙂
It’s all over now, baby blue
No more Microsoft-Hosted Tier1 Dynamics 365 Finance / SCM environments
Microsoft-Hosted Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management Tier1 environments are gone. If you need a development or build environment you have to host it at your own costs in an Azure subscription. Typically partners will create an Azure Subscription for the customer and deploy the Tier1 environments there. Depending on the size (recommended ist D12v2) and Auto-Shutdown strategy the costs will be somewhat equal to the former Tier1 Addons.
During the first lock-down in spring Azure reached its capacity limit in Europe. Even Netflix and YouTube reduced the streaming quality to HD and lower. Microsoft shut of Teams functionality like seaing someone typing in the chat window and video conferences. In spring we were advised to deploy Tier2 environments in other regions than Europe. Thankfully this time we did not experience such capacity limits although many partners deployed many virtual machines for their customers in November.
IT-Disaster Austria Part 1 – The empty Online Shop
This week was an IT disgrace for the Austrian government. Last week was Black-Friday week and Cyber Monday at Amazon. In order to strengthen Austrian companies the Ministry for Digital and Economic affairs together with the Austria Commerce Chamber decided invest 700.000€ to develop and launch an Austrian Online Shop. This week the “Kaufhaus Österreich” / “Store Austria” was launched and failed immediately. Because it is nothing more than a link list with a not functional search. The search does not index the products from the vendors but only their company name and description. For Example, if you search for a mouse no results are returned because no registered vendor has “mouse” in their company name 🤣
No mouse in Austria
IT-Disaster Austria Part 2 – COVID-19 mass-test registration
Austria will conduct free corona mass tests in December. To organize these tests an online registration page. There you have to provide name, social security number, Email or phone number. After the registration a mail is sent with a link to make an appointment in a local test center. The registration site was announced in the media but the registration site failed permanently with an unexpected error. People report that 5 or more try were required to get registered.
Registration site for Corona mass-test failed
But the “unexpected server error” on submit was not the only problem. The Austrian news paper Der Standard reported a list of problems:
The site went offline only few hours after launch because of an DDOS attack
People could not book an appointment in their home district
Someone managed to book so many appointments that a test site was exclusively blocked
Some Email addresses were deleted
The website had no imprint
Much more problematic is a huge data leak. More and more people report that they get personal data from other people. For example, on Wednesday a teacher from Carinthia reported that he got an appointment for another person from Vienna.
The first lock-down in spring was a game changer. Home office has become normal. But also in non-lock-down times the usage of Microsoft Teams now is on a high volume. For us it has become the collaboration backbone.
Teams usage is stable no matter if lock-down
Webcast Marathon
Last week on 26th November we held a webcast marathon. We presented 6 talks for Dynamics 365 Finance and Power Platform. The webcasts were organized using Microsoft Teams Live Events. The registration pages were quickly built using Microsoft Forms and automated using Power Automate. When a new participant registered for a webcast, PA read the registration from Form, picked the corresponding .ics calendar, sent a mail to the participant with the calendar .ics as attachment and created a new record in Azure table storage.
Webcast Registration via Power Automate
It turned out that the combination of Office 365, Power Platform and Teams work great together and allows to manage a complex distributed scenario like a webcast with different speakers exclusivly in the cloud.
Lock-down results
In contrast to the very strict first lock-down in spring, the actual “hard” lock-down allows more exceptions.
Monday morning: Some stay at home but many (have to) go to work (30th November)Monday morning : First week of first lock-down in spring (16th March)
In theory we have a curfew all day. Schools and Universities are closed, many retail stores are closed, home depots are closed for B2C customers and gastronomy is limited to delivery. But since going to work, sport and shopping is allowed we don’t really feel the pressure like in spring. However, it seems to work and the numbers are dropping.
The second Corona wave hit us hard in Austria. After a very chilly summer, Corona strikes back. Compared to the first wave, testing capacities have rising up to 4x times. But even when considering a high number of unidentified cases in spring, the number of infections is much higher now and hospitals are now reaching their capacity limit.
We had a Soft-Lockdown in October with mainly restaurants closed and a pseudo-curfew from 20:00 to 06:00 but a lot of exceptions. Obviously the Soft-Lockdown came to late and had less effect, so we are now under a stricter Lockdown. Although the situation is more severe than in Spring, the restrictions are less hard now.
Notebooks are sold out
Home-Schooling and Home-Office has become a widely accepted practice. However, this results in a high demand of devices. At this moment almost all business grade laptops are sold out. No matter if you are Looking for Lenovo ThinkPads or ThinkBooks, HP Elitebooks, etc.
Webcast Marathon
Due to the pandemic our annual company event for our customers is canceled 😥 Since 10 years we are organizing an yearly event with our customers including good food, news and presentations.
Better times (2019)
This year we are presenting a day full of webcasts regarding the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain. We will discuss collaboration in times of Home Office. Moreover we will present Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate and Dynamics 365 Finance & SCM ERP projects.
From 1st May the restrictions to access public space has been revoked. Stores, exception restaurants and hotels, are open again. Shopping malls opened on Saturday 2nd May. With all the shops back open, and people lining up before boutiques and storming the malls there is a fear of a second wave coming soon.
ErpCoder 