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Announcements​

Check this section for links to the latest Python news.

Azure AI Foundry​

📰WhatWhere
November 2024: Announced at Ignite, AI Foundry is a unified AI platform formerly known as Azure AI Studio, integrated with our SDK with pre-built templates enabling developer to access models, integrate with Azure AI, debug and improve application quality and safety across development, testing and production environments

Visual Studio Code​

📰WhatWhere
August 2024: Improved Python Discover with the new python-environment-tools, inline variable values, VS Code Native REPL improvements, Pylance enhancements like disabling unreachability hints, Debug Welcome view.
August 2024: Pre-release of Django running tests is open to the public and is looking for freedback.

Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS)​

📰WhatWhere
April 2024: Enhanced support for multiple interpreters, rich editing, IntelliSense and Code comprehension
April 2024: improved interactive window for running Python code.

Python in Excel​

📰WhatWhere
June 2024: Python in Excel started rolling out to Enterprise and Business users running the Current Channel on Windows, starting with Version 2407 (Build 17830.20128). It also became available in preview for Family and Personal users running the Current Channel on Windows starting with Version 2405 (Build 17628.20164)

Azure Container Apps​

📰WhatWhere
November 2024: Announced at Ignite, Azure Container App now has Serverless GPUs and Dynamic sessions in preview. Dynamic Sessions provides a Python code interpreter, pre-installed with popular libraries.
June 2024: Azure Container Apps introduced secure sandboxes at scale with dynamic sessions, enhancing the security and scalability of containerized applications.
January 2024: A new tutorial was released on building and deploying Python web apps with Azure Container Apps and PostgreSQL, making it easier to get started with containerized Python applications

Python on .NET Aspire​

📰WhatWhere
July 2024: Container Image Building: Introduced the AddDockerfile(...) and WithDockerfile(...) methods to simplify the creation and customization of Dockerfiles. These methods support build arguments and secrets, enhancing security and automation.
July 2024: Python Code Orchestration: Added the AddPythonProject(...) method, allowing developers to launch Python-based services. This feature leverages Python’s virtual environment (venv) tool and requires manual installation of dependencies specified in the requirements.txt file.

Azure App Service​

📰WhatWhere
November 2023: Azure App Service now supports Python 3.12, allowing developers to use the latest Python features and improvements.
December 2022: Enhanced configuration options for Linux-based Python apps, including better support for virtual environments and static file serving for Django apps.

Azure Developer CLI (AZD)​

📰WhatWhere
March 2024: The Azure Developer CLI (azd) version 1.7.0 was released, adding sovereign cloud support and improving the template gallery with better search and filtering capabilities.
September 2023: New Python web azd templates were introduced, providing a quick start for building and deploying Python web applications with best practices.

Azure SDK for Python​

📰WhatWhere
June 2024: Released 47 packages, including stable packages for App Configuration, Cosmos DB, and Event Hubs. New beta packages include AI Model Inference and Document Translation.
October 2023: Updated the Azure SDK for Python to support Python 3.8 or later, with over 180 individual libraries for various Azure services.

Azure Cosmos DB​

📰WhatWhere
August 2024: The latest SDK includes support for vector search and embedding policies, enhancing the capabilities for advanced search scenarios.

Azure AI​

📰WhatWhere
August 2024: The Azure Machine Learning Python SDK v2 was released, introducing new capabilities like standalone local jobs, reusable components for pipelines, and managed online/batch inferencing.
May 2024: Comprehensive resources and tutorials for developing Python apps using Azure AI services, including OpenAI, Vision, and Language services.
📰WhatWhere
August 2024: New Python samples and demos were released, showcasing the functionality and workflow of Azure AI Search solutions.
July 2024: The Azure AI Search client library for Python was updated to version 11.5.1, adding support for vector, keyword, and hybrid queries, as well as AI enrichment capabilities.

Windows PyTorch Support​

📰WhatWhere
May 2024: DirectML Support for PyTorch 2.2: Microsoft announced the integration of DirectML 1.13 with PyTorch 2.2, enhancing the performance of AI models on Windows. This update simplifies the setup process with a one-package install, making it easier to run inference on the latest models across various GPUs.

Fabric​

📰WhatWhere
July 2024: Git Integration Enhancements: Improved capabilities for creating and managing Git branches and connected workspaces, Warehouse Restore-in-Place: New feature allowing restore-in-place of a warehouse through the Microsoft Fabric Warehouse Editor
June 2024: Lakehouse Schema Updates: Enable lakehouse schema to reflect changes in dataflows, DuckDB and DeltaLake Integration: Added DuckDB package and DeltaLake into the default Python runtime.
March 2024: OneLake File Explorer: New feature for editing via Excel, Autotune Query Tuning: Enhanced query tuning capabilities, Test Framework for Power Query SDK in VS Code: Improved testing framework for Power Query SDK4..

Python Graph API​

📰WhatWhere
August 2024: Viva Engage API: The Viva Engage API is now generally available. This API allows developers to create, update, and manage Viva Engage communities, which are central places for conversations, files, events, and updates.
August 2024: User Privacy Settings: New capabilities to get and update user privacy settings for item insights and meeting hours insights using the userInsightsSettings resource.
August 2024: Microsoft 365 Usage Reports: New options to get or update tenant-wide settings to hide or show identifiable information for users, groups, or sites in Microsoft 365 usage reports
May 2024: Microsoft Copilot Extensions and Connectors: Introduced at Build 2024, these features allow developers to expand the actions that Microsoft Copilot can take on the user’s behalf and integrate knowledge from various data sources using Graph connectors.

Playwright​

📰WhatWhere
July 2024: TLS Client Certificates: Playwright now supports supplying client-side certificates for TLS Client Authentication.
July 2024: New max_retries option in apiRequestContext.fetch() to retry on ECONNRESET network errors. Updated browser versions: Chromium 128.0.6613.18, Mozilla Firefox 128.0, WebKit 18.01.
July 2024: Clock API: Introduced a new Clock API to manipulate and control time within tests, allowing for testing time-related behavior.

This article was created with the assistance of Microsoft Copilot. ✨