Washington, D.C.

Business Value Track

Monday, June 12th 2023, 9:00 am

  • Nate Chamberlain

    Microsoft MVP & MCT

Unboxing Microsoft 365: Make the most of your productivity toolbox

Join Microsoft MVP and certified trainer Nate Chamberlain in this full day workshop for newer Microsoft 365 users or evaluators looking to better understand all the possibilities Microsoft 365 brings to your organization. Attendees will learn about all the apps and latest features in Microsoft 365 that enable both individual and group productivity including SharePoint, Office 365 apps, Outlook, OneDrive, To Do, Teams, Lists, Planner, Viva, and more. We’ll go beyond definitions to explore specific business use cases, tips, and FAQs such as: - Microsoft 365 overview: What’s in my toolbox? - Understand the relationships between apps, and how permissions and Microsoft 365 groups power your modern work - Co-authoring documents, version history - Requesting files from others, sharing files, and managing access in OneDrive and SharePoint - Teams vs SharePoint vs OneDrive - Teams conversations vs chats vs emails - How do the newer Viva apps fit in? & more! Check out my workshop preview: https://youtu.be/kFgepQcAyT8

Monday, June 12th 2023, 9:00 am

  • Mark Rackley

    Microsoft MVP
  • Stephanie Donahue

    Microsoft MVP & RD

We’ve Deployed Microsoft Teams… Now What?

Every organization that uses Teams needs an effective long-term strategy. Microsoft Teams is the fastest-growing Microsoft application in history! Most organizations hear this news and immediately go into risk management mode. Who’s already using Teams? Should we stop people from using Teams? Do we need to put provisioning processes in place? What do we do with all this STUFF that gets created whenever someone spins up a new Team? What about SharePoint? It’s possible that more questions arise from a successful Teams deployment than an unsuccessful one! But how should you address your deployment and long-term strategy of Microsoft Teams? How does Teams fit into your overall Modern Workplace vision? Attend this full-day workshop with Microsoft MVP’s Stephanie Donahue and Mark Rackley from Avanade and: - Understand how Teams fits into your overall Microsoft 365 strategy - Learn to effectively manage your Teams environment including: + Scale + Governance + Retention - Dig into options for customizing Teams to get even more out of your Teams deployment including: + bots + web parts + provisioning - Tackle how to train users on best practices and prevent secure information from being accidentally shared - Learn what Viva is and why your company should be planning to embrace it to get the most out of your investments in Teams Microsoft Teams is here, it’s being adopted like crazy, and proper strategy and education is key to making the most of your Microsoft 365 investment. Check out our workshop preview: https://youtu.be/p4ikBeuodmk

Tuesday, June 13th 2023, 1:30 pm

  • Tamara Bredemus

    Learning Strategist Manager & Adoption Specialist at Planet Technologies

I’m a SharePoint Site Owner…Now What?

You missed a meeting and now you are in charge of your group’s SharePoint site or maybe you volunteered to get your hands dirty. Now that you are the site owner, you might not know where to start. We will work together to develop a game plan. In this workshop we will learn the following: 1. Figure out what type of SharePoint site you have. 2. Sifting through and managing permissions. 3. Navigation and custom pages. 4. Building a solution using out-of-the-box features. 5. Implement governance or create governance as needed. By the end of the workshop, you will have the skills needed to get started running your inherited site. Check out my workshop preview: https://youtu.be/wFOyTQ9VkCo

Tuesday, June 13th 2023, 1:30 pm

  • Daniel Glenn

    Microsoft MVP

Modernize Your Intranet in Less than 4 hours!

To fully utilize the new features in Microsoft 365, you need an intranet that employs the new modern tools. Most organizations do not have the budget for another intranet implementation that may take months or years, and ultimately not be up to date. So how do you implement the new modern features faster, while also having little downtime and gaining the best of what Microsoft has to offer? During this workshop, we will walk through how to take your current intranet to the modern version your users need. Using live demos and plans, you will learn: - Plan for and implement Viva Connections & Viva Engage - How to modernize your current classic sites - Hub site planning and management - How to make use of Microsoft 365 Groups for your existing sites - The tricks to using 'site swap' and how to get your new modern intranet at the root of your tenant - How to make the SharePoint Home site a seamless part of your intranet Come ready with your laptop to follow along!

Wednesday, June 14th 2023, 11:30 am

  • Amarender Peddamalku

    Practice Lead at Perficient

Power Automate Multi-Stage Approval Workflows

In this session we’ll learn how to design and develop Multi-Stage Approval Workflows Using Power Automate. We will also learn how to restart the workflow from a given stage and how to include Dynamic Approvers. We'll dig into how to design and develop Automated escalations and Automated reminders. We will also learn how to log workflow history and ways to retain the history indefinitely.

Wednesday, June 14th 2023, 11:30 am

  • Mark Rackley

    Microsoft MVP

An Introduction to Power Virtual Agents for Microsoft Teams

Over the past few years, it has become increasingly easier to create powerful bots with little to no code. Now almost anyone can quickly create a deploy a chat bot with ease. Power Virtual Agents is a premium add-on to the Power Platform that allows you to create and deploy such bots. As part of Dataverse (previously called Project Oakdale) many Microsoft 365 subscribers have access to Power Virtual Agents for Microsoft Teams. These chat bots are covered under their Microsoft 365 licensing and require no premium licensing to develop, deploy, or use. In this session attendees will learn: 1) How to create / deploy chat bots in Teams 2) How to create Topics, use branching logic, and prompt users for input 3) Add even more power to their chat bots using Power Automate flows. All without any additional licensing!

Wednesday, June 14th 2023, 11:30 am

  • Daniel Glenn

    Microsoft MVP

Build your first Power BI dashboard

Creating compelling reports is an important skill in our data-centric world. Have you seen a nice-looking report or dashboard and wondered how you can get started creating one? Are you interested in learning how to create a Power BI dashboard, from simple data to actionable intelligence? Then this session is for you! In this session, we will talk about the building blocks of Power BI, look at different types of data you can use, and define what makes a good dashboard. You will learn when to use Power BI Desktop and when you need the Power BI service. We will also discuss how you can safely share Power BI insights inside and outside of your organization. You will leave this session with the resources you need to get started in your journey with Power BI.

Wednesday, June 14th 2023, 3:30 pm

  • Andrew Seabrook

    Senior Collaboration Engineer at Cloudforce
  • Jesse Kellner

    Director of Programs at Cloudforce

Breaking collaboration boundaries with external partners through Teams

Guest access, external access, and shared channels all offer new ways to extend the boundaries of communication and collaboration. According to Microsoft research, IT executives report that 55 percent of all collaboration is with external business partners, and more than 300 midsize to large enterprises identified the two most common elements of collaboration that have risen in importance over the past two years: - Fostering collaboration with a wide range of people inside and outside the organization (68%) - Effective team communication (72%) The obvious question: How can we take advantage of the fundamentally deeper relationships these tools allow us to enjoy with our fellows in partner organizations while ensuring that our most sensitive data and interactions remain secure? Considering this question, it is high time for a re-imagining of how we approach and structure inter- and intra-organizational relationships from a technical perspective, with a renewed focus on distinguishing what makes day-to-day work most meaningful and how to empower users across different environments to work together most meaningfully. In this session, we will explore the ways in which the Teams platform can help us realize the goal of bringing external and internal users closer together while maintaining the integrity of the team, and refresh both our perspectives and priorities for organizing and supporting users and their flow of work.

Wednesday, June 14th 2023, 3:30 pm

  • Daniel Christian

    Microsoft MVP & MCT

Forms, Forms Everywhere but Which One Should I Pick?

Microsoft has a variety of no-code, low-code for forms and apps services available, so which one do I use? Join Daniel Christian, a Microsoft MVP and certified trainer, as he walks you through these form options available and provides guidance on when you should use which one. This is a demo heavy session with real-world examples.

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 9:00 am

  • Joanne Klein

    Microsoft MVP

An end-to-end look at Microsoft Syntex

Microsoft Syntex is a big step forward in providing the ability to intelligently identify content across your Microsoft 365 environment. Unstructured content is being produced at an exponential rate in our modern workplaces today and we need a way to manage it at scale by providing structure (content types and metadata) and governance (security and compliance controls) to it. Microsoft Syntex is that and so much more! To demonstrate this new capability, Joanne Klein will walk through a live demo of using a Microsoft Syntex AI document understanding model to intelligently identify Statements of Work across SharePoint libraries. The walkthrough will cover setup, training, deployment, and all the "extras" you get with a Syntex license. Microsoft Syntex. It’s almost magic.

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 9:00 am

  • Amarender Peddamalku

    Practice Lead at Perficient

Build external-facing websites using Power Pages

Using Power Pages we'll learn to quickly create powerful external-facing websites and customize them with pages, layout, and content. We'll also learn how to configure and allow users outside the organizations to sign in with a wide variety of identities, create and view data in Microsoft Dataverse, or even browse content anonymously. We'll dive into portals ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) using Microsoft Power Platform CLI tool to deploy/publish changes from Dev > QA > Production.

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 9:00 am

  • Daniel Christian

    Microsoft MVP & MCT

Why Should I Consider Using Power Automate for Desktop?

While we do live in a cloud-first, desktop-first technology era, there are still several home-grown or legacy applications that are still being used. They do not have an API for cloud-based services to leverage and hence we need a robotic process automation (RPA) system that can fill in the gap. Join Daniel Christian, a Microsoft MVP and certified trainer as he introduces you to Power Automate for desktop.

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 10:40 am

  • Virgil Carroll

    Owner and President at High Monkey

Microsoft Viva Topics: Upping your Knowledge Management Strategy

Microsoft Viva may still be one of Microsoft's newer technology stacks, but even at its young age it provides vast amount of opportunities to organizations to better tackle their knowledge management goals. Where there are many Viva tools currently available, Viva Topics provides the greatest opportunity to up your knowledge management game. In this session, join Virgil Carroll as he walks you through the the capabilities of Microsoft Viva, how it ties into comprehensive knowledge management and strategies to leverage it inside any kind of organization.

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 10:40 am

  • Emily Mancini

    Microsoft MVP

Conducting user research to drive your intranet design

Intranet teams are responsible for creating intuitive experiences for employees to find the right content at the right time, enabling them to do their jobs better. Many organizations forget to include employees in the development process, introducing the risk of creating a solution that does not meet the real need. In this session, we will discuss how to develop a user research plan, conduct virtual usability testing, and communicate the results across your organization. Learn how user research can help you achieve your business goals and identify 85% of the usability problems early in your development process. Create a human-centered process in your organization to yield the best results.

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 12:40 pm

  • Husein Sharaf

    President & CTO at Cloudforce
  • Jonathon Segars

    Cloud Solutions Engineer at Cloudforce

Securing Your Remote Workforce Through Azure Virtual Desktop

Hybrid workplaces are here to stay, and organizations are faced with new challenges surrounding securing their remote workforce. Businesses are invested in pivoting to a cloud-first approach, but how can you properly secure your environment when the workforce is dispersed, using their own devices, and connecting from unknown networks? Microsoft’s Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) allows organizations to quickly deploy managed workstations for a modern and flexible remote workforce. AVD enables organizations to control the workspace of its employees even in a BYOD environment; the organization controls the virtual desktop and employees can remain responsible for their own devices. This separation allows for a lower administrative overhead, a more secure environment, and a highly scalable solution for organizational growth. This session will focus on how your organization can leverage AVD to empower your remote workforce while maintaining control of your data and securing your cloud infrastructure.

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 12:40 pm

  • Shyam Oza

    Director of Product Management

Anatomy of an Attack and How to Recover with Spanning Backup for M365

Uber, Medibank, Rockstar and many more were targeted in 2022. We’ll peel the covers back on some of last year’s most popular data breaches and social engineering hacks to learn from and prevent them from occurring in the first place. Its also not a matter of if but when and we’ll take a look at how to recover data in minutes with Spanning Backup for Microsoft 365.

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 12:40 pm

  • Antoine Snow

    AvePoint, US Public Sector Solutions Leader

From Insights to Impact: Measuring Your Intranet ROI

Digital Transformation has taken businesses on a journey of technical advances resulting in a new way of working. SharePoint Intranets are no longer static file repositories. They’re dynamic venues for knowledge sharing, productivity, and collaboration. A well-managed modern SharePoint Intranet streamlines communication, improves employee experience, and facilitates connection. How can you tell if your investments in modernizing successfully result in a well-managed intranet? In this session, we will cover: Top KPIs you should be monitoring to evaluate the health of your SharePoint Intranet How to implement those metrics with actionable steps that will increase user adoption, improve site performance, and help provide usage data to your key stakeholders. 

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 1:20 pm

  • Michelle Gilbert

    Microsoft Director Modern Work Customer Success | President MN M365 User Group | Former MVP

Understanding the Modern Work Employee Experience Architecture

Learn how Microsoft is empowering employee experiences at the core of what you care about, to the personal and team productivity needs, beyond to how you connect to community and leaders, and building your professional experiences. You will walk away with a new sense of Modern Work Architecture that envisions where work gets done and what matters to you and employees you may support.

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 1:20 pm

  • Steven Storey

    Customer Success Director, Microsoft

💡TaaP in a Snap for Project/Program Management

TaaP (Teams as a Platform) for managing your programs/projects from concept to completion within Microsoft Teams. You'll walk away with actionable insights to streamline your workload(s) in Teams!

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 1:20 pm

  • Nick Brattoli

    Microsoft MVP & MCT

Scaling your SharePoint intranet for large organizations

You've created your "quick and dirty starter intranet," and users and groups are starting to ask for their own SharePoint sites and Teams. Maybe you work for a conglomerate and want to host multiple brands inside a single Microsoft 365 Tenant. Maybe you've even done a migration from your older SharePoint environment. No matter the case, scaling out your intranet can become a daunting task with many branching paths. In this session, join Nick Brattoli as he discusses strategies around scaling your intranet. He'll talk about topics such as: • Keeping your architecture scalable and secure • Avoiding Sprawl • Adoption recommendations • Admin and site owner tips and tricks

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 2:40 pm

  • Daniel Glenn

    Microsoft MVP

Power BI Sharing: Your Options for Keeping Everyone Informed

Every organization is a data organization and you must collaborate on data to stay on track. Sharing insights from within Power BI will give you an advantage and help steer your organization in the right direction. However there are some pitfalls with sharing - if you don’t know your options and set proper governance, you could be on your way to a data breach or giving your private information to the competition. In this session, you will get a short introduction to Power BI and understand where data resides, why and how you should share with your colleagues and outside partners, and get a strategy for setting governance for your data. You will walk away with the outline of a governance plan, an understanding of your sharing options, and the sharing settings you should immediately turn off.

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 2:40 pm

  • Shyam Oza

    Director of Product Management

How AI Changes the Threats to Your Organization’s Data What to do About it

Having fun with ChatGPT? It might not all be fun and games. Join Shyam Oza to understand how Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks will evolve in 2023 and beyond. Learn from the experts on how to defend your organization and have a response plan ready for when things go wrong. Hear real world war stories, see how Spanning’s rich integrations across products really strengthen your data protection posture in Microsoft 365 and beyond.

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 2:40 pm

  • Mark Rackley

    Microsoft MVP

A Real World Introduction to Viva Connections

One of the brightest stars (and lowest cost) member of the Microsoft Viva family is Viva Connections, but it also seems to be the most misunderstood. What exactly is Viva Connections, what features does it offer, and how can your organization start using it today? In this lively session, attendees will learn: - What is the difference between Viva Connections Desktop and Viva Connections Mobile? - How to best use the Viva Connections Newsfeed - How to use and customize the Viva Connections Dashboard - How to take advantage of out of the box ACE's (Adaptive Card Extensions) and how to use the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) to create your own to create a more powerful dashboard experience

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 2:40 pm

  • John Peluso

    Microsoft RD

Taking Planner to Task! Getting Planner to Work for YOUR Team

There’s no shortage of collaborative task management apps out there, but Planner has some good things going for it right off the bat. It’s part of the fabric of Office 365 and that family heritage can present some real benefits, but in the world of task management software, it’s a relative newcomer—so where are the sharp edges and “gotchas” that could ruin your day? In this session, we’ll explore the good, bad and ugly of Planner and its relationship with Office 365. For example, why is Planner’s integration with M365 Groups both a blessing and a curse? We’ll review several real-world examples and give you the best practices and suggested approaches learned from real teams in the field.

Thursday, June 15th 2023, 4:30 pm

  • Asif Rehmani

    Microsoft MVP

Design blended learning solutions for your organization

Classroom training by itself is not enough. It wasn't enough before COVID and it's definitely not enough or even possible many times post COVID. Employees are in hybrid environments spending time at home and office as required. There isn't a single learning delivery solution that by itself can provide the appropriately needed learning and support for our Microsoft 365 users wherever they are. This session will dig into the learning technology models combining macrolearning and contextual microlearning that works! We will see real life examples of solutions deployed by many major corporations around the world on how to structure blended learning for your organization in the new normal.

Friday, June 16th 2023, 9:00 am

  • Amarender Peddamalku

    Practice Lead at Perficient

Automate content processing using AI & Microsoft Syntex

We'll learn how to use Microsoft Syntex that uses advanced AI and machine teaching to amplify human expertise, automate content processing, and transform content into knowledge.

Friday, June 16th 2023, 10:20 am

  • Daniel Glenn

    Microsoft MVP
  • Joanne Klein

    Microsoft MVP

Microsoft Syntex and Viva Topics - A better together story

Microsoft Syntex is Content AI integrated into the flow of work, but what does that really mean? Join Microsoft MVPs Joanne and Daniel in this session where they'll unravel this statement and demonstrate how Syntex can bring structure to content and feed into Viva Topics to automatically organize it for you! Ultimately, this makes it easy for people to find the information and knowledge they're looking for right when they need it in the context of their work. Joanne and Daniel will demonstrate an end-to-end example of how a simple-to-build Syntex AI model, SharePoint taxonomy, curated Viva topics and AI-generated topic pages can come together in a secure and compliant manner to turn content into knowledge across the Microsoft 365 apps users use every day.

Friday, June 16th 2023, 10:20 am

  • Virgil Carroll

    Owner and President at High Monkey

Building your own 365 knowledge network

If anything has been learned from the last few years, its how valuable our collective organizational knowledge is and important it is to make sure everyone has access to it, no matter where or when you work. Microsoft introduced a knowledge management strategy many years ago, an though the different technologies are sprinkled across various 365 services, it is still giving organizations an opportunity to leverage these technologies together into a cohesive strategy. In this session, Virgil will walk you through the various knowledge management components inside Office 365, including Microsoft Search, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva (and others). He will help you see how your organization could leverage these opportunities and start you down the path to knowledge management success.

Friday, June 16th 2023, 10:20 am

  • Emily Mancini

    Microsoft MVP

Creating a powerful employee experience with Viva

You can create a powerful digital employee experience in Microsoft 365 without ever touching custom coding. With the launch of Viva, there is now a suite of tools to support the unique needs of our new hybrid work scenarios. Learn more about how: • Viva Connections can bring your intranet to where people are working in Microsoft Teams • Viva Learning supports upskilling and educating your organization • Viva Engage fosters communication across work units

Friday, June 16th 2023, 12:30 pm

  • Asif Rehmani

    Microsoft MVP

All that you ever wanted to know about Microsoft 365 learning pathways

Are your employees utilizing Microsoft 365 to the fullest? Do they have the training and support needed to be successful in their job? Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways is a Microsoft-built solution you can deploy to your tenant, today, for free. It creates an adoption and training center that showcases dynamic, always up-to-date content from Microsoft to support training and adoption for your end users. You can also customize it to fit the exact needs of your organization by incorporating your own training content and highlighting your events. Come to the session and I will show you how you can deploy and get the best use out of the content from Microsoft 365 learning pathways.

Friday, June 16th 2023, 12:30 pm

  • Daniel Glenn

    Microsoft MVP
  • Joanne Klein

    Microsoft MVP

Collaboration and Compliance in the Modern Workplace

Have you moved to Microsoft 365 for Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, and Yammer to reap the benefits of modern collaboration, but left wondering how to incorporate some of the compliance features you now have access to? Join Microsoft MVPs Joanne and Daniel in this session where they'll bring together two equally important yet seemingly incompatible aspects of the modern workplace: collaboration and compliance. Although serving both masters is challenging, this workshop will look at practical ways to "dress up" collaboration with compliance. With a he-said-she-said approach, Daniel will talk about the modern collaboration tools available in Microsoft 365 and Joanne will share what kinds of Microsoft Purview compliance controls could be applied to help them be more compliant.

Friday, June 16th 2023, 1:50 pm

  • Asif Rehmani

    Microsoft MVP

5 steps for driving sustainable Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint user adoption

Why do so many people resist changing their ways? It's not because Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint are bad platforms - quite the contrary actually - it's because of their past experiences with change in technology. Change Management is hard. No doubt about it! In this session, we will talk about the 5 proven things You can do to make your users fall in Love with Microsoft 365 and drive end user adoption of the platform.