Monday 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM · Room A314

Optimizing Search and Content Management in Microsoft 365

In Microsoft 365, managing content with decentralized permission models support organizational change and cleaner permissions. Unfortunately, they may not align with users' mental models, making it difficult for them to find content. Creating intuitive locations for content based on user needs across these spaces can enhance user experience and efficiency.

Join us as we explore different approaches for centralizing your content in this modern decentralized world. You will leave with scenarios and best practices for structuring and delivering content throughout your tenant.

What we'll cover: -Understanding default search scopes and how to customize them -Using the Content Type Gallery and Site Templates for a consistent information architecture -Centralizing content through custom search experiences, including the PnP Modern Search web parts, Search Verticals, and the Highlighted Content web part. -Evaluating when to use Restricted Search and Access Control Lists -Using SharePoint Advanced Management for Restricted Access Control and Restricted Content Discoverability

Tuesday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room A402

Establishing SharePoint Online Admin Rockstar Status

SharePoint Online (SPO) integrates with many services that you need to be familiar with to successfully manage your collaboration content. In this full day workshop, we are going to learn about these different services and how to manage the integration with them by exploring and discussing SharePoint Online best practices for configuring, securing, optimizing, and implementing redundancy.

We will begin by discussing and creating a new Microsoft 365 tenant, followed by exploring how to customize both the M365 and SharePoint administrator dashboards so they only display information related to the Microsoft 365 services and SPO-related components like SharePoint Online and OneDrive.

We will also explore how to create and assign users to access SharePoint Online as both an end user and as administrators.

Being most scenarios require the migration of content, we will discuss several options for migrating content from many different sources to SharePoint Online and OneDrive.

Most migrations require at least an interim hybrid configuration, so we will introduce and explore the components that can be configured for a hybrid environment as an interim solution, or as a long-term solution.

We will then roll up our sleeves and explore the configuration of several components of SharePoint Online using both the GUI and PowerShell. These SPO components and configurations include;

Creating, configuring, and managing site collections

Configuring the user profile service (UPS) to ensure your Active Directory data is included in your search index

Exploring several search service configuration options, to ensure your users are able to quickly find the information they need, along with how to access some search-related reports, as well as some suggestions on how to help your users submit better search queries for more accurate search results

Discussing both SharePoint Online and OneDrive configuration options for managing and securing your collaboration content

Create and implementing a structured taxonomy to provide consistent and reliable data in SPO by using published tenant-level content types and managed metadata fields via the term store, as well as other custom column types, that can all be managed by information architects.

As we discuss these topics throughout the day, I’ll be sharing best practices, as well as tips and tricks that every SPO admin should know about while working with SPO.

When you leave the workshop, you’ll have all the skills and best practices to migrate to, configure, manage, and secure SharePoint Online and OneDrive components using the SharePoint Online Admin center, OneDrive admin Center, and PowerShell.

Tuesday 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM · Room A315

Mastering Metadata in SharePoint Online: Unlocking the Power of SharePoint Premium

Metadata in SharePoint Online is essential for efficient content management and retrieval. Entering metadata manually is a simple and powerful way to start organizing your content. However, as the complexity and volume of content grow, this approach becomes difficult to manage. This session will guide you through transitioning from basic metadata management in SharePoint Online to leveraging the advanced features of SharePoint Premium.

We will explore scenarios for choosing SharePoint Premium, focusing on the use case of managing legal documents. Learn how this advanced capability can streamline content management by automatically populating metadata fields, reducing manual entry, and minimizing errors. Discover how SharePoint Premium can enhance document accuracy and compliance, ultimately improving the efficiency of your legal operations. We will also discuss the one-to-many relationship of Matters to Cases and how to manage various content types including Contracts, Pleadings, Affidavits, Legal Briefs, Discovery Documents, Court Orders, Case Files, and Correspondence.

Wednesday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room A405

News: Who, what, when, where, and how

Today there are numerous methods to share news within your organization. This session explores the various types of news, the audience for each option, and what you should use when. Learn about how to create effective communications for your organization.

Wednesday 2:00 PM - 3:10 PM · Room A315

Case Document Management with Document Sets

In this session we will walk through how to enable and build Document Set Content types. We will explore features and configuration options. Join us as we explore uses for this folder 2.0.

In this session we will explore: What is it and how can it be used Plan
Build a Custom Document Set Document Set Settings Additional Configurations in the Library

Wednesday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room A405

A SharePoint based Intranet your users actually will love

Join this session to learn how to build a SharePoint based Intranet with all the features that your users will love, and how it will integrate with Viva and Teams.

Knut has worked with delivering Intranets for the last 15 years with both SharePoint and different vendors, and have deep knowledge in aligning business requirements with the functionality available and make great solutions for the end users.

We will cover all the latest updates from Microsoft and look into what webparts to use when, and share insights and best practices.

Wednesday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room A312

Teams and Microsoft 365 Sharing - Unstructured and Structured

Teams and Microsoft 365 external sharing is all about publishing or collaborating with people outside your organization. Users will find ways to do it with or without IT support (typically through email or shadow IT), so it's important for IT to provide an easy way for them to do it effectively and securely.

Sharing can be done in a number of different ways. Unstructured sharing to a small set of external users works well with the OOTB SharePoint and OneDrive features. External users can also be invited in as full Microsoft Teams guests for collaboration. Teams Shared Channels can be used to improve the user experience for external users, eliminating the need for tenant switching in Teams.

As the scale increases, structured sharing with many external users needs alternatives such as Azure AD B2B, custom code or third party solutions. We'll discuss options available and what makes sense where using real world examples.

In this session we will cover both configuring sharing appropriately, and the user experience for both content sharers and recipients. We'll go through a number of different scenarios.

External sharing in Microsoft Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint Online Azure AD B2B (Business to Business) Teams Shared Channels and Azure AD Direct Connect Microsoft's Entitlement Management portal's Access Packages for external users Custom and third party options leveraging the Graph API We'll also touch on how to leverage Microsoft's security stack to improve the security of your Microsoft 365 Extranet.

Wednesday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room A315

Integrating Forms with Teams for Real-time Responses

Do you ever wonder what your Microsoft Team members are thinking or what their thoughts are on a specific topic or initiative? Microsoft Forms is a powerful and versatile tool that allows you to create surveys, quizzes, and polls that can be responded to by your Team members which allows you to view real-time responses from your participants. These results can then be exported to an Excel spreadsheet for additional analysis, and to generate some neat visual charts or graphs using Power BI.

In this session we are going to introduce and discuss the different types of uses for Forms, how to create a form on a Microsoft Teams channel, explore the configuration options for these forms, as well as how to export the results for use in other Microsoft products, like Power BI.

Thursday 9:00 AM - 10:10 AM · Room A315

Build a Vacation Request Solution OOB

From gathering requirements to building a workflow in Power Automate, follow along as we build a solution to track and approve vacation requests. Take the information back to your office and build your own vacation request solution. The basis of this simple solution will use out-of-the box functionality in SharePoint and Power Automate.

Thursday 10:50 AM - 12:00 PM · Room A311

Building a Resilient Intranet: Strategies for Sustainable Engagement with Copilot and AI

Most intranets start strong—high traffic, executive excitement, and fresh content. But six months later, engagement stalls, pages go stale, and the value declines. This session focuses on building intranet solutions that don’t just launch well but stay relevant and resilient over time.

We’ll cover practical strategies for sustaining engagement using Microsoft 365 tools including SharePoint, Viva Connections, and Microsoft Teams. Learn how to design scalable information architectures, apply governance models that drive accountability, and use data-driven feedback loops to evolve content and structure. We’ll share real-world tactics to support content owners, maintain momentum, and adapt the intranet to shifting employee needs.

Additionally, we’ll explore how Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Studio can help ensure your content consistently resonates with employees. By assisting authors with tone, clarity, structure, and alignment to audience intent, Copilot becomes a valuable partner in making communications more relevant and effective. When used thoughtfully, AI can help content teams fine-tune their messaging and deliver an intranet experience that informs, engages, and connects.

Thursday 1:00 PM - 2:10 PM · Room A405

Data recovery options for SharePoint/OneDrive

SharePoint and OneDrive include several content recovery options for SharePoint and OneDrive for Business administrators, site collection administrators, and end users. Educating your end users on SharePoint recovery options like the site recycle bin, versioning, and site collection recycle bin can lighten the burden on your admins.

Using either a GUI or PowerShell you can backup and restore your entire SharePoint Server farm or components of it. In SharePoint Server you can also perform more granular content backups by exporting site collections, site, libraries, and lists, and there are options for recovering these site collections, sites, lists and libraries from content databases that are no longer part of your SharePoint Server farm.

With a vast majority of your SharePoint Server content stored in SQL Server it is imperative that you have an efficient way to recover items or entire databases as quickly as possible.

This discussion will introduce the Best Practices framework that will allow your SharePoint Server administrators to configure SharePoint as well as SQL Server for quick content recovery, minimizing the downtime and providing shorter and achievable Service Level Agreements (SLA’s).

Thursday 1:00 PM - 2:10 PM · Room A316

Teams First Information Architecture and Governance

When planning out or updating a Microsoft 365 implementation, SharePoint is still important, but it really needs to start with Teams, and then the underlying SharePoint structure for a big part flows out of that. It's not just answering planning questions, but also ensuring that everyone understands that Teams is much more than a meeting and chat platform.

Topics we'll cover in this session include:

Introducing a maturity model on how organizations leverage Teams, SharePoint, Email, and OneDrive Level setting on how they work together Understanding the differences between Standard, Private, and Shared Channels, and the underlying SharePoint site collections Where do standalone Communication and Team Sites fit into the Teams and SharePoint structure Guests versus B2B Direct Connect in Teams, and external sharing in SharePoint Open source scripts and Power BI dashboards to inventory and analyze your file shares, SharePoint on-premises, and SharePoint Online Answering the question - what does a Team and a Channel represent in my organization MindJet as a tool for planning your IA Commercial and open-source solutions for implementing your IA Real-world scenarios and case studies

Thursday 2:20 PM - 3:30 PM · Room A313

SharePoint Premium: The journey to automating content processing

Do you want to stop wasting time on manually processing content in SharePoint? Meet SharePoint Premium, the AI-powered service that automates content processing for you. In this session, we'll show you the different model types that SharePoint Premium uses, including Custom Models and Prebuilt Models. With these models, SharePoint Premium can automate a variety of content processing tasks, from extracting information from structured forms to identifying metadata in unstructured text and extracting specific entities from content. Join me for this informative session and learn how SharePoint Premium can enhance your efficiency and accuracy for content processing.

Thursday 4:10 PM - 5:20 PM · Room A315

Reaching Airspeed Velocity to Get Your New Intranet Off the Ground

The creation of the first intranet happened in the latter part of the 20th century, but no one would recognize that as an intranet by today’s standards. Since then, intranet implementations and the platforms they’re built on have matured significantly and grown more complex.

In this session, we’ll be looking at the modern intranet through the lens of SharePoint. There are plenty of decisions to consider and points to deliberate even before you jump into action. We’ll discuss optimal team composition, roles that should be factored-in, technological considerations, stakeholder involvement/representation, project lifecycle needs, launch considerations, and more.

I’ll be sharing my experiences, highlights, triumphs, and painful lessons learned architecting intranets of varying sizes for the last decade or so.

In short: we will be covering all of the things I wish I had known before I ever started building intranets in the hopes they will spare you some of the pain I endured.

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room A403

Navigating Document Approval in SharePoint: A Practical Case Study

At a medical research non-profit, different departments rely heavily on SOP documents, or Standard Operating Procedures. These documents have to go through annual reviews that are several layers deep, in addition to needing a group approval of the final SOP. In this session, Lindsay will break down exactly how she built SOP approval processes for six different departments using just SharePoint document libraries, Power Automate, and Approvals that have served their purpose effectively and efficiently for years.

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room A405

Ensure your intranet is ready for Copilot: How to plan an effective governance strategy

Are you tired of your intranet being a mess of unorganized, outdated, and non-compliant content? Do you have a governance plan that no one reads, follows, or cares about? Do you want to learn an approach to make your digital workplace more efficient, engaging, and secure? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this session is for you! Learn how to plan and implement governance for your intranet, Microsoft Viva, and Microsoft 365 in a way that actually works – and provides a framework to help you prepare and deploy Copilot. Whether you are new to governance or a seasoned pro, this session will give you the tips, tricks, and templates you need to succeed!

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room A410

Improving Microsoft Search by improving your content practices

In a world where content is increasing exponentially every day, more and more people inside organizations are relying on Microsoft Search and AI-based tools (like Copilot) to help them break through their increasingly confused information environments. While these tools continue to improve and better understand people's 'intent', even the best cannot make up for poor content practices that plague most organizations.

In this session, Join Virgil as he explores how to improve your content practices to increase search findability and better support the people in your organization that rely on Microsoft Search to find the RIGHT content for what they need, when they need it.

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room A315

Exploring Microsoft 365 migration considerations and tools

Congratulations, on your decision to move to Microsoft 365. If your mind is running rampant on how to complete the migration, this session is for you.

We will begin by exploring the steps necessary during the following migration phases • Before the migration • Completing the migration • Managing the cloud-based content after migration

As you can guess, you’re going to need to know what the best approach is to complete the migration, so we will also discuss what your migration options are, and what tools are available, including out of the box tools like the SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool (SMAT), the SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT), Migration Manager, as well as several other tools to help streamline and successfully complete your migration to Microsoft 365.

Friday 12:30 PM - 1:40 PM · Room A311

Next-Gen SharePoint: Elevating Collaboration with Copilot & Premium Integration

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, SharePoint continues to stand at the forefront of collaborative innovation. The introduction of Copilot in SharePoint marks a new chapter in its journey, offering unparalleled advancements in AI-driven collaboration and productivity. SharePoint Premium on the other hand helps you automate extracting data from your content to enhance your organization’s road to better compliance. In this session, we will dive on how you can use AI in SharePoint to create Copilot custom models to generate files, and leverage SharePoint Premium to automate the content processing and extraction of your data. You will learn how you can create an end-to-end solution for your users to enhance their collaboration using custom Copilot models in SharePoint, and to eliminate the manual document processing.

Friday 12:30 PM - 1:40 PM · Room A315

Ensuring brand consistency with Microsoft 365

Learn how to keep your brand consistent and improve your digital presence using SharePoint, Office, Stream, and Designer.

This session will explore effective strategies for leveraging these powerful tools to maintain a cohesive and recognizable brand identity. By integrating the functionalities of SharePoint, Office, Stream, and Designer, you can create a unified digital experience that reflects your brand's values and aesthetics.

Friday 12:30 PM - 1:40 PM · Room A316

Implementing Purview Information Protection with the Traffic Light Protocol

With the speed of AI development and the need for Copilot readiness, robust data governance and protection strategies are paramount. This workshop delves into the integration of Microsoft Purview Information Protection with the Traffic Light Protocol (TLP) to enhance safe sharing practices within organizations. We will explore the implementation of sensitivity labels aligned with TLP designations, enabling a clear and consistent approach to categorizing and controlling access to sensitive information.

In this workshop we'll cover:

• Business overview of the need for Purview Information Protection and what the Traffic Light Protocol is
• Explore what Entra ID Conditional Access Policies and Authentication Contexts are
• Review the Azure Information Protection Service
• Go over inventory tools for reviewing the current Microsoft 365 tenant setup
• Setup a dev tenant and get hands on
	○ Create an Authentication Context
	○ Create Conditional Access Policies
	○ Configure MFA requirements
	○ Define and publish the TLP sensitivity labels
	○ Configure auto-labelling rules
	○ Define external sharing rules
	○ Apply labels to 
		○ Sites, libraries, folders, and files
		○ Emails and meetings
		○ Teams, channels, and conversations