Wednesday 2:20 PM - 3:30 PM · Room 202A

Elevating Your Experience: Improving Findability & Knowledge Discovery in Microsoft 365 & SharePoint

Susan Hanley

Information Architect/Business Analyst

In today's fast-paced business environment, quick and easy access to knowledge is critical for success. Unfortunately, many organizations and people struggle with finding and accessing information within their intranets.

In this session, we’ll review several different strategies to improve findability in Microsoft 365 – from simple tips to help users be more successful with search to more strategic approaches for intranet navigation and structure using home sites and hubs, information delivery with Viva Connections, improving knowledge management with Viva Topics and Viva Engage, and how Copilot can help.

You will learn practical and actionable tips and tricks that you can implement immediately as you evolve your employee experiences.

Wednesday 2:20 PM - 3:30 PM · Room 204AB

Getting Started Making Copilots with Assistants, Graph, and AI Search

Doug Ware

MVP Alumni, Author, Drone Pilot

Fabian Williams

Microsoft, Senior Program Manager on the Graph team

In this session Doug and Fabian will build a copilot that uses Microsoft Graph and Azure OpenAI On Your Data.

You will learn about prompts that use tools such as the ability to work with email via Microsoft Graph and how to use your own APIs and how to include retrieval augmented generation (RAG) using Azure Open AI with AI Search.

Wednesday 4:20 PM - 5:30 PM · Room 204C

Building a Policy Center with PnP Modern Search

Marc D Anderson

President | Sympraxis Consulting

In a modern Intranet, we generally want to store content in the site where it should be managed. We think of this as distributed content management and it's similar to the way News works in modern SharePoint. This usually means each department or organizational unit can manage their content using a process which makes sense for them.

At the same time, we may want to roll up that content in one central location for ease of access. A Policy Center is a great example of this approach and one we find ourselves building for many of our clients.

In this session, you'll see how the following components add up to make a Policy Center:

• Information architecture (IA) in the form of Site Columns and a Content Type to represent a Policy
• A Site Template which only instantiates a Policy library in the site and applies the IA
• A Policy library in each Intranet site, deployed using the Site Template, with Policies specific to that department
• Changes to the search schema to support metadata filtering
• A Policy Center page built using PnP Modern Search Web Parts to display the Policies from across the Intranet

Additionally, we'll discuss various approaches to solve the content management puzzle - before the Policy is even visible on the Intranet.

Wednesday 4:20 PM - 5:30 PM · Room 209AB

Manage Microsoft 365 Chaos with Microsoft Search

Ryan Schouten

CEO Mahay Consulting

Employees at many organizations have a hard time finding what they are looking for. How can we get the chaos under control? Microsoft has spent a lot of time and energy into improving the search experience. Come join this session to learn more about how you can take advantage of the unified and consolidated search platform that Microsoft is making available to Microsoft 365 users.

This is especially important in the age of Copilots. We'll discuss how we can best prepare for Copilot to make sure our users are successful.

Thursday 1:10 PM - 2:20 PM · Room 208AB

Enhancing Communication and Collaboration through Customized Search Experiences

Emily Mancini

Founder & Executive Director, Left Uncharted

In SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams, we are building a flat hierarchy through separate site collections or Teams and creating connections through hub site relationships. This supports organizational change, cleaner permission models, and so much more but can prove challenging when you want to centralize a subset of content across these site collections.

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 how to structure and deliver content throughout your tenant.

What we'll cover:

• Understanding the hub site structure and search scopes
• Using the content type gallery for consistent information architecture
• Centralizing content through search experiences (including Modern PnP search web part and search verticals)
• Creating intuitive microlearning content (through Learning Pathways or Viva Learning)

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 201

Unlock Third Party or Line of Business Data using Graph Connectors and Copilot

Fabian Williams

Microsoft, Senior Program Manager on the Graph team

In this session we will focus on how anyone but especially knowledge workers can use Large Language Models (LLMs) driven tools like Copilot or custom GPTs and 3P/LOB data in a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) pattern to aids individuals to ask in natural language questions and get more complete and textual responses.

Microsoft Graph Connectors allow for that by bringing in your own data into Microsoft 365 and making it available through a search index and semantic labeling (index) thus allowing the LLMs to reason over that otherwise locked data.

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 207A

Understanding Copilot (Part 2): Optimize Your Organization's Content for Copilot

Daniel Glenn

Microsoft MVP, Owner and Microsoft 365 Consultant at CollabFront

Emily Mancini

Founder & Executive Director, Left Uncharted

Content is the lifeblood of every organization. It is how teams collaborate and create value for the organization. However, managing content effectively can be challenging, especially with the increasing volume and variety of content types. How can you organize, secure, and process your content to maximize its value and prepare it for Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365?

In this session, we will discuss best practices for organizing your content and sites in Microsoft 365, perform a security and governance audit to ensure information is not leaked through new AI tools, and do a walkthrough on integrating Copilot into your daily workflow.

Join us for Part 2 of this 2-part series, where we discuss empowering users to navigate digital spaces effectively through Copilot and search techniques.

Friday 12:30 PM - 1:40 PM · Room 204AB

Using Site Templates to Deploy Consistent Information Architecture

Marc D Anderson

President | Sympraxis Consulting

A great information architecture improves many content management scenarios, from search, to business processes, to ease of content tagging and storage.

In this session, we'll look at how Site Templates can be used to create reusable site building blocks rather than focusing on configuring the entire site. By using these specific building blocks together, you can build up your sites to have capabilities you need, in whatever combinations make the most sense for the work at hand.

Friday 1:50 PM - 3:00 PM · Room 202A

Searching non Microsoft 365 content in Microsoft 365

Ryan Schouten

CEO Mahay Consulting

Search in Microsoft 365 is currently limited to content that is stored natively in its tools, how can you add in your own business content to the search index?

In this discussion we will discuss the options for getting your content into the search system in Microsoft 365. We will cover hybrid scenarios and how to best leverage them in addition to some other strategies that will help get your content ready for Microsoft Search.

We will also discuss how we can expose external content in Co-Pilot.