Monday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 432

Best Practices for Intranet Information Architecture: the key to unlocking AI’s full potential

In this workshop, we will explore the basics of Information Architecture (IA) and its role in creating effective intranets using Microsoft 365, SharePoint, and Viva Connections. We’ll talk about why IA is so important to AI – and how you can ensure that your intranet content can act as a valuable partner in your AI solutions. Whether you are just starting out or looking to improve your current intranet design, this workshop will provide you with the necessary tools and techniques to make the most of new and upcoming features, capabilities, and best practices.

We'll cover key topics including creating and organizing content, building site structures, creating metadata, and leveraging search functionality.

You will take away:

• Approaches for planning navigation across the entire intranet and on individual sites
• Tips and best practices for audiences, hubs, and home sites
• Page design guidance that supports accessibility and great user experiences
• Effective use of metadata on pages and documents – and whether it is OK to use folders to organize your content.
• How to leverage Viva Connections to bring your intranet to your users in the flow of work – and how to plan audiences to ensure that the right tools and information gets to the right groups.
• How Copilot can help your information architecture and vice versa.

You'll leave with a clear understanding of what IA is, why it matters, and how to get started with creating effective intranets that meet your organization's needs.

Monday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 435-436

SharePoint: Zero to Hero

If you are new to SharePoint, this is your workshop. We will start at the beginning with, “What is this thing you call SharePoint?” and then go step-by-step to “Now I can build basic business solutions.” Everything we do during this session will be in SharePoint Online, but also works for On-Premises environments. No Code.

Here’s what we will cover:  1.            What is SharePoint 2.            Getting around SharePoint 3.            How to build and use a solution for your business needs 4.            Discover what metadata is and how it can help 5.            How to make sure the right people have the right access to the right things at the right time 6.            Create a one-stop-shop with a custom page

At the end of this workshop, you will have the information needed to create simple solutions using the tools provided by SharePoint without waiting for IT to build it for you. Buckle up. We’ve got a lot to cover.

Monday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 445-446

Driving employee engagement with Microsoft Viva, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Copilot

Hybrid and remote work are the new normal, but work trends indicate the greatest challenges are a sense of community, connection, relationship-building, and inspiration. This full-day workshop explores how Microsoft Viva, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Copilot come together to foster company culture, unlock communication and engagement opportunities, organize content, and spark employee creativity.

Tuesday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 432

Data Protection, Collaboration, and User Engagement: Assisting Your Organization in Doing it All

With the ever-changing cloud landscape, organizations struggle to help their employees collaborate and be effective in their day-to-day responsibilities. Adding data protection and security could raise the difficulty even more, as the business needs to balance the ability to collaborate while keeping its information and users safe. Ensuring user engagement and adoption is fundamental to success.

In this workshop, David and Sarah will cover the design and implementation of Microsoft 365's collaboration tools, such as SharePoint, Teams, Viva Engage, and more, while ensuring the solution is safe, secure, and fully collaborative. They'll help you understand how you can work together to protect your organization's information and employees in a manner that encourages endorsement from those using the tools.

Tuesday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 433-434

Power Automate Multi-Stage Approval Workflows - Workshop

In every organization there are a number of scenarios which require an Approval process. It could be Contract approvals, PTO/Leave Approvals, Event approvals and many other business processes.

In this workshop we'll learn how to design and develop Multi-Stage Approval Workflows using Power Automate. The workflow will move back and forth b/w different stages and will also learn how to restart a workflow from a given stage. We'll learn how to include Dynamic Approvers in the workflow process.

We'll also learn how to design and develop Automated escalations and Automated reminders. We'll implement timeout features in the workflows to escalate it to the next approver in the process. We will learn how to log and retain workflow history beyond what Microsoft Power Automate offers out-of-box. We'll develop a button to kick off the workflow from a SharePoint library/list.

Tuesday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 443-444

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 437-439

How to Maximize Your Intranet Potential with Out-of-the-Box Features in Microsoft 365 and SharePoint

Microsoft 365 is packed with powerful tools and features for building an effective intranet. But with so many options, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. In this presentation, we'll take a deep dive into the "out-of-the-box" features of SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365 and show you how to leverage them to build an intranet that meets your organization's unique needs. From creating and organizing content with SharePoint to enhancing communication with Teams and Viva Engage, we'll cover everything you need to get started, including newer capabilities like the Brand Center and Copilot Agents for SharePoint. By the end of the workshop, you'll have a solid understanding of the key features of SharePoint Online and how to use them to build an intranet that helps your organization communicate, collaborate, and succeed. You will also understand what is possible “in the box” and where you may want to invest in third party solutions or custom development.

Wednesday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 437-439

Empower Users with an Efficient Portal

In today's fast-paced and decentralized organizations, it is crucial to create spaces that enable users to work and collaborate efficiently. The wide range of solutions, including SharePoint, Viva Connections, Viva Engage, Teams, and Outlook, often leads to confusion about where to work.

This session aims to clarify the various offerings and discuss strategies for providing a portal that simplifies and addresses users' questions.

Wednesday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room 421-422

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 435-436

How to succeed in search: Acronyms, bookmarks, and Q&A results

Are your users breaking a sweat sifting through outdated and vague content in search of simple answers and results in Microsoft 365? Learn how to involve users in improving search for everyone in your organization by collaborating to incorporate acronyms, bookmarks, and Q&A result types in your search results across all of Microsoft 365.

We'll also cover some content lifecycle tips to help you keep unwanted and outdated results out of the picture (looking at you, Site Assets library full of icons and images).

While this session is targeted towards Search administrators (or global administrators), power users are welcome to (and should) attend to learn what's possible and to be empowered to start conversations with admins to make positive change org-wide.

Wednesday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room 437-439

Transform your intranet for the future with the latest best practices and capabilities in Microsoft

Intranets are more than technology projects. They thrive when they are at the heart of the digital workplace, connecting people, process, and technology. In this session, we will discuss how you can both prepare your intranet for the future with a great foundation and unlock potential with the latest capabilities in SharePoint, Copilot, and Viva. This session will guide you through creating a dynamic, user-friendly intranet that enhances collaboration and productivity. Learn how to leverage AI-driven insights and boost employee engagement. Whether you're revamping an existing intranet or building a new one, you'll gain practical tips and strategies to drive meaningful business outcomes and take your intranet to the next level.

Wednesday 2:00 PM - 3:10 PM · Room 437-439

Building your organizational home site & hubs strategy

It's a flat new world in SharePoint. We've moved on from classic and hierarchical site collections and built an array of modern sites. But how do we organize our content, sites, and intranets in this new world? This session introduces home sites and hubs and provides guidance on how to build a strong content management strategy for their use. We'll define what home sites and hubs are, lay the conceptual groundwork for understanding their use, and provide a creative new way of conceptualizing the logical ties between your myriad of flat SharePoint sites. We’ll also discuss how Viva Connections plays into our intranet and home site strategy.

Wednesday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room 421-422

Document intelligence in the AI-driven SharePoint Agreements Solution: Practical tips/best practices

The SharePoint Agreements solution is a new offering that encompasses the end-to-end flow of managing agreements both inside your company and with third parties. It ties together functionality across multiple M365 platforms including SharePoint, Teams, Word and Approvals and has AI features integrated throughout. This session will share details about the experiences of early adopters and best practices for organizing content within the solution workspaces along with features coming in the next quarter.

Thursday 9:50 AM - 10:10 AM · Solution Studio

IT Success Story: How a Small IT Team Cut Ticket Resolution Time in Half With Smart Documentation

Discover how Appalachia Technologies, a managed service provider (MSP) with a small but nimble IT team of just five people, transformed their service delivery approach by embracing a documentation-first mindset. By weaving AI-driven IT documentation into their daily operations, they were able to reduce response and resolution times by 50% and reclaimed over 160 hours annually, utilizing an automated password rotation solution.

In this session, we’ll walk through their real-world playbook, from how they structured their documentation to the habits and workflows that helped drive efficiency, consistency and visibility across the team.

Whether you're just getting started with IT documentation or looking to refine your approach, this session will equip you with practical strategies to optimize efficiency and maximize the impact of documentation in your IT operations.

Thursday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 437-439

Empowering corporate communications with Microsoft 365

Creating and delivering compelling and consistent corporate communications messages across multiple channels can be challenging, especially in the fast-paced and dynamic business environment. In this session, you will learn tips and best practices to improve internal communications. We will talk about new and emerging capabilities in SharePoint News and Viva Engage along with premium capabilities available with Viva Amplify and Copilot. Whether you’re a seasoned communicator or a curious novice, this session promises actionable insights, practical tips, and a dash of innovation.

Thursday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room 421-422

Content Types: Easier Than the Theory of Relativity

Everyone talks about them, but what the heck are they and how can I use them? We will start with some demos of how to use custom content types, then on to what the heck are content types anyway and we will end with another demo to build content types in the browser.

Key Takeaways:

1. What are content types?
2. Planning content types
3. Creating site columns
4. Creating content types
5. Using content types

Thursday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room 437-439

Enhancing Communication and Collaboration through Customized Search Experiences

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) -Ways to limit content from appearing in search

Thursday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room 442

You Have Sensitive Information. Now Let's Protect It.

Every organization has data considered sensitive to its business, employees, or even the industry it exists within. As a result, protecting its data has become a priority for many organizations worldwide. Microsoft provides several tools for identifying sensitive information within the organization and protecting it from being provided to sources that should not have it.

In this session, we'll cover features and processes such as Microsoft Purview Information Protection (MPIP), Data Loss Prevention (DLP), and more to help you protect your organization's sensitive information from leaving your control and falling into the hands of those who should not have it.

Thursday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room 445-446

Power employee engagement with Microsoft Viva, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Copilot

Learn how Microsoft Viva, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Copilot come together to foster company culture, unlock communication and engagement opportunities, organize content, and spark employee creativity.

Thursday 2:00 PM - 3:10 PM · Room 437-439

Optimizing your information architecture

Managing a portal in today's landscape of SharePoint, OneDrive, Microsoft Loop, and Microsoft Teams can introduce information sprawl. This session covers using information architecture principles and governance to manage collaboration spaces effectively. By employing hubs, policies, labels, and best practices, you can enhance data management and empower users to use Copilot efficiently.

Thursday 2:00 PM - 3:10 PM · Room 447-448

The intranet of tomorrow: Beautiful, flexible, and AI ready

Discover how creating beautiful sites and pages is easier than ever! With Copilot in SharePoint, you can easily build pages and sites grounded in the data that matters most in just minutes. Additionally, learn how Viva Amplify enhances your intranet experience by providing powerful tools for communication and engagement, making your intranet more dynamic and effective.

Friday 9:00 AM - 10:10 AM · Room 437-439

Knowledge Management Strategies in the era of Copilot: Beyond the Basics

Microsoft 365 offers a robust suite of tools to support your Knowledge Management goals. This session will explore comprehensive strategies to leverage the full spectrum of Microsoft 365 tools and organizational strategies, from manual and automatic metadata classification in SharePoint to enhance explicit knowledge, to AI-assisted tacit knowledge and expertise location experiences with Viva Engage and Answers in Viva, and Copilot-assisted knowledge experiences grounded in your organizational content. You will gain practical strategies for achieving your Knowledge Management goals and a deeper understanding of how Microsoft 365 and Copilot can support your journey. You will take away practical strategies for achieving your KM goals and a deeper understanding of how Microsoft 365 and Copilot can help you in your journey.

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 423-424

Forms, Forms, and more Forms. Data gathering for the modern info worker

Microsoft List (and SharePoint) forms, Forms with Power Apps, and Microsoft Forms. Which one (or more) should you use, and when?

This session will walk through updated capabilities and options available to no-code makers and citizen developers when building solutions with forms.

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 437-439

Navigating Communication Channels in Microsoft 365 for Meaningful Engagement

Microsoft 365 offers a suite of powerful tools to support communication including Viva Engage, Microsoft Teams, Viva Amplify, Viva Connections, and SharePoint Online which can transform how organizations communicate and collaborate. Navigating these channels to ensure the right message reaches the right audience at the right time requires strategic planning. Join this session to delve deep into the better practices for leveraging Microsoft 365 communication tools.

Backed by comprehensive user research, this session will provide actionable strategies for determining what-to-use-when, ensuring your messages are delivered through the most appropriate channels for your outcome objectives. We will explore the nuances of each tool, from the community-building strengths of Viva Engage to the collaborative power of Microsoft Teams, the broad reach of Viva Amplify, the seamless integration of Viva Connections, and more structured information management in SharePoint Online. We will address the critical aspect of managing responses and fostering ongoing engagement. Learn how to cultivate meaningful interactions and maintain productive communication flows within your organization.

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 440-441

Introduction to JSON to master customizing SharePoint

JSON is EVERYWHERE in SharePoint Online and your ability to take your SharePoint deployments to the next level depend on your ability to understand and create complicated JSON objects. In this densely demo-packed session, attendees will learn:

• What is JSON and how to understand the structure
• Tips for creating JSON objects and starting with community content as a starting point

Attendees will also learn how to use JSON Objects in SharePoint Online to:

• Customize list columns and list views
• Create Site Designs for creating custom site templates
• Create stunning Quick Views for Viva Connections ACE's
• Post messages in teams as Adaptive Cards
• Process SharePoint REST queries in Power Automate
• and more!!

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 442

Protecting users from themselves: How to engage your employees and drive effective data protection

Many organizations feel they must choose between protecting their data or enabling strong collaboration. David and Sarah ask: “Why not do both?”

Sarah Haase (renowned user adoption specialist) and David Drever (data protection expert) join forces to demonstrate you can collaborate, share files, and protect your data at the same time! Join them as they demonstrate how to configure your Microsoft 365 environment to collaborate internally and externally while ensuring your data is protected. Sarah and David will outline methods for planning your security, configuring Microsoft Purview, and driving effective employee engagement and adoption. By the end of the session, you’ll understand how to build a highly collaborative environment that lets your users share and protect your data.

Friday 12:30 PM - 1:40 PM · Room 433-434

Navigating Document Approval in SharePoint: A Practical Case Study

At her 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 four different departments using just SharePoint document libraries, Power Automate, and Approvals that have served their purpose effectively and efficiently for years.

Friday 12:30 PM - 1:40 PM · Room 437-439

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).

Friday 1:50 PM - 3:00 PM · Room 432

Revamp your Communications from Strategy to Technology

If you have ever done some type of communication, this session will help you make sense of where to start, what to use when and how to get your message out. If you are working on a large-scale campaign to the entire company or sending an update to your project team, there are all types of communications that happen in an organization. Learn how to create strategies that flow into governance guidelines and use the technology appropriately for the best results. This session will focus on using your intranet, SharePoint, Viva Engage, Viva Connections, Amplify and Teams as well as how Copilot can interact, and you will walk away with a better sense of where to start.