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

Establishing SharePoint Online Admin Rockstar Status

Brian Alderman

Six-year MVP Alumni, 28-year MCT, Author, Speaker, Consultant

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.

Wednesday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room 435-436

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

Nate Chamberlain

Microsoft MCT

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 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room 435-436

Transition from SharePoint Search to Microsoft Search

Mike Maadarani

Microsoft MVP, Cloud Solution Architect, MCM Consulting

Search in Microsoft 365 has been evolving for the past 2 years, transitioning from the classic SharePoint Search to a modern advanced Microsoft Search. While we were able to customize classic search, we want to have the same experience in Modern Search and Modern SharePoint.

Join me to learn how you can transition from the classic SharePoint Search and display templated to a modern customizable experience that fits your need. In this session, we will cover how you can use PnP as the solution to customize your search, create your own modern search center and how to build search driven sites.

Thursday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 432

Copilot Studio vs. Azure OpenAI

Peter Carson

President

AI powered agents feel like they're coming everywhere, but how do you light up your own data in them not just for staff, but also for external guests? How can you incorporate an AI Agent into both scenarios securely?

We'll start the session with a level set on how AI really works, and in particular Retrieval Augmented Generation. A combination of Search and Large Language Models, it lets your chat interface answer questions it hasn't been trained by leveraging search. Built properly it also respects security, and only answers from content the user has access to, which can live in Dataverse, Microsoft 365, or any other search accessible repository.

One approach we'll cover is Copilot Studio, a low-code environment where you can build intelligent chat experiences using ready-made large language models, a dialog manager, and numerous data connectors. These can be published in a variety of ways, and can enforce security against your enterprise data.

The other approach is more roll-your-own, leveraging Azure AI Search, Azure OpenAI, and supporting code based on Microsoft published architectural examples.

We'll also cover consumption based pricing from Microsoft for both.

Feeling faint of heart with all this tech talk? Don't despair. Yes we'll be showing code, but we'll also go over real-world business cases, and the solution architectures that leverage the Microsoft AI stacks.

Thursday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 435-436

Reasoning over non Microsoft 365 content in Microsoft 365 using Search and Copilot

Ryan Schouten

SharePoint Knight

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 be discussing Microsoft Graph Connectors that allow your content to be visible in Microsoft Search and Microsoft Copilot

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

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) -Ways to limit content from appearing in search

Thursday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room 445-446

What's all the hype about SharePoint/OneDrive hybrid

Brian Alderman

Six-year MVP Alumni, 28-year MCT, Author, Speaker, Consultant

Microsoft SharePoint Server on-premises now makes it better, and easier, than ever to integrate with SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business providing a rich, robust, and powerful collaboration hybrid solution for your organization.

In this session we will learn what SharePoint/OneDrive hybrid is about, as well as why it may be beneficial to your organization. We’ll explore the several hybrid components including Active Directory configurations, search, managed metadata, connectivity services, as well as other hybrid components and their requirements.

In addition, we'll introduce an overview of the configuration steps necessary in both Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Server on-premises for a successful hybrid configuration.

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

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

Susan Hanley

Information Architect/Business Analyst

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.