Tuesday 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM · Room 604
SharePoint Data Modeling: From Requirements to Usage
Data modeling is an essential first step in any Power Apps or Power Automate project. Power apps provides a user interface for information stored in a data source and Power Automate creates workflows that manipulate data stored in a data source based on specific events or triggers. Data modeling is difficult enough for professional developers, but it is even harder for citizen developers. Citizen developers usually have little exposure to concepts like data normalization and often can’t use true relational databases like SQL or Dataverse because of the cost of Premium licensing. So, they are left trying to figure out how to build their flows or apps using data stored in SharePoint lists or Excel spreadsheets. In this workshop I will show you some real-world techniques for doing data modeling. I’ll start with a typical project requirements definition and show you how to easily convert it into an Entity Relationship model. Next, I’ll show you how to map that Entity Relationship model onto a set of SharePoint lists. Once I have the lists designed, I’ll show you how to use them in a Power App and a flow. Along the way I’ll walk you through what you need to know about using SharePoint as a data source, including: • What Column types work well and which ones to avoid • When to use (or not use) Lookup columns to create relationships between lists • How to plan for Security in SharePoint • Other Common issues I’ll focus on SharePoint in the workshop but the techniques I teach you are also applicable for other data sources like Excel, SQL or even Dataverse.
Tuesday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 602:603
The One Copilot Workshop to Rule them All
Let's face it, Copilot is everywhere, in everything, it's like the force... and sometimes just as confusing and hard to grasp. Those who learn to harness the power of Copilots within their organization will be able to go where no organization has gone before...
But what does it all mean? It all seems so overwhelming. What if your organization is unwilling to pay for Copilot licenses? What is the average person to do??
Join Mark Rackley in this full-day demo-filled tutorial where attendees will learn:
- What is Copilot and Generative AI?
- What do you need to do to prepare for Microsoft Copilot?
- What are your options for extending Microsoft Copilot?
- When and how should you use Copilot Studio?
- How can you create your own Custom Copilot that doesn't require expensive licensing?
With practical demos and real-world stories from the trenches, you will leave with all of your Copilot questions answered and feeling empowered to embrace Generative AI in your organization.
Tuesday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 606
Microsoft 365 Compliance: Implementing information governance, risk, and compliance management
Microsoft 365 gives enterprises and government organizations the tools they need in the modern workplace to identify their risky information and to govern their data effectively to meet regulatory compliance needs. These tools help to protect sensitive data from both accidental and malicious data loss, and they protect the organization from risk by ensuring we retain our data appropriately following regulatory controls such as GDPR, NIST, and CIS. Implementing these compliance solutions requires a clear understanding of the capabilities available in the Microsoft cloud and industry best practices for establishing a data governance framework.
In this all-day workshop, David Drever and Joanne Klein will help you learn how to develop a framework for information governance for enterprises and government organizations, including planning a record retention schedule and implementing retention labels/policies. They’ll teach you how to leverage disposition reviews, implement event-based retention, and to apply retention labels to your data automatically. They’ll discuss how utilizing Compliance Manager and Insider Risk Management can further govern your environment. Finally, you will learn how to use eDiscovery to facilitate legal holds and “Freedom of Information and Privacy” (FOIP) requests. Join David and Joanne to discover how to implement data governance and compliance in Microsoft 365!
Tuesday 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM · Room 607
Improve Findability in Microsoft 365
Findability is much more than technology. It needs to be the combination of culture, communication, and technology, as well as how your content is organized.
This workshop discusses the most important success factors of enterprise search in Microsoft 365: roles and responsibilities, search metrics, risk management, governance, search lifecycle, as well as how to implement it well. Agnes uses real world examples to go through all the steps to enable you to create an actionable plan for your organization.
Tuesday 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM · Room 608
Dataverse Bootcamp for M365 Makers
Wes Preston
Founder and independent consultant working with platform alignment and no-code solutions with M365 and Power Apps
Dataverse, Dataverse, Dataverse… You've heard about it but haven't checked it out yet. Now's the time to see how to scale solutions up from Lists. In this hands-on workshop we'll start with a Power App built with List data and build a similar solution using Dataverse as the data source - talking through the pros and cons comparison along the way.
Adding Dataverse is an investment in time, skills, and licensing. Know when to engage and what to expect.
- Learn what Dataverse is, where it fits in the maker toolset, and how Copilot adds to the experience.
- Cover what the differences are between Dataverse, Microsoft Lists, and other data sources and talk through some of the 'what to use when' considerations as Lists solution builders integrate with and shift to Power Platform tools.
- Get a perspective on the maker skills needed when using Dataverse and how to get started in your organization.
Using the Developer Plan, attendees will get a hands-on look at Creating Dataverse tables, relationships, forms, and more. With Dataverse as a data source, we'll also do a quick compare of model-driven vs. canvas Power Apps.
Tuesday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 609
Automate Desktop Processes using Robotic Process Automation in Power Automate
Automate routine tasks, eliminate the chance for errors, and free up time for more important work with robotic process automation (RPA) and Power Automate for desktop.
This workshop allows you to experience the utility of RPA and Power Automate for desktop and use out of box actions such as manipulating Excel documents as part of an end-to-end invoice processing solution.
In addition, with the Copilot feature available, building the desktop flows has become easier than ever! Hence join Daniel Christian, a Microsoft MVP and certified trainer as he walks you everything that Power Automate desktop has to offer.
Tuesday 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM · Room 611
Big Data Analytics in SharePoint and Microsoft 365 with Microsoft Graph Data Connect
Have you ever worked in a large enterprise-scale SharePoint Online or OneDrive environment with thousands of sites, or millions of files, or thousands of users?
If you have, then you probably understand the challenges with trying to get detailed and timely analytics on your current state, including permissions for all files across all sites, or storage information for all sites and to try and figure out which groups are consuming all your space. Governing large enterprise-scale SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365 environments is a real challenge due to the sheer amount of data you need to reason over.
In this workshop, we'll look at how the Microsoft Graph Data Connect for SharePoint (Project Archimedes) provides some exciting capabilities which will help to get us this data quickly, without getting throttled, and in a form that we can easily report on, across very large enterprise scale environments.
We'll provide a step by step demonstration of how to setup and use Microsoft Graph Data Connect for SharePoint (Project Archimedes), Azure Synapse and Power BI to get access to these data sets quickly and efficiently, without getting throttled, and in a form that we can easily report on across very large enterprise environments.
Tuesday 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM · Room 612
Fix that intranet! Improve your intranet content, structure, and processes
This intranet-focused and beginner-friendly half-day workshop will help you transform your SharePoint Online intranet. We'll divide our time into two areas:
Theory & Best Practices: The first half addresses common intranet challenges, such as disorganized content, outdated information, and confusing navigation. We'll cover theoretical aspects of intranet governance, content strategy, and structure optimization.
SharePoint Application: In the latter half, we put theory into practice. Delve into SharePoint specifics, including hub structures, settings, and SharePoint features and tools. Learn to overcome pain points by leveraging SharePoint's abilities for a more organized, current, and user-friendly intranet.
Perfect for those aiming to elevate their intranet experience, this workshop bridges strategic planning with practical SharePoint solutions.
Note: This is not a hands-on build-an-entire-intranet-in-three-hours workshop. This is entirely focused on best practices and ideas for improving your existing intranet's content, structure, and processes leveraging all SharePoint has to offer.
Let's fix that intranet!
Tuesday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 613:614
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 compare, discuss, and explore SharePoint Premium to understand the differences between SharePoint Online and SharePoint Premium and explore the features available in SharePoint Premium including AI integration with SharePoint for content processing, Syntex integration, document portal, content governance, Microsoft backups, Microsoft archives, and SharePoint eSignatures.
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 using Out-of-Box tools.
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 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM · Room 615:616
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 619:620
Everything You Wanted to Know About Power BI... but were afraid to ask!
Power BI is the gold standard for cloud-based report delivery, and forms the reporting component of Microsoft Fabric. It's very approachable - you can get up and running with it in minutes, but it's also very robust, secure and extensible. As you might expect, it has many pieces and nuances, and it's important to understand what is possible, even if you may not take immediate advantage of some features, to understand what to use when. This all day tutorial will explore the way that Power BI works, and what it can do. We will walk through its architecture, the Power BI web service, Power BI Desktop and how it works with Microsoft Excel. Then we focus on the relationship with SharePoint, what can be done in an on premises or hybrid environment and how to connect it and refresh it with all sorts of data. Finally, we will cover off how it is licensed, and a whole host of other miscellaneous topics including how it works on its own, and within Microsoft Fabric. This tutorial consists of a mix of theory and demonstrations, with emphasis on the demonstrations using real world data. It is designed for the beginner and the novice user, but even advanced users will find some nuggets of new information. Power BI is a fast moving, and ever-changing product, and this tutorial is constantly updated to reflect that. Above all we encourage questions and dialog. We can't answer your questions if you don't bring them, so please come armed! Feel free to even bring us data and we can work through any reporting challenges that you may have. If you want to get exposed to Power BI & Microsoft Fabric, this is certainly a session for you.
Tuesday 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM · Room 604
Content Management for the AI Era: How to Optimize Your Content for Copilot
Content is the lifeblood of every organization. It is how teams collaborate, communicate, and create value. 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 the next-generation AI assistant, Microsoft 365 Copilot?
Join this workshop where you will learn how to get your content in order, so you can fully leverage the capabilities of Microsoft 365 Copilot. • Discover best practices for organizing your files, folders, and sites in Microsoft 365, ensuring easy access and seamless collaboration. • Prepare your content for Copilot, the AI assistant that transforms productivity by generating high-quality content, insights, and actions from your data. • Perform a security and governance audit to ensure information is not leaked through new AI tools. • Walkthrough integrating Copilot into your daily workflow, unlocking the full potential of AI-driven productivity.
By the end of the workshop, you will be equipped with the knowledge and skills to effectively organize your content within Microsoft 365, enabling you to harness the power of Microsoft AI and revolutionize your work experience.
Tuesday 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM · Room 608
Ultimate guide to administering M365 and Teams
Are you an admin who's been administering M365 for years? Or are you brand new to the admin role? Either way, there will be something for you in this workshop!
We will be taking a deep look into the administration of M365 and some of its services, with a heavy focus on Teams, using the admin center, PowerShell, Graph, and more. Expect deep explainers on what different switches really do, and practical advice on how to configure things appropriately for your organization.
We will spend time in this workshop setting up automations together and sharing real world examples of how to make your job easier.
Tuesday 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM · Room 611
Microsoft 365 User Adoption Master Class
A smooth deployment isn't enough. Driving effective utilization of SharePoint and Microsoft 365 is more than building effective migration strategies, training users on key features or sending out marketing emails. This master class provides a deep-dive on the components of user adoption. You'll learn why user adoption programs succeed and fail, gain practical experience designing adoption strategies and learn how to leverage innovation games to build consensus.
During this workshop, you will: • Learn the basic foundations of user adoption, including key intrinsic and extrinsic motivators • Understand how different types of users in your organization can make (or break) your chances of user adoption success • Understand how innovation games can help drive shared understanding, uncover user requirements and drive engagement/enthusiasm • Examine real-world user adoption programs and determine how and why they were successful
Tuesday 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM · Room 612
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 new capabilities like the Brand Center and Copilot 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.