From October 12th to 14th, Microsoft Ignite (Microsoft's annual conference for professionals, services and enterprise products) was held in Seattle and around the world.
More than 907 sessions and 1212 speakers from around the world to speak around the following topics: Azure, AI, Business Applications, Industry Cloud, Microsoft 365, Power Platform, Security and Windows.
And this year again, there were a lot of announcements. Impossible to mention them all in this article but I have selected 6 announcements that particularly interested me and for which I will follow their development.
,# 1 Microsoft Places: Turn your spaces into places
Who are the people in the office?
How to tell my colleagues that I will be at the office that day?
How to know where my colleagues are?
How to better reserve spaces?
The new connected workplace platform wants to answer all these questions.
Microsoft Places' hybrid scheduling will draw on data from Outlook and Teams and allow you to visualize the upcoming week and know when your colleagues and close associates plan to be in the office. You will be able to view which days are the most crowded in the office, making it easier to meet face to face.
Several administration functions are provided, as well as room maps to see where your closest colleagues are sitting and choose your office accordingly.
Microsoft Places will be available in 2023 and if you want to know more, you can refer to the official announcement.
,#2 : “working hours and location” in Outlook and Teams
For this meeting, who will be on site and Who will be remote ?
In the same spirit as Microsoft Places, here is a new feature to facilitate hybrid work habits. We all know it today. Scheduling a meeting when it comes to determining who can attend in person, who will be remote or if you need a conference room.
Working hours and location is a new little module that allows a user to set their working hours in Outlook by week, specifying when they will be remote or in the office. They can also set different working hours per day, or multiple working slots in a day.
Colleagues can then see each other's work locations by using the scheduling wizard in Outlook, in the people map in Teams, or by opening a person's contact card.
Big change coming: office.com, the Office mobile app and the Office for Windows app will become the Microsoft 365 app, with a new icon, look and additional features.
We will find the interface that we already know with the "create" and "my content" modules, to which will be added :
- Feed : Relevant content based on who you work with and what you work on is surfaced through an easy-to-digest interface to simplify your workflow. Available today for commercial users on the web, Windows, and mobile.
- Tagging : A new way to group and organize your content with custom tags across all types of content. Available today for commercial users on the web and Windows
The changes will begin rolling out for Office.com in November 2022. Then, the changes will begin rolling out for the Office app on Windows and the Office mobile app in January 2023. If you want to know more, you can refer to the official announcement.
,,# 4 : Refresh interface of OneDrive
Change also to the OneDrive sharing interface. This one is enriched with new features particularly interesting:
- Visual file type filters to search better by document type
- The "People" filter to access all the files you have collaborated on by person card. The view shows by default the last people you collaborated with but it is possible to search for other people using a search bar.
- The "Meetings" filter to find files shared in a meeting you attended. This view includes all the meetings you've been invited to, as well as all the files shared in attachments, discussions and even meeting recordings, making it easier to find information.
Change also in the Teams channel interface. This one is enriched with new features particularly interesting:
- The compose box and recent messages now appear at the top of the page. This makes it much easier to create a new message without having to look at the bottom of the window.
- Message composition now groups message types, such as announcements, Q&A, video clip and more to come ...
- Each post in a channel can be pinned more easily and users can also pop out the post, keep an eye on the discussion, while continuing to work on other topics.
- Each channel will have a customizable header if you want to add a particular visual identity to a channel
This interface will be available in private preview by the end of the year and if you want to know more, you can refer to the official announcement.
,#6 : New features coming for Microsoft Loop
The development of Microsoft Loop continues and there have been many announcements. Here are the ones I find most interesting:
- Loop as an application with workspaces, pages and components (that sync with Microsoft 365 applications) to work on collaborative projects such as event planning, product development, brainstorming, etc...
- Loop components in more places (Word for the web + Whiteboard). Loop is now available in Word for the web, Whiteboard and Outlook for Windows. And the best part is that if you want to transfer the conversation to another application, you can copy and paste the component into Teams chat, Outlook or Whiteboard. All content remains synchronized and updated in real time, no matter where your teammates access the component.
- New Loop component types (Polls + Q&A). 2 new modules are introduced. Polls which allows you to create and launch quizzes and word clouds. Q&A for collects answers to questions in real-time across your team and tracks who responds to each question in line, providing clarity on who responds to what.
From October 12th to 14th, Microsoft Ignite (Microsoft's annual conference for professionals, services and enterprise products) was held in Seattle and around the world.
More than 907 sessions and 1212 speakers from around the world to speak around the following topics: Azure, AI, Business Applications, Industry Cloud, Microsoft 365, Power Platform, Security and Windows.
And this year, I had the privilege to be invited as a speaker to animate 2 sessions, the first one on a decision tree for Microsoft Teams and the second one on hybrid work around the new work habits and Microsoft Viva.
,Microsoft Teams Best Practices, Tips and Tricks from our experts
For Ignite 2022, Laurie Pottmeyer and Stephe Rose asked a panel of our MVP Community real world experts to share what they felt were the most impactful, currently available, Teams features for IT pros and their users.
Following my session, I was asked to write an article for Techcommunity on "Managing Communication Channels in Teams" including some of the ideas from my session, such as the decision tree to understand the differences between a team, a conversation group, a sharing channel, a loop etc ... and point out some of the differences between the Microsoft 365 business and Microsoft 365 education.
You can find this article by clicking on the image below
If you have any questions or comments this post, feel free to contact me
From October 12th to 14th, Microsoft Ignite (Microsoft's annual conference for professionals, services and enterprise products) was held in Seattle and around the world.
More than 907 sessions and 1212 speakers from around the world to speak around the following topics: Azure, AI, Business Applications, Industry Cloud, Microsoft 365, Power Platform, Security and Windows.
And this year, I had the privilege to be invited as a speaker to animate 2 sessions, the first one on a decision tree for Microsoft Teams and the second one on hybrid work around the new work habits and Microsoft Viva.
,Microsoft Teams Best Practices, Tips and Tricks from our experts
For the first one, Laurie Pottmeyer and Stephen Rose invited MVP Community real world experts to hear and see what the most impactful Teams features are for them and their customers.
I presented a session with a strong focus on the right decisions to make in a Teams deployment, beyond just technical governance. I shared a decision tree that I use daily with my customers to make them understand the impact of choices on a team vs. a channel vs. a conversation group, etc...
Here is the description :
Let's stop talking only about technical governance! Any good adoption relies on people and their good understanding of communication and collaboration paths. No good technical governance without good governance of uses. I will propose a small tour of the right decisions and key organizational schema to have on teams, public, private and shared channels, Loop and some governance particularities between business and education tenants.
If you couldn't attend the session, check out the recording below
,Travail et équipes hybrides : où en êtes-vous ? (delivered in French),
For the second one, I was with Sarah El Marjani to animate a round table in French on hybrid work, what has changed in our work habits and I shared with the participants some good tips to find your way in the management of communication channels, in the management of collaboration and new work habits.
We also talked about some of the solutions from Microsoft Viva that can improve the daily life and experience of the employee.
Here is the description :
The pandemic has clearly shown the importance of communication and collaboration with people on site and remotely. What about today? How have the structures in Teams evolved with shared channels? Loop? Viva? What master plan to consider? What best practices to follow? What do we need to know about new features and adoption?
If you couldn't attend the session, check out the recording below
If you have any questions or comments about my 2 sessions, feel free to contact me
Connexion
