[news.microsoft.com] podcasts – The Intrazone by Microsoft 365

Farewell (for now) 

Hybrid Work on Wheels 

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop April 2025 

The Easter Bunny hopped and in SharePoint tech terms - the SharePoint Easter eggs were hoppin' into your Microsoft 365 tenants! This month's (eggs) updates include: Viva Connections cards in SharePoint agents, SharePoint eSignature for Microsoft Word, SharePoint quick steps to automate common tasks and workflows, new document library template: "Resume repository", OneDrive: Ask Copilot questions on meeting recordings, and more. Plus, we recap the BIG Copilot news day and all the disclosed elements.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

00:00 Intro

01:09 Employee engagement

03:45 Teamwork

06:45 Related items

14:39 May 2025 Teasers

15:57 Closing

SharePoint | @SharePoint & @MSSharePoint.Bsky.social| SharePoint Community blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Microsoft Learn - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Microsoft 365 changes

Upcoming events:

NOW ON DEMAND: Microsoft's 50th Anniversary | April 4, 2025 (Worldwide) 

Microsoft 365 Community Conference | May 5-8, 2025 (Vegas)

Microsoft Build | May 19-22, 2025 (Seattle, WA | Online)

SharePoint Intranet Festival (SWOOP Analytics) | May 21, 2025 (Online)

European Collaboration Summit | May 26-28, 2025 (Düsseldorf, Germany) 

European Power Platform Conference | June 16-19 (Vienna, Austria) 

TechCon 365 - Seattle | June 23 – 27, 2025 (Seattle, WA) 

TechCon 365 - Atlanta | August 11-15, 2025 (Atlanta, GA)

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop March 2025 

March Madness in SharePoint tech terms means the SharePoint team worked like mad to deliver a lot of great new tech: Create pages with Copilot in SharePoint, Viva Connections: New News experience, SharePoint agents: New usage reports, a new Table toolbar, annotation layout and tools for editing PDFs, approval workflows to any list or library, OCR for OneDrive, and more. Plus, we recap the output of the SharePoint Hackathon - celebrating the winning submissions.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

01:30 Employee engagement

10:08 SharePoint Hackathon - That's a wrap!

14:07 Teamwork

19:27 Related items

24:24 April 2025 Teasers

SharePoint | @SharePoint & @MSSharePoint.Bsky.social| SharePoint Community blog | Feedback 

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Microsoft Learn - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals.

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Microsoft 365 changes

Upcoming events:

"SharePoint: From Concept to Creation to Impact + Live AMA" webinar with Jeff Teper | NOW ON DEMAND

SharePoint Hackathon (Learning series + Awards ceremony | NOW ON DEMAND)

Microsoft's 50th Anniversary | April 4, 2025 (Worldwide) 

Comms vNext | April 15-16, 2025 (Denver, CO) 

Microsoft 365 Community Conference | May 5-8, 2025 (Vegas)

Microsoft Build | May 19-22, 2025 (Seattle, WA | Online)

SharePoint Intranet Festival (SWOOP Analytics) | May 21, 2025 (Online)

European Collaboration Summit | May 26-28, 2025 (Düsseldorf, Germany) 

European Power Platform Conference | June 16-19 (Vienna, Austria) 

TechCon 365 - Seattle | June 23 – 27, 2025 (Seattle, WA) 

TechCon 365 - Atlanta | August 11-15, 2025 (Atlanta, GA) 

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Get to know Copilot 

There is so much to learn about Microsoft 365 Copilot, it helps to have someone translate Copilot into practical knowledge, tips, and tricks. We chat with TJ Devine, one of Microsoft's foremost experts in Copilot - to hear how it evolves AND how best to talk about it - to understand what you can do with AI in Microsoft 365. You'll hear TJ touch on key AI innovations, core integration touch points, customer journeys with Copilot adoption, some of his favorite tips when working with Copilot, and a glimpse into the future. Small note: TJ, Mark, and Chris recorded this themselves - their real voices - no AI augmentation, just pure AI education! 

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

08:57 - Interview with TJ Devine

44:55 - Upcoming Events

TJ Devine | LinkedIn

SharePoint | @SharePoint & @MSSharePoint.Bsky.social| SharePoint Community blog | Feedback 

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Copilot hub on adoption.microsoft.com

Microsoft Learn - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals.

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Microsoft 365 changes

Upcoming events:

• "SharePoint: From Concept to Creation to Impact + Live AMA" webinar with Jeff Teper | Jan. 29, 2025, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PST
• Ability Summit | March 18, 2025 (Online)
• MVP Summit 2025 | March 24-27.2025 (Redmond, WA & online)
• AIIM 2025 | Atlanta, GA March 31- Apr. 2
• Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | March 31 – April 2 (Las Vegas, NV)
• Microsoft's 50th Anniversary | April 4, 2025 (Worldwide)
• Comms vNext | April 15-16, 2025 (Denver, CO)
• Microsoft 365 Community Conference | May 5-8, 2025 (Vegas)
• Microsoft Build | May 19-22, 2025 (Seattle, WA | Online)
• SharePoint Intranet Festival (SWOOP Analytics) | May 21, 2025 (Online)
• European Collaboration Summit | May 26-28, 2025 (Düsseldorf, Germany)
• European Power Platform Conference | June 16-19 (Vienna, Austria)
• TechCon 365 - Seattle | June 23 – 27, 2025 (Seattle, WA)
• TechCon 365 - Atlanta | August 11-15, 2025 (Atlanta, GA)

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Deep M365Con learning with Laura and Rez 

Are you ready for deep thoughts on deep learning with Laura Rogers and Noorez Khamis? Laura is an MVP and founder of IW Mentor, who brings a wealth of knowledge in SharePoint and Microsoft 365. Rez is also an MVP and CTO at Creospark with an extensive background on the depths of SharePoint and Microsoft 365. Together, they bring us insights of in-person events, based on their own workshop experiences and the benefits they see, and receive, during hands-on learning and the importance of networking at conferences. It's a great conversation about tech, learning, and sharing what you learn.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

02:03 Interview with Laura Rogers and Noorez Khamis

38:17 Upcoming Events

Laura Rogers (IW Mentor) | LinkedIn | Twitter 

Noorez Khamis (Creospark)| LinkedIn | Twitter 

SharePoint | @SharePoint & @MSSharePoint.Bsky.social| SharePoint Community blog | Feedback 

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Microsoft Learn - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals.

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Microsoft 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Ability Summit | March 18, 2025 (Online) 

MVP Summit 2025 | March 24-27.2025 (Redmond, WA & online) 

Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | March 31 – April 2 (Las Vegas, NV) 

Microsoft's 50th Anniversary | April 4, 2025 (Worldwide) 

Comms vNext | April 15-16, 2025 (Denver, CO) 

Microsoft 365 Community Conference | May 5-8, 2025 (Vegas)

Microsoft Build | May 19-22, 2025 (Seattle, WA | Online)

SharePoint Intranet Festival (SWOOP Analytics) | May 21, 2025 (Online)

European Collaboration Summit | May 26-28, 2025 (Düsseldorf, Germany) 

European Power Platform Conference | June 16-19 (Vienna, Austria) 

TechCon 365 - Seattle | June 23 – 27, 2025 (Seattle, WA) 

TechCon 365 - Atlanta | August 11-15, 2025 (Atlanta, GA) 

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop February 2025 

No extra day this year. No matter, the product team crammed a lot of goodness into the 28 days of Feb'2025. The busy'ness delivered: Viva Connections: User-created cards, Copilot Visual Creator powered by Clipchamp, Microsoft Lists: Forms updates, SharePoint: Updated document libraries, Improved Microsoft Lists links in Teams chats and channels, Preview mode for SharePoint Pages, Personal Loop workspaces, SharePoint spaces retirement, and more. Plus, we grabbed time with Matt Taylor to talk about getting started with SharePoint agents, including his own journey as a recent implant into the world of SharePoint from the Teams Rooms team.

Read and follow along with this episode's corresponding blog post.

01:27 - SharePoint Hackathon info

04:00 - Employee engagement

07:43 - Interview with Matt Taylor

28:10 - Teamwork

38:04 - Related tech

44:00 - Teasers

45:42 - Microsoft 365 Community Conference info

Matt Taylor | LinkedIn

SharePoint | @SharePoint & @MSSharePoint.Bsky.social| SharePoint Community blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Microsoft Learn - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Microsoft 365 changes

Upcoming events:

• NOW ON DEMAND | "SharePoint: From Concept to Creation to Impact + Live AMA" webinar with Jeff Teper, CJ Tan, and Melissa Torres
• SharePoint Hackathon, including six webinars | March 3-17, 2025 (Online)
• Ability Summit | March 18, 2025 (Online)
• MVP Summit 2025 | March 24-27.2025 (Redmond, WA & online)
• Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | March 31 – April 2 (Las Vegas, NV)
• Microsoft's 50th Anniversary | April 4, 2025 (Worldwide)
• Comms vNext | April 15-16, 2025 (Denver, CO)
• Microsoft 365 Community Conference | May 5-8, 2025 (Vegas)
• Microsoft Build | May 19-22, 2025 (Seattle, WA | Online)
• SharePoint Intranet Festival (SWOOP Analytics) | May 21, 2025 (Online)
• European Collaboration Summit | May 26-28, 2025 (Düsseldorf, Germany)
• European Power Platform Conference | June 16-19 (Vienna, Austria)
• TechCon 365 - Seattle | June 23 – 27, 2025 (Seattle, WA)
• TechCon 365 - Atlanta | August 11-15, 2025 (Atlanta, GA)

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Post-publication impact of SharePoint pages 

Take an audio tutorial tour that covers 10 ways to make a SharePoint page work for you, after you publish them! After your page looks great and is ready for your audience—make a plan to put that page as close to your reader as possible. Share it directly to them - intact - without requiring them to click away from where they are already focused and working. All are built-in features of SharePoint and related technology, geared to help you get the word out. It’s not sorcery. It IS truly magical. Get ready to flex your post-publication page amplification!

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback 

Mark Kashman | @mkashman [host]

Microsoft Learn - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals.

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Microsoft 365 changes

Upcoming events:

"SharePoint: From Concept to Creation to Impact + Live AMA" webinar with Jeff Teper | Jan. 29, 2025, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PST

Ability Summit | March 18, 2025 (Online) 

MVP Summit 2025 | March 24-27.2025 (Redmond, WA & online) 

Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | March 31 – April 2 (Las Vegas, NV) 

Microsoft's 50th Anniversary | April 4, 2025 (Worldwide) 

Comms vNext | April 15-16, 2025 (Denver, CO) 

Microsoft 365 Community Conference | May 5-8, 2025 (Vegas)

Microsoft Build | May 19-22, 2025 (Seattle, WA | Online)

SharePoint Intranet Festival (SWOOP Analytics) | May 21, 2025 (Online)

European Collaboration Summit | May 26-28, 2025 (Düsseldorf, Germany) 

European Power Platform Conference | June 16-19 (Vienna, Austria) 

TechCon 365 - Seattle | June 23 – 27, 2025 (Seattle, WA) 

TechCon 365 - Atlanta | August 11-15, 2025 (Atlanta, GA)

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop January 2025 

Kicking off 2025 with a bang, and a BIG SharePoint event. January 2025 brought a lot of new offerings: Viva Connections on the SharePoint app bar, Pay-as-you-go billing model for SharePoint agents, Re-imagined Hero web part, Viva Engage: Leadership feed, Editorial card web part, Accessibility assistant tool for SharePoint pages, SharePoint pages: Flexible sections, Microsoft Teams: New DVR capabilities, and more. Plus, we grabbed a few important audio snippets from the BIG SharePoint Event with Jeff Teper and the SharePoint team - focused on AI and your intranet.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

02:00 Snippets from the BIG SharePoint event

05:31 Employee engagement

13:06 Teamwork

16:29 Related items

19:01 Roadmap teasers

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Learn - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Microsoft 365 changes

Listen to and follow Sync Up, our podcast from the OneDrive team. 

Upcoming events:

NOW ON DEMAND | "SharePoint: From Concept to Creation to Impact + Live AMA" with Jeff Teper and team + plus our new 5-part SharePoint learning series, new customer studies (Amey, Takeda, and Avanade), insights about the upcoming SharePoint Hackathon (March 2025), and more.

M365 Miami 2025 | Feb.6-7, 2025 (Miami, FL)

SharePoint Hackathon | March 3-26, 2025 (Global | Online)

MVP Summit 2025 | March 24-27, 2025 (Redmond, WA & online)

Microsoft 365 Community Conference | May 5-8, 2025 (Vegas)

SharePoint Intranet Festival (SWOOP Analytics) | May 21, 2025 (Online)

European Collaboration Summit | May 26-28, 2025 (Düsseldorf, Germany)

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint agents in the wild 

Ground your SharePoint agent curiosities in real-world AI use and insights. We talk with customer success expert, Matt Wolodarsky, who recently worked with 80+ of our early adopter customers to best understand their use of SharePoint agents and how we can craft and shape their future. We also talk with Brent Sanders and Anna Henke-Gunvaldson from the Microsoft Legal team (CELA) who share how they put SharePoint agents to work on our internal legal portal called CELAWeb - to help others navigate the nuance and complexity of legal matters as they engage with customers and partners year-round. Get ready to go beyond what SharePoint agents are, and dive into how they can be used to save time, time and time again.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

Listen to all of the episodes on our Intrazone YouTube channel here. 

04:57 Interview with Matt Wolodarsky

36:49 Interview with Brent Sanders and Anna Henke-Gunvaldson

01:08:09 Upcoming Events

Matt Wolodarsky | LinkedIn 

Brent Sanders | LinkedIn 

Anna Henke-Gunvaldson | LinkedIn 

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback 

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Related resources

Microsoft Legal | SharePoint agent case study (coming soon from Microsoft)

NEW SharePoint agent adoption guide (adoption.microsoft.com)

SharePoint agents (adoption.microsoft.com)

GA BLOG | “SharePoint agents now in general availability“ by Adam Harmetz (VP - SharePoint, Microsoft); published on day one of Microsoft Ignite 2024.

CJ Tan’s “One-click AI agents in SharePoint and Teams - focused on files you select” video from the Microsoft Mechanics show

“Create and share SharePoint agents in a few clicks” from the Meet the Makers series - Karuana Gatimu interviews CJ Tan.

Microsoft Learn - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals.

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Microsoft 365 changes

Upcoming events

"SharePoint: From Concept to Creation to Impact + Live AMA" webinar with Jeff Teper | Jan. 29, 2025, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PST

M365 Miami 2025 | Feb.6-7.2025

MVP Summit 2025 | March 24-27.2025 (Redmond, WA & online)

Microsoft 365 Community Conference | May 5-8, 2025 (Vegas)

SharePoint Intranet Festival (SWOOP Analytics) | May 21, 2025 (Online)

European Collaboration Summit | May 26-28, 2025 (Düsseldorf, Germany)

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop December 2024 

Happiest of holidays, and welcome to 2025! December 2024 brought some great new offerings: Microsoft Syntex pay-as-you-go: Simple document processing model, Viva Connections: Power Apps card, Viva Pulse now included in Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Search for Bing retirement, Outlook.cloud.microsoft, Add external content links to Viva Learning, Microsoft 365 data residency: New Zealand, the big, upcoming SharePoint Event + AMA (Jan.29.2025 - 9 AM PST), and more. Plus, a little year in review: The top five features of 2024, a quick list of apps we said goodbye to, and a few 2025 predictions.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

02:11 Employee engagement

SPONSOR | Upcoming SharePoint event

09:36 Top 5 SharePoint features shipped in 2024

20:40 Related technology

26:29 January 2025 teasers

32:22 AI and agents insights from Jeff Teper

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback 

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals.

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events

ON DEMAND

• Microsoft Ignite 2024 | Incl. SharePoint "event guide" 
• ESPC | Dec 2-5, 2024 in Stockholm, Sweden (incl. Jeff Teper's ESPC24 keynote on demand)

UPCOMING

• "SharePoint: From Concept to Creation to Impact + Live AMA" webinar with Jeff Teper | Jan. 29, 2025, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PST
• M365 Miami 2025 | Feb.6-7.2025
• MVP Summit 2025 | March 24-27.2025 (Redmond, WA & online)
• Microsoft 365 Community Conference | May 5-8, 2025 (Vegas)
• SharePoint Intranet Festival (SWOOP Analytics) | May 21, 2025 (Online)
• European Collabroation Summit | May 26-28, 2025 (Düsseldorf, Germany)

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Guide to employee effectiveness with Synozur 

On today's episode, Michelle Caldwell (CEO – Synozur) shares how best to envision and plan for employee effectiveness within the AI era. Michelle puts focus on seeing your company as a comprehensive and integrated framework – a Company Operating System – across people, content, processes, key product use, and more. You’ll discover how to take an empathetic approach to modern workplace experiences, to operate more effectively and achieve your strategic goals.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Michelle Caldwell | LinkedIn | Twitter

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Synozur (website) + Polaris Pathways (podcast)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

ON DEMAND Events

• Microsoft Ignite 2024 | Incl. SharePoint "event guide" 
• ESPC | Dec 2-5, 2024 | Stockholm, Sweden (incl. Jeff Teper's ESPC24 keynote on demand)

UPCOMING Events

• "SharePoint: From Concept to Creation to Impact + Live AMA" webinar with Jeff Teper | Jan. 29, 2025, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PST
• M365 Miami 2025 | Feb.6-7.2025
• MVP Summit 2025 | March 24-27.2025 | Redmond, WA, and online
• Microsoft 365 Community Conference | May 5-8, 2025 | Las Vegas
• SharePoint Intranet Festival (SWOOP Analytics) | May 21, 2025 (Online)
• European Collabroation Summit | May 26-28, 2025 | Düsseldorf, Germany

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop November 2024 

This month's pitstop looks at  everything that landed in November 2024: Viva Engage: Updates for the Copilot adoption community, Copilot Pages, Add Approvals to any SharePoint document library, Teams: New chat and channels experience, Teams: New calendar experience, and Windows Server 2025 (GA). Plus, we share highlights from Microsoft Ignite 2024 - Five announcements from across the Microsoft portfolio. You'll also hear a segment of audio from Maya Rodrig - from the Microsoft Loop team - summarizing Copilot Pages alongside BizChat. It's a busy pitstop to get up to speed AND look ahead.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

01:24 Employee engagement

07:13 "Copilot Pages" by Maya Rodrig

11:17 Teamwork

13:23 Related technology

31:25 Teasers

Maya Rodrig | LinkedIn 

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback 

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals.

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Microsoft Ignite 2024 | Now on demand (incl. SharePoint "event guide")

ESPC | European SharePoint Conference | Dec 2-5, 2024 in Stockholm, Swede

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop October 2024 

October 2024 brought a few spooky and exciting updates - no bones about it (ok, a skull or two, maybe): Copilot agents in SharePoint, Clipchamp for Microsoft 365 E3 and E5, Copilot in  Viva Amplify, SharePoint eSignature: Adobe Acrobat Sign and Docusign integration, SharePoint: Design Ideas, Microsoft Lists: Add approvals to any list, Copilot agents in OneDrive (announced), Colorful folders in Windows File Explorer, SharePoint list and library rules will now send notifications from the no-reply@sharepointonline.com email address, New Planner for the Web and more. Plus, audio snippets from the OneDrive October 8th event, a new tech song for SharePoint Advanced Management, and a visit from Count Dracula 365.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

You can also find all episodes of The Intrazone on YouTube, click here.

01:43 Employee engagement

11:32 Teamwork

23:44 Related technology

28:35 Teasers

31:00 "SAM Copiloting Securely" by Dustin Willard

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals.

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Microsoft AI Tour | Ongoing, free, one-day events around the world. Up next: Hilversum (Nov.4), Casablanca (Nov.27), Bern (Nov.28), Warsaw (Nov.28), Toronto (Dec.3) and more to close out 2024 and continuing into 2025.

TechCon365 - Dallas | Nov. 11-15, 2024 | Dallas, TX

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov 18-22, 2024 | Chicago, IL

ESPC | European SharePoint Conference | Dec 2-5, 2024 | Stockholm, Sweden

CollabCon 2024 + CollabCruise | Dec. 12, 2024 | Orlando, FL [CollabCruise Dec.13-16 on the brand new Royal Caribbean Utopia of the Seas]

And always review and share the CommunityDays.org website to find your next event.

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone + explore Mondays at Microsoft with Karuana Gatimu and Heather Cook.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop September 2024 

September 2024 brought a few nice updates and some key disclosures—SharePoint Brand center, Copilot in OneDrive (GA), Copilot in SharePoint: Text web part, Microsoft 365 Copilot: Wave 2 news, Bing Generative Search news, Microsoft Delve retirement, Microsoft AI Tour Live updates, completion of the Microsoft Loop Learning Series, and more.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

00:59 Employee engagement

03:25 Teamwork

07:42 Related technology

25:18 Teasers 

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback 

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals.

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Oct. 8th at 10am PDT | Microsoft OneDrive: AI Innovations for a New Era of Work and Home

Oct. 14-18 | ESPC - SharePoint week (Seven virtual webinars | Free)

Oct. 16th at 8am PDT "Create and share Copilot agents in SharePoint in a few clicks" with CJ Tan and Karuana Gatimu; our next "Meet the Makers" episode.

CollabDays New England | October 18-19, 2024 | Burlington, Massachusetts

TechCon365 - Dallas | Nov. 11-15, 2024 | Dallas, TX

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov. 18-22, 2024 | Chicago, IL 

ESPC | European SharePoint Conference | Dec. 2-5, 2024 | Stockholm, Sweden

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

You can also follow The Intrazone by Microsoft 365 on YouTube

Microsoft Loop 101 and AMA 

Time to get Loop'y. This episode is your Microsoft Loop 101 audio course. It's a mix of foundational insights and a full 80-minutes of Q&A from an AMA four Loop product makers: Patrick Gan, Manon Knoertzer, Derek Liddell, and Dan Costenaro. They take and answer a ton of audience questions during a recent ask Microsoft anything, AMA. They covered topics across governance, permissions inheritance, AI, integrations with Planner and Teams, and how pages are stored. We also included information about the new Copilot Pages, powered by Microsoft Loop, plus a slew of upcoming events and webinars. 

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

08:05 Full Microsoft Loop AMA audio (from 9/12/2024)

01:34:05 Upcoming events and webinars

Microsoft Loop | LinkedIn | Twitter | Try Loop | Loop adoption hub

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

"Copilot pages for IT Admins - Sep 2024 update" by Dan Costenaro

Full Microsoft Loop AMA + Q&A on demand (video): https://aka.ms/LoopAMA

Try Microsoft Loop: https://loop.cloud.microsoft

Loop on the Microsoft 365 public roadmap

Loop adoption center

Get started with Loop ('how to' content on support.microsoft.com)

Loop governance capabilities (Microsoft Learn)

All Loop blog posts on the Microsoft 365 tech community

Ron Pessner’s blog "Microsoft Loop | Live, Five-Part Learning Series" (has the full, playable versions of each part in the series + info about presenters and what's covered in each)

Loop on LinkedIn: "Microsoft Loop Community" public group

Loop on X: @MicrosoftLoop

Full 5-Part Loop Learning playlist on the "Microsoft Community Learning" YouTube channel: (now on demand)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals.

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

September 26, 9am PT "Microsoft Loop IT governance and management controls"

October 2nd at 9am PT "The development spectrum of Microsoft 365 and Power Platform" with SMEs

April Dunnam, Vesa Juvonen, and Chris Kent.

Oct 8th at 10am PT | Microsoft OneDrive: AI Innovations for a New Era of Work and Home

Oct. 14-18 | ESPC - SharePoint week (online)

Oct. 16th at 8am PT "Create and share Copilot agents in SharePoint in a few clicks" with CJ Tan and Karuana Gatimu; our next "Meet the Makers" episode.

CollabDays New England | October 18-19, 2024 | Burlington, Massachusetts

TechCon365 - Dallas | Nov. 11-15, 2024 | Dallas, TX

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov 18-22, 2024, "Save the date" |Chicago, IL

ESPC | European SharePoint Conference | Dec 2-5, 2024 | Stockholm, Sweden | and always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop August 2024 

August 2024 brought a slew of updates and information—Microsoft 365 Backup (GA), SharePoint: A new Start experience, SharePoint: New Banner web part, Stream Playlist card on Viva Connections dashboard, Viva Amplify: Video templates, OneDrive: Annotate PDFs (text boxes), Microsoft Lists: Row reorder, Clipchamp: Image background removal, Microsoft Loop components in OneNote, and more. Plus, you'll hear audio from a recent live AMA - specifically a question to David Johnson (Principal PM Architect from the Microsoft Digital team) asking him to share one good story and one bad story about managing Microsoft's Microsoft 365 tenant over the years. As you can imagine, he's got stories. And to round it out, we have insights about a few timely events for SharePoint, Planner, Loop, and more. 

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

01:43 Employee engagement

10:35 AMA audio snippet with David Johnson (MS IT)

13:53 Teamwork

18:32 Related tech

35:00 Teasers

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

"Learn governance from Microsoft Digital, Microsoft’s own IT department" (blog)

"Reimagining content management at Microsoft with SharePoint Premium" (Inside Track)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

"Meet Copilot in Microsoft Loop" (webinar) | September 4th at 10:00am PDT

Next episode of Mondays at Microsoft | September 9th at 8:00am PDT (online)

Microsoft Loop AMA (90 minutes) | September, 12th from 10:00am - 11:30am PDT (online)

"The new Microsoft Planner: What’s New and What’s Coming Next" + Live AMA | September 17 at 9am PDT

Metaverse One 2024 | September 18 (online)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference | Sept. 18-20, 2024 | Las Vegas, NV

CollabDays - Portugal Porto 2024 | Seopt.21, 2024 | Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto

European Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | Sept.24-27, 2024 | Stockholm, Sweden

CollabDays - New England | Oct. 18, 2024 | Burlington, MA

TechCon365 - Dallas | Nov. 11-15, 2024 | Dallas, TX

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov 18-22, 2024, "Save the date" | Chicago, IL

European SharePoint Conference [ESPC]| Dec 2-5, 2024 | Stockholm, Sweden

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Microsoft 365 Backup—Veeam 

Back up your data with confidence. Microsoft 365 Backup offers lightning-fast restorability, ensuring business continuity. On this episode, guest host, Brad Gussin from the SharePoint engineering team, provides an overview of the core offering. You'll then hear an interview with our valued partner, Karinne Bessette from Veeam, about the Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 solution.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

Karinne Bessette | LinkedIn | @Veeam  [guest]

Brad Gussin | LinkedIn [co-host]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Learn more about Microsoft 365 Backup (adoption.microsoft.com)

Learn more about Veeam's Microsoft 365 Backup solution

"Microsoft Announces General Availability of Microsoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Backup Storage" by Zach Rosenfield [July 31, 2024] 

Watch "The Ins and Outs of Microsoft 365 Backup & Archive"

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

TechCon365 - DC | Aug. 12-16, 2024 |Washington, DC 

CollabDays Hamburg | Hamburg, Germany | August 31, 2024 

Microsoft Power Platform Conference | September 18-20, 2024 | Las Vegas, NV

CollabDays Portugal Porto 2024 (previously CollabDays Lisbon)| Sept. 21 Venue: Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto

CollabDays New England | October 18-19, 2024 | Burlington, Massachusetts

TechCon365 - Dallas | Nov. 11-15, 2024 | Dallas, TX

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov 18-22, 2024 | Chicago, IL 

ESPC | European SharePoint Conference | Dec 2-5, 2024 | Stockholm, Sweden

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Microsoft 365 Backup—Commvault 

Microsoft 365 Backup is your in-place solution for lightning-fast restorability, ensuring business continuity. On this episode, guest host Brad Gussin from the SharePoint engineering team provides an overview of the core offering. You'll then hear an interview with our valued partner, Brad Kirby from Commvault, about their integration of Commvault Cloud with our Microsoft 365 Backup storage platform - extending data recoverability and searchability.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

Brad Kirby (Commvault) | LinkedIn | @Commvault [guest]

Brad Gussin | LinkedIn [co-host]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Learn more about Microsoft 365 Backup (adoption.microsoft.com)

Learn more about Commvault's Microsoft 365 Backup solution

"Microsoft Announces General Availability of Microsoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Backup Storage" by Zach Rosenfield [July 31, 2024] 

Watch "The Ins and Outs of Microsoft 365 Backup & Archive"

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

TechCon365 - DC | Aug. 12-16, 2024 |Washington, DC 

CollabDays Hamburg | Hamburg, Germany | August 31, 2024 

Microsoft Power Platform Conference | September 18-20, 2024 | Las Vegas, NV

CollabDays Portugal Porto 2024 (previously CollabDays Lisbon)| Sept. 21 Venue: Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto

CollabDays New England | October 18-19, 2024 | Burlington, Massachusetts

TechCon365 - Dallas | Nov. 11-15, 2024 | Dallas, TX

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov 18-22, 2024 | Chicago, IL 

ESPC | European SharePoint Conference | Dec 2-5, 2024 | Stockholm, Sweden

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop July 2024 

July 2024 brought some great new offerings—New SharePoint content pane, co-authoring in SharePoint, OneDrive: Additional file types to filter, OneDrive: Updated shared folder experience, new Copilot in Planner (preview), the 2024 release wave 2 plans for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, details about how to enter the Deadpool Xbox giveaway sweepstakes, and more. Plus, we also hear from Melissa Torres from the SharePoint team who focuses on pages and news. You'll hear Melissa talk about recent updates and then dive into learning more behind the scenes co-authoring in SharePoint pages.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

7:50 Interview with Melissa Torres

24:45 Teamwork

28:35 Related Technology

35:00 Teasers

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Melissa Torres|LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

BLOG + DEMO VIDEO | "Introducing Coauthoring for SharePoint Pages and News" by Melissa Torres

Get Loop'ed in on the upcoming Microsoft Loop 5-Part Learning Series. Register today

Watch | "Content Management and Collaboration for the AI Era"

Watch | "The intranet of tomorrow: beautiful, flexible, and AI ready"

Watch all 55 product learning videos on demand.

Enter the #XboxCheekyControllerSweepstakes [More details + complete rules]

Join the Power Platform community

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

TechCon365 - DC | August 12-16, 2024 | Washington, D.C.

CollabDays Hamburg | August 31, 2024 - Hamburg, Germany

Microsoft Power Platform Conference | Sept. 18-20, 2024 | Las Vegas, NV

CollabDays - New England | Oct. 18, 2024 | Burlington, MA

TechCon365 - Dallas | Nov. 11-15, 2024 | Dallas, TX

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov 18-22, 2024, "Save the date" | Chicago, IL

European SharePoint Conference [ESPC]| Dec 2-5, 2024 | Stockholm, Sweden

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Amped up on Amplify 

This episode is like a gift to your future work "comms pro" personality. All the heartache of manual copy/pasting into various internal distribution channels will fade away. And what shines through? The ability to communicate like a pro with the broadest reach and impact for your internal news and campaigns - big or small. We talk with Liz Sundet (Senior Customer Experience program manager at Microsoft), a wonderful technologist and trainer focused on getting Microsoft customers prepared to use Microsoft Viva Amplify. You'll hear insights about the tech, best practices for internal comms, and insights into how customers use Amplify to, you guessed it, amplify their internal comms, with solid reporting intact. 

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Note: We now publish posts for our regular episodes to the Community News Desk blog. We will continue to publish 'SharePoint roadmap pitstop' episodes to the SharePoint community blog.

Liz Sundet | LinkedIn | Twitter 

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

OneDrive | @OneDrive | OneDrive community blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals.

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Community Days - Chicago | July 20, 2024 | Chicago, IL, United States

M365 NYC (Community Days) | July 26, 2024 | New York, NY, USA

TechCon365 - DC | August 12-16, 2024 | Washington, D.C.

CollabDays Hamburg | August 31, 2024 - Hamburg, Germany

Microsoft Power Platform Conference | Sept. 18-20, 2024 | Las Vegas, NV

CollabDays Portugal Porto 2024 (previously known as CollabDays Lisbon)| Sept. 21, 2024, Venue: Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto

CollabDays - New England | Oct. 18, 2024 | Burlington, MA

TechCon365 - Dallas | Nov. 11-15, 2024 | Dallas, TX

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov 18-22, 2024, "Save the date" | Chicago, IL

European SharePoint Conference [ESPC] | Dec 2-5, 2024 | Stockholm, Sweden

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop June 2024 

It's official - summer is here (in the Northern Hemisphere); happy Wintering Southern Hemi. No matter the latitude, the attitude and altitude of tech delivery continued with verve and zest. June 2024 brought some great new offerings—Viva Amplify supports SharePoint audience targeting, SharePoint Premium: Autofill columns, SharePoint: Apply shapes to images, updated CLI for Microsoft 365 v7.10, Teams: File previews in messages, SharePoint: Text web part updates, OneDrive: Shortened URLs, Microsoft Designer updates + new icon, planner.cloud.microsoft, and more. We also hear from Dave Cohen about how the SharePoint team plans, designs, and delivers ongoing value to your intranet of today and tomorrow.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

04:40 Employee Engagement

10:55 "The intranet of tomorrow: beautiful, flexible, and AI ready" with Dave Cohen

15:09 Teamwork

20:22Related Technologies

29:35 Teasers

Dave Cohen | LinkedIn

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

Join the Community News Desk blog 

Learn from Dave Cohen and Denise Trabona about SharePoint: The intranet of tomorrow: beautiful, flexible, and AI ready

Watch in-depth, Microsoft 365 product learning videos at aka.ms/M365ConSessions

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Community Days - Chicago | July 20, 2024 | Chicago, IL, United States

M365 NYC (Community Days) | July 26, 2024 | New York, NY, USA

TechCon365 - DC | August 12-16, 2024 | Washington, D.C.

CollabDays Hamburg | August 31, 2024 - Hamburg, Germany

Microsoft Power Platform Conference | Sept. 18-20, 2024 | Las Vegas, NV

CollabDays - New England | Oct. 18, 2024 | Burlington, MA

TechCon365 - Dallas | Nov. 11-15, 2024 | Dallas, TX

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov 18-22, 2024, "Save the date" | Chicago, IL

European SharePoint Conference [ESPC]| Dec 2-5, 2024 | Stockholm, Sweden

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Reflecting on OneDrive and SharePoint 

You might call this episode ShareDrive or OnePoint, if you dare. We hear from Stephen Rice (Principal product manager) from our OneDrive companion pod, Sync Up - and he chats/interviews your Intrazone host, Mark Kashman. It's a little bit of a M365 multi-verse as they interview each other - pod-to-pod, Intrazone-to-Sync Up. You'll hear their takes on their respective products - Stephen on OneDrive and Mark on SharePoint. In the end, it's a double bonus benefit for you - the best of both pods.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Note: We now publish posts for our regular episodes to the Community News Desk blog. We will continue to publish 'SharePoint roadmap pitstop' episodes to the SharePoint community blog.

09:40 Conversation with Stephen Rice

25:03 Upcoming Events

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Stephen Rice | LinkedIn

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

OneDrive | @OneDrive | OneDrive community blog | Feedback 

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Intranets and AI on Microsoft 365 | June 19-20, 2024 - Virtual

Community Days - Chicago | July 20, 2024 - Chicago, Illinois

M365 NYC (Community Days) | July 26, 2024 - New York City, NY

TechCon365 - DC | August 12-16, 2024 | Washington, D.C.

CollabDays Hamburg | August 31, 2024 - Hamburg, Germany

Power Platform Community Conference | Sept. 18-20, 2024 | Las Vegas, NV

CollabDays - New England | Oct. 18, 2024 | Burlington, MA

TechCon365 - Dallas | Nov. 11-15, 2024 | Dallas, TX

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov 18-22, 2024, "Save the date" | Chicago, IL

European SharePoint Conference | Dec 2-5, 2024 | Stockholm, Sweden

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop May 2024 

Built & Build. May 2024 brought some great new offerings and insights on future ones: OneDrive file cards for Viva Connections dashboard, Updated file viewer for non-office file, Link files from SharePoint in Teams mobile, SharePoint: Advanced tenant rename, SharePoint + Stream: Video page templates, Teams + Loop workspaces in meetings, improved version history controls for SharePoint document libraries, Microsoft Graph API for SharePoint pages (GA), and more. Plus, we highlight some of the SharePoint and Teams (and Surface) news from Microsoft Build 2024.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

02:22 Employee Engagement

07:14 Teamwork

12:43 Related Technologies

31:38 Teasers

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

TechCon365 - Seattle | June 3-7, 2024 | Seattle, WA

EU Power Platform Conference | June 11-13, 2024 | Brussels, Belgium

"Using Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Lists to improve your productivity" #Collab365 '2-hr workshop'

TechCon365 - DC | August 12-16, 2024 | Washington, D.C.

Power Platform Community Conference | Sept. 18-20, 2024 | Las Vegas, NV

CollabDays - New England | Oct. 18, 2024 | Burlington, MA

TechCon365 - Dallas | Nov. 11-15, 2024 | Dallas, TX

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov 18-22, 2024, "Save the date" | Chicago, IL 

European SharePoint Conference | Dec 2-5, 2024 | Stockholm, Sweden

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop April 2024 

We focus on everything that landed this past April 2024: SharePoint brand center (Preview) with custom fonts support, Search from Viva Connections in Teams mobile, SharePoint: New feedback button, New Planner (GA), SharePoint eSignature and Approvals, SharePoint pages: New heading support, Clipchamp: Silence Removal, Microsoft Loop: Guest Sharing, and more. Plus a few audio clips from the recent New Planner launch events. And now, to the roadmap!

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

01:22 Employee Engagement

05:33 Planner + AI and Copilot

09:01 Teamwork

14:37 Related Technologies

23:00 Teasers

New Planner | GA Blog | "Meet the Makers" | New Planner AM

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback 

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals.

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Microsoft 365 Community Conference | April 30 - May 2, 2024, Orlando, FL

European Cloud Summit | May 14-16,2024, Wiesbaden, Germany

SharePoint Intranet Festival (Online from SWOOP Analytics | May 22)

TechCon365 - Seattle | June 3-7, 2024, Seattle, WA

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov 18-22, 2024, "Save the date," Chicago, IL

European SharePoint Conference | Dec 2-5, 2024 in Stockholm, Sweden

And always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Apple Vision Pro'ductivity 

It’s time to unveil the mysteries of productivity within the Apple Vision Pro. The question is, is your persona ready? This episode brings you John Moore, a tech tinkering persona as your guide. John takes us into the realm of spatial computing as it blends with the productivity stack of Microsoft 365.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

02:50 Conversation with John Moore, Enterprise Architect - EY

29:15 Upcoming Events

John Moore | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube + 365 Deep Dive show [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

“Announcing Microsoft 365 apps available on Apple Vision Pro” By Gabriel Valdez Malpartida (Microsoft)

Apple Vision Pro (product page)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

North American Cloud & Collaboration Summit (NACS) | April 9-11, 2024, Dallas, TX

Comms vNext (Denver, CO | April 24-25)

Intranet Insights 2024 (Online | April 24)

Microsoft 365 Community Conference | April 30 - May 2, 2024, Orlando, FL

European Cloud Summit | May 14-16,2024, Wiesbaden, Germany

SharePoint Intranet Festival (Online from SWOOP Analytics | May 22)

TechCon365 - Seattle | June 3-7, 2024, Seattle, WA

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov 18-22, 2024, "Save the date," Chicago, IL 

European SharePoint Conference | Dec 2-5, 2024 in Stockholm, Sweden

+ always review and share the CommunityDays.org website

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop—March 2024 

Here's what landed in March 2024 | SharePoint: New section backgrounds, Answers in Viva content in Microsoft Search, SharePoint Premium: Enable/disable Unstructured, Structured, and Prebuilt Document Processing, Manage SharePoint Embedded containers, Microsoft Lists: New forms experience, New Planner app in Teams (Public Preview), OneDrive: Create with templates, Microsoft Viva Goals: New URL domain, and more. To the roadmap!

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

05:13 Employee engagement updates

11:32 Teamwork updates

20:05 Related items and April Teasers

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Copilot | Adoption center | @MSFTCopilot (X/Twitter) | LinkedIn

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

April 3, 2024, New Planner "Meet the Makers" (online)

April 4, 2024, New Planner AMA (online)

Microsoft 365 Community Conference | Orlando, FL, April 28 - May 4, 2024

Microsoft Ignite | Chicago, IL, Nov,18-22, 2024, a 360-degree tour of McCormick Place

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

In-person events tips and tricks 

We grabbed time with three Microsoft tech event experts: Sharon Weaver (Founder & CEO | Smarter Consulting), Sean Bugler (Principal Innovation Architect | Metropolitan Transportation Commission), and Derek Cash-Peterson (Principal Architect | Sympraxis Consulting LLC) - to get their insights about in-person events. The goal is to give you, future attendee, tips, tricks and best practices to optimize your in-person event experience. We also got a sense of what each person plans to present, and each shared a fun story from their past in-person event memory box. Lots of laughs. Lots to get you prepped before boarding your flight to Orlando, FL.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

02:26 Conversation with Sharon Weaver, Sean Bugler, and Derek Cash-Peterson

33:30 Upcoming Events

Sharon Weaver | LinkedIn | Twitter

Derek Cash-Peterson | LinkedIn | Twitter

Sean Bugler | LinkedIn | Twitter

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Watch the video of our conversation in YouTube here https://youtu.be/E3wpmDlxiN0

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | March 26-28, 2024, Las Vegas, NV

SharePoint Embedded Developer Summit | March 26-27, 2024, Redmond, WA

Special Planner event | April 3 at 10am PDT - sharing more about the New Planner

Special Planner AMA | April 4 at 10am PDT

AIIM | April 3-5, 2024, San Antonio, TX

North American Cloud & Collaboration Summit (NACS) | April 9-11, 2024, Dallas, TX

Microsoft 365 Community Conference | April 30 - May 2, 2024, Orlando, FL

European Cloud Summit | May 14-16,2024, Wiesbaden, Germany

TechCon365 - Seattle | June 3-7, 2024, Seattle, WA

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov 18-22, 2024, "Save the date," Chicago, IL 

European SharePoint Conference | Dec 2-5, 2024, Stockholm, Sweden

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Ubisoft—Custom search supports game development 

We chat with game developer Ubisoft about their use of custom Search in Microsoft 365. Franck Cornu, Mihaela Nite and Stephanie Daigle discuss their journey to update their old global search application - originally built on SharePoint Server 2013, now fully on SharePoint in Microsoft 365. Learn why they moved to the cloud, how they customized the Search experience in the cloud, plus tips and tricks for your consideration.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

09:15 Conversation with Franck Cornu, Mihaela Nite and Stephanie Daigle

51:34 Upcoming Events

Franck Cornu | LinkedIn [guest]

Mihaela Nita | LinkedIn [guest]

Stephanie Daigle | LinkedIn [guest]

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

"Ubisoft journey with Microsoft Search" [use case whitepaper]

"Build Microsoft Graph connected web sites for a custom enterprise search experience"

Jan 18, 2024 | Frank Cornu on Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Development community call.

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Enterprise Connect | March 25-28, 2024 | Gaylord Palms, Orlando, FL

Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | March 26-28, 2024, in Las Vegas, NV

SharePoint Embedded Developer Summit | March 26-27, Redmond, WA

Special Planner event | April 3 at 10am PDT - sharing more about the New Planner

AIIM | April 3-5, 2024, in San Antonio, TX

North American Cloud & Collaboration Summit (NACS) | April 9-11, 2024, in Dallas, TX

Microsoft 365 Community Conference | April 30 - May 2, 2024, in Orlando, FL

European Cloud Summit | May 14-16,2024, in Wiesbaden, Germany)

TechCon365 - Seattle | June 3-7, 2024, in Seattle, WA

Microsoft Ignite (+ more info) | Nov 18-22, 2024, "Save the date," Chicago, IL 

European SharePoint Conference | Dec 2-5, 2024 in Stockholm, Sweden

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop—February 2024 

Busy February - taking advantage of that extra day. We leap into everything that landed this past month: Copilot Dashboard for Viva Insights, SharePoint Premium: Translation (GA), Sample: Custom copilot in SharePoint with SSO, Signaling Viva Topics retirement (Feb 2025), Custom document library templates, Updated Lists apps: Sites/Teams/PWA, Copilot in Teams, Microsoft Clipchamp: Automatic captions, Teams: Hide General Channels, Initial Microsoft 365 apps on Apple visionOS, and more. To the roadmap!

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

01:34 Employee engagement updates

08:02 Teamwork updates

11:20 Related items and March Teasers

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Copilot | Adoption center | @MSFTCopilot (X/Twitter) | LinkedIn

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | March 26-28, 2024 in Las Vegas, NV

AIIM | April 3-5, 2024 in San Antonio, TX

North American Cloud & Collaboration Summit (NACS) | April 9-11, 2024 in Dallas, TX

Microosft 365 Conference | April 28 - May 4, 2024 in Orlando, FL

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

On the minds of OneDrive admins 

On this episode, we hear from Drew Madelung (Microsoft MVP | Solution Architect - Protoviti) who expertly focuses on all things OneDrive, specifically all the deep diving details admins need to know about. Drew is all about how to think about managing OneDrive to the fullness of your organization; how to make it better, how to optimize using what you have AND investing in the right places to keep with the times -- aka, your trusted advisor for all things OneDrive in overdrive - at your disposal and within your control.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus,  click here for transcript of this episode.

08:31 Conversation with Drew Madelung

41:17 Upcoming Events

Drew Madelung | LinkedIn | X | Blog

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

CollabDays - Bremen 2024 | Feb 9-10, 2024 near Hamburg in Germany

Teams Nation 2024 | Feb 21, 2024 9:00 - 19:30 CET

CollabDays - Calgary 2024 | Feb. 24, 2024

Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | March 26-28, 2024 in Las Vegas, NV

AIIM | April 3-5, 2024 in San Antonio, TX

North American Cloud & Collaboration Summit (NACS) | April 9-11, 2024 in Dallas, TX

Microosft 365 Conference | April 28 - May 4, 2024 in Orlando, FL

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop January 2024 

What a great start to 2024 - tantalizing tech for everyone. We focus on everything that landed this past month: Microsoft 365 Backup (Public Preview), SharePoint Premium: Document translation, new image and video experiences in Viva Engage, Community Campaigns in Viva Engage, SharePoint “News for email” custom tab, Microsoft Search: ServiceNow Tickets connector GA, Teams: Discover Feed in Channels, and more. This month, we cover numerous Viva Engage updates. So many that we decided to include a short primer on what Engage is and how it supports community engagement with your organization. To the roadmap!

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

01:26 Employee Engagement

11:23 Teamwork

16:04 Related items

22:50 Teasers

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Community Days - Miami | Feb 2, 2024 (Miami, FL)

CollabDays - Bremen 2024 | Feb 9-10, 2024 near Hamburg in Germany

M365 Saturday DC | Feb 10, 2024 (Reston, VA)

Teams Nation 2024 | Feb 21, 2024 9:00 - 19:30 CET

CollabDays - Calgary 2024 | Feb. 24, 2024

Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | March 26-28, 2024 in Las Vegas, NV

AIIM | April 3-5, 2024 in San Antonio, TX

North American Cloud & Collaboration Summit (NACS) | April 9-11, 2024 in Dallas, TX

Microosft 365 Conference | April 28 - May 4, 2024 in Orlando, FL

SharePoint Intranet Festival (Online)

European Collaboration Summit | May 14-16, 2024 in Weisbaden, Germany

TechCon365 - Seattle (formerly 365 EduCon) | June 3-7, 2024 in Seattle, WA

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

WWSD: What would Sue do (for your intranet) 

On this episode, we hear from Sue Hanley who expertly focuses on change -- evolving and improving your intranet. Sue is an information architect, a knowledge management expert, and she doesn't shy away from the word: Portal. Sue is steeped in all sorts of governance and collaboration consultation in the grandiose enterprise content services and app: SharePoint. We grabbed time with Sue to discover how to make intranets better, how to make them work for you AND be worthy for people to go to and come back. Employees need to find things quickly and get things done – or your intranet doesn’t get a second visit.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

08:23 Conversation with Sue Hanley

34:35 Upcoming Events

Sue Hanley | LinkedIn | Twitter

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

CollabDays - Bremen 2024 | Feb 9-10, 2024 near Hamburg in Germany

Teams Nation 2024 | Feb 21, 2024 9:00 - 19:30 CET

CollabDays - Calgary 2024 | Feb. 24, 2024

Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | March 26-28, 2024 in Las Vegas, NV

AIIM | April 3-5, 2024 in San Antonio, TX

North American Cloud & Collaboration Summit (NACS) | April 9-11, 2024 in Dallas, TX

Microosft 365 Conference | April 28 - May 4, 2024 in Orlando, FL

SharePoint Intranet Festival (Online)

European Collaboration Summit | May 14-16, 2024 in Weisbaden, Germany

TechCon365 - Seattle (formerly 365 EduCon) | June 3-7, 2024 in Seattle, WA

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop December 2023 

Ho ho ho, Merry SharePoint! December 2023 brought a lot to review AND a lot to look forward to. We'll focus on everything that landed this past month: SharePoint eSignature, Stream: Add a survey, poll, quiz, link or text, Viva Engage: Community creation API, OneDrive app for Teams, OneDrive: Open in app, Microsoft 365 Backup (Public Preview), Microsoft Loop moves to loop.cloud.microsoft, and indicating the retirement of Delve in Dec. 16, 2024. And then, we'll highlight the top 5 SharePoint tech items of 2023, peek ahead at 5 anticipated features slated for CY24-Q1, shine a light on a few related items, hit up the always fun teasers AND stick around: We've cooked up a bonus festive song for you titled, "It's beginning to look a lot like SharePoint" - it's queried at number one on the Power BI charts :).

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

01:49 Employee engagement

06:45 Top 5 SharePoint features shipped in 2023

12:26 Teamwork

16:50 Related Technology

27:55 "It's beginning to look a lot like SharePoint" [parody]

29:49 Teasers + 5 features of interest on the public Microsoft 365 roadmap: CY24-Q1

35:55 Closing

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | March 26-28, 2024 in Las Vegas, NV

AIIM | April 3-5, 2024 in San Antonio, TX

North American Cloud & Collaboration Summit (NACS) | April 9-11, 2024 in Dallas, TX

Microosft 365 Conference | April 28 - May 4, 2024 in Orlando, FL

SharePoint Intranet Festival (Online)

European Collaboration Summit | May 14-16, 2024 in Weisbaden, Germany

365 EduCon - Seattle | June 3-7, 2024 in Seattle, W

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Records compliance from the get-go 

On today's episode, we chat with Joanne Klein - an expert on compliance in Microsoft 365. Joanne brings energy and technical expertise to real-world implementations of collaboration balanced with compliance. We spoke onsite during 365 EduCon - Chicago about records management and specific tooling (like Microsoft Purview), content lifecycle management best practices, and how to get it right from the get-go.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

15:52 Conversation with Joanne Klein

43:43 Upcoming Events

Joanne Klein | LinkedIn | X | Website [guest]

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Microsoft Ignite now on-demand | from Nov. 14-17, 2023

Teams Nation 2024 | Feb. 21, 2024 | #TeamsNation + early tweet

Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | March 26-28, 2024 in Las Vegas, NV

AIIM | April 3-5, 2024 in San Antonio, TX

North American Cloud & Collaboration Summit (NACS) | April 9-11, 2024 in Dallas, TX

Microosft 365 Conference | April 28 - May 4, 2024 in Orlando, FL

SharePoint Intranet Festival (Online)

European Collaboration Summit | May 14-16, 2024 in Weisbaden, Germany

365 EduCon - Seattle | June 3-7, 2024 in Seattle, W

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop November 2023 

A blend of disclosure and rollout news this past month. We cover the following: Stream: Videos 'in Outlook', Stream: Collaborative notes in Teams meeting recordings, Microsoft 365 Archive: Public Preview, SharePoint: Out-of-the-box document library templates, Offline mode in OneDrive for Web, OneDrive: Add Individual File Shortcuts, Loop components in Channels, Teams: Files app updating to OneDrive app, and more. We also cover highlights from Microsoft Ignite 2023 - including an audio snippet from Jeff Teper publicly introducing *SharePoint Premium* for the first time.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

01:12 Employee Engagement

05:45 Audio of Jeff Teper announcing "SharePoint Premium"

08:05 Nov.2023 Teamwork features

15:57 Related Technology

26:44 Dec.2023 Teasers

Jeff Teper | LinkedIn | X/Twitter

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

"Introducing SharePoint Premium – the future of AI powered content management and experiences" by Jeff Teper

"Announcing SharePoint Embedded Public Preview at ESPC23" by Zach Rosenfield

"SharePoint Roadmap Update – Fall 2023" by Dave Cohen

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 in (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

DEVintersection | Dec.5-7.2023

Viva Engage Festival  (SWOOP Analytics) | Dec. 6, 202

Teams Nation 2024 | Feb. 21, 2024 | #TeamsNation + early tweet

Inaugural Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | March 26-28, 2024 (Vegas)

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Andy puts the A in AI 

Never take the shortcut to learning, take the Huneycutt! On today's episode, we talk with Andy Huneycutt from Upskill Tech about his use and best practices across two areas: AI and Automation; namely his use and experiences with Power Automate and Copilot We delve into his expertise across both, plus benefit from his tinkerings with generative AI – based on practical use working on a children's book full of AI generated story and characters.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

04:45 Conversation with Andy Huneycutt

37:30 Upcoming Events

Andy Huneycutt | LinkedIn | YouTube | Upskill Tech | Charlotte Area SPUG 

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Now on-demand | Microsoft Ignite | Nov. 14-17, 2023

CollabDays - Lisbon @CollabDaysLIS | Nov. 25 (Lisbon, Portugal - University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL))

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 in (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

DEVintersection | Dec.5-7.2023

Viva Engage Festival  (SWOOP Analytics) | Dec. 6, 2023 (and keep your eye out for a similar offering in May 2024 - a 'festival for SharePoint')…

Teams Nation 2024 | Feb. 21, 2024 | Early info from MVPs Chris Hoard, Chirag Patel, and team: #TeamsNation + early tweet

Inaugural Microsoft Fabric Community Conference | March 26-28, 2024 (Vegas)

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop October 2023 

October 2023 brought some spooky new offerings: Power Apps leader in 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Applications Platform, Video search improvements, new Intelligence & Search admin homepage, OneDrive colorful folders, New Microsoft Teams, Viva Goals + Planner, SharePoint: BCS retirement in Microsoft 365, and much much mwahahaaaa more. We talk with Miceile Barrett and Arvind Mishra, Principal product managers on the OneDrive team about recently released features like colorful folders and new shared views for People and Meetings. And we dive into the Oct. 3rd moment focused on all the news and announcements about what's next for OneDrive - including Copilot in OneDrive, full OneDrive experiences in Teams and Outlook, the new "Open in app" feature, and more. Boo!

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

02:28 Employee engagement

07:52 Conversation with Miceile Barrett and Arvind Mishra (from the OneDrive team)

28:33 Teamwork

33:03 Related Technology

38:01 Events

40:54 Teasers

Miceile Barrett | LinkedIn | X

Arvind Mishra | LinkedIn

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

365 EduCon - Chicago | Oct.30 - Nov.4, 2023 (Chicago, IL)

Community Days - Mexico City | Nov.2.2023 (HOTEL GALERÍA PLAZA REFORMA)

Microsoft Ignite | Nov. 14-17, 2023 (Hybrid: Seattle, WA and online)

CollabDays - Lisbon @CollabDaysLIS | Nov. 25 (Lisbon, Portugal (ISCTE-IUL))

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 in (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

The power of the web part 

Web parts make the intranet go 'round. On this episode, we talk with Pat McGown (CEO, Cloudwell). In a world of SharePoint web parts, Pat and team build and deliver useful ones. We focus on developing web parts - past and present, some of their productivity-focused web part solutions, and tips and tricks for both developers and intranet managers. You can never get too much information about a good web part - be it one you use out of the box, one you procure from a partner, or one you build and design, and customize for your business.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

08:24 Conversation with Pat McGown

40:36 Upcoming Events

Pat McGown | LinkedIn | X/@PMcGown X/@Cloudwell_io

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

365 EduCon - Chicago | Oct.30 - Nov.4, 2023 (Chicago, IL)

Community Days - Mexico City | Nov.2.2023 (Juarez, Ciudad de Mexico)

Microsoft Ignite | Nov. 14-17, 2023 (Hybrid: Seattle, WA and online with pre-day labs)

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 in (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

European Cloud Summit | NEW DATE: May.14-16.2024 (Wiesbaden, Germany)

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop September 2023 

September 2023 brought some great news and new offerings: Answer Analytics in Microsoft Search, introduction of Microsoft 365 Chat, a GA date for Microsoft 365 Copilot (Nov. 1, 2023), introduction of Copilot in Microsoft Stream, Favorite and Unfavorite additional file types and folders in OneDrive and SharePoint document libraries, Microsoft Lists - MSA Preview support on iOS and Android, Planner Loop Component, and more. This month you'll hear more about the recent Copilot news, including a snippet of audio from Colette Stallbaumer about Microsoft 365 Copilot and the newly announced Microsoft 365 Chat.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

01:30 Employee Engagement

11:23 Teamwork

16:30 Related Technology

21:48 Teasers

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback 

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Microsoft Power Platform Conference | Oct.3-5.2023 (Las Vegas)

CollabDays New England | Oct.5.2023 (Burlington, MA)

ARMA InfoCon | Oct 9-11, 2023 (Detroit, MI)

ShiftHAPPENS | Oct 10-11, 2023 (Washington DC)

365 EduCon - Chicago | Oct.30 - Nov.4, 2023 (Chicago, IL)

Community Days - Mexico City | Nov.2.2023 (Hotel GALERÍA PLAZA REFORMA)

Microsoft Ignite | Nov. 14-17, 2023 (Hybrid: Seattle, WA and online)

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 in (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

European Cloud Summit | Dec.4-6.2023 (Wiesbaden, Germany)

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Communities in the enterprise 

On today's episode, we chat Amy Dolzine, Microsoft alliance relationship director for the Americas at EY, based out of Cleveland, Ohio. We talk about some of the foundational "community" elements of Yammer, where Amy started her journey as an SME for planning and designing communities within the enterprise - what in the early days was referred to as "the social enterprise." We quickly got into the value and status quo of the evolvement into Viva Engage and some of the related tech around the corner that provides additional internal communications levers - Viva Amplify. 

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

07:19 Conversation with Amy Dolzine

38:13 Upcoming Events

Amy Dolzine | LinkedIn | X/Twitter [guest]

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

OneDrive event, "The Future of File Management" | Oct.3.2023 at 10am PT (online)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference | Oct.3-5.2023 (Las Vegas)

CollabDays New England | Oct.5.2023 (Burlington, MA)

ARMA InfoCon | Oct 9-11, 2023 (Detroit, MI)

ShiftHAPPENS | Oct 10-11, 2023 (Washington DC)

365 EduCon - Chicago | Oct.30 - Nov.4, 2023 (Chicago, IL)

Community Days - Mexico City | Nov.2.2023 (HOTEL GALERÍA PLAZA REFORMA)

Microsoft Ignite | Nov. 14-17, 2023 (Hybrid: Seattle, WA and online)

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 in (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

European Cloud Summit | Dec.4-6.2023 (Wiesbaden, Germany)

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop August 2023 

August 2023 brought some great new offerings: SharePoint news to email inbox, two new SharePoint site theme options, accessibility improvements to SharePoint page authoring, announcements in Viva Connections, Restricted Access Control for SharePoint and OneDrive, OneDrive: Colors for folders, OneDrive: Meetings and People views, SharePoint pages sharing update, Teams Meet app, new Search experience within chat and channels, and more. In this episode, we hear from my colleagues, Denise Trabona (Partner design director) and Sara Cummings (Product manager on the SharePoint pages team) - both helping design and deliver the value of SharePoint news directly into your inbox.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

01:30 Employee engagement

11:23 Teamwork

16:30 Related tech

21:48 Teasers

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Denise Trabona | Twitter | LinkedIn [guest]

Sara Cummings | LinkedIn [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

SEF 2023 | Sept.11-12.2023 (Tekniska Museet – Stockholm, Sweden)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference | Oct.3-5.2023 (Las Vegas)

CollabDays New England | Oct.5.2023 (Burlington, MA)

ARMA InfoCon | Oct 9-11, 2023 (Detroit, MI)

ShiftHAPPENS | Oct 10-11, 2023 (Washington DC)

365 EduCon - Chicago | Oct.30 - Nov.3, 2023 (Chicago, IL)

Community Days - Mexico City | Nov.2.2023 (HOTEL GALERÍA PLAZA REFORMA)

Microsoft Ignite | Nov. 15-16, 2023 (Hybrid: Seattle, WA and online)

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 in (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

European Cloud Summit | Dec.4-6.2023 (Wiesbaden, Germany)

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Viva Connections adoption best practices 

Yosemite Syntex SAM 

In this episode, we talk with Sesha Mani, Partner Group Product Manager at Microsoft focused on security and compliance. We spoke with Sesha about SAM - that's SharePoint Advanced Management. We cover its core benefits – helping SharePoint and IT Admins address sprawl and oversharing – mapped to what it gives you beyond the core management aspects within the SharePoint admin center. SAM expands on the principles of securing and managing content and data with advanced access policies for secure content collaboration AND advanced sites content lifecycle management.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

08:32 Conversation with Sesha Mani

39:05 Upcoming Events

Sesha Mani | LinkedIn

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@MKashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@CMcNulty2000 [co-host]

"Microsoft Syntex – SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) Add-on – Announcing General Availability" by Sesha Mani

Learn more about SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) on Microsoft Learn

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

365 EduCon - Seattle (plus PWR EduCon) | Aug.21-25.2023

SEF 2023 | Sept.11-12.2023 (Tekniska Museet – Stockholm, Sweden)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference | Oct.3-5.2023 (Las Vegas)

CollabDays New England | Oct.5.2023 (Burlington, MA)

365 EduCon - Chicago | Oct.30 - Nov.4, 2023 (Chicago, IL)

Community Days - Mexico City | Nov.2.2023 (Juarez, Ciudad de Mexico)

Microsoft Ignite | Nov. 14-17, 2023 (Hybrid: Seattle, WA and online with pre-day labs)

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 in (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

European Cloud Summit | Dec.4-6.2023 (Wiesbaden, Germany)

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop - July 2023 

You can always rely on July to bring goodness to SharePoint and Microsoft 365: New SharePoint site creation experience, Viva Pulse GA, Viva Connections platform updates, new Search layouts for results, OneDrive: Simplified sharing, Lists UX update, Stream playback in Teams chat and channels, AAD > MSeID, Inspire announcements highlights, and more. We also hear from our friend Chris McNulty about the Microsoft 365 Backup and Archive announcements - from Microsoft Inspire. Plus, a bonus love song all about OneDrive, "King of the Cloud."

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

03:25 Employee engagement

10:04 OneDrive song, "King of the Cloud"

12:23 Teamwork

15:19 Related tech

25:31 Teasers

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Scottish Summit | Aug.5.2023 (Manchester, UK)

365 EduCon - Seattle (plus PWR EduCon) | Aug.21-25.2023

SEF 2023 | Sept.11-12.2023 (Tekniska Museet – Stockholm, Sweden)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference | Oct.3-5.2023 (Las Vegas)

CollabDays New England | Oct.5.2023 (Burlington, MA)

365 EduCon - Chicago | Oct.30 - Nov.4, 2023 (Chicago, IL)

Community Days - Mexico City | Nov.2.2023 (Juarez, Ciudad de Mexico)

Microsoft Ignite | Nov. 15-16, 2023 (Hybrid: Seattle, WA and online)

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 in (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

European Cloud Summit | Dec.4-6.2023 (Wiesbaden, Germany)

Visit CommunityDays.org to discover more events throughout the year.

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Fighting crime in real time 

In this episode, we dig into two real-time, data-driven public service scenarios -- both about systems and people that support policing at-scale. You'll hear solution-oriented clips pulled from two episodes of the 'Public Sector Future' podcast, with show host Olivia Neal - Director of Public Sector Center of Expertise at Microsoft. First, Olivia speaks to Ian Bell, CEO of the UK’s Police Digital Service, to give an inside look into harnessing the power of digital, data, and technology to better protect the communities they serve. Then a conversation with Joseph Courtesis, former Inspector of the NYPD who helped rationalize millions of data points from multiple data sources to save police time, in real time.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

Olivia Neal | LinkedIn | Twitter | Public Sector Future podcast (Promoted by @MSFTNews)

Ian Bell | Profile on PDS site | Twitter | LinkedIn | Police Digital (Twitter) | PDS on LinkedIn

Joseph Courtesis | Twitter | LinkedIn | NYPDNews (Twitter) | NYPD (LinkedIn) | NYPD (Website)

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Public Sector Center of Expertise

Microsoft for Public Safety and Justice

Episode 51: The UK’s Police Digital Service

Episode 14: Real Time Crime Center

Lessons from the pandemic are shaping the future of public safety (article)

UK Police Digital Service (website)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

365 EduCon - Seattle (plus PWR EduCon) | Aug.21-25.2023

SEF 2023 | Sept.11-12.2023 (Tekniska Museet – Stockholm, Sweden)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference | Oct.3-5.2023 (Las Vegas)

365 EduCon - Chicago | Oct.30 - Nov.4, 2023 (Chicago, IL)

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 in (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

European Cloud Summit | Dec.4-6.2023 (Wiesbaden, Germany)

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop June 2023 

June had wonderful new offerings for SharePoint and Microsoft 365: New Stream (on SharePoint) web part, Playlist view in the SharePoint List  web part, Viva Connections supports different audiences, OneDrive Home update, Loop Components sync with Planner and To Do, get ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot, and more. We also added a sneak peek of Sync Up - The OneDrive podcast (it's back!). And pulled audio of Jason Moore (VP of Lists and OneDrive) to frame the essence of OneDrive and the new Home experience. Stay to the end for a bonus snippet of the conversation between Jeff Teper and his manager Rajesh Jha - where they talk about the early days and decisions evolving BPOS > Office 365 > Microsoft 365.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

03:18 Sync Up podcast snippet with Stephen Rice and Arvind Mishra

04:33 Employee Engagement

09:30 Jason Moore on OneDrive innovation

13:17 Teamwork

16:15 Related Technology

21:42 Teasers

23:08 Jeff Teper and Rajesh Jha (Fireside chat on Office 365 customer journey)

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

OneDrive | Website | Help and learning | @OneDrive | OneDrive community blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Sync Up - The OneDrive podcast with Stephen Rice and Arvind Mishra

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Microsoft Inspire (Partner event) | July.18-19.2023 (virtual only)

365 EduCon - Seattle (plus PWR EduCon) | Aug.21-25.2023

Microsoft Power Platform Conference | Oct.3-5.2023 (Las Vegas)

365 EduCon - Chicago | Oct.30 - Nov.4, 2023 (Chicago, IL)

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 in (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

European Cloud Summit | Dec.4-6.2023 (Wiesbaden, Germany)

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

The SharePoint experience 

A swell of innovation is coming, aiming to boost the creator in us all – to create faster, more intuitively, and with the help of AI – your intranet web design partner. In this episode, we talk with Adam Harmetz, Vice President of SharePoint Experiences at Microsoft. We get his perspective on the recent SharePoint announcements disclosed at the Microsoft 365 Conference on May 2, 2023, in Las Vegas, Nevada. These include insights on Copilot in SharePoint, all the coming site design goodness – including custom fonts and 'brand center', the updated capabilities when working with images and videos, plus one of the core aspects - design goals, if you will - to evolve the SharePoint start experience for when you're in creator mode.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

02:04 Conversation with Adam Harmetz

16:10 Upcoming Events

20:03 Related Blogs

Adam Harmetz | LinkedIn | Twitter

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

"SharePoint in the AI Era: Introducing 'Copilot in SharePoint' and 10 more innovations for creators" by Adam Harmetz.

"Welcome to the new era of SharePoint and OneDrive in Microsoft 365" by Jeff Teper.

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

365 EduCon - DC | June.12-16 Washington D.C. - USA

CollabDays Central Europe | June 17th - in Technopark Zürich | 4 Tracks, with up to 20 Sessions in one day

Microsoft Inspire | July 18-19 (virtual only event)

European Power Platform Conference | June 20-22, 2023 in Dublin, Ireland

Commsverse 2023 - June 21-22, 2023 - Surrey, United Kingdom

CollabDays Zagreb - July 1, 2023 - Zagreb, Croatia

365 EduCon Seattle – August 21-25, 2023 - Seattle, WA, USA

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop May 2023 

May 2023 brought great new offerings to SharePoint and Microsoft 365: Customizable Viva Connections mobile dashboard, Syntex image tagger, Syntex prebuilt model for contracts, OneDrive: Simplified sharing, Loop components in Outlook Mobile, and more.  We also highlight public disclosures from two recent events, Microsoft 365 Conference and Microsoft Build. We also share an audio clip of Rajesh Jha, EVP for experiences and devices at Microsoft, when he spoke recently at the Microsoft 365 Conference about his first time seeing ChatGPT 4 with Bill Gates, Sam Brockman from OpenAI and others - that initial wow impact that laid the foundation for Copilot innovation at Microsoft.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post and transcript.

01:15 Two upcoming June events: 1) Viva Round the World, and 2) AMA - SharePoint, OneDrive, Lists, and Stream

04:30 Employee engagement

08:53 Audio snippet of Rajesh Jha about ChatGPT and AI (from the Microsoft 365 Conference keynote)

11:35 Teamwork

13:51 Related items

18:58 Announcements from Microsoft 365 Conference and Microsoft Build)

26:35 Teasers

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

“Welcome to the new era of SharePoint and OneDrive in Microsoft 365” by Jeff Teper.

“SharePoint in the AI Era: Introducing 'Copilot in SharePoint' and 10 more innovations for creators” by Adam Harmetz.

“Experience the New OneDrive: Fast, Organized, and Personalized” by Jason Moore.

“Microsoft Lists: Easier, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Lincoln DeMaris.

“Enhanced Video in Microsoft 365” by Owen Paulus.

“New era in content management and security in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams” by Sesha Mani.

Microsoft Build "Book of News" (May 23, 2023)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Viva Round the World | June.2.2023

CollabDays Netherlands | June.10.2023 Vianen, Utrecht

365 EduCon - DC | June.12-16 Washington D.C. - USA

AMA | SharePoint, OneDrive, Lists, and Stream | June.14.2023 at 10am PT (90 minutes)

CollabDays - Central Europe | June.17.2023 Technopark Zuerich

European Power Platform Conference | Jun.20-22 Dublin, Ireland

Microsoft Inspire (Partner event) | July.18-19.2023 (virtual only)

365 EduCon - Seattle (plus 365 PWRCon) | Aug.21-25.2023

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Adobe and Microsoft 

How do Adobe and Microsoft work together? And what are the outcomes? In this episode, you'll hear from Ben Vanderberg - SaaS Tech Evangelist, Strategist, and Speaker from Adobe. We dig into the core of the partnership from a content collaboration perspective. We touch on Adobe integration with Microsoft 365, Power Platform, Teams, Edge, SharePoint and more. We, too, take a trip down PDF memory lane and some of the recent Adobe AI announcements like coming out of the recent Adobe Summit 2023 AND NAB 2023.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

Ben Vanderberg | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback 

Learn more about the Adobe + Microsoft partnership: On MS.com and on Adobe business site

Adobe document cloud

Adobe Summit 2023 

Adobe Podcast: Recording and editing, all on the web - aka "Project Shasta"

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

CollabDays Italy | May.20.2023 in Milan

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Düsseldorf Fair, Germany

Document Strategy Forum 2023 | May 22-24 Le Méridien Charlotte, NC

Microsoft Build 2023 | May 23-25, 2023 build.microsoft.com

CollabDays Netherlands | June.10.2023 Vianen, Utrecht

365 EduCon - DC | June.12-16 Washington D.C. - USA

European Power Platform Conference | Jun.20-22 Dublin, Ireland

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 Amsterdam, Netherlands

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Jeff Teper is your Copilot 

On today's episode, we dig into a slew of announcements with Jeff Teper (President of Collaborative Apps and Platforms at Microsoft). We spoke to Jeff onsite in Vegas shortly after he and his team delivered a 90-minute whirlwind opening keynote – one that covered the value of community, tech Copilot, Teams, SharePoint - including Copilot in SharePoint, OneDrive, Lists, and goodness for IT with recent admin and security innovation. There were a ton of new announcements, plus the culmination of what Jeff coined "The wave of AI" - meaning the past few weeks have been a surge of AI news across Microsoft 365, Teams, Viva, Security, Loop – the big reveal being the notion of bringing that same AI service value into our beloved SharePoint.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

00:00 Intro with Chris and Mark

07:25 Conversation with Jeff Teper

50:40 Upcoming Events

Jeff Teper | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback 

“Welcome to the new era of SharePoint and OneDrive in Microsoft 365” by Jeff Teper.

“SharePoint in the AI Era: Introducing 'Copilot in SharePoint' and 10 more innovations for creators” by Adam Harmetz.

“Experience the New OneDrive: Fast, Organized, and Personalized” by Jason Moore.

“Microsoft Lists: Easier, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Lincoln DeMaris.

“Enhanced Video in Microsoft 365” by Owen Paulus.

“New era in content management and security in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams” by Sesha Mani.

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland - formerly known as SPS Warsaw.

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

CollabDays Italy | May.20.2023 in Milan

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Düsseldorf Fair, Germany

Microsoft Build 2023 |May 23-25, 2023 build.microsoft.com | Hybrid Global Digital and in-person in Seattle. Register now.

Document Strategy Forum 2023 | May 22-24 in Charlotte, NC, USA (Le Méridien Charlotte)

CollabDays Netherlands | June.10.2023 Vianen, Utrecht

365 EduCon - DC | June.12-16 Washington D.C. - USA

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop April 2023 

April 2023 brought some great new offerings to SharePoint and Microsoft 365: Project integration in Viva Goals, Viva Connections: Mobile SharePoint site navigation, improved Graph Connector content results, eDiscovery document version shared, Microsoft Lists: Applied filters, Microsoft Loop: .fluid > .loop, new files experience in Teams, Create pages and news in the SharePoint app bar, and more. We chat with Ben Truelove, Principal Designer at Microsoft focused on Microsoft Lists about recent user interface updates - narrowing in on the new experiences when working with and creating views + what was released this past month: Applied Filters. April showers truly brought May Features.

Click here to view this episode's corresponding blog post.

Click here for this episode's full transcript. 

01:13 Employee engagement

05:54 Conversation with Ben Truelove

18:11 Teamwork

23:05 Related Items

29:41 Teasers

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Ben Truelove | LinkedIn [guest]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Düsseldorf Fair, Germany

Microsoft Build 2023 | May 23-25, 2023. Register now.

The AIIM Conference 2023 | May.25-27.2023 Hyatt Regency, New Orleans

CollabDays Netherlands | June.10.2023 Vianen, Utrecht

365 EduCon - DC | June.12-16 Washington D.C. - USA

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop: March 2023 

March 2023 brought both new updates and big announcements. In this episode, we cover: File web part now: “File and Media”, Viva Connections on iPad, Microsoft Edge + Adobe Acrobat PDF Engine, Microsoft Lists + Approvals app in Teams, OneDrive: Favorite/Unfavorite, Suggested files in 1:1 chat, Microsoft Word: Send to Kindle, and more. Plus, we have two guests: 1) Matt McKenzie, Director of Microsoft 365 product marketing, shares insights about the upcoming Microsoft 365 Conference in Vegas (May 2-3), and 2) Sudha Narayanan explains how Microsoft Lists supports approval scenarios natively within info tracking incorporating the Approvals app in Teams. Our related tech segment highlights three big disclosures: 1) Microsoft 365 Copilot, 2) the Loop app (Public Preview), and the New Teams app (Public Preview); #Speed.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Click here for transcript of this episode.

1:46 Conversation with Matt McKenzie

12:09 Employee engagement updates

18:43 Conversation with Sudha Narayanan

33:18 Teamwork updates

37:15 Related tech + Teasers

Matt McKenzie | LinkedIn | Twitter

Sudha Narayanan | LinkedIn

Microsoft 365 Conference (May 2-4, 2023) | Website | Twitter | Register

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Resources:

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Adobe Summit 2023 (Past | keynote and breakout sessions now on-demand)

Microsoft Viva Summit | April.20.2023 Online

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Düsseldorf Fair, Germany

Microsoft Build 2023 | May 23-25, 2023. Register now.

The AIIM Conference 2023 | May.25-27.2023 Hyatt Regency, New Orleans

CollabDays Netherlands | June.10.2023 Vianen, Utrecht

365 EduCon - DC | June.12-16 Washington D.C. - USA

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Topics is Engaged 

Viva Topics in Engage doubles the impact and access of your knowledge at your fingertips - and how you pay it forward to others. On today's episode, we hear from Raj Jain (Principal product manager at Microsoft) about all things topical about Viva Topics, specifically - the role of Viva Topics within your Viva Engage community discussions, questions, and announcements posts. The real value gives you a built-in knowledge management system that balances and refines the length of your internal communications without sacrificing the depth you pay forward to each person that reads your comm. Two Viva apps, one great outcome.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

05:35 Conversation with Raj Jain

19:08 Upcoming Events

Raj Jain | (Principal Product Manager - Viva Engage and Answers team) [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Viva Topics | Website | Viva adoption center | @MicrosoftViva

Viva Engage | Website | Viva adoption center | @MicrosoftViva

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Modern Workplace Conference 2023 | March.27-29.2023 Paris, France

Microsoft Secure | March.28.2023 Online

Microsoft Viva Summit | April.20.2023 Online

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Düsseldorf Fair, Germany

Microsoft Build 2023 | May 23-25, 2023. Register now.

The AIIM Conference 2023 | May.25-27.2023 Hyatt Regency, New Orleans

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop: February 2023 

In this episode, we cover: Yammer > Engage rebrand, Viva Topics in Viva Engage, Stream Playlists, SharePoint Advanced Management, updated OneDrive Home and Shared, external file requests for SharePoint document libraries, export Microsoft Lists as datasets for Power BI, update to rules email notifications, and more. Plus, we talk with Sesha Mani, Principal group product manager on the SharePoint team focused on admin, security, and compliance. Sesha highlights the value of new SharePoint Advanced Management capabilities when working with proposals, contracts, invoices, and more - to help IT address sprawl and oversharing with a new set of advanced security and content management capabilities - broadly speaking advanced access policies for secure content collaboration AND advanced sites content lifecycle management.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Click here for full transcript. 

1:30 Employee Engagement

7:40 Conversation with Sesha Mani

21:10 Teamwork

28:25 Related Technology

Sesha Mani | LinkedIn | Twitter

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

"Microsoft Syntex – SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) Add-on – Announcing General Availability" (blog post)

Learn more about SharePoint Advanced Management (MS Learn)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Modern Workplace Conference 2023 | March.27-29.2023 Paris, France

Culturati | Apr.2-3.2023 Austin, Texas

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

Technorama Belgium - the Jungle Edition | May.15-17 Kinepolis Antwerp

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

CollabDays Italy | May.20.2023 Milan, Italy

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Dusseldorf, Germany

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Viva Engage has the answer 

You have questions. Viva has answers. On today's episode, we chat with Michael Holste and Steve Nguyen, Microsoft employees who focus on Microsoft Viva Engage and all the goodness it brings - with many exciting announcements disclosed today. You'll learn about things geared toward leadership communications, ways to host and run internal AMAs, and the general notion of getting answers to your questions when using Microsoft Viva, what is referred to as Answers in Viva. Plus, a little future news on Yammer branding… it's a packed episode that will warm the community part of your heart.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

06:10 Conversation with Michael and Steve

37:06 Upcoming Events

Michael Holste | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Steve Nguyen | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Viva Engage | Website | Viva adoption center | @Microsoft365

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

“New Leadership, Analytics, and Knowledge Experiences for Viva Engage are now rolling out” by Michael Holste

Yammer rebrand 2023 (blog)

Insights for Yammer customers (blog)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Microsoft Viva Engage AMA | Feb.23.2023 online at 9am PST

WorkPlaceDudes Summit | Feb.24.2023 Holland

Modern Workplace Conference 2023 | March.27-29.2023 Paris, France

Culturati | Apr.2-3.2023 Austin, Texas

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

Technorama Belgium - the Jungle Edition | May.15-17 Kinepolis Antwerp

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Templates, templates, templates 

It's a templates world, from start to finish - if you want to finish on time. In this episode, we first chat with Cathy Dew, senior product manager on the SharePoint team, about the value and design of SharePoint templates, Microsoft 365 templates, Lists templates, and more. We then connect with two of our partners from Pointwork in Copenhagen, Denmark: Peter Larsen, their CTO, and Lars Kristensen, a Principal consultant; we drill down into the real-world use and adoption of templates + governance and hear how they help streamline your business in production.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

06:55 Conversation with Cathy Dew

26:15 Conversation with Pointwork

53:30 Upcoming Events

Cathy Dew (Microsoft - Senior product manager) | LinkedIn | Twitter

Peter Larsen (Pointwork - CTO) | LinkedIn | Twitter

Lars Kristensen (Pointwork - Principal consultant) | LinkedIn | Twitter

Pointwork | Website | LinkedIn | Twitter

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Collab365 | Three-hour Microsoft Lists workshop online with Mark Kashman | Feb.8.2023

Reimagine Education | Feb.9.2023 (online)

WorkPlaceDudes Summit | Feb.24.2023 Holland

Modern Workplace Conference 2023 | March.27-29.2023 Paris, France

Culturati | Apr.2-3.2023 Austin, Texas

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

Technorama Belgium - the Jungle Edition | May.15-17 Kinepolis Antwerp

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

CollabDays Italy | May.20.2023 Milan, Italy

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Dusseldorf, Germany

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop: January 2023 

In this episode, you’ll hear about all the new features and updates: Microsoft Feed, Planner integration with Viva Goals, extracting PDFs in OneDrive for Android, Microsoft Lists: Calendar week layout, Microsoft Teams @Everyone, Microsoft named a Leader in 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Insight Engines, Stream (Classic) sets to retire: February 15, 2024, and more. Plus, we talk with Bill Bär from the 'content AI' team focused on Search, Syntex, and a whole lot of AI. Bill shares insights into the design and value of Microsoft Feed - a smart aggregate of all sorts of things happening around - content, people, videos, reminders, actionable tasks, and more -- coming to Outlook and the Office mobile apps.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

Bill Bär | LinkedIn | Twitter

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Learn about Outlook mobile search, aka - Microsoft Feed in Outlook

Deploying Outlook for iOS and Android app config in Exchange

Download your own complimentary copy of the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Insight Engines.

Make Your Goals a Reality with OKRs and New Capabilities from Microsoft Viva Goals

Panel discussion at #ESPC22 w/Jeff Teper & Suzy Dean (AddIn365): https://youtu.be/gmltQ85QM54

Timeline for Stream (Classic) retirement:  https://aka.ms/StreamClassicRetireTimeline

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming 2023 events:

Collab365 | Three-hour Microsoft Lists workshop online with Mark Kashman

Reimagine Education | Feb.9.2023 (online)

WorkPlaceDudes Summit | Feb.24.2023 Holland

Modern Workplace Conference 2023 | March.27-29.2023 Paris, France

Culturati | Apr.2-3.2023 Austin, Texas

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

Technorama Belgium - the Jungle Edition | May.15-17 Kinepolis Antwerp

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

CollabDays Italy | May.20.2023 Milan, Italy

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Dusseldorf, Germany

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Fast Fridays with Jeff Teper 

We chat with Jeff Teper to dig into what he calls "Fast Friday" - his use of technology to record his thoughts about what he's up to each week - where he spends time, anecdotes on internal and external meetings, and things he's working on - big and small. Fast Fridays are about capturing thoughts, putting them together, and then getting them out there - and that it's OK to be scrappy, consistent, and engaged versus over-polished and less available. For Jeff, it's all about transparency, communication, and leadership - every week. You'll learn about his approach to leadership, why he creates and publishes his Fast Fridays, and the importance of Microsoft Teams and other tools for communications.  Get ready to grab some Teper tidbits on The Intrazone.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for a transcript of this episode.

Jeff Teper | LinkedIn | Twitter

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

M365 Twin Cities | Jan.21.2023 Brooklyn Park, Minneapolis

Culturati | Apr.2-3.2023 Austin, Texas

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Dusseldorf, Germany

European Power Platform Conference | Jun.20-22 Dublin, Ireland

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 Amsterdam, Netherlands

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop: December 2022 

Our team spent most of December 2022 refining the cloud, improving it for your return to work – whenever that may be. In this episode, you’ll find details about a load of great new offerings: Microsoft Syntex Pay-as-you-go (Preview), search video transcript for Stream (on SharePoint), SharePoint Apps: Add to teams when enabling an app, OneDrive: Sensitivity labels appear on the sharing dialog, OneDrive sync reports (GA), SharePoint sites search in usage analytics, Microsoft Teams Premium (Preview), Microsoft Whiteboard mobile apps, and more.

Plus, we included audio from my co-host Chris McNulty, Director of product marketing for Syntex and Viva Topics – from his recent keynote segment during the European SharePoint Conference - to provide an update on all things Microsoft Syntex. Happy holidays, and welcome to 2023.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Click here for transcript of this episode.

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Microsoft 365 Setup site (Getting started and deployment guides)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Notes from the ESPC22 keynotes 

Sink your ears into clip highlights from each of the four Microsoft keynotes from the European SharePoint Conference 2022 (ESPC22 | Copenhagen, Denmark). You'll hear from Jeff Teper covering the approach Microsoft takes in making Microsoft 365 the best productivity offering, from Karuana Gatimu sharing insights about the metaverse in Teams, Scott Hanselman about how many keystrokes you have left, Vesa Juvonen on the continuum of opportunity for developers -- no-to-low-to-pro code. And last, a fun selection of questions and answers from the Microsoft AMA. Tons of insights on Microsoft technology for all roles, plus an audible glimpse on the value of content and community.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Click here for a transcript of this episode. 

European SharePoint Conference Twitter | Instagram | Website

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Scott Hanselman's KeysLeft.com site

Microsoft Graph Developer Proxy

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Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming 2023 EU Events from the ESPC event team:

• European Power Platform Conference (EPPC23) | Jun.20-22 Dublin, Ireland
• European SharePoint Conference (ESPC23) | Nov.27-30 Amsterdam, Netherlands

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Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

SharePoint roadmap pitstop: November 2022 

Gobble, gobble - time to gobble up all the updates that landed for SharePoint and related tech on the month of November 2022 - a load of great new offerings: Briefing email enhancements, a new praise compose experience, a new Viva admin experience, SharePoint tenant URL rename (GA), three new SharePoint site templates, updated management for site information, sign language via in Microsoft Teams, Editor using Context IQ in Word, and more. We also pulled audio from Cathy Dew, Senior product manager from the SharePoint team, to give share more behind the design and application of SharePoint site templates. It's a packed edition, minus the tryptophan.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

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Upcoming Events:

ESPC22 (Nov.28 - Dec. 1, 2022 | in-person Copenhagen, Denmark, Bella Center)

Microsoft 365 Conference (Dec.6-8.2022 | In-person Las Vegas, NV MGM Grand)

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Add to OneDrive 

On this episode, we hear from Gaia Carini and Katy Erlandson from the OneDrive engineering team. We dig into OneDrive to distinguish the value between the "Add to OneDrive" feature and general sync of team site document libraries - sometimes referred to as "Shared libraries". You’ll hear more about what each capability does, the path forward by design to make it easy for you, plus guidance for today and going forward. The whole of this episode spawned from a Twitter thread request, and we think you'll like this audible response.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Full transcript below.

Gaia Carini (Principal GPM) | Twitter | LinkedIn 

Katy Erlandson (Senior product manager) | LinkedIn

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

OneDrive | Website | Help and learning | @OneDrive | OneDrive community blog | Feedback

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

Resources:

"Sync in SharePoint and OneDrive" includes info + PowerShell script if you want to remove the Sync button from all the SharePoint libraries in your organization | Set-SPOTenant -HideSyncButtonOnTeamSite $true

The @RippedOrange tweet thread that started it all: "Sync vs Add Shortcut to OneDrive"

"Add shortcuts to shared folders in OneDrive for work or school" (support article)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

European SharePoint Conference 2022 (Nov.28 - Dec. 1) Copenhagen, Denmark at the Bella Center

Microsoft 365 Conference (Dec.6-8.2022) Las Vegas, NV

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

TRANSCRIPT

MARK KASHMAN: Welcome to the Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365 Intelligent Intranet. I’m Mark Kashman, Senior Product Manager on the Microsoft 365 marketing team. And on today’s episode, we hear from Gaia Carini, Principal Group Product Manager, and Katy Erlandson, Senior Product Manager, both from the OneDrive engineering team, here to dig in to distinguish the value between Add to OneDrive, the feature, and general sync of Teams Site Document Libraries.

There’s a lot that you can do, and there’s some best practices. And just so you know, document libraries in this case are sometimes referred to as shared libraries, those that you share with your, or in a shared space, effectively outside of your OneDrive, your own personal work OneDrive, but you want to bring in all of those files and folders even if they’re shared.

So you’re going to hear about each of these capabilities, the Add to OneDrive and the common notion of sync, and the path forward—by design—to make it easier for you and pervasive. You’ll hear guidance today and going forward, plus a few favorite tips and tricks—direct from the team—that designs the overall user experience of OneDrive. And the of the whole of this episode kicked off by request from our audience on a unique platform discussion, and we will share that as we kick off the episode with Gaia and Katy. Just a fun way where we heard some great feedback that turned into a great episode.

So I just have a few thoughts to share. When you actually think about the Add to OneDrive feature, it’s really easy. You just locate the folder that you want to add to your OneDrive, select the circle of the Folders tile, so that you can take an action on it, and then select Add Shortcut to My Files—effectively Add to OneDrive at the top of the menu—or you just right-click a folder and select that same notion, Add Shortcut to My Files.

So this is a feature that I use, the Add to OneDrive, for all of the files in this podcast, really forever – for wherever I am in my OneDrive. Most commonly, here at my desk at home, I go into the Windows Explorer, I find the Mark-Microsoft OneDrive icon, I click into the Documents-The Intrazone folder, and there it is, even though this comes from a document library in a SharePoint site that’s connected to a Teams’ team that we use to help manage this podcast. It’s really just a one-or-two-click-away action for me to get to those show notes and the folders, and all of the things we do per each episode across the various Microsoft Teams channel, effectively a folder in a document library.

I have access to all of that. No matter where I look across OneDrive, once I’ve added it to OneDrive, created that shortcut for my common My Files experience, and it takes me to wherever those files are located, without moving them, but it’s a great reference with some real ease of access.

So I do this for the Intrazone, I do it for the Microsoft Lists product management that I help manage here at Microsoft, and of course with various conferences, some of which are managed by other people, which I think is one of the best possible use cases where somebody else is managing files and folders, and I go in and I add those that are most relevant to me, during that event, to my OneDrive, by just clicking on their folders and files and add to my OneDrive.

I have access, so I can do that, and then I will have access, more directly, without having to navigate to that site or that team. It’s just right there in Windows Explorer, same experience, document/name of event, even if it’s managed by somebody else who’s invited me into that team, and then we all work on a variety of files, but then I have access to all of that, with fewer clicks and more in my own domain so I know which files are mine and which files are coming from a shared location.

That’s a little bit of how it works, how I use it. I think the best thing, though, is to get clarity of what we’re really here to answer, which is, how do I distinguish that Add to OneDrive feature with Team Site sync when I’m using OneDrive? And no better people to help answer that than from the product team, so let’s bring in Gaia and Katy to address this and much more.

(Music.)

All right, it is enough of you hearing Chris and I speculating what this OneDrive sync and all the things you can do in this modern era of files experiences everywhere. We are here talking with Gaia and Katy from the OneDrive team, joining us on the Intrazone. Gaia and Katy, welcome.

GAIA CARINI: Thanks, Mark, we’re excited to be here.

MARK KASHMAN: And I’m excited that you’re here. Before we get into the why we’re here, which might be obvious to everybody, but we have a really particular reason that’s kind of a fun reason of the way this episode came about. But if you don’t mind, both of you sharing just a little bit about what you do on the OneDrive team, and of course there – if there’s more that you do here at Microsoft, people would love to know a little bit more about you.

So I thought, Katy, we would start with you.

KATY ERLANDSON: I’m a PM on the OneDrive sync team. I’ve been working primarily on our enterprise features, the last few years, and Add to OneDrive being one of them, so I’m happy to be here today and talk more about that.

MARK KASHMAN: Very nice, and Gaia.

GAIA CARINI: Hi, everyone. I’m Gaia. I am the Group Product Manager of the OneDrive sync team. So my team, including Katy, works on OneDrive for Windows and macOS across consumer and commercial users and scenarios. And yeah, I’ve been working on sync for several years now, and I love being on the OneDrive team, and it’s been really fun.

MARK KASHMAN: What I thought was fun about this episode, I know you both know, but for our audience, you should know that the impetus of this episode truly came from our audience in the broadest way. There was a Twitter discussion that was going on, and the focus of that was "when do I use the Add to OneDrive feature versus sync?"

And of course, you can imagine somebody out there was thinking about who they should pull into this conversation, and we now have Gaia and Katy who are about as close to the source of answering that question, which we will address it in the exact way that you’d imagine, the OneDrive team as the accurate way.

You know, when you first saw that Twitter discussion, there was that twee threat. A. I was really happy that you said yes to joining us on the Intrazone to provide the answer. Is that a common thing that you see people asking, or as they’re trying to navigate some of the feature sets and capabilities of OneDrive?

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, it is a question that we have been getting, and so I was looking forward to us coming here on the Intrazone to talk more about the two different ways to sync files from either shared libraries in SharePoint, or just a folder someone has shared with you in – from their OneDrive, or files from Teams. Since it is a common question, we’re really excited to go more into the differences and what our recommendations are, and what we see the long-term plan to be.

MARK KASHMAN: So where do we start? We come off this thread and we start to stare at – you know, what is a great way to answer that, which I know you both have some nice thoughts around that. I thought Gaia, just to start with you, let’s set some ground foundational elements of, when we talk about sync, maybe at the Teams Site level, you know, what is that, syncing the Teams Site and then answering in that same vein of thought, what is Add to OneDrive.

GAIA CARINI: So first, starting with just OneDrive sync as the app, OneDrive sync lets you access and edit and share files from Windows and macOS, no matter where they are, in your own OneDrive, in someone else’s OneDrive or in a Teams Site, you know, or in – you know, from a channel in Teams, including if you are offline. And to sync the files that are in those shared locations, we have two models that are supported, the sync button and Add to OneDrive.

And so first, I thought I’d just share what are some of the differences between those. So the sync button is something that we’ve had since we started supporting with the new sync client when we were on our journey to replace Groove. We added the sync button and that syncs the folder or library to that specific device.

And so let’s say I’m here on my Windows PC, and I go to, you know, our team, the folder where our team saves all of our specs. I can click the sync button and that will sync it to this PC specifically. But then if I go on my Mac, I won’t see that same folder, and that’s where Add to OneDrive comes in.

Add to OneDrive allows you to add that folder—let’s say in this case a spec folder that’s really important and I go to all the time—to your OneDrive so that it’s easy to find, no matter which device you’re on. And it’ll start syncing, you know, on that device where you added it to your OneDrive but across all your devices too.

So now, if I go back to my Mac, I’ll see that same folder also being synced, but I’ll also see it on my mobile device, through the OneDrive mobile app, or on Teams if I go navigate my OneDrive files through Teams, and on the web and in Office. And so it just allows you to easily find your files in those shared locations.

MARK KASHMAN: So I’ve used the Add to OneDrive feature, and I – I’ve done it four or five times, consistently, with – the right use case—at least for me—is when I go into my Windows machine, any Windows machine and I get into my OneDrive, and I see those shared folders that I’ve added to my OneDrive. It’s the quickest way for me to get to them, and it also is the kind of spaces that I work in, pretty much throughout the year.

I have one Add to OneDrive for my next-gen events site, so any event that I work on, I can get into the folder of the individual event, see the sessions, PowerPoints, any videos, and you know, some of the pre-material that we have for people to use for like graphics to tweet out, and stuff like that.

And I also have another one that I use for Microsoft Lists, with the Lists team. It’s a place where we create a lot of different outbound presentations. We also manage, you know, the different feature sets that are upcoming, but from a content and document perspective, I just go into my Windows Explorer, click on OneDrive and then go right into the name of that team, which is either Microsoft Lists or Next-gen Events, and it’s just right there, and it’s – it’s really easy to navigate.

I know it’s there, and it just – like you said, it doesn’t matter which machine I’m on, so I really do love that feature, and I think it’s really important for people to understand how to leverage that in the different scenarios, which I thought, Katy, if we could get some of that insight from you, you know, whether you’re thinking about sync or Add to OneDrive, or what we know, kind of into the future, what we’ll get to, is what do you recommend and why, when – when you think about different ways that you would guide people to use the technology.

KATY ERLANDSON: Yeah, so we definitely recommend Add to OneDrive. It is a newer, shiny feature. From Team Site sync, as Gaia mentioned, it’s kind of a more holistic OneDrive experience, so you’re not just getting it on whichever device you chose to sync it on, but you’re getting that content across all of your devices. And it’s also more – more performant. I’m not sure how many people realize this, but with Team Site sync, we’re actually also syncing all of the metadata for the whole library, even if you go and you only sync at the subfolder level, like in Gaia’s case in the spec folder.

In Add to OneDrive, if you go and you add the shortcut right at the spec folder level, then we’re only syncing that content. So for really, really big document libraries, this can actually be a pretty big gamechanger.

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, to add to what Katy was saying, with Add to OneDrive, we’ve also made several improvements to the experience where, for example, if you decide, you know, you’re done with a certain project and you no longer need that folder, and so you remove the shortcut from your OneDrive, we’ll go and clean that up from the device, which I know is feedback we get from the sync button experience.

So we’ve made improvements like that to the experience. We also have a group policy that allows removing the shortcut content if users no longer have access, for example, to the content. So we’ve been continuing to improve on the experience, based on feedback, in addition to all of the advantages Katy mentioned.

MARK KASHMAN: Maybe, Kattie, back to you, you – you know, thoughts around guidance. If I’m IT, and I’m thinking Microsoft is describing, you know, these different ways that I can configure for my employees, my end user, what would be some of the things that we might guide them to consider—if not even pass along—to their end user?

KATY ERLANDSON: If you know that no one in your company right now is using Teams Site sync, we recommend just guiding everybody to only using Add to OneDrive. In our documentation there is a script where you can actually turn off the sync button for your whole site, and so if you know that – that no one in your – in your organization is using Teams Site sync, I would just go ahead and turn that off now and start taking advantage of – of all the things that Add to OneDrive has to offer.

If you are in a mixed state, I would definitely stay tuned for our guidance here. We will be migrating users off of Teams Site sync and into – on to Add to OneDrive, eventually, but first, we really want to make sure that we’re addressing feedback and that we can make sure that the migration will be seamless. So definitely stay tuned here but know that that’s where we’re heading.

MARK KASHMAN: So one thing that I’ve been just curious about, hearing you talk about the administrative capability to turn off the sync button in the Teams Site, from the Teams Site level, does that same sync button disappearing experience actually happen also in Microsoft Teams? If I’m in the Files tab, which effectively is that shame – same connected SharePoint document library, does the sync button also disappear in Teams?

KATY ERLANDSON: Yeah, so it will also go away in Teams. It’s the setting that removes the button for the whole tenant, so – so yeah, Teams will be included in that.

GAIA CARINI: But the Add shortcut to OneDrive option that we’ve been talking about is already available in Teams, and so if you go to the Files tab and there is – you know, in the general channel—or whichever channel—a folder that you want to make sure you’re syncing, you can still use the Add shortcut to OneDrive button from Teams.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, that’s great, because I think a lot of people kind of ask a broader question, you know, when I’m working in SharePoint versus working in Teams, files being the – what they’re talking about. It’s that – sometimes that delta of experience.

I know the team is broadly working on, you know, having the capabilities be the same, and I think from a sync perspective it’s really important that, if you—from an admin perspective—chose to remove the sync button, by guidance of, you know, using the Add to OneDrive more, as we go into the future, I think a lot of that is kind of comfort food for admins to go, "Okay, I changed it once and that will be adhered to these different entry points that people might be making those choices," which kind of leads me into where I at least wanted to pick your brain.

The Twitter topic was more around what we’ve been talking about, the sync and Add to OneDrive, how they work together and maybe, you know, a little bit more guidance on what – what to use, when. If we were to step back and just ask the OneDrive team, whether it’s a sync question or broader than that, what is the long-term plan? You know, where would you tell people the – the direction that we’re going, either in this space or even broader than that?

Gaia, I would start with you.

GAIA CARINI: As Katy mentioned, the long-term plan is to really use the Add shortcut to OneDrive, or Add to OneDrive functionality, to allow users to sync their files across all devices and access them really easily, no matter where they are. As part of that, we have been talking to a lot of customers, and we have heard feedback on some of the gaps in the experiences, or some of the – you know, just feedback from users interacting with Add to One Drive and comparing it to this – the way the sync button syncs files.

And so we were really focused on really understanding all of that feedback and addressing that. We also, in addition to that, need to work on making the migration from the sync button synced content to Add to OneDrive really seamless, both on Windows and Mac, and so that’s another thing that we’ve been looking at and planning.

Eventually, the goal is to fully replace the sync button, and so stay tuned for more information and timelines on that. We don’t have timelines on it right now. Again, the – the current focus is really addressing the feedback so we can really make the Add to OneDrive experience the best possible one for users across different scenarios.

MARK KASHMAN: Anything from a – a robust service like OneDrive, especially one that’s been in use at scale, managing our customers, especially – you know, for giving IT the tools that they need, and obviously the awareness change management of what’s coming or best practices and guidance, I – I certainly think that’s a great investment area.

I know, you know, knowing a lot of change, and if it affects our customers negatively because it’s a bigger impact or something that they didn’t see coming, and this one sounds like it’s a perfect way to both blend getting users to think about doing things a little bit differently and that impact not being something that is unmanageable by IT when we make that change.

So Katy, you know, there’s probably a lot of feedback that’s coming in. What would you say is the number one or top piece of feedback that we’re actually working to address?

KATY ERLANDSON: The thing that we hear the most, probably, is this concept of, like confusion around me versus we. With Teams Sites, we kind of said, "Okay, if it’s in your OneDrive node, you can think of it as your personal stuff; if it’s in your Teams Sites node, you can think of it as shared content, but then users can still share from their OneDrive and then it’s – there’s a mix of shared content there.

And now, by adding shortcuts into OneDrive, it just adds a little bit more to that confusion, and so our primary focus is to clear that up. It becomes the most problematic around deletes. So if somebody deletes a file that they think is in their OneDrive, and it’s just for them, and then that delete is propagated, and then now that’s deleted for everybody, and then they don’t find out about it until somebody else needs to work on it, and then it’s missing.

So that’s our top priority. We want to make sure that deletes are super clear. It’s clear when it’s being deleted for just you or it’s being deleted for everyone, and we want users to confirm that before they actually do send that delete out to everybody.

So that’s number one. We kind of had this same feedback with Teams Site sync also. It’s not really a new problem to add to OneDrive, but it is definitely still there.

MARK KASHMAN: It sounds like, to me, you’re going to be increasing—in a positive way—the use and value of the recycle bin and the awareness of "before you throw it away …" and of course, always the awareness of "if it’s been thrown away …" you know, the recovery and – and the value there, the value for OneDrive if it’s your own set of files, and certainly value if it’s a shared set of files.

And it’s interesting, the me/we space, I’ve heard both internally working with MVPs, hearing how they discuss it, and I think the way you’re describing it, Katy, a lot of it is the – how does the technology work, and what are the things that, you know, are blocking people from either understanding it or, if they’re using it, and they hit some of these—especially like a delete scenario—how to make it so that they do delete something effectively, or if they delete it and they’re aware before they maybe accidentally do it.

KATY ERLANDSON: Exactly. We want to make sure that we can prevent it if it’s not what they meant to do, and when accidents do happen, we also want to invest in making that recovery be easier.

MARK KASHMAN: Gaia, did you have a thought?

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, I think you both are spot on. On the me versus we topic, I think some of the things we’re looking at is really how to surface the fact that the shortcut is from a shared location in File Explorer and Finder. You know, whether that’s through the icons we use, or even where the shortcut goes by default.

And so we’re exploring different potential paths there, but we know it’s definitely a common theme across a lot of customers we’ve talked to, and so it’s really top of mind for our team.

MARK KASHMAN: Do you have – because you work on OneDrive, you most likely use it as much as I do, on a daily basis – you know, if people listening to this, if there was something that’s either a recent innovation or something that people, you know, might be just one or two clicks in, and they should know about it, or if it’s staring them in the face and – you know, we just want to increase, we know how many times people are using it. Is there any recent or relevant tip or trick of using OneDrive, of just something that you actually use, each and every day, and – and really enjoy?

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, I can start. I have the exciting announcement, as of yesterday. We reached 100% on our file backup, also known as Known Folder Move, for macOS. This feature is something I use every day, across both my Windows PC and my Mac, basically to ensure that all my files on my desktop and my documents folder are in OneDrive, and I can access them across devices, from my phone, if I’m out.

And so it’s something we’ve had on Windows for a long time, and we used – we’re really focused on continuing to improve that experience as well. And yeah, as of yesterday, we got to 100% in production on macOS, and it’s been something that our team has been working on for a while, and really excited about that.

MARK KASHMAN: Well, congratulations. KFM on Mac is not a small feature to – to build and deliver. Now, it’s up to our customers to actually take advantage of it.

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, so we’re really looking forward to the feedback on that.

MARK KASHMAN: That’s great. Katy, any particular feature or capability that you love about OneDrive, that you use?

KATY ERLANDSON: I think mine also has to be KFM. It’s not something that I think about appreciating every day, but just the fact that I don’t have to worry about what files are where, on what device. I mean, I’m constantly working on multiple devices every day. I have three going, most days.

So the fact that they’re all in sync with where my files are, I know that, you know, I can find a certain spec on my desktop, every time. It’s easy, I like it.

MARK KASHMAN: You both keep saying this word, spec. And I’m thinking, maybe we can put all of your specs in your OneDrive for Consumer, and we can share that folder so that the world can sync all of your specs. Do you think that’s a good idea?

KATY ERLANDSON: Probably not.

GAIA CARINI: I do have every single file I own—both in my personal life and in my work life—in my OneDrive. Now, of course, whether that’s in my personal account or my work account is really important, but yeah, I wouldn’t be able to function at all without my OneDrive.

Since you told us to go beyond just sync, I’ll tell you one of my other favorite features I use a ton, especially even both at work and outside of work. I love using the PDF signing feature from the mobile app. I feel like that’s something that not everyone might know about, but it’s so, so useful, so you don’t have to print something out and sign it.

For folks listening, if you haven’t checked that out, you definitely should.

KATY ERLANDSON: And the PDF scan. I think that’s my favorite one –

GAIA CARINI: Yeah.

KATY ERLANDSON: My favorite non-sync feature would be the PDF scan.

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, totally, the PDF scan and then sign, both, whether you’re using them together or separate, yeah, for sure.

MARK KASHMAN: That’s awesome, I – I think I’m mentioning the same feature. I was just going to say, real quickly, my favorite features is on the OneDrive mobile, and it’s when using the expense tool. Sometimes you have a receipt that requires it to be in the system, and I use OneDrive religiously because I typically create a folder for each event that I attend, or each travel, and so I collect my PowerPoints and my videos, and all the – kind of the marketing stuff, but then, inevitably, I have a meal out, and I’ve got my – my folio from the hotel and all those things.

And I immediately as soon – much sooner than later, I will go into OneDrive, navigate through, sometimes through my Add to OneDrive for these next-gen events folder, and I go to the folder of the event, and then I just save it, and you know, I do a – basically a scan, a document scan of the receipt, and it’s very easy to give it a name, put it in the right folder, and then I’m ready to put it in the expense tool when I return.

And it does a great job of cropping the receipt, no matter form the – the receipt is in, and it just puts it – you know, again, kind of in the most compliant space for me, OneDrive, and then is very then easy to upload into that expense tool for each expense report.

So thank you for – for building off of Office Lens, but I think taking it to a level of real usability. It’s very easy.

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, I agree, the Clutch feature. We don’t thank the mobile team enough for that one.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, I mean, honestly, whoever did the Office Lens integration did such a nice job because what you described, around PDF markup, the inking capabilities, you know, that’s next level. If you haven’t ever done that, it really is – there’s a lot that you can accomplish, and it’s not a hard-to-use feature. It’s really friendly.

Well, thank you for giving us a lot to think about, and to kind of answer this Twitter question in a really nice long form to learn about it and more, especially, you know, kind of the – to get your head on where the team is going, and you know, the best ways to navigate through from an IT perspective, for the benefit of end users. I know that you always – you and your teammates always have the customer in mind for the experience, but also for change management. It’s very, very – very important.

So thank you both for hopping off of Twitter and coming to the Intrazone.

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, thanks for having us.

KATY ERLANDSON: Yeah, thanks so much.

(Music.)

MARK KASHMAN: Now you know the difference of using the feature Add to OneDrive, what it does, bringing your shared libraries closer to home within your OneDrive domain, easy access, and how it balances the ways that you might adjust, syncing directly from a Teams Site or directly from a Teams’ team. Just Add to OneDrive and then you can get all the sync goodness and more.

Always great to hear directly from the product team, and of course, it’s based on that feedback that you’ve got that I want some clarity on how these things work and what they are. So I really appreciate having Gaia and Katy come in and share all of that insight, plus the insights into how they designed the product, going forward, which I think brings a lot of value—I hope—to you, in your use of OneDrive, going forward.

So let’s talk about events. I really just have two events and then a little tickler about what I know about is coming in 2023, without some specific dates. But to round out the year, next up, very soon, at the end of November, is the European SharePoint Conference. This is from November 28th to December 1st, in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the Bella Center. There’s going to be four Microsoft keynotes, one with Jeff Teper, another with Scott Hanselman. Karuana Gatimu will have a keynote, and then there will be a developer keynote with Vesa Juvonen.

Of course, there are breakout sessions with Microsoft, Microsoft MVPs and community leads. There’s "Ask the Experts," which is a really great one-to-one/one-to-few, just individual chat, "I have a question … here’s an answer … or here’s some feedback, please listen." Those are always great, and I will be doing three of those, and I know my peers across Microsoft and a lot of our MVPs are taking that time to support the ATEs as well.

And at the European SharePoint Conference there’s a really fun "Ask Microsoft Anything," with all of the Microsoft speakers in attendance to answer questions with a SharePoint Connect. This is a nice evening event, sponsored by Microsoft, and we’re really pleased and privileged to be in Copenhagen to represent our teams, but also to be a part of the community, engaging in Copenhagen.

Literally the next week, in Las Vegas, is the Microsoft 365 Conference. This is from December 6th through the 8th, again, in Vegas. It’s co-located with a couple of events, so you’ll see a few other events in the same exact location at the MGM Hotel. There are a number of Microsoft keynotes.

You’ll first hear from Scott Guthrie, followed by Jeff Teper. You can imagine the value there, with some of the broader leadership across those broad product portfolios of Azure and Microsoft 365. And similar to a lot of great events, it’ll dive into then a lot of breakout sessions, workshops, differing ways to engage. There are of course booths and expo halls, and all of that, to get up to speed with what partners offer, and just a lot of time to network, across both these events.

Whether you’re in Denmark, whether you’re in Nevada, you have really, really nice back-to-back offerings, and the Microsoft 365 Conference is always a really nice event to plug into and get the depth of knowledge you need, and to get answers and provide feedback so that you can have that nice two-way engagement of the community.

So a little teaser ahead into 2023. These aren’t really solid dates, but I know that the 365 Educon team has a number of events in 2023, in Washington, DC, in Seattle, in Chicago. There’s the European Collaboration Summit. There’s of course different events from the Microsoft 365 Conference team, focused on events on the Power Platform. There will be unique moments for things like Viva and Syntex, and of course, expect some of the larger first-party events that Microsoft put son, like Build, Inspire and Ignite, which has already got the data on it.

If you’re interested in Ignite, that’s November 15th through the 16th, 2023, which feels like a long time from now, but I can already feel that some of the engines internally are warming up into what does that event look like.

So 2023 is certainly going to be a great year for events. It’s something that we, in the broad teams that I represent here, just in referencing, very much look forward to, in plugging in, to round up 2022 with ESPC22, and Microsoft 365 Conference, and then gearing up to have a great 2023, of which of course, Chris and I will always keep you informed on every episode with ones that are upcoming.

(Music.)

We want to thank our guests, Gaia and Katy, for being on the show, and for giving us insights about the value and future of Add to OneDrive. So if you haven’t ever added to OneDrive, this episode is the encouragement that you needed. It’s a really great feature, and we really appreciate having Gaia and Katy on to explain it, and to also give guidance and a little bit of a look ahead.

We encourage you to check out our show page for the links to all of what was discussed today, and more. You can go to aka.ms/theintrazone, and send us your questions, send us your feedback, whether it’s to the SharePoint team, or the OneDrive team, or pretty much anybody here at Microsoft. I’ll navigate to what it is that you’re looking for, as best as I can.

Just email us at theintrazone@microsoft.com, or find us on Twitter @sharepoint, @onedrive and @mkashman with a K. Remember to rate, review and tell all your friends about the show. This really is the way that we hope to get the word even more broad, to anyone that you know, that you work with, friends, peers, partners, customers that would benefit from the knowledge that we aim to share through this show. We hope that you can encourage other people to follow, and of course, you can get this show where you get your other favorite tech podcasts.

Thank you so much for listening. I’m your host, Mark Kashman. This has been The Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365, add to cart, Intelligent Intranet.

END

SharePoint roadmap pitstop: October 2022 

To the echoes of ghostly gasps and looming, deadly fog - the spirit of Halloween cast an eerie shadow this past month. No need to fear. October 2022 brought some great new, welcome offerings: Viva Engage GA, Viva Insights: Focus mode in Teams, Stream (on SharePoint) GA, Excel Live in Teams, OneDrive: Folder backup for macOS, conditional access improvement for Lists for Android, Office app becoming Microsoft 365 app, and more. You’ll hear more about Viva Engage and Yammer Storylines that both hit general availability. We also pulled audio from Marc Mroz, Principal product manager from the Stream team, to give you a sense of how video in the flow of work evolved as Stream (on SharePoint) hit general availability this past month. It's a treat full-of-new-tricks Halloween edition.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Marc Mroz | Twitter | LinkedIn

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Learn more about Viva Engage

Learn more about Stream (on SharePoint)

"Microsoft Ignite 2022 guide to Viva, Syntex, SharePoint, OneDrive, Lists, Stream, Project and more" - updated with on-demand video content links, new section with 25+ links to relevant announcements blogs, and more.

"5 hidden gems from Microsoft Ignite 2022" - new Kashbox article about a few hidden gems from Ignite.

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

KM World (Nov.7-10.2022)

M365 Chicago (Nov.11.2022)

Minnesota M365 Fall 2022 Workshop Day (Nov.18.2022)

ESPC22 (Nov.28 - Dec. 1, 2022 | in-person Copenhagen, Denmark)

Microsoft 365 Conference (Dec.6-8.2022)

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Microsoft Syntex: Content AI in the flow of work 

Time to turn the crank on your Syntex knowledge - now an elevated brand and loads of new innovation. Every workday, Microsoft customers add 1.6 billion documents to Microsoft 365. That content is essential to your organization -- carrying knowledge, decisions, and transactions that are vital to the flow of work. Microsoft Syntex, announced this week at Microsoft Ignite 2022, brings the power of content management and AI together to transform the way we work. We chat with Ian Story, Principal GPM on the Syntex product team and Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Founder of analyst firm, Deep Analysis, and learn the behind the scenes of this exciting new "Content AI" category and solution.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Full transcript below and if you click here. 

Social and Info Links:

Ian Story (Principal group product manager - Syntex) Twitter | LinkedIn

Analyst | Alan Pelz-Sharpe (Founder | Deep Analysis) Twitter | LinkedIn | Website

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Syntex | Website | Get started today | Resources |

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Resources:

Microsoft Ignite 2022 announcement blog, "Welcome to Microsoft Syntex – Content AI integrated in the flow of work"

New Microsoft Mechanics episode: "Introducing Microsoft Syntex | Content AI" with Omar Shahine, CVP - Product management, Microsoft, and Jeremy Chapman, Director, Microsoft product marketing

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

Microsoft Ignite (Oct.12-14, 2022; virtual + SCC + six regional "spotlights")

North American Cloud Summit (Branson, MO)

South Coast Summit (Oct.14-15, 2022; Ageas Bowl, Southampton, UK)

CollabDays New England (Oct.22 in-person Burlington, MA at the Microsoft MTC)

ESPC22 (Nov.28 - Dec. 1, 2022 | in-person Copenhagen, Denmark)

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

TRANSCRIPT

MARK KASHMAN: Welcome to the interzone, a show about the Microsoft 365 Intelligent Intranet. I’m Mark Kashman here with my cohost, Chris, who is exhaling with all the news that’s out there, McNulty.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Well, thanks, Mark. Today, we’ll hear from Ian Story, who is the Principal Group Product Manager at mm, and Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Founder and Principal of the Analyst Firm, Deep Analysis. And I’ll be interviewing myself, Chris McNulty.

MARK KASHMAN: And you’ve got a mirror, right? So that during this you can be both guest, subject matter expert and cohost.

CHRIS MCNULTY: For my day job, I am Director of Product Marketing for the Next-Gen Content Services Team, here at Microsoft, and so that’s a fairly broad range of capabilities that includes OneDrive and SharePoint and Stream, and some parts of our newer technologies, Viva, and of course, what we’re doing with Syntex. So I’m kind of playing a dual role today.

MARK KASHMAN: I like it, I like asking you questions, Chris.

CHRIS MCNULTY: But today, we are going to be digging into the wonderful world of content, the artist formerly known as ECM, or Content Services, what’s going on in the industry as a whole, what we’re observing from our customers, and how Microsoft is proposing a whole set of solutions to help you address the challenges that you may face with content in your organization, using cloud, using AI and using processing.

MARK KASHMAN: Yes, and the answer to all of your challenges, the thing that you’re going to hear more about today is, what is new for Syntex. We’re going to get insights of what’s most valuable for customers. We’re going to get a breakdown in the direction and the goals of the products, two of the human-managed content, at scale, with a little help from AI.

CHRIS MCNULTY: You know, if you jump back in time, not super far, but a few years back, we launched a research project, looking for ways that we could add more value to what at the time was still usually referred to as Office 365, and we recognize that the ways that people interact with content and knowledge were a gap. And so we launched a long-term research and engineering project to innovate in those spaces, and that project was – essentially had two main threads, one of which was released last year as the first module of Microsoft Viva, Viva Topics, helping you discover knowledge in your organization.

But we recognized that there was still a lot more that we could be, and should be, doing for those core content experiences, which has led us to incubate a number of capabilities for Syntex, and then today, at Ignite, to unveil the next stage, which for us is Microsoft Syntex.

MARK KASHMAN: You know, one way to think about it, certainly for our audience, with SharePoint in their history and their DNA, it is the pie, you know, the chart of what SharePoint is, when you get the SharePoint server and you deploy it, and you deploy it for X, Y and Z. There are six main components. One of them, like you mentioned earlier, was enterprise content management, and if I literally went around the wheel of the pie, we could see that what used to be SharePoint Social grew up and became what is now managed and owned by Yammer, that social aspect of community. Search went to Microsoft Search. BI investments went to Power BI, and on and on, around the corner, but Content Management, ECM, always had its foothold in SharePoint, and it still does, but it really now is manifesting in SharePoint Syntex, now Microsoft Syntex, just like you said.

So it really is a huge investment, a huge evolution, but also to address everything that people were doing or trying to do with ECM, but now in this modern era, to be able to do it at scale, and to do it with less of the tactical work and doing more of the – the business value that the people can own.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah, scale is really one of the things that we’re mindful of. And so one of the signals that we’ve looked at, looking at some of the analyst research is that the world is on track to have 130 billion terabytes of unstructured files and videos and documents, and all the rest, in just 3 years. And to kind of tear that down into just the Microsoft side of that, every day, on average, our customers add 1.6 billion new documents to M365, and then tomorrow, we wake up and we do another billion-six. And that kind of scale, even inside of a single organization, is just mind-boggling.

When we think about some of the innovations that we brought to market, and our colleagues have brought to market, around automation, certainly, the Power Platform is a great way to have a structured process around data and experience and reporting, and it’s really powerful, but when it comes back to the content that people use, you know, to capture – I don’t know, notes about a podcast or recordings or decisions or contracts or proposals, all of these things are the lifeblood of organizations, and they flow in and out of an organization with people who live outside. If there is one automation tool people are using to try to make sense of it, it might be Outlook, but fundamentally, it’s just too much for people to keep track of.

MARK KASHMAN: And I heard one of our colleagues, Karuana, in a pre-Ignite call, literally just describe her inbox as she’s got her hands thrown up for the next week or two, but if it were in a more structured way, or just in a way that wasn’t such a disconnected-type information sharing, if it was a little bit more structured for her and teams, and take that to the next level for the things that really need to be archived and distributed and shared in the right way, with the right automated process behind it, I can hear, even in her voice – you know, to do that in something like Outlook would – it is and would be a nightmare for a lot of people, especially at the scale that you just described.

And knowing some of our tools that help automate, obviously the AI behind it, I know one other important component which you’ve been driving from a partner program perspective, but with this evolution to Microsoft Syntex, and all of the tendrils that kind of make the art of the possible even more possible, how would you describe the ecosystem in this era of Syntex?

CHRIS MCNULTY: I think it’s waking up. You know, I don’t want to rob too much from things I expect we’re going to talk to Alan about, because we’ve done some prep work with him as well, but it’s been a very interesting time. Like things have been relatively quiet for a number of years, and we’ve seen kind of a huge growth rate pop in content management across the cloud. And a lot of that growth is happening beyond that core set of services for content sharing and collaboration in – well, business processes, in search, in areas like e-signature, which is one of the things that we’re readying for Syntex.

And one of our hypotheses is that we have all of this cloud power that’s out there, and content management sits sort of right next to both business process and productivity. And at its worst, what people used to describe ECM as, ECM is the most expensive place to put documents that nobody ever looks at ever again. So you can build all the workflows you’d like, but it’s not meaningful, unless you keep a human element in it.

And so how do we take all of this scale and all of this power, and frankly, all of this AI, and make it accessible to people through the apps they use every day? You know, one of the things that we took forward from Microsoft Viva is the importance of not taking a rip-and-replace approach to the platform, of not standing up something that is completely brand new with a whole new set of experiences, which is why Viva is based on and delivered through Teams and the rest of M365.

And we take a similar approach. It definitely has a strong heritage, coming from SharePoint, for how it interacts with content, but making sure that we have rich experiences that you can get to, through Word, through Outlook, and through the rest of the apps that you use every day in M365.

MARK KASHMAN: And that’s important because, first, with the IT hat who might be reviewing "how do I put this in place … what does it run on … are there any security measures I need to be aware of that are new, that aren’t what I’m used to with SharePoint, Exchange and of course Teams," you know, as a frontend and a backend to a lot of that. So if I – if I take on a – you know, the CISO and ITDMs, look at it, and go, "Look this is a – a benefit to the investments we’ve already made," over time – a lot of our content is already in the right place. It’s just going to get better tagged, maybe even better used because of that tagging and the exposure through some of the discovery mechanisms, or the investments that are coming for Search.

So if I take off the IT hat, I know there’s another component, you know, so that people just start to wrap their heads around "what is Syntex … how do I get it … what do I need to do and what value does it bring to me?" Can you shine a little light on the commercial model that probably is evolving, but I think, if anybody on this – audience, just assume that it’s new to them, what – what does that commercial model look like for Mic – Microsoft Syntax?

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah, so one of the things you’ll hear us talking about, increasingly, as we roll out new capabilities, is the pay-as-you-go model. We’re mindful that there are core capabilities in Syntex, tagging documents, building new ones, electronic signature, summarization, translation, all the rest. There are some people who are hardcore content consumers and generators who need to use those capabilities every day, but for every one of then, there’s 10, 20 or 50 people in the organization who might need to do that once a month, or once a year.

And so, increasingly, we’re shifting to a pay-as-you-go model. So all of those services and capabilities can be distributed, as I mentioned, without buying and extra seat license for anyone who might need them. All we are focused on is who are our Microsoft 365 commercial users, and then allowing those services to be available on a pay-as-you-go basis, so just as couple of cents per page to tag a document, or to get it translated, providing much more flexibility in how people get access to them and making sure that you’re not paying for things that you don’t need and don’t use.

MARK KASHMAN: I think that’s going to resonate really well, both with how the technology works – like that just makes sense when you describe it, but also in that consumption space. You know, when people see the value and they do use it, that will be the cost, and if people aren’t using it, then the cost isn’t going to be something that just is almost like unused, the lease that you’ve never used to drive the car. It’s when you drive the car that those costs will – will come through, for good reason.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Well, there’s a lot that I can say about this, but there’s plenty of other people far more knowledgeable than me who can talk about our vision in this space.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, so before we jump into today’s discussion with Ian and Alan, we did want to pause and play an audio clip of Jeff Teper, who is President of Collaborative Apps and Platforms at Microsoft, which under his team includes Syntex. And from his Syntex breakout session from the Microsoft Ignite 2022 show, this audio clip gives a really nice framing to, what is Microsoft Syntex and why Microsoft went this way.

AUDIO CLIP/JEFF TEPER: Hello, everyone, we’re thrilled to be here with you today to share our new innovations that put people at the center with content seamlessly integrated into collaboration and workflows. My name’s Jeff Teper, and I’m the President of Collaborative Apps and Platforms at Microsoft, and I’m joining you here today from Microsoft Studios.

The amount of content created for collaboration in business processes is growing dramatically, and we’re honored that so many of you have chosen the Microsoft Cloud as your foundation for content collaboration. You’re creating over 1.6 billion new documents in Microsoft 365, every day. That’s over 10 times versus just 5 years ago. And this growth will continue with increased internal and external collaboration and the digitization of work in the cloud.

By industry estimates, we’ll have over 130 billion terabytes of unstructured content by 2025, and organizations are already spending over $46 billion a year to store and manage that content, but all too often, critical information remains locked up in disconnected silos, or even stored as paper in warehouses. This scale creates real challenges and exciting opportunities for a better solution, one that builds on your existing investments but brings a breakthrough from new technologies, augmenting the lifecycle of content management so people can be more effective, and organizations can drive their transformations with more agility at lower costs.

What’s needed is a novel approach to enhance, connect, manage and build your content at scale. We call this emerging area, content AI. To harness the power of content AI, we’re very excited today to introduce Microsoft Syntex. It’s a comprehensive new set of capabilities that bring content AI into the flow of work.

CHRIS MCNULTY: So it’s always great to hear Jeff outline the whats and whys of any technology, and I’m personally especially excited to hear him frame Microsoft Syntex for us today. We hope that helps land the discussion now, as we get ready to bring Ian and Alan onto the Intrazone.

MARK KASHMAN: And you Chris, we’re bringing you on the Intrazone.

(Music.)

MARK KASHMAN: So you got a little teaser of what is this thing we call Syntex, but to dive under the covers, both inside Microsoft, outbound today through the Intrazone, and a nice analyst perspective from outside of Microsoft to really see and give a sense of what does the industry expect, and what is this thing that’s called Syntex? From a different point of view, I want to bring onto the show, Ian Story, who is a Principal Group Product Manager here at Microsoft, focused on a lot of what we’re doing around enterprise content management, content services, content AI, and now in the form of Syntex Outbound.

And analyst, Alan Pelz-Sharpe, who is the Founder of Deep Analysis, but also an industry expert in all of those same categories. So Alan, Ian, and of course, Chris, welcome to the Intrazone.

IAN STORY: Thanks, Mark, it’s great to be here.

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Excellent, yeah, I’m looking forward to the discussion.

MARK KASHMAN: So maybe we’ll start with Ian, just for the nature of – you know, let’s start with Microsoft and we’ll move out. Ian, can you just give us the 101 of what you do here at Microsoft and the perspective of, you know, this evolution of content AI?

IAN STORY: Thanks, Mark, as you noted, I lead the product team for Syntex, and I’ve been with the company for a little more than six years. Day to day, we are building the product. You know, I’ve been working on Syntex for a couple of years now, and you know, to the earlier capabilities in and around SharePoint, to now growing it to really be Microsoft Syntex and all the capabilities therein. So lots of exciting things in the space, and being a former customer myself, and having worked in this industry for over 20 years, I’m very excited about it, and every customer and partner, and even Microsoft person that we chat about Syntex with, seems to really start to see how this is going to change a lot of what folks have traditionally thought of as document management – I’ll throw a different one at you there, enterprise content management, content services, now content AI. So we’re very excited about it.

MARK KASHMAN: I’m very happy for you and your team to be at this moment in time. The milestone is – is a big one and I’m really excited to hear what you have to share today. Alan, before we go too much further, do – can we get a deep analysis of who Alan is, and give a sense of, you know, your take kind of at the – at the ongoing and now current bump of evolution for Syntex?

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Yeah, indeed, I am an industry analyst, and I’ve been covering the – the news that’s in document management there, so I’ll use it, this sort of space, the technologies, the practices for over 20 years. And Deep Analysis, I founded the company, coming up six years ago, and that’s what me and my colleagues focus on, so it’s the one thing we sort of like to think we really do know what we’re talking about.

The thing is, when we founded Deep Analysis, it seemed like nothing had changed in the industry for the best part of 20 years. It was certainly not exciting, that’s to be for sure, but a lot happened in a short period of time. I mean, you’ve got cloud mobility, you know, sort of easy access to AI, and people like Amazon and Google and yourselves, suddenly coming along and releasing modules that developers could get their hands on, which was, you know, a real first.

Alongside that, a ton of VC money flooded into the market, so it’s never been so vibrant, frankly – I mean, it really hasn’t been this vibrant for over 20 years, so there’s an understanding that we can’t carry on the way we’ve been going. Some of our clients have – I’m not exaggerating here – I mean, they have tens of billions of files they’ve accumulated. They don’t know what they’ve got. They don’t know what to do with it, and people are always looking to automate, to make things more efficient, more effective, and documents are – are often the stumbling block. They seem to be the hardest thing to sort out, and so – you know, Syntex has come along at a time where there’s a lot of interest, not just within Microsoft but outside of it, and a real need in the buyer community to – to start tackling these tough problems, frankly.

So yeah, it’s good timing for Syntex, and I think the next four or five years, Syntex and – you know, some of the startups will do very, very well, and my hope is, more importantly, that we finally stop sorting documents out, you know, start to understand what it is we’ve got and make better use of this, instead of just piling them up in – in another repository and then move them to cheap storage, so that’s the goal. That’s the hope.

MARK KASHMAN: My hope through this conversation is to – to take it on that same journey. You know, there was this category of document management, content management, and adding in the – the benefits now to customers who are doing things at scale or – or possibly even coming to you, Alan, and saying, "We are under water because of the sheer volume that we have, ether because the repositories that we’re now combining are moving to the cloud. We’re exposing a lot of things that we kind of forgot about, but we need to categorize and better be able to find and use and repurpose."

Before we get too deep into, you know, the benefits and some of the news of the day, as far as we’re now at Ignite, we’ve exposed a lot of new – of new disclosures and information, Ian, can I get from you the kind of primer, 101, 201, as far as you want to go, of what Syntex does, if we got the problem space a little bit from what Alan just shared, how Syntex starts to help that content throughout its lifecycle?

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: I’d say the first thing with Syntex is we bring, you know, content AI, you know, kind of an artificial intelligence to your content, and we do basic things, like we classify it and say, "Oh, that’s a contract. And that’s an invoice. And that’s a receipt." And we extract metadata from it and apply that metadata so that you can more easily find it in the future, like, "Oh, that the contract number is this. So the vendor name is that," or the total on your receipt is, you know, $11, or what have you.

We take all that metadata, and then we can use it to help route the content around. We can put the right retention on the content, the right sensitivity labels to help protect it, and so forth. And you know, that’s often kind of the start of the content lifecycle, is a piece of content comes into an organization or is created within the organization, and you need to do some very basic management. And you know, in the industry, there’s the old saying that everybody loves the library. It’s so great to go to the library and browse and use the card catalog to find what you’re looking for, but nobody wants to be the librarian, the person that types in all that information and manages it, and so forth. And so that’s the first thing Syntex helps you with.

But from there, whether you’re taking it through a business process with Power Automate, or you’re doing some simple review and approvals, maybe you need to do an e-signature, at the end of that business process, maybe you want to archive the content and apply even some more security around it, depending on the nature of what the process was, and so forth. And we’ve really expanded Syntex to handle all those types of use cases as well, all those requirements.

And you know, my colleague, Chris, I’m going to beat him to it here, but he loves to say, you know, in the past, we would find that content would often begin its life in Microsoft 365, but then end its life in another repository, because it had been archived off to a so-called system of record or be moved out to another repository as part of a signing process or something like that. And it gets complicated to keep track of all that stuff, and the chain of custody, and you know, some of these things are very high value, that’s why you’re using this type of technology for them. And we want to help you keep it all organized, keep it all within M365, and really take advantage of your investment in the platform.

And so that’s, you know, in a very high-level nutshell, what Syntex does, and we can do that, whether it’s images attached to an email, or embedded in an email, or files in SharePoint, or you know, you’ve got images that you want to just identify what’s in the image. Is it a picture of solar panels, like we showed at Ignite; we’ll identify solar panels in the image or do optical character recognition to pull out that text and be able to use it for search and so forth.

So it’s really, I kind of think of it like a little bit of a Swiss army knife for your content with lots of different tools that are, you know, integrated into the knife itself. In our case, that’s Microsoft 365. And yeah, it’s just right there at the ready for you. And I’d say something – the last thing that I’ll note that we’re pretty excited about is the ability for our customers to pay as they go. You don’t have to buy an upfront license that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to use Syntex. It’s right there in Microsoft 365. You set up your very basic billing information, and this isn’t a punch in your credit card or something like that, this is something that your admin does. And then you can start translating documents, summarizing documents, signing documents, getting the capacity for archiving, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, in a really seamless pay-as-you-go fashion.

MARK KASHMAN: Alan, I’d love to just get your perspective on listening to what Ian just said. Knowing of course, a – a primer to the product, and of course, the space, does that land with what you know, you’ve been hearing from customers, or expect to hear from them once they become familiar with what Syntex does?

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Well, yeah, I mean, it’s – and, and again, you know, just to sort of wave my industry analyst independence flag here, I mean, as I say, there’s – there’s a lot of products coming to market to do this. I mean, the big difference here is that most of the customers out there are already Microsoft customers, so you have a massive advantage here. And, and Syntex and the team have done a pretty good job, I mean, let me say that, but I think just to echo, or maybe to emphasize what Ian was saying there, I mean, you’d be surprised, even in the largest, you know, best-known companies, you want to get a copy of a contract. Trust me, people are digging through email folders to find it. So you know, a lot of this is basic stuff, right? Tagging, summarizing, translating, filing away. It’s all basic stuff, really, but it doesn’t happen inside most organizations. That’s the truth of it, right? It happens in somebody’s head, but you have to kind of ask that person.

So it’s a huge step forward to be able to use content AI to be able to automate these basic administrative steps because, without these basis administrative steps, you actually cant’ do very much, other than store. You really can’t do very much. So it’s one of those things. It’s sort of a sleeping giant, I would say, in the sense that it’s the kind of work nobody wants to do, nobody has ever wanted to do, and in most cases have never done. If you can now automate that with AI, it’s not about just bringing order to chaos; it’s about – you know, absolutely unleashing the value of the content. The benefits here are potentially huge.

I don’t want to overstate it because there’s work to be done, and you know, you – you’ve got to start with baby steps, but over time, this is – this is a very big deal for organizations, you know, this is a real change.

MARK KASHMAN: You know, you mentioned the notion that we have a lot of customers and certainly that is on the backbone of a lot of great progress in technology into the cloud for Microsoft, just the industry and – and getting customers comfortable moving there. And now truly seeing content at scale, they’re in the cloud or moving to it. And I think there’s a bit of more of an expectation of what happens when my content is in the cloud, or lands in the cloud? And that also the benefit in the balance of perception of AI and – and those companies. And I think Microsoft is one of them that can actually do the promise of AI. There are not just this notion of AI, and it’s the next solution to all your problems, but it is also a balance between what value humans and AI bring together, taking off some of the things like Ian mentioned, the – the library and that nobody wants to be, but it’s of benefit to everybody, and moving into them the value of getting through to the business process and not just having to be a content that may or may not bring value.

My hope with this question that I have for Chris is a – a – kind of a branding question. But I think it also leads into you know, what is and why is Microsoft doing more in this space? We’ve said Syntex a few times, Chris. And before Ignite, it was known as SharePoint Syntex, now Microsoft Syntex. Can you give us a little behind the scenes branding around what that name update means? And certainly, I think it encompasses a lot of what we’ve heard already, but just to give us a little foundation of why Microsoft Syntex?

CHRIS MCNULTY: Well, that’s a good question, Mark. Obviously, you know, our roots for content management go way back through SharePoint back to the earliest days of what was Project Tahoe, at the close of the 20th century, in fact. And so it’s made sense, as we’ve been developing all of our AI capabilities that we’re introducing in Microsoft Syntex. It made sense for us to kind of first explore how they worked in and around SharePoint, which was how we’ve originally incubated the product.

When we, though, think about this massive scale and customer demand for these kinds of solutions, we think is really important to signal that, you know, Microsoft is fully committed to carving out this new category of content AI, and our entrance into that space as Microsoft Syntex, to really reflect the fact that we’re not just integrating capabilities that are being developed from the OneDrive and SharePoint teams, but looking left to right across Microsoft to make sure we’re fully integrating the partnerships that we’ve established, whether it’s coming from Power, or the Word team or the Azure teams. And so calling it Microsoft Syntex really helps us convey that comprehensive breadth of what we’re doing beyond kind of our SharePoint history.

MARK KASHMAN: All right, so we know this thing, Microsoft Syntex. We know why we’re doing it. We know what the industry is doing. And we get thoughts both inside and outside of Microsoft of how we’re going about it and – and the effect over time. Ian, I’d like to start with you. You know, there’s a lot of new innovation. There’s the basis of what is Syntex already, but it’s growing. And it’s really growing. You know, a lot of disclosures and announcements for people to learn more about in blogs and updated websites. And of course, through this podcast, we hope to achieve some of that. Where I wanted to start was the – this notion of generating content from templates. Can you speak to a little bit of the design and approach and of course, you know, layer in value and benefits?

IAN STORY: You know, one of the key things that happens, you think about content that comes into an organization, whether that’s an invoice that needs to be paid or an insurance claim that needs to be processed, or a new account opening, or mortgage application or a car loan that needs to get handled and approved or denied, part of that content coming in, yeah, you extract the metadata and you store it, and you make it easy to find, and so forth. But you ultimately need to respond somehow, right? That’s part of the process. And so being able to respond in a standardized fashion, using a template that you can create very easily, just pick a Word document, make sure it’s of course, been reviewed, and approved by your legal department and corporate communications, and so forth before you start just sending these out. Once you have a standard template, you can then take advantage of all that metadata and other information that comes from the business process itself to either bulk generate documents to respond. Maybe those are account statements or something like that. Or on a onesie twosie basis, ad hoc respond, using content assembly.

So imagine, you know, I work in a call center somewhere, and maybe I’m a utility, and you have a problem with one of our services, and you call in and complain and, yep, sure enough, we screwed up. And I need to send you an apology letter. Well, I can pull in your name and your address and what the mishap was that happened to you, and so forth, into a standardized template, and then, you know, email that to you, or print it and stuff it in an envelope and send to you and so forth. And that’s really what this content assembly document generation capability is all about in Syntex.

And you know, it’s a little crazy, we – we’ve been leaders in content creation with Office for decades. And yet, we’ve never really had that easy bulk content generation capability, except for, you know, things like mail merges, and now Syntex is really bringing that in and, of course, all the content that you generate then is managed by the rest of Syntex with all the right metadata and security and retention and sensitivity, and so forth, applied to it. So it’s really like kind of the last mile in getting back to your customers after you have a request that comes in that you need to respond to.

MARK KASHMAN: So you know, if from templates, we can turn a little bit to our – our content processing capabilities. And of course, also at scale. Alan, I’d love to – you know, start with you on this one because I know your firm focuses on document and information processing. And with what you’ve learned with some of the new capabilities for Syntex, you know, maybe just give the – the 101 of content processing leads to X or Y. And with what you know about Syntex, if you wouldn’t mind layering in, from your perspective, how it addresses that.

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Well, yeah, document processing – I mean this – this term has been around a long time and it – it is what it is, right, document processing documents. So it’s this combination of automation and, you know, the – the document itself, how you actually automate things. So in truth, a lot of things Ian was just talking about there, about assembling documents and invoices, you could say the same thing about processing documents, except in reverse, right? So you’re – you’re accepting something into your organization, you know, take something like an invoice as the most sort of obvious example of – there are thousands of different examples. And you’re extracting out the relevant fields, invoice number, value, addresses, you know, whatever, description of goods, whatever. And using that extracted data, pointing it to the right triggers, and as much as possible, automating what happens to that information and the document through it’s lifecycle.

So an invoice, through it being sort, you know, reviewed, approved and – and paid, that’s basic, but up until today – and again, to pick up on what Ian was just saying about sort of building the documents, it’s been possible to do that, and it’s not – this is not sort of a brand-new concept—far from it—people have been able to do this for – for a very long time, but it’s been very difficult to do and very expensive to do, and often not very accurately done at that.

So the thing is, with Syntex, it’s coming in here at a low price point, and it’s easily accessible, and it relies on advanced AI, and in theory—and I’m sure in practice—you’re basically – you know, it’s just sort of an overused phrase, but you’re basically commoditizing and - and democratizing what have been advanced very-expensive-to-implement technology, and that’s a big deal. You know, even small organizations deal with invoices and contracts and statements, and all sorts of documentation. So anything that helps with that is going to be make customers very happy, indeed, but the key thing here is that the – the concepts are not new. What’s new here is that the technology has moved on a long way, and it’s an awful lot cheaper, it’s an awful lot accurate – more accurate, and it’s an awful lot easier to use.

So the uptick of this, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s – if it’s not very substantial over the next couple of years.

MARK KASHMAN: Ian, any tech bits to fill in there if what Alan is saying, price point, and obviously the technology being the enabler, that you would share around new or – or at least significant to point out, around content processing that Syntex offers?

IAN STORY: First, I’ll thank Alan for basically saying, faster, easier, less expensive. That’s like the Holy Trinity for – in this business. But new and exciting things, we have image tagging, which now can recognize almost 10,000 things in images, automatically, you don’t have to train it. We have taxonomy tagging, that uses the taxonomy that you’ve already built out in SharePoint. You know, things like all the jurisdictions that you do business in, or all your customers, and we’ll automatically tagged documents, again, with no training, based on those jurisdictions and customers and so forth.

More prebuilt models. We’ve announced contracts and ID cards, like passports and so forth, come into Syntex here, shortly. Translation and summarization. You’ve seen those demoed in Satya’s keynote, in fact, where we can translate documents into dozens and dozens of different languages, or many sourced – not any, but again, dozens of sources to dozens of different target languages. Summarizing documents. You know, you get those really long statements of work, and you need to summarize them. So we’ve really increased with a bunch of new services, what we could already do, which was simple extraction of metadata from structured forms, and kind of semi-structured documents, and unstructured documents with kind of computer training or computer teaching, as opposed to computer learning.

So we’re very excited about all the features here, in and around Syntex, to help you with this part of your business.

MARK KASHMAN: Excellent. I think I’m just going to use Syntex to do the audio processing on this podcast, and then we’ll get it converted into 12 different languages. And we’re doing – we’re just going to take The Intrazone to the next level.

IAN STORY: (Laughter.) We can’t synthesize your voice quite yet, but we’ll – we’ll see when we can get that for you and translate this to German, and French, and so forth.

MARK KASHMAN: All right. Well, this is exactly where I wanted to go next because another one of the big announcements wasn’t voice processing, although there’s some sense of digital signature that you both have already provided by introducing yourself and be – making the audience aware of who’s speaking. But there’s a big one that is a part of Syntex now, which is the eSignature, and probably, to Alan’s point, not new to the industry, but very new to Microsoft, and would love to hear your approach to both how we’re doing it, partnering in a way, you know, to accomplish the benefit of what customers want or have. Can you talk a little bit about the approach to eSignature, Ian?

IAN STORY: So, first and foremost, you know, we have really wonderful partners with Adobe Acrobat Sign and DocuSign, and many other signature partners. And so, as we embarked on building an e-signature feature for Syntex, the first thing is any place where you can use our eSignature capabilities, you can use our partners. We are very focused on keeping a vibrant, healthy ecosystem in and around this.

But what we heard from customers just over and over was that they really wanted to keep the content in Microsoft 365. They didn’t want to have to export it, move it out, even if it was just temporary. You know, there’s things about the chain of custody and who has access and what permissions, and so forth. And so, that’s really, you know, from customer necessity, where we’ve built this eSignature capability that you’ll see from us next year, that allows customers to both use a wet signature on a document, like ink, basically, or use digital signature, an electronic signature that actually, you know, cryptographically signs it with a certificate; and of course, use both of those in tandem.

So, we’re thrilled to be bringing that to all of the Microsoft 365 customers out there but would again reiterate but if you’re already using one of our partners, you certainly are welcome to continue to do that.

MARK KASHMAN: Chris, I wanted to throw to you, you know, we’ve mentioned a couple of things around generating content, content processing for that inbound or existing content to be able to make sure it’s processing properly. And now with eSignature, just, you know, we’ll go into a little bit more tech, of course, but to get your perspective on, you know, hearing this and knowing that you’re pretty much putting foot forward on how we market it, and how we talk about it, and of course, how our customers – what they’re saying, just a lens on, you know, what does this mean for getting the word out and your take on some of these features?

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a couple of trends kind of – and e-signature is a good lens to use to interpret these trends. And they move across two dimensions.

So, the first is, how do we take all of these AI and workflow capabilities that we are orchestrating from across Microsoft, and bring them into the flow of work, which I know is a catchphrase. But from a commercial level, it doesn’t always make sense to bundle up, you know, an exhaustive menu of capabilities, and then go buy expensive licensing, just so everyone in your organization who might ever need to do something has access to it.

So, it’s really about breaking down the availability to a way that everyone can have access to these and only pay for what they need. So, some people need heavy users of a capability like eSignatures. Some people may only lightly need to generate one, maybe once a year. And so, it’s about taking those capabilities that come from all different aspects of Microsoft and introducing them in a way that everyone can benefit from it without a lot of startup cost and getting things deployed.

I think the second thing, and again, eSignature is a good lens on this, is helping you continue to accelerate the value of your content by keeping it all in the M365 platform. You know, there are certainly ways and places where integrating with some other content repositories can make sense for making it searchable.

But we hear a lot from customers who say, you know, “The moment I have an approved contract, it goes off to some other contract management system. And then I can’t really find it all that easily.” And whether it’s looking at things like archiving or e-signature, or some of our line of business integration work that we’re doing, it’s really about keeping that information available to you personally, and also available to that broad range of M365 capabilities so that if you have meta data security, compliance, all of those attributes that you’ve added to your content continue to have value because they stay inside of your trust boundary.

MARK KASHMAN: To the point of if it’s inside your trust boundary, which certainly can be a pretty broad boundary, but the value of the cloud also means you should be able to repurpose the content. You should be able to ingest it just fine and at scale.

But the other area that I want to turn to that I think is really critical, as far as how much awareness does your system have of your content, wherever it resides, is the investments that we’re making with Microsoft Search, and everything that’s been derived from the content, whether it’s from templates or content processing. You have all of this metadata, and on top of that, a better understanding beyond the metadata.

And this might be a kind of a triple punch, because I’d love to get the how important and what role does general search play into this space with Alan, and then to hear, you know, the investments that we’re making, Ian, on the engineering side. And Chris, of course, the broader value of Syntex goes now beyond Syntex, because it’s inclusive of big investments with Search, big investments that we’ll talk about next around access and governance.

But for this one, Alan, do you mind kicking off a little bit of when you’re working with customers, how easy it is for them to find this content, or if they’re finding it challenging, how important that is as a part of the solution?

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Yeah, it’s – it’s an odd one this because, I mean, search is certainly important. That – there’s no question about that, but the reality is most search doesn’t work very well. And it doesn’t work well because most content isn’t tagged very well, right? And we’ve been sort of saying this for years, but I’ll repeat it on here, because I’m sure most people haven’t heard this analogy anyway.

You know, you’ve got every customer out there in every enterprise, be it government organization, for that matter, that expects their – their work search to work like Google, or Bing, or whatever, right? It’s supposed to work like that. It doesn’t, and they scratch their heads as to why. Well, the reason being the content hasn’t been tagged properly, and the search engine doesn’t know what to do.

So, any improvement to your work search is going to be something which will be very much appreciated by workers to – so that they can actually find things as opposed to e-mailing and – and asking their colleagues, because that’s the reality for a lot of workers today. That’s really their search engine. So, you can’t really underestimate that.

I think the flip side is, the better you manage content – so, again, if you’re automating all of this tagging, if you’re automating categorization, etcetera, then your dependence on search becomes less. And you, in an ideal world, which I don’t think anybody’s at today, but in an ideal world, search is for finding things that are lost, right? It’s not your default. It’s not your starting place. It’s the last place you go. You only use it when you really, really can’t find it. So, it’s a spectrum of problems, really.

Today, most search engines really don’t work very well. It’s not because the search engine is faulty, it’s because the content it’s searching against is very hard to understand, and it’s not labeled. But ultimately, you go on a journey where your search gets better. People like that, but if you really sort of fulfill on the dream here, you reach a point where the search becomes really quite secondary and is a place of last resort, because you know where things are. And they’re prompted to you and they’re where they should be.

MARK KASHMAN: Ian, if that’s a lead into what – what is maybe at scale for the world, a use case or I don’t want to say limitation, but it may be a limitation for how people don’t necessarily have a great search experience, you know, without great tagging or great archiving or, you know, being able to discover it, but can you just speak to, you know, how we’re upping our game and adding to the capabilities of when somebody searches sometimes might be more of an automated experience, because it finds them versus going in searching for it? But just the levels of investment in search for Syntex.

IAN STORY: You know, we’ve started, of course, years ago with Microsoft Search and all the capabilities that we have built and acquired over the years. And it’s, I would say, really, quite good, but it does come down to, as Alan noted, you have to have your content at least a little bit organized, and tagged, and properly secured, and so forth.

And so, that’s where Syntex comes in. It kind of enriches all that content or, to use our marketing term since we have Chris here on the podcast as well, enhances that content to make sure that it’s more easily indexed or more easy to find after it’s been indexed. You know, major improvements that we’ve done, first, it starts with what we call content query, which instead of giving you kind of an Internet-style search, like you might find in Bing or one of the other Internet search engines, or even on your intranet, we give you a rich taxonomy that you can easily customize and extend.

If you’re looking for invoices, instead of saying, I’m looking for invoices from this vendor for this date, and just getting like keywords back, we actually have a structured content query that allows you to specifically find only invoices from that vendor, only invoices, you know, for this specific date and this specific amount, and so forth. It’s a very nice experience, because sometimes folks just use the search to think, oh, well, I didn’t realize I could find things based on the vendor number. Of course, that’s what I’m going to type in, because that will give me an absolute match.

Beyond that, we’re investing in things like Q&A, question and answering, so that you can ask questions and get human answers back instead of just a list of documents. And this is incredibly, you know, overdue in this industry where folks, to this point, really have just these big archives of content that maybe you go in and search, and then you get a bunch of documents back, and maybe you can open the document and get some hit highlighting or jump down to the spot in the document. But to synthesize that as actual knowledge, and this is where we work with things like Viva Topics as well, to get real information back and not just, you know, keywords that came back, that’s a place where Syntex is really, I think, raising the bar.

We’re also adding natural language searches so that if you, you know, just want to search the way you would ask a friend to find this document, instead of using a structured query, we can do that; and then last but not least, semantic understanding where you can just kind of give the gist of what you’re looking for. You don’t know the exact right way to say it, even. And our search can actually understand, again, using these AI capabilities through Syntex Content AI, kind of understand what you were looking for and find the right thing.

So, a lot of investment and improvement to Search that we’re very bullish on and optimistic for.

MARK KASHMAN: So, I’m going to try a little natural language querying of my co-host, Chris Mc-Syntex. Chris, this is for you, in natural language. We’ve gotten a lot around investments to this point, but I think when we really approach IT, and when they’re thinking through how people can better lock down content, based on some of the information that’s derived or processed out of Syntex and if you is the word “enhanced,” I think then Ian proves his point, but how are we enhancing security, and access and government when we think of the value that Syntex brings for lifecycle management, for storage? You know, there’s a lot that now comes or is a part of Syntex,

CHRIS MCNULTY: Well, if – if you go back and think about that – that run rate of adding a billion-point-six documents a day to M365, it’s really hard to, like, bring that into human centric understanding of what the processes are, which is why we’ve architected Syntex the way we have. That extends to management. So, we have an increasing number of customers who have billions of pieces of content in M365.

And so, one of the best ways of helping people manage that in the aggregate, rather than dealing with onesie-twosie access requests, is being able to establish policies to use simple rules to move less used content into storage tiers, which run at a reduced cost to kind of match the expectation for how people are working with that content, being able to protect information with backup and restore capabilities, and to use AI to discover parts of your information architecture, that are currently at risk of being over shared, to be able to deploy fine-grained conditional access policies, to shape the way that a particularly external parties get access to that content, and to enlist site owners in periodic reviews of that content.

So, the scale of AI helps an admin drill into the areas where they should be focusing their attention to make sure that information is being stored, protected and secure throughout that lifecycle.

MARK KASHMAN: Ian, you know, there’s been a lot of capabilities have been brought into Syntex, some very specific to IT and managing content. You know, is there anything that you want to add there, Ian?

IAN STORY: Yeah. I think we’ve heard for so long from our customers that you really want a backup capability, that you really want tiered storage and archival capability, that you want even more security around managing, you know, sensitivity, and internal and external folks, and who can see what and, you know, more reporting and data, and so forth around your content. And so, we’ve – we’ve made a lot of investments there with Syntex with, you know, a full-on backup and restore capability, and an archiving capability, bringing tiered storage at a lower price point to Syntex.

And so, there’s a lot there for the IT folks that are listening in, and the folks that have to manage all this content beyond all the unbelievable content AI and end user value that we provide.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, and it really wraps up, you know, so much IT value that pays off, of course, if there is work that can be offboarded from IT having to do some of this deeper work. And the benefits automatically come to end users when they can automate their processes, and – and certainly everything that we’ve talked about up until this point. A lot of that depends on, then what is the storage mechanism? And how much of – of the solution is the storage component helping? So, that’s great to hear.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah. You know, I would just observe that some of the work that we’re doing on that security management piece also, it’s really important to set the technology so it can be an IT business partnership, because if you’re in IT, and you’re being asked to supervise 10,000 sites, and you get a flag that, hey, there may be oversharing happening on, you know, the Project Delta site, you go over there. You look and you see, there’s 10 internal people and three external people. How do you know if that security makes sense, unless you kind of dig deeply and inject yourself into that project?

So, providing a way to let IT offer service to those content owners in a way that enlists their guidance, I think, is another way that we can sort of accelerate that business technology partnership here.

MARK KASHMAN: So, I’m betting that a lot of presentations, conferences, consultations, of course, this podcast that you get brought on, lands at some point to ask you what does the future hold. And I think we’ve heard a lot of technology and a lot of – of customer requests or customer requirements, as far as what they need to better manage their content. And I hope that our audience is really starting to see what is Syntex and how does it help them with a lot of those challenges.

But if we were to put on your futuristic hat, whether it’s like Johnny Carson would do with the card to his head, or something like the Zoltar machine in Big, and your customers are asking you these same questions, what is it that they can start thinking to ensure that their content, security, processing, a lot of the automation and everything is intact and working for them? Really just want to understand, you know, what – what do you tell every customer as they go forward?

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Yeah. I mean, as an industry analyst, theoretically, we have crystal balls, and we can tell where the market is going to be in 10 years’ time. It’s not quite as simple as that, unfortunately. But I – I think there’s a couple of things going on here.

One I think I’ve already touched on, is that, you know, you’re – you’re basically, with Syntex, you’re automating the work that people don’t want to do, have never wanted to do and, frankly, will never do. Nobody wants to add metadata to a file. Nobody wants to file a document away in the right place. They – they’ve, again, never have never will. So, just that alone is a great step forward.

But I think what’s exciting is that, you know, we’ve got advances in AI now. Those advances have come at an incredibly fast pace over the last five years. So, just like everything else we’ve talked about on this podcast, none of this is new, right? AI is not new. It’s how much easier it is, how much quicker it is, how much more accurate is and how much more affordable it is.

And so, with – with that in mind, you know, we’ve – we’ve got this potential to really rethink, reimagine, reinvent the way the back office, not just the back office, but how back-offices work. I think that’s what’s exciting, and I think that’s what does excite some of the people we speak to, in that, you know, ultimately, the world of document management and workflow, right up to this current day, has always just simply mimicked paper processes. No matter how digital it is, it’s always just been a copy, but an electronic copy of manual paper activities. But with AI, we’ve got the potential here to – to really rethink it and say, is there a better way? And in many cases, there are.

So, if we touch on something Ian mentioned earlier around contracts, I mean, contracts are big, hairy, dangerous things, right? But if you’re able to, you know, in a few years’ time, bring in AI that can not just read them, but genuinely understand, to a large degree, what they are, you know, you can have them triggering clauses. You know, you can have automatic renewal of contracts or automatic closure of contracts. And that’s sort of interesting, but it’s revolutionary if you’re a law office. It’s revolutionary if you’re in the accounting department.

So, I think the potential here is – is that we have, over the next however many years, an opportunity to absolutely reinvent the way we’ve been working for the last 50, 60, maybe even 100 years. And that sounds like hyperbole, but it’s really not. The technology can do it. A lack of imagination and maybe just a lack of knowing where to start, for many organizations, is the biggest barrier, not the technology.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah, I’m glad to hear you say that. You know, I had a similar point of view for a couple of years that one of the things that holds people back is a failure of imagination, you know, to imagine that things actually could be better. And the technology enables it, but people need to be inspired, I do think, to ask the questions about is there a better way of doing this, instead of just continuing along the same old, same old path that they’ve been on for years.

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Yes, and – and it’s true. I mean, you know, to give a sort of nonsense Syntex, although Syntex could certainly play in this space, I did some work pre-pandemic in supply chain. And, you know, there was a bunch of – I won’t go into the technology or the startups, but there was a bunch of startups who came along who could really revolutionize the supply chain operations from – from start to end, dramatically reduce costs, dramatically reduce the number of disputes – I mean, really exciting stuff.

Those – those startups went nowhere. And the reason they went nowhere is that people just couldn’t get their head around it. This is the way it’s always been done. And it was a lack of imagination. I think maybe not those startups, but I think, you know, the supply chain will change. But that’s our biggest challenge, is educating exciting, empowering people and – and, frankly, getting them to have a passion around what is, dare I say it, ultimately a boring topic, right, paperwork. But getting them passionate about that and the possibilities, that’s our biggest challenge.

I mean, the technology is just… I – I’ve been doing this a long time, and it’s hard to describe just how much better the technology today is that it was just five years ago. (Laughter.)

IAN STORY: So, Alan, I’ll – I’ll play on that, and I’ll say when you say technology, in our world, that means Syntex, so much better than this technology was five years ago. But, you know, it’s not just, to me, the lack of imagination. I think it’s the lack of empowerment for folks to actually make these changes. I think there are folks in all these departments that process documents in every organization that can imagine that better way, but they’re just not empowered.

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Yes.

IAN STORY: There’s so many processes and constraints. And this system only does this, and you can’t use it for that. We’re not licensed for it, and so forth. And that’s, you know, to such a large degree, what we’ve always done at Microsoft is take these very powerful capabilities and get them into the hands of more folks, and at a lower price point, and with more flexibility and more integration that lets you start to take the imagination that you have and, you know, make it happen, right?

And that’s – that’s really what I’m the most excited about with Syntex, is getting this stuff that, you know, has been the domains of developers, and data scientists and so forth, and get it, you know, more into the hands of folks that can, you know, just like, say, 20 years ago, what SharePoint did for ECM, now bringing, you know, Microsoft Syntex to the table to do this for AI for everyone.

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Yeah, and I agree with you, and – and I’m going to do something which I rarely ever do, which I’ll be an optimist. I actually think that there’s never been a better time for change. You know, we can’t sort of blame it all on the pandemic, but there’s just been so many shifts over the last couple of years that, you know, people are open to new ideas and doing things better.

I spoke at a conference just a few weeks ago to a lot of people from higher education. And we were talking about the sort of reinvention of the credentials of – of academic credentials, and the systems and processes there. And I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty darn sure that if I’d given that same taught three or four years before, people would have been polite about it, I hope, and would have said, that’s a nice idea, maybe one day. No, not this time. They’re taking down notes, they’re asking questions. They want to do it.

So, I think we’re in a world now where I don’t know how long this window of opportunity will last, but I think people do want change. And they are open to new ideas.

I come back to, though, my – my challenge here is that they’re excited about it, they do want change, but they don’t really know how to start. You can’t just go in and say, hey, I’ve got better technology. (Laughter.) You know, you’ve got to actually say, well, this is how we get you from where you are today to where you want to be in the future. And they need their hands holding. But I think their hands are – I’m mangling analogies here, but I think that their hands are outstretched. They – they want that.

MARK KASHMAN: Anytime Syntex comes up or the conversations like this, I can’t help but think a lot of customers might be staring at that warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. And it’s just boxes and content, and the Ark of the Covenant gets put to who knows where, and whenever that might be discovered again. That might be a little silly way to frame it, but it – it does sound a lot of how you describe the now, even if it’s somebody’s recent past, you know, that they’ve come from there, and they’ve just got a lot more to go.

But off of what Alan was just ending on there with where to start, maybe that’s where we end. To both Chris and Ian, Ian, I’d love to start, you know, just to understand if somebody were to get their hands on Syntex to – to give it a trial or to try out some capabilities, where does a common customer start with Syntex? Where would you suggest?

IAN STORY: Two things right off the top of my mind: Number one, we have today, and you don’t even need Syntex or any kind of license from Syntex or pay-as-you-go to use this. We have an assessment tool, the Syntex Assessment tool. You can run that against your environment today, just the things you have access to. It doesn’t even have to be a system administrator that runs it. You can run it against your sites, the ones that you manage as a person on the business side. And it can help identify places where Syntex can help.

Hey, there’s a whole bunch of content over here that doesn’t have any metadata on it, or hey, there’s a whole bunch of metadata structure set up over here, but people aren’t using it. That’s the first thing.

And then once you identify some of those places, before you start building models, which, again, can be built in minutes trained on just a handful, five or six documents. But before you do that, try the pre-built models that we have, whether that’s image tagging, or taxonomy tagging, or even one of the prebuilts to recognize receipts or invoices or student contracts and ID cards, start – start with something like that. You know, find a place that has the need, and we can help identify that, and then use one of the prebuilts that are really easy to use, even translation or summarization, right, before you have to start building custom models, and so forth.

That’s probably where you’ll end up, is doing lots of really interesting custom things with, again, minutes of work, not hours or days or weeks of training. But start really simple. Find the place and use one of the prebuilt things to tag all your images, or tag all your documents or process some invoices, or some receipts, or some contracts or some ID cards.

MARK KASHMAN: Chris, do you mind expanding just a little on that and peppering in, when – when it’s appropriate, a couple of aka.ms links that I know you’ve got up your sleeve?

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah. So at Ignite this week, we are landing kind of a world of videos to help explain and let you see what these experiences look like in action. These are being distributed across our Microsoft.com Web properties, and they are in a couple of different places. But if there’s one URL to remember, it would be aka.ms/Syntex, which will bring you to our product page. And from there, you can navigate to our adoption hub with more extensive videos, customer evidence, white papers and the like.

If there’s a second URL that you’re going to let me promote, it’s going to be aka.ms/Syntex/start, which provides you an overview of everything that we’re doing and engaging at Ignite, along with some guidance as to how to get started with workshops, how to experience the right demos, and how to think about the kinds of processes in your organization where Syntex may have the most relevance, including links to our assessment tool and more.

MARK KASHMAN: Very good. Well, I will make sure those are in the show notes and in the blog. And of course, I know they’re going to be lots of places. And maybe this is an appropriate time where we can re-up the – the rights that we have to Start Me Up, the music from the Windows 95 launch. That’s probably still within our realm.

Joking aside, thank you all for joining The Intrazone. Congratulations to the – all the innovation that went into what I know internally, we’ve talked about a while as Syntex 2.0, but it really is times, you know, 10 or 20. It’s just a huge growth spike here at the Ignite moment and beyond. And, Alan, thank you for your perspective today. Appreciate you all being here on The Intrazone.

IAN STORY: Well, thanks so much for having us, Mark. And we’re thrilled for everyone to go out and try out Microsoft Syntex. It’s been great being here.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah, Mark, thanks for letting me swivel the chair around and be on kind of the other side of the interview this time. I just want to, you know, in closing, just reflect back to the audience.

You know, our work is not done. You know, we think we’re very excited about everything that we’re landing, but we are really interested in getting your feedback and making sure that we’re providing kind of the best ways for you to engage our capabilities in the flow of work. So definitely, please be in touch.

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: And yeah, thank you for inviting me. It’s been a great discussion. I’m really interested as an analyst, and to see where this all goes. I’ll be watching it very closely, as will my colleagues at Deep Analysis. And if you want some independent sort of viewpoints, you can always check out our website where our research is open source. But again, thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate it and enjoyed the conversation.

(Music.)

CHRIS MCNULTY: Up next on The Intrazone, events. This week, we’re returning to Microsoft Ignite Live. And we’re really excited to be able to spotlight current and upcoming events here on The Intrazone.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah. So, on this day of this podcast going live, Microsoft Syntex news out there. Where we funneled a lot of that news and excitement was through Microsoft Ignite. It’s happening right now, October 12th through the 14th. There’s a lot of great sessions live, on demand. You can – you can dive into Ignite.microsoft.com, get registered, get in and access the content. But like we said, it’s happening now.

There’s a lot of content for Syntex, both in person, and online and on demand. You’ll hear from Jeff. You can meet Chris. There’s a whole lot of things coming from Ian and Sean (ph) and Kristen (ph). The whole Syntex team is firing on all pistons. And guess what? So is the Viva team, and so is the SharePoint team, and the Teams team, and the Azure team. It’s Microsoft coming together as one, big party of news, big disclosures, big announcements from keynotes to breakout sessions to on demand. And if you’re in a couple of the regions where we’re doing regional spotlights, there are six of them. Raise your hand and try to get into those in person, if you’re in any of those six regions.

We’ll put a link with all the information. Of course it’s happening now. So, it’s a hurry up if you want to get engaged, but a lot of the content will live on – very quickly on demand. So, that will be almost in immediately available to you.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Also coming up incredibly quickly, this weekend, October 14th and 15th the South Coast Summit. This will be happening at the Ageas Bowl in Southampton, not the one on Long Island, Southampton, UK for our friends across the pond.

MARK KASHMAN: Next coming across the pond back from England to New England, that is Collab Days New England, October 22nd. This is in person in Burlington, Massachusetts at the Microsoft MTC. That is the Microsoft Technology Center, really cool building, lot of great local folks that are helping put on that show. We know one of them. They’ve been on this show before, Chris Bortlik. But there’s a lot of great people, of course, from the community all gathering together. It’s one of those big SharePoint Saturdays that isn’t called that anymore, bringing together multiple SharePoint Saturdays into one. It is now Collab Days New England, October 22nd.

CHRIS MCNULTY: And if you’re in the Boston area, you have no reason not to go because the Red Sox are absolutely not playing that day. (Laughter.)

MARK KASHMAN: (Laughter.) You heard it here first on The Intrazone. Chris, what is our last kind of –kind of a little bit further down the road, but a really nice event that’s coming around the corner?

CHRIS MCNULTY: It’s further down the road, but it’s not that far. It is next month, so the other side of U.S. Thanksgiving. The European SharePoint Conference, ESPC 22 will be kicking off November 28th in Copenhagen, Denmark. This has always been a really large event for Microsoft’s European community. We tend to bring a decent number of folks over from Redmond as well. But you will be able to meet over 100 speakers, and there’s usually a great crowd. Jeff Teper is delivering one of the event keynotes, and it’s a real don’t miss if you’re free.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, so Jeff’s bringing it. We also have Heather Newman, who has a Power Platform oriented keynote. Vesa Juvonen is going to be one, doing one for developers specifically, and also Scott Hanselman. So, there are four Microsoft keynotes. There are probably about 20 to 25 Microsoft sessions right next to all of the community and MVP sessions. I’ve seen the list of sessions. If you haven’t, we have a link in the show notes. It’s a really great show, and always a really nice event that this team puts on.

CHRIS MCNULTY: And of course, if you have an event coming up to spotlight on a future episode of The Intrazone, just write to the show and we’ll be happy to share the news.

MARK KASHMAN: We want to thank our guests, Ian Story and Alan Pelz-Sharpe. And Chris, I want to double thank you for being co-host and guest this go around. And to all of you for being on the show and for giving us insights about the value and feature set of this thing we now call Microsoft Syntex.

CHRIS MCNULTY: And you’re doubly welcome. We encourage you to check out our show page for links to all of what was discussed today and more. Go to aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

MARK KASHMAN: You can send us your questions and feedback for the SharePoint teams anytime. You can reach us via e-mail at TheIntrazone@microsoft.com or via Twitter @SharePoint, @MKashman and @CMcNulty 2000.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Of course, thank you for listening and supporting The Intrazone. Remember to rate, review and tell all your friends about the show. Follow the show at Ignite or wherever you get your favorite tech podcasts.

MARK KASHMAN: We thank you for listening. We’re your hosts, Mark Kashman and Chris McNulty. And this has been The Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365, AI is for letters, invoicing, and contracts at scale intelligent intranet.

(Music.)

END

SharePoint roadmap pitstop: September 2022 

September brought some great new offerings: Cultural site template for Hispanic Heritage Month, Manage site access based on sensitivity label, Viva Learning cards for the Viva Connections Dashboard, New 'Activity' column in OneDrive, Granular Policies for OneDrive: Request Files, Quick Access to SharePoint document libraries in Office backstage, Schedule send for Teams chat, Video clips in Teams chat (Preview), new Stream mobile app (beta) - iOS and Android, improved Adobe PDF experience in Microsoft Teams, and more. Plus, we chat with Sesha Mani, Principal group product manager on the SharePoint team focused on all the goodness SharePoint and OneDrive IT Pros can do to manage and control their collaborative, content management environments.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Sesha Mani | Twitter | LinkedIn [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Resources:

SharePoint and OneDrive Security "cookbook": https://aka.ms/sharepointsecuritycookbook

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

Microsoft Ignite (Oct.12-14, 2022; virtual + SCC + six regional "spotlights")

North American Cloud Summit (Oct.12-14; Branson, MO)

South Coast Summit (Oct.14-15, 2022; Ageas Bowl, Southampton, UK)

European SharePoint Conference (ESPC22 | Nov.28 - Dec.1 | Copenhagen, Denmark)

Microsoft Lists workshop [now available on-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

The power of the Power Platform 

Chris and Mark chat with April Dunnam, Principal cloud advocate on Power Platform Developer Advocacy Team at Microsoft. April is also a Power Platform MVP alumni, a Microsoft Certified Trainer, and previously a SharePoint developer out of Tulsa, OK. This episode brings the live Intrazone breakout session from 365 EduCon - Dallas right into your Intrazone ears. We asked April to share insights and best practices for user experiences designed to build 'sticky apps', plus her take on new Power Platform innovations: covering Power Pages, Power Automate: the Pay-as-you-go model, modern commanding, RPA, and governance with 'Managed Environments'. You'll also hear an audio clip from Jeff Teper's keynote about 'collab apps' from the recent Power Platform Conference in Orlando, FL.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

04:50 Jeff Teper and Vesa Juvonen at Power Platform Conference

10:30 April Dunnam at 365 EduCon Dallas

43:15 Events

Social and Info Links:

April Dunnam (Principal cloud advocate | Microsoft) | @AprilDunnam | LinkedIn | Low-Code Revolution (show) | Blog

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Power Platform @MSPowerPlat | Blog | Overview

Resources:

April Dunnam's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/aprildunnam

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

European Cloud Summit (Sept.26-28; Mainz, GE)

365 EduCon - Chicago (Sept.26-30; Chicago, IL)

Teams 10x (Virtual Summit; Sept.28-29, 2022)

Microsoft Ignite (Oct.12-14, 2022; virtual + SCC + six regional "spotlights")

North American Cloud Summit (Branson, MO)

South Coast Summit (Oct.14-15, 2022; Ageas Bowl, Southampton, UK)

CollabDays New England (Oct.22 in-person Burlington, MA at the Microsoft MTC)

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

SharePoint roadmap pitstop: August 2022 

August 2022 brought a lot of new tech to Microsoft 365 - lots of SharePoint and related tech goodness: Viva Goals GA, Viva Engage GA, Viva Insights updates, Microsoft Lists - MSA Preview for iOS (beta), new SharePoint team site templates, new web parts and site theme, co-authoring encrypted documents on mobile, new OneDrive home experience, To Do in Outlook for Windows, and more. We also hear from Ankur Madan and Sahil Baid discuss progress in the mobile Lists space, namely bringing access to the Lists - MSA Preview to the Lists iOS app, and more about overall progress to date and innovation for Lists on the Android platform.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Ankur Madan (Senior product manager) | LinkedIn [guest]

Sahil Baid (Product manager) | LinkedIn [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Resources:

Download and install the Microsoft Lists - MSA Preview iOS beta: https://aka.ms/ListsiOSMSA 

"15 reasons to love OneDrive"

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

HR Tech (Sept.13-16.2022; Vegas - Mandalay Bay)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference (Sept.20-22.2022; Orlando, FL)

European Cloud Summit (Sept.26-28; Mainz, GE)

365 EduCon - Chicago (Sept.26-30; Chicago, IL)

Teams 10x (Virtual Summit; Sept.28-29, 2022)

Microsoft Ignite (Oct.12-14, 2022; virtual + SCC + six regional "spotlights")

North American Cloud Summit (Oct.12-14; Branson, MO)

South Coast Summit (Oct.14-15, 2022; Ageas Bowl, Southampton, UK)

Microsoft Lists workshop [now available on-demand] 

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Datacenters - Think globally, act locally 

On this episode, Chris and Mark chat with Sean Emam (Principal GPM for all datacenters) and Jon Farmer (our lead datacenter PMM). We highlight news about the recent opening of a new datacenter in Qatar, and the value of operating Microsoft datacenters at scale across various product groups, partners, and ultimately out to customer. You’ll hear more about the history and design behind our go local efforts, choosing locations, and the focus on sustainability across all datacenters to enable great business impact, with clean energy and sustainable practices intact at every turn.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Social and Info Links:

Jon Farmer (Director of product marketing – datacenters | Microsoft) | LinkedIn

Sean Emam (Principal GPM for all datacenters | Microsoft) | LinkedIn 

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Resources:

“Microsoft opens first global datacenter region in Qatar, bringing new opportunities for a cloud-first economy” – press release

“New Microsoft datacenter in Qatar” – announcement blog

“We live in the cloud” – a virtual tour of Microsoft datacenters

“Where your Microsoft 365 data is stored at-rest” - Learn more about Microsoft datacenters worldwide

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

HR Tech (Sept.13-16.2022; Vegas - Mandalay Bay)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference (Sept.20-22.2022; Orlando, FL)

European Cloud Summit (Sept.26-28; Mainz, GE)

365 EduCon - Chicago (Sept.26-30; Chicago, IL)

Teams 10x (Virtual Summit; Sept.28-29, 2022)

Microsoft Ignite (Oct.12-14, 2022; virtual + SCC + six regional "spotlights")

North American Cloud Summit (Oct.12-14; Branson, MO)

South Coast Summit (Oct.14-15, 2022; Ageas Bowl, Southampton, UK)

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

OneDrive turns 15! 

It's OneDrive's 15th birthday, and all the presents are for you. On this episode, Ankita Kirti and Mark Kashman chat with Arwa Tyebkhan (Principal GPM | OneDrive) and Steven Bailey (CVP OneDrive and SharePoint engineering) to celebrate both OneDrive’s 15th lap around the sun AND to hear more about the new OneDrive Home experience. We first go into the way-back machine to learn about the evolution from Windows Live Mesh, Grove.exe and SharePoint Workspaces, into SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro, and land on OneDrive as we know it today. We also discover that it’s not only OneDrive’s birthday… the team has been hard at work redesigning the OneDrive Home experience to help you easily resume your work and catch up on what you missed while you were away – everything at-a-glance and easy to prioritize where to start working.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Steven Bailey (CVP OneDrive and SharePoint engineering lead) | LinkedIn

Arwa Tyebkhan  (Principal GPM - OneDrive) | LinkedIn 

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Ankita Kirti | @Ankita_Kirti21 [co-host]

OneDrive | @OneDrive | OneDrive community blog | Provide feedback

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Provide feedback

Resources:

"OneDrive turns 15!" - A brief history and introducing a new OneDrive Home experience | by Ankita Kirti (blog, customer video, podcast)

Short "OneDrive turns 15!" video + screenshots of new OneDrive home experience

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

365 EduCon - Dallas (Aug. 8-12, 2022; Dallas, TX)

HR Tech (Sept.13-16.2022; Mandalay Bay - Las Vegas, NV)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference (Sept.20-22.2022; Orlando, FL)

European Cloud Summit (Sept.26-28; Mainz, GE)

365 EduCon - Chicago (Sept.26-30; Chicago, IL)

Microsoft Ignite (Oct.12-14; Hybrid) + FAQs + follow @MS_Ignite 

Microsoft Lists workshop [On-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

SharePoint roadmap pitstop: July 2022 

July 2022 brought a lot of new tech to Microsoft 365 - lots of SharePoint and related tech goodness: Record a new video from Stream start page, Video collections page, One-time passcodes from no-reply@notify.microsoft.com, AAD memberOf “Nested” Groups, Power Automate flows in Lists templates, Microsoft Lists: Calendar view conditional formatting, Review mode for Word documents, news from Microsoft Inspire 2022, and more. We also hear from Kristina Hotz from the Microsoft Identity and network access team share insights about new permission management capabilities - 'nested groups' - within Microsoft Entra (the new brand where Azure Active Directory (AAD) lives). So, tell your dynamic groups and friends -- it's time for this episode of The Intrazone.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Katrina Hotz | LinkedIn | [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

Resources:

Admins – get started with Microsoft Entra: https://entra.microsoft.com

"Create "nested" groups with Azure AD Dynamic Groups" by Kristina Hotz

Modern Work announcements from Microsoft Inspire: “From enabling hybrid work to creating collaborative experiences—here’s what’s new in Microsoft 365” by Colette Stallbaumer General Manager, Microsoft 365, and Future of Work.

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

365 EduCon - Dallas (Aug. 8-12, 2022)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference (Sept.20-22.2022; Orlando, FL)

European Cloud Summit (Sept.26-28.2022; Mainz, DE)

365 EduCon - Chicago (Sept.26-30.2022)

Teams 10X (Sept. 28-29.2022; virtual)

Microsoft Ignite (Oct.12-14.2022; hybrid)

North American Collaboration Summit (Oct.12-14.2022; Branson, MO)

Microsoft Lists workshop [now available on-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Get your OKRs on with Viva Goals 

Go behind the scenes with the solution that aligns teams to your organization’s strategic priorities, driving results and a thriving business. On this episode, Chris and Mark chat with Lucy Hitz (product marketing for Viva Goals) and Kevin Shively (Vice President of marketing for Viva Goals) to celebrate the general availability (GA) for Viva Goals (8/1/2022). We chat about important aspects of product design and development from the acquisition of Ally.io into its evolution as "Viva Goals" within the Microsoft Viva family offered through Microsoft 365, experienced as an app in Microsoft Teams. And we cover how Goals supports visibility and organizational alignment via the use of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) - for individuals, managers, and at the cross-company level.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Lucy Hitz (product marketing for Viva Goals) | LinkedIn

Kevin Shively (Vice President of marketing for Viva Goals) | LinkedIn | Twitter

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Viva | @Microsoft365 | Viva Goals website | Viva community (forum/blogs)

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Provide feedback

Resources:

NEW tech community blog post, "Viva Goals is now generally available" by Lucy Hitz (8/1/2022)

NEW Microsoft Mechanics show, "Manage objectives and key results with transparency" with Vetri Vellore and Jeremy Chapman (8/1/2022)

Viva Goals website + recent on-demand session from Microsoft Inspire: “Microsoft Viva Goals: Now generally available”

Viva Goals documentation: "Introduction to Microsoft Viva Goals" (docs.microsoft.com)

Microsoft 365 Worklab podcast with Vetri Velore (CVP Goals engineering): "Microsoft’s Vetri Vellore on Helping Employees See Their Impact"

"OKRs for All: Making Objectives and Key Results Work for your Entire Organization" book by Vetri Velore

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

365 EduCon - Dallas (Aug. 8-12, 2022; Dallas, TX)

HR Tech (Sept.13-16.2022; Mandalay Bay - Las Vegas, NV)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference (Sept.20-22.2022; Orlando, FL)

European Cloud Summit (Sept.26-28; Mainz, GE)

365 EduCon - Chicago (Sept.26-30; Chicago, IL)

Microsoft Ignite (Oct.12-14; Hybrid)

Microsoft Lists workshop [On-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

PowerShell - from server to service 

On this episode, Chris and Mark chat with Todd Klindt (Consultant and Microsoft MVP, Sympraxis Consulting) about the early days of PowerShell, IT Pro benefits over the years, and what it all means for SharePoint, Exchange, Teams and Azure in the cloud. You’ll hear more about how and why PowerShell evolved (“Monad”) – why it's CLI & GUI - not CLI vs GUI, recent extensions for admins to automate server and service management – like the concise and aptly named SharePoint Online Management Shell, and powerful PnP PowerShell examples to learn from and use in production.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Todd Klindt - Consultant & Microsoft MVP – Sympraxis Consulting | Twitter: @SympraxisC & @ToddKlindt | LinkedIn | Todd's Website & Blog; both run today on hosted, classic SharePoint Server 2010 🙂 [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Provide feedback

Resources:

"Monad" Manifesto v1.2, by Jeffrey P. Snover | “The next generation platform for administrative automation." (Aug.8.2002)

"Free Microsoft 365 E5 instant sandbox" (information about ‘dev tenant’ subscription)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

Microsoft Inspire 2022 (Virtual) (July.19-20.2022); all sessions now on-demand

365 EduCon - Dallas (Aug. 8-12, 2022)

HR Tech (Sept.13-16.2022; Mandalay Bay - Las Vegas, NV)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference (Sept.20-22.2022; Orlando, FL)

European Cloud Summit (Sept.26-28; Mainz, GE)

365 EduCon - Chicago (Sept.26-30)

Microsoft Lists workshop [On-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

SharePoint roadmap pitstop June 2022 

June 2022 brought a lot of new tech to Microsoft 365 - lots of SharePoint and related tech goodness: Pride Month | LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group site template, Viva Topics in Teams chat, inline playback of videos in Hero web part, updated site logo management, multilingual UI when editing team sites, rename Add to OneDrive Shortcuts, OneDrive: Pin and unpin shared libraries, Planner cards in team site activity feed, SPS'2013 Workflows migration assessment tool, Teams chat with self, and more. We also hear from Adam Ford from the OneDrive and SharePoint design team share insights about the focus on UX - especially in SharePoint pages and how they appear in Microsoft Teams. So, design some listening time for this episode of The Intrazone.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Adam Ford | LinkedIn | [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

Resources:

"Create and use modern pages on a SharePoint site" (Microsoft support 'how to' article)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

Microsoft Inspire 2022 (Virtual) (July.19-20.2022)

365 EduCon - Dallas (Aug. 8-12, 2022)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference (Sept.20-22.2022; Orlando, FL)

European Cloud Summit (Sept.26-28.2022; Mainz, DE)

365 EduCon - Chicago (Sept.26-30.2022)

Microsoft Lists workshop [now available on-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Tech therapy with Sue Hanley 

Let the knowledge transfer begin! And never stop - with confidence to go, go, go. On this episode, Chris and Mark chat with Sue Hanley (Microsoft MVP, information architect) and her customer, Carol Zollinger (IT Support Technician | Christian Children's Home of Ohio), about identifying problems, drilling in with questions, concerns, etc. to ultimately decide what tech will work, and most importantly: How the tech will be implemented by people, for people. Have a seat on the couch and listen to the wise words of Sue and how she collaborated to point Carol and her team in the right direction.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Social and Info Links:

Sue Hanley - Information architect & Microsoft MVP| Twitter | LinkedIn | Website | Blog

Carol Zollinger - IT Support Technician | Twitter | LinkedIn | CCHO.org | @CCHOhio

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Provide feedback

Resources:

Sue Hanley's governance questions: http://tiny.cc/M365GovQuestions

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Listen and subscribe to other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

Gartner Digital Workplace Summit (Jun.21-22; previously planned for in person in San Diego, CA, now being run virtually)

Commsverse - Hybrid Work Conference (June.29-30.2022; Mercedes-Benz World, UK)

Microsoft Inspire 2022 (Virtual) (July.19-20.2022)

365 EduCon - Dallas (Aug. 8-12, 2022)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference (Sept.20-22.2022; Orlando, FL)

European Cloud Summit (Sept.26-28; Mainz, GE)

365 EduCon - Chicago (Sept.26-30)

Microsoft Lists workshop [On-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

SharePoint roadmap pitstop: May 2022 

May 2022 brought a lot of new tech to Microsoft 365 - lots of SharePoint and related tech goodness: Site template history panel, Microsoft Stream, Section templates, Loop components in Outlook mail (Preview), Admin PowerShell control for Loop components, Inspiration Library in Microsoft Viva Insights, Microsoft Lists, Build 2022 news, and more. We also talk with Marc Mroz from the Microsoft Stream team about the progress and value of "Stream on SharePoint" and dig into the recent player enhancements that landed this month. So get Stream'ing this episode of The Intrazone right away!

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Social and Info Links:

Marc Mroz | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

Resources:

Microsoft Stream roadmap article (docs.ms.com): https://aka.ms/streamroadmap

"Build collaborative apps with Microsoft Teams" | Build 2022 blog by Jeff Teper

Microsoft Lists on Feedback Portal: https://aka.ms/Feedback/Lists

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

Scottish Summit (June.10-11.2022; Glasgow)

Commsverse - Hybrid Work Conference (June.29-30.2022; Mercedes-Benz World, UK)

Microsoft Inspire 2022 (Virtual) (July.19-20.2022)

365 EduCon - Dallas (Aug. 8-12, 2022)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference (Sept.20-22.2022; Orlando, FL)

Microsoft Lists workshop [now available on-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Get schooled on Viva Learning 

Get ready to be a learn-it-all! On this episode, Chris and Mark chat with their peers from the Microsoft Viva Learning team, Andrea Lum and John Mighell. Viva Learning removes traditional obstacles paving pathways to learning culture success. They cover the demands of "enterprise learning," upskilling within Microsoft Teams, connecting 3rd-party content sources (Coursera, Harvard Business Publishing, Pluralsight, Skillsoft, to name a few), and a peek at what comes next. Time to get schooled on The Intrazone.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Andrea Lum | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

John Mighell | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Provide feedback

Microsoft Viva Learning | @Microsoft365 | Website | Viva community blog | Provide feedback

"Viva Learning news and feature update" March 8th, 2022 by John Mighell

Learn more about Viva Learning: https://aka.ms/VivaLearning

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

Build 2022 (May.24-26.2022 | Virtual)

Thrive Conference (May.24-25.2022 | Slovenia)

Microsoft Inspire 2022 (Virtual) (July 19-20, 2022)

365 EduCon - Dallas (Aug. 8-12, 2022)

Microsoft Lists workshop [on-demand]

Subscribe to and follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

SharePoint roadmap pitstop - April 2022 

April 2022 brought a lot of new tech to Microsoft 365 - lots of SharePoint and related tech goodness: Viva Topics in Outlook for the Web (4:40), Viva Topics insights, Microsoft Stream: Comment on a video or audio file, Create directly from the SharePoint app bar, Microsoft Lists for Android (9:30), Create and manage Power Apps from Microsoft Lists within Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Lists Calendar view: 'Unscheduled' Pane, OneDrive: Access your Teams standard and private channel files, OneDrive: Pin shared libraries to Quick Access, Viva Insights (20:20): Shared focus plans, Microsoft Purview, Bookmarks in New Yammer, Whiteboard files stored in SharePoint, and more. We also hear from two Microsoft Viva product leads - Naomi Moneypenny discuss progress we're seeing with Viva Topics and its latest feature in Outlook, plus insights about Viva Insights from Erik Anderson.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Social and Info Links:

Naomi Moneypenny | Twitter | LinkedIn [guest]

Erik Anderson | LinkedIn [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

Resources:

Viva Topics in Outlook for the Web click-through demo 

Microsoft Purview: Your home for Microsoft 365 compliance solutions

.whiteboard files Tweet from Ian Mikutel (Head of Product at Microsoft Whiteboard for Teams and Surface)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

SEF 2022 (planned for in-person with a few sessions delivered virtually, May.4-5.2022 | Sweden)

Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon (May.4-6.2022 | Virtual)

Microsoft Tech Days (May5.2022)

365 EduCon (May.9-12.2022 | Seattle, WA)

Microsoft Ability Summit (May10.2022 | Virtual) @MSFTEnable

Build 2022 (May.24-26.2022 | Virtual)

Thrive Conference (May.24-25.2022 | Slovenia)

Microsoft Lists workshop [now available on-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Optimizing SharePoint performance 

On this episode, we break the sound barrier with Shyam Narayan (Principal Group Product Manager | Microsoft (SharePoint)) about optimizing SharePoint performance. It's all about scale, speed, and reliability of the SharePoint service in Microsoft 365, from page load times to file open/upload/download, and "not waiting for sync." We focused our discussion on all the recent service tweaks and innovations he and team have done to optimize the SharePoint content services platform.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Social and Info Links:

Shyam Narayan | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Provide feedback

Resources:

"Optimizing SharePoint performance in Microsoft 365" [blog]

Network planning and performance tuning for Microsoft 365 [documentation]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and subscribe to other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

AIIM 2022 (Apr.27-29, Denver, CO) 

SEF 2022 (planned for in-person with a few sessions delivered virtually, May.4-5.2022, Sweden) 

Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon (May.4-6.2022 | Virtual) 

Microsoft Tech Days (For developers | May 5th, 13:30-15:30 BST)

365 EduCon - Seattle (May.9-12.2022, Seattle, WA) (use code: KASHMAN to save $100)

Microsoft Build 2022 (May.24-26.2022 | Virtual) 

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Loop, there it is! 

On this episode, we get loop'y with Microsoft Loop. We chat with Greg Howard -- Principal product manager for Microsoft Loop and Fluid Framework (Office Experience Organization at Microsoft). Greg takes us through what Loop is - including common use scenarios, how it adds value throughout Microsoft 365, what's out now (Loop components), behind-the-scenes integration work (OneDrive component storage), and insights into what comes next. It's gonna be a Loop-the-loop thrill ride! Hop on.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Social and Info Links:

Greg Howard | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host] 

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog 

Resources:

Main Microsoft Loop product page: https://aka.ms/Loop

Announcement blog: "Microsoft Office—Transforming for the hybrid world" [scroll to the 'Introducing Microsoft Loop. Think, plan, create--together' segment]

"Overview of Loop components in Teams" (doc.microsoft.com)

Greg Howard on the February 2022 #MSLUG chat

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

AIIM 2022 (Apr.27-29, Denver, CO) 

SEF 2022 (planned for in-person with a few sessions delivered virtually, May.4-5.2022, Sweden) 

Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon (May.4-6.2022 | Virtual) 

365 EduCon - Seattle (May.9-12.2022, Seattle, WA)  (use code: KASHMAN to save $100)

Microsoft Build 2022 (May.24-26.2022 | Virtual) 

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

SharePoint roadmap pitstop - March 2022 

March 2022 brought a lot of new tech to Microsoft 365 - lots of SharePoint and related tech goodness: Top news in Viva Connections dashboard, Focus plans in Viva Insights, SharePoint Syntex: Content assembly, Microsoft Teams Connect "Shared channels", co-authoring MIP content on mobile, Managed metadata column in SharePoint document libraries, new Lists templates, Yammer dark mode, and more. We also hear from Arun Das, principal product manager helping to bring Microsoft Teams Connect "Shared Channels" to market (currently in public preview). Arun highlights several scenarios Teams Connect was designed to address - across internal and external users, with multiple content types, and the value of governance to manage and control it all from an IT perspective.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Arun Das | LinkedIn [guest]

Resources:

"Seamless external collaboration with Microsoft Teams Connect using Shared Channels"

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

Document Strategy Forum (DSF) 2022 (April 4-6.2022, Chicago, IL)

Microsoft 365 Conference (in-person, Apr.5-7.2022, Las Vegas, NV)

AIIM 2022 (Apr.27-29, Denver, CO)

SEF 2022 (planned for in-person with a few sessions delivered virtually, May.4-5.2022, Sweden)

365 EduCon (May.9-12.2022, Seattle, WA)

Microsoft Lists workshop [available now on-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

FastTrack'ing Viva, SharePoint, and OneDrive 

On this episode, Chris and Mark cover all things FastTrack - Microsoft's program to help customers move comfortable to the Microsoft 365 cloud. speak with Lora Moynihan from the FastTrack team and Mike Hollingshead from the SharePoint team - representing scale use and adoption motions on the product engineering side. And then we chat with Alejandro Lopez who sits on the frontline with our customers once they are engaged with the FastTrack program. We discuss the best ways to engage FastTrack, some tips and tricks specific to OneDrive, SharePoint, and Viva - knowing that FastTrack holistically covers all of Microsoft 365.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Social and Info Links:

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog 

Lora Moynihan | LinkedIn [guest]

Mike Hollinshead | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Alejandro Lopez | LinkedIn [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host] 

FastTrack | Site | Twitter | LinkedIn | Resource hub

Resources:

FastTrack: https://www.microsoft.com/FastTrack

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

Enterprise Connect (Mar.21-24.2022, Orlando, FL)

Teams Nation 2022 (Mar.23.2022)

CollabDays - Cologne (Mar.2022 - no specific day announced yet)

Document Strategy Forum (DSF) 2022 (April 4-6.2022, Chicago, IL)

Microsoft 365 Conference (in-person, Apr.5-7.2022, Las Vegas, NV)

AIIM 2022 (Apr.27-29, Denver, CO)

SEF 2022 (planned for in-person with a few sessions delivered virtually, May.4-5.2022, Sweden)

365 EduCon (May.9-12.2022, Seattle, WA)

Microsoft Lists workshop [available now on-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

SharePoint roadmap pitstop February 2022 

February 2022 continued strong in Microsoft 365 with numerous SharePoint and related tech goodness: Updated My feed web part, Viva Topics integration with SharePoint Syntex taxonomy, new Microsoft Graph connectors, channel and folder rename between Teams and SharePoint, Microsoft 365 connected templates, OneDrive sync for macOS, and more. We talk with Raju Nagalinga - principal program manager at Microsoft focused on Microsoft Graph connectors in connection to Microsoft Search. Raju talks more about two new connectors for Jira and Confluence, plus the broader ways to connect your various content sources for a holistic end user search results experience.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Click here for a transcript of this episode. 

Social and Info Links:

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Raju Nagalinga | Twitter | LinkedIn [guest]

Resources:

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

Enterprise Connect (Mar.21-24.2022, Orlando, FL)

Teams Nation 2022 (Mar.23.2022)

CollabDays - Cologne (Mar.2022 - no specific day announced yet)

Document Strategy Forum (DSF) 2022 (April 4-6.2022, Chicago, IL)

Microsoft 365 Conference (in-person, Apr.5-7.2022, Las Vegas, NV)

AIIM 2022 (Apr.27-29, Denver, CO)

SEF 2022 (planned for in-person with a few sessions delivered virtually, May.4-5.2022, Sweden)

365 EduCon (May.9-12.2022, Seattle, WA)

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Lists for everyone 

Have you heard? You can now sign into Microsoft Lists with your Microsoft account (MSA) - now in preview: lists.live.com. This is a lightweight version of the Microsoft Lists app designed for small business and individual use in conjunction with your MSA. In this episode, we talk with Miceile Barrett and Ben Truelove from the Lists engineering and design teams respectively. We discuss the innerworkings of the what, how, and why of the service and primary design elements that make it easy and powerful to track and manage information no matter what size the team - in work or life.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Full transcript below and if you click here. 

Social and Info Links:

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Miceile Barrett - Senior product manager | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Ben Truelove - Principal designer | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

#MicrosoftLists (Twitter)

Resources:

Sign up and try the Microsoft Lists - MSA Preview: https://lists.live.com

"Try Microsoft Lists with your Microsoft account (MSA)" (Preview launch blog)

Get to know the Microsoft Lists - MSA Preview (demo video)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

CollabDays - Bletchley Park, England (Feb.23.2022) + @CollabDays_Park

Enterprise Connect (Mar.21-24.2022, Orlando, FL)

Teams Nation 2022 (Mar.23.2022)

CollabDays - Cologne (Mar.2022 - no specific day announced yet)

Document Strategy Forum (DSF) 2022 (April 4-6.2022, Chicago, IL)

Microsoft 365 Conference (in-person, Apr.5-7.2022, Las Vegas, NV)

AIIM 2022 (Apr.27-29, Denver, CO)

SEF 2022 (planned for in-person with a few sessions delivered virtually, May.4-5.2022, Sweden)

365 EduCon (May.9-12.2022, Seattle, WA)

Microsoft Lists workshop on-demand

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

TRANSCRIPT

MARK KASHMAN: Welcome to the Intrazzone, a show about the Microsoft 365 Intelligent Intranet. I’m Mark Kashman, flying Han Solo this week this week, to shine a light saber light on Lists. Heck, this episode is bound to make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. It will outrun the data center ships in milliseconds flat, not those on-premises, multi-minute bulk cruisers. I’m talking about the big AI-driven cloud ships. Trust me, this episode will be fast enough for you to upload and download your lists before we even know it, just like that (snaps fingers).

On today’s episode, we dig into the inner workings of the Microsoft Lists - MSA Preview that Microsoft launched on January 31st, 2022. We’re going to uncover the what and how and why of this service, and the design elements throughout. In a few minutes, I’ll be joined by Miceile Barrett and Ben Truelove, two of my colleagues from Lists Engineering and Design teams, respectively, but first, before we meet up with Miceile and Ben, have you heard, you can now sign up for the Lists preview using your Microsoft account, which is often referred to as an MSA. This is a lightweight version of the Microsoft Lists app that’s designed for small business and individual use, you guessed it, in conjunction with your MSA.

You may now already have a separate login if you are already working with Microsoft Lists as a part of the Microsoft 365 business plans where you use your or ID. The good news is, you can do both, and we hope that you give this MSA preview a try.

One of the big MSA Lists updates is the new top-level URL. I’m going to say it twice, so that you can type it in right now, Lists.live.com. That’s Lists.live.com. Go ahead, type it into your browser now. I’ll wait. I’m very excited to see what you see on the other end when that resolves to the new list experience with your MSA.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

(Music.)

Now, we would love for you to participate. We hope that you start creating and sharing Lists with your work colleagues, partners, your soccer team, or your neighborhood volunteer groups, whatever suits your fancy, to test and try out the MSA preview to the fullest. We’ve designed the app off the core of Microsoft Lists, plus we introduce a lot of new experiences like a new tabbed view experience for all of your views, or that you can share by just typing in somebody’s name, draw them in by typing their name, their email address into the person column, or a better way to work with images in-line and a lot more.

And of course, we carry forward all of the great Microsoft Lists product experience that you may already know. Either way, you’re going to find a lot of great ways to track and manage your information for work and for life.

A couple of examples I’ve been using the new Lists app MSA experience to track who’s who on my soccer team, tracking things like what position they play, and of course their email and telephone number, those kinds of things. I set up one classic example that we heard a lot of people wanted to do, either for movie clubs are book clubs, where you can track what movie or book you’re going to read or watch next. Or like our friends Stormin’ Norman Young in Canada, you can use it to track your home projects. That’s a real one out there. Stormin_30 on Twitter.

Maybe you want to create an ongoing list of gifts for friends, families or coworkers. Or this is one of my favorites that I came across on Twitter after we announced this by one of our friends and colleagues out there Simon Hudson. He created a quote "I got issues" list that helps him track and manage all of his worries and woes, so they’re not worrying or woe-ing him anymore. It’s real. I saw it on Twitter.

Anyway, it is time to liberate yourself from coordination chaos. It is time to clear your brain space and get organized. In short, it’s time to hear more about and then try the Microsoft Lists - MSA Preview. The best place to start beyond this episode is at the preview launch blog. And I’ve got a short aka.ms link to share, so you can go right to the blog. Just type in aka.ms/mslists/blog/msapreview.

All right, enough of the preamble. Let’s get to what you are really here for, to hear more about the Microsoft Lists - MSA Preview from my engineering and design colleagues, Miceile Barrett and Ben Truelove, aka, some of our best list experts here at Microsoft. And remember, as Han says, "It is not wise to up a Wookie," especially when they’re injecting JSON to customize and format a choice column. Good choice to stick around. Let us not upset Chewie #botharmsintact.

Okay, enough of the silliness. Let’s hop into the audible Let us not upset, Chewy, hashtag both arms intact. Okay, enough of the silliness. Let’s hop into the audible Millennium Falcon. And here we go with audible Miceile and Ben.

(Music.)

So you’ve heard me talk a little bit about this thing we call the Lists MSA preview, but that’s not as exciting as really hearing it from the people at Microsoft who are making it, the product, designing it, thinking about all the use cases. I would like to welcome to the show, to the Intrazone, Miceile Barrett and Ben Truelove. Ben, Miceile, welcome to the Intrazone.

BEN TRUELOVE: Thanks, Mark.

MICEILE BARRETT: Thanks, Mark.

MARK KASHMAN: So nice to have you here and so nice to have you here in this special time. I bet that you both are buzzing. This is the – the week of launch, just for everybody listening. First starting with Miceile, can you give our audience a refresher of what you focus on, here at Microsoft?

MICEILE BARRETT: Absolutely. You’re right this week has been crazy with the launch. But like Mark said, my name is Miceile Barrett. And I am a Product Manager on the Lists app. I started at Microsoft in 2016 and actually joined the SharePoint team, where I worked on what were then called SharePoint Lists and Files. So it’s been a really awesome journey for me seeing the product evolve and grow. And I’m super excited to be on the podcast, especially during this week, when we’re getting all of your feedback coming in.

MARK KASHMAN: What is this thing you called SharePoint Lists? I don’t know what that means.

MICEILE BARRETT: We don’t – we don’t want to talk about them anymore.

MARK KASHMAN: That’s right. Lists are lists now. All right, Ben, similar question. Can you share what your focus is, here at Microsoft?

BEN TRUELOVE: I am a designer here at Microsoft. I’ve been here since 1997. And we focus on the user experience. So anytime that the software is in contact with a human and helps out humans, that is what we do is we make those experiences better from either the visuals to how it behaves and the basic flow of information and tasks.

MARK KASHMAN: Nice. So UX is your area, just in case we say the short, shorter version of UX, user experience. And really the design of Lists, what people interact with, for the most part, and of course, a lot of other things as they’re interacting with Lists in other applications. So a lot of great work I know that you both are doing and have done. This conversation, as we’ve already said at the front of the show, is all about this launch, this recent Microsoft Lists - MSA Preview, and our audience doesn’t really have a lot of detail on what that means. They may know what Microsoft Lists are, they may have worked with SharePoint Lists 10 or 15 years ago. They might have, you know, right before Ben joined Microsoft, been using Windows 95, but we’re going to really focus on this MSA preview.

So Miceile, I’ll throw it to you because I know you’ve been working probably the most on this of anybody on this call, as far as the end to end of what is this thing? Can you give us your 101 of what is this Microsoft Lists - MSA Preview?

MICEILE BARRETT: Absolutely. And Microsoft Lists - MSA Preview is quite a mouthful. So I kind of want to take it word by word here. So Microsoft Lists was an app that launched in 2020. And you could access the full power of Lists directly through your Azure Active Directory or your corporate account. And we saw a lot of value that our customers were getting from that product. And so over the last two years, we spent time trying to build something that anyone could use to get that value.

And so like I mentioned, in that launch in 2020, it was really focused on enterprises and existing people inside of the Microsoft 365 business area. And we wanted to launch something that would give that power to anyone who wants to use it. And so that’s what that MSA piece is. And for those who don’t know, MSA stands for Microsoft Account, and so could be something that’s Outlook email, it could be something that’s, you know, @gmail.com. It’s really something that you’ve set up for your personal Microsoft account.

And we’re calling it a preview because we just launched it and we do have a cap on it for now. We were only letting in the first 200,000 customers that want to sign up and experience the preview. So you’ll sign up today if you want to get into the preview. And I think the thing that I really want to emphasize is that this can be used by anybody, whether you want to use it for managing something related to your pet’s medical history, to running your hobby, all the way to a small business that just needs to organize and track things.

This free offering is something that you can use and take advantage of. And so I think that it’s really awesome to see that power getting put into the hands of anyone who has a simple Microsoft account. And it’s been great. Like Mark said, we launched this new offering on Monday at 8 a.m., so it’s been live for just about a week. And we’re seeing some really great usage adoption right now.

MARK KASHMAN: I think that’s important. The timestamp of the launch was January 31st, 2022, 8 a.m., all pistons firing. I think the other thing, as you were breaking down the parts that I thought was really good, you know, each word kind of leans into explaining what this is. The Microsoft account that we’re leveraging is really your authentication mechanism.

So if you have Outlook.com, if you’re using OneDrive Consumer, or for personal or family, that’s the same Microsoft account. If you have an MSA already, you don’t need to get a new one. If you don’t have an MSA, they’re free, very easy to get. It’s just another way of telling Microsoft, "I am this person, and I’d like to use that service." That service is Microsoft Lists, in that context that Microsoft Lists MSA preview I am this person. And I’d like to use that service. That service is Microsoft Lists in that context that Miceile has just walked through.

So this is nothing short of a really big lift for the team. Ben, I know we’re gonna get into features and whatnot with both you and Miceile, but I want to also take a step through the broader design strokes of just like Miceile said, we’ve been pitching Lists for a long time, whether it’s the lowercase L with SharePoint, or uppercase with L with Microsoft Lists. But we’ve also kind of said lists are lists are lists. It’s that same common platform. Can you talk about how that’s carried over from a design perspective, or carried forward or, or however you might want to think about when you think of Lists in the commercial space, and now Lists with the MSA preview, how do you think about it?

BEN TRUELOVE: Yeah, well, I’m going to start off a little metaphysical here, in that – so I like to say that everything is a list, and if you really get down to it, everything is a list, down DNA. The DNA of our lists of course, started off in SharePoint. But when we created the Microsoft Lists product, the one thing that we wanted to do to evolve it is to make it more open and adaptable, but still have that power, to still have that ability to organize and track things. Everyone organizes and tracks things, from a grocery list to large customer databases, for example. But we wanted to really bring that to the masses, as you would say, and make it easy for everyone to use.

MARK KASHMAN: So are you saying that Lists are the DNA of life?

BEN TRUELOVE: Yes. DNA is actually a list.

MARK KASHMAN: I like it. I mean, I know it’s one of the three core elements of SharePoint. And for our audience, who has for many years been tuned into, not just this show, but the ways of SharePoint, all up, I think that’s one big statement. Before we get into the first thing, I want to ask Miceile, that’s kind of product oriented, and a big decision that was made for this specific preview was the core of everything that we’re talking about is founded in based on SharePoint.

This is now SharePoint opening to how you both have articulated to new audiences, ones that are not maybe our enterprise or commercial customers, but a broader audience of smaller business, individuals, families, friends, all of those things. And to know that opening those doors to SharePoint, that’s extremely new. That, I know, has never been something that SharePoint has really taken a foot into.

MICEILE BARRETT: It is absolutely the first time anything like that has been done. It’s been three days, and so far, it’s good. I think you’re touching on a great point there, Mark, where, you know, when you look back at Lists, and you know, 10 – 15 years ago, they were nestled inside of SharePoint. And they were really a very powerful database that not a lot of average users could come in and get a lot out of. And we’ve seen a lot of improvements.

You know, in 2013, we launched a version of SharePoint that had a lot of Lists features in it. And then in 2016, we launched the modern Lists, and then 2020, we pulled list out as its own app. And so taking that, just the natural progression further where anyone can now use those Lists, regardless of if you’re a SharePoint expert.

And I think that’s where Ben’s design really comes in and shines is that we started seeing people really thriving in Lists that had no experience with them before, and that was what we wanted our product to become, something that is powerful, and anyone could get value out of. And so by, you know, redoing the design and making it much more customer facing as well as UX friendly, I think just shines, especially in this new launch, where we’ll talk about some of the changes and improvements we made, as we’re continuing that push to really empower anybody to make something in their list.

MARK KASHMAN: So if Lists are the DNA, what you’re saying, Miceile, is Ben is the DNA sequencer?

MICEILE BARRETT: Exactly. You could call them the tRNA, if you really wanted to.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to I want to kind of take it into that next level. We understand that SharePoint is the platform opening doors to new audiences. One of those doors, which is truly the door, is the kind of top-level Universal Resource Locator, the URL. The new URL is lists.live.com. You can type it in right now and your heart’s content while you’re listening to this podcast, but first lists.live.com. Miceile, can you talk about the – I want to say design behind it, but the actual design of how we built that, what our approach was?

MICEILE BARRETT: Yeah, I’m hoping that, for folks that are listening, hearing that URL, even if you’ve never heard of the word or product Lists before, I’m hoping it sounds familiar. the reason that it sounds familiar is because we have OneDrive Live, and we now have Teams Live, and Lists is a natural progression of that uniform URL structure that we’re building here.

So having lists.live will sound familiar, even if you’ve never heard of the product, Microsoft Lists. And you know, I’d mentioned it earlier in this podcast that I had joined in 2016, on SharePoint. And I think if you had tried to find Lists before, the URL is actually pretty – pretty obscure, it’s a little bit challenging to find. Even when we launched the Lists app in 2020, the URL is a my-sharepoint.com\lists, like it’s a crazy URL that’s very challenging to use.

So it was a huge priority for this launch that we did on Monday, to say it has got to be easy to find, people need to be able to type in three words in that URL and be able to get where they’re going. So it made me happy, a career high, personally, to be able to launch something that is so easy to get to your lists. It no longer requires saving those bookmarks, messaging an IT admin, or trying to navigate through your history. It really is just lists.live.com. And so that was probably the biggest focus of this launch, if I’m being honest here. Having that entry point that is consistent as well as easy to remember was something that we were not going to launch without.

You know, you call it a P zero, but I would say this was more fundamental than a P zero. This was something that, like started the entire project from the ground up, was having a unique space for Lists.

MARK KASHMAN: What is just the – kind of easiest way to let people know, when they get to lists.live.com, there’s an experience they’ll have if they haven’t been there before. And then once they’re signed up and signed in, they’ll have you know, kind of that direct experience. And that’s just during preview. Just I wanted to get from you, just so people know, if they try it right now what to expect.

MICEILE BARRETT: That is, that is a great thing to bring up. So right now, it’s super new, and we’re in a preview stage. So if you’ve never signed up or joined the preview, and you go to lists.live.com, we’ll actually load our marketing page. And that marketing page contains, you know, a couple of videos as to how, you know, a cookie company uses Lists, as well as some examples. And like descriptions of what the product is. And then you’ll also see a couple of disclaimers as to what the preview is.

And then once you click, you know, sign in or try the preview, and you get authenticated, you know, in the backend, what we’re doing is actually adding you to the preview. And so now, since you’ve seen all the content, and you’re a little bit more familiar, if you go back to lists.live.com, you’ll just load your Lists home, and the Lists app as you’ve – you know, as you want to see it.

So I think it’s a really nice experience with this preview, where we tried to put a little bit more learning in the front. So when you go to that lists.live.com, you’re going to see a really pretty marketing page that actually Mark Kashman, our very own, made. So if you guys – feedback on the words there, you’re going to go to Mark.

MARK KASHMAN: I do want to give full props to my peer Paul Diamond, who helped get it there, because – you know, to the 90% level, and then when I came and was working with Mikhail, and a lot of other folks like Ben, with getting the right images and getting maybe some not-so-fuzzy ones, but anyways, that’s just day one or two that we’ve been working through.

The other thing, before we kind of turn to Ben, I’ve got some questions around design, Ben, but the last thing I was just thinking, around the lists.live.com, is a reminder that, when you’re signed in, with your MSA, at lists.live.com, check in the upper-left and just hit the app expander so you can see that it’s just the same apps that you’ve been using, potentially – you know, office.com, and so outlook.com, you’ll see OneDrive. You can start a new Word document. All of that stuff is all there. It’s just now bringing Lists into that pool of apps when you’re signed in with an MSA.

So it’s not really a teaser of anything into the future, but just the reality that this is a nice new app for your use when you’re signed into office.com, with your MSA, but it adds a ton of new value. So that’s where we’re going next.

But Ben, I wanted to hear from you. I know you’ve been designing this new experience, or a unique experience for what we’re dealing with the MSA preview, but it also builds on a lot of the things that we’ve been doing in the commercial space, because it is the Lists product that we’re expanding. But from the design side, the way I want to ask you this question is, what are things that you’re looking for as feedback as people start to use this, maybe in a new way, maybe very new people? But if you think about our feedback tool asks you what you like, what things we can work on to make better, or even feature suggestions, but because you designed it, what are the things that you’re looking for based on what your team, you and your team did consciously?

BEN TRUELOVE: Well, I’m going to add a little nuance to that, actually. So I’m going to say that I didn’t design it alone, myself, but I actually work with a larger team. And like we say, at our company, we’re really not alone, we all work together. And that’s a really important thing. So feedback is central to our design process. So yeah, and the more feedback we get, the more diverse perspectives we get, the better it’s going to be.

Now, in terms of types of feedback we’d like, it’s great to hear exactly what happened. Like, if something broke for you, like if the experience ended, for some reason, like I could not complete this thing. It’s like, it’s good to know exactly what it is that stops that from – success from happening. And if there’s something that just doesn’t work out for you, like, how can we make it better? And what other ways would you like to do it in?

Also, we’d love to hear positive feedback, like this experience is great for this reason. It’s good to get details. And it’s great to hear what you all are feeling and how you all are doing because we like to – I like to think of designers as like storytellers. And really, we want to always have happy endings. And so help us get to that happy ending for you.

MARK KASHMAN: Before we turn to Miceile, on a similar question, I have to ask Ben, is there anything based on choices that you and the team made from a design perspective that you’re like excited/nervous about and awaiting feedback on a specific X or Y thing?

BEN TRUELOVE: So I would love to hear about the new things that we’ve added to make views easier, for example, code, the view tabs. I’d love to hear about filter pills, so making filters more transparent. And I’d love to hear about how the inline editing is working for you all. That’s another thing that we provided in this new consumer release is being forward about just instant editing of your lists right there on the canvas.

MARK KASHMAN: So Miceile, if we take that same question around what type of feedback are you interested in? I know you’re interested in it all, maybe some of those things that you’re a little nervous about, but excited to get so that we are turning in the right direction. But if we took it from, Ben was providing a little lens through design, if you think about the service, or the product itself, what are some of the things that you’re looking for as far as feedback?

MICEILE BARRETT: Absolutely. I think about this a lot, so I’m trying to condense it into only like two or three things. The first thing I think would be very interesting to hear from folks using it is what they’re using it for. And there’s actually a button in the suite nav where you can submit feedback. And I’m going to kind of make a call, a plea, where there’s an option that you can click saying, let the product team contact you. And so if you select that box, that means that when I actually get your feedback through the tools that we use, I’ll be able to reach out to you and talk with you about the experience.

And one of the things that I’m most interested in is kind of building out the portfolio of real customer use cases. I’ve really enjoyed doing this on the enterprise side, but I think that we just scratched the surface of what Lists can be used for. And you know, so far, I’ve seen some really incredible things being built on Lists - MSA preview.

One of them is managing a wood-turning hobby group and how they do their sales for the holiday season. And I just absolutely loved those conversations because, one, I got to understand why they’re using the list, two, what value it has added, and then three, understand what’s missing, right? Like what would make their experience better so that they could do things faster or with less overhead or reduce time to needing to – you know, organize so they can actually focus on what they want to be doing?

And so that brings me into the second thing of, if there’s something that you wish Lists did, send it in that feedback tool. We are building extremely agile for this offering here. So if there’s something that would just make the list experience better or more meaningful to you, I would like to know what that is. And you know, it’s very easy for me to sift through that feedback and find the top 10 things that we need to build next.

Really, the two that I want to call out is what are you building on it, and two, what’s missing? Is there anything that would make the experience better for you, or whoever you’re trying to get to adopt it?

MARK KASHMAN: I like it. I like that the woodworking group is building the would-work-on list. (Laughter.) That’s what they’re building. That’s a really nice way to think about it.

I have to tell both of you, I have officially submitted my first piece of feedback publicly through the tool. I know through the early phases of pre-beta, pre-getting it out there publicly, I sent a few things. And I know you all were doing lots of hammering on the product before we went live.

But my first piece of feedback actually came when somebody else who was using the MSA Preview did a public share of a list to me that was highlighting a show that we were working on. And they were advertising, and they were advertising a number of shows. That was just how they were going to represent upcoming shows, was to publicly produce it on this list.

But so, I went in, and I had some feedback that I wanted changed. And what I noticed was they had shared it in a view-only method to me, but to me, it looked like I could edit. I want to be very clear. I could not edit it; it was not possible for me to edit. But there was some user interface where it just felt like, gosh, it looks like I’m able to edit even though I couldn’t.

That was the feedback I sent. I was appreciative of that I could, and hearing that you’re open to it, I hope you don’t mind plus one more that I sent.

MICEILE BARRETT: Oh, absolutely. And I mean, this is a great example of I know that I have two other asks sitting in my feedback tool of that. So now, I get to add three to it, and it’s great to get that type of feedback and understand the scenario.

MARK KASHMAN: Good.

MICEILE BARRETT: Great example, Mark. You’re setting the bar high. (Laughter.)

MARK KASHMAN: There’s a lot that I think Ben kind of teased at it that I want to turn to next, which is there are some unique new features that the MSA Previewer is bringing for the first time, really. And we’ll see where this lands within the commercial space, but I think it’s really important to know that the design work, it is not just a copy/paste of what you know in the commercial space. But it’s intended to be unique for how people are going to use this. And it will be shaped by the feedback we were just talking about.

But Ben, let’s jump into one of the things you mentioned, and it doesn’t have to be a super-long example. I’d love to hear kind of the what it is and why you did it, but it’s the new tabbed experience for views. Maybe you can explain kind of the way it was and the way that you’re now doing it in the MSA Preview.

BEN TRUELOVE: Views in the past were accessed by a little menu in the command bar. It just had a little name up there, just a little footnote. And you’d click on that, and then if you created multiple views, you get all these views in the menu plus any commands that are related to a view. That could be a really long list, and then all the views were just kind of crammed up in that corner and hidden.

And so, what we’ve done with the tabs views, the view tabs, is we brought that up to the surface. We want to celebrate the views that you’ve created, the work you’ve created right on the top level. These tabs will be right along the top of the list itself, so you can quickly just, at your fingertips, go between all these different views.

And that also goes hand in hand with our new view types that we’ve had, too, like our calendar, and our gallery for showcasing things more visually as well. That was very, very different from what we had before. And we think that it’s going to resonate with people.

Another thing that we did, too, is when we brought the views out into the surface, we also were able to make that view command menu much shorter.

MARK KASHMAN: Oh, yeah, sure. I didn’t think about that part. I was just thinking as you were describing it. What I really liked about it is if I’m the one that creates the views, then I know they’re there. But if I didn’t create the views, and I didn’t know that they were there, and maybe I’m not as fluent to go to that drop down menu, just seeing them just calls to my attention. Oh, here’s another way to pivot this information, or here’s something that somebody else did, that they thought would be valuable for me to consume this in a different way. Same data, different view.

I really like it. It’s not any different as far as creating the views. All the consistent custom views and some of the unique ones that you walk through are all there, but it does bring them front and center. And I hope that that really increases the value of them, which we think will start with just the visibility of the use of them.

Miceile, this one might be a little funny to describe from an audio perspective, but I’m going to pitch it to you because I think it’s a really cool new feature. But can you walk through what the new sharing experience is within a person column?

MICEILE BARRETT: Let me just start by saying in this new experience, you’re signed in with your Microsoft account. And there’s not this concept of a directory or a company where you can kind of type in your coworker’s name or your friend’s name. And so, we know that collaboration is one of the biggest values out of Microsoft Lists. Being able to collaborate with your family, your peers, your fellow teammates is very important, and is actually where we see Lists being the stickiest amongst our customers.

And so, in the MSA Preview offering, you can add collaborators to your list. And a collaborator basically means that that person will be able to come into the list and contribute with whatever permissions you give them, whether it’s view only, or edit permissions, or the ability to edit the schema. And once they actually come into that list, they’re going to appear in that people column drop down menu, because they are what we’re calling a collaborator.

This sounds a little bit more complicated than it is. But what you do is you go into your people column, and you type in “Ben Truelove.” And you realize, oh, Ben’s not actually a collaborator yet in this list. And we will notify you that he’s not a collaborator, and we will give you a temporary placeholder for him, and a link that you can send to him. And so, then when Ben gets that link and signs in, that little temporary placeholder will get redeemed with his MSA. And he’s now a collaborator in that list with the permissions you granted him. It’s a way to kind of get you off the ground moving, but to pull in your team and your family as you need.

And the UI, again, just Ben and his team did a great job making sure that it’s clear, and intuitive and fast, because we want you to get as many collaborators into the list as possible.

And I realized we kind of dove straight in there, Mark. We might have wanted to take a step back as to what even is the people column. (Laughter.) Let me go ahead and just tackle that as well.

MARK KASHMAN: (Laughter.) Yeah. And honestly, I think hopefully, you’re going this direction. Explain kind of maybe there’s a limitation within the enterprise in who you can add to a person column, and maybe where this adds to that in terms of a potential in the future of how you can add people who aren’t part of your global address list.

MICEILE BARRETT: Yeah, exactly. The people column is one of the list column types that we have. Just like a choice field, or a date field or text field, people is one that we have. And we see people being used a lot, whether it’s to assign an owner to something, to assign the person responsible or the person you’re going to meet with, a way to just track different humans you’re interacting with. I guess I shouldn’t limit it to humans. You could use dog names in the system. But it’s a way to add people you need to rely on or work with in a list.

And in enterprise, that’s pulled from the Azure Active Directory, which is set up by your company’s IT department. And so, if you’re working with an external customer or someone, if they’re not in that Active Directory, it is not possible to add them to that people column.

And so, it’s a really cool kind of shift that we have here, where we want to, again, back to what we’re saying the beginning, anyone should be able to succeed in this product. It should not be scoped to people who have advanced Azure Active Directory setup. And that’s where our design was focused, right, making it so that anybody can be added to a list. And then you use a simple link to give them a way to kind of redeem that placeholder and come in. And so, it makes it really fast, simple, and removes any of those barriers where you might not see a name appear.

MARK KASHMAN: Okay. On The Intrazone, if you heard that clearly, all you animal lovers out there or animal adjacent friends, it is possible to add your pet. And I’m talking to you, Peanut. That’s my dog right behind me. Peanut is able to help me with my next list. That’s what you’re saying.

MICEILE BARRETT: Yep. And I think one thing, too, with this placeholder concept is you can add in people’s names and kind of see them rendered in a way that indicates it’s a person, and you don’t even need to share with them. If you want to do something that’s tracking just their information, and they don’t need to be a collaborator on the list, it’s also a great way to just track.

And so, I think that that’s one of the value props of Lists. You have track and organize, and part of that, you might not necessarily always need that person in the list. And so, it’d be very easy to kind of type in those names and get yourself moving. And if you discover later that you do want that person to be inside of the list, working with you, you just go ahead, copy that link and send it to them. And they’ll be right there as a collaborator like you need them.

MARK KASHMAN: That’s really cool.

Ben, I want to touch on, I think it’ll be two things, but I’m just kind of mashing them together before we kind of roll into maybe some of your personal use. When people are working with images, we know we have the image column, or for lack of maybe a more direct way, you could also add any attachment to a list item. But what are some of the ways that we’ve been thinking differently from a design perspective for images?

And the second thing just to throw in there, I don’t know how you want to talk about them both. But there’s also a new…. You had mentioned the new filter pill experience. And I don’t want to mash them together too much, but I think they’re important, both visually and how you can make your list really work for you.

BEN TRUELOVE: Yeah. Well, it’s funny you say visually. Thinking about images, well, they are visual. And one thing that we’ve done is to enable people to just go ahead and click in an image column cell and get a file picker, so they can go and look for their pictures, looking at pictures to upload to any list. That’s one change from the old SharePoint. The old SharePoint, you had to actually enter a URL or upload it to a site, and then add it to it. But now, you can just add pictures directly.

Imagine you’re creating a pet calendar, for example, and you’ve got all these pet pictures to upload. It’ll be that much easier, rather than having to upload them and then try to add them. Our regular consumers just have their pictures on their devices, and that’s the fastest way to get them on there.

Now, for the filter pill experience, one thing that we’ve found is that sometimes, someone might send you a link to a list, and it may not be read only, but it might be filtered. You might have a list that might be filtered, for example, to only approved videos, or something like that. And you’ll come there, and you’ll see these videos. And it’s like, oh, wait, where’s my video at? And people will think, oh, there’s data loss there. It’s like, oh, no, it’s lost because Lists lost my video or my list item.

But with filter pills, which are on the surface, as well, just like view tabs, which are going to sit right above the column header and right below the view tabs, you can tell right away, okay, this view is filtered by this parameter, by only approved. And it’s really a snap to then remove those filters just by clicking on the X on the filter pill, and it takes that away.

MARK KASHMAN: That, to me, has been – they’ve been both positive in terms of the use case of being able to add and see filters. But what I found really useful is if I have a filtered list, and I’m viewing something in a unique, but direct way of how I wanted to see something, and then to be able to un-filter to then navigate to some other way of viewing the information, because I want to then accomplish something next on a broader set, something that’s a little less filtered, just be able to remove a filter just with a click, huge, huge advancement in terms of just productivity gains, ease of use. Huge kudos to that, just from my perspective. And I know others have said the same to you directly.

So, if you haven’t seen them or used them, give them a try, especially when un-filtering. It’s very, very easy.

BEN TRUELOVE: And also, I just want to add, from a recognition point of view, we apply any formatting that you’ve applied to the list to those pills. If you’ve got a pill that’s approved, and it’s green, you’re going to see a green pill up there. If it’s a person you’re filtering by, you’re going to see that person pill up there.

MARK KASHMAN: Cool. The last area that I wanted to get while we’ve got time with you is personal. This is getting into the personal space of this new personalized offering. And I will certainly add my personal sense, just as a tag-on to what you share. But since you’ve been using Lists, beyond your tests of everything that you needed to walk through, end-to-end, to make sure the product was ready to stand up for the public, what are some of the scenarios or a scenario there you’re using for your personal use, now that you can with Lists kind of outside of the Microsoft space for us working at Microsoft?

Miceile, let’s start with you. What’s a personal use of this new technology that you’ve been taking on?

MICEILE BARRETT: Yeah. I think if anyone follows me on Twitter, they know that I like to ski. And over the last two-to-three months, ski resorts have been so crowded that I picked up a new hobby, where I go backcountry skiing now. I needed to get a new set of skis that were lighter, new boots, new bindings, my avalanche beacon and shovel. And as you can imagine, this list was getting very expensive. I decided to buy it used, and I used a list to track all of the different Craigslist vendors that I was buying from.

And so, as you can imagine, I wanted to make sure I was getting stuff that all worked together. Tech bindings only work with so many pairs of boots. And I was trying to do it all kind of just in my head or on a piece of paper, and it just was not working. So, I used my Microsoft Lists MSA Preview app to actually track all of the different ads, what they cost, what they cost new, when I could meet them, if it worked with a different set. And you’ll be happy to hear I now have a full setup, and it will be on my Twitter page soon.

MARK KASHMAN: Oh, that’s awesome. If we see in OOF message, we’ll know that you’re out on the slopes, or at least the moderately sloped slopes.

MICEILE BARRETT: Absolutely. (Laughter.)

MARK KASHMAN: And I just want to call out, if you do follow Miceile on Twitter, not too long ago, she posted a really fun picture of herself in not this gear, maybe, but I think you’re on a downhill ski. You were all geared up on your laptop, doing work from the slopes. I thought that was classic.

MICEILE BARRETT: It was great. Yeah, I was using Nucleus, taking Lists offline.

MARK KASHMAN: Oh, excellent. Oh, offline, too.

MICEILE BARRETT: I was sitting in the Canadian Rockies. And I was like, you know what, I’ve got my laptop on me. It’s sunny; I can take some meetings and work from here.

MARK KASHMAN: Awesome. Well, I hope that you let the Nucleus team know. If they didn’t see you on Twitter, I hope you sent that privately. That’s fun.

MICEILE BARRETT: Absolutely.

MARK KASHMAN: Ben, whether you’re on the ski slopes getting ready with all this new gear from a bunch of vendors, or not, what is your personal use that you’ve been using with the MSA Preview?

BEN TRUELOVE: My most recent use of Lists, I have a lot of lists, actually, but the one of my favorites now is, well, I’m getting married in fall. And we needed a wedding guest list because we need to figure out who are we inviting. And we have a limited size venue, so we needed to figure out who we could bring. It’s been really enjoyable, because we can use those filter pills, like I said before, to filter out whether they’re coming or they’re not, or just sending an invite.

But one of my favorite parts I’ve found is that we’ve started compiling addresses so we can mail out invitations and save the dates. And the location column, which is a column type, so great because you only have to type out just the first few characters of address. And for most addresses, the service that it’s connected to just finds these locations for you in the auto suggestions. And so, it’s been really a snap to start adding addresses, for example, to my wedding list.

MARK KASHMAN: Wow. First, congratulations or pre-congratulations. That is great news and a really fun use case, and very personal. I also just want to say that by bringing in the locations column as kind of one of your proof points of what you’re actually using, clear indication that this is bringing SharePoint forward. We’ve had the location column for a while, and it really is one of those magical ones where one column equals possibly three or four and gives you lots of pivot points. You might do some interesting analysis of your guests before they come.

Last thing I want to say, Ben, because you just made me think of it in a funny way if technically, SharePoint is on the backend managing your wedding list, you could potentially, per list, for this list have up to 30 million wedding guests. (Laughter.)

BEN TRUELOVE: Yeah. (Laughter.)

MARK KASHMAN: Are you ready for that? (Laughter.)

BEN TRUELOVE: I don’t think my venue’s ready for that. (Laughter.) I love company.

MARK KASHMAN: Oh good. Well, maybe we’ll keep your list into the realm of what’s possible in preview, and then that’ll help you manage not inviting 30 million people.

Well, thank you for sharing. Both of those are great, from the ski slopes to the wedding bells. Mine, maybe not as interesting, but I have been on a soccer team for over five years, maybe moving into the 10-year mark. And we’re always on a group thread, and there’s an e-mail chat with some of us internally at Microsoft. But we’ve never really had a list of who are all the players, especially as we get new people that join the team, what position they play, basic things like their e-mail and their phone number. And of course, I use the image column for people that are new, so they know who the other players are.

I created a soccer club list. I think it’s one of those easy ones for me where it’s like, gosh, that’ll be a really nice thing for our team to have. It’s a lowercase “t” team, and soccer list of all the players. Very easy to put together and got some good use of a bunch of different column types.

Ben and Miceile, thank you for the work that you do, both on the design and the product side. And of course, carry forth a thank you to the rest of the team, whether they’re in Redmond, in India, or wherever they might be. Working on Lists has been no small task in the last few years. And the lead up to this MSA Preview, I know there’s been a lot of really unique work, like we had mentioned before, to really get SharePoint running outside of the commercial space, but so that it adds that same value and maybe even more addresses what people who aren’t familiar with SharePoint will be able to do with Lists.

That’s a long list of why I’m thinking you but thank you for all that work. And thank you for being on The Intrazone.

BEN TRUELOVE: Thanks for having us.

MICEILE BARRETT: Thank you, Mark.

MARK KASHMAN: Any last words? Lists.live.com. Miceile?

MICEILE BARRETT: Yep, exactly. Lists.live.com. Go there, send feedback, contact me. My Twitter handle is @MicrosoftMiceile. Get out there and make a list and tell me what you made it for.

MARK KASHMAN: Nice. Last words, Ben?

BEN TRUELOVE: Ditto, ditto. My Twitter handle is @betruthfulness. And if you’re inclined, I’d love to see pictures of these lists. (Laughter.)

MARK KASHMAN: (Laughter.) Yeah, that’s one thing in the feedback tool. Check that little box if you’re okay to share what’s on your screen. It really helps the team better decipher your feedback, and it gives them a sense of how are people using it? What can we do better based on that feedback? I iterate all that and make sure to have all of your personal links that you’re willing to share in the show notes, and of course, lots of links to get started in the preview.

Thank you for your time, and really excited for where this goes in these coming months.

MICEILE BARRETT: Wonderful. Thank you, Mark. Bye!

BEN TRUELOVE: Thanks, Mark.

(Music.)

MARK KASHMAN: You now have one of the best viewpoints. Your ability to see what is this thing Microsoft Lists MSA Preview. You should know at its core, from the depths of the outside all the way inside, what is this thing, because you heard it from Miceile and Ben. You heard it from a product side, a design side, examples of what you can do, and of course, we hope a lot of encouragement to try that preview. Again, lists.live.com. Get started today.

Now, if you want to dig in a little bit more and, of course, hear a lot of news and information, and best practices, and dig in with a lot of your colleagues around the world, there are a ton of events that I want to highlight, some of which I or my colleagues will be attending to share more about Lists, both Lists in Microsoft 365 for Business, and now with the use of your Microsoft account.

First up, a shoutout to the event in England. This is a Collab Days Bletchley Park, and that’s February 23rd. You can follow them and get all the news at collabdays_park.

The next event is Enterprise Connect. This is in March 21st to the 24th. It’s an in-person event in Orlando, Florida, and they truly cover all natures of product across OneDrive, SharePoint, the Power Platform, Azure. It’s a pretty pervasive spectrum of what they offer at the Enterprise Connect. Dig into their website. I’ll have a link in the blog and in the show notes, so that you can go and check out what it is that they offer.

Now, if you focus down, this next event is called Teams Nation 2022 because it is on March 23rd, 2022, so far now a yearly conference. And it’s a really great event that’s all about Microsoft Teams and everything you can do at the core of Teams, and of course, a lot that you can do in the ancillary with a lot of the integration work across our own apps and a lot of other third-party apps, or custom experiences that people are building on Teams.

A lot of great keynotes, a lot of great sessions, and I’ll have one that showcases a lot of how you can leverage lists from an events perspective, so how I use it to plan and manage across my whole team, plus a lot of other partner teams to get ready for multiple events throughout the year. We’re talking about events in this section. We just talked about Lists. Teams Nation, for me, is where I’m going to combine them both to show how I use Lists to prepare for events.

Anyway, the next event, Collab Days Cologne, this is March 2022. There is not a specific day announced yet, but it is listed on their site. I wanted to call it out. If they do update that, I’ll certainly update that in the future, in a future episode.

Next one that my team, through my co-host and friend, Chris McNulty, he’s going to be representing Microsoft, along with a lot of other partners and customers, showcasing a lot of work at the Document Strategy Forum. This is April 4th through the 6th, and it’s in person in Chicago, Illinois. And it’s bound to be one of those depth-type conferences that goes into all of those enterprise content management strategies for how you can really serve up content as a service throughout all of your employee experience, and your deeper level content management solutions that you want to put in place. If you go there, say hi to Chris for me.

Next is another in-person event in Las Vegas. This is the Microsoft 365 Conference, April 5th through the 7th. And this is where we’ll get that kind of real-time Chris. He’s going to be bouncing between the DSF conference and the Microsoft 365 conference.

But again, a load of people both from the community and from Microsoft, including Jeff Teper are going to be at the Microsoft 365 Conference April 5th through the 7th, a load of content from the OneDrive and SharePoint team. Viva will have a specific track, if you want to learn more about Microsoft Viva, and of course a track dedicated to Microsoft Teams and attract dedicated to the Power Platform. A lot of great people that I know both from the community and for Microsoft will be flying there in person to share what they know and, of course, answer any questions that you might have.

Next is another one of those specialized conferences, a little bit back to the content management days, is the AIIM 2022. This is April 27th through the 29th. And that will be in Denver, Colorado. Get your lungs ready to go into the altitude and learn from the AIIM conference.

Next one is the SEF 2022. This was planned to be in person for a lot of number of sessions, and it was postponed and moved around a little bit. But now it’s going to be a blended experience of some people in person, and some people delivering, like myself, virtually on May 4th through the 5th. The event, if you’re in person, is in Sweden, but you can certainly connect as a consumer, or if you’re wanting to fly over to Sweden, I’m sure they would love to have you. But look for SEF 2022, a lot of great sessions, especially if you want to have an in-person experience in Sweden.

Next is the 365 EduCon, and this is the one that will be in Seattle. They have about three to four cities a year, and the one in Seattle is May 9th through the 12th. It’s in our backyard, essentially just across the pond if you go from Redmond, Washington, where most of everybody from my team works at Microsoft, and then a lot of people flying in from all over the place from the community, Microsoft MVPs, to give a lot of workshop sessions. And of course, there will be a Jeff Teper keynote dropping over and spending time at 365 EduCon Seattle, early part of May.

And I just wanted to drop, since we’re talking about Lists in this episode, I just wanted to call attention that we still have a Microsoft List workshop that’s available on demand. This is primarily based on Lists in Microsoft 365 Business Plans. But since lists are lists are lists, you will find that a whole lot of the lessons that are in that training, cover what you can do with Lists, full stop, both work and life, the product with that common platform as it expands to all those different scenarios. We hope the core of the product is the same experience. If you do review the Microsoft List workshop on demand, you’ll get a lot of insights of what you can do both through Microsoft 365 Business or now with the MSA Preview.

I want to thank our guests, Miceile Barrett and Ben Truelove, for sharing product and design insights all about Microsoft Lists, especially the MSA Preview. And remember, try the Microsoft Lists MSA Preview. Not doing so would be a Wookie mistake. Remember, #allarmsintech.

We encourage you to check out our show page for links to all that we discussed today and more. Go to aka.ms/TheIntrazone. You can reach us any space, anytime. Send questions, send feedback, maybe send your quantum theories for hyperdrive. Send it to us via e-mail at TheIntrazone@microsoft.com or via Twitter @SharePoint, @MKashman and @CMcNulty 2000. Remember to rate, review and tell all your friends about the show. Follow the show wherever you get your favorite tech podcasts.

Thanks so much for listening. I’m your host, Mark Kashman. This has been The Intrazone a show about the Microsoft 365 lists for life, intelligent intranet.

(Music.)

END

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop January 2022 

January 2022 kicked us off right in Microsoft 365 with a slew of SharePoint and related tech goodness: Microsoft Editor in SharePoint pages, Viva Topics topic card improvements, SharePoint navigation switcher, conversation search in Office.com and SharePoint, migration updates, Microsoft Lists: Board view, Power BI for libraries, new library drop-down menu, Lists in the SharePoint app bar, and more. Mark also chats with Yogesh Ratnaparkhi - Microsoft principal program manager focused on migration of files and folder into Microsoft 365. We chat about progress on Migration Manager in the SharePoint admin center, recent updates with the SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT), and highlight some of the key organizing and scheduling capabilities now available to admins. It's a packed half hour, and you'll find yourself more informed at the end.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Social and Info Links:

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Yogesh Ratnaparkhi | LinkedIn [guest]

Resources:

Sign up and try the Microsoft Lists - MSA Preview

Read and review the free ClearBox 'Intranet and Employee Experience Platforms 2022'

Visit the Microsoft Viva adoption center within adoption.microsoft.com

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

CollabDays - Bletchley Park, England (Feb.23.2022) + @CollabDays_Park

Enterprise Connect (Mar.21-24.2022, Orlando, FL)

Teams Nation 2022 (Mar.23.2022)

CollabDays - Cologne (Mar.2022 - no specific day announced yet)

Document Strategy Forum (DSF) 2022 (April 4-6.2022, Chicago, IL)

Microsoft 365 Conference (in-person, Apr.5-7.2022, Las Vegas, NV)

AIIM 2022 (Apr.27-29, Denver, CO)

SEF 2022 (planned for in-person with a few sessions delivered virtually, May.4-5.2022, Sweden)

365 EduCon (May.9-12.2022, Seattle, WA)

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Architecting Adelaide 

Ready to tap into the wisdom of the Southern Hemisphere? It’s time to audibly travel to Australia for architect-level SharePoint guidance. On this episode, we hear from three IT Pro experts from the Aussie community – specifically the Adelaide Microsoft IT Pro Community: Brett Moffet (Cireson), Matt Cline (Data#3), and Andrew O'Young (Subnet). You’ll hear their approach to solutions – from managing a hybrid deployment, to migrating to the cloud at scale, and recommendations for IT Pros “to learn more and get certified.” You’ll walk away with a nice set of new best practices, opinions, and three new mates.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman | @mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty | @cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Brett Moffett | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Matt Cline | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Andrew O’Young | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Resources:

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Planned events in 2022:

Enterprise Connect (Mar.21-24.2022, Orlando, FL)

Teams Nation 2022 (Mar.23.2022)

CollabDays - Cologne (Mar.2022 - no specific day announced yet)

DSF22 (April 4-6.2022, Chicago, IL)

Microsoft 365 Conference (in-person, Apr.5-7.2022, Las Vegas, NV)

AIIM 2022 (Apr.27-29, Denver, CO)

SEF 2022 (planned for in-person with a few sessions delivered virtually, May.4-5.2022, Sweden)

365 EduCon (May.9-12.2022, Seattle, WA)

Listen to and follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

SharePoint roadmap pitstop December 2021 

December 2021 rounded our year of SharePoint and related tech goodness: Azure Active Directory Dynamic Groups for SharePoint audience targeting, create and manage verticals in Microsoft Search, Microsoft Lists lookup columns, the ability to manage Teams and channel connected team sites in the SharePoint admin center, markup ink for photos stored in OneDrive and SharePoint, Microsoft Loop components in Teams chats, and more. Mark also notes five SharePoint resolutions for 2022, plus an audible "Ode to SharePoint". 2021 is in our rearview mirror, with 2022 poised and ready to bring much improvement and innovation to the Microsoft 365 intelligent intranet.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman | @mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty | @cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Resources:

"Goodnight Subsites" - an admin's tale co-authored by Susan Hanley and Mark Kashman, illustrated by Rebecca Jackson.

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Listen to and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

SEF 2022 (Jan.11-12.2022)

Teams Nation 2022 (Marc.23.2022)

Microsoft 365 Conference (again in Vegas Apr.5-7.2022)

AIIM 2022 (Apr.27-29 in Denver, CO)

365 EduCon - Seattle (May.9-12.2022)

365 EduCon - Dallas (formerly SP Fest) (Aug.8-12.2022)

Listen to and follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Reemergence of in-person events 

This is a retrospective perspective episode based on three recent in-person tech events: 1) The European Collaboration Summit in Düsseldorf, Germany, 2) the Microsoft 365 Collaboration Conference in Vegas, and 3) 365 EduCon event in DC (formerly SharePoint Fest). We hear from Spencer Harbar (one of the EU Collab Summit leads), and Mark shares both first- and third-person thoughts on seeing others face-to-face to share and listen. Oh, to roam the conference halls, coffee chats, solution building in the expo with partners - plus a little SWAG. Explore the tactical notion of once again meeting others, training others, and getting feedback with smiles "in person" - after 2+ years. This episode is a glimpse into recent stirrings of the best community in tech.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman | @mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty | @cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Spencer Harbar | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Highlighted events:

European Collaboration Summit (Nov.29 - Oct. 1.2021; in Dusseldorf, Germany)

Microsoft 365 Collaboration Conference - Vegas (Dec.7-9.2021; Las Vegas, NV (MGM Grand))

365 EduCon - DC (formerly SP Fest) (Dec.12-16.2021; Washington D.C., US (Walter E Washington Convention Center))

Resources:

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Listen and subscribe to other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Planned in-person events in 2022:

Microsoft 365 Conference (again in Vegas Apr.5-7.2022)

365 EduCon - Seattle (May.9-12.2022)

365 EduCon - Dallas (formerly SP Fest) (Aug.8-12.2022)

European Cloud Summit in Mainz, DE (Sept.22-28.2022)

365 EduCon - Chicago (Sept.26-30.2022)

North American Collaboration Summit in Branson, MO (Oct.12-14.2022)

European SharePoint Conference 2022 returns live and in-person in Copenhagen (Nov.28-Dec.1.2022)

Listen to and follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop November 2021 

November 2021 brought lots of great SharePoint and related tech releases: Microsoft Viva GA, private drafts for SharePoint news and pages, Embed web part for SharePoint spaces, SharePoint Framework (SPFx) v1.13, SharePoint admin center: Manage channel sites, Microsoft Lists: Fast and offline, updated site creation experience, Microsoft Feedback for OneDrive and SharePoint, and more – plus new disclosures from Microsoft Ignite. We also chat with Andrey Esipov, principal program manager on the SharePoint team working to make Microsoft Lists, OneDrive and other technologies fast and available for offline work. Andrey shares more about 'Project Nucleus' and how it combines Progressive Web App (PWA) tech with the new Microsoft.SharePoint.exe component.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Andrey Esipov | LinkedIn [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman | Kashbox blog [host]

Resources:

“Building fast, offline-capable Microsoft 365 web applications” by Andrey Esipov

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft 365 public roadmap

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming Events:

European Collaboration Summit (Nov.29 - Oct. 1.2021)

Microsoft 365 Collaboration Conference - Vegas (Dec.7-9.2021)

365 EduCon - DC (formerly SP Fest) (Dec.12-16.2021)

365 EduCon - Dallas (formerly SP Fest) (Jan.31-Feb.4.2021)

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Listen and follow to other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Review. Recap. Re-Ignite. 

The news firehose of Microsoft Ignite has been capped, and now it's time for the recap to re-Ignite your synapses on all that was disclosed. Join Mark and Chris as they walk though tons of announcements from Microsoft Ignite 2021 across SharePoint, OneDrive, Microsoft Viva, Loop, Syntex, Lists, admin, security and more. There's a whole lot coming in the months ahead to improve your content and collaboration, with marked enhancements for employee experiences. 

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host] 

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog 

Microsoft Lists | Resource center | Adoption | Posts within Microsoft 365 community blog

Microsoft Loop 

Resources:

"Microsoft Viva is now generally available to help transform your hybrid work experience" by Seth Patton

Microsoft Ignite 'Book of News' 2021

Microsoft Ignite 'ODSPV Guide' (list of related blogs, sessions, and more: 

Microsoft Lists resource center

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Listen and subscribe to other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

Microsoft Tech Community Live: Microsoft Viva Edition - a video AMA (Nov.16.2021 8am-12pm PST)

Teams Day Online (Nov.17.2021)

European Collaboration Summit (Nov.29 - Oct. 1.2021)

Microsoft 365 Collaboration Conference - Vegas (Dec.7-9.2021)

365 EduCon - DC (formerly SP Fest) (Dec.12-16.2021)

365 EduCon - Dallas (formerly SP Fest) (Jan.31-Feb.4.2021)

Follow and subscribe to The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: October 2021 

October 2021 brought lots of great SharePoint and related tech releases: SharePoint hub to hub site association, new site templates, modern site-level term store, edit images in OneDrive and SharePoint, Calendar view in List web part, view transcripts from Teams meetings, establish official Yammer Communities, and more. We also chat with Cathy Dew, senior program manager on the SharePoint team focused on the integration of SharePoint and Microsoft teams, with new ownership of SharePoint hub sites. We chat with Cathy about the new hub to hub association capability and the value of organizing your intranet and extranet in the ways that make sense and work best for your employees and partners.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog 

Cathy Dew | Twitter | LinkedIn [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [host]

"Getting started with hub site associations in SharePoint - building the hub of hubs" demo video by Cathy Dew

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming Events:

Microsoft Ignite (Nov.2-4.2021; digital event) - Save the date announced | @MS_Ignite

Microsoft Tech Community Live: Microsoft Viva Edition - a video AMA (Nov.16.2021 8am-12pm PST)

Teams Day Online (Nov.17.2021)

European Collaboration Summit (Nov.29 - Oct. 1.2021)

Microsoft 365 Collaboration Conference - Vegas (Dec.7-9.2021)

365 EduCon - DC (formerly SP Fest) (Dec.12-16.2021)

365 EduCon - Dallas (formerly SP Fest) (Jan.31-Feb.4.2021)

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Listen and follow to other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

From paper to auto-classified documents 

One piece of paper might be easy to find. One document within twenty million – well, that leads to time-waste greater than a needle in a haystack. In this episode, we focus on Northumbrian Water's migration of 20M documents, the benefits of a Knowledge Discovery Workshop, applying both SharePoint Syntex and Viva Topics for improved intake recognition and better people and content discovery. Plus a fun story of a very important, nearly irreplaceable van.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Resources:

Gabriel Karawani | LinkedIn | Twitter || ClearPeople (Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Vimeo) [guest]

Craig Stanley | LinkedIn | Twitter || Northumbrian Water (Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | YouTube) [guest]

Mark Kashman | Twitter [co-host]

Chris McNulty | Twitter [co-host]

Microsoft 365 Content Services Partner Program

Microsoft Partner Network

SharePoint | Syntex | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog

Viva Topics | Resource center | #MSFTViva | Viva community blog

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Events:

Microsoft Ignite (Nov.2-4.2021; digital event) 

European Collaboration Summit (Nov.29 - Oct. 1.2021)

Microsoft 365 Collaboration Conference - Vegas (Dec.7-9.2021)

Microsoft Lists workshop [available now on-demand]

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Visualize Lists with Power BI 

What can your data tell you? Automatic dashboards and reports can make tracking metrics easy. And now it comes in one click from Microsoft Lists directly into Power BI. On this episode, Chris and Mark speak with Amanda Rivera, program manager on the Power BI team at Microsoft. They ask Amanda to share more about the design and value from the latest integration between Microsoft Lists and Power BI. This new experience empowers Lists users to explore their data with just a few clicks. You'll be amazed at the dashboards and reports you generate.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Full transcript below and if you click here.

Amanda Rivera | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host] 

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog 

Power BI | @MSPowerBI | LinkedIn group | Site

Microsoft Lists | Resource center | Adoption | Posts within Microsoft 365 community blog

Resources:

“Quickly create reports from Lists” (blog and video) by Amanda Rivera

Power BI (Microsoft Learn)

Microsoft Lists resource center

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Listen and subscribe to other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

South Coast Summit (Oct.15-16.2021)

Microsoft Ignite (Nov.2-4.2021; digital event) | @MS_Ignite

European Collaboration Summit (Nov.29 - Oct. 1.2021)

Microsoft 365 Collaboration Conference - Vegas (Dec.7-9.2021)

Microsoft Lists workshop [available now on-demand]

Follow and subscribe to The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

TRANSCRIPT:

Podcast: The Intrazone

Episode 73: Visualize Lists with Power BI

Amanda Rivera [guest]

Mark Kashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty [co-host]

TRT: 32:00

MARK KASHMAN: Welcome to the Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365 intelligent internet. I’m Mark Kashman, here with my cohost, Chris at one-time speed McNulty.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Thanks, Mark.

Today, we chat with Amanda Rivera about the latest integrations between Microsoft Lists and Power BI. Amanda represents the Power BI side of the house, working closely with the lists team. And I wish I knew someone we could bring in from the list team to talk about lists.

MARK KASHMAN: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I’m virtually raising my hand in Teams.

CHRIS MCNULTY: See, I’m looking at OneNote, which doesn’t help me for that.

MARK KASHMAN: I’ll lower my hand now. It’s just you and me.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Is the caller there? Hi.

MARK KASHMAN: I will just tell you, this is one of those integrations where, because I am not a Power BI expert, and the getting from a list to Power BI does wonderful things, it’s possible in the past, but now it’s just one click.

And so, we have been working on this feature, me, as you’ve indicated, working with the list team, but also working with Amanda’s team to bring it together. So it’s one of those true powerful one-click actions.

If you haven’t tried this, this is one of those things that’s now available. We’d love for you to go to one of those lists that you love and put a lot of information into it, and move it into Power BI with one click, that really brings you to this capability of being able to analyze everything that you’re doing, be able to see how many of X or Y, or how much of this and that. And it really gives you the tools that you need to munge the data in a really visual way.

So I’m being honest with my Power BI hat. It’s a pretty small hat and I’m getting better at it. But Chris, any thoughts that you have? You know, I know you have a pretty good history with lists. But what about Power BI? Where are you at with that?

CHRIS MCNULTY: So I’m super excited about this. So in my days before Microsoft, one of the topics I would usually cover was all of the things you can do for business intelligence in M365 and how you could use analysis services and build data cubes and put Power BI in front of them. So it’s definitely a topic of interest.

And this one, you know, if I jump into that time machine that we were joking about before, I remember, I think it was late 2017, we were doing some semester planning with Corinne Yusaturk (ph) and (Chox?) and looking at all the things that we were doing in business apps, which is an area I used to cover as part of my role.

And the idea of one-click integration so that you could point to data in a list and get beautiful visualizations that you could experience through SharePoint and all the other places that Power BI plugs in, was a great idea. I understand, having been at Microsoft a while, it does take a while to coordinate things and make them happen, but I’m really glad to see those ideas that our engineers had are starting to come together.

So I’ll ask you Mark, what is Power BI, for those folks in our audience who might not live with that day-to-day?

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, my understanding, and just again, transparency, I’m not your deepest expert on Power BI, but it is a tool where you can take your data model, that being oftentimes a list as a source, but it does not need to be, it certainly can come from other areas of the Power Platform or other third-party sources of data, SQL, Azure SQL.

Once you bring in the data, it’s making sense of it. Think in terms of having rows and columns in Excel and being able to create a nice chart, based on some pivoting and some choices that you make for what rows and columns will make up the chart.

Think about doing that at scale, sometimes with multiple sources. It’s very possible in Power BI to have one source of data populate one of the graphs that’s on the dashboard, or the report, and another source or the same list serving both of the graphs, or six or seven. And the graphs can of course, look differently, be colorized and can add text and elements to it to add the context to it. It becomes a dashboard, a real palette to be able to visualize your data.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah, you know, Power BI 10 years ago was one of a number of reporting visualization tools that were available throughout the Office realm. And over time, it’s really grown to be able to address some of those key scenarios, like printed recordings with pagination, or dashboard construction.

And it’s definitely a platform that anyone can use. If you understand your data, the more you know about your data, the better the results are. But most people are able to build a chart in Excel. There’s wizards and Power BI makes it easy for you to get started, but it’s also an incredibly powerful platform.

And I didn’t mean – it’s a powerful platform. I can’t believe I accidentally said that.

(Laughter.)

MARK KASHMAN: The marketing is embedded.

CHRIS MCNULTY: But what’s nice about Power BI is that you can bring that analysis into so many different places, whether they’re embedded into other apps or experience through mobile clients or into Teams or through SharePoint.

And what I’m really excited about is, you know, going back to that conversation of a couple of years ago, we had a pretty good handle on what Power BI was and where it was headed. But what I’m really not surprised by is ever since I started having less to do with lists, how much more Microsoft has done with lists.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, I know we’ve talked about it before as one example of a list of what we do internally at Microsoft to track everything from all the teams on the roadmap. There’s this one giant list of all roadmap items in their different statuses, are they live or published? Is it in development or something that’s been launched? And – and it’s an early trigger for a lot of then events that fall off of that in terms of blogging and announcements, website updates.

But it’s a pretty massive list, and it has a really nice reporting dashboard that they’ve built off of it, that if you need to see how are your items trending, obviously, you can go in and fix individual line items. But it is a really nice way to visualize how are we doing across the company, specifically here, Microsoft 365, which has a ton of components, a lot of people involved. And it is always nice to get the bigger picture, which I think is really a role that – that Power BI plays, always off the real data, always live, and always influenced by a lot of people that are contributing the right level of expertise into making things accurate,

CHRIS MCNULTY: We promise people efficient use of their time. So that being said, I think it’s about time that we welcome Amanda into the Intrazone.

[Music.]

MARK KASHMAN: Alright, so you’ve been hearing Chris and I jabber on about our thoughts on Power BI and lists, but the true integration value and to really get an understanding of what it is and what you can now do in Microsoft 365, we are going to turn to talk to Amanda Rivera, who is a PM on the Power BI side, working closely with the list team.

Amanda, I want to welcome you to the Intrazone.

AMANDA RIVERA: Thank you for having me.

MARK KASHMAN: Absolutely. So I’ve gotten a teaser of course of what you were planning a long time ago, and now that we’ve rolled out, I think both you and I and some of our peers have done a little bit of evangelization around what it is and what you can do, and we want to really drill into that.

But before we jump into the technology, I want to make sure everybody knows a little bit more about who you are, the team that you work on here at Microsoft. So if you don’t mind taking a second, let’s learn a little bit about who is Amanda and what you do at Microsoft.

AMANDA RIVERA: I’m a program manager on the Power BI team. I’ve been working on BI at Microsoft for about seven or so years now. I’ve worked on a bunch of different areas within Power BI over the years. Currently, I’m focusing on an area we call Quick Create internally, which basically has a mission of empowering anyone with the table of data, no matter where they are or who they are, to be able to start making data-driven decisions in just a few clicks. So even if you aren’t a traditional analyst, if you have data, you should be able to just jump right in and start analyzing that data and making decisions off of it.

MARK KASHMAN: I feel like you’re talking to me directly because I have not historically been a deep Power BI expert. I read enough so I can be a little bit deadly on a customer conversation or when we’re talking about the value of integrations between various apps, but when I saw the work that you were doing, and I tried it for the first time, I really thought no, that is a quick way to get into it and not have to know about data modeling, or do I have the right set of data so that it can do X or Y.

If you take me in where you’re focused now, as one of your audience members, certainly there are hundreds and thousands of different types of folks that are coming in with different skillsets. And so, we know that Power BI offers a lot through that lens, whether it’s, you know, an early introduction, you know, somebody who’s just getting started with Power BI, or somebody who’s been doing it for a while.

Can you just give a little definition of the role that Power BI plays as an application within Microsoft 365? Again, skillset aside, just the real core of what is Power BI amongst all these applications and services.

AMANDA RIVERA: Well, with Power BI, we’re really about trying to create a data-driven culture. That’s the phrase we use a lot on our team, data driven. So we know people have access to all kinds of data in their lives now. It could be a table in Excel. It could be the engagement data for the Microsoft Teams channels that you’re managing. It could be survey results in Microsoft forums. Wherever the data that you’re using lives, Power BI really wants to just enable everyone to find insights on top of that data and make confident decisions based off of that data.

MARK KASHMAN: And my assumption is you are also internally data driven. In using Power BI internally, do you as a Power BI team also have a ton of data that you’re driving? You don’t have to expose any of what the data tells you, but I’m assuming that you also have some really nice Power BI dashboards for the Power BI team.

AMANDA RIVERA: Definitely, I would say we’re our biggest dog food’ers. We use the product all the time. We’re constantly in meetings; we’re pulling up Power BI reports to look at, you know, how our features are performing, where we think we need to move next, whether that’s, you know, usage telemetry from the – from the product itself, or feedback that we’re collecting from customers through interviews, or – or we have sites where you can vote on ideas, and we’re looking at the data from there; all of this, we have Power BI reports for all of it and look at it all the time,

MARK KASHMAN: I think it’s great, and I can only imagine that they’re really well-crafted Power BI reports.

I do want to tell you about the one report that I made, that I think will lead us right into what I really want to talk to you about today, which is the new Power BI integration with Microsoft Lists.

And so this is a little meta, because we’re on the Intrazone show here. I have a Microsoft List that I use to track all of our Intrazone shows. And we have a couple of flavors of different kinds of shows that we do, some for orienting around our partner efforts, obviously oriented around what our engineering and our PM peers are doing, and what we’re doing with partners, and also as a roadmap.

So we’ve got a couple of these types of shows that we do, and each show gets X number of – of listens within the first week and then in the first month, and of course we track all of that.

My true first use of your feature was from the Intrazone to really be able to pivot and provide data up to my leadership that said, how many shows have we done X number of months, how many per month, how are the shows doing, which shows are doing better, do we have good coverage, all that. So we have exactly what your feature gives us, and we leverage that each quarter to review, how’s the show doing?

AMANDA RIVERA: Oh, I love that. I love that you were able to instantly find a use case for it, and I love that it’s specifically, like you said, meta.

MARK KASHMAN: And to be frank, I did learn a little bit about Power BI once it was generated for me, so I could configure a few things. But I really loved that first big, huge hurdle that it gave me, at least, as a – as kind of an introductory user to Power BI, it just worked and provided me with a view into something. And then tweaking and configuring that view is really where I focus my time.

That’s my use case, but to talk about the feature, maybe to put it in a – in a nutshell, what is your team enabling with Microsoft List, when you think of that integration with Power BI and Microsoft Lists?

AMANDA RIVERA: Specifically within Microsoft Lists, the feature, like you just mentioned in your scenario, is all around having a new, lightweight creation experience to allow you to instantly start exploring the data that’s stored in your list.

So our Visualize Your List feature, which you’ll – you find under the Integrate menu, will basically automatically generate a report for anyone, based off of the list data they were just looking at, and then allow you to start, really allowing you to start customizing it from there.

So we’ll automatically throw some visuals on the page, based off of what we think is interesting about that data, and then you can start using – we have a pane on the right where you can start just indicating what fields or columns from the list that you are most interested in, and then we’ll update those visuals for you automatically. So it’s just a couple of clicks to just start influencing the report yourself to see what you want to see in the charts.

And then we also have the same built-in interactive features that Power BI reports in general have, that users like to use to basically go drill down one level deeper. You can do things like filtering the data down to specific things that you’re interested in, or we have this feature called Cross-Highlighting that lets you click on a specific data point in one chart, and then all the other charts highlight to show you the correlated data across them. So you can start, you know, just exploring and playing with your data really to find these interesting insights.

MARK KASHMAN: That’s one of my favorite parts that I was maybe just a hair cautious being a new user, but the – the evidence was pretty clear that what I did in Power BI didn’t alter the data. It just truly gave me a visualization, a place to analyze and look further into it.

But no matter what I did in Power BI, it was really just making it more refined to what I wanted to view, but at the same time I wasn’t, you know, updating the data. I wasn’t affecting the data in a way that I might like, feel like I’m overriding something.

AMANDA RIVERA: Exactly. Yeah, the list stays completely the same. We’re just pulling the data from the list and giving you a playground so you can explore it better.

MARK KASHMAN: A Power BI playground for the masses. I think that’s your new tagline right there.

AMANDA RIVERA: Yes, exactly.

MARK KASHMAN: So you are in a comfortable place right now as far as features are concerned because you are at general availability, which I’m sure has taken you a while from the early phases of planning on some napkin in the digital space.

What are some of the learnings that you’ve had from that original design, maybe that original meeting where you met with the list team, or at least thought about reaching out to them, and then move through those what we call rings of release, targeted release, and then into full production? What would you say that journey brought in terms of we thought we started here, and now we’ve ended there? How would you – how would you explain

AMANDA RIVERA: The place where we had the most discussion, the most back and forth was in that original design phase for the feature. So there was definitely a lot of collaboration and back and forth between us, the Power BI team, and obviously, the PM team over on the list side as well.

So we spent a lot of time discussing and figuring out exactly what feature set makes the most sense for this specific audience, because like we mentioned before, Power BI has a very wide range of features for a very wide range of different user types, and we wanted to make sure we kept this experience simple enough so that we – it’s just the key features that this user base would be most interested in. So we spent a lot of time trying to dig in and find that right feature set.

And then we also spent a lot of time talking about how would users find this content and share this content with others as well who have access to the list. So there’s lots of conversations early on, around those kinds of topics between the PM teams.

And then we also spent some time showing it to potential customers, showing it to MVPs, demoing the experience and getting that feedback really early on.

So I would say, once we went through that whole effort, there was definitely a lot of iteration there. But once we had that final approach, actually not too much changed once we started rolling out past targeted release, once we had that targeted release. It’s pretty much honestly stayed the time by the time we reached full production, I would say.

MARK KASHMAN: No, that’s nice, because it means that you did your homework properly, and you the collective obviously have delivered on that, because I’ve used it now a couple of times, and I certainly have demoed it a lot in the context of what can you do with Microsoft Lists, how can you take it further with the Power Platform.

And I see a lot of our customers with Power BI in mind, but also inclusive of Power Apps and Power Automate, truly seeing it as a couple of clicks to be able to extend what you can do with lists. And even to some point, it’s abstracted, like, okay, it’s a list, but it happens to be where I put my data, or where I’ve always had my data.

We’ve previously had on the show some of your colleagues talk about the value of Power Apps on top of a list, the value of Power Automate moving things along a business process. And it’s really nice to be able to round out what I call my product manager portfolio, to be able to talk about this broader integration with the Power Platform.

And I’ve seen it a number of times with a lot of different customers, using not all free all the time, but, you know, that value of, if they are using a list as a data source, to be able to then do more with it and do more with it that isn’t a huge cost of either time or people resources, of budget resources.

But I do want to drill in, and I’d love to get your take on it, because I’m assuming you have met with a lot of customers in the early phases, it sounds like with our MVPs and maybe some early customers. But since then, you know, to get an understanding that great, the feature works for them, but what are they doing with it.

And I thought I’d lead with one example, very, very recent, within the last couple of weeks for me, but I’ve met with one of the customers who we reached out because they were a list customer, and they were starting to leverage Power BI across a lot of lists. And when I say a lot of lists, this is probably in the 20 or 30 lists that they’re then leveraging either one list for Power BI or one Power BI that consumes multiple lists, just to help them visualize what it is that they’re doing.

And it’s basically working with their legal staff, who is a legal team at a healthcare industry – a healthcare company, and they’re building it to help them manage processes on daily legal assignments that are assigned to their different lawyers.

And without exposing who they are and too much about what they do, it was really interesting to see how, almost on their own, you know, they’re building some of these things. And then they’ve augmented with some of their technical specialists.

But if you were to – whether it’s an individual customer, or a summary of a couple of customers who are doing some of the same thing, what types of scenarios or use cases are you seeing people leverage this feature, but then really, you know, landed it in the context of their business?

AMANDA RIVERA: So I would say there’s a couple of different interesting scenarios we’ve been hearing from customers for use cases for this. One thing that came up early on was being able to track issues in general.

So some people were using list to be able to track, you know, incoming feedback for something that they’re working on, whether it’s like an IT ticket or, you know, bugs for something that’s being developed, they were basically using lists to track these things.

And so, it was a lot of building out the reports to look at how much work is remaining, how many tickets have been filed, or has anything been open too long, and it’s now past SLA? So they were building out these reports based off of the ticket data that was stored in the list to be able to, you know, just track how their team is doing.

Similarly, we’ve also heard from things like marketing campaigns tracking the, you know, what – what project tasks are remaining before I can launch a new campaign online for my product, things like that. And it’s all around how many hours are left, how many tasks are still open, what – who’s done what, being able to – to make – see what’s been checked off and what’s not. So people have been using that.

I do think it’s worth me mentioning one fun thing. You know, you mentioned earlier that you’re using it to track your podcast data. I wanted to call out that our engineering manager on the Power BI side, he used the feature to track his golf games when testing it out. So I thought that was a lot of fun as well.

MARK KASHMAN: Now, here’s a very important question, and maybe you need to take this offline and get back to me, but has his golf game improved since his dashboard has been enabled?

AMANDA RIVERA: Oh, I’ll have– I’ll have to follow up with Doug. I’m not sure.

MARK KASHMAN: Well, we’ll definitely put in what his handicap is in the show notes, and I will make sure to update it in the next episode after this, if his golf game has improved, if he’s got a new handicap or some other metric that he wants to share.

Before we leave off into a couple of resources that I think will be helpful, one being the blog that you wrote, that I think has a really great video and, you know, just an ironing out of what the feature is and how to use it, once somebody creates a dashboard, you mentioned that they can go in the right-hand pane and – and try a few things.

Is there any real specific tip or trick that is either unique to this feature, or just something that everybody should try, and maybe it’s not the first thing that they realize or discover, of once you’ve got a dashboard created, and of course, this feature does it for you, which is a real blessing, you know, what is that thing that, if you’re looking over somebody’s shoulder, and you’re like, “Oh, you’ve got to try X,” what is that thing that everybody can do, once they’ve got their list data in a Power BI dashboard?

AMANDA RIVERA: Two things came to my mind when you asked that question. One is, within the initial view that you get, one thing that I think a lot of people don’t know is they can change the way Power BI is aggregating the data in the chart.

So oftentimes, we’ll default to if you have a number, we add it all up, sum it up, but you may be interested in say, average, the average of this number, or the min or the max, and we let you set that through that same right pane. There’s a little three dots, if you’re actually looking at it, that you can click, and you can actually be able to change the aggregation that we’re picking for the field. So that’s one really easy way to customize the results.

And then the second thing I wanted to mention was that a lot of people don’t always realize that there’s an edit button in the top left of the UI that takes you into effectively the full edit mode for Power BI. So if you liked the defaults we gave you, but you need to make some tweaks to it, like I want to see, instead of a bar chart, I want to see a line chart, for example, or a tree map, or you want to start changing some colors or playing around more and learning some more about Power BI itself, there’s an edit button that will take you to that – that place where you can start doing all those activities.

MARK KASHMAN: Okay, so have more control over what the number is or what you want it to represent, and don’t miss the edit button.

AMANDA RIVERA: Yes.

MARK KASHMAN: My very last question, maybe as a follow-on to all of those, is there a feature for Doug where he can input a number for his golf score, and it drops maybe a stroke or two off of each hole? Look at how many birdies he’s getting. He’s getting a double bogey, all these. That was amazing.

AMANDA RIVERA: Nope, he has to improve his golf game himself.

MARK KASHMAN: That’s true. Okay, well – well, Power BI will help him track his progress. It won’t augment it, and it certainly won’t lie for him.

So let’s talk about resources. I’m sure that the Power BI team has a lot of information and – and best places to go for to learn more about Power BI. So we’ll start there. Where would you send somebody who maybe wants to learn about this feature, or just learn about all those things you can do once you click Edit? Where do we send people to go learn more about Power BI?

AMANDA RIVERA: Well, you mentioned the first obvious thing, so that we have a blog around this feature specifically, and then obviously the blog has stuff on all of Power BI. So if you want to just start, you know, learning more about Power BI in general, following the blog is a great place.

We have a YouTube channel. The blog that you’ll link to, it has embedded in it a video, but there’s a whole YouTube channel dedicated to Power BI that has a lot of great resources.

And then obviously, like most of Microsoft’s products, we have a really great, rich documentation setup. So you can go and read all the details about how Power BI works in general. And even have like learning paths set up. So you can take courses or – courses is probably too strong of a word, but you can start learning and picking little increments of information in and start progressing in your Power BI skillset. So that’s definitely one thing that people can do.

I would also like to mention that if they are into social media, the Power BI Twitter community is great. So if you want to just take it one step further, everyone is super friendly there and willing to share their knowledge. And there’s a lot of us on Twitter. So hash – search for #PowerBI, and you’ll find all kinds of comments,

MARK KASHMAN: It sounds like a load of links that I will definitely have in the show notes. And always really nice to hear about the learning paths, which is maybe one last macro point. The actual next thing that I did once this feature was out there, is I thought, well, it’s a good time to learn a little bit more about Power BI.

So internally, we had and still have a beta preview of the Microsoft Viva Learning. And Microsoft Viva Learning connects to LinkedIn Learning. And guess what? Within LinkedIn learning, there is an intro to Power BI module, of which I clicked into and tried to get a little bit more upskilled on what you can do with Power BI. So we will make sure to put all of that, and just a little macro point is just to say you have good training and it was really great next step for me.

So Amanda, I want to thank you on behalf of all of our customers who, at least from what I’ve seen, are loving this feature, and if anything, are trying it for the first time and getting that new analysis and visualization value from moving from lists into Power BI, but also to say thank you for coming on the Intrazone.

AMANDA RIVERA: Thank you for having me.

[Music.]

MARK KASHMAN: Now, you too are much more fluent on what Power BI is from Amanda herself, and the work that they’ve recently done working with Microsoft lists, making it that one-click experience to get from data to visualizing it in the dashboard.

Let us turn then to events, events on the horizon, might – might – might we even say, event horizon.

Chris, what is our first event?

CHRIS MCNULTY: Coming up in just a few days, the South Coast Summit. So this is a great-sized cloud technology conference focusing on the Microsoft stack. It will be held inside of the UK. This one will be live. The event will include an expo hall, sessions from Microsoft UK from MVPs, gold partners around the UK. And just like the virtual events, this one is also free for all attendees, including breakfast, lunch, tea and coffee. And if you sneak back through the lunch line, I suppose you can count that as dinner.

MARK KASHMAN: And because we know Spencer, our friend who is helping put on this event, probably bigger emphasis on the tea.

Our next event is Microsoft Ignite. This is Microsoft’s big first-party event in November, November 2nd through the 4th. There’s a lot to be offered when you join in Ignite. It’s all a virtual event. There will be keynotes, breakout sessions, ask the experts, a chance to get your questions asked and provide feedback. There’s on-demand sessions for a lot of scaling or breadth content. And of course, from the marketing side, there will be a slew of blogs, with links to learn more, timing and availability on the roadmap. It is a ton of people coming together.

I don’t want to jump off of this and go right to our next event. Chris, any thoughts on Ignite you just want to throw in there?

CHRIS MCNULTY: We will have tons of news about Microsoft Viva and Syntex and Teams, and there’s even more coming on Windows 365. And it is hard for all of us to keep up with that book of news, as we call it, but we sure hope that you’re going to be able to join us for that event.

Beyond that, the European Collaboration Summit or ECS, that will kick off on the 29th of November as a community-driven event in Dusseldorf, Germany. The key focus here is modern workplace, looking at Office 365, Teams, SharePoint, business apps, Power Platform, and it’s really there to help inform attendees’ decisions. There’s a lot of what’s new and best practices sessions. There’ll be some folks from Microsoft there. And again, this event is for right now, looks like it’s going to be held in person. But stay tuned at CollabSummit.edu for the latest breaking news there.

MARK KASHMAN: Our last event is the Microsoft 365 Collaboration Conference. In your history mind, this is what the SharePoint Conference was, put on by our great third-party team that is known as the SharePoint Conference Team. There will be keynotes from Jeff Teper, all about pretty much everything that his portfolio covers, Charles Lamanna from the Power Platform team, and Karuana Gatamu from the Teams team. There’s a lot of content delivered by Microsoft, delivered by our partners and MVPs in the community. We will be delivering three of the 20 workshops and approximately 60 of the 200 sessions. So there is a lot, a lot to get. If you would like to visit us and be with us in person, that event will be in Las Vegas, December 7th through the 9th. Microsoft 365 Collaboration Conference, you can find that at the M365conf.com.

CHRIS MCNULTY: You know, Mark, it’s a lovely time of the year here across the northern United States, and the leaves are starting to turn. And it’s that time of year when you look out at your lawn, in between watching baseball games, and you start to see a leaf land and it blows away. Are the leaves really going? Is this really going to happen.

And I feel that way about events because we’re starting to see events taking their tenuous steps about this one’s going to be live, no, this one’s going to pull back, or this one’s going to be live or reschedule. But I do feel that the tide is turning here, and we are really looking forward to taking the Intrazone out on the road some months coming up in the too-distant future.

And now if you have an event, wanting to promote it, whether it’s virtual, whether it’s hybrid or in person, please reach out to us at the Intrazone, and we will make sure to feature it on a future episode.

MARK KASHMAN: We want to thank our guest, Amanda Rivera, for sharing her insights into the power of lists, plus the power of Power BI.

CHRIS MCNULTY: We encourage you to check out our show page for links to everything we discussed today and more. Visit us at aka.ms/theIntrazone.

MARK KASHMAN: You can reach us via email at theIntrazone@microsoft.com or via Twitter @SharePoint, @MKashman, and @CMcNulty2000.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Remember to rate, review, and tell all your friends about the show.

Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.

MARK KASHMAN: Thank you so much for listening today. We are your hosts, Mark Kashman and Chris McNulty. This has been the Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365 intelligent, highly dashboarded intranet.

END

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop September 2021 

September 2021 brought lots of great SharePoint and related tech releases: Microsoft Viva Connections (Public Preview), updated video experiences, images in the Text web part, SharePoint team site navigation switcher, share Lists as links, Microsoft Lists: Applied filters, Planner updates, Whiteboard stored in OneDrive, and more. We also chat with Som Roy and Raagul Manoharan user experience designers on the broader OneDrive & SharePoint team focused on new Viva Connections experiences across Web and mobile.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Social and Info Links:

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [host]

Raagul Manoharan | Twitter [guest]

Som Roy | LinkedIn [guest]

Resources:

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming Events:

Microsoft Ignite [Nov.2021]| @MS_Ignite

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Listen and follow to other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Modern HR 

Thoughtful HR leads to engaged employees through engaging employee experiences. Backed with good data and insights, listening systems, and dedicated leaders and managers, modern HR practices foundationally improve employee interests, retention, and wellbeing – “in the cloud”, spanning hybrid work. We talk with Kerry Olin (Microsoft CVP, HR Services) and Jay Clem (Microsoft GM, HR Services) about how Microsoft adjusts its practices and technology to improve the employee experience for 160,000 full-time Microsoft employees around the world, including introductory thoughts “on the importance of data and insights” from Kathleen Hogan (Microsoft EVP and Chief HR Officer).

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Social and Info Links:

SharePoint Facebook | Twitter | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Microsoft Viva | Resource center | Posts within Microsoft 365 community blog

Kerry Olin | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Jay Clem | LinkedIn [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Resources:

“Excellence in People Analytics” book written by Jonathan Ferrar and David Green – with a forward "CHRO perspective" from Kathleen Hogan

• myHRfuture (site) | Twitter | David Green (Twitter)
• Digital HR Leaders (podcast)

"Modern HR" (External Microsoft site)

“Employee Experience Starter Kit” (Power Apps app .ZIP file)

"Microsoft moves its Human Resources employee portal to SharePoint Online“ (Inside Track article)

"Microsoft HR leader: IT pivotal to driving culture change“ (IT Showcase article)

"Hybrid Work: A guide for business leaders" (PDF)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

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Upcoming Events:

Microsoft Ignite [Nov.2-4.2021]| @MS_Ignite

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Lists loves lawyers: A conversation with VillageMD 

On this episode, we bring order to legal use cases of Microsoft Lists. We chat with Wendy Rubas (General counsel) and Janessa Nelson (Legal operations manager) from the legal organization within VillageMD – a national leader in value-based primary care. We cover a lot of ground how useful integrations between Lists, Power Platform, and SharePoint help optimize people productivity and document automation with visual analytics to improve the patient experience.

Click here for this episode's companion blog post and links.

Full transcript below and if you click here. 

People:

VillageMD | Website | LinkedIn | Twitter

Wendy Rubas (General Counsel) | LinkedIn 

Janessa Nelson (Legal Operations Manager and Training Executive Producer) | LinkedIn

Mark Kashman | Twitter [co-host]

Chris McNulty | Twitter [co-host]

Resources:

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog 

Microsoft Lists | Resource center | Adoption | Posts within Microsoft 365 community blog

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Events:

Commsverse (Sept.15-16.2021); a Microsoft Teams Community Event) [hybrid: UK - in-person and online]

Thrive Conference (Oct.19-20.2021)

Microsoft Ignite (Nov.2-4.2021; digital event) - Save the date just announced

Microsoft Lists workshop [available now on-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone, and discover other Microsoft podcasts: aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

TRANSCRIPT

MARK KASHMAN: Welcome to the Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365 intelligent internet. I’m Mark Kashman, here with my cohost, Chris, the guy who thinks about the word Syntex all day long, McNulty.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Well, thanks, Mark. Those are the good days. The bad days are the ones where I think about it all night long.

MARK KASHMAN: Syntexian dreams; that sounds amazing.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah, it’s funny, I actually had an odd dream last night where I was using Syntex while riding a bike on a curvy road where there was a giant video screen for miles on the right side of me, and I could watch the documents. It was an indication I should stop looking at technology before I go to sleep.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, it sounds like maybe also one of those wellness days, you need to take one of those wellness days.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah, I’ll just settle for days.

We’re not talking about Freudian analysis of Chris’s dreams today. Today, we’re going to be hearing from our customer, VillageMD, about how they use Microsoft Lists, and SharePoint and Power BI to drive innovation at the customer level for a whole host of legal applications.

So we’ll be hearing from their lead legal counsel, Wendy Rubas, and Janessa Nelson, who’s one of their legal Operations Manager.

MARK KASHMAN: One of the things I wanted to just kind of go into the way-back machine, our friend of the podcast, Tejas Meta (ph), used to manage a solution called Matter Center. And it’s really interesting taking some of those valuable insights in Microsoft Word at the time to help promote a lot of saving people time in – specifically in the legal community.

But to see a lot about what Wendy and what Janessa and team are doing for the legal team with inside a healthcare company, it’s really fascinating to see their use cases, to hear about, obviously, everything they’re doing to benefit from their value of their investments in Microsoft 365.

But I want to hone in on what do you know about this space. When you think of content management, you know, you must think pretty heavily on there’s a lot of content management when you think about the legal community.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah, here’s the thing about the legal community, the regulatory community, especially if you’re coming from kind of a generic SharePoint perspective, a lot of the content is, I’d say, fairly square, and then it’s broad and somewhat deep, but not super deep or super structured.

And you have the need to be able to collaborate on all of these interestingly rich structured things, whether they’re contracts or pleadings, deposition review, court orders, things like patent application, and there’s just a wealth of information in there. And how those things get combined with legal research and a collaborative process where there’s reuse, and need for governance, you know, fairly high expectations for security and compliance, because this is the legal world, I think it is an industry that really pushes us to the limits of what we can do and hopefully beyond.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, and within that mix, the content is certainly a huge focus, and it has an internal notion, you know, let’s finalize these documents before we share it with our clients and make them longer-term legal form documents. But how to derive and save time in the creation of those, but also how to, in parallel, track time, because we know that a lot of their world is based on billing certain hours and having that be regulated with how it’s associated with their output, the documents being a lot of that output.

So a lot of what I think you will hear, and what I’m excited for people in the audience to hear is how they’re using the tools to kind of combine saving people time, managing time, and ultimately becoming this repository where they can see what are we creating, making it easy to access, and then over time, being able to review what have we done and – and how can we streamline even further?

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah, you know, it’s interesting for folks who kind of live outside of this area, who are thinking of SharePoint for any of the other reasons, legal, I think tends to be a trailing indicator on adoption of SharePoint technologies, because their need to do these highly bespoke integrations with what the rest of us might call project management systems, and what they would think of as matter management.

So for legal processes, you have clients, and clients have multiple projects with, call it matters, and being able to integrate with all of that, plus all of these complex workflows for things like conflict checking, can they even work on something, or understanding the current status of all of these areas.

The legal profession for – you know, understandably, has been thought of as a paper-based industry for centuries and centuries, and there’s that great tradition of information that needs to be carried forward into it.

But one thing that when we first sat down with Wendy getting ready for today, it’s just fascinating what they’ve been able to do, hearing about it kind of from the outside, using standard off-the-shelf technologies, with things like workflows and Power BI and everything that we’ve done with lists of late, to really enrich that experience and lifts it beyond just having sets of documents that people can search for and work on, but being able to create this persona that really kind of steps in and helps.

You know, it’s interesting; I thought there was someone else they were going to have us interviewed named Sharon Pointer, and it looks like she’s not going to be able to speak with us today. Do you know anything about that?

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, you know, Sharon pointer, you know, if you say it a few times fast, you start to understand who Sharon Pointer is: Sharon Pointer, Sharon Point, SharePoint, Sharon Pointer. It is a persona, and I think we’ll hear a lot more about it. They even have an avatar, which we’ll make sure to have in the blog, so you can see who is Sharon. But it’s really interesting to hear from them their use of SharePoint, and their ability to adopt it with their broader audience, who isn’t the most technical of audiences, based on what we heard from them, Sharon Pointer being somebody who helps them every day is truly that backend, I think for a way to describe it, a robo-lawyer.

We don’t want to give away too much, but that persona is pretty important, I think, in two ways. One, that bet that they’re putting on that Microsoft 365 backend with tools like SharePoint, Microsoft Lists, leveraging the Power Platform to automate and visualize.

But the other thing that they’ve invested a lot in is people. And when you hear from Janessa, who represents the implementation side, we know the business, they do understand the legal community and their needs, but they’re not lawyers. But they’re also not traditional IT. They’re really there to be solution builders, knowing the legalese requirements, but also knowing the capabilities and the boundaries that they can then build on top of.

And I think you’ll see it’s a lot of configuration and use. It’s not deep customization, like Chris said. When they talk about Sharon Pointer, it’s really interesting to hear why they use that name, and of course, behind that, what they’re really doing.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Well, SharePoint Nation, you’ve probably heard me waste enough time getting ready. I’m here with Mark to bring our guests in. So why don’t we get right to it. And let’s take a moment and bring Wendy and Janessa into our Intrazone virtual studios.

[Music.]

MARK KASHMAN: We have reached that point, which is the most interesting point, which is our guests on the Intrazone. We are now pleased to welcome Wendy and Janessa from VillageMD, Wendy, Janessa, welcome to the Intrazone

WENDY RUBAS: Thank you so much for having us. It’s a true pleasure and thrill to be here. We’re listeners of Intrazone. We learn a lot from it. So it’s a thrill to be here.

MARK KASHMAN: You know, that’s the way that I think we became aware because you had written to us and said, “Hey, I love the Intrazone, and we have a great story to tell.” And I think pretty immediately, we agreed. We said, you do have a great story to tell. And usually it’s a little bit more work for us to get somebody to tell their story. Very much thank you for being here.

Before we jump too much into the what the story is, can you share with our listeners a little bit about yourself and your role at VillageMD? Wendy, we’ll start with you.

WENDY RUBAS: Thank you. Yes, I’m General Counsel at VillageMD. So that means I’m responsible for the legal risk and compliance departments. I also sort of end up owning information governance by default. I never set out to have a background, but my background, I’ve had to build operating systems in legal departments. This is, I think, the fourth time. I came into my role with that experience

MARK KASHMAN: Janessa we have one particular question that typically is not what we start with. We actually are going to hear more about your role based on a lot of how that plays into the story of VillageMD. But just initially, so we can get a sense of who you are and what you do at VillageMD.

JANESSA NELSON: My name is Janessa Nelson, and I’m the legal Operations Manager here at VillageMD.

Interestingly enough, I’m not actually a lawyer. I do have a specialized master’s program from Northwestern University. It’s called a Master’s of Science and Law. It’s sort of a shortened course program where we did take some law classes from law professors at the university, but we also had business and just other sort of interdisciplinary skills, in order to have more practical applications for law and business, to be able to work sort of in this legal operations role that I’m in now.

I actually have an interesting background. I studied science in undergrad. And then I went and worked in healthcare as a medical scribe for many years. And that actually taught me really valuable lessons on docket management and writing notes and whatever is written in the chart is what happened. And so, that was sort of my default going in, which actually ended up being a positive instead of a negative, especially with Wendy.

So yeah, I’m very lucky to have worked at VillageMD. And, you know, I have a decent amount of career experience, but this is, you know, my first time working in in-house legal department post my master’s program. So it’s been three years.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah, Northwestern is great. They have all of these really creative interdisciplinary programs. I know Microsoft participates in one through the Kellogg School for marketing leadership, where they ship you out for three days and force feed you deep dish pizza and some learning along the way.

Apart from the culinary benefits that you may have experienced along the way, I’d love to take our listeners on a little bit of a tour about who we’re talking with today, from the perspective of your business.

So Wendy, could you chat a little bit about what is VillageMD, and who are some of your internal users

WENDY RUBAS: Happy to. VillageMD is a private company. It’s a growth company. And the mission of VillageMD is to change healthcare, which is a big mission. But we support and work with primary care providers, and they’re changing the way they practice so that instead of providing services, they’re working on managing the health of a population.

So the analogy I like to use is like you go to a mechanic, when you have a muffler, you need a muffler, and that mechanic goes, here’s your muffler, and you pay, versus if the mechanic was responsible to keep all the cars on the road and keep all the cars running. And that’s really the change that’s happening in healthcare, and VillageMD is at the forefront of that change, a very innovative healthcare company and technology company,

MARK KASHMAN: You said, Janessa, that you have obviously some specific training to understand the speak of lawyers, the speak of the healthcare industry. But from a tech perspective, could you summarize, you know, what you would see as some of the broader challenges from an IT perspective that you see within health care, obviously, from a legal perspective?

JANESSA NELSON: So I mean, first and foremost, what Wendy has really installed in me is that it should be sort of user friendly, right? So, any of the applications that we’re making, we’re wanting to allow users to utilize it. That’s how you’re going to get the best information. And if you build something, and nobody uses it, great, you spent $100,000, and you’re not getting anything from it, because no one will use it.

So that’s sort of one of the first things, there’s always a give and take with that, making sure that you’re providing enough information so that you have – you can report out or have actionable workflows that are going on, but also making sure that it’s people feel comfortable using it,

The number two thing is managing the volume and flow of work. Especially when Wendy started and I started, everything was being done via email. And that’s just not sustainable as a business continues to grow and adapt and change. Working in email can be great at the start, but once you’re getting 100, 200 emails a day, there’s only so much that you can do to sort of keep it managed.

The other thing that we found is talking between departments is always a struggle that I think every corporation has. It’s definitely, you know, something that we’ve continued to work on, so trying to break down silos of information and make information accessible to multiple different users through one system.

And that sort of also goes into another thing, which is source of truth. So you know, every department has different information. You know, if you’re reporting something out, is it accurate, or does somebody else have different information? So, that’s something that we’ve definitely been trying to work on is part of the inter-department connection is everyone has one place where they put their information, and so that’s why we know it’s correct.

And then the last but not least is VillageMD is an insane growth company. We’ve made a huge amount of growth in the three years that I’ve been here. And nothing is static at VillageMD. You know, we’ve – we’ve changed and continue to grow, and probably will in the future.

And so, we’ve wanted to customize and build, and change and adapt, and that can be a little hard when you’re buying technology off the shelf. It doesn’t allow you to change and adapt. But we’ve had great success with sort of the interconnectedness of the Microsoft tools. And Wendy’s constantly described them as Legos; you can sort of build and change them as you want.

MARK KASHMAN: Anybody that describes the inbox as not being a content management service, we love that. But also, you know, hearing the adaptability and the flexibility, you know, I don’t think it’s often where we hear a lot of legal entities thinking about extending, you know, services and apps, but when they do, or when they can, it is to map to exactly what the business needs are. And we can guess at what your unique – your unique business needs are, and certainly pleased to hear that you’ve kind of gone that direction, but also are getting what it is that you need out of it from a platform perspective.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Thinking about this, bringing new technology into law firms is there’s definitely a storied history there. I remember back in the 1980s, when my parents were both lawyers, like Mark’s dad and my dad, one day in the mid-80s, decided to unplug our home Commodore 64 with a TV, with a modem, and bring it into the office, I think to sort of prove a point.

And, you know, Wendy, I know you made a move, I think that was a little more – more nuanced and forward-looking than a C-64, to hire technology pros like Janessa, to really rethink the way work was being done for VillageMD. Can you share a little bit about how that – you know, what led to that and what some of the benefits are that you’ve seen from that?

WENDY RUBAS: Well, people always say you learn from failure. That’s true. So I’ve had the pleasure of implementing systems over my career. And there’s this fantasy that people have that you’re going to buy a system, and then like, oh, check that off, that works now because we bought software.

And what people don’t realize is that every system has to have an owner, a babysitter. This idea that people are just going to, across an organization, insert information into a system, and then you’ll have something usable, is really it’s a fantasy. It’s not how it happens. And so, and I’ve learned that the hard way.

You know, I’ve become very guarded about who enters information into my system, not who can see it, but the responsibility for entering it is everything. Because if you’re going to get reporting, and you’re going to have intelligence, it has to go in right.

And so, you know, I’ve had the experience of buying systems, I’ve had the experience of building. And when you buy, many times, you know, your budget is on the software license.

So in the – so coming into Village, the strategy was, I’m going to use these Microsoft products, which have really advanced, and see if I can’t build what I need. And I’m going to use the budget, because at that time, I was the only lawyer here, on people to run the system.

And that has really just paid off in so many ways. As we’ve grown, we’ve added more of the MSL grads, and each one now has their own sort of domain. And they become like the subject matter expert in a way that the lawyers really aren’t. Like, if you think the lawyers are reading the contracts, but the lawyers aren’t the ones that are really involved in the reporting and the analytics about the turnaround times and the number.

Lawyers are never going to be able to do that with the work they do, and that’s where I think, as you said, the storied history of legal technology fails. If you are going to ask lawyers to change how they work, change their process, that’s probably not going to work. You’re just – they’re just not going to put it in there, and they’re going to work around it and just keep it in their email, or their secret drives, or their Commodore at home. And so – or they’ll say, well, let me file that on Friday. You know, I’m going to file all this, you know, but then they just never will.

So what we’ve done is just wrap around the lawyers, so that the stuff gets in, and we have the analytics, and we have the records, but it’s not in the way of the lawyers. And that was the strategy.

MARK KASHMAN: Part of the switch to the cloud, as I was hearing you answer, this is maybe five or 10 years ago, when we really started to, as a – as an entity moved from product to service, and there was this notion from IT, like, oh, you’re kind of taking away my core value of standing up servers, making good uptime for services and whatnot. But with that transition, they weren’t out of a job; they just transitioned into being closer to the business.

And you’re – you’re intentionally, you know, with the right proactive reasons, hiring IT that is for the business, not for the actual systems on the backend. Even if they’re working with them, it’s still more closely aligned to the business value, which I think is a really wonderful move to hear, partly because you don’t need the infrastructure support, but you still need somebody that can translate, how can we be more efficient to support what is the core driver of the business. So anyway, I just wanted to share that. Great direction, and I think it’s also validating that there is still a lot that can be supported if you’re on the IT side of the business.

I want to hear about one thing that is going to be more of a personification question, if you will. But this is based on a little prep that – that you sent us. On your team, you have a member and I want to ask you, who is Sharon pointer?

WENDY RUBAS: Well, Sharon is, is we used to call her our robo-lawyer. We made her an avatar. And I wanted her to look like the Jetsons maid.

MARK KASHMAN: Rosie.

WENDY RUBAS: But of course, none of these people knew what I was talking about. So I lost that battle.

But we built this system. It’s a database. And then we started finding ways to flow and intersect with the business, because as Janessa said, one of the biggest challenges about being the only lawyer in a department is the flow.

And so, if somebody wants a contract, they send you an email, “Hey, can I have a contract?” And you go, “Well, what’s the term,” and then they go, “Well, two years.” And you go, “Well, what’s,” so 50 emails later, you know?

So we started doing intake forms and things like that, and we would tell people when we were training people, and we’d say, just do it in SharePoint. And it was just a, no offense, guys since you’re a SharePoint podcast, but it was – it was a block, and it’s like blank faces, they didn’t know what we were talking about. So I think they were thinking about the little yellow folders.

So we were brainstorming about this one day, and we just – and I was trying to describe because a lot of the people I was working with had never worked with the file cabinet days. And I was just, so there used to be a lady who sat in front of the file cabinet. And like, if you wanted to file something, you had to give it to her. And when your stuff was expired, she told you. And she was sometimes kind of mean, but you know, you needed her. So then I go, maybe we just need to describe it like that.

And we just had this idea of like, let’s call it Sharon Pointer. Let’s just say, send it to Sharon. It’s a –

JANESSA NELSON: It was a game changer.

WENDY RUBAS: It was a game-changer.

And so, because people could understand, we’ll send it to Sharon. Sharon will remind you when it expires, and then like Sharon isn’t going to take it – and this is just like the way it was, too, with file cabinet people – Sharon was not going to take that unless everything is filled in. You can’t give that to Sharon if it’s a mess. So that’s sort of the breakthrough that we had, and then it just sort of went from there.

JANESSA NELSON: Like Wendy said, she has an avatar. She also has an email address, so you can email Sharon@villagemd.com.

Not only has it allowed us, as we continue to grow within our analyst team and in the legal department, we sort of have like a dummy account, where multiple different people can be accessing those files from sort of a centralized location.

WENDY RUBAS: We just – they just send it to Sharon, and then on the backend, we have people working that queue. We didn’t expect that, but that’s been a really great benefit.

JANESSA NELSON: That’s exactly right.

And then, you know, it helps with consistency. It’s always email Sharon, so everybody knows that.

The one issue that we’ve had is that people think that she’s a real person. And so, that’s always something that we have to make sure to tell people that it’s not a real person. It’s our sort of automated backend work.

And so, most of that’s built off of flow, but you know, anything that gets pushed out pretty much comes from the Sharon account. So there you go.

WENDY RUBAS: Plus we get to blame Sharon. We love to blame Sharon. Like if that was not working, or it’s like we go, “Sharon, she is so, you know, moody.” It’s become just like a department.

And – and as I’ve grown up, you know, my new department members really have embraced it. So it’s been great.

CHRIS MCNULTY: You know, it’s interesting about, you know, fictitious persons, if you’ve ever gone through a Microsoft demo, one of the most common names in the demo is Megan Bowen. Someone decided to set up a Twitter account for Megan where she complains that like, she’s the most hacked person in the world. Every day, hundreds of people are logging in as her and it’s not the real her and – but it is funny, sometimes the fictitious people are better than the real ones.

Years ago, my path to technology also led me through law firms, as the child of two lawyers. And without revealing the jurisdiction, there was one Superior Court where the file clerk was only available to give you files like 9:30 to 11:30 –

WENDY RUBAS: Right.

CHRIS MCNULTY: – and 1:30 to 3:30. And I remember making a point of getting there at 1:45, and the reaction I got was, “Ah, geez, can’t you see I’m getting ready to close here?”

MARK KASHMAN: Does Sharon Pointer keep better office hours?

WENDY RUBAS: She keeps 24/7 office hours.

JANESSA NELSON: Sharon works hard. She works late. She works weekends. She’s like that.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Let’s take our audience through a little bit more detail about not just what Sharon does, but to Wendy and Janessa, what you’ve accomplished.

So Janessa, I understand you’ve put a system in place that automatically can bill documents, sort of a self-service tool that’s running. Can you talk a little bit about what that is, how people are using it, and of course, is that legal?

JANESSA NELSON: Yeah –

WENDY RUBAS: So Sharon’s not a lawyer.

JANESSA NELSON: Sharon – Sharon’s a robo-lawyer, not a real lawyer. She doesn’t have a JD.

I was the second fulltime hire. We added some more people, but you know, we’d get questions all the time from our business team asking for support for drafting NDAs, something that’s so simple, very templated. They just didn’t understand how to put in the entity information or just anything.

So I’d get these emails, we’d have to go back and forth, what do you need? Drafting might take five minutes, but, you know, if it wasn’t a high priority, you know, it just took so long to do it.

So I went up to Wendy and I was like, I have a proposal. I can utilize this Microsoft form. I can ask a couple basic questions. And then using a backend Power Automate flow, I can intake that information stored in our system, and then also put that information into a Word document and then send that document out.

WENDY RUBAS: I think I gave her a lecture about that will never work. Go ahead, try it. No one’s ever going to use that. I’ve tried to create – I’ve got all the list, all my things that I’ve tried to do that never worked. So I go, we’ll try it but no one’s ever going to – they’re going to want to call the lawyers. You know, that’s – they’re never –

And so then, it was just sort of operating in the background and we started looking at the data and – and our users love it, and they use it. So we’ve done that now for a bunch of different agreements.

Again, these are repetitive template agreements, and there’s a few questions and you just sort of fill it in. You know, in the old days, we had a paper intake form. You had to fill in what you wanted. But there’s no paper at Village really. So – so this is just it queues up the user what information we would need to fill it in. And then, you know, Sharon’s, pretty quick, she does a form right away.

JANESSA NELSON: Yeah, it takes a couple of seconds and then sends them an email. So it’s actually faster than what I can do. And she files it for me. So like, it’s way higher service that I was ever going to be able to give to people. It’s 24/7 accessible. And we’ve seen a huge amount of people love it. They love the self-service. And we did 150 self-services last month, just – just last month.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Have you ever been tempted to temporarily rename Sharon to Janessa, so people do think that you generate all that output?

JANESSA NELSON: I’m okay. You know, if she ever has any issues, I would rather them blame Sharon and not me, so.

MARK KASHMAN: Well, it sounds like you – you gave Sharon a good, you know, push in the right direction. Then, you know, at some point she can operationalize and takeover, and you’re on to the next thing anyway.

JANESSA NELSON: (Inaudible/crosstalk) sort of be impulsive and moody and send out occasional like mean emails, but I was overruled on that.

WENDY RUBAS: Yeah, we’re trying to avoid the Terminator Skynet, I think is try to avoid that situation, but yeah.

MARK KASHMAN: Come with me if you want to law, or live or something like that.

So let’s move into your – one of the second solutions that you shared with us that we’d like to dig into. And this one’s pretty close to my wheelhouse. But for lawyers that are on the clock, and I mean, that sort of time is money, but at the same time, taking notes and getting information is also valuable, to not have to search and find. And to your earlier point, that single source of truth, you have put some of your truth, truthfully, into lists, and they’re in SharePoint and they’re accessed through kind of a unique endpoint that I’m going to let you describe. But can you talk about that role for lawyers and you in leveraging lists for the work that you do?

WENDY RUBAS: I’ve been so fortunate in bringing on some new folks into the department that really understood what the power of this was instantly and got it, but you build a list. That takes time, because you have to constantly tinker with it. You don’t have the right columns. You don’t have the – you can tinker with that infinitely, but especially at first.

But once you get that bill, and it’s sort of got the things you need, I’ve come to think of that as like the backend. So we have some of our users that work in that all the time, and so they’re very familiar with it. But the interface isn’t like 100% quick and easy and intuitive, because it’s basically like a spreadsheet with, you know, benefits. It has a lot of cool things, but it’s – it’s not like an amazing interface.

And so, we brought in a very experienced paralegal who immediately got it. And she had envisioned – we get lots of people call us and want corporate documents. They need to know about our entities. And again, what we’re always trying to do is to be efficient, is reduce the noise, so the lawyers and the staff can just work on the things that really require them. And it isn’t just a lot of just, you know, assembly line of noise.

And so, she said, maybe we could create an interface. She didn’t know about Power Apps. But these documents could be – you could work with them in a different way visually. And she sort of drew out what it would look like. And it’s simulating an old school Minute Book. So it has the tabs. If you’ve ever had a corporate minute book, you know, they, you know, back in the good old days when it was a leather bound, and it had all the most important things. So you always felt good knowing, lawyers love knowing. it’s in the minute book.

So VillageMD is in many states, and we have lots of different entities, and just keeping track of bylaws, operating agreements, charter documents, that’s a whole world. If you’re not organized and tight on that, you can end up with a big problem.

So we – we were able to build this interface that’s not even just for the lawyers. The lawyers like it, but really, other people in the organization that need this information can quickly and intuitively understand it and where to go to get it.

JANESSA NELSON: And so, we used Power Apps to build that. We did, you know, hire. We sort of had a SharePoint consultant to help us out with some of those front=facing applications using Power Apps, because it’s a little bit more difficult with like the level of coding and interactivity between the Power Apps, because we want something a little bit complicated. And so, we did hire somebody.

But the way that we built it was we wanted it to be pulling directly from our SharePoint list. And so, it’s automatically updating and, you know, allowing us, whenever we’re growing and entering new markets, that information will be immediately sort of available in there, and there’s very little maintenance that we have to do on our end. And so, that way this can continue to live and breathe and grow with minimal coding requirements, you know, from our team.

MARK KASHMAN: I would say that’s not too uncommon. You know, there’s going to be a point in time where even if you hired technology specialists, they’re not skilled in every single app and service out there.

So if you augment with a partner or you know, a one-time hire, even if it’s coding, you know, it is, you know, certainly okay from a platform perspective. But that skillset of the Power Platform, that is oftentimes a very different person. And I think Power Apps especially has so much that’s possible. But if you’ve not done it, doing it that one time and maybe only one time for – for this kind of need, you know, it’s the right thing to do to hire, not – not a buy versus build, but build a little, get your solution, and then I’m assuming you now are all in a good run state, and you know, that hire maybe will be something for another project, but it’s just been –

WENDY RUBAS: Even if you buy software, many times you have to customize it. How many times do people have to bring in support to do that? So – but this pays dividends just in terms of time saved.

CHRIS MCNULTY: The other thing I wanted to drill down on a bit is your use of Power BI. Many of our customers and certainly, you know, from Microsoft’s perspective, we see lots of use of Power BI to help people report and analyze, you know, the structured data, which are typically these large databases.

And kind of with your list strategy, you have all of this user-contributed data, but you’re using Power BI, as I understand, to help analyze and report against that, if I have that correct.

Could you talk through kind of what you’re doing there and some of what that looks like for your user base?

JANESSA NELSON: So I mean, just at a glance, what it allows us to do is just see volume of work that we’re intaking, we’re producing, we’re doing on a regular basis, at any time, in real time, which is a valuable thing, you know, in a fast-paced growth company.

WENDY RUBAS: And you can’t overstate how many legal departments do not have a simple count of the work that they’ve done.

The benefit from Power BI is because everything is in one system, and it’s all within the Office 365, mostly SharePoint, is that I can get a cross-section between all of our disparate lists. So compliance volume month over month, how many contracts we reviewed, how many contracts are unsigned, turnaround time, I do all of my invoicing and budget management in a SharePoint list. And so, I can get information about costs, transactional work, policies. I can keep going on enterprise risk, insurance, training, etc, etc. So anything that’s sort of stored within there, we can report out.

And the goal is, is that like, you know, whatever you sort of need, we can customize a report based off of what you need. You know, what you need changes over time, which is nice, so that way, we can build them from scratch ourselves. It’s nice, because I don’t have to rebuild this every time. So if we’re going to do a count of how many compliance entries we had per month, instead of going through the list, doing it manually, I just click refresh, and it just updates itself for me.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, just even here, you know, going off of a single list into Power BI gives you lots of value, if that’s your sole focus, if your function is a product or a project. But as you’re leveraging it on behalf of a lot of other entities, so they’ve got different needs, you know, maybe different sets of lists that combine to really create the report that somebody is going to have to, maybe in the past, manually go and whatever tool they may have used in the past.

It really brings me back to what you lead with was this – this kind of the health of the data, you know, what you put in, if it’s not good data, or it’s just everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean, if it’s – if it’s in like decent places, but multiple repositories. The challenge that I think that you were probably facing before you really started to refine was healthy data and ease of, you know, pulling out that – that – that what we would call the insights, but, you know, the analysis, and serving, it sounds like, multiple, not just scenarios, but multiple needs of people.

WENDY RUBAS: You can only have so many spreadsheets sent to your inbox. I mean, there’s only so much. Email has, you know, gone from convenience to sort – sort of nuisance in some ways. And same with spreadsheets, because you know, you get spreadsheets from everywhere, and it’s like all the information is there, if you only had the time to open it and look at it. So the Power BI is – is an amazing tool for us in that way,

JANESSA NELSON: It goes back to the source of truth and inter-department connection. So you know, we have our contract library in SharePoint. And our procurement team, which is newer to the organization, has started utilizing that library. And so, we can produce reports for them, so that they can automatically get information that they need. And it can automatically update which is, you know, a great feature that is really, really valuable to, you know, anybody who’s trying to keep track of like herding cats, in some ways.

MARK KASHMAN: So you’ve got the cats herded, and something tells me, once a month, they start scratching and clawing about something new, something different, or you just have a backlog of now a lot of great ideas and – and you want to get to them.

So if I could frame this next question, we know based on our working and what we’re doing with SharePoint and sort of the art of the possible, but from your lens, if you were to look at what do I want next from Sharon Pointer, if she’s going to work a little bit more overtime on the next project, we’ve got a sense of leveraging lists and Power Apps and Power BI, you know, with the form intake, what do you see is the next thing that you either already have on your backlog, or you’re hearing from your customers, your clients internally and what they’re trying to accomplish that you think you can solve with technology? Just a little insight into maybe the – your future roadmap that you’d be willing to share.

WENDY RUBAS: There’s a couple of things and some of them we’re working on, and some of them are on the future. Ease of use with email, and integration with email is paramount because no matter how much you do, you’re always going to have inbound email. So trying to find ways to automate information coming into our email and getting into the SharePoint list is something that I’m obsessed with and we’re always trying to figure that out.

The other area is I think we’re in a moment, like this is a moment that people will look back on. Like, I always tell these guys I’m hiring, like there was a day when this was all paper, and you had binders and tabs. And I think there’ll be a moment when people go, there was a time when you had to do dropdowns, you know, to get structured data.

And so, we’re always trying to find ways to get the dropdown structure, without the manual effort to use whether it’s tagging, we’re using some automated things. So you have types, and I’ll just go in. We’re doing some integrations with other software like signing document software that will automatically populate, so that I don’t have to pay smart people to go dropdown, dropdown. You know, so we’re always trying to do that.

And then the other thing, we’re working with the – there’s an AI tool, Power Apps AI Builder. And so, we’re – we’re trying to teach Sharon how to read some of this stuff herself, so we don’t have to tell her what it says, but she can read it, put it in, and then we can just approve it.

And we’ve had some luck with that. You know, it’s not – it’s actually been surprising to the team. They’ve been able to train this, whatever it is, to look at that. And this is again, on repeated, repetitive templates, like NDAs or those kinds of things, that can read it, and then it’ll know, put it into the system so that I don’t have to have dropdowns.

We’re at different stages of maturity in all of our different modules, but – and some of them we’re still trying to build some of these interfaces, and it’s really limited only by your imagination, in a way. Like if you can envision what would help you, you can build it. That’s the hardest part, I think,

MARK KASHMAN: Where would you categorize yourself? And I know that there’s some older ways of framing this around a maturity model, a technology adoption model, whatever it might be, but you shared phases. How would you describe where you are now and what is next in that chart, just for our audience to understand where you’re going?

WENDY RUBAS: I like to use a graph like that because when people come in, it’s important that they understand, it’s not always going to be like this. And so, but the first, you know, you start out with this chaos information everywhere, whenever. And then you go into, you know, spreadsheets, which is the next step, and we’ve been through that.

And then you build the database, so we’ve got databases built. Then you know, you’re forever fixing them and tinkering with them and then you run reports and realize you don’t have the fields you need. So that’s the next stage that you get. You stay there a while. Then you start doing the flows. That could be for approval routing. It could be for reminders, and things like that.

So I feel like we’ve come through all of those pretty much, and really in different stages, in our different places, we’re really perfecting our views in Power BI. In some areas that are high value outside of just my department, we’re doing these Power Apps sort of interfaces.

And then as I said, automation, the next frontier is integration with other department, other organization systems. That’s where you get real intelligent, not just having a contract, but having the spend data all together, which comes from you know, AP. That’s really for a user, a business user, you know, what they want. They want to have it all together in one place.

And we’re working on that in some of our policy system, how can we show the interconnectedness of policies by doing word, you know, almost like word, have it, read it and show what words are in it and things like that.

Again, you almost have to start with an imagination as to – and that’s I think the hardest thing with software sometimes is we get very indoctrinated into what it does, and it gets us out of thinking of what should it do, or could it do or how this could be better.

But with these tools, really just the usability and the automation is where we’re going. I’m always telling my team; we’re not always going to be doing dropdowns. Just stick –like I challenge them, go figure it out, how to stop doing them, because that’s really the bane of databases. So that’s, I guess, sort of our roadmap.

MARK KASHMAN: Well, we want to thank you both for your time and if you could pass along, Sharon Pointer can also bill us for this time, that would be great.

Do you have any last thoughts? You know, because I think you represent a specific industry that, at least from what Chris and I are aware of. We don’t hear a lot about the technology that – that really is leveraged, you know, within the law space, and obviously, blended with healthcare, that’s even more unique. But any best practices, even if it’s just agnostic, you know, to technology and how it’s leveraged to help, you know, move things forward, and maybe modernize, you know, how anybody works. Just last thoughts,

WENDY RUBAS: You know, to my peers out there, they’re all trying to adopt technology at different – or sort of know they want to, and the answer is, in a sense, to have one of these MSL type support systems to come in and solve that. That’s – that’s the key.

You know, the other thing I can’t stress enough is, building on top of these Microsoft products saves you so much time, because it’s already provisioned. You don’t have to give people passwords. It already knows who works here. It already has all this stuff in it.

So many times you do demos, and you see products, and they look so great. And they just, you get so frustrated, they break your heart after you buy them. I just want to encourage my peers to – to just try it. You’d be surprised how easy it is.

JANESSA NELSON: I think Wendy said set it all. Simple is sometimes better when you’re first starting, and then you – you know, if people actually find it worthwhile, they’ll want more. You know, they’ll keep asking for, you know, more features and more things that it can do.

And that’s what really that we’ve seen with Sharon is that growth has happened really organically because we started simple. And you know, it’s gotten more complicated. It’s because I’ve learned more as Sharon’s continued to grow. But also the businesses invested. And so you know, they see the capability. And so, they’re interested in – in working in partnering with us. And so, you know, if anybody’s going on that journey, it’s okay to not start with the most complicated thing, start where you are, and see if it works,

CHRIS MCNULTY: Janessa, Wendy, thank you very much for coming into the Intrazone. It’s really great to catch up. It’s really inspiring to hear how much you’re able to do and land with the tools that we have. And thank you. And I hope our audience can learn from this example.

WENDY RUBAS: Well, it’s our pleasure, appreciate the opportunity to amplify the work of this amazing team that I’ve got.

[Music.]

CHRIS MCNULTY: So up next on the Intrazone, events. If there’s an event promoting and sharing information about SharePoint, legal technology, HR, Viva, anything else in Microsoft 365, we want to spotlight it here for you on the Intrazone. Let’s get right to it. Mark, how are you?

MARK KASHMAN: I am good, and I am still completely digital, but enjoying plugging in and planning and working with all the event leads. A lot of these things like Commsverse is taking a hybrid approach. And shortly after this goes live, September 15th to the 16th, there is a Microsoft Teams community event in the UK. And again, in person and online.

CHRIS MCNULTY: We also want to share a couple of updates. And this reminds me of when I was a small child listening at home on snow days back on the East Coast for upcoming school cancellations or delayed openings. And frequently my school would be the one that was still running.

The reality of this pandemic is we’re responding to different events. So there’s a couple of events that were coming up in September and October, SharePoint Fest DC, Collab Days New England, SharePoint Fest Dallas. These have all been postponed until it makes sense to bring people together. So we will continue to update you on those events. They have not been canceled. We’re just looking for a time when it makes sense for us to be able to participate with our customers in a way that’s safe for everyone.

But one event, Mark, I know that you’re deeply in the midst of that is not postponed is?

MARK KASHMAN: Microsoft Ignite. And in the mix of a lot of what is happening with in-person events and all the fluctuation, it was decided a long time ago that the Microsoft Ignite event was going to be all digital. And we are in full swing of content planning.

Chris, you are also planning, meeting with your PM peers, and there’s a lot going on across the company. Obviously, we represent a certain corner of the entirety of Microsoft, but to represent what Ignite is in planning, there will be, as you would expect, keynotes from Satya and some of our leadership across the major areas that we want to convey with new innovation, new scenarios that we support.

There will be events that – breakout sessions that then go into further detail. There will be a some very one-on-one, one-to-few, one-to-many type engagements with Ask the Experts, roundtable discussions, one-to-one customer and partner meetings and everything in between to make it so that we make available as much as we can through the digital format, what it is that we’re working on from a roadmap perspective, clarity on what’s in market and how to use and adopt it, and a lot of voices coming from Microsoft, from the community, from partners, and from customers, all packaged between November 2nd through the 4th, again all digital with a lot of great thinking in terms of how can we make it a really great engaging online event.

CHRIS MCNULTY: And remember, it’s free, and you can engage in it from the comfort of well, anywhere.

When I think forward to what 2022 is going to look like. I’m confident that we’ll be returning to having somewhat more traditional or hybrid events. And I know some of you out there, there’s at least a couple of you who at next year’s event are going to sit – you may be sitting down right now and saying, “Oh, another virtual event; I’m tired of virtual events.”

And next year, you’ll be coming to something like an Ignite, and you’ll get there, think about all of the difficulties and travel and you don’t like your hotel room and say, “Gosh, I wish we could still do all of these things virtual.”

So we know that it’s going to continue to evolve, and we just want to make sure that everyone’s safe, and everyone is well informed, and we’re happy to participate again this year.

If you have more events coming up, whether they are physical, hybrid, or virtual, please write to us through the show handle, and we’ll be sure to spotlight your event on an upcoming episode of the Intrazone.

MARK KASHMAN: One last little note for events is for everything that was postponed, we do have links that describe more about what they’re planning, so that if you were interested in those events, when they get rescheduled, or that they’ve already been rescheduled, we’ll make sure to have great links that take you directly to some of that information they’ve recently put out.

[Music.]

CHRIS MCNULTY: Well, I think that means that our intranet court is just about adjourned here today.

We would love to thank Wendy and Janessa for their insights into their own deployment and rollout of Microsoft technologies. We’ll put links to everything they talked about today and more in our show notes, and in the Intrazone blog.

MARK KASHMAN: You can check out our show page, this particular episode, and all episodes at aka.ms/theIntrazone.

CHRIS MCNULTY: And if you’re curious about other Microsoft shows, check out aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

MARK KASHMAN: You can email us anytime about your wildest dreams, like Chris was having about Syntex, or your most concerning thoughts at theIntrazone@microsoft.com, or chase us down on Twitter @SharePoint, @Mkashman, and @CMcNulty2000.

CHRIS MCNULTY: You may be sitting around at this point, because the broadcast has come out, the first week of the NFL season is in the books. And if your team is oh and one and already out of the playoffs, that means that you’re either in Houston, or you’re looking for something to learn more about.

If you like what you’ve heard today, help us help more people. Share that SharePoint love and follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.

You know Mark, I could have also gone for U.S. Open Tennis. By the time this is broadcast, we’ll know who won.

MARK KASHMAN: We are your hosts, Mark Kashman and Chris never miss an opportunity to get a sports reference in there McNulty, and you have been listening to the Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365 lists legal eagles intelligent internet.

[Music.]

END

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop August 2021 

August 2021 brought lots of great SharePoint and related tech releases: Teams meeting recordings in SharePoint, SharePoint spaces text updates, SharePoint Store modernization, Lists for iOS updates, File cards in Office for Android, Universal print with OneDrive, Yammer Topics API changes, and more. We also chat with Vesa Juvonen, our SharePoint principal program manager focused on all things OneDrive and SharePoint development - and an excellent Microsoft 365 developer community lead.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post and transcript.

Resources:

Vesa Juvonen | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman | Twitter | Kashbox Substack blog [host]

SharePoint Twitter | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

"Explore and deploy SharePoint Framework solutions from partners in SharePoint (Microsoft 365)" blog post by Vesa Juvonen

Microsoft 365 public roadmap

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Microsoft Ignite (Nov.2-4.2021; digital event) - Save the date just announced

Microsoft Lists workshop [available now on-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Implementing Microsoft Viva 

It's time to go beyond what Microsoft Viva is, and move into implementation, deployment, and adoption. We've got a terrific "knowledge roundtable" discussion with four Microsoft MVPs: Dux Raymond Sy about Viva Connections, Susan Hanley about Viva Topics, Asif Rehmani about Viva Learning, and Robert Mulsow on Viva Insights. This episode is filled with great tips, tricks, and challenges when configuring and rolling it out Viva for your company and colleagues.

Click here for this episode's companion blog post and links.

00:00 Intro

09:00 Roundtable

01:13:00 Events

People:

Dux Raymond Sy | LinkedIn | Twitter | AvePoint [guest]

Susan Hanley | LinkedIn | Twitter | SusanHanley.com [guest]

Asif Rehmani | LinkedIn | Twitter | VisualSP [guest]

Robert Mulsow | LinkedIn | Twitter | SkillBridge [guest]

Mark Kashman | Twitter [co-host]

Chris McNulty | Twitter [co-host]

Resources:

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog 

Microsoft Viva | #MSFTViva | LinkedIn | Site | Blog

The Intrazone episode with Microsoft CVP, Jared Spataro: "Viva Las Microsoft" aka, the Viva 101 podcast.

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Events:

Commsverse (Sept.15-16.2021); a Microsoft Teams Community Event) [hybrid: UK - in-person and online]

SharePoint Fest DC + dedicated 'Teams Fest' track (Sept.20-24.2021) [in-person]

HR Tech Conference 2021 (Sept.28-Oct.1.2021) [in-person]

CollabDays New England (Oct.9.2021) [in-person] Jeff Teper kicking it off + Chris McNulty live. Check out Jeff Teper's related t-shirt tweet

SharePoint Fest Dallas (Oct.11-15.2021) [in-person] - co-keynote (Chris & Mark)

Microsoft Ignite (Nov.2-4.2021; digital event) 

Microsoft Lists workshop [available now on-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone, and discover other Microsoft podcasts: aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

The gifts of GitHub 

GitHub is the collaborative developer community, a place to share and review code, then deploy it to any operating system, any cloud and any device. On this episode, we speak with Martin Woodward, one of the original members who onboarded Microsoft to the open-source world, and Tetsuya Kawahara, a Microsoft MVP expert in Microsoft Lists customization (JSON). We learn how they use GitHub to share their knowledge, connect with other developers, and create the world’s most important technologies.

Click here for this episode's companion blog post and links.

Click here for transcript of this episode.

11:00 Conversation with Martin Woodward

42:00 Conversation with Tetsuya Kawahara [with English interpreter]

56:15 Events

1:02:15 Conversation with Tetsuya Kawahara [full answers in Japanese]

People:

Martin Woodward | LinkedIn | Twitter | GitHub [guest]

Tetsuya Kawahara てっちゃん (Microsoft MVP) | LinkedIn | Twitter | GitHub [guest]

Mark Kashman | Twitter [co-host]

Chris McNulty | Twitter [co-host]

Resources:

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog 

GitHub | @GitHub | LinkedIn | Site

GitHub Docs

Tetsuya's list formatting samples (GitHub)

Microsoft PnP community list formatting samples (GitHub) | Microsoft 365 community (guidance, best practices)

Microsoft Lists resource center

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Events:

North American Collaboration Summit (Aug.9-11.2021) [hybrid; Branson, MI and online]

"SharePoint, Teams, Lists, Viva, The Intrazone - oh my!" (Aug.10.2021 - online) Adelaide AUS user group meetup

Commsverse (Sept.15-16.2021); a Microsoft Teams Community Event) [hybrid: UK - in-person and online]

SharePoint Fest DC + dedicated 'Teams Fest' track (Sept.20-24.2021) [in-person]

HR Tech Conference 2021 (Sept.28-Oct.1.2021) [in-person]

Microsoft Lists workshop [available now on-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone, and discover other Microsoft podcasts: aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop July 2021 

Get ready to boost your July 2021 memory bank! Lots of great SharePoint and related tech releases this past month: News boost, collapsible page sections, edit pages and news in Teams, custom list templates, suggested attachments in Planner, SharePoint Server Subscription Edition (preview), 'post on-behalf' in Yammer, and more. We also hear from Nancy Handa, our SharePoint program manager focused on pages and news innovations - including work that brings them to life in Microsoft Teams.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post and transcript.

Resources:

Nancy Handa | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman | Twitter | Kashbox Substack blog [host]

SharePoint Twitter | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

"Edit a SharePoint page or news post in Microsoft Teams" blog post by Nancy Handa

Microsoft 365 public roadmap

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Events

North American Collaboration Summit (Aug.9-11.2021) [hybrid; Branson, MI and online]

Commsverse (Sept.15-16.2021); a Microsoft Teams Community Event) [hybrid: UK - in-person and online]

SharePoint Fest DC + dedicated 'Teams Fest' track (Sept.20-24.2021) [in-person]

HR Tech Conference 2021 (Sept.28-Oct.1.2021) [in-person]

Microsoft Lists workshop [available now on-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Top 5 hidden gems of Microsoft Lists 

Did you know Microsoft Lists could do this or that? In this episode, we hope you’ll find a few useful, hidden gems to jumpstart your information tracking in Microsoft 365. Maybe you’re just getting started or have been at it for a while. Regardless, Lists can help you and your team across numerous scenarios - tracking issues, managing assets, supporting an internal event. Lists are simple to create and highly customizable based on whatever you want to track, organize and automate. And we’re here to help you. Gem hunters, ready? Give it a listen and learn as you go.

Click here for this episode's companion blog post (includes 5 more gems, a new demo video, screenshots, and links to further documentation)

People:

Jeff Teper | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Andrea Lum | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman | Twitter [co-host]

Chris McNulty | Twitter [co-host]

Resources:

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog 

Get the Lists app for iOS today (App Store; works on iPhone and iPad)

Microsoft Lists resource center

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Events:

Microsoft Inspire 2021 (July 14-15, 2021) [virtual]

SharePoint Fest Chicago (July 26-30, 2021) [in-person]

North American Collaboration Summit (Aug.9-11, 2021) [hybrid; Branson, MI and online]

Microsoft Lists workshop (on-demand + materials to redeliver in your organization)

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone, and discover other Microsoft podcasts: aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop June 2021 

June 2021 brought some great new offerings: SharePoint Auto News Digest updates, SharePoint admin center updates (dashboard and new site information columns), Microsoft Lists - @mentions in comments, Power Apps can now display images from Microsoft Lists, Delete from within page details, Headspace mindfulness content comes to Microsoft Viva Insights, and more. We also hear from Rk Menon, program manager on the SharePoint team focused on the SharePoint admin center experience and capabilities in Microsoft 365.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post and transcript.

Resources:

Rk Menon | LinkedIn [guest]

Mark Kashman | Twitter | Kashbox Substack blog [host]

SharePoint Twitter | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

SharePoint admin center (primary Help content)

Microsoft 365 public roadmap

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Events:

Inspire 2021 (July 14-15, 2021) [virtual]

SharePoint Fest Chicago (July 26-30, 2021)

Microsoft Lists workshop (on-demand)

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Windows plus Microsoft 365, from chip to cloud 

In this episode, Chris and Mark talk with Thomas Trombley (Senior program manager - Windows Servicing and Delivery) and Jason Howard (Senior program manager - Windows, Developers, and Experiences (WDX)) about how the Windows desktop and ecosystem supports modern work in the context of Microsoft 365. We dig into helping customers plan for hybrid work, best practices for systems and services for IT to tune and optimize, and how to get into and remain in a good run state for managing it all from "the chip to the cloud."

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Click here for transcript of this episode. 

People and related products:

Thomas Trombley (Senior program manager - Windows Servicing and Delivery) LinkedIn [guest]

Jason Howard (Senior program manager - Windows, Developers, and Experiences (WDX)) LinkedIn | Twitter (@NorthFaceHiker) [guest]

Mark Kashman | Twitter [co-host]

Chris McNulty | Twitter [co-host]

Windows | Twitter

Windows Insider Program | Twitter | Windows Insider Podcast

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog 

Resources:

"Microsoft 365 - Modernize your enterprise deployment with Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 apps" (Learning pathway on docs.microsoft.com)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Events:

Microsoft Viva AMA (June 23, 2021 at 9am PT) [Within the Microsoft Tech Community]

What's next for Windows event (June 24, 2021 at 11am ET) [Livestream]

Inspire 2021 (July 14-15, 2021) [virtual]

SharePoint Fest Chicago (July 26-30, 2021)

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone, and discover other Microsoft podcasts: aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Visio for everyone 

Get ready to take your diagramming skills to the next level! In this episode, Chris and I talk with Mukul Kumar (Senior product manager) and Nishant Kumar (Product manager) from the Visio team at Microsoft. They have some exciting news that’s ‘goodness at no cost’ to a lot of people in Microsoft 365. We'll dig into this and all things Visio – its place in the world of productivity, use cases for beginners to experts, web to desktop, and more. The goal of you finishing this episode is that you'll be fluent on diagramming in your sleep.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Click here for transcript of this episode. 

Resources:

Mukul Kumar | Twitter | LinkedIn [guest]

Nishant Kumar | LinkedIn [guest]

Mark Kashman | Twitter [co-host]

Chris McNulty | Twitter [co-host]

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog 

Visio | @MSVisio | Visio community blog 

“Announcing Visio in Microsoft 365​ - Visual collaboration for teams everywhere​” (related Visio announcement blog post)

"Recapping Ignite with the five biggest Visio updates" (recent Ignite blog post)

Visualize with Visio (video series)

Learn more about Microsoft Visio (support.microsoft.com)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Events:

Microsoft 365 Collaboration Summit (June 8-10, 2021)

Microsoft Viva AMA (June 23, 2021) [Within the Microsoft Tech Community]

Inspire 2021 (July 14-15, 2021) [virtual]

SharePoint Fest Chicago (July 26-30, 2021)

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop May 2021 

May 2021 brought some great new offerings: Yammer conversation highlights, Immersive Reader for SharePoint documents, content migration from Dropbox and Google Workspace into Microsoft 365, Microsoft Lists: Export to CSV, Microsoft Lists: Updated sharing experience, Microsoft Lists: Turn comments on/off, and more. We also hear from Yogesh Ratnaparkhi, principal program manager on the SharePoint team focused on the migration of content into Microsoft 365 - specifically release updates to the SharePoint admin center’s Migration Manager to move content from third-party cloud providers like Box, Dropbox and Google Workspace into Microsoft 365.

Click here for the episode corresponding blog post with details and links to all resources discussed in the episode. 

Resources:

Yogesh Ratnaparkhi | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman | Twitter | Kashbox Substack blog [host]

SharePoint Twitter | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

"Migrate your content into Microsoft 365" [Tech Community blog + migration infographic]

Microsoft 365 public roadmap

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Events

ESPC21 (June.1-2, 2021) - Virtual | Jeff Teper keynote, numerous Microsoft and MVP sessions + workshops

Microsoft 365 Collaboration Summit (June.8-10, 2021) - Hybrid | Dan Holme, Karuana Gatimu, and Charles Lamanna keynotes, plus numerous Microsoft and MVP sessions + workshops

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Viva Topics is the on-hovercraft of knowledge 

It’s time to turn content into knowledge with the help of AI. Chris and Mark talk with CJ Tan (principal PM manager | Microsoft) about her role on the Project Cortex team focused on Viva Topics. We dig into knowledge roles, deployment practices, common scenarios, and top of mind for 'What's next?’ We don't think that AI is the only substitute for IA (Information Architecture). People, metadata and AI interact better together. CJ walks us through how it all works from pilot to broad-scale use and adoption.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Click here for transcript of this episode. 

Resources:

CJ Tan| LinkedIn [guest]

Mark Kashman | Twitter [co-host]

Chris McNulty | Twitter [co-host]

Get started with Microsoft Viva Topics New Learning Paths in doc.ms.com:

Main resource center: https://akak.ms/Viva/Topics

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog 

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Events:

Teams Nation (May 12, 2021)

M365 Virtual Philly (May 14-15, 2021)

Microsoft Build (May 25-27, 2021)

ESPC21 (June 1-2, 2021)

Microsoft 365 Collaboration Summit (June 8-10, 2021)

SharePoint Saturdays (ongoing)

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop April 2021