365 EduCon,&nbsp;a Microsoft 365 Conference, brings to you the world’s leading experts in&nbsp;Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Power Platform, Microsoft Teams and Azure. Whether you are&nbsp;new to Microsoft 365, Power Platform and SharePoint or an experienced power user, admin or developer, 365 EduCon has content designed to fit your experience level and area of interest. Our workshops and sessions are taught by Microsoft Certified Trainers, Microsoft MVPs, Microsoft Regional Directors and Microsoft engineers.
At&nbsp;365 EduCon,&nbsp;a Microsoft 365 Conference,&nbsp;subject matter is divided into tracks and each session is designated for beginner, intermediate or advanced. Tracks are offered for the following subjects:&nbsp;Microsoft 365, Azure, Microsoft Teams, Teams Development, Teams Architecture &amp; Administration, OneDrive, Search, Content Management, Power Users, Business Value, Implementation/Administration, Workflow, Business Intelligence, SharePoint Development, and more. Choose one complete learning track or mix and match based on what content best meets you and your organization’s current needs!&nbsp; Find out more: https://365educon.com/Chicago&nbsp;

365 EduCon Chicago - A Microsoft 365 Conference

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South Concourse Lobby, ATE, Collab Studio

Are you looking to take your productivity to the next level? Microsoft Copilot will help you achieve just that! In this workshop, learn how Microsoft Copilot works with Microsoft 365, Bing Chat, Microsoft Edge, and Windows 11. Discover how OpenAI is integrated into Microsoft 365 to streamline your business processes, automate tasks, improve workflows, and increase productivity while saving time and effort.

Deep Dive into Microsoft 365 Copilot across pivotal apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote. Discover how Copilot enhances your capabilities for document creation, data analysis, presentation design, email management, and note-taking. It’s your digital companion, optimizing each task, making daily operations smoother and unleashing new potentials for efficiency.

You'll discover Microsoft's new Bing Chat, powered by ChatGPT. Learn how to get more relevant, up-to-date, and annotated search results using natural language chat. You'll discover how the new Bing Chat helps you draft emails, summarize documents, draft blogs, and more!

You'll discover how to use Microsoft Teams premium features powered by Microsoft Copilot such as:
Intelligent recap: A summary of the meeting with key points and tasks.
Smart transcription: A live transcript of the meeting with speakers and edits.
Meeting insights: A dashboard that shows relevant information for the meeting.
Live captions: A real-time translation of the speech into different languages.  

You’ll also learn how to use Power Apps and Power Automate where you can describe what you want in natural language and let AI build it for you! For example, you can use Power Apps “Ideas” to create an app from a description3, or use Power Automate “create a cloud flow from a description” or “format data by example” features3 to automate your data processing.

The future of the modern workplace is here! Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how Microsoft 365 and OpenAI can help you achieve more with less effort! With hands-on exercises and practical tips, you'll leave the workshop with a solid understanding of how to use Microsoft 365 and OpenAI to maximize your productivity.

Next level productivity with Microsoft Copilot

Are you ready to supercharge your Microsoft 365 skills and take your productivity to the next level? Join us for a dynamic and interactive workshop covering practical productivity tips for using the Microsoft 365 ecosystem to improve your and your team's everyday workflows.

In this workshop, you'll learn from experts who will showcase real-world examples of how to leverage the full potential of Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook, Microsoft Teams, OneNote, Planner, OneDrive, Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Lists, and Microsoft Viva. We will also discuss Microsoft Loop and the newly announced Microsoft 365 Copilot!

You'll come away with the best ways to use the many tools in the Microsoft 365 toolbelt, including which apps work best in different scenarios. On top of that, you'll get examples of bringing multiple apps together to extend the value of your digital workplace, based on proven practices your presenters have seen work well for power users in other organizations.

From advanced collaboration techniques to automating everyday tasks, you'll come away with practical tips and tricks that you can put into action right away.

Maximizing Microsoft 365 Productivity: Practical Strategies and Use Cases for Power Users

NOTE: YOU WILL NEED A COMPUTER WITH THE LATEST VERSION OF POWER BI DESKTOP INSTALLED PRIOR TO WORKSHOP TIME. THIS IS A HANDS ON BOOTCAMP.

Need to create stunning dashboards from your SharePoint data?

Yes you do!

In this bootcamp, we’ll show you:
• How should I approach my BI need?
• What things should be considered when creating dashboards?
• What are the best practices?
• How much is this going to cost me to license?
• What security aspects should concern me?

Who should take this course:
If your company uses Office 365 or SharePoint 2013/2016 and you are a:
• Manager
• Business Analyst
• Power User
• SharePoint Administrator
• Consultant

If you work in these areas, you will see value:
• Marketing
• Information Technology
• Finance
• Sales
• Social Media

The class assumes no prior knowledge of Power BI and Data Concepts.

What is required for this class:
Install Microsoft Power BI Desktop on your laptop (recommended but not required)
We'll provide an Office 365 site for you to use for exercises

In this workshop you will:
• Learn how to create Production Dashboards using Power BI, from SharePoint list and document library data
• How to use Power BI in a multitude of situations, including ad hoc analysis and the creation of formal dashboard.
• Learn the Power BI components: Power BI Desktop, PowerBI.com, Power BI mobile applications and how they can be used with Office 365 and SharePoint
• Receive an introduction into the core functions of Power BI; Data extraction, loading and transformation using Power Query Formula Language (“M”) and DAX.
• Receive some guidelines on how to extract Project data in fast manner.
• Discover some data modeling practices that will ensure you have maximum flexibility in analysis. You'll also learn some visualization best practices to ensure you can tell your digital story effectively
• Learn best practices for maintaining content with your organization

This workshop provides an end to end view of Power BI for SharePoint reporting, so that you are able to use Power BI immediately for your needs.

Power BI Bootcamp for SharePoint Professionals

SharePoint Online in Microsoft 365 has many components and in this full day workshop we are going to learn about these different components and how to manage them so SharePoint Online is properly configured, secure, and optimized.  

We will create a new M365 tenant, customize the admin center, add some users, groups, and manage roles, as well as discuss, explore, and roll up our sleeves and configure SharePoint Online configuration settings, create and configure site collections, configure user profile settings, create a structured taxonomy using the term store, and configure the search service to ensure your users are able to quickly find the information they need.

When you leave, you’ll have all the skills necessary to configure and manage the different SharePoint Online components using both the SharePoint Online Admin Center, and PowerShell.


Becoming a SharePoint Online Admin Expert

Join Microsoft MVP and certified trainer Nate Chamberlain in this full day workshop for newer Microsoft 365 users or evaluators looking to better understand all the possibilities Microsoft 365 brings to your organization.  

Attendees will learn about all the apps and latest features in Microsoft 365 that enable both individual and group productivity including SharePoint, Office 365 apps, Outlook, OneDrive, To Do, Teams, Lists, Planner, Viva, and more. 

We’ll go beyond definitions to explore specific business use cases, tips, and FAQs such as: 
  •  Microsoft 365 overview: What’s in my toolbox? 
  •  Understand the relationships between apps, and how permissions and Microsoft 365 groups power your modern work 
  •  Co-authoring documents, version history 
  •  Requesting files from others, sharing files, and managing access in OneDrive and SharePoint 
  •  Teams vs SharePoint vs OneDrive 
  •  Teams conversations vs chats vs emails 
  •  How do the newer Viva apps fit in? 
& more! 


Unboxing Microsoft 365: Make the most of your productivity toolbox

Microsoft Power Platform is a low-code platform for rapidly building customized end-to-end business solutions. It consists of five product areas: Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Power Virtual Agents, and Power Pages. Each area can be used individually or together. Thanks to native integration with Azure, developers can use their cloud development skills to extend Microsoft Power Platform with different Azure services. With a low-code integrated development approach, business goals can be achieved faster and free up time for the developers.

In this hands-on workshop, we will cover how to use Azure for custom development in Microsoft Platform services like Power Automate, Power Apps, Power Pages, Power Virtual Agents, Dataverse, and Power BI. 

We will cover:
•	Microsoft Azure Key Concepts
•	How does Power Platform use Azure?
•	How can fusion teams take advantage of Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Power Platform?
•	Authentication and Authorization in Azure
•	Azure + Power Automate
•	Azure + Power Apps
•	Azure + Power Pages
•	Azure + Power Virtual Agents
•	Azure + Power BI
•	Azure + Dataverse
•	Azure OpenAI + Power Platform
•	ChatGPT + Power Platform
•	What are Azure Functions?
•	What are Logic Apps?
•	What is Azure Bot Service?
•	How to create an enterprise-grade app using Azure and Microsoft Power Platform?

At the end of the workshop, attendees will have a working knowledge of Azure and how to use it to implement the customizations in the Microsoft Power Platform.

Access to Azure, Azure Open AI, and Microsoft Power Platform ( Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, and Power BI ) will be provided to create the customization. The target audience of this hands-on workshop is Developers, Power Users, and IT Pros who want to get into development. 
 
Please note: Attendees will need to bring their laptops with internet access and modern browsers like Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. The tablets will not work.


Hands-On: Azure, Azure OpenAI & ChatGPT For Power Platform Developers Masterclass

Learn how to start using Power Apps and Power Automate (Flow) with SharePoint Online to automate your daily workload. Discover how to use  connections to connect Power Apps to services like SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Excel, Outlook and even SharePoint on-premise. 

In this session I'll show you how to use Power Apps to: 
- Customize SharePoint list forms with Power Apps
- Create a canvas app based on a SharePoint list
- Connect to other data sources
- Apply Themes, branding, and layouts
- Manage custom conditional formatting
- Use the Formula bar to create complex functions
- Share your Power Apps with colleagues

This session will also discuss how to get started with Power Automate (Flow). Learn how to create custom Flows in an easy-to-use visual designer right in a web browser.  

In this session I'll show you how to use Power Automate (Flow) to:
- Connect to data in the cloud and on-premises
- Use triggers to start your flow
- Control branching in your flow with conditions and switches
- Review the run history of your Workflows
- Share your flows with colleagues
- How Licensing works

SharePoint is the underlying data storage system for OneDrive, Teams, and much more. Learning to use Power Apps and Power Automate (Flow) can help to address the challenges faced by today’s information workers.

Automate your Business Processes with Power Apps and Power Automate

Every organization that uses Teams needs an effective long term strategy. Microsoft Teams is the fastest-growing Microsoft application in history! 

Most organizations hear this news and immediately go into risk management mode. Who’s already using Teams? Should we stop people from using Teams? Do we need to put provisioning processes in place? What do we do with all this STUFF that gets created whenever someone spins up a new Team? What about SharePoint? It’s possible that more questions arise from a successful Teams deployment than an unsuccessful one! 

But how should you address your deployment and long term strategy of Microsoft Teams? How does Teams fit into your overall Modern Workplace vision?  

Attend this full-day workshop with Microsoft MVP’s Stephanie Donahue and Mark Rackley and:
-	Understand how Teams fits into your overall Microsoft 365 strategy
-	Learn to effectively manage your Teams environment including:
     o	Scale
     o	Governance 
     o	Retention
-	Dig into options for customizing Teams to get even more out of your Teams deployment including:
     o	bots
     o	web parts
     o	provisioning
-	Tackle how to train users on best practices and  prevent secure information from being accidentally shared

Microsoft Teams is here, it’s being adopted like crazy, and proper strategy and education is key to making the most of your Microsoft 365 investment. 


We’ve Deployed Microsoft Teams… Now What?

Have you only heard of Power BI in passing or have always been the end-user but now are ready to learn and invest in this tool to bridge the gap between data and decision making? Then this is a must attend workshop for you.

Scott Shearer, a Microsoft Business Applications MVP and MCT, will take you on a journey into the Microsoft Power BI world. This demo-rich half day workshop will introduce you to Power BI - no experience necessary. Scott will walk you through how to use commonly used data sources to build reports that help visualize your data and create amazing experiences for the end users.

In this workshop, you'll be introduced to:
•	Power BI Licensing
•	Using the Power BI Desktop App
•	Using the Power BI Service
•	How to create reports and dashboards
•	DAX fundamentals
•	Learning resources
•	And more (time permitting...)


Please note that this is not a hands-on workshop but attendees are welcome to follow along.


Power BI For The Absolute Beginner

In every organization there are a number of scenarios which require an Approval process. It could be Contract approvals, PTO/Leave Approvals, Event approvals and many other business processes. 

In this workshop we'll learn how to design and develop Multi-Stage Approval Workflows Using Power Automate. The workflow will move back and forth b/w different stages and will also learn how to restart a workflow from a given stage. We'll learn how to include Dynamic Approvers in the workflow process. 

Power Automate Multi-Stage Approval Workflows - Part 1

If you want to start creating Power Automate Cloud Flows and have little to no experience, this session is for you! 

Here's what you'll learn:
 - What are Power Automate Cloud Flows and why you should care
 - Types of Cloud Flows
 - How to create Flows from a template and from scratch
 - How to debug your Flows
 - Power Automate and SharePoint, Excel and other data sources
 - Power Automate Expressions
 - Power Automate approvals
And more…

All concepts will be presented using live demos.
While this is not a hands-on session, attendees are welcome to follow along.

Attend this session and gain the skills that you need to star creating Power Automate Cloud Flows today!


Power Automate Cloud Flows for the Absolute Beginner

In every organization there are a number of scenarios which require an Approval process. It could be Contract approvals, PTO/Leave Approvals, Event approvals and many other business processes. 

In this workshop we'll learn how to design and develop Automated escalations and Automated reminders. We'll implement timeout features in the workflows to escalate it to the next approver in the process. We will also learn how to log and retain workflow history beyond what Microsoft Power Automate offers out-of-box. We'll develop a button to kick off the workflow from a SharePoint library/list. 

Power Automate Multi-Stage Approval Workflows - Part 2

Microsoft Teams is a powerful collaboration platform that allows teams to work together seamlessly, no matter where they are. It's built on top of the Microsoft cloud, which means it can access all the powerful tools and applications available in Office 365. With Teams, you can manage conversations, share files, schedule meetings, and work with colleagues in real time.

This workshop will cover everything you need to know to get the most out of Microsoft Teams. We'll start with an overview of the platform and walk through how to start with Teams. From there, we'll dive into best practices for managing different scenarios, such as managing remote teams, running effective meetings, and collaborating on projects.
We'll also explore how Teams interacts with other Microsoft applications, such as Viva, Loop, SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, Dataverse, and the Power Platform. You'll learn how to use these tools to streamline your workflows and increase productivity.

The workshop will cover data, management, file sharing, governance, and application extensions with Power Platform. We'll also explore the different types of chats and adaptative cards available in Teams. By the end of the workshop, you'll understand how Teams works and how to use it to enhance collaboration within your organization.

To get the most out of the hands-on portion of the workshop, attendees should bring a laptop computer with a demo environment. 
While tablets or phones may be used, they may not offer the best experience for completing the labs. This workshop is perfect for organizations considering deploying Microsoft Teams or just starting their journey with the platform. We'll assess everything from A to Z to ensure you have the knowledge and tools to succeed.

Mastering Microsoft Teams

In this workshop, we will explore the basics of Information Architecture (IA) and its role in creating effective intranets using Microsoft 365, SharePoint, and Viva Connections. 

Whether you are just starting out or looking to improve your current intranet design, this workshop will provide you with the necessary tools and techniques to make the most of new and upcoming features, capabilities, and best practices. We'll cover key topics including creating and organizing content, building site structures, creating metadata, and leveraging search functionality.

You will take away:
* Approaches for planning navigation across the entire intranet and on individual sites
* Tips and best practices for audiences, hubs, and home sites
* Page design guidance that supports accessibility and great user experiences
• Effective use of metadata on pages and documents – and whether it is OK to use folders to organize your content.

You'll leave with a clear understanding of what IA is, why it matters, and how to get started with creating effective intranets that meet your organization's needs.

Information Architecture for SharePoint Intranets and Viva Connections in Microsoft 365

The complete Microsoft 365 workshop – from beginner to power user in a single day! This comprehensive workshop covers everything you need to know to get started quickly with Microsoft 
365. 

Upon completion of this workshop, you’ll know how to:
* Meet, chat, and work together more efficiently using Microsoft Teams.
* Manage and share content with SharePoint and OneDrive.
* Manage tasks and projects better with Planner, To-do, and Lists.
* Connect and engage with Outlook and Yammer.
* Organize and stay in sync across chat, meetings, or documents using Loop.
* Create and be more productive with Whiteboard, Forms, Word, * Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and more!

This hands-on workshop will empower you to use Microsoft 365 to its fullest potential – maximizing personal productivity, collaborating with your team, or solving challenges across the organization.

Discover what’s possible with Microsoft 365.

Microsoft 365 Power User Workshop

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing the way we work, and it's more accessible than ever before. 

This full-day workshop led by Stephanie Donahue and Mark Rackley will explore how AI is transforming organizations and what it means for you. Attendees will learn about the AI features available in M365 and how to use them to build applications and workflows. 

The workshop will also cover real-world examples of how companies are using AI today and what the future holds for this technology. Get ready to ride the AI tidal wave and discover how it can enhance your productivity and work efficiency.

Navigating the AI Revolution in M365

In recent years, the amount of digital content moving to the cloud has been dramatic. No doubt, this has made collaboration easier and more versatile, but it's also brought with it a new set of problems, such as oversharing, exfiltration of data, and non-compliant destruction of data. Organizations like yours must ensure data is available when required and protected when sensitive.

In this workshop, your expert presenters will share their collective knowledge and experience with a deep dive into what Microsoft Purview can do, including coverage of features such as Data Lifecycle Management, Records Management, and Microsoft Information Protection.

But it's not all theory. You'll leave the workshop with their recommended approach for implementation using a Day 1/Day 2/Day 3 incremental model that maintains a balance between the user experience and the necessary protections for your organization.

Now's the time to ensure your data is safe from prying eyes. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from two of the best in the industry on exactly how to make that happen.

Microsoft 365 Purview: Maintaining and Protecting Your Data Throughout its Lifecycle

Power BI is the gold standard for cloud based report delivery. It’s very approachable – you can get up and running with it in minutes, at the same time, it’s very robust, secure and extensible. As you might expect, it has many pieces and nuances, and it’s important to understand what is possible, even if you may not take immediate advantage of some features, in order to understand what to use when.

Join John White (MVP) and Jason Himmelstein (MVP) for this all-day tutorial which will help to guide you through building a complete analytical solution, using all the features of Power BI. We will start from nothing, and create queries that import and integrate data from many different sources. You will also learn how to refresh data using the on-premises data gateway and the personal gateway to connect to existing on-premises data from a variety of sources. In addition, you will see an overview of the many other additional features available in Power BI.

At the end of this seminar you will be ready to not only start using Power BI for your projects, but you will also understand which approach is best for different situations. Bring your questions, and we’ll do our best to answer them.

Everything you wanted to know about Power BI (but were afraid to ask!)

Spend any amount of time in the Power Platform forums and you will begin to see a lot of similar questions asked over and over again.  

In this workshop we will look at some of the most common issues Citizen Developers encounter when trying to develop applications and workflows in the Power Platform.  We'll examine each type of problem, analyze why they occur, and provide workarounds that you can use when you encounter them. 

The workshop will be divided into two parts.  In the first we'll concentrate on Power Apps and in the second we'll look at Power Automate. 

Here is a general list of the overall topics we will cover:
  • Morning: Power Apps
	○ Delegation
	○ Working with Dates and Times
	○ Conditional Formatting of data
	○ Passing Data to and Retrieving Results from a Flow
  • Afternoon: Power Automate
	○ Using Conditions and Switches effectively
	○ Handling Loops and Parallel Branches
	○ Working with Large Data Sources
	○ Implementing Error Checking/Correction
	○ Improving Performance

Advanced Power Apps and Power Automate: Workarounds for Common Problems

Intranets built in SharePoint Online are running on the galaxy's best platform for enterprise communication and collaboration.

In this half-day, beginner-friendly workshop, we'll learn about SharePoint but with an intranet focus. We'll cover tips and ideas for content strategy, planning and structuring an intranet, best practices for facilitating internal communication and collaboration, how Teams and Viva Connections play into things, digitizing forms, and using the Power Platform to create, automate, and visualize throughout SharePoint.

Note: This is not a hands-on build-an-entire-intranet-in-three-hours workshop. This is entirely focused on best practices and ideas for improving your intranet's content, structure, and processes.

Let's fix that intranet!

Fix that intranet! Improve your intranet content, structure, and processes

The best way you can customize and extend your SharePoint site is by using the SharePoint Framework (SPFx). This model is the way you customize and extend the SharePoint modern experience for SharePoint Online, but that’s not all because now you can use it to create apps for Microsoft Teams, Viva Connections, and Office apps.

In this half-day session, you’ll see how to get up your dev environment running in just a few minutes & then we’ll start building! By the end of the day, you’ll know how to build web parts, single-page apps (SPAs), extensions, integrate data from SharePoint and external sources, and so much more! Walk away with a ZIP filled with sample projects & tons of resources!

NOTE: Hey 👋, Andrew here… this workshop is not intended for attendees to follow along & build the same projects during the session. Instead, focus on learning, taking notes, & getting answers to your questions - you’ll walk away with everything at the end of the day!

Developers! Learn the SharePoint Framework to Customize and Extend Microsoft 365

A smooth deployment isn't enough. Driving effective utilization of SharePoint and Microsoft 365 is more than building effective migration strategies, training users on key features or sending out marketing emails. This master class provides a deep-dive on the components of user adoption. You'll learn why user adoption programs succeed and fail, gain practical experience designing adoption strategies and learn how to leverage innovation games to build consensus. 

During this workshop, you will:
• Learn the basic foundations of user adoption, including key intrinsic and extrinsic motivators
• Understand how different types of users in your organization can make (or break) your chances of user adoption success
• Understand how innovation games can help drive shared understanding, uncover user requirements and drive engagement/enthusiasm
• Examine real-world user adoption programs and determine how and why they were successful

Microsoft 365 User Adoption Master Class

You'll see where Power Apps fits in your toolset and how Power Apps can extend and build interfaces where you may have used InfoPath in the past. Demos and exercises will be used to illustrate the topics covered. You'll have the opportunity to "take the wheel" and test out Power Apps for yourself. Through a series of hands-on labs, you'll gain first-hand experience in customizing SharePoint/List forms with Power Apps and extending Lists and Teams user experiences. Your instructors will be there to assist anytime you have questions or need some help.

Attend this workshop and say goodbye to InfoPath. Gain the skills you'll need to immediately start customizing your Microsoft 365 SharePoint and Teams sites with Power Apps and Power Automate.

Notes and Requirements: 
To participate in the hands-on portion of this workshop, attendees should bring a laptop computer. Attendees who bring tablets, even with keyboards, will likely experience difficulties in successfully completing the labs.

We will be using Power Apps, SharePoint, Microsoft Lists, Teams and other Microsoft 365 components in our labs. Attendees may choose to use a personally owned or corporate Microsoft 365 tenant. If not, please register for a free Microsoft 365 Developer tenant prior to the workshop here:  https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/dev-program

If you will be using a company-provided laptop and will not be using your corporate tenant, please verify that you are able to connect to the Microsoft 365 environment that you will be using prior to arrival.

Check out our workshop preview: https://youtu.be/d8brL7-GDAc

Power Apps for SharePoint Bootcamp

With ChatGPT, other large language models and generative AI has caught the attention of global consumers, enterprises, and c-suite. In this demo-driven workshop, Microsoft Business Applications and AI MVP and Microsoft Certified Trainer Prashant G Bhoyar will cover how organizations can use Azure Open AI, ChatGPT, and Power Platform services to build next-gen end-to-end customer engagement.

We will cover :
•	The new and improved Power Virtual Agents key concepts
•	Copilot in Power Virtual Agents
•	Azure Open AI Key Concepts
•	ChatGPT key concepts
•	How can fusion teams take advantage of Azure Open AI, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Power Platform?
•	Authentication and Authorization in Azure
•	Azure API Management
•	Azure Communication Services
•	Power Platform Custom Connectors
•	Azure Open AI + Power Virtual Agents
•	ChatGPT + Power Virtual Agents
•	How organizations can build next-gen end-to-end customer engagement with Power Virtual Agents, Azure, Power Platform, ChatGPT, and Azure Open AI

At the end of the workshop, attendees will have a working knowledge of how to build next-gen end-to-end customer engagement with Power Virtual Agents, Azure, Power Platform, ChatGPT, and Azure Open AI.


Azure OpenAI, ChatGPT, and Power Platform Better Together

This half-day session covers how to build tabs, bots, and message extensions for Microsoft Teams, while also including Microsoft 365 apps. We will explore various development tools such as TeamsFX, the Teams Toolkit, YO Teams, the Dev Portal, and SPFx, giving you everything you need to get started building your own Teams apps. Whether you're a seasoned developer or new to the game, this half-day session will serve as your on-ramp to building MS Teams apps.

NOTE: Hey 👋, Andrew here… this workshop is not intended for attendees to follow along & build the same projects during the session. Instead, focus on learning, taking notes, & getting answers to your questions - you’ll walk away with everything at the end of the day!

Accelerate Your Teams App Development Journey: Build High-Quality Apps with Confidence

Collaboration lives at the core of a modern workplace and collaboration is built around the ability to access and share information. Not all information is the same and the ability to get content securely to the right people, both internal and external, at the right time keeps work moving. But how do you easily and securely your data in Microsoft 365? What are your options to ensure you retain control of your data?

The ability to safeguard your data is possible! In this workshop, we will show you:
  • The elements of the Microsoft data security landscape
  • How to secure you data with sensitivity labels
  • Control & manage sharing in your tenant
  • Prevent exfiltration with data loss prevention
  • How to detect, investigate, and view details on incidents and alerts
  • How to bring your audit logs into Azure

By the end of this workshop you will know what you can do to secure your data and allow your company to collaborate better while knowing you are secure!


Share, Protect, & Govern Your Data in Teams, SharePoint, & OneDrive

We will start the afternoon with an overview of Power Automate.  You'll learn about the different types of Flows that can be created with Power Automate and will start creating Flows yourself.

We'll then dive into Power Automate concepts including expressions, variables and loops.  We'll move on to thoroughly covering how to use Power Automate with SharePoint.  Finally, we see how to integrate Power Apps and Power Automate.

Live demos will be used to demonstrate all of these concepts.  You'll have the opportunity to implement what you have learned through a series of hands-on labs.

Notes and Requirements: 
To participate in the hands-on portion of this workshop, attendees should bring a laptop computer. Attendees who bring tablets, even with keyboards, will likely experience difficulties in successfully completing the labs.
 
We will be using Power Apps, SharePoint, Microsoft Lists, Teams, and other Microsoft 365 components in our labs. Attendees may choose to use a personally owned or corporate Microsoft 365 tenant. If not, please register for a free Microsoft 365 Developer tenant prior to the workshop here:  https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/dev-program
 
If you will be using a company-provided laptop and will not be using your corporate tenant, please verify that you are able to connect to the Microsoft 365 environment that you will be using prior to arrival.

Check out our workshop preview: https://youtu.be/d8brL7-GDAc

Power Automate for SharePoint Bootcamp

The platform shift to AI is well underway. Just as customers turned to Microsoft to help them make the shift to remote and flexible work, they’re now turning to us to help them understand how this new era of AI will change work yet again. Learn how AI is transforming work. Understand how Microsoft 365 can be your end-to-end solution spanning durable trends impacting teamwork, organizational productivity, and employee wellbeing. Join Liz and Mark - product leaders from Microsoft - as they highlight news and demos across Copilot, Teams, Viva, SharePoint, OneDrive, Lists, and more. Kick off 365 EduCon - Chicago to understand the strategy and vision - clarity on where Microsoft is taking productivity into the future.

Keynote: Flexible, AI-Powered Work

Microsoft Syntex brings advanced content AI solutions into your existing Microsoft 365 investment but is it something that will help you? 

In this session, we will go through what Microsoft Syntex is, how it works, and why it could be an important part of your enterprise in Microsoft 365. 

Introduction to Microsoft Syntex

Far more than data management apps, workflow solutions need to factor in the need for frequent change. You should expect even the best-designed models and applications to be regularly modified -- and that's a good thing. 

This has an impact on how to design processes, how to create forms and reports, how to connect to external data, and how to maintain internal data.

This session will talk about reasons why workflow solutions need to be modified so often, why you should embrace this, and strategies and tactics for addressing it. Its advice can be applied to Microsoft Power Automate (Flow), WEBCON BPS, Nintex, K2, SharePoint Designer, or most anything else.

Building Business Processes that Can & Will Evolve: Product-Neutral Principles

This session will provide you with the knowledge that you need to quickly become productive using Power BI.

You will be introduced to:
  - Power BI licensing
  - Power BI Components
  - Using the Power BI Desktop app
  - Using the Power BI Service
  - How to create reports and dashboards
  - Learning Resources

Don't have a Power BI license?  You can start using Power BI for free!

Attend this demo-rich session and get started with Power BI!

Beginners Guide to Power BI

he SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is now the established future for modern, client-side development in the Microsoft ecosystem. SPFx is used for SharePoint webparts and extensions, Teams apps, Adaptive Card Extensions (ACEs) and Microsoft Viva. 

The first step in SPFx development is understanding the model and building the appropriate development environment. We will cover these topics, configure a flexible developer environment and then build, debug, and deploy our first SPFx webpart.

Getting Started with the SharePoint Framework (SPFx)

If you create business solutions with SharePoint lists 
If you surface information and solutions via Microsoft Teams or SharePoint
If you're concerned with the potential complexity of Power Apps

This session will show why Power Apps canvas apps should be considered part of your toolset. 

We will cover:
 - Simple extensions of the SharePoint list experience with Power Apps
 - How to take data from SharePoint lists to Teams and mobile experiences
 - Power Apps examples that bring immediate value and set the stage for further enhancements

Intro to Power Apps for Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Lists

What's going with intranets these days? Should corporations be investing in creating or modernizing their Intranets? How does the rise of Teams and new tools like Viva impact your intranet? What does it all mean? 

Join Stephanie Donahue and Mark Rackley for a frank discussion about the future of Intranets and what you need to do today to prepare for tomorrow. 

The Intranet is dead... long live the Intranet!

You will learn the needs of generational workforces and how to create curated experiences in Teams based on your organization's personas.  

You will see how four diverse types of employee's experiences in Teams have unique needs: Deployment Team; Information Workers; Firstline Workers; and Executives. And learn to apply policies and settings that matter to them.

Create a Curated Experience in Teams!

On Feb 4, 2021, Microsoft Viva was announced and has taken the world of employee experience to a new level during the heart of the pandemic.  However, to many, questions are still left from what is this new thing to where do I get started?  

In this session we will talk about each of the modules that are available today, what you need for pre-requisites and what are some things you can do to start to take advantage of these experiences as well as what will change in the near future.  

Come make sense out of Microsoft Viva and take advantage of the employee experiences it offers.  

What is Microsoft Viva?

Microsoft Power Pages is a secure, enterprise-grade, low-code software as a service (SaaS) platform for creating, hosting, and administering modern external-facing business websites. Power Pages provides you with rich, customizable templates, a fluid visual experience through a reimagined design studio, and a new, integrated learning hub to quickly build sites that suit your unique business needs.

We'll learn how to create powerful external-facing websites that allow users outside their organizations to sign in with a wide variety of identities, create and view data in Microsoft Dataverse, or even browse content anonymously. 

Also, we'll learn to quickly create a website and customize it with pages, layout, and content. 

Build external-facing websites using Power Pages

Power BI Premium is a way to get past many limitations of the shared Power BI service. However, with great power comes great responsibility. 

This session will outline exactly what Power BI Premium is, what features it unlocks and what limitations it changes. We will also call out situations where Premium may not be appropriate, and the steps that you need to take to ensure that you get the maximum value from it. 

If you’re considering a move to Power BI Premium, you’ll want to attend this session. 

Power BI Premium – When Do I Need It?

Join our deep dive to learn more about accelerating your productivity, unleashing your creativity and uplevelling your skills with Microsoft 365 Copilot.  We'll include answering your questions on the governance and management of these AI driven experiences.

Microsoft 365 Copilot

Connect and Cultivate with the Sponsors in the Expo Hall

Ask the Experts - "Ask the Experts" is for attendees to engage in one-on-one conversations with subject matter experts. Participants have the opportunity to sit down with an expert and receive immediate answers or feedback to their questions on a specific topic of interest. These discussions provide a unique platform for attendees to tap into the knowledge and expertise of industry professionals, fostering meaningful conversations and promoting learning in a personalized and accessible manner.  Engage with speakers, Don Kirkman, Sean McDonough, Andrew Connell and Nate Chamberlain. 

Expo Hall and Ask the Experts

When you start using SharePoint everyone says, "Don't use folders." If that is true, how do we organize and find the stuff we put into SharePoint? Metadata. 

In this session, we will explore what metadata is, how to use it, and how to get our co-workers to use it. Recreate this demo when you get back to the office to win your users over to the metadata side. 

This demo works in SharePoint Online and On-Premises. 

Key Take Aways: 
  - What is metadata?
  - When to use metadata 
  - Choices for metadata 
  - When to use folders 

Metadata Rules. Folders Drool

Say your company rushes in the coming months to implement a private version of ChatGPT over their Intranet. An employee asks, "Hey ChatGPT, is my company going to have a layoff?" How will it answer?

This scenario becomes plausible as ChatGPT / GPT-4 can be connected to data sources for Q&A activities. If the data related to layoffs is accessible by the AI, it's possible that an employee could get an answer to their question. You should take great care before connecting it to your own internal data.

Unfortunately hearing ChatGPT, AI and Machine Learning terms thrown about like doubloons at a Mardi Gras parade in the news is giving many organizations FOMO. We'll discuss what you should know before you jump in.

In this session, we'll address:
- What are these technologies and how they will impact you
- How can these technologies be used in your organization
- Data and security considerations
- Preparing for unintended consequences

Join us to learn about this brave new world and how you could apply it in your own work.

How to Avoid AI Disasters: ChatGPT, Data Security, and Unintended Consequences

Creating compelling reports is an important skill in our data-centric world. Have you seen a nice-looking report or dashboard and wondered how you can get started creating one? Are you interested in learning how to create a Power BI dashboard, from simple data to actionable intelligence? Then this session is for you! 

In this session, we will talk about the building blocks of Power BI, look at different types of data you can use, and define what makes a good dashboard. 

You will learn when to use Power BI Desktop and when you need the Power BI service. We will also discuss how you can safely share Power BI insights inside and outside of your organization. 

You will leave this session with the resources you need to get started in your journey with Power BI.

Build your first Power BI dashboard

In this introductory developer session, we will talk about the functionality released in SPFx that supports list form customizers. This functionality allows developers to create a customized user interface for forms in SharePoint lists or libraries enhancing the user experience and providing the ability to include custom logic into the form. In this session we will create our first list form customizer and attach it to a SharePoint list. We will also look at how to enhance the user experience through the use of a Fluent UI design system. Attendees will leave with an understanding of how to create their first list form customizers and have resources to support further exploration. All are welcome and while development experience isn’t necessary for this session, we will be looking at code and talking about SPFx and React.

Introduction To Custom List Forms Using SPFx

If you are shopping for or planning a new intranet, what capabilities do you need to have? What do you need to think about to ensure that you deliver success? How does Microsoft Teams factor into your intranet? How can Microsoft Viva deliver value for your intranet users? How can the new features introduced for SharePoint, including Copilot, help me advance my intranet outcome goals? 

If you are wondering about the answers to these questions and more, this session is for you! We’ll review key concepts, ideas, capabilities, and planning tips to help ensure that your intranet drives value for everyone in the organization. 

Whether you are a seasoned intranet professional or just starting your journey, this presentation will provide you with valuable insights and practical guidance on what to include in your ultimate shopping list.

The Ultimate Shopping List for a Successful Intranet in Microsoft 365

Transform your Power App design process and drive business results with data from Microsoft Syntex. This AI-powered technology streamlines the data extraction process, providing you with the information you need to create custom Power Apps that meet the unique needs of your organization. With Power Apps, you can focus on designing the app that will deliver real business value, while it takes care of the technical details. 

Attend our session to discover how to efficiently extract data with Microsoft Syntex, store it in Dataverse, and manipulate it before creating your Power App.

Say goodbye to manual data extraction and hello to a more efficient, effective Power App design process. Unleash your creativity and take your app design to the next level with Microsoft Syntex.

Unleash Your Creativity: Design Power Apps Like a Pro with Microsoft Syntex

Microsoft Teams continues to be the work zone for employees. Integration with SharePoint, Microsoft Viva, Lists, Planner, OneNote, etc. make it possible to live and work inside of Teams all day. Managing the prime-time real estate of pinned apps in Teams can be challenging, especially as your employees' list of critical apps grows. How do you prioritize which apps get pinned for all users? And should you leave open navigation space so users can select their own favorite apps to pin?

In this session, we'll examine sizing and use of the Teams navigation bar. We'll discuss organizing principles, talk about types of models (pre-selected app pinning vs. employee self-service pinning) that may work for your organization, and give you tips on how to prioritize Teams navigation icons.

Manage the mess: Building an organizational strategy for pinned apps in Microsoft Teams

Do you want to expose your organizational educational as well as policies content directly through Microsoft Viva Learning so it appears through Microsoft Teams? If yes, this is exactly what you will learn how to do in this session.

We will demonstrate step by step how you can show any of your organizational content (videos, documents, etc.) directly through the free version of Viva Learning so it's always easily accessible easily by employees in your organization.

Showcase Your Organizational Content Through the Free Version of Viva Learning

With ChatGPT, other large language models and generative AI has caught the attention of global consumers, enterprises, and c-suite. In this demo-driven session, we will cover the key concepts and how organizations can use ChatGPT, Azure Open AI, and Power Platform services to build next-gen enterprise-grade applications.

We will cover :
 - Azure Open AI Key Concepts
 - ChatGPT key concepts
 - Co-Pilots in the Power Platform
 -  How can fusion teams take advantage of Azure Open AI, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Power Platform?
 -  How organizations can build next-gen enterprise-grade apps using ChatGPT, Azure OpenAI, and Power Platform services?

ChatGPT, Azure Open AI and Power Platform: Better Together

Data Protection is top of mind for all organizations that work with sensitive information.  As those organizations move into the Microsoft Cloud and adopt Cloud services faster and faster, establishing a strong data protection strategy is critical to protecting the information that your business runs on and preventing threats from both external attackers and insiders.  

Whether you're concerned about unstructured or structured data, risks from accidental or malicious data leaks, external threats, ransomware, external sharing, or any combination of these, having a Data Protection Strategy that protects your data no matter where it lives is a critical part of that strategy.  Microsoft Purview provides robust capabilities for protecting that data, both in the cloud, on-premises or shared externally and understanding those capabilities is an important part of rolling out controls to protect your information.  

Join Antonio as he shares important considerations for establishing a Data Protection strategy for your organization and learn how you can use the extensive features of Microsoft Purview to protect your critical business information.

Establishing a Data Protection Strategy with Microsoft Purview

In this exciting session, get ready to dive into the latest updates and advancements in the Microsoft Power Platform and the thriving community surrounding it. 

Discover the newest features and enhancements across Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Virtual Agents, and learn how these updates can supercharge your productivity and unlock new possibilities for building innovative solutions. 

Explore the vibrant Power Platform community, its valuable resources, and collaborative opportunities, and gain insights into how developers and enthusiasts are leveraging the platform to drive digital transformation and solve real-world challenges.

Highlights on What’s New for Microsoft Power Platform and Community

Networking Lunch - Join other attendees at lunch to share ideas, talk about the issues of the day, and maybe solve a few. While you enjoy lunch, you can find and connect with other like-minded people at tables designated for certain languages, technologies, and interests.

Expo Hall - Connect and Cultivate with the Sponsors in the Expo Hall

Ask the Experts - "Ask the Experts" is for attendees to engage in one-on-one conversations with subject matter experts. Participants have the opportunity to sit down with an expert and receive immediate answers or feedback to their questions on a specific topic of interest. These discussions provide a unique platform for attendees to tap into the knowledge and expertise of industry professionals, fostering meaningful conversations and promoting learning in a personalized and accessible manner.  Engage with speakers, Daniel Glenn, Amarender Peddamalku, Sue Hanley and Matt Meyer. 

Networking Lunch, Expo Hall & Ask the Experts

Every organization has data considered sensitive to their business, employees, or even the industry they exist within.  In 2022, over 1800 organizations reported data breaches in the U.S. alone, affecting over 400 million individuals. As a result, protecting its data has become a priority for many organizations worldwide.  Microsoft provides several tools for identifying sensitive information within the organization and protecting it from being provided to sources that should not have it.

In this session, we'll cover features and processes such as Microsoft Information Protection (MIP), Data Loss Prevention (DLP), and more to help you protect your organization's sensitive information from leaving your control and falling into the hands of those that should not have it.

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

The creation of the first intranet happened in the latter part of the 20th century, but no one would recognize that as an intranet by today’s standards. Since then, intranet implementations and the platforms they’re built on have matured significantly and grown more complex. 

In this session, we’ll be looking at the modern intranet through the lens of SharePoint. There are plenty of decisions to consider and points to deliberate even before you jump into action. We’ll discuss optimal team composition, roles that should be factored-in, technological considerations, stakeholder involvement/representation, project lifecycle needs, launch considerations, and more. 

I’ll be sharing my experiences, highlights, triumphs, and painful lessons learned architecting intranets of varying sizes for the last decade or so. 

In short: we will be covering all of the things I wish *I* had known before I ever started building intranets in the hopes they will spare you some of the pain I endured.

Reaching Airspeed Velocity to Get Your New Intranet Off the Ground

Power BI has revolutionized the industry by accelerating our ability to deliver Data Analytics solutions.  But how do we ensure the code we build is reliable and the data is produced in a timely and trustworthy manner? 

Enter DataOps, a better way to develop and deliver Data Analytics Solutions.  

In this session, I’ll cover the concept of DataOps, why it matters to Power BI, and the principles that can drive you to continuously improve.

DataOps 101 – A Better Way to Develop and Deliver Data Analytics

The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is a development toolkit for building apps and web parts for Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Adaptive Cards, and Office.com. 

In this session, attendees will learn how to use the SPFx to create custom solutions for these platforms. We will cover the basics of setting up an SPFx development environment, including how to create a new project and configure it to work with Teams, Outlook, and Office.com. 

We will also discuss how to use Adaptive Cards to create interactive and dynamic user interfaces for these platforms. Finally, we will demonstrate how to deploy and test SPFx apps in a real-world scenario. 

Attendees will leave this session with the knowledge and skills needed to start building custom solutions for Teams, Outlook, Adaptive Cards, and Office.com using the SharePoint Framework.

Building solutions for Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and Office.com with SharePoint Framework

Power Apps is a great no-code tool lets "citizen developers" create applications that are designed to run on Desktop PCs, Web Browsers, Tablets, and Mobile devices. But if you want to avoid building 3 or 4 different versions of your App you need to know how to design your Power App to adjust for different sizes, resolutions, rotation, and types of layouts. 

In this session we'll review all the Tips and Tricks you need to know to easily build one Power App that will adjust to work on any device that supports Power Apps and look good in the process.

Microsoft Power Apps: Building Responsive Design Apps for Every Device

Unleash the full potential of your data creation process with Power Automate and Microsoft Syntex. Say goodbye to manual tasks and hello to automation. Power Automate provides a simple yet powerful interface to create custom workflows that streamline your data creation process. 

Microsoft Syntex, on the other hand, utilizes AI to extract valuable information from unstructured sources and categorize it for you. With these tools working together, you'll see improved accuracy, efficiency, and an overall increase in productivity. 

Join our session to learn how to upgrade your data creation process today with Power Automate and Microsoft Syntex.

Streamline data creation using Power Automate and Microsoft Syntex

Approvals and Updates are two apps in Microsoft Teams you can use to customize and standardize routine business processes for your team. For example, you might customize a project request template only your team can use. 

Or maybe you want to create a travel approval template the whole organization can use. And with Updates, you can automate regular requests to gather project status updates, performance reviews, and more. 

In one hour, you'll learn how these two built-in Teams tools can boost your team's consistency and efficiency.

A closer look at Approvals and Updates in Microsoft Teams

Whenever we poll an organization for the top features for their Intranet, People Search that actually works is always in the top three. You'd think this would have been long solved, but it's often still a challenge for many organizations. 

There are a number of reasons for this:
 - People data is often spread in many different places and systems in an organization, and there is no single version of the truth
 - As a result, Azure AD, which is the core of identity in Microsoft 365, is either not well populated or just plain wrong
 - People search and people cards in Microsoft 365 has gotten tremendously better, but it's still not all the way there

With so much of an organization's IP and knowledge actually in the heads of the people, finding a person or expert is key to success for the organization as a whole.

In this session we'll go over a series of steps any organization can take to get a handle on their people in Microsoft 365, and provide a simple and rich experience for finding the right person at the right time.

 - Review of Azure AD identities and how they are managed
   * Synced users from on-premises AD with Azure AD Connect
   * Cloud only identities
   * What IT manages, and what users or the business can self-manage
 - Other sources of truth, and how they can be synced to Azure AD
   * HRIS, payroll
   * Customizing and extending Azure AD with additional attributes specific to the organization
   * Easily deploying and configuring an open-source, rich people search web part that can be used organization wide or within departments or business units
     - https://github.com/YannickRe/spfx-msgraph-peoplesearch
   - Building fully-customized person pages and self-managed profile pages

We'll also share real-world examples of this in use for a municipal police force, large charity, and post-secondary college.

Building a Rich People Search with OOTB and Open Source Components

The future of the modern workplace is now with Microsoft Copilot! In this session you'll learn how Microsoft Copilot works with Microsoft 365, Bing Chat, Microsoft Edge, and Windows 11 to streamline your business processes and increase productivity while saving you time and effort.

Deep Dive into Microsoft 365 Copilot across pivotal apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote. Discover how Copilot enhances your capabilities for document creation, data analysis, presentation design, email management, and note-taking. It’s your digital companion, optimizing each task, making daily operations smoother and unleashing new potentials for efficiency.

You'll discover Microsoft's new Bing Chat, powered by ChatGPT. Learn how to get more relevant, up-to-date, and annotated search results using natural language chat. You'll discover how the new Bing Chat helps you draft emails, summarize documents, draft blogs, and more!  

The future of the modern workplace is here! Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how Microsoft Copilot can help you achieve more with less effort! With lots of demos and practical tips, you'll leave with a solid understanding of how to use Microsoft Copilot to maximize your productivity.

Microsoft Copilot - the future is now!

SharePoint and OneDrive include several content recovery options for SharePoint and OneDrive for Business administrators, site collection administrators, and end users. Educating your end users on SharePoint recovery options like the site recycle bin, versioning, and site collection recycle bin can lighten the burden on your admins.

Using either a GUI or PowerShell you can backup and restore your entire SharePoint Server farm or components of it. In SharePoint Server you can also perform more granular content backups by exporting site collections, site, libraries, and lists, and there are  options for recovering these site collections, sites, lists and libraries from content databases that are no longer part of your SharePoint Server farm. 

With a vast majority of your SharePoint Server content stored in SQL Server it is imperative that you have an efficient way to recover items or entire databases as quickly as possible.

This discussion will introduce the Best Practices framework that will allow your SharePoint Server  administrators to configure SharePoint as well as SQL Server for quick content recovery, minimizing the downtime and providing shorter and achievable Service Level Agreements (SLA’s).

Data recovery options for SharePoint/OneDrive

In this session, we will explore the powerful combination of Power Apps and Dataverse for building scalable applications. Discover how to leverage the robust features of Power Apps to create custom applications and extend their capabilities using the rich data model provided by Dataverse.

Learn best practices for designing scalable apps, optimizing performance, and ensuring data integrity, enabling you to deliver high-quality solutions that can grow with your organization's needs

How to build scalable apps with Power Apps and Dataverse

Ask the Experts - "Ask the Experts" is for attendees to engage in one-on-one conversations with subject matter experts. Participants have the opportunity to sit down with an expert and receive immediate answers or feedback to their questions on a specific topic of interest. These discussions provide a unique platform for attendees to tap into the knowledge and expertise of industry professionals, fostering meaningful conversations and promoting learning in a personalized and accessible manner.  Engage with speakers, Treb Gatte, Andy Huneycutt, Matt Meyer, Amit Vassu

D&I session Leadership - eather Newman and Liz Sundet  will discuss how showing respect, empathy, and kindness to those you work with builds trust across your team. We will discuss tactics for establishing your base of knowledge in your field, how to give your team autonomy, how to build authentic communication and how to lead with compassion, all of which are tools for becoming a great leader.

"

Expo Hall, Ask the Experts & D&I at Collab Studio

Microsoft Syntex marks a significant stride in the intelligent classification of SharePoint content. At the heart of Syntex lies document processing models to effectively assist in managing content. The modern workplace generates vast amounts of unstructured content, which demands large-scale management through automatic structuring, including metadata and content types, and governance, such as security and compliance controls.  Fortunately, Microsoft Syntex offers precisely that, and much more!

To showcase this novel capability, Joanne will explain all Syntex model types and provide use-cases for each one. She'll then conduct a live demo to highlight the creation of a Microsoft Syntex unstructured document processing model to efficiently classify SharePoint documents and then integrate it with Power Automate and Syntex Content Assembly to automatically generate related documents using a Syntex modern template!. The walkthrough will cover the complete end-to-end process from setup to model training and deployment.

Exploring Microsoft Syntex Document Processing from Start to Finish

In this session we’ll learn how to design and develop Multi-Stage Approval Workflows Using Power Automate. 

We will also learn how to restart the workflow from a given stage and how to include Dynamic Approvers. We'll dig into how to design and develop Automated escalations and Automated reminders. We will also learn how to log workflow history and ways to retain the history indefinitely. 

Power Automate Multi-Stage Approval Workflows

Data security is more important than ever before. As businesses and individuals move more of their data to the cloud, protecting it from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction is essential. 

In this session, we will focus on data security for end users in Microsoft 365. We will discuss the common threats to data security and the security features available in Microsoft 365 to help protect your data. We will also share tips and advice on how to use these features effectively.

By the end of this session, you will be able to:
- Understand the importance of data security and the common threats to data security
- Identify the key data security features in Microsoft 365
- Learn how to use Microsoft 365 security features to protect your data
- Implement best practices for data security in your workplace

This session is ideal for end users in Microsoft 365 who want to learn more about how to protect their data. No prior knowledge of data security is required.

 

Data Security: It's Not Just for IT Anymore

GitHub Actions enable developers to automate repetitive and complex manual tasks. 

In this session, you'll learn how you can use GitHub Actions to create automation workflows including robust CI & CD processes to build, test & deploy solutions. But we won’t stop there. 

Learn how to instrument all sorts of things, optimize your workflows, deploy Azure resources with zero credentials, create custom actions, and more! Regardless if you’re building SharePoint Framework projects, Azure solutions, or something else. 

GitHub Actions: Tips, Tricks, & Best Practices for your Microsoft 365 and Azure Projects

The Microsoft Power Platform CoE toolkit is a collection of components and tools that are designed to help you get started with developing a strategy for adopting and supporting Microsoft Power Platform, with a focus on Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents.

Join us in this session as we deploy and explore the components of the Power Platform CoE Starter Kit. 


Get started with the Power Platform Center of Excellence starter Kit

Join us for a session on Microsoft Teams Mesh—a transformative platform revolutionizing collaboration by extending the capabilities of Microsoft Teams. 

Explore Teams Mesh features, benefits, and integration with Microsoft Teams infrastructure. Discover real-time communication tools, immersive meeting experiences, and the extension of collaboration boundaries with AR, VR, and spatial computing. 

Learn about security, privacy considerations, and real-world use cases.  Embrace a new era of teamwork with Microsoft Teams Mesh!

Exploring the Power of Microsoft Teams Mesh: Revolutionizing Collaboration in the Digital Era

Your intranet is the entry point to all your company tools and resources. This can be anything from an external website or solution, a custom application, etc. How to centralize all these different tools and applications is one of the most common questions Sympraxis Consulting gets from clients. 

Typically, organizations will manually add links to these resources using various web parts across many sites. There is no way out of the box to search your environment for these links. This introduces individual management of enterprise resources, which can cause challenges when there are company changes. 

For example, if your company uses Workday for their finances but then decides to switch to Oracle, you’ll have to manually adjust all the different links to Workday within your intranet. If all those links are centralized it is scalable and much easier to manage as the owner of that link can instead edit in one place and have it reflected everywhere.

 
In this session, we'll take a holistic view of the technology through the lens of the Maturity Model for Microsoft 365 and gain an understanding of current state vs. desired state can help organizations in these important ways: 
- Define current state and limitations with out of the box web parts
- Understand and compare options for solving your organizations quick links issues through extension
- Identify the pros and cons of each approach 


Organizational Tools & Resources: Configuration thru Customization

Virtual events have become vital to connect and communicate with your organization, customers, and partners in the hybrid work era. Whether you want to host a company-wide town hall, an internal broadcast, or a customer-facing webinar, you need a reliable and easy-to-use platform to deliver a high-quality and interactive experience. In this session, you will learn how to use Town Halls in Microsoft Teams, a new virtual event experience that integrates advanced production capabilities into the familiar Teams meeting experience. You will discover how to create, schedule, and manage Town Halls in Teams and use the virtual green room, the studio mode, and the Q&A panel. You will also get a sneak peek into the upcoming features and enhancements that will make Town Halls even more powerful and engaging. Join us and learn how to take your virtual events to the next level with Town Halls in Microsoft Teams.

Host engaging and professional virtual events with Town Halls in Microsoft Teams 

What do companies like Lego, AEG, Polaris, Takeda, and the Special Olympics have in common? They all have useful tips and tricks around driving internal usage of software to help them move from synchronous work to asynchronous work. 

In this session we will hear from those customers and learn how they drove success in their organizations and how you can as well.

Real World Tips and Tricks for Driving Software Deployment

Log Analytics and Application Insights are increasingly becoming the storage mechanism of choice for telemetry data. At its core is Azure Data Explorer (ADX) or "Kusto", and the KQL language for analysis, which can also be used independently. Power BI is of course the standard for data analysis and reporting in the Microsoft ecosystem. 

It's easy enough for Power BI to report on Log Analytics and ADX data, but the devil is in the details. When should you use native KQL Queries? When should you use Direct Query? What about Hybrid tables and aggregations? 

This session will dive deeply into the nuances of reporting on both Log Analytics and ADX data with Power BI. 

Azure Monitor, Azure Data Explorer and Power BI, Oh My!

Join in to hear and see the future vision of SharePoint from the user experience (UX) perspective. You'll hear both now and future context, a peek behind how Microsoft plans to evolve SharePoint design, and best practices when creating and building gorgeous sites and pages for communication creators and consumers alike. One not to miss if you want to get clarity on where SharePoint is heading next.

SharePoint in the AI Era: Introducing Copilot in SharePoint

Got a burning question you just can't yet find an answer to? This AMA is to be a lively live hour of Q&A - to ask questions and voice feedback - direct to the product teams across OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, Viva, Syntex, Yammer, Power Platform, and more. 
And then enjoy pizza and casual networking with all. 
You'll come in scratching your head and leave with a head full of answers, and maybe a belly full of 'za.

Microsoft AMA + SharePint

With the introduction of Microsoft 365 Copilot, it's tempting to think that information architecture is no longer relevant. After all, Copilot promises to find all your information effortlessly, acting as your personal assistant. 

However, we need to consider potential challenges. What if Copilot leads users to sensitive content accidentally? Have we adequately secured our environment in our rush to enable remote work? Additionally, how valuable is the content returned in search queries? Is it time to revisit site lifecycle management and retention to optimize Copilot's performance? 

Join this session as we discuss strategies to prepare your M365 environment for the future, ensuring seamless engagement with Microsoft 365 Copilot while addressing critical information architecture considerations.

Rethinking Information Architecture in the Era of Microsoft 365 Copilot

If you've heard of Power Automate Business Process Flows; they're an implementation of stage/state machine logic available to companies with Premium licensing. 

SharePoint Designer 2013 supported stages, and third-party options range from emulation (Nintex) to engine-level support (WEBCON). 

This session will start by explaining how stage-based designs and processes work, move on to why they're often far better than classic sequential flowcharts, and conclude with examples of how to build and run such solutions. 

It's the most useful workflow "secret" you can possibly learn.

Stages and State Machines: The Ideal Way to Model and Manage Workflows

Every organization is a data organization and you must collaborate on data to stay on track. Sharing insights from within Power BI will give you an advantage and help steer your organization in the right direction.

However there are some pitfalls with sharing - if you don’t know your options and set proper governance, you could be on your way to a data breach or giving your private information to the competition.

In this session, you will get a short introduction to Power BI and understand where data resides, why and how you should share with your colleagues and outside partners, and get a strategy for setting governance for your data. You will walk away with the outline of a governance plan, an understanding of your sharing options, and the sharing settings you should immediately turn off.

Power BI Sharing - Your Options for Keeping Everyone Informed

Users are spending more and more time using Teams. It makes sense to try and reduce the friction of context switching by bringing our custom applications directly into Teams where they are working. We are able to harness the collaborative nature of Teams and SharePoint in one application and render it in many different contexts. 

In this introductory developer session we will look at how to create and deploy a SharePoint Framework WebPart and have it be usable in Teams. We will use one code base to make the web part Teams aware in both a Teams Tab and a Personal App. We will look at how to use that app to read and write data into SharePoint using PnPjs.

Users will leave with an understanding of how to leverage SPFx to create applications they can use in Teams and resources on how to explore this further. 

Code Once Use Everywhere - Using SPFx to create applications that work in Teams and SharePoint

Power Apps cards are micro-apps with enterprise data and workflows and interactive, lightweight UI elements that other applications can use as content. Because they're part of the Power Apps ecosystem, cards can add business logic through Power Fx and integration with business data through Power Platform connectors. Using cards, you can quickly build and share rich, actionable apps without any coding or IT expertise.

Join us in this session to get started with Card in Power Apps. We will take a tour of the Power App Card Designer, go over the controls it has to offer, connect to different data sources and send a Card to a Teams channel. 


Create Adaptative Cards with Power Apps

Microsoft Teams has been designed for teamwork and flexibility, powered by the Microsoft cloud to bring together the best of Microsoft 365 into a single workspace for working with people, managing conversations, maintaining files, and integrating Office 365 applications, so everyone has instant access to everything they need for a successful collaboration.

With great features come great questions, and this session will cover how to plan, implement, and master Microsoft Teams. Be ready for an overview of Microsoft Teams, examples of how to get started with Microsoft Teams, best practices for managing different scenarios, and how Viva, Loop, the Power Platform, SharePoint + OneDrive, and Dataverse interacts with Microsoft Teams. 

If your organisation is considering deploying or starting your journey to Microsoft Teams, this session is for you as we'll assess everything from A to Z.

Become a Microsoft Teams Rockstar

Microsoft List (and SharePoint) forms, Forms with Power Apps, and Microsoft Forms. Which one (or more) should you use, and when? 

This session will walk through updated capabilities and options available to no-code makers and citizen developers when building solutions with forms. 

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

We'll learn how to use SharePoint Syntex that uses advanced AI and machine teaching to amplify human expertise, automate content processing, and transform content into knowledge.

Automate content processing using AI & SharePoint Syntex

Power Fx is the low-code language that can be used across the Microsoft Power Platform. It's a general-purpose, strong-typed, declarative, and functional programming language. Citizen developers and Professional developers can use it to build business applications.

In this demo-drive session, we will cover the following topics in detail.
•	What is Power Fx?
•	What are Data Types?
•	What are Operators and identifiers, Tables, Variables, Imperative logic, and Global support? 
•	How can we use Power Fx in Power Platform to build the business application?
•	Power Fx Best Practices

Power Fx for Absolute Beginners

Learn about and see demos of the new features coming to OneDrive that will enhance sharing, collaboration, offline use, and more. You'll get the latest news, roadmap, plus a few tips and tricks along the way.

What's new in OneDrive

Ask the Experts - "Ask the Experts" is for attendees to engage in one-on-one conversations with subject matter experts. Participants have the opportunity to sit down with an expert and receive immediate answers or feedback to their questions on a specific topic of interest. These discussions provide a unique platform for attendees to tap into the knowledge and expertise of industry professionals, fostering meaningful conversations and promoting learning in a personalized and accessible manner.  Engage with speakers, Julie Turner, Virgil Carroll, Daniel Glenn and Derek Cash-Peterson

D&I session at Collab Studio - Mentorship: Speakers, Heather Newman and Liz Sundet will discuss the benefits of both being and having a mentor. Having an outside eye to your career from both perspectives is crucial to your growth. Do you have a personal career "Board of Directors"? Anyone who’s ever participated in mentoring will tell you that, “We learn when we teach and we teach when we learn." We'll share our experiences in mentoring and setting up those circles of trust for yourself.

Expo Hall, Ask the Experts, & D&I at Collab Studio

Everyone talks about them, but what the heck are they and how can I use them? We will start with some demos of how to use custom content types, then on to what the heck are content types anyway and we will end with another demo to build content types in the browser.

Key Takeaways:  
1) What are content types?
2) Planning content types 
3) Creating site columns 
4) Creating content types 
5) Using content types 

Content Types: Easier Than the Theory of Relativity

Power Automate helps us to create intelligent automated workflows between your favorite apps and services to get notifications, synchronize files, collect data, and do much more. 

Power Automate ( Microsoft Flow ) has opened Pandora's box of features that developers can use to build real-life enterprise-grade solutions using the low code paradigm. For example, calling the SharePoint REST APIs, calling Microsoft Graph APIs, calling External web services, and integrating with Azure services such as Azure Functions and Azure Dev Ops. 

In this demo-driven session, we will cover how developers can use some of the rich feature sets of Power Automate ( Microsoft Flow ) and build real-life enterprise-grade business applications.

You will learn:
 - How to use Azure AI Services like ChatGPT with Power Automate?
 - How to consume the REST Endpoints using Power Automate ( Microsoft Flow )?
 - How to consume Microsoft Graph APIs using Power Automate ( Microsoft Flow )?
 - How to call Azure Function from Power Automate ( Microsoft Flow )?
 - How to build enterprise-grade business applications in Microsoft 365 using 
 - Power Automate ( Microsoft Flow )?
 - How to convert Power Automate ( Microsoft Flow ) to Logic Apps?


Power Automate for Microsoft 365 Developers

In this session we will go over how to configure create a custom connector that accesses Microsoft Cognitive Services Face API.  We will then build a Power App that will be used to configure and train face models and be used for facial recognition.

Using Power Apps as A Rapidly Deployable Front End for Open AI

SPFx can be used to build beautiful, modern solutions for Office 365, Microsoft Teams and Viva, but the usefulness of these solutions is limited if not connected to live data.

We will cover how to connect to SharePoint and Microsoft Graph directly using the REST APIs for each data source. We will then explore how to use PnPJs and the Microsoft Graph toolkit (MGT) to simplify and accelerate both the development and performance of our SPFx solutions.

Connecting SharePoint Framework (SPFx) projects to your data

Metrics and scorecards are a Power BI feature that enables you to track and act upon on the metrics that matter to your organization.

In this presentation, you'll learn
1. What are Power BI Metrics and how are they intended to be used
2. See some examples of real-world scorecards
3. See how to set up a scorecard demo
4. Show you how to set up Power Automate to trigger actions when a metric status changes
5. Show the Metric integration in Microsoft Teams

Power BI Metrics - Tracking the metrics that matter to you

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, organizations need to ensure that their intranets and Microsoft 365 environments are effectively governed to meet both business and compliance requirements. But having a governance plan is not enough. Unless you can effectively define and communicate roles and responsibilities, provide actionable guidance and best practices to site owners, content authors, and end-users, your governance plan will not be effective or sustainable.

Attend this session to learn how you can effectively plan and implement governance for your intranet, Microsoft Viva, and Microsoft 365 to support your organization's digital transformation. We will also talk about governance planning for new capabilities - like Copilot and other generative AI tools. Whether you are just starting your governance journey or looking to take your existing efforts to the next level, this presentation will provide you with actionable insights, practical guidance, and content to help you get started!

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Community Days | 365 EduCon Chicago - A Microsoft 365 Conference