Learn from the top Microsoft 365, Power Platform and AI experts at TechCon365 SeattleTechCon365 is a leading Microsoft training conference formerly known as 365 EduCon, dedicated to empowering professionals across industries with the latest insights into Microsoft technologies, including Microsoft 365, Power Platform, and AI. The conference provides a unique platform for learning, networking, and collaboration, fostering innovation and excellence in the rapidly evolving tech landscape.&nbsp;Find out more:&nbsp;<a href="https://techcon365.com/Seattle" target="_blank">https://techcon365.com/Seattle</a>

TechCon365 and PWRCON - A Microsoft 365 and Power Platform Conference

Room 607

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. We’ll talk about why IA is so important to AI – and how you can ensure that your intranet content can act as a valuable partner in your AI solutions. 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.
 -  How to leverage Viva Connections to bring your intranet to your users in the flow of work – and how to plan audiences to ensure that the right tools and information gets to the right groups.
 -  How Copilot can help your information architecture and vice versa.

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.

Best Practices for Intranet Information Architecture: the key to unlocking AI’s full potential

Findability is much more than technology. It needs to be the combination of culture, communication, and technology, as well as how your content is organized. 

This workshop discusses the most important success factors of enterprise search in Microsoft 365: roles and responsibilities, search metrics, risk management, governance, search lifecycle, as well as how to implement it well. Agnes uses real world examples to go through all the steps to enable you to create an actionable plan for your organization. 

Improve Findability in Microsoft 365

Effective governance policies play a big role in the successful roll-out of the Power Platform across the organization and running it on a scale. In this half-day workshop, we will cover the key principles of Power Platform Governance, the tools available at our disposal, and how to use those. The governance policies will include Power Automate, Power Apps, Power Virtual Agents, Power Pages, Dataverse, and Power BI.

In this demo-driven workshop, we will cover,
1. Power Platform Governance Overview
2. Center of Excellence ( CoE ) Starter Kit
3. Managed Environments
4. How to use Co-Pilot for governance?
5. Automation Kit
6. Data Loss Prevention policies
7. User Management
8. Permission manager
9. License and capacity management
10. Security and Control
11. Best Practices

At the end of the workshop, attendees will have a working knowledge of how to implement Governance in Power Platform.


Half-Day Workshop : Power Platform Governance 101

In today's rapidly evolving technological landscape, the question of whether artificial intelligence (AI) will replace enterprise search is becoming increasingly relevant. In many organizations, it’s not a question anymore - rather it’s an “all-in” on AI.

During this session, we will explore the evolving relationship between information retrieval and content generation. We will discuss the implications of AI in the context of governance, information management, information architecture, permissions, as well as the balance (or the lack of balance) between information retrieval and content generation.

Join us for this thought-provoking discussion on the future of enterprise search in the era of AI. Gain valuable insights, and discover strategies for harnessing the power of AI while ensuring responsible and effective implementation within your organization.

Will AI replace search?

Adaptive Card Extensions are a new way to create custom components that can render dynamic and interactive content in SharePoint pages, news, and lists. 

In this session, you will learn how to use the SharePoint Framework to create and deploy Adaptive Card Extensions, and how to use them as part of dashboards. 

You will also learn how to leverage Viva Connections, a new solution that brings your SharePoint intranet to Microsoft Teams, to enhance the reach and impact of your Adaptive Card Extensions. 

You will see how Viva Connections can help you create a unified and personalized employee experience that boosts engagement, productivity, and wellbeing.

Improve your users' productivity with custom Viva Connections cards

Join us for an engaging and informal lunchtime gathering where participants delve into topics that matter to them. Discussion Bytes is a space for sharing ideas, perspectives, and experiences.  Grab your lunch, pull up a chair, and let’s exchange insights over a byte-sized conversation.  Moderated by Wes Preston.

Discussion Bytes - How to help users achieve their desired skill levels and keep up with changes

In today's fast-paced business environment, quick and easy access to knowledge is critical for success. Unfortunately, many organizations and people struggle with finding and accessing information within their intranets. 

In this session, we’ll review several different strategies to improve findability in Microsoft 365 – from simple tips to help users be more successful with search to more strategic approaches for intranet navigation and structure using home sites and hubs, information delivery with Viva Connections, improving knowledge management with Viva Topics and Viva Engage, and how Copilot can help. 

You will learn practical and actionable tips and tricks that you can implement immediately as you evolve your employee experiences.

Elevating Your Experience: Improving Findability and Knowledge Discovery in Microsoft 365 and ShareP

It's a flat new world in SharePoint. We've moved on from classic and hierarchical site collections and built an array of modern sites. But how do we organize our content, sites, and intranets in this new world? 

This session introduces home sites and hubs and provides guidance on how to build a strong content management strategy for their use. We'll define what home sites and hubs are, lay the conceptual groundwork for understanding their use, and provide a creative new way of conceptualizing the logical ties between your myriad of flat SharePoint sites. 

We’ll also discuss how Viva Connections plays into our intranet and home site strategy.

Building your organizational home site & hubs strategy

Are you tired of your intranet looking like it’s stuck in the 90s? Do you want to give it a makeover without breaking the bank? Look no further than Copilot, Viva Connections, and some critical best practices for helping your intranet deliver ongoing value to your employees and the organization.

In this presentation, we’ll talk about how to perform intranet surgery using the latest AI-powered tools from Microsoft. With Copilot, you can generate new content for your intranet in seconds, from catchy headlines to informative articles. With Viva Connections, you can customize your intranet to match your organization’s brand and culture and provide a seamless experience for your employees in the flow of work – to connect, collaborate, and learn. With the latest best practices for discovery and governance, you can ensure that your intranet rehab is successful and transforms your intranet powerful tool for communication, collaboration, and innovation.

Intranet Surgery: How Copilot and Viva Connections can give your intranet a makeover

Join us for an enlightening session that dives into communication and collaboration's impact on employee experience, focusing on empowering your workforce with Microsoft Teams best practices.

During this session, we'll share how AI will revolutionize how employees work and share a wealth of insights, strategies, and real-world examples to equip you with the needed knowledge.

Session Highlights:
 - Gain a better understanding of employee motivations
 - Overcoming Hybrid Work Challenges
 - Leveraging learnings from CX to improve EX
 - Making communications seamless
 - The current and future role of AI
 - And more

Join us and discover the power of Microsoft Teams in fostering productive and engaged hybrid teams. Whether your team members work from home, in different offices, or in different time zones, this session will equip you with the insights needed to create a seamless and collaborative hybrid work environment.

Elevate Your Workforce: Harnessing Microsoft Teams & AI for Employee Empowerment

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 in complexity. 

In this session, we’ll be looking at the modern intranet with a focus on SharePoint-based design and implementation. 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 the things I wish *I* had known before I ever started working on intranets in the hope that they will spare you some of the pain I endured.

Helping Your New Intranet Reach Airspeed Velocity

Come and learn the top 10 best practices you should be doing to both manage and secure your environment. Tenant configuration can be a balance of usability and security when planning your roll-out or management model. 

These best practices will assist you in improving visibility into M365 and help you understand the necessary controls needed to have in place to ensure your tenant is protected.

Top 10 best practices every Admin should be doing in M365!

Join the Microsoft Education Product Team to learn all about what's new for Schools, Colleges and Universities. 

We'll cover:
- AI in Education: How we're bringing AI capabilities, including Copilot, to educators everywhere
- New Classwork, Assignments and Grading improvements
- School Connection: Keeping parents connected
- Learning Accelerators updates: Using AI to help students improve in Reading, Speaking, Searching, & Math
- And more to be announced!

What's New in Microsoft 365 for Education

Dataverse, Dataverse, Dataverse… You've heard about it but haven't checked it out yet. Now's the time to understand how it impacts M365 users. Adding Dataverse to your toolset for solutions is an investment in time, skills, and licensing. Know when to engage and what to expect. 

- Learn what Dataverse is and where it fits in the maker toolset.
- Cover what the differences are between Dataverse, Microsoft Lists, and other data sources. Talk through some of the 'what to use when' considerations as Lists solution builders integrate with and shift to Power Platform tools. 
- Get a perspective on the maker skills needed when using Dataverse and how to get started in your organization. 

Intro to Dataverse for M365 Makers

In this transformative era of meetings, the fusion of physical and digital spaces offers unparalleled opportunities for innovation, connection, and productivity.

This session will cover how Microsoft Teams Rooms revolutionizes how we work by providing advanced, interactive, and captivating meeting spaces that cater to the needs of hybrid work environments.

You will leave this session learning how to create an engaging, inclusive meeting room atmosphere that fosters collaboration and teamwork among remote and in-person participants.

Unearthing the power of Microsoft Teams Room

SharePoint Online (SPO) has been with us for over a decade, and in that time it has received numerous changes and adjustments intended to optimize performance. Despite the work that has gone into the platform, some organization still find users reporting a poor experience and "bad performance." 

In this session, we will look at development and design approaches that will enable SPO to deliver optimal performance when your organization begins using it. We'll review the current state of tooling available for our use (like the Page Diagnostics for SharePoint tool) and how it can be used to guide analysis of performance issues. We will also look at elements in any environment that can negatively impact SPO performance to make it look like the "bad guy" when SPO is actually innocent. 

At the conclusion of this session, participants will have the confidence needed to troubleshoot, classify, and possibly resolve performance-based issues in their SPO tenant.