GreyHatBeard&Princess: Recent Episodes
Kevin McDonnell
A Modern Workplace Podcast covering all things Microsoft 365 with Kevin McDonnell (the grey), Al Eardley (the hat), Garry Trinder (the beard) and Luise Freese (the princess) chatting every two weeks about the latest Microsoft 365 news and then picking a topic each week with guests joining us at times as well. If you would like to appear on the show, please drop us a line using the form at https://www.greyhatbeard.com/upcoming-shows. We’d love to hear from everyone, especially if you’re not an MVP and would like to be heard more in the community.Check out our YouTube channel to view the shows as well as our biggest conference sessions and some Bitesize guides as well - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCbalP0tGZ1kyD1A0GQeVDQ
Does community matter? Hell yeah! This week, Femke Cornelissen joins us to chat about the importance of community to her journey to becoming a Technology Evangelist at Wortell in the Netherlands. We chat about her jump from marketing to SharePoint Consultant and how chatting at Ignite helped her realise the power of community.
Want to get more involved in the community? Check out these great events already booked in for this year that we are involved in.
8 March - Microsoft Ability Summit 2023 - Home (eventcore.com)
13 April - Community Day – Event 2023 (communityday2023.nl)
22-24 May - Collab Summit - European Collaboration Summit (collabsummit.eu)
2-4 May – M365 Conference - https://m365conf.com/
13 June - Community Days | Viva Explorers Belgium
15 June - aMS Berlin - 15.06.2023: Call for Speakers @ Sessionize.com
Experts Live
25 May - Experts Live - Netherlands
18-20 September Experts Live - Prague
20-22 June - EPPC - European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference (sharepointeurope.com)
21-22 June - Commsverse - The Microsoft Teams Conference 2023
5 Aug - Scottish Summit - Microsoft Cloud community Event
18-20 September - Location | Experts Live EU
27th September 2023 - CollabDays Bletchley Park 2023 | Collabdays
13-14 Oct - South Coast Summit - South Coast Summit – A Microsoft Cloud Technology Conference
15-16 November - Microsoft Ignite - Home - Microsoft Ignite Information Home Page
27-30 Nov - ESPC- European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference (sharepointeurope.com)
Photo by William White on Unsplash
Garry and Kevin are joined this week to talk Viva Connections with Anoop Tatti (https://aka.ms/anoopt), covering what Viva Connections is, why you would use it and how you can build it out with the usual distractions along the way!
Viva Home
Announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-viva-blog/more-options-coming-soon-for-the-viva-connections-desktop/ba-p/3644419
How to set up Viva Home - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/connections/edit-viva-home
Great video by Darrell As A Service on how to set up Viva Home or not - Your new Viva Connections landing page? - YouTube
PnP Samples:
https://github.com/pnp/AdaptiveCards-Templates
https://github.com/pnp/sp-dev-fx-aces
This week, Kevin, Al and Garry (sadly Luise couldn't make it last minute) look back at 2022 to pick our favourite tech news of the year and our own personal highlights. Kevin even decided last minute about what everyone's focus was for 2023 so there are some late panics in the show that are worth sticking around for!
Microsoft Viva Goals brings purpose and alignment to the employee experience
Set Team and Company Goals | Microsoft Viva
What New Terms Like 'Goblin Mode' Reveal about Work in 2023 (microsoft.com)
Teams Toolkit Overview - Teams | Microsoft Learn
Build Microsoft 365 apps that help keep employees in the flow of work
Introducing Microsoft Syntex - Content AI in the flow of work - Microsoft Community Hub
Microsoft Syntex, Content AI | Microsoft 365
Shared channels in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn
Entra, Purview, Priva, & Viva: Microsoft's New Move to Naming Products (synergy-technical.com)
Microsoft Viva Sales | Microsoft Viva
Introducing Mesh avatars for Microsoft Teams in Private Preview - Microsoft Community Hub
Microsoft will start charging for some Microsoft Graph Teams API calls starting July 5th 2022 | The thoughtstuff Blog
Introducing the Microsoft Graph Developer Proxy community preview - Microsoft 365 Developer Blog
Microsoft Teams Premium licensing - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn
ChatGPT: Optimizing Language Models for Dialogue (openai.com)
No news this week as we had a slightly shorter recording so we have included some links below. However, instead we have a cracker of a show with Will Rowe from MS-Talent, talking about the current job market in Microsoft IT related roles, the impact of hybrid, why people are moving and even blue back hair (yes really).
- Careering out of control - Will's own podcast with even more advice
- Tech layoffs - https://www.geekwire.com/2022/report-amazon-to-cut-10000-corporate-and-tech-jobs-making-largest-layoffs-in-its-history/
- Leading women in tech urge schoolgirls to take on the UK's... - NCSC.GOV.UK
- Culture of learning at Crayon
- https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-learn-blog/crayon-strengthening-a-global-company-during-the-pandemic-with-a/ba-p/3262746
- Building OKRs into your business
- https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-viva-blog/how-to-build-okrs-into-your-business/ba-p/3670976
-
Customizing F5 debugging in Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code - Microsoft 365 Developer Blog
- Replace ngrok with your own local tunnelling service
- Breaking changes for the Microsoft Graph Insights API - Microsoft 365 Developer Blog
Events:
- Still time to sign up for ESPC 22 - European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference (sharepointeurope.com)
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
A very brave Emily Mancini tackles the subject of Yammer and when it excels for organisations over Teams. The chat with Luise, Al and Kevin takes in the different use cases around Yammer and Teams, how you can help adoption, why you should consider both and a lot lot more. There were certainly opinions this week!
This week, Kevin, Al and Luise were joined by Emily Mancini to talk about the latest news with Power Platform updates, great eBooks about Viva via Mark Rackley, new devices (with live demos!) and the end of an era in Microsoft related journalism as Mary Jo Foley leaves ZDNet after 16 years. This led to a slightly diverted chat about what we were up to 16 years ago - can you guess?
Power Platform Oct 2022 Updates - https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/whats-new-power-apps-october-2022-feature-update/
Viva eBook - https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE56FRU
Viva Admin features https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-viva-blog/announcing-new-microsoft-viva-it-admin-features/ba-p/3650475
The Presenter + and Microsoft Audio Dock
Sara Fennah’s Presenter+ review https://teamsqueen.com/2022/10/25/first-look-at-microsoft-presenter/
End of an era for Mary Jo Foley https://www.zdnet.com/article/mary-jo-foley-looks-back-on-a-momentous-16-years-of-covering-microsoft-for-zdnet
Events
Garry keynoting FinJS London - https://buff.ly/3gs7IE7
Viva Explorers Day https://communitydays.org/event/2022-11-12/viva-explorers-community-day-uk
M365 Chicago Microsoft 365 Chicago Virtual Event (m365chicago.com)
ESPC - https://www.sharepointeurope.com/conference/schedule/
The SharePoint Wizard Ami Diamond is on the show to talk about community and why it matters to him, especially with his YouTube channel and host of WhatsApp groups he maintains.
The SharePoint Wizard Channel
Community days - https://communitydays.org/
Garry and Kevin are joined by Ami Diamond (aka the SharePoint Wizard) to talk about the big news from Microsoft Ignite, including Microsoft Syntex, Teams Premium, Designer, Loop and big exciting news about Planner (no really).
Microsoft Ignite 2022 Book of News
Weekly view in SharePoint calendar - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=SharePoint&searchterms=100504
Microsoft Syntex—Content AI integrated in the flow of work | Microsoft 365 Blog
Microsoft Syntex - How big a deal is this? | Deep Analysis (deep-analysis.net)
Susan's Hanleys Roadmap Slides
Microsoft 365 at Ignite—Re-energize your workforce in the office, at home, and everywhere in between | Microsoft 365 Blog
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2022/10/11/microsoft-and-meta-partner-to-deliver-immersive-experiences-for-the-future-of-work-and-play/
Enhance collaboration with Microsoft Teams chat and channels features for the hybrid workplace - Microsoft Community Hub
Microsoft Designer - Stunning designs in a flash
Loop - https://loop.microsoft.com
Presenter+
https://twitter.com/sfennah/status/1582082424187813889?s=20&t=Zll43rUYu6OuoenuY23cvQ
Announcing updates to the Planner API in Microsoft Graph - Microsoft 365 Developer Blog
Project and Planner value from innovation
Kevin, Al and Garry were guest-less so covered the large amount of news and had a chat about Viva, Teams and Power Platform
- Hybrid Work Is Just Work. Are We Doing It Wrong? (microsoft.com)
- Microsoft Viva Ebook
- What’s New in Microsoft Teams | August and September 2022 - Microsoft Tech Community
-
Microsoft Teams apps coming in preview to Office and Outlook apps on Android
- https://devblogs.microsoft.com/microsoft365dev/microsoft-teams-apps-coming-in-preview-to-office-and-outlook-apps-on-android/
- https://devblogs.microsoft.com/microsoft365dev/start-your-journey-to-becoming-a-microsoft-365-developer
- Microsoft Power Up Program for career switchers
- Microsoft Power Platform Conference shares new opportunities - Microsoft Power Platform Blog
Collab Days Bletchley Park - 5 Oct - Kevin and Garry
- CollabDays Bletchley Park | Collabdays
Techorama Netherlands October 11 - 12
- Home | Techorama
Collab Days Belgium - Oct 15th
- CollabDays Belgium 2022 | Collabdays
Ignite - 12-14 Oct
- Register - https://ignite.microsoft.com/home
South Coast Summit - 14-15 Oct
- Register - South Coast Summit – A Microsoft Cloud Technology Conference
- Security & Compliance Workshop - Security and Compliance with Microsoft 365 - 1 Day Workshop Tickets, Fri 14 Oct 2022 at 09:00 | Eventbrite
Codemotion - 18/19 Oct
- Home | Codemotion
Viva Explorers - 12 Nov
- Viva Explorers Community Day (Manchester, UK), Sat, Nov 12, 2022, 9:00 AM | Meetup
European SharePoint Office 365 and Azure Conference 28 Nov - 1 Dec
- European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference (sharepointeurope.com
Newly minted MVP Leon Armston joins us to chat about all things SharePoint Syntex, covering what it is, what you need to use it and some real life scenarios that Leon has used.
Leon's Blog
SharePoint Syntex | Microsoft 365
Automate document generation with SharePoint Syntex and Power Automate (preview) - SharePoint Syntex | Microsoft Docs
Licensing for SharePoint Syntex - SharePoint Syntex | Microsoft Docs
SharePoint Syntex Adoption – Microsoft Adoption
AI Builder Calculator | Microsoft Power Apps
Regex generator – GPT Crush – Demos of OpenAI's GPT-3
https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-gb/ai-builder-calculator/
(6) LinkedIn - James Eccles
Get started with SharePoint Syntex - Learn | Microsoft Docs
SharePoint look book (microsoft.com)
PnP Syntex Samples
Syntex Roadmap
Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash
This week we are joined by Leon Armston, newly minted Microsoft 365 Apps and Services MVP, who shares his thoughts on the latest news.
- Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro and Microsoft Teams Rooms Basic, everything you need to know. - Tom Talks
- Driving adoption of Microsoft Viva at Microsoft - Microsoft Tech Community
- Introducing Adoption Score – helping customers get the most out of Microsoft 365 - Microsoft Tech Community
- Public preview of SharePoint Framework 1.16 – First release of upcoming features - Microsoft 365 Developer Blog
- Introducing Microsoft Teams App Camp - Microsoft 365 Developer Blog
- What’s new: Power Apps August 2022 Feature Update | Microsoft Power Apps
Events
- Metaverse One - 7th Sep
- Register - Metaverse One – A Community Metaverse Event (metaverse-one.space)
- Collab Days Netherlands - Sep 10th 2022
- CollabDays Netherlands 2022
- Power Platform Conference Sep 20-22
- https://powerplatformconf.com/
- Teams 10X - Sep 28th/29th
- https://teams10x.com/
- Collab Days Bletchley Park - Kevin and Garry
- CollabDays Bletchley Park | Collabdays
- Techorama Netherlands October 11 - 12
- Home | Techorama
- Ignite - 12-14 Oct
- Register - https://ignite.microsoft.com/home
- Collab Days Belgium - Oct 15th
- CollabDays Belgium 2022 | Collabdays
- South Coast Summit 14/15th October
- Register - South Coast Summit – A Microsoft Cloud Technology Conference
- Security & Compliance Workshop - Security and Compliance with Microsoft 365 - 1 Day Workshop Tickets, Fri 14 Oct 2022 at 09:00 | Eventbrite
- Viva Workshop - Employee Experience with Microsoft Viva - 1 Day Workshop Tickets, Fri 14 Oct 2022 at 09:00 | Eventbrite
- Codemotion - 18/19 Oct
- Home | Codemotion
- European SharePoint Office 365 and Azure Conference 28 Nov - 1 Dec
- European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference (sharepointeurope.com)
- Viva Workshop - Microsoft Viva and Syntex Workshop - European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference, 2022 (sharepointeurope.com)
Part 2 of our recording with Gavin Jones as we dig into productivity
- Modern Workplace Accelerator | MeeTime Services
- Gavin 🤓 Jones | LinkedIn
- MeeTime (@meetimeapps) / Twitter
Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash
This week, Gavin Jones joins Al and Garry to cover the latest news and views from across the Microsoft 365 space.
Last week was Microsoft Inspire, the main conference for Microsoft Partners, and so we are covering the announcements that were made. The exciting news is that there were new products, new APIs, new release dates and no new renames!
Viva Engagehttps://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-viva-blog/announcing-microsoft-viva-engage/ba-p/3571382
Viva Learning APIUse the employee learning API to integrate with Viva Learning - Microsoft Graph beta | Microsoft Docs
Teams and M365 updates
From enabling hybrid work to creating collaborative experiences—here’s what’s new in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft 365 Blog
- Excel Live - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/announcing-excel-live-transform-microsoft-teams-meetings-with/ba-p/3573371
- Collaborative Annotations
- Video Clip
- Viva Goals is now GA
Microsoft simplifies Endpoint Manager enrollment for Apple updates - Microsoft Tech Community
Microsoft Teams Connect Shared channels go GA -https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/microsoft-teams-connect-shared-channels-is-moving-into-generally/ba-p/3568000
Introducing the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform: A comprehensive, flexible customer care solution - Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog
Other news
Garry's Bot video - Create Notification Bot for Microsoft Teams using Teams Toolkit (Tutorial) - YouTube
AC and JT present CloudDev Clarity - CloudDev Clarity | Episode 1 - Introducing the show!
Events
- Collab Days Netherlands - Sep 10th 2022 CollabDays Netherlands 2022 |
- Power Platform Conference Sep 20-22 https://powerplatformconf.com/
- Teams 10X - Sep 28th/29th https://teams10x.com/
- Techorama Netherlands October 11 - 12 Home | Techorama
- Collab Days Belgium - Oct 15th CollabDays Belgium 2022 | Collabdays
- South Coast Summit 14/15th October South Coast Summit – A Microsoft Cloud Technology Conference
- Codemotion - 18/19 Oct (Milan) Home | Codemotion
- European SharePoint Office 365 and Azure Conference 28 Nov - 1 Dec European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference (sharepointeurope.com
How old are you? Do you remember when the future of collaboration was SharePoint? Maybe you remember when it was web 2.0? Maybe you even remember back to when the internet or email was the future! This week, Hans Brender joins us to talk about the future of collaboration and we go a bit loopy talking about how Microsoft Loop will change the way we work, hopefully without us even realising it.
Microsoft Loop
Microsoft Loop User Group
Hans Brender - Aalen, Deutschland, HBsoft | about.me
Photo by Werner Du plessis on Unsplash
Hans Brender joins us to talk about the latest news just ahead of Microsoft Inspire. We cover:
- Viva Sales and how it changes the outlook for Viva (pun slightly intended)
- How to make beautiful Power Apps, inspired by the awesome Kristine Kolodziejski
- Why you should upgrade your SharePoint Framework solutions with CLI for Microsoft 365
- Thinking about questions to ask at the upcoming Microsoft Search AMA
Microsoft's Viva Sales: A new companion app that works with many CRM systems (not only Microsoft's) | ZDNet
Viva Sales and what it means for the future of Viva (mcd79.com)
CLI for Microsoft 365 v5.4 (pnp.github.io)
https://www.kristinekolodziejski.com/
Dribbble - Discover the World’s Top Designers & Creative Professionals
powerapps-samples/samples/fluentui-for-teams-theme at main · pnp/powerapps-samples · GitHub
How to enhance maker experience with a custom theme for Teams apps (m365princess.com)
Microsoft Search, Ask Us Anything - Microsoft Tech Community
Upcoming events
- Microsoft Inspire July 19/20
- https://inspire.microsoft.com/
-
AMS Kinshasha August 20th
- Hear Hans speak on OneDrive Tips and Tricks
- Register using Microsoft Forms
-
Collab Days Netherlands - Sep 10th 2022
-
CollabDays Netherlands 2022 |
-
Power Platform Conference Sep 20-22
-
https://powerplatformconf.com/
-
Techorama Netherlands October 11 - 12
-
Home | Techorama
-
Collab Days Belgium - Oct 15th
-
CollabDays Belgium 2022 | Collabdays
-
South Coast Summit 14/15th October
-
South Coast Summit – A Microsoft Cloud Technology Conference
-
European SharePoint Office 365 and Azure Conference 28 Nov - 1 Dec
-
European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference (sharepointeurope.com)
We are joined by Aaron Rendell, Head of Technology for CPS, to talk about Power Platform Centre of Excellence and how the CoE Starter Kit is what is says - a starter. We chat about the different processes and plans you that you should have in place to make your Power Platform usage the best it can be and to truly enable your citizen developers the right way.
Microsoft Power Platform | Power Platform COE Establishing a Power Platform Centre of Excellence
Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence Kit - Power Platform | Microsoft Docs
New: turn images and designs into apps using AI-powered express design | Microsoft Power Apps
Power Platform adoption maturity model - Microsoft Power Platform - Power Platform | Microsoft Docs
Events:
Microsoft Teams Tech Conference (commsverse.com)
South Coast Summit – A Microsoft Cloud Technology Conference
(Call for speakers for South Coast Summit is open until end of July - if you want any advice, message GreyHatBeardPrincess and we'll happily help)
Photo by Alex Blăjan on Unsplash
Another episode, another something a little different. Following on from our show at the South Coast Summit last year, we decided to keep a similar format but with much better sound this time. We are joined by a host of great community members to talk about what their fantasy dinner party would be with three rules - there has to be one person from the community, one from Microsoft and one other (living or dead). Naturally, the rules were thrown out the window half the time but we had some great responses.
Big big thanks to all those who came along to record with us:
- Luke Evans
- Carmen Ysewijn
- Laura Graham-Brown
- Alexio Chandiwana
- Yannick Reekmans
- Alison Mulligan
- Chike Edupta
- Ashley Graham-Brown
- Zoe Wilson
- Sara Fennah
A slightly different show as we recorded our Happy Hour Etiquette session at the Scottish Summit. Al, Kevin and Luise were joined by Marijn Somers and Sara Fennah to share thoughts and tips on etiquette in Microsoft 365.
The sound wasn't the best so we hope that it came across ok for you all. Let us know if you'd like more live recordings like this.
We are joined by Tomasz Poszytek to talk about all things processes in Teams. You may think that it is just about approvals but there is so much more that you can do to make your business processes more automated. We also talk about how you can plan your automations too.
Useful links:
Adaptive Cards
Overview of Universal Actions for Adaptive Cards - Teams | Microsoft Docs
Power Automate - Process advisor - Power Platform Release Plan | Microsoft Docs
What is a Center of Excellence - Power Platform | Microsoft Docs
Tomasz Poszytek - YouTube
Photo by Alvaro Reyes on Unsplash
Do you know what Infrastructure as Code is? If you do, have you thought about it with Microsoft 365? We are joined by Luke Evans to talk about what Infrastructure as Code is, why it's important and how you can do it in the world if Microsoft 365.
Some useful links (that slightly give away what we will talk about!):
M365 DSC
Claus Jespersen - clajes/ConditionalAccess: Repository holding various Notes from the Field with many Conditional Access Tips and Tricks (github.com)
Simian - Platform (gosimian.com)
PnP Provisioning Engine
Trace | Office 365 Documentation Tool | SysKit
Photo by Edge2Edge Media on Unsplash
This week we are joined by independent Microsoft 365 consultant Luke Evans (Twitter, LinkedIn) to talk about the latest news including a nicely timed announcement of Viva Goals (Microsoft's release of Ally.IO), how to organise your Teams with no owners, some amazing new accessibility tools announced at the accessibility summit and the latest SharePoint updates.
Microsoft Viva Goals brings purpose and alignment to the employee experience - Microsoft 365 Blog
Microsoft Launches Group Ownership Governance Policy (practical365.com)
Microsoft Security Experts - Managed Services | Microsoft Security
Microsoft Ability Summit 2022
Microsoft Adaptive Mouse, Hub & Buttons - Accessories Designed for Accessibility - Microsoft Store
SharePoint pit stop
FormCustomizer extension in latest SPFx v1.15 preview version
Events
Microsoft Build - https://mybuild.microsoft.com/en-US/home
- Microsoft Build - 24th-26th May
- Attend in person for UK
- Garry speaking
- Build Microsoft 365 apps that help keep employees in the flow of work
- Luise speaking
- Create interactive meeting apps for Microsoft Teams
- Web-APIs mit Power Apps ansteuern
-
10/11 June
- Microsoft Cloud Community Event - Scottish Summit 2022
-
29/30 June
-
Microsoft Teams Tech Conference (commsverse.com)
-
14/15th October
-
South Coast Summit – A Microsoft Cloud Technology Conference
We went a little different with this show as Kevin and Peter Rising were on an offsite together and so recorded a chat during lunch on their thoughts on what was top of mind. Hybrid meetings, measuring well-being with Viva and exciting news on a new Microsoft 365 book were all covered.
What will the future of work be? Rather than just guessing, Zoe Wilson talks to us about the the future of work, especially within the UK Public Sector. We chat about what it means to offices, how people do work and what the feelings of people are to modern work.
The 2022 Work Trend Index Report - Making hybrid work work (microsoft.com)
Worklab - WorkLab: Vital facts about the future of work. (microsoft.com)
Photo by Surface on Unsplash
This week we are joined by Zoe Wilson, Director of Innovation and Customer Success at Agilisys, to talk about the latest news including some new updates to Teams with better search, the power of a Power Platform API (with documentation!), securing the metaverse and some great ideas from top authors around protecting your time.
Nominate your favourite podcast at Tech Community Awards (commsverse.com)
What’s New in Microsoft Teams | March 2022 - Microsoft Tech Community
Introducing Microsoft Power Platform API (preview) | Microsoft Power Apps
Service Account updates - Frequently asked questions about Power Automate licensing - Power Platform | Microsoft Docs
The metaverse is coming. Here are the cornerstones for securing it. - The Official Microsoft Blog
The New World of Time Management in an Age of Hybrid Work
Luise's post on avoiding overcommitting - https://www.m365princess.com/how-to-avoid-overcommitting/
EventsMicrosoft Build - https://mybuild.microsoft.com/en-US/home
End of Teams Nation - Teams Nation – 100% free, 100% community driven conference dedicated to Microsoft Teams
-
5-7 April
- Microsoft 365 Conference (m365conf.com)
-
6-8 April
-
European Power Platform Conference - European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference, 2022 (sharepointeurope.com)
-
4-6 May
-
Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon (m365virtualmarathon.com)
-
10/11 June
-
Microsoft Cloud Community Event - Scottish Summit 2022
-
29/30 June
-
Microsoft Teams Tech Conference (commsverse.com)
Learn more about the Women in Teams community - (563) The Women in Microsoft Teams Community "Join Us" - YouTube
Sign up for the Women in Teams - https://aka.ms/WomenInTeams
This week we are joined by the fascinating Wictor Wilen who talks about the journey that he has taken with the open source project Yo Teams. We talked about why he created the project, how it has grown, how the community has helped make it what it is and what's next for Yo Teams (plus Kevin asks the stupid question about how many Teams Apps he has created but just pretend that didn't happen). Whether you are a dev or not, it's a fascinating chat about the journey from something just for you him to a tool used by thousands of developers worldwide.
Wictor Wilén (@wictor) / Twitter
https://github.com/pnp/generator-teams
This could be the most important podcast that you listen to all year! If you have flows in Power Automate running with Service Accounts then listen to this show as soon as you can. We are joined by Wictor Wilen to talk about a few of the big news stories in the last couple of weeks including the importance of understanding your licensing in Power Automate with service accounts. We also had calmer chats on the latest Teams functionality, how cool it is that you can customise the SharePoint menu now and that you can now try Microsoft Search in Windows.
Big thank you to Nate Chamberlain for recommending us! https://twitter.com/chambernate/status/1502285726125285378?s=20&t=aP1MYb8aVU3XzxjHGoCQRw
The Flow chat
- Change the owner of cloud flow - Power Automate | Microsoft Docs
- Is Power Automate dead when it comes to running any background processes? by Jukka Niiranen
Great Expectations: Making Hybrid Work Work (microsoft.com) - Work Trend Index 2022
5 years of Microsoft Teams - 3 ways to meet new hybrid expectations with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 - Microsoft 365 Blog
Command bar customisation in SharePoint Command bar customization syntax reference | Microsoft Docs
Microsoft Search finally coming to Windows 10! Releasing Windows 10 Build 19044.1618 to Release Preview Channel | Windows Insider Blog
Events* 23 March + Teams Nation – 100% free, 100% community driven conference dedicated to Microsoft Teams * 5-7 April + Microsoft 365 Conference * 6-8 April + European Power Platform Conference - European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference, 2022 (sharepointeurope.com) * 4-6 May + Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon (m365virtualmarathon.com) * 10/11 June + Microsoft Cloud Community Event - Scottish Summit 2022 * 29/30 June + Microsoft Teams Tech Conference (commsverse.com)
If you turn on Power Platform, everyone just uses it, right? Michael Roth joins us to point out why this isn't true and what you should be considering to do about it. How do you get people engaged? How do you ensure that appropriate governance is in place? How do you get the balance between the two? We chatted about all that and more.
Pre-Requisite Questions for Power Platform
Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence Kit - Power Platform | Microsoft Docs
Photo by Megan Ellis on Unsplash
This week, we are joined my Michael Roth who helps us cover the new privacy tool from Microsoft, switching tenants and accounts in Microsoft 365 from within the web apps, a bundle of SharePoint updates and even more Teams updates. There was some "it's not a feature, it's a bug" as well as a sneaky "it depends" that got in there too and certainly some hot takes on what Microsoft is delivering.
Find and visualize personal data in Microsoft Priva - Microsoft Priva | Microsoft Docs
Microsoft Priva is Now Generally Available for Enterprise Customers
Find and visualize personal data in Microsoft Priva - Microsoft Priva | Microsoft Docs
Tenant switching for some Microsoft 365 Web Apps
SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: February 2022
What’s New in Microsoft Teams | February 2022
Jonnychipz Schooled In - Microsoft Viva with Kevin McDonnell
Events
- 23 March
- Teams Nation – 100% free, 100% community driven conference dedicated to Microsoft Teams
- 5-7 April
- Microsoft 365 Conference
- 6-8 April
- European Power Platform Conference - European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference, 2022 (sharepointeurope.com)
- 4-6 May
- Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon (m365virtualmarathon.com)
- 10/11 June
- Microsoft Cloud Community Event - Scottish Summit 2022
- 29/30 June
- Microsoft Teams Tech Conference (commsverse.com)
Exams - the bane of adolescent life but also something that stick around if you're in the Microsoft world. Are they worth it? Do they have to be that painful? This week we are joined by the queen of certifications, Sara Fennah, to talk about all things Microsoft Certification and how you can make the most of them
Sara Fennah's Blog – Hints, Tips and Random Thoughts from an MCT (m365train.co.uk)
The Teams Queen Blog – A Site Dedicated to Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Certifications | Microsoft Docs
This week we are joined by the greatest trainer of them all, Sara Fennah, who helps us cover the biggest news of the week. The four of us joined to talk about Microsoft's new sustainability dashboard in Power BI, the North Star Architecture guidance for industries around Power Platform, the joy/hope that Shared Channels in Microsoft Teams should bring and the awesome resources on the Microsoft Adoption site for Microsoft Viva.
- Measure your cloud carbon footprint with the Emissions Impact Dashboard for Microsoft 365 (Preview)
- Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability
- North Star Architecture for Power Platform · GitHub
- North Star Architecture for Power Platform – Power CAT Live - YouTube
- Shared Channels in public preview
- Microsoft Viva – Microsoft Adoption
Events* 23 Feb + Feb 2022 - M365 Security & Compliance User Group | Meetup + Bletchley Park 2022 | Collabdays * 23 March + Teams Nation – 100% free, 100% community driven conference dedicated to Microsoft Teams * 6-8 April + European Power Platform Conference - European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference, 2022 (sharepointeurope.com) * 10/11 June + Microsoft Cloud Community Event - Scottish Summit 2022 * 29/30 June + Microsoft Teams Tech Conference (commsverse.com)
We have some exciting news as we have a new co-host! The amazing princess of Microsoft 365 - Luise Freese! Luise will join as a regular host on the shows, adding her experience and sparkle to the conversation. To kick off this week, we talked about four of the biggest news stories with the possible demise of HoloLens, celebrating a year of Microsoft Viva, easier Application Lifecycle Management for the Power Platform and a new poster for your wall full of Microsoft certifications.
- Has Hololens 3 been cancelled?
- https://www.techradar.com/news/microsoft-reportedly-ends-work-on-hololens-3
- https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/4/22918025/microsoft-hololens-3-canceled-reports-comment-rumors
- Celebrating a year of Viva
- Microsoft Viva celebrates 1 year: Transforming the employee experience
- https://www.microsoft.com/worklab
- Application Lifecycle Management with Power Platform
- Introducing the ALM Accelerator for Power Platform
- PnP | Sharing Is Caring
- Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence Kit - Power Platform | Microsoft Docs
- Microsoft Certifications Poster
- https://aka.ms/certposter
Other news and events
- https://www.leonarmston.com/2022/02/testing-out-sharepoint-syntex-content-assembly-aka-modern-mailmerge/
- CLI for Microsoft 365 v4.4
- GitHub Shots Bootcamp Live on Microsoft Dev Radio, February 2022
- https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-devops/github-shots-bootcamp-live-on-microsoft-dev-radio-february-2022/m-p/3041259
- Collabdays UK Bletchley Park - Wednesday, 23 February 2022
- https://www.collabdays.org/2022-bletchleypark/
- M365 Security & Compliance User Group - Wed, 23 Feb 2022
- Feb 2022 - M365 Security & Compliance User Group | Meetup
- European Power Platform Conference 6-8 April Berlin
- European Power Platform Conference - European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference, 2022
- Teams Nation - 23 March 2022
- Teams Nation – 100% free, 100% community driven conference dedicated to Microsoft Teams
- Scottish summit - 10/11 June 2022
- Microsoft Cloud Community Event - Scottish Summit 2022
Very excited to share this episode with you as we have our first podcast crossover! Kevin and Garry are joined by Andrew Moran, Jon Jarvis and Sophie Dimelow from the Microsoft Spotlight podcast to talk about Women In Tech. The chat covered a very broad range of areas including why we were talking about it, unconscious bias and what we as a collective can do to help.
Do check out the Microsoft Spotlight podcast too at Microsoft Spotlight Podcast.
We're back! Kevin, Al and Garry return from their break over Christmas and New Year and pick a story each to cover before sharing the latest events.
If you would like to appear on the show, we now have a Sessionize link and would love to hear from you over at https://sessionize.com/greyhatbeard/.
- Syntex content assembly and the content lifecycle - Microsoft Tech Community
- January 2022 – Syntex Licensing Updates and New Year Reflections - Microsoft Tech Community
- Get Started - Microsoft365DSC - Your Cloud Configuration
- The Surprising Impact of Meeting-Free Days (mit.edu)
Notes from a Big Cloud (peterrising.co.uk)
Events and other fun
- 26 Jan – M365 S&C UG
- Registration - Jan 2022 | Meetup
- CFS - https://sessionize.com/M365SandCUG/
- 17 March – London Power Platform User Group
- 23 Feb – Collab Days Bletchley
- 23 March – Teams Nation
- Registration - https://www.teamsnation.online/
- CFS - https://sessionize.com/teamsnation2022/
- June 29/30 - Commsverse
- Registration & CFS - https://www.commsverse.com/
Happy Christmas one and all and happy holidays for anyone celebrating even more! This episode, Kevin, Al and Garry are joined by some pillars of the Microsoft 365 community who share their Christmas wishes. Big thank you to Carmen Ysewijn, Karoliina Kettukari, Kat Grennan, Luke Evans, Marijn Somers, Mark Vale, Michael Roth, Paul Bullock, Pete Rising, Randy Chapman, Simon Doy, Steve Goodman, Tom Morgan, Yannick Reekmans and a random cat!
Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash
Ho ho ho, merry Christmas to all those who celebrate and apologies to the relentless bombardment of forced joviality to all those who don't. This week, Kevin, Al and Garry look back at the biggest topics of 2021 to see how big those new stories now feel. Strange to think that this time last year, none of us knew about Viva. Amazing to see the growth of Cyber Security and the sad fact of virtual conference fatigue. Could we really have hoped that our dream of the death of IE11 would finally come true. Join us to find out.
Below are links to news articles that we covered in previous shows on the big topics of the year:
- Microsoft Viva
- The Massive Market Impact of Microsoft Viva - by Josh Bersin
- How employers can prepare for the ‘great resignation’
- The ‘great resignation’ is a trend that began before the pandemic – and bosses need to get used to it (australiantimes.co.uk)
- Microsoft Teams Tech Conference (commsverse.com)
- South Coast Summit – A Microsoft Cloud Technology Conference
- Teams hits 250 million monthly active users
- GitHub Copilot · Your AI pair programmer
- GitHub Codespaces
- Microsoft talks about buying Discord
- Then Sony invests instead
- End of IE11
Our favourite shows - go back and give them a listen:
- Al - Live from South Coast Summit
- Garry - Some thoughts on Design Thinking
- Kevin - Livin la Viva Loca
After a few messages where Garry asked Al about a book he had used before, we decided that the subject of the book was a good start for a show to talk about. So, here we are with Garry, Kevin and Al talking about Design Thinking and why putting people first is key to getting great solutions, whether they are fully developed apps or building out a SharePoint site.
Some of the books and links we used are below:
- “Design thinking” explained - Raconteur
- Design thinking, explained | MIT Sloan
- The Design Thinking Playbook - the book that started the whole conversation!
- Sprint - how to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days
- Gamestorming - a playbook for innovators, rulebreakers and changemakers
- LUMA Workplace - Solve problems faster and better with unique innovation tools & resources
And one that we forgot to mention but is a great event down in the South West of England
https://agileonthebeach.com/
Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash
With Thanksgiving in the US last week, there weren't too many updates coming out from Microsoft so we dig a little deeper to bring you some interesting updates. Find out what Flowspace is and whether Microsoft is moving into the office furniture space. Learn whether Microsoft will be fighting more anti-trust suits. See whether 20 year old university projects still work.
Micrsoft Lists - Building fast, offline-capable Microsoft 365 web applications
How to Edit lists offline (microsoft.com)
A game changer? setValue in Microsoft Lists | Path to SharePoint... and Beyond!
Microsoft Flowspace office pod guarantees privacy with excitement of being around colleagues - dlmag
Red Dot Design Award: Flowspace Pod (red-dot.org)
Nextcloud complains to EU about OneDrive bundling in Windows • The Register
.Net 6 out on Azure Functions Announcing Azure Functions 4.0 public preview with .NET 6 support - Microsoft Tech Community
Upgrading a 20 year old University Project to .NET 6 with dotnet-upgrade-assistant - Scott Hanselman's Blog
Microsoft 365 Developer Program launches new instant sandbox with Teams sample data pack - Microsoft 365 Developer Blog
Performing Static Code Analysis on PowerShell Module and Scripts – Liam Cleary [MVP and MCT] (helloitsliam.com)
Script Samples | PnP Samples
This week we cover the often missed functionality of Azure DevOps to help you manage work better. Whether it's product management or running a migration, you can use DevOps boards to track your waterfall, scrum and even wagile projects! Garry, Al and Kevin talk through the different things to consider and why it is worth finding out more.
Intro of DevOps Dojo - Azure DevOps Blog (microsoft.com)
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/best-practices-agile-project-management?view=azure-devops&tabs=agile-process
DevOps tutorial | Microsoft Azure
The Phoenix Project - Book (itrevolution.com)
The Unicorn Project | by Gene Kim (author of The Phoenix Project) (itrevolution.com)
Al, Garry and Kevin catch up on some of the topics they didn't cover before on Ignite around Lists and Security & Compliance, then also look into what the Surface Laptop SE is.
- Introducing Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps
- Microsoft Reimagine - Imagining a new era of education | Microsoft EDU
- Microsoft introduces Windows 11 SE, new $250 Surface Laptop SE for education market | ZDNet
- Microsoft to add new education-focused M365 A1 per-device subscription plan | ZDNet
- Support all learners with the new Microsoft 365 A1 for devices license | Microsoft EDU
- Microsoft Lists announcements - Ignite 2021 November 2-4, 2021
- Microsoft Viva – The Teams Queen Blog
- The Great Reshuffle and how Microsoft Viva is helping reimagine the employee experience - Microsoft 365 Blog
- The ‘great resignation’ is a trend that began before the pandemic – and bosses need to get used to it (australiantimes.co.uk)
- Introducing Feedback for Microsoft 365 - Microsoft Tech Community
- New Pomodoro app in Windows 11 Clock https://twitter.com/jamesmcroft/status/1459067662093336585?s=20
- Festive Tech Calendar 2021
The Ignite summary continues (check out Part 1 for the start) as Kevin, Al and Garry cover their thoughts on Ignite 2021 (Autumn Edition) and pick the news that caught their attention most including Power Apps licensing (good news for a change), Viva licensing (more good news!), Container Apps and a few returning surprises (possibly less good news).
Book of News - https://news.microsoft.com/ignite-november-2021-book-of-news/
- PowerApps per use licensing https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/powerplatform/2021/11/02/new-power-platform-capabilities-announced-at-microsoft-ignite/
- Viva - Microsoft Viva is now generally available to help transform your hybrid work experience - Microsoft 365 Blog
- Viva roadmaps from Susan Hanley - https://twitter.com/susanhanley/status/1455669594320945164?s=21
- Container Apps https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/apps-on-azure/introducing-azure-container-apps-a-serverless-container-service/ba-p/2867265?ocid=AID3042118
- Open AI Service https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/new-azure-openai-service/
- Migrate SP workflows to power autoMate - thanks Resa Dorraini !https://twitter.com/rezadorrani/status/1456062036232871936?s=21
The worst news https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-power-apps-microsoft-access-security-mobility-new-experiences/
Kevin, Al and Garry cover their thoughts on Ignite 2021 (Autumn Edition) and pick the news that caught their attention most including Loop, Context IQ, Mesh for Teams, Connected Spaces for Dynamics 365 and more. We continue to the chat in part 2.
Book of News - https://news.microsoft.com/ignite-november-2021-book-of-news/
Some of the links below are repeated but they are duplicated for anyone who wants to click into a specific subject.
- Microsoft Loop - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2021/11/02/whats-new-in-microsoft-365how-were-empowering-everyone-for-a-new-world-of-hybrid-work/
- Context IQ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2021/11/02/whats-new-in-microsoft-365how-were-empowering-everyone-for-a-new-world-of-hybrid-work/
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces - Gain a new perspective with Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces - Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog
- Mesh for Microsoft Teams https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2021/11/02/whats-new-in-microsoft-365how-were-empowering-everyone-for-a-new-world-of-hybrid-work/
- Mesh for Microsoft Teams aims to make collaboration in the ‘metaverse’ personal and fun | Innovation Stories
- Microsoft Teams Connect https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2021/11/02/whats-new-in-microsoft-365how-were-empowering-everyone-for-a-new-world-of-hybrid-work/
A slightly different show today as Al and Kevin came live from above the South Coast Summit expo floor to record with a few guests. The sound isn't the greatest this time but the content is fantastic as we had Alison Mulligan, Luke Evans, Zoe Wilson and Mark Christie sharing with us what their dream conference would be. Find out who wants Satya Nadella speaking, who likes to get hands on with hardware and who would love it to be a giant festival.
Big thanks to our guests and give them a follow on Twitter or LinkedIn:
- Alison Mulligan
- Luke Evans
- Zoe Wilson
- Mark Christie
Finally a huge huge huge thank you to the conference organisers Aaron Rendell and Nathan Sweeney - no-one would have believed it was the first big event they had put on. So impressive and they've both earned a well deserved rest.
For this show, we decided to heavily borrow from Office365Distilled's show about Commsverse and share the sessions that we are excited to watch at the South Coast Summit. Al and Kevin picked a few of the talks that caught our interest or that we know how amazing the people can be.
Check out the sessions list on the South Coast Summit website.
Burnout Begone as a Service - Dona Sarkar (13:00) - Accessibility and inclusion track
Hello from the other side - how makers and developers make a FusionDev team - Yannick Reekmans and Luise Freese (11:00) - Power Platform track)
Approaches to Managing Insider Risk in a work from anywhere world - Graham Hosking and Dan Cousineau (11:30) - Security and compliance track
Feed on knowledge harvested with Viva Topics (even if you are a minnow) - Sara Fennah and Kevin McDonnell (14:00) - Collaboration Track
Planning a career in Power Platform - Alison Mulligan (14:30) - Power Platform track
Working with Templates in Microsoft 365 - Chirag Patel (14:30) - Collaboration track
Modern Work Management in Office 365 - what is the right tool for you and your organisation? - Sam Graber (14:30) - Collaboration track
AI Builder in Action! - Marco Rocca (16:00) - Data and AI track
How I found luck - Keith Whatling (17:00) - Where Keith is going, he don't need no track
Al and Kevin cover the latest news including a chat about the new Surface devices, some SharePoint updates, Viva Learning GA date and the amazing fact that Skype isn't dead yet.
Sign up for newsletter now available at Worklab
Microsoft’s fall Surface event: the 7 biggest announcements - The Verge
Microsoft Whiteboard receives Surface Slim Pen 2 support, new features, and a UI overhaul | Windows Central
SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop September 2021 (microsoft.com)
Viva Learning preview moving to general availability - M365 Admin (handsontek.net)
Microsoft says Skype is "here to stay" with this major feature update | ZDNet
Where is Microsoft Teams data stored? A comprehensive breakdown | Onna Technologies, Inc. - JDSupra
Microsoft to add new education-focused M365 A1 per-device subscription plan | ZDNet
Community
ProvisionGenie/ProvisionGenie: ProvisionGenie 🧞 is an open-source project by Luise Freese & Carmen Ysewijn.
Hacktoberfest 2021 (digitalocean.com)
South Coast Summit – A Microsoft Cloud Technology Conference
Does Employee Experience matter? Yes and we are joined by Karoliina Kettukari of Meltlake to help explain to you why, how employees can make the most of Microsoft Viva to help their experience and what organisations should consider when it comes to adoption and change in the world of employee experience, especially for frontline workers.
As we often do, we would highly recommend checking out the Microsoft Worklab site for more on the subject.
Garry and Kevin sat down to run through the latest news as Viva Connections Public Preview went out, more attempts to explain Yammer and Teams and the excitement of collaborating on flows in Power Automate lands. All while Kevin tried not to burst with the excitement of meeting real people at Commsverse.
Viva Connections Public Preview - Microsoft Tech Community
73%: The Hybrid Work Paradox
The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers | Nature Human Behaviour
New collaborative app from ServiceNow brings employee experiences into the flow of work in Microsoft Teams
Bringing large groups and communities together in Teams - Microsoft Tech Community
Announcing Public Preview of Power Apps respecting Conditional Access on individual apps
Power Fx Formula Columns in Dataverse (for Teams)
Announcing co-presence in Power Automate | Power Automate Blog (microsoft.com)
Power Apps, Accessibility, and WCAG - Hart of the Midlands
SharePoint: Hub to hub site association
SharePoint Navigation Switcher
Microsoft acquires Clipchamp to empower creators
Office LTSC is now generally available
Home computing pioneer Sir Clive Sinclair dies aged 81 | Clive Sinclair | The Guardian
Halt and Catch Fire
https://github.com/GavinMendelGleason/excel_as_code
Events
- CollabTalk - What Does It Take To Build Community? – buckleyPLANET
- South Coast Summit – A Microsoft Cloud Technology Conference
- European Collaboration Summit - Home (collabsummit.eu)
- Scottish Summit will be hybrid https://twitter.com/kevmcdonk/status/1438935272192987142?s=20
This week, we decided to just have a chat about what was making us think at the moment and what we thought would be coming up over the next six months.
Al caught us by surprise by talking about sustainability and opened our eyes to things that we can do in the digital space.
Garry is getting deeper and deeper into the world of Dev Ops, not just the tools but the processes as well.
Kevin keeps up his excitement about all things Employee Experience with Microsoft Viva and also looks forward to seeing what people can innovate with after the slight lulls during the pandemic.
Listen to the show and then let us know what you think on Twitter or on the Microsoft Cloud Hub Discord Server.
Kevin, Al and Garry are back together for the first time in a while and so we tried to find the finest news around to share with you. Unfortunately, Kevin does decide to show his muppets off.
Github codespaces
Github.dev
About billing for Codespaces - GitHub Docs
Daily briefing and MyAnalytics branding updates to reflect Microsoft Viva - Microsoft Tech Community
Together Mode:
https://twitter.com/kevmcdonk/status/1432999299412078592?s=20
https://twitter.com/kevmcdonk/status/1432763528193220622?s=20
CarPlay on Teams
Teams updates - What’s New in Microsoft Teams | August 2021 - Microsoft Tech Community
Microsoft hires former Uber exec to lead a new consumer apps effort - The Verge
Cosmos hacked ChaosDB: How we hacked thousands of Azure customers’ databases | Wiz Blog
kevmcdonk/S4MSC-Twitter: Sample for creating Microsoft Search custom indexes from Twitter data (github.com)
New Discord community for Microsoft Cloud related chat - mscloudhub.com/community (sorry, we forgot to mention this one!)
Commsverse
South Coast Summit
Scottish Summit
With the first big Microsoft related conference in the UK scheduled for September, we invited two of the Commsverse organisers to chat to use about what you can expect from Commsverse and also how Teams Devices can improve the ways that you can use Teams. Mark talked about all the different things that will be at the event itself (that you can join in person or virtually) and Randy shared loads of info on how Teams Devices can help, from better headsets all the way through to a full meeting room with sound bars, ceiling microphones and even a mahogany table.
Register for Commsverse now or find out more details on their website.
We are joined by Mark Vale and Randy Chapman, co-organisers of the Commsverse conference all about Microsoft Teams, as we discuss the latest news including automated recording of Teams, holographic meetings and why Kevin wants to look you in the eyes.
Rest in peace Abel Wang
- Please do donate on Abel's behalf to Girls Who Code or buy a t-shirt in his memory to go to the same charity
What is new in teams - July 2021
Teams hits 250 million
Mimesys’ holographic meetings
Kevin’s new center cam - https://thecentercam.com
Chris Herd's thread on hybrid working
Workspace collaboration optimiser
How to run a maturity model workshop
Community
Paul Bullock’s PnPun samples
Scottish summit call for volunteers
Events
Commsverse - https://online.commsverse.com
South Coast Summit - https://www.southcoastsummit.org
What are your big habits, good or bad? Do you switch off effectively at the end of each day? Do you make time to do the work you need to do? In Show 39, Kevin, Al and Garry discuss the ways that Microsoft Viva can help you to build up habits, practices and rituals and we also cover what is meant by those three things too!
- What are habits, practices and rituals?
- What routines does Viva help you build?
- What routines does Viva help your organisation build?
Useful links
Difference between rituals and ceremonies
Routines: The Unexpected Power of Habits, Practices, and Rituals | Jan Stanley | TEDxBeloit
A ceremony is a group thing, a ritual is an individual thing
Alan Eardley - Why Microsoft To Do is good for your mental health
Photo by Corey Agopian on Unsplash
Microsoft Inspire was last week so we cover the latest news including our wish coming true for Dynamics in Teams and a new version of SharePoint.
Microsoft Inspire 2021 Book of News
From collaborative apps in Microsoft Teams to Windows 365—here’s what’s new in Microsoft 365 at Inspire
Enrich your employee experience with new Viva partner integrations
Introducing a new era of hybrid personal computing: the Windows 365 Cloud PC
Windows 365 vs. Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) – Comparing Two DaaS Products - Nerdio (getnerdio.com)
A new day for SharePoint Server - SharePoint Server Subscription Edition preview (microsoft.com)
Teams
- Future of Productivity with Microsoft Teams Case Study | Accenture
- Announcing General Availability of Safe Links for Microsoft Teams
- WebView2 and Electron | Electron Blog (electronjs.org)
Compliance
- Microsoft acquires CloudKnox Security to offer unified privileged access and cloud entitlement management - The Official Microsoft Blog
- Ensure compliance using separation of duties checks in access requests - Microsoft Tech Community
- Erica Toelle – Microsoft is planning to offer more built-in, ready-use out-of-box classifiers in our compliance solutions. You can use these machine-learning trainable classifiers to automatically detect, classify, retain/delete, and manage content, even if you do not know where the content is located in Microsoft 365. - https://aka.ms/MIG-AI
Place vs. Space
- Beyond the Binary: Solving the Hybrid Work Paradox (microsoft.com)
EventsSamples for Microsoft Search (mcd79.com)
- July 28th July 2021 | M365 S&C UG
- South Coast Summit Call for Speakers closes on 31st July - South Coast Summit – A Microsoft Cloud Technology Conference
- 28 Aug - India Cloud Security Summit
On "Freedom Day" in the UK (yes, we are using quotes and yes we're not convinced either), we decided to look back and do a retrospective on the modern workplace in the pandemic. There were no post-it notes involved and thankfully no-one has been assigned a load of tasks to do next but we did talk about:
- What went well
- What went badly
- What should we do more of
- What should we do less of
Below is a list of what we covered but give the show a listen to see what we really thought.
What went well
Work life balance
Travel
New ways proved to work
New ways were found as well
Moving to the cloud - resilience
Resilience of Teams
Metrics from employee experience
Disability - choice
What went badly
Learning from people
Appalling powerpoint - next slide please
Communication - too many different ways of doing things - Zoom, Teams, Webex
Water cooler chat and meetings
Impacts to innovation and creativity
Ability to switch off
More time working and not commuting
Back to back meetings
What should we do more of
Objective driven rather than time driven
Data and being data driven
Async comms
Have a natter
What should we do less of
Less meetings without agendas
Less just saying hello
Being in one place
Being rigid
Big changes - smaller and incremental change instead
Photo by Fran on Unsplash
Show 38 and the three of us cover the big news from the last couple of weeks, starting with highlighting the campaign to become allies for women and stop the ridiculous messaging on social media before returning to regular fare with Team high fidelity and latest Viva updates.
- Toxic male behaviour - we can and must do better | Mcd79 blog
- https://unbreak.tech/
- ⚡️ Salma (@whitep4nth3r) / Twitter
Microsoft Teams high fidelity audio “Music Mode” for Music and Pro Microphones – Tom Talks
Microsoft Teams: Get ready for clearer sound on your meetings thanks to this audio upgrade | ZDNet
Salesforce brings sales and service data into Microsoft Teams to support a hybrid workforce - Microsoft Tech Community
Microsoft Viva Topics Product Updates - June 2021 - Microsoft Tech Community
Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365
How employers can prepare for the ‘great resignation’ (fastcompany.com)
Power Apps pricing and licensing updates (microsoft.com)
GitHub Copilot · Your AI pair programmer
New mystery AWS product 'Infinidash' goes viral — despite being entirely fictional • The Register
Accessibility and SharePoint - welcome to the Immersive Reader (mcd79.com)
Events
- M35 Security & Compliance UG - 28 July 2021 | Meetup
- 28 Aug - India Cloud Security Summit
- Commsverse - https://online.commsverse.com/best-community-podcast-2021/
- South Coast Summit - https://www.southcoastsummit.com
This week we are joined by Luise Freese who shares with us the joy of community and how you can get involved by reading and even possibly writing content for the PnP Community Blog.
- Read the blog
- Request access to write a blog
- Message Luise on Twitter or LinkedIn for any queries on what to write
Photo by Corinne Kutz on Unsplash
This week we are joined by the M365 Princess, independent Microsoft consultant, queen of stickers and open sourceress - Luise Freese! We talk about the latest news including our thoughts on Windows 11 and the associated Teams updates, get impressed by Vesku Nopanen rocking the HoloLens2 and discuss why printers are bad.
Windows 11
- Summary - Upgrade to the New Windows 11 OS | Microsoft and Microsoft: Windows 11 is a better fit than Windows 10 for this hybrid world | ZDNet
- UI Changes - Here are the UI changes Microsoft showed off in Windows 11 - The Verge
- TPM issues - https://www.zdnet.com/article/will-your-pc-run-windows-11-even-microsoft-cant-say-for-sure/ and Why Windows 11 is forcing everyone to use TPM chips - The Verge
- No IE!!! Windows 11 is deleting Internet Explorer - The Verge
Teams enhancements - https://twitter.com/rishmsft/status/1408084132786151427?s=20
- Support for multiple accounts!!!!
Vesa Nopnanen using Teams with HoloLens Microsoft HoloLens 2 – experiencing the future today – Vesa Nopanen – My Teams & Microsoft 365 Day (myteamsday.com)
Developer news
Github Project Planning GitHub Issues · Project planning for developers
Connected account tooltip for PnP PowerShell Connected Account tooltip in PowerShell | PnP Samples
Viva and Search
Viva Connections dev model being open in SPFX v1.13 https://twitter.com/vesajuvonen/status/1408013967289688070?s=20
Viva Topics auto highlighted in SharePoint today https://twitter.com/resing/status/1407899914969878529?s=20
Announcing developer preview of the Microsoft Federated Search Platform - Microsoft Tech Community
Security and compliance
What’s New in Information Protection? - Microsoft Tech Community
- GA: Mandatory Labelling
- PP: Co-authoring and autosave for protected documents
-
GA: Dynamic marking
- Ministry of Defence 'sorry' after secret papers left at bus stop - BBC News
- GA: Track and Revoke
EventsKevin on MVPBuzz with Christian Buckley - #MVPbuzzChat with Kevin McDonnell – buckleyPLANET
M365 Security & Compliance User Group – Wed 30 June
- June 2021 | Meetup
After a brief interlude last week, we are back with a quick fire 1-2 to keep you going through the year. Al, Kevin and Garry chat about the latest news with some great new features and intriguing new possibilities.
Teams
Rename your SharePoint domain - SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Docs
Universal Actions in Adaptive Cards on Microsoft Teams
Introducing Headspace, a new focus mode, and quiet time settings with Microsoft Viva Insights - Microsoft Tech Community
Power Platform
Announcing the general availability of Power Apps component framework for Canvas Apps
Canvas source code tool integrated with Power Platform CLI
Announcing Power Query dataflows for Dataverse in Teams (preview)
Read NFC tags with Power Apps on iOS and Android
https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/read-nfc-tags-with-power-apps-on-ios-and-android/
SharePoint – Adding ‘Time to read’ to modern pages – Alex's SharePoint Blog (sharepointalex.uk)
Other M365
Bringing Visio to Microsoft 365: Diagramming for everyone
Meet the new Microsoft Whiteboard designed for Hybrid Work
Viva/Employee Experience
Canon require employees to smile to get in!
China’s tech workers pushed to their limits by surveillance software | Financial Times
Other
Viva AMA
Ask the Microsoft Viva team anything on June 23! - Microsoft Tech Community
Events30th June - Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance User group
June 2021 | Meetup
24th June - What's next for Windows?
Microsoft Windows Event - Watch the June 24 LIVE stream
Commsverse
South Coast Summit
- Including pre conference days on sharing is caring, security and compliance and Microsoft Viva among others
A few weeks ago, friend of the show (and co-host of the amazing Office 365 Distilled podcast) Marijn Somers asked about whether you could remove a connection to a tenant when your account had been deactivated. This kicked off an idea for the show to talk about how we manage access to multiple tenants and how you can make life easier for yourself.
We cover:
- Cleaning up accounts you no longer have access to
- Using Edge/Chrome profiles
- Using a password manager
- Multiple Teams instances
- Things to think about and reasons to work multi-tenant
Useful links:
Managing access to other organisations – Thoughts of an IT Professional (eardley.org.uk)
https://blog.eardley.org.uk/2019/10/chromium-edge-create-your-own-shortcuts/
Photo by pawel szvmanski on Unsplash
We are joined by Simon Doy and Simon Hudson who are part of the team working on the Maturity Model for Microsoft 365 and share with us what it is, who it is for, why you should use it and how to get started. Whether you are non-technical or technical, there is so much great stuff in there to help position where you want your processes to be in Microsoft 365 (and even beyond).
Useful links:
- Maturity model for Microsoft 365
- Caring is Sharing initiative including links to the Maturity Model Practitioners sessions
- Leeds Power Platform User Group
Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash
With Microsoft Build last week, Kevin, Al and Garry cover the key updates from their perspective. Whether it was a huge number of Microsoft Search updates, building apps for Teams or the amazing developer keynote with Scott Hanselman and friends, there was plenty to keep devs and non-devs enthused. Don't forget to vote for us at the Commsverse Tech Community Awards too!
Developer Velocity Lab - Microsoft Research
Continuous access evaluation in Azure AD | Microsoft Docs
What’s new and what’s next for Microsoft Search - Microsoft Tech Community
Microsoft Search crawling video transcripts - Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365
Microsoft Build 2021: What’s new with Azure Communication Services? - Microsoft Tech Community
Tom Morgan series on Azure Communication Services - Learn Azure Communication Services Day 1 – What is Azure Communication Services (ACS), an Introduction | The thoughtstuff Blog
Build the next generation of collaborative apps for hybrid work - Microsoft 365 Blog
Reduce process bottlenecks with process advisor for Power Automate, now generally available | Power Automate Blog (microsoft.com)
Power Apps Developer Plan | Microsoft Power Apps
Transform your business applications with fusion development - Learn | Microsoft Docs
Introducing Power Apps Ideas: AI-powered assistance now helps anyone create apps using natural language | Microsoft Power Apps
Microsoft Power Platform is the best way for teams to build together - Microsoft Power Platform Blog
Use Bot Framework Composer with chatbots - Power Virtual Agents | Microsoft Docs
The personal side of Microsoft Viva - The KashBox (substack.com)
Tech Community Awards - Commsverse | A Microsoft Teams Conference
As many of us start to think about returning to the office, we are joined by Paul Dredge to talk about Hybrid Working. No, we don't mean sitting in the back of a Prius trying to get the latest reports out but what do we mean? We were able to cover:
- What is hybrid working?
- What will change?
- The wellbeing of hybrid working
- The tools supporting hybrid working
Related links (that we either discussed or just think are great on this topic)
6 Principles for Hybrid Work Wellbeing (microsoft.com)
What We’ve Lost During the Pandemic…and What We’ve Gained (microsoft.com)
The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work—Are We Ready? (microsoft.com)
What Happens if ‘Absorbing by Observation’ Disappears? (mit.edu)
Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain: 14 May 2021 - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)
Long working hours killing 745,000 people a year, study finds - BBC News
Covid lockdown easing - why am I exhausted? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-57100378
Photo by Avi Richards on Unsplash
This week we are joined by Paul Dredge, Senior Technical Consultant at Hable, as we discuss the latest news on Teams for Personal, Webinars, Syntex samples and more.
Microsoft Teams now brings family and friends together to call, chat, and make plans
Introducing Webinars in Microsoft Teams: Easy, professional webinars to engage customers
Five new features enhancing Adaptive Cards in Microsoft Teams
Migration Manager: Dropbox migrations
Syntex model samples
The benefits of deploying built-in labeling within Microsoft 365 apps
Three Considerations for Azure Information Protection Deployments
'Huge shortage' in digital skills says Apprentice winner
Sony’s PlayStation to integrate Discord chat for gamers
Box as the source for Tech Community documents?
EventsLearn Git on TikTok with Christos Matskas
25-27 May - Microsoft Build
Next M365 Comp and Sec May 19 May 2021 | Meetup
South Coast Summit – A Microsoft Cloud Technology Conference
- South Coast Summit 2021 - Security & Compliance Workshop Tickets, Fri 15 Oct
- South Coast Summit 2021 - Microsoft Viva and Syntex Workshop Tickets, Fri 15 Oct
Tech Community Awards - Commsverse | A Microsoft Teams Conference
Agenda 2021 - SharePoint Saturday Cologne (spscgn.azurewebsites.net)
- How to measure Wellbeing and Productivity using Viva Insights - Al
- An introduction to knowledge management with Viva Topics - Kevin
Microsoft 365 Chicago Virtual Event (m365chicago.com)
- How to measure Wellbeing and Productivity using Viva Insights - Al
This week we are joined by Ryan Yates as we have Book Club 2, discussing our favourite books we've read or listened to in the last year. Whether it is to find out more about how we can sleep better, building habits or celebrating that humans are nicer than we think, we dig into the topics and occasionally touch on the importance of the topic to the Modern Workplace.
Ryan's choices
The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head is Really Up To by Dean Burnett
Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker (Paperback)
A Degree in a Book: Psychology: Everything You Need to Know to Master the Subject - in One Book! by Porter, Dr Alan
Al's choicesRest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less by Alex Pang and Soojung-Kim
Atomic Habits: The life-changing million copy bestseller by James Clear
A World Without Email: Find Focus and Transform the Way You Work Forever by Cal Newport
The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols
Kevin's choices
Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
The Knowledge Illusion by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach
Fiction picks
Kevin - The Devil and the dark water by Stuart Turton
Ryan - Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman
Al - all Neil Stephenson books but currently Fall or dodge in hell
Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash
This week we chat about intros as Al works out how to intro his new role and then we cover news on SharePoint functionality, a change in model for SPFX releases, new stuff for Viva and record numbers for Teams. And we laughed at Kevin's sunburnt head.
SharePoint/OneDrive
Immersive Reader in SharePoint - SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop April 2021
WhiteBoard moved into OneDrive - Enable Microsoft Whiteboard for your organization - Office Support
WhiteBoard being upgraded in Teams - https://myteamsday.com/2021/04/28/teams-whiteboard/
SPFX
SharePoint Framework Public Previews - Release Candidates
CLI for Microsoft 365 3.9 Release with SPFx Public Preview Upgrade Support
SharePoint Framework 1.12.1 Released
Viva
Announcing Viva Learning public preview - Microsoft Tech Community
Microsoft Viva Insights: Home-tab – Vesa Nopanen – My Teams & Microsoft 365 Day
Alexandria in Microsoft Viva Topics: from big data to big knowledge - Microsoft Research
Yammer and Viva Topics - https://twitter.com/kevmcdonk/status/1389256066781880323?s=20
Teams
145 million active users (that's 130 million "you're on mute" a day according to Jeremy Thake)
Other
M365 Dev Podcast - CLI in Containers with Garry Trinder (schaeflein.net)
LearnPixelArt
Events
12 May - Teams Nation
- Viva insights - Al
- Microsoft Search - Kev
- https://teamsnation.rocks/register
14/15 May - SPS Philly
- Viva insights - Al
- M365 Philly Virtual 2021 (spsevents.org)
19 May - M365 S&C UG
- Syntex for compliance labelling - Kev
- Office Message Encryption - Patrick van Bemmelen
- May 2021 | Meetup
29 May - SPS Cologne
- Viva insights - Al
- Viva Topics - Kev
- SharePoint Saturday Cologne 2021 (spsevents.org)
Commsverse sep 15th and 16th - Commsverse - The Microsoft Teams Conference
South Coast Summit = 16th October South Coast Summit – A Microsoft Cloud Technology Conference
What a great chat this week with Christos Matskas about the best of Security and Identity in Azure. Christos is a PM at Microsoft and Developer Advocate and shared with us some of what is going on with the team and the impressive developer experience that you can get. Christos inspired us to dig further into what can be built and to stop building anything else!
You can hear more from Christos on the 425 show either on Twitch or YouTube at:
425show - Twitch
425show - YouTube
Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash
We are joined by Christos Matskas for the news this week - as a Developer Advocate for Security and Identity at Microsoft, he shares with us his thoughts on the latest news. This week we talk about Microsoft's purchase of Nuance, some interesting articles on security and more Power Platform updates to improve the governance and deployments.
Our big news - we have a custom YouTube URL - https://www.youtube.com/greyhatbeard - thanks to all who helped make this happen.
Microsoft to buy AI and speech technology firm Nuance for $16bn
How Nuance acquisition stacks up
Security
- How far have we come? The evolution of securing identities
- De-risk your lateral movement paths with Microsoft Defender for Identity
- Announcing GA of Microsoft Data Loss Prevention Alerts Dashboard
Power Apps
- Announcing data source environment variables
- CoE starter kit in Dataverse for Teams
Teams
- New frontline worker features in Teams
- Streamline requests with new approval features in Microsoft Teams
EventsClean up completed Microsoft To Do tasks using CLI for Microsoft 365 · Garry Trinder
26-28 April - Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon (m365virtualmarathon.com)
- 27 Apr 15:00 (BST) - Why Microsoft To Do is good for your mental health
- 28 Apr 12:00 (BST) - How to measure Wellbeing and Productivity using Viva Insights
- Building a culture of knowledge sharing
- Microsoft Search - the what, the why and the how
28 April - M365 S&C UG April 2021 | Meetup
- Steve Goodman - Advanced session controls in Microsoft Cloud App Security
- Viktor Hedberg - Azure AD: How to extend your current IAM processes to the cloud, and beyond
4 May - MBAS - MyMbas - Your home for MyMbas (microsoft.com)
12 May - Teams Nation - https://teamsnation.rocks/register
25-27 May - Microsoft Build - MyBuild - Home (microsoft.com)
This week, we are joined by Laura GB to talk about all things data, especially with the world of Power BI. We covered why tools like Power BI are so useful when working with data, how you can tell stories using them to answer questions with data and the latest updates from Power BI to inspire you.
Quick Create – Easily Create Power BI Reports from Lists
https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=72175%2C
Premium per User finally got a price
Power BI Premium per user now generally available for purchase | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI
Dataflows getting some love
What’s New In Dataflows – April 2021 | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI
Deployment Pipeplines - Premium feature but works with PPU
Announcing new deployment pipelines capabilities | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI
Power BI Roadmap
Power BI Release Plan - Microsoft Power BI Community
Power BI Object Level Security
Object-level security - Power Platform Release Plan | Microsoft Docs
Photo by Franki Chamaki on Unsplash
This week we chat about a huge amount of news, covering latest Viva updates, Power Platform and real sales for Mixed Reality.
Viva
Workplace Analytics - Apr 2021
Personal productivity and wellbeing - Microsoft Viva Insights
What's the digital maturity of your internal communications?
Inside the Viva Connections App
PowerApps
Print() screens in your canvas app
Power Apps Code Review Tool
Build your own home office room display system – Loryan Strant
SecurityMicrosoft Unified DLP update Apr 2021
Announcing Azure AD Verifiable Credentials
Security baseline for Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise
Graph
MS Graph Fundamentals on Microsoft Learn
Other
M365 falls over due to DNS
SPFXv1.12
Oracle offers to move clients to cloud for free as it plays catch-up
Microsoft to sell augmented reality goggles to army
CLI for M365 v3.8 Release
Cloud Conversations with Ru and Pete
Start to build good habits
Managing Teams – Movers and Leavers
- 7 April - Teams Day Online - https://modernworkplacesummits.com/
- 13 April - PnP CLI for Microsoft 365 AMA
- 15 April - London Power Platform UG - TBC
- 26-28 April - Virtual Marathon - https://www.m365virtualmarathon.com/
- 28 April - M365 S&C UG - April 2021 | Meetup
- 12 May - Teams Nation - https://teamsnation.rocks/2021
This week, we got chatting about testing, covering a few different areas like how you can do it, why it's so important and the different types. Many people think about testing as something you do as part of a development project but whatever work you do, there are always elements of testing you should be doing. Why would you not? Actually, we cover that too.
During the chat, we talked about making sensible decisions on how much you should test and covered some of the pain that triggered the idea for the show with a very large migration project that needed a lot of testing.
Photo by Charl Folscher on Unsplash
This week we discuss the latest news in part 1 as we share our thoughts on why Microsoft might buy Discord, hybrid work, enabling Viva Connections and plenty of Teams dev news.
Microsoft said to be in talks to buy Discord
The next great disruption is Hybrid Work
Add Viva Connections for Microsoft Teams desktop - SharePoint in Microsoft 365
Open source tool for managing large groups
Four device capabilities developers can utilise for Microsoft Teams Mobile Apps
SharePoint Framework 1.12 extending more of Microsoft Teams
Doctor v1.10 released - Maintain your documentation on SharePoint without pain
Dataverse custom API general availability
Commsverse community awards
- 31/03/2021 - M365 Security & Compliance UG - Teams Architecture for compliance and Azure Sentinel
- 06/04/2021 - MCSCUG - Garry on CLI for Microsoft 365
- 07/04/2021 - Teams Day Online 3 - Session List | Modern Workplace Summits
- 12/05/2021 - Teams Nation
- 27/03/2021 - SharePoint's 20th Birthday Party
Aaron Rendell joins us as we talk about our first steps in community, the benefits of getting involved and how you can get involved yourself.
Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash
With Ignite last week, Al and Kevin are joined by Peter Rising to discuss the big topics across the keynote, Power Platform, Security and Compliance, Teams and Viva.
Microsoft Ignite 2021 Book of News
Microsoft Mesh
Resources for Getting Started with Mixed Reality for Unity
Announcing new Power Platform capabilities
Introducing Microsoft Power Fx
Solve IT governance & admin challenges with new features for Power Platform
Automate tasks with Power Automate Desktop for Windows 10
Azure Purview
4 ways Microsoft is delivering security for all
A cloud built for the next decade
Secure and Compliant Collaboration with Microsoft Teams
Cosmos DB backup and restore
Microsoft 365 solutions for the hybrid work world
Dynamics 365 & Microsoft Teams
Future of SharePoint Syntex
Future of Microsoft Viva Topics
Susan Hanley roadmap slides
Events
09/03/2021 - The Happy Hour Etiquette: The etiquette of employee experience
09/03/2021 - Women in Teams
11/03/2021 - London Power Platform User Group
16/03/2021 - Security & Compliance: Core Concepts Explained
31/03/2021 - M365 Security & Compliance UG - March 2021 | Meetup
07/04/2021 - Teams Day Online 3 - Session List
The first in a new model for us as we start to release weekly. This means that it's just news this week and then part 2 will follow next week with Rabia Williams telling us about what it means to be a Microsoft Dev Advocate.
First the news as we find the mythical beast that is intelligent meetings and debate what low low code might be among other things
Microsoft to add new webinar and 'meeting intelligence' capabilities to Teams via Teams Pro
Enhance productivity in Microsoft Teams with pop out apps and tabs
Update information at the speed of type: Edit in grid view
Microsoft to Crackdown on High Volume Microsoft 365 Email Offenders
Change in Azure Pipelines grant for public projects
Track projects and share news in Teams with two new Power Apps
Microsoft readies Power Fx, a new Power Platform low-code language
Introducing Power Apps mobile apps new look (public preview)
Enhanced component properties
Power BI Magic Quadrant
Enabling remote work and new scenarios with Microsoft 365 E3
Events and ego posts24 Feb
- M365 Sec and Comp UG - Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance User Group (London, United Kingdom) | Meetup
27th Feb - Scottish Summit
- Happy Hour Etiquette guide to Microsoft 365
- Microsoft To do is good for your mental health
- Manage your tenant and SharePoint Framework projects with CLI for Microsoft 365
27th Feb - Global Automation Bootcamp
- Keyless Authentication using Azure Managed Identity
2-4 March
- MS Ignite - Microsoft Ignite
9 Mar
- Etiquette Happy Hour - The Happy Hour Etiquette: A communications manifesto for everyone" | Meetup
16 March
- Thames Valley Azure User Group - https://www.meetup.com/Azure-Thames-Valley/events/276005171/
29 June - first in-person conf in the UK this year? https://online.commsverse.com/
On 4th February, Satya Nadella announced Microsoft Viva and something changed. This wasn't a pure focus on new technology, this was a focus on Employee Experience, this was a platform to bring together a set of services in a simple way to improve life for employees. We are joined this week by Steve Adams, CEO for CPS, to talk about what this means.
First the news as we talk about Microsoft Lens, some upcoming deadlines to plan for and spinach. Yup spinach.
Office Lens is Renamed to Microsoft Lens
Demo: SharePoint Site Collection Level Permissions
Turn on or turn off guest access to Microsoft Teams
End of support reminder for Microsoft Edge Legacy
Microsoft sets deadline for end of support of IE 11 by 365 apps
New security and Compliance Exams
Security Community Webinars
Scientists have taught spinach to send emails and it could warn us about climate change
Texas officials apologise after 'Chucky' missing child alert
9 Feb
- The Happy Hour Etiquette: A communications manifesto for everyone" | Meetup
17 Feb
- MS Tech Days - GreyHatBeard - Manage, Monitor and Secure the Power Platform
- M365 UK UG - Kevin on Microsoft Search
19/20 Feb
- Power Platform Bootcamp - Kevin on Knowing Me, Knowing You - using Facial Recognition in Power Apps
- Paris, France · Global Power Platform Bootcamp
- Singapore, Singapore · Global Power Platform Bootcamp
24 Feb
- Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance User Group (London, United Kingdom)
27th Feb
- Scottish Summit
2-4 March
- MS Ignite - Microsoft Ignite - Login - Login
16 March
- Thames Valley Azure User Group
On 4th February, Satya Nadella announced Microsoft Viva and something changed. This wasn't a pure focus on new technology, this was a focus on Employee Experience, this was a platform to bring together a set of services in a simple way to improve life for employees. We are joined this week by Steve Adams, CEO for CPS, to talk about what this means.
We cover:
- What is Microsoft Viva?
- What is the business value of employee engagement
- How does Viva play into this so well?
- Where do partners play into this?
- What do we think is next?
Useful links:
- Microsoft Viva
- Intro blogs to the four pillars of Topics, Learning, Insights and Connections
- The Massive Market Impact of Microsoft Viva by Josh Bersin
- Microsoft Viva e-Book - The People-Powered Workplace: Reimagine the Employee Experience
- M365Voice Podcast with Chris McNulty
- Kevin's post introducing Viva Topics
Photo by D A V I D S O N L U N A on Unsplash
How many times have you had to consider third party tools for your Microsoft 365 environment? What should you think about when choosing tools? We are joined by Michal Pisarek, CEO of Orchestry and 6 time MVP to talk about these things.
First the news as we talk about Microsoft's latest sharing of meeting science, new DLP playbooks, big numbers for Teams usage in the UK and Kev's dream robot.
WorkLab
Microsoft 365 Information Protection and Compliance Deployment Acceleration Guides
Microsoft Teams DLP Playbook!!! - Microsoft Tech Community
Enhancements to Microsoft Exact Data Match - Microsoft Tech Community
Manage guest access with access reviews - Azure AD | Microsoft Docs
Big Teams numbers for NHS
Teams internal sharing turned on by default
Yammer inclusive reactions
Meet Raspberry Silicon: Raspberry Pi Pico now on sale at $4 - Raspberry Pi
Best of CES
Microsoft Channels ‘Black Mirror’: Turn Deceased People Into Chatbots
NV350 CARAVAN】 OFFICE POD CONCEPT
Do you need a standalone device for Teams?
Tech Community Awards - Commsverse Online
Events
Tues 26 Jan
- Collab365 GlobalCon5 Turbo Tuesday - Kevin - How to make a desk locator with Microsoft Search
- MCSCUG Meetup (Modern Workplace and Power Platform) | Meetup - Al - Entitlements
Thurs Jan 28
- CollabDays Birmingham (Virtual) 2021 | Collabdays - Al - Workplace Analytics
- Demystifying the Microsoft 365 Platform: Unlock Power Productivity and Performance - Michal
- How Much Community Management Is Too Much? CollabTalk Tweetjam
Friday 5th Feb
- Global Automation Bootcamp 2021 - Garry
Wed 17th Feb
- Microsoft 365 UK (M365UK) User Group - Kevin
- Tech Days event TBC - Manage monitor and secure the Power Platform
18th Feb
- PnP Community Call Feb 18th - Run CLI for Microsoft 365 in Docker
How many times have you had to consider third party tools for your Microsoft 365 environment? What should you think about when choosing tools? We are joined by Michal Pisarek, CEO of Orchestry and 6 time MVP to talk about these things.
We covered:
- When would you need to spend more on licensing?
- Why would you buy rather than do yourself?
- What factors should you consider for evaluating a product?
- What questions should you ask?
- Do you need to chose a big player?
Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash
8vQ4IpuaytfDYZ0EYut6
Welcome to the 2nd year of GreyHatBeard. 2021 may not be starting in the best way for many but why not listen to us as we have a Celebration of Automation. We're joined by Veronique Lengelle, a dual MVP and also a Solutions Architect at CPS, sharing her expertise in PowerShell and how it can improve your life through automation.
First the news as we pick up on topics like the Solarwinds hack, more outages and Kevin's thoughts on the best bits of CES...
More outages with Power Apps and Data Flows.
Slack outage on first working day of the year.
Google outage due to running out of space?
You can now share Dataverse for Teams apps beyond a team | Microsoft Power Apps
Solarwinds Hack
- Solorigate Resource Center – updated December 31st, 2020 – Microsoft Security Response Center
- Statement on the story from The New York Times regarding JetBrains and SolarWinds | JetBrains Blog
Pupils in Scotland struggle to get online amid Microsoft issue.
Nvidia buying ARM.
John Briginishaw's Power Platform learning journey.
Latest CLI for Microsoft 365 updates
Run CLI for Microsoft 365 in Docker
Tues 26 Jan
- MCSCUG Meetup (Modern Workplace and Power Platform) | Meetup
Thurs Jan 28
- CollabDays Birmingham (Virtual) 2021 | Collabdays
Thurs 4 Feb
- London Power Platform User Group - https://powerplatform.london/nextevent
- Speakers TBC
Friday 5th Feb
- Global Automation Bootcamp 2021 – Power Community
Sat 27 Feb
- Scottish Summit
Welcome to the 2nd year of GreyHatBeard. 2021 may not be starting in the best way for many but why not listen to use as we have a Celebration of Automation. We're joined by Veronique Lengelle, a dual MVP and also a Solutions Architect at CPS, sharing her expertise in PowerShell and how it can improve your life through automation.
In this part, we covered:
- Why should you automate things?
- What are the options?
- How do you learn about them?
Here are some useful links for learning about PowerShell, PnP PowerShell and CLI for Microsoft 365:
- Introduction to PowerShell - Learn | Microsoft Docs
- Introduction to Power Automate - Learn | Microsoft Docs
- Introduction to Azure Logic Apps - Learn | Microsoft Docs
- PowerShell Documentation - PowerShell | Microsoft Docs
- CLI for Microsoft 365 docs - https://pnp.github.io/cli-microsoft365/
- Find out more about changes between the latest PnP PowerShell command and the older version - powershell/CHANGELOG.md at dev · pnp/powershell · GitHub
Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash
Finally. The end of 2020 is close and this is our last show of the year so we decided to look back at the biggest news and then look forward to what we hope are some better times in 2021. We are joined by two fantastic guests in Laura Graham-Brown (freelance consultanct and queen of Power BI) and Michal Pisarek (CEO at Orchestry Software) who shared their own thoughts.
In part 1, we cover the latest news to finish up 2020 on a high.
- Microsoft Productivity Score removing the names of the users
- Powerful ways to connect SharePoint team sites, files, lists and pages as tabs in Microsoft Teams
- Microsoft unveils Azure Purview for data governance, Azure Synapse Analytics hits general availability
- Use Power BI with Azure Purview to achieve better data governance and discovery | Microsoft Power BI Blog
- Outages everywhere!
- Microsoft 365 in UK and Europe
- AWS
- Over 200 million users rely on SharePoint as Microsoft is again recognized as a Leader in the 2020 Gartner Content Services Platforms Magic Quadrant Report
- 20th birthday of SharePoint next year
- Microsoft Graph Toolkit 2.0 hits General Availability
- Announcing public preview of the Microsoft Teams Activity Feed API on Microsoft Graph
Posts and events
Kevin's blog on our Collab Days Munich/Vienna session on the etiquette of Microsoft 365
- 16th Dec - Microsoft 365 UK User Group December 2020 | Meetup
- Keyless Authentication with Azure Managed Identity
- End of year CollabTalk
- 18th-20th Jan - Modern Workplace Paris - Accueil - MWCP 2021 (modern-workplace.pro) - Kevin speaking on Microsoft Search
- 26th Jan - MCSCUG Meetup (Modern Workplace and Power Platform) | Meetup
- Al speaking on Entitlements
- 27th Feb 2021 - Home | Scottish Summit
- GreyHatBeard Etiquette of Microsoft 365
- Garry - Manage a tenant and SPFX using CLI for Microsoft 365
- Al - To-Do is good for your Mental Health
Finally. The end of 2020 is close and this is our last show of the year so we decided to look back at the biggest news and then look forward to what we hope are some better times in 2021. We are joined by two fantastic guests in Laura Graham-Brown (freelance consultanct and queen of Power BI) and Michal Pisarek (CEO at Orchestry Software) who shared their own thoughts.
We covered three questions with points awarded at the whim of Kevin to decide on two finalists who would defend the indefensible - listen to found out what they tried to defend!
- Without mentioning Covid, Trump, Brexit or Climate Change, what was the biggest news this year?
- What do you expect to see in the world of modern workplace for 2021?
- What's your suggestion for our lovely listeners for 2021?
Thank you so much to all who listened to our first year and can't wait to bring you more chat and even more guests in 2021 - happy holidays to all!
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
We are back to just us this week because we are keeping things private - well, at least we're discussing privacy and the things you should consider with the data you hold in Microsoft 365. Are you comfortable sharing how your data to get a better measure of your productivity?
First though, this week's news with new functionality in OneDrive and Search, a warning for PnP PowerShell and Azure Function lovers and a great idea from a friend of the show.
Shared Library in OneDrive
Search updates
- Use the Microsoft Search API in Microsoft Graph to search files - Microsoft Graph | Microsoft Docs
- https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-search-what-you-need-to-know/
PnP PowerShell will no longer run in Azure Functions v1
Salesforce buying slack
Dear Microsoft | Slack
Chris Huntingford's decision chart for Power Platform Licensing
CLI for Microsoft 365 v3.3
Configuration Settings for Sharing in Microsoft 365
Upcoming Events
- Thu 3 Dec - London #PowerApps and #PowerAutomate User Group - Christmas 2020 - Power Platform User Groups
- Fri 4 Dec - Winter Across the Alps - Munich-Vienna 2020 | Collabdays
- Sat 12th Dev - Microsoft 365 Saturday Bangalore 2020
- 16th Dec -
We are back to just us this week because we are keeping things private - well, at least we're discussing privacy and the things you should consider with the data you hold in Microsoft 365. Are you comfortable sharing how your data to get a better measure of your productivity?
Related links:
- Microsoft Announced a 'Productivity' Feature That Lets Managers Keep Track of Everything You Do. It Didn't Go Over Well | Inc.com
- Microsoft files patent to record and score meetings on body language - BBC News
- 'I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots' - BBC News
- Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system - BBC News
The Joy of Migration is this week's topic as we are joined by Paul Bullock who is a member of the PnP Core Team and heavily involved in the SharePoint Modernisation project so we chat about how to go about Microsoft 365 migrations and some of the pain we've faced along the way.
Part 1 covers the latest news including the newly announced Dataverse (watch out for Al's Spiderman impressions), new apps for Teams and a great run through of the lifecycle of an item in SharePoint.
News
- Reshape the future of work with Microsoft Dataverse for Teams—now generally available | Microsoft Power Apps
- Microsoft makes Power Platform tools, Dataverse data platform available for Teams | ZDNet
- Jeff Teper's take on things
- Is Dataverse already being used?
- Teams Apps for Meetings are GA
- Lifecycle of an item in SharePoint: Where does it go? - Microsoft Tech Community
- Announcing general availability of Microsoft Teams Resource-specific consent and read channel messages - Microsoft 365 Developer Blog
- Teams meeting chat - Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365
- M365WhatDidYouMeme - https://twitter.com/kevmcdonk/status/1328360500116254720?s=20Managed
EventsMicrosoft 365 Developer Bootcamp 2020
- Hamburg - Kevin - “Microsoft Search - the what, the why and the how” (Nov 28th)
- Cologne - Kevin - Adaptive Cards Template Service (Nov 26th)
3 Dec - London Power Platform User Group - https://powerplatform.london/nextevent
- Lightning Sessions
- Submit a Session - https://powerplatform.london/submitsession
Friday 4 Dec - CollabDays - winter across the alps - https://www.collabdays.org/2020-munich/
- Al - Security & Compliance: Core Concepts Explained
- GHB Panel on etiquette in M365
Microsoft 365 UK (M365UK) User Group (London, United Kingdom) | Meetup
GlobalCon 4 from Collab 365
- 1-4 Dec Kevin - “An intro to Knowledge Management with Microsoft 365 including SharePoint Syntex and the rest of Project Cortex”
The Joy of Migration is this week's topic as we are joined by Paul Bullock who is a member of the PnP Core Team and heavily involved in the SharePoint Modernisation project so we chat about how to go about Microsoft 365 migrations and some of the pain we've faced along the way.
We covered:
- How to prepare for a migration
- How to plan for a migration
- How to run a migration
- How to validate a migration
- Plenty of war stories
Thanks to Paul for joining us and check out his blog post for more information on updating a publishing page to the modern experience.
Can I convert a Publishing page to the modern experience? – CaPa Creative Ltd
Photo by Mariko margetson on Unsplash
Telling Stories - more than just a great album by the Charlatans, it is a way to share the benefits of tools like those in the Power Platform. This week we are joined by Clarissa Gillingham as she shares her experience of forming great stories and some great tips for creating your own.
First though, the news as we cover the latest Teams usage numbers, updates to Power Apps and more.
News
Teams serving 115 million daily active users
Microsoft Teams web getting an updated look and feel
New scenes in Teams
Lego backgrounds for Teams meetings
SharePoint 2010 Workflows Stopped Yesterday
Import and Export of Microsoft Teams Conversations in Microsoft Graph API
Power your digital transformation with insights from Microsoft Productivity Score - Microsoft 365 Blog
Modern Fluent UI controls in Power Apps (preview) | Microsoft Power Apps
Mobile Offline for Power Apps | Microsoft Power Apps
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EventsCheck out our new series GreyHatBeard BiteSize
Microsoft 365 Developer Bootcamp 2020
- Hamburg - Kevin - “Microsoft Search - the what, the why and the how” (Nov 28th)
- Cologne - Kevin - Adaptive Cards Template Service (Nov 26th)
3 Nov – Al speaking at Leeds PPUG on Model-Driven Apps for Dummies (and non-Dynamics folks)
9 Nov - Al speaking on Productivity in an age of Collaboration via the Reactor London
13 Nov - Al speaking at M365 Chicago - https://www.spsevents.org/event/chicagosuburbs2020/
GlobalCon 4 from Collab 365
- 10 Nov - Turbo Tuesday - Al - Ceremonies for Productivity & Knowledge
- 1-4 Dec Kevin - “An intro to Knowledge Management with Microsoft 365 including SharePoint Syntex and the rest of Project Cortex”
- 1-4 Dev Clarissa - "How to transition from SharePoint to CDS"
Telling Stories - more than just a great album by the Charlatans, it is a way to share the benefits of tools like those in the Power Platform. This week we are joined by Clarissa Gillingham as she shares her experience of forming great stories and some great tips for creating your own.
If you would like to appear on the show, please drop us a line using the form at https://www.greyhatbeard.com/upcoming-shows. We’d love to hear from everyone, especially if you’re not an MVP and would like to be heard more in the community.
We covered:
- Why telling stories helps
- Relatability
- Turn something abstract into something understandable – a journey
- How to tell stories well
- Focus on the people
- Analogies
- Formulate a journey
- Sharing stories
- User stories drive functionality
- Power BI is visual storytelling
Related links:
Appalling slides and graphs at Prime Minister's last update!
https://twitter.com/markwilsonit/status/1322624750011764736?s=20
https://twitter.com/DomKent/status/1322619110371590145?s=20
Photo by Robyn Budlender on Unsplash
This week we learn how saying no means that you can actually say yes more often, adding more control to what you do and being more productive with it. We chat about trying not to over commit and work out when you can work most effectively.
But first we cover the latest news with Microsoft’s analysis on wellbeing in an era of Covid19, the latest from Zoom and some small but useful updates in the world of SharePoint.
Al
- WorkPlace Analytics
Kevin
- Jared Spataro post on how the pandemic has affected workplaces
- Zoom updates from Zoomtopia including end-to-end encryption and “Zapps”
- Modernised adding of content types to lists and libraries
- Enforcing page properties on save in SharePoint
- Demo of Project nucleus from PnP Monthly Call
- SharePoint Spaces reaches GA and so Kevin created a GHB space
- Microsoft supporting the digital gap
- Microsoft 365 Network Analytics reaches preview
Garry
- General Availability of Microsoft Graph Teams Membership API
- Creating hyperlinks to missing pages in modern SharePoint
Events
- Newly announced South Coast Summit for next Oct - register now!
- aOS Southeast Asia 2020 - Kevin - “Microsoft Search - the what, the why and the how” (Oct 23/24th)
- CollabDays Benelux - Al speaking on how ToDo is good for your Mental Health (Oct 24th)
- Microsoft 365 Developer Bootcamp 2020
- Hamburg - Kevin - “Microsoft Search - the what, the why and the how” (Nov 28th)
- Cologne - Kevin - Adaptive Cards Template Service (Nov 26th)
- GlobalCon 4 from Collab 365
- 10 Nov - Turbo Tuesday - Al - Ceremonies for Productivity & Knowledge
- 1-4 Dec Kevin - “An intro to Knowledge Management with Microsoft 365 including SharePoint Syntex and the rest of Project Cortex”
- 9 Nov - Al speaking on Productivity in an age of Collaboration via the Reactor London
- 13 Nov - Al speaking at M365 Chicago
This week we learn how saying no means that you can actually say yes more often, adding more control to what you do and being more productive with it. We chat about trying not to over commit and work out when you can work most effectively.
If you would like to appear on the show, please drop us a line using the form at https://www.greyhatbeard.com/upcoming-shows. We’d love to hear from everyone, especially if you’re not an MVP and would like to be heard more in the community.
Related links:
- Circadian Rhythms
- Embracing asynchronous communciations
- The Acorn Electron - OK, we didn’t actually discuss this on the show but Garry and Kevin had a great chat before the show about it - who else played Repton?
Photo by Andy T from Unsplash
Ignite was on fire last week so we dedicated the show to our thoughts on the main news that came out. Was it the Power Apps in Teams news that caught your attention, perhaps Project Nucleus or even the updates to Logic Apps? We cover what was announced and how we think you will be able to make use of these.
If you would like to appear on the show, please drop us a line using the form at https://www.greyhatbeard.com/upcoming-shows. We’d love to hear from everyone, especially if you’re not an MVP and would like to be heard more in the community.
Ignite links
- Ignite Book of News
- Ignite 2020 Roadmaps
- Teams and Power Apps
- Teams and Power BI
- Power Apps with Azure API Management
- What’s new in Teams
- Teams aiding mental health with Workplace Analytics and Headspace integration
- Productivity Score
- Use OneDrive and SharePoint for Stream Recordings
- The SharePoint Home app for Microsoft Teams
- SharePoint Communications changes
- Microsoft Ignite 2020 guide to SharePoint, OneDrive, Planner, Stream, Visio and Lists
- Microsoft Lists Lookbook
- Project Nucleus - intelligent sync for SharePoint Lists
- SharePoint Syntex - Project Cortex
- Post show update - it’s available now!
- What’s new in Microsoft Search
- New Logic Apps runtime, performance and developer improvements
- Azure Communication Services
- Fluid Framework
While we eagerly await the news to come from Ignite, Peter Rising was kind enough to join us again and share some thoughts on Security and Compliance in Microsoft 365.
We aimed to cover:
- What can be done in M365?
- How do we know license requirements?
- What’s coming next and what do we wish is coming next?
Related links:
- CIS Benchmarks
- Top 10 ways to secure M365
- M365 Secure Score
- M365 Compliance Score
- Steve Goodman’s post on whether you need backup for Microsoft 365
- Tony Redmond’s post on why you don’t need backup for Microsoft 365
- AvePoint’s reply to Tony’s post
- M365 licencing guide for Security & Compliance
- M365 roadmap export – filtered for Security & Compliance products
Image by Michael Dziedzic from Unsplash
While we eagerly await the news to come from Ignite, Peter Rising was kind enough to join us again and share some thoughts on Security and Compliance in Microsoft 365. We first covered some interesting ideas from Facebook, sunken datacentres and debated laptops vs desktops.
If you would like to appear on the show, please drop us a line using the form at https://www.greyhatbeard.com/upcoming-shows. We’d love to hear from everyone, especially if you’re not an MVP and would like to be heard more in the community.
Al
- Automating Responses to Meeting Invites
- Laptop or desktop?
Kevin
- CORS errors on UK Test and Tracing site!
- Surface Duo released
- UK South azure outage
- Azure status history
- Azure UK South Outage: Overheating Cloud Dried Up Services
- Project Natick - datacentre under the sea
- Facebook Infinite Office - Facebook’s Infinite Office is a virtual office space for the WFH crowd
- Video lens to show quick symbols based on hand gestures
- Demo video
- Snapchat studio link
- Back Paul Bullock on being able to look other Team’s users in the eye
Peter
Ignite Table Talks sessions from the community
Events
- Kevin’s Knowledge Management series continues
- Considering where knowledge is stored
- Organising knowledge
- Creating a culture of knowledge
- Microsoft 365 Developer Bootcamp 2020
- Kevin speaking on “Microsoft Search - the what, the why and the how”
- Teamsfest - 7th Oct
- GreyHatBeard guide to entitlements
- Peter Rising “Hands on Data Loss Prevention and Retention”
- Peter’s talk at M365 User Group
- Sign up for next month’s talk with Joanne Klein and Lesley Crook
- Collab Days Lisbon - 10 Oct
- Al speaking on “How to use Sensitivity Labels to secure your content”
After almost two months, the three of us are back together and ready to share the latest info and our thoughts to you all. This week, we think about how you can stay in contact with the latest information, discuss the Microsoft 365 roadmap and our thoughts and wishes for what will be announced at Ignite 2020.
We aimed to cover:
- How keep up with what is changing in M365?
- How do you know when the changes will happen?
- What do we think is coming for Ignite?
- What do we hope is coming?
Related links:
- Ignite registration
- Matt Wade’s Ways to keep up to date
- Microsoft 365 Roadmap site
- Azure Updates
- Jeff Teper tweet about one more thing
- The Saga of Dataflex (Project Oakdale) continues
- Microsoft Community Calls
Image by Matt Duncan from Unsplash
After almost two months, the three of us are back together and ready to share the latest info and our thoughts to you all. This week, we think about how you can stay in contact with the latest information, discuss the Microsoft 365 roadmap and our thoughts and wishes for what will be announced at Ignite 2020.
First up was the news including why you should backup your Teams chat, the end of IE11, opensource at Microsoft and supporting a campaign against toxic male behaviour on Twitter.
Al (the hat)
- Project Whata? Project Moca
- SP2010 workflows - Less than 2 months before they start to be disabled (1 Nov)
Kevin (the grey)
- KPMG deletes chat back history
- Great discussion started by Joanne Klein about whether people have short delete histories on Teams chats with Tom Arbuthnot and Aaron Rendell’s comments
- IE11 finally dying
- Luise Freese’s campaign against toxic behaviour on twitter against women in tech
- No stickers for Garry
- Azure celebration of Gregor Suttie’s commitement
- Metalogix Expert discontinued
Garry (the beard)
- Revamp of Open Source site
- Patrick Rodgers tweeting Nolan Lawson’s post about the pain of being an open source maintainer
- GitHub Codespaces Beta Preview
- This news just missed the show but Visual Studio Codespaces is being replaced with Github spaces
- CLI for Microsoft 365 v3 Release
- Microsoft Lists is now GA in Microsoft Teams
- To Do APIs have been released in Microsoft Graph
- Reporting endpoints for Teams calls added to Microsoft Graph
Events
- Kevin’s Knowledge Management series starts
- Al’s blog on Meeting chat in Teams
- PnP Vi
Have you been using lockdown and the extra time at home during the pandemic to try and pass some Microsoft Certifications? Or perhaps you are just interested in how you can better implement Security and Compliance in Microsoft 365? We were joined by Peter Rising this week as Al and Garry ran the show while Kevin sweltered in a tent on the Isle of Wight.
We aimed to cover the following on Microsoft 365 Security Certification:
- What’s available?
- What do they cover?
- What are the benefits?
- How can you study for them?
If you liked the sound of Peter’s book, then check it out at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-365-Security-Administration-environments/dp/1838983120
Image by Dayne Topkin from Unsplash
Have you been using lockdown and the extra time at home during the pandemic to try and pass some Microsoft Certifications? Or perhaps you are just interested in how you can better implement Security and Compliance in Microsoft 365? We were joined by Peter Rising this week as Al and Garry ran the show while Kevin sweltered in a tent on the Isle of Wight.
First up was the news including several updates on what is happening with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft proving Pink Floyd wrong with more education updates.
If you would like to appear on the show, please drop us a line using the form at https://www.greyhatbeard.com/upcoming-shows. We’d love to hear from everyone, especially if you’re not an MVP and would like to be heard more in the community.
The news links below are the ones discussed on the show but also some additional links we found during the week.
Al (the hat)
- New Updates to Teams for Education
- New education pages in SharePoint Lookbook
Garry (the beard)
- Let your users skip sign-in with Single Sign-On support for Microsoft Teams tabs
- Frictionless app development and enablement with the new Teams App Submission API
Peter (deputy grey)
- Microsoft Whiteboard in Teams Adds Sticky Notes and Text, Improves Performance New Microsoft Teams Advanced Communications SKUs are now available
Events
- PnP virtual conf - Garry speaking on CLI for Microsoft 365
- TeamsFest
- Peter - Hands on Data Loss Prevention and Retention
- Al & Kevin - GreyHatBeard Guide to Entitlement
- M365 UK Virtual User Group
- Next event on 12th August
Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash
Never let it be said that we turn down a challenge. We were asked by a listener to try and summarise Power Platform licensing and rather than just share what we knew, we managed to bring in one of the Microsoft experts on the subject, the very tattoed and always entertaining Chris Huntingford. Then, by sheer chance, Microsoft decided to drop the bombshell news of Dataflex and we had even more to chat about.
We aimed to cover:
- What licenses do you need from Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 or stand-alone?
- What is licensed - Power Platform, Power Virtual Agents and Power Portals?
- Where does Dataflex play into this?
- Listener questions
Useful links
- Power Apps and Power Automate Licensing Guide - as Chris said, read this before you ask questions
- Power Platform Centre of Excellence Toolkit
- Power Platform Admin Centre
- Multiplexing post from Jukka Niiranen
Some great posts on Dataflex
- Introducing Dataflex
- Matt Weston - Dataflex from a SharePoint perspective
- Jukka Niiranne - Dataflex is more and less than CDS
- Great Twitter thread on license differences between Dataflex and Dataflex Pro
- Andrew Welch summary
- April Dunham summary video
- ZDNet - what is Dataflex
Image by Olav Ahrens Røtne from Unsplash
Never let it be said that we turn down a challenge. We were asked by a listener to try and summarise Power Platform licensing and rather than just share what we knew, we managed to bring in one of the Microsoft experts on the subject, the very tattoed and always entertaining Chris Huntingford. Then, by sheer chance, Microsoft decided to drop the bombshell news of Dataflex and we had even more to chat about.
However, that is all for part two. In this part of the show, Al and I cover the latest news, especially all the updates from Microsoft Inspire and Ready 2020.
Kevin
- New employee on-boarding hub
- Slack makes EU antitrust claim against Microsoft over Teams - even though they, apparently, aren’t in competition
- Cosmos dB power shell
- Mention a user in teams
Al (the hat)
- Universities using a supplier that suffered a ransomware attack - highlights the need for constant vigilance of users and technical solutions
- Premier League club almost lost £1 million to Hackers
- DataFlex potentially being sued already
Garry (the beard)
- SPFX 1.11 released - Extend more of Microsoft Teams, and publish to AppSource
- Jeff Teper’s thoughts on SPFX 1.11
Inspire 2020
- Inspire book of news - Azure
- Blog Storage to support NFS - mentioned in Book of News but no further details yet
- M365
- Microsoft Lists starting to roll out
- July - Office 365
- August - Teams
- Universal Print
- Yammer
- External guests
- External communities to EU
- Yammer Admin Portal
- Microsoft Lists starting to roll out
Events
- PnP virtual conf
- Al talking on Microsoft To-Do and Mental Health at Office 365 & SharePoint User Group (West Midlands)
- M365 UK Virtual User Group
- Next event on 12th August
Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash
Governance - huh, what is it good for? Well, to find that out, take a listen to this week’s episode as we are joined by newly minted MVP Chirag Patel to talk about Teams Governance. We cover three key topics:
- Why do you need Governance?
- What do you need to consider?
- How can you do it?
Useful links
- Joanne Klein’s post on concerns over Teams after setting up provisioning - includes some great tips
- Plan for Governance in Teams
- Teams provisioning app sample in Github
- Productivity Score
- Governance quick start for Microsoft Teams
- Developing self-directed work teams (old article but still true today 😊)
Image by Marek Piwnick from Unsplash
Governance - huh, what is it good for? Well, to find that out, take a listen to this week’s episode as we are joined by newly minted MVP Chirag Patel to talk about Teams Governance.
This part of the show covers the latest news including some exciting new updates from Microsoft Teams.
We it 100 followers! - thanks for noticing, Lee Ford.
Al
- Sensitivity Labels in Teams reaches general availability
- Full documentation from Microsoft Docs
- Reimagining virtual collaboration in Teams
- Mentions in adaptive Cards from Tomasz Pozytek
Garry
- New maintainer in Office 365 CLI - Welcome MVP Rabia Williams
- Change of name for ‘Office 365 CLI’ moving to ‘CLI for Microsoft 365’
- Get notified of presence changes – the Microsoft Graph presence subscription API is now available in public preview
Kevin
- The death of 2010 workflow
- New leaders of digital workplace
- Hugo Bernier’s set of dev tools
- Guide to Rockstar meetings with Matt Wade
- Azure Dev Ops Boards
Events
- ProDev conf
- M365 UK Virtual User Group
- Next event on 15th July
- M365 Virtual Marathon videos now all available
- “Hello, can anyone hear me?” - The etiquette of meetings in Microsoft Teams - Kevin McDonnell
- Building the Perfect Microsoft 365 Tenant - Chirag Patel
- Designing and Implementing Microsoft 365 Adoption Centre - Chirag Patel
- Microsoft Teams for the Project Manager
- London PPUG - Thursday 16th July
- Leeds PPUG
- Commsverse - not too late to sign up for all the videos at a great price
- including the GreyHatBeard session that we had great fun doing
Bono may still not have found what he is looking for but this week we talk about Microsoft Search and how you can help people to find what they are looking for, well, as long as it is a document, page or other bit of content. We cover three key topics:
- What is Microsoft Search?
- Other search in Microsoft 365 like Teams
- Planning for a good search experience
Useful links
- Overview of Microsoft Search
- You can now add new verticals to search
- Microsoft Search coming to teams
- PnP Search Web Parts -> Classic to Modern Search Centres by Frank Cornu
- Modern Search Single Page Application by Kevin and Garry
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
Bono may still not have found what he is looking for but this week we talk about Microsoft Search and how you can help people to find what they are looking for, well, as long as it is a document, page or other bit of content.
But first the news and our attempt to try and cover slightly less to keep the episodes shorter (TLDR - we just ended up chatting more - sorry).
If you would like to appear on the show, please drop us a line using the form at https://www.greyhatbeard.com/upcoming-shows. We’d love to hear from everyone, especially if you’re not an MVP and would like to be heard more in the community.
The news links below are the ones discussed on the show but also some additional links we found during the week.
Al (the hat)
- Daily Briefing from Cortana
- Meetings and agendas
Garry (the beard)
- DotNet core support for CSOM announced and with further details on the Microsoft Blogs
- Update your applications to use Microsoft Authentication Library and Microsoft Graph API
- Office 365 CLI is now available in Azure Cloud Shell
Kevin (the grey)
- Microsoft retail stores closing
- Did we mention enough how great Mary-Jo Foley is?
- Teams community blog space
- Amazon Honeycode, a competitor for Power Apps? and the announcement from Amazon
Events
- GreyHatBeard speaking at Commsverse Online
- 7th July - “Keyless Authentication using Azure Managed Identity” by Garry
- Microsoft 365 UK User Group
- PowerfulDev Conference organised by Dona Sarkar and keynoted by Scott Guthrie
- PowerApps 4 Kids
Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash
It’s a CPS bonus this week as Iain Smith (Office Apps and Services MVP and Head of Professional Services at CPS) joins us to talk about Unified Comms. We should have been on best behaviour but that doesn’t suit us on a Saturday morning! We cover three key topics:
- What is Collab and Unified Comms?
- What tools do you need for both?
- How are they better together?
Image by Phil Goodwin from Unsplash
It’s a CPS bonus this week as Iain Smith (Office Apps and Services MVP and Head of Professional Services at CPS) joins us to talk about Unified Comms. We should have been on best behaviour but that doesn’t suit us on a Saturday morning!
Al is an MVP!!!
Garry
- Embedding modern SharePoint pages in Microsoft Teams as personal apps (preview)
- Office 365 CLI v2.10
- Code tour option in Office 365 CLI
Iain
- Number of active users in Microsoft Teams
- Local Media Optimisation
- Teams and Skype Consumer is now live and rolling out into tenants
- Gen2 hardware being released
Kevin
- Interview with Jeff Teper on VentureBeat - Teams will be bigger than Windows!
- Behind the scenes of the Virtual Marathon
- 10 tips for preparing for Project Cortex
- How your Teams data is stored from Martina Grom
- Tweet about Github data locations from Iris Classon
Al
- Facebook purchase of Giphy
- Patrick Guimonet (@patricg) shared a great article explaining the science of Microsoft Threat Protection
- Protect GitHub content with Azure Sentinel
Events
- GreyHatBeard speaking at Commsverse Online
- Kevin and Al - June 15th-19th - Global Con 2 from Collab 365, now also featuring the Godfather of SharePoint Jeff Teper! - click links below to register for free:
- Kevin - how to run a virtual workshop using Microsoft Teams
- Al -To-Do, Doing, Done: How to manage work
- Al - Model Driven Power Apps for beginners at East Mids Power Apps & Power Automate User Group
This week we have a special guest as Stephan Bisser, MVP for AI with a focus on Conversational AI, joins us to talk about Bots. We cover three key topics:
- Why/when would you use a Bot?
- How do you get started designing then building a Bot?
-
What’s changed recently?
-
Stephan’s post on updates from Build
- Adaptive Cards Management System
- Bot Framework Composer General Availability
- Updates to LUIS
- DevOps routines for language models
- What are Power Virtual Agents?
- Chatdown tool mentioned by Stephan
- Adaptive Cards Designer
- Adaptive Cards Community Calls
Image by Eric Krull from Unsplash
This week we have a special guest as Stephan Bisser, MVP for AI with a focus on Conversational AI, joins us to talk about Bots.
Part 1 first though, the news as we pick up some of the latest updates following the Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon and some Power Platform goodness.
If you would like to appear on the show, please drop us a line using the form at https://www.greyhatbeard.com/upcoming-shows. We’d love to hear from everyone, especially if you’re not an MVP and would like to be heard more in the community.
Al (the hat)
- Portals coming into Power Platform Admin Centre
- Teams Updates for May
Stephan (the guest beard)
- Omar Shahine’s Twitter feed with details of Microsoft Lists
Kevin (the grey)
- Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon Teper keynote - links to specific points below
- Microsoft 365 Connectivity
- Teams audio filter
- Lists - building out custom gallery view
- Ability to set meetings by default as Teams in Outlook web
- Using WSL2 for SPFX development by Joel Rodrigues
- Microsoft replacing human journalists with Bots
Events
- GreyHatBeard speaking at Commsverse Online
- Kevin and Al speaking at Global Con 2 from Collab 365 from June 15th-19th, now also featuring the Godfather of SharePoint Jeff Teper! - click links below to register for free:
- Kevin is covering how to run a virtual workshop using Microsoft Teams
- Al is covering To-Do, Doing, Done: How to manage work
- Stephan’s appearance on Microsoft 365 SharePoint PnP Weekly
- Check out Stephan’s Twitter Feed for more news on upcoming events
Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash
A bonus show this week as Kevin (the Grey), Al (the Hat) and Garry (the beard) discuss the news and their views from Microsoft Build 2020. We cover the big announcements as well as a few interesting ones that may have missed your attention
General
- Build On-Demand Sessions
- Scott Hanselman’s Keynote
- Satya Nadella’s Keynote Easter Eggs
Microsoft 365 News
- Microsoft Lists
- Cortex Connectors
- Other Project Cortex announcments
- Teams templates
- New Teams announcements
- New Shift actions for Power Automate
Dev News
- To-Do Graph API
- Azure Static Web Apps
- Cosmos DB Serverless pricing coming
- Ms builds 5th largest supercomputer just for training AI models
- Window Package Manager
- Terminal 1.0 - Includes WSL - Ubuntu
- PWA Improvements to Edge - Project Fugu
- Bot Framework announcements
- Fluid Framework
Power Platform News
- Power Platform Pro Dev Conference announced by Dona Sarkar
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
The first rule of Book Club is that you MUST talk about Book Club. The second rule is that audiobooks are ok too. This week we talk about our favourite books that have steered our thoughts in our careers. Two books each with one for luck.
Al
- Deep Work - Cal Newport
- Amazon
- The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg
- Amazon
- Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow
- Amazon
- The Machine Stops - E.M Forster
- Amazon
Garry
- Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, The Infinite Game
- Amazon
- TED Talk
- The Phoenix Project
- Amazon
- Azure DevOps Demos
- Unicorn Project
- Amazon
Kevin
- Organised Mind - Daniel Levitin
- Amazon
- Team of Teams - General McStanley
- Amazon
- Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
- Amazon
The first rule of Book Club is that you MUST talk about Book Club. The second rule is that audiobooks are ok too. This week we talk about our favourite books that have steered our thoughts in our careers. Before that though, we share our the news and our thoughts on two big topics for the week, the Microsoft Business Application Summit (MBAS) and Github Satellite.
Also, some news on a great result in the MBAS hackathon we mentioned last time
Part 1 focuses on the news and what we’ve been up to.
If you would like to appear on the show, please drop us a line using the form at https://www.greyhatbeard.com/upcoming-shows. We’d love to hear from everyone, especially if you’re not an MVP and would like to be heard more in the community.
Kevin (the grey)
- Hacking for Good MBAS
- EMEA finalists
- Our submission
Al (the hat)
- Microsoft Business Application Summit On Demand
- Al’s views on MBAS
- Jack Binnall’s views on MBAS
Garry (the beard)
- GitHub satellite
- GitHub codespaces
- Code Scanning & Secret Scanning using CodeQL
- GitHub Discussions - O365 CLI Discussions
Other
- Page translations in SharePoint
Events
- GreyHatBeard speaking at Commsverse Online
- Kevin and Al speaking at Global Con 2 from Collab 365 from June 15th-19th, now also featuring the Godfather of SharePoint Jeff Teper! - click links below to register for free:
- Kevin is covering how to run a virtual workshop using Microsoft Teams
- Al is covering To-Do, Doing, Done: How to manage work
- Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon
- [Kevin speaking on the etiquette of Teams Meetings](http://www.m365virtualmarathon.com/speakers.html
I like that but can it look a bit less like SharePoint? Have you ever heard that said by someone? You might even have agreed. We talk about how true that thought is and if it needs to be done, what are the best ways to do it if you really do have to.
This week we also have a special guest joining us so big thanks to Matt Weston for giving us his time and thoughts on SharePoint.
Also this week, you may notice our new logos courtesy of Iain Smith’s very talented daughter - what do you think?
How you work and staying focused
We kept it to general chit chat this time but covered topics like:
- Tracking work and prioritising
- Sticking to one thing
- Keeping focused with music and location
Related links:
- SharePoint Lookbook
- Customising SharePoint froms in SharePoint Desinger deprecated in SharePoint Online
I like that but can it look a bit less like SharePoint? Have you ever heard that said by someone? You might even have agreed. We talk about how true that thought is and if it needs to be done, what are the best ways to do it if you really do have to.
This week we also have a special guest joining us so big thanks to Matt Weston for giving us his time and thoughts on SharePoint.
Also this week, you may notice our new logos courtesy of Iain Smith’s very talented daughter - what do you think?
Part 1 focuses on the news and what we’ve been up to.
If you would like to appear on the show, please drop us a line using the form at https://www.greyhatbeard.com/upcoming-shows. We’d love to hear from everyone, especially if you’re not an MVP and would like to be heard more in the community.
Matt (the guest)
- Stock Images and Managed Metadata Service in SharePoint
- Pinned Power Apps on the left
Kevin (the grey)
- Hacking for Good MBAS
- Our submission
- IoT - lightbulb moments!
- Static sites cost breakdown by Andrew Connell
- QnA Maker needs WestUS resource
- SharePoint Spaces
Garry (the beard)
- Power Virtual Agents for Covid-19
- Teams request app templates
Events
- Kevin and Al speaking at Commsverse Online
- Kevin and Al speaking at Global Con 2 from Collab 365 from June 15th-19th, now also featuring the Godfather of SharePoint Jeff Teper! - click links below to register for free:
- Kevin is covering how to run a virtual workshop using Microsoft Teams
- Al is covering To-Do, Doing, Done: How to manage work
- Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon
- Microsoft Business Application Summit - 6 May
- Black Country Power Platform User Group - 12 May
- Power Platform Leeds (May 12th) - The Lockdown Sessions : Microsoft Teams in a Remote World (Simon Hudson & Dylan Hayes)
How is the world of remote working treating you? Are you able to work well and focus? This week we chat about how to track your work effectively with Microsoft 365 and some techniques for staying focused.
How you work and staying focused
We kept it to general chit chat this time but covered topics like:
- Tracking work and prioritising
- Sticking to one thing
- Keeping focused with music and location
Related links:
- Manage your time with Outlook
- Pomodoro technique
- Microsoft To-Do
- Timeular (not mentioned by something Kevin uses a lot)
- Getting Things Done
- My Analytics
- Deep Work blog
- Music for programming
- Music to code by
- Concentration playlist on Spotify
- Music for Concentration playlist on Spotify
Image by Kevin McDonnell
How is the world of remote working treating you? Are you able to work well and focus? This week we chat about how to track your work effectively with Microsoft 365 and some techniques for staying focused.
Kevin
- Great post from Chris Tubb (via Sharon O’Dea) on search not working
- Reduced seat requirements for multi-geo
- United Nations breach from unpatched SharePoint
Garry
- Managed Metadata REST APIs - demoed on PnP Community Call
- Multilingual Portals
- Demonstrated on another PnP Community call
- Office 365 Groups renamed to Microsoft 365 Groups
- Getting started with Office 365 CLI and PowerShell
- Identify and report on Microsoft Teams Private Channels using Office 365 CLI and PowerShell
- Welcomed new team member to Office 365 CLI team - Albert Jan-Schot (CTO) Portiva
Al
- SharePoint 2010 end of extended support - extended to April 13 2021
- Concentration with VOIP - link to the program on Smart Phones that Al mentioned
- On BBC4 for those in the UK
- On Netflix
- The challenges of time
- Email and Outlook - Add a zoom meeting in Outlook.com with the Zoom for Outlook add-in
Events
- June 15th-19th - Kevin and Al at Global Con 2 from Collab 365:
- Kevin - how to run a virtual workshop using Microsoft Teams
- Al - To-Do, Doing, Done: How to manage work
- Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon
- Microsoft Business Application Summit - 6 May
- London Power Platform User Group - 23 April
- Black Country Power Platform User Group - 12 May
Is governance a dirty word to you? Let us persuade you otherwise as we talk about the importance of governance with the Power Platform, sharing why you should do it, how best to do it and when to do it.
Governance and the Power Platform
Three topics:
- What do we mean by governance? - what it is and why you should do it
- What can you do for the Power Platform? - using the tools and an intro to the Power Platform CoE Toolkit
- When to use ALM tools? - going beyond power users
Related links:
- Power Platform Centre of Excellence Toolkit intro
- Power Platform Centre of Excellence Toolkit Github repo
- Power Apps Test Studio
Image by Kevin McDonnell
Is governance a dirty word to you? Let us persuade you otherwise as we talk about the importance of governance with the Power Platform, sharing why you should do it, how best to do it and when to do it.
Events
- Kevin and Al speaking at Global Con 2 from Collab 365 from June 15th-19th - click links below to register for free:
- Kevin is covering how to run a virtual workshop using Microsoft Teams
- Al is covering To-Do, Doing, Done: How to manage work
Garry (the beard)
- New licensing Options for M365 for unattended accounts (automation)
- 775% increase in usage for Teams calling and minutes in Italy (not quite as big as first reported!))
Not covered in the show:
- GitHub Discussions now available on the Office 365 CLI repo
Al (the hat)
- Online Conferences - how to get the best out them
- SPS Warsaw (not on Saturday and not just in Warsaw)
- Teamsfest (does involve Teams and is an absolute fest)
- Business Apps - 2020 Wave 1 launch Not covered in the show:
- Microsoft Tech Blogs Round up
- The demise of Office 365?
- Azure Active Directory Premium P1 is coming to Microsoft 365 Business
Kevin (the grey)
- Great community project for snippets on Bot Framework from Steffan Bisser
- [Managed Metadata Services](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-sharepoint-blog/modernizing-sharepoint-managed-metadata-services-mms/ba-p/1277450]
- Changes to Teams coming - multiple people in one view, background images and raise your hands feature
- Great post on another way to make Teams meetings interesting from Mark Jones
- Pluralsight free for a month
- Power Apps for Big Kids and Little Kids
Bucking the trend, we have decided to go Corona Lite in this episode and try and provide a distraction to the talk of remote working and certain viruses that are filling our newsfeeds. Instead, we’ll be talking about Contributing to Open Source.
Contributing to Open Source
Three topics:
- Why you should - the benefits to you and everyone else
- How you should - a little overview of Github and how you can get involved
- How others do - an insiders view of maintaining an open source repo from Garry and how you can be a good contributor
Related links:
- PnP Initiative
- PnP’s Sharing is Caring Initiative with thanks to David Warner and Hugo Bernier
- David’s Parker’s Place Shop Preview
- Microsoft 365 Community Docs with thanks to Marc D Anderson
- Office 365 CLI aka Garry’s other baby
Image by Tim Marshall from Unsplash
Bucking the trend, we have decided to go Corona Lite in this episode and try and provide a distraction to the talk of remote working and certain viruses that are filling our newsfeeds. Instead, we’ll be talking about Contributing to Open Source.
Events
- Al - 1 April (no joke) at Teamsfest on Managing Work in Teams
- Al - April 3 at SPS Warsaw on To-Do, Doing, Done: How to manage work
- Kevin and Al - June 15th-19th Global Con 2 from Collab 365
- Kevin - how to run a virtual workshop using Microsoft Teams
- Al - To-Do, Doing, Done: How to manage work
Kevin
- My first online only workshop using Microsoft Teams which I will be speaking more about on Global Con 2
- Github buys NPM
- Github releases Github mobile
- Teams usage jumps from 32 million to 44 million daily active users in a week
Al
- Build a crisis management site to connect people and information
- Crisis Comms PowerApp
- Crisis Comms SharePoint site
- The SharePoint Lookbook
- If you want to try the sites from SharePoint Lookbook but don’t have tenant admin, sign up for the Microsoft 365 Developer Program to get a free dev tenant
Garry
- Virtual MVP Summit
- Want to become an MVP?
- “How I exported 820 .ics files from an Office 365 Group calendar, for MVP Summit” by Yannick Reekmans
- Couple of blog posts Garry wrote about using Git in the last couple of weeks
- Squashing commits
- Keeping your fork up to date
- Fabric UI has now evolved into Fluent UI
- Subscribe to message changes in Teams through the Graph API
- PnP PowerShell has moved from the SharePoint org into the PnP org
- Yo Teams generator is now part of PnP, Wictor Wilen leading
We are halfway to double figures and the Hat is back for Episode 5. This week, it’s back to school as we talk about learning.
How do we learn?
Three topics:
- Learning by training and certification
- Learning by listening
- Learning by doing
Related links:
- Microsoft Certifications
- Phil Worrell’s podcast list (including us!)
- Sharing is Caring - great guide for GitHub contributors
Podcasts:
- Microsoft Cloud Show
- PnP Dev Weekly
- Ctrl+Alt+Azure
- Microsoft 365 Developer Podcast
- New Habits Podcast
Image by Tim Mossholder from Unsplash
We are halfway to double figures and the Hat is back for Episode 5. This week, it’s back to school as we talk about learning.
Part 1 focuses on the news and what we’ve been up to.
First some exciting news - as promised in our last episode, we managed to get together a repository of all those great etiquette of Microsoft 365. It is maintained in our brand new GreyHatBeard Repo in Github but the best way to view the content is on it’s own site:
https://greyhatbeard.github.io/m365-etiquette
Please take a look and let us know if you think there should be other things on there. The best way is to use Github to fork the repo and then submit a Pull Request. Many of you won’t understand that at all then for now, just drop us a message on Twitter and we’ll add the details. Thanks already to Loryan Strant as he has agreed that we can pull many of his tips from his blog series on the subject.
Garry
- SharePoint WebHooks and Logic Apps sample from Scottish Summit
- MVP Summit going online only
Kevin
- Is COVID-19 a Jira ticket?
- Free tier for Cosmos DB
- GlobalCon1 - virtual conference from Collab365
Al
- Crisis Communication App
- Microsoft retiring all MCSA, MCSE & MCSD
- Al’s Twitter poll on running a user group at the moment
- Wictor Wilen Tweet on getting outside
Episode 4 and our first guest! Joining us is Marijn Somers, MVP for Office Apps and Services from the Netherlands and bringing a beautiful hat to stand in for Al who is away this week.
Etiquette of Office 365
Three topics:
- What would you consider when sharing the etiquette of Office 365?
- Why is etiquette important?
- What are your top tips?
Related links:
- No Hello
Image by MorningbirdPhoto from Pixabay
Episode 4 and our first guest! Joining us is Marijn Somers, MVP for Office Apps and Services from Belgium and bringing a beautiful hat to stand in for Al who is away this week.
Part 1 focuses on the news and what we’ve been up to.
Marijn
- Is powerapps a worthy follow up for infopath ?
- Outlook Spaces: the pinterest for your project
- Jeff Teper also taking over Teams
Kevin
- Kevin’s first Microsoft Docs fix - go on, try it yourself!
- The new single Office App
- Mr Tesler passed away - the creator of Copy, Paste, Cut
Garry
- Using React hooks to globally share service scopes between components
- Azure Logic Apps
- Azure Managed Identies
- Garry’s blog on it all - COMING SOON!
Events
- Collab Days
- Scottish Summit on 29th Feb
- European Collab Summit on 8-10 June
- Commsverse on 29-30th April
- Collab 365 GlobalCon1 on 2-6th March
- Next #CollabTalk on Task Mgmt on Feb 26th
Episode 3 is up and after some feedback, we’re going to two shows - one for news and what we’re up to and the other on the discussion. In the discussion this week, we cover Problems with Dev Ops in a “Non-Agile” World.
Problems with Dev Ops in a “Non-Agile” World
Three topics:
- Building trust and confidence through DevOps
- Setting up a product backlog
- Setting up agile friendly contracts between client and consultant
Related links:
- Azure Dev Ops
- Finance and Budgeting in a world of Agile and Continuous Deployment
Image by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto from Pixabay
Episode 3 is up and after some feedback, we’re going to two shows - one for news and what we’re up to and the other on the discussion. In news, there’s more insights for Power Apps, more notes for Azure Dev Ops and more outages for Microsoft.
Al
- Model-driven apps in Power Apps
- App Insights integration for Power Apps
- Power Apps Test Framework
- 19th Feb - Power Platform Happy Hour - link to Teams meeting
Garry
- Bravo Notes
- Office 365 DSC
Kevin
- MS Search SPA
- IoT Azure MX Chip
- BBC Microbit
- Teams outage
- How to monitor your own certificates in Key Vault
- Jeff Teper taking on Teams - ok we didn’t mention this one really but we meant to!
Events
- Collab Days
- Scottish Summit on 29th Feb
- Power Platform Happy Hour 19th Feb
- European Collab Summit on 8-10 June
- Commsverse on 29-30th April
- Collab 365 GlobalCon1 on 2-6th March
- Next #CollabTalk on Task Mgmt on Feb 26th
- Summary of last #CollabTalk on Team Analytics
We’re back for more! This week we decided to split the show in to four smaller, easier to digest parts for all you busy people on the move. The running topic this week was the hugely exciting subject that is Project Cortex and all that it will be able to offer.
The four parts are:
- Part 1 - News and what’s front of mind for the Grey, the Hat and The Beard
- Part 2 - How will end users use Cortex?
- Part 3 - How will Cortex make metadata different?
- Part 4 - What problems will Cortex solve?
Related links:
- More information on Cortex https://aka.ms/projectcortex
- PnP call with Naomi Moneypenny - https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/blogs/community-pnp-january-2020-monthly-community-call-recording/
- David Warner’s Screenshot summary of the PnP call (lots of useful screenshots for Cortex) - http://warner.digital/pnpsummary01142020/
- Microsoft’s controversial roadmap item to set Bing as default - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=59917
- Andrew Connell’s post on Bing as default - https://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/microsoft-office-turns-into-malware/
- UserVoice entry to ask MS not to set Bing by default - https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/264636-general/suggestions/39496423-change-to-bing-search-for-proplus-should-be-opt-in
- The SharePoint Dev Docs issues that have been cleaned up - https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-docs/issues
- Commsverse, the independent Microsoft Teams Conference that Al and Kevin are speaking at - https://www.commsverse.com/
- Scottish Summit, the free Microsoft focussed conference that Al and Garry are speaking at - https://scottishsummit.com/
- Power Apps Centre of Excellence Starter Kit - https://github.com/microsoft/powerapps-tools/tree/master/Administration/CoEStarterKit
- Power BI Adoption Framework - https://github.com/pbiaf/powerbiadoption
We’re back for more! This week we decided to split the show in to four smaller, easier to digest parts for all you busy people on the move. The running topic this week was the hugely exciting subject that is Project Cortex and all that it will be able to offer.
The four parts are:
- Part 1 - News and what’s front of mind for the Grey, the Hat and The Beard
- Part 2 - How will end users use Cortex?
- Part 3 - How will Cortex make metadata different?
- Part 4 - What problems will Cortex solve?
Related links:
- More information on Cortex https://aka.ms/projectcortex
- PnP call with Naomi Moneypenny - https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/blogs/community-pnp-january-2020-monthly-community-call-recording/
- David Warner’s Screenshot summary of the PnP call (lots of useful screenshots for Cortex) - http://warner.digital/pnpsummary01142020/
- Microsoft’s controversial roadmap item to set Bing as default - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=59917
- Andrew Connell’s post on Bing as default - https://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/microsoft-office-turns-into-malware/
- UserVoice entry to ask MS not to set Bing by default - https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/264636-general/suggestions/39496423-change-to-bing-search-for-proplus-should-be-opt-in
- The SharePoint Dev Docs issues that have been cleaned up - https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-docs/issues
- Commsverse, the independent Microsoft Teams Conference that Al and Kevin are speaking at - https://www.commsverse.com/
- Scottish Summit, the free Microsoft focussed conference that Al and Garry are speaking at - https://scottishsummit.com/
- Power Apps Centre of Excellence Starter Kit - https://github.com/microsoft/powerapps-tools/tree/master/Administration/CoEStarterKit
- Power BI Adoption Framework - https://github.com/pbiaf/powerbiadoption
We’re back for more! This week we decided to split the show in to four smaller, easier to digest parts for all you busy people on the move. The running topic this week was the hugely exciting subject that is Project Cortex and all that it will be able to offer.
The four parts are:
- Part 1 - News and what’s front of mind for the Grey, the Hat and The Beard
- Part 2 - How will end users use Cortex?
- Part 3 - How will Cortex make metadata different?
- Part 4 - What problems will Cortex solve?
Related links:
- More information on Cortex https://aka.ms/projectcortex
- PnP call with Naomi Moneypenny - https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/blogs/community-pnp-january-2020-monthly-community-call-recording/
- David Warner’s Screenshot summary of the PnP call (lots of useful screenshots for Cortex) - http://warner.digital/pnpsummary01142020/
- Microsoft’s controversial roadmap item to set Bing as default - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=59917
- Andrew Connell’s post on Bing as default - https://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/microsoft-office-turns-into-malware/
- UserVoice entry to ask MS not to set Bing by default - https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/264636-general/suggestions/39496423-change-to-bing-search-for-proplus-should-be-opt-in
- The SharePoint Dev Docs issues that have been cleaned up - https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-docs/issues
- Commsverse, the independent Microsoft Teams Conference that Al and Kevin are speaking at - https://www.commsverse.com/
- Scottish Summit, the free Microsoft focussed conference that Al and Garry are speaking at - https://scottishsummit.com/
- Power Apps Centre of Excellence Starter Kit - https://github.com/microsoft/powerapps-tools/tree/master/Administration/CoEStarterKit
- Power BI Adoption Framework - https://github.com/pbiaf/powerbiadoption
We’re back for more! This week we decided to split the show in to four smaller, easier to digest parts for all you busy people on the move. The running topic this week was the hugely exciting subject that is Project Cortex and all that it will be able to offer.
The four parts are:
- Part 1 - News and what’s front of mind for the Grey, the Hat and The Beard
- Part 2 - How will end users use Cortex?
- Part 3 - How will Cortex make metadata different?
- Part 4 - What problems will Cortex solve?
Related links:
- More information on Cortex https://aka.ms/projectcortex
- PnP call with Naomi Moneypenny - https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/blogs/community-pnp-january-2020-monthly-community-call-recording/
- David Warner’s Screenshot summary of the PnP call (lots of useful screenshots for Cortex) - http://warner.digital/pnpsummary01142020/
- Microsoft’s controversial roadmap item to set Bing as default - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=59917
- Andrew Connell’s post on Bing as default - https://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/microsoft-office-turns-into-malware/
- UserVoice entry to ask MS not to set Bing by default - https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/264636-general/suggestions/39496423-change-to-bing-search-for-proplus-should-be-opt-in
- The SharePoint Dev Docs issues that have been cleaned up - https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-docs/issues
- Commsverse, the independent Microsoft Teams Conference that Al and Kevin are speaking at - https://www.commsverse.com/
- Scottish Summit, the free Microsoft focussed conference that Al and Garry are speaking at - https://scottishsummit.com/
- Power Apps Centre of Excellence Starter Kit - https://github.com/microsoft/powerapps-tools/tree/master/Administration/CoEStarterKit
- Power BI Adoption Framework - https://github.com/pbiaf/powerbiadoption
Our first show! We introduce the podcast and ourselves before going to chat a little about what we’ve been up to as well as the news we’ve been keeping an eye on.
After a little roundabout chat on the news, we moved on to our thoughts for 2020 based on what we’d seen at ESPC and Ignite, covering Project Cortex, Microsoft Search, Bots and others.
Then we wrapped up with our tips for everyone for the year ahead.
Links for things mentioned:
- SPFX 1.10 released - https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/blogs/announcing-sharepoint-framework-1-10-extending-sharepoint-framework-across-microsoft-365/
- Google Android search provider - https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/9/21058120/google-android-search-engine-choice-duckduckgo-bing-default-eu-antitrust-ruling
- Google mapped 98% of Earth with 10 million miles of Street View imagery and 36 million square miles of Google Earth imagery https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/13/21020814/google-world-mapped-street-view-earth-square-miles
- Microsoft moving in to the HR space - https://joshbersin.com/2019/12/microsoft-formally-enters-the-hr-tech-space-and-the-strategy-is-compelling/
- Project Cortex - https://aka.ms/projectcortex
- Microsoft Search - https://aka.ms/microsoftsearch
- Power Virtual Agents - https://powervirtualagents.microsoft.com/en-us/
- Bot Framework Composer - https://github.com/Microsoft/BotFramework-Composer
- Office 365 CLI - https://pnp.github.io/office365-cli/