Stories of Modern Work

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In episode 4 of season 2, we have Chander Ramanathan, Intelligent Workplace Lead from SXiQ based in Melbourne, Victoria back on the show to share his experiences using Microsoft Teams during Remote Work.

Episode Summary Here is the summary of what we discussed in the episode:

Both Chander and I got carried away with the custom backgrounds in MS Teams!
Security concerns with Zoom Meetings
Using Microsoft Teams web and desktop clients
3x3 video grid coming to Teams
How a music academy seamlessly switched to Teams from Zoom to continue to deliver their music classes online.
How a small General Practitioner health group in Melbourne were able to consolidate diverse business systems into the Office 365 ecosystem and save on licensing fee along with being ready to support remote work and remote patient consultations.
We shared our views on how we Microsoft improve Teams to provide better support for Remote Workers.
We had a bit of fun trying to give a new name to Microsoft Teams! Happy Call 😉

Resources mentioned in the episode: * Free access to Microsoft Teams E1 licenses for first 6 months free with an annual commitment. User limit 3000. Speak to your existing Microsoft Partner to get these free licenses. Available from 4th May. * Free Microsoft Teams version - https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/free

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In episode 2 of season 3, we have Chander Ramanathan, Intelligent Workplace Lead and Stefano Tempesta, Microsoft MVP, and CTO from SXiQ based in Melbourne, Victoria back on the show to share security tips for your remote workforce.

Here are the summary tips we discussed on the show:

Ensure your Wi-Fi password is secure
Check your environment to ensure you are not discussing confidential information with family around.
Do not give away your personal information on social media apps and games.
Do not share forward messages on messaging platforms like WhatsApp
Ensure parental controls are set up and up to date on all devices used by kids.
Don't fall prey to email phishing attacks. Check links in the email before clicking on them.
Organisations should ensure Office 365 security features like ATP (Advanced Threat Protection) are configured and enforced properly.
Use strong passwords and stop reusing passwords. Use Password Manager like LastPass and 1Password to support you with this. Tip: Excel spreadsheet with your passwords is not a password manager.
Use Multi-Factor Authentication for both personal and business services.
Ensure you don't have confidential information like passwords in your background when you are joining video conference calls.
What to do if your Office 365 account is compromised?
Keep your work and personal devices separate
Keep the number of users with Global Admin access less than three.
Use granular admin roles based on the job at hand.
Start to use 'Global Reader' role if your CXOs or managers need admin access to see what has been implemented.
What is 'Zero Trust Framework'?
Introduction to Zero Trust Framework
How to implement the Zero Trust Framework in Office 365?
Check your Office 365 Secure Score and act on the recommendations.
Implement Conditional Access to detect and prevent security anomalies

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In episode 2 of season 2, we have Chander Ramanathan, Intelligent Workplace Lead and Stefano Tempesta, Microsoft MVP, and CTO from SXiQ based in Melbourne, Victoria where we discussed:

Microsoft Events going to be available online
What is Project Cortex?
Private Preview of Project Cortex [applications now open till 8th April 2020]
Task Management using Microsoft Planner and Microsoft To-Do apps during remote work
Microsoft Sunsetting Wunderlist app and replacing it with Microsoft To Do
Occupational Health & Safety checklist/form to support Remote Working
Crisis Management Portal using Live Tiles
Crisis Communications site built by Microsoft using native SharePoint modern communication site template
PowerApps Emergency Response Gallery
Remote Work Central for empowering your employees working remotely
Power Virtual Agent to build bots for emergency response

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Welcome back to Season 2 on Stories of Modern Work Podcast. After a long hiatus in 2019, we are back in 2020 with some amazing interviews where we learn from Office 365 stories and tips from our guests. In season 2, we are doing things differently. Podcast episodes will be published in both Audio and Video formats. This will enable us to go deep into some of the topics we will be covering in the coming episodes.

In episode 1 of season 2, we have Chander Ramanathan, Intelligent Workplace Lead from SXiQ based in Melbourne, Victoria. Chander has agreed to share his Office 365 stories and tips in a five-part mini-series. In this mini-series, we will be concentrating on using Office 365 as a Remote Work platform.

Episode Summary In this introductory episode, we discuss:

Intelligent Intranet
The democratisation of Intranet Development
How is SXiQ doing Remote Work
How to stay productive during Remote Work using Office 365.
Using Microsoft Planner and White Board app to be more productive while working remotely.

There is a bit of singing and talking about Indian music legend AR Rahman too.

Resources Here are links to some of the resources we mentioned in the episode.

SXiQ - https://sxiq.com.au/
Live Tiles - https://www.livetiles.nyc/
Distant Socialising - https://news.stanford.edu/2020/03/19/try-distant-socializing-instead/
Remote Work: Office Not Required by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson - https://basecamp.com/books/remote
Microsoft Whiteboard App - https://whiteboard.microsoft.com/

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In this episode of the stories of modern work podcast, I chat with Alexander Dick from AvePoint about How to setup Office 365 Governance in three steps.

Summary on points discussed in this episode

What is Governance and how to go about creating governance plan
Importance of Governance Plan before things go out of reach
Best practice to setup approval process for team creation
Re-certification of permissions in your Teams and Office 365 groups
Clean-up of unused Teams
Implications of miss configured permissions in Delve

Links to products and resources mentioned in this episode

Workshop on the 14th of May in Melbourne with Dux - How to Roll Out A Sustainable Adoption Program for Microsoft Teams and Yammer in 90 Days: https://www.avepoint.com/au/events/workshop/au-teams-adoption-workshop-series?ref=jag-modernwork
Product Brochure for Cloud Governance: https://avepointcdn.azureedge.net/pdfs/en/AvePoint_Cloud_Governance_for_Teams_and_Groups_Product_Brochure.pdf?ref=jag-modernwork
Operational Governance Webinar: https://www.avepoint.com/au/events/webinar/microsoft-teams-operational-governance?ref=jag-modernwork
When and How to use Microsoft Teams: https://www.avepoint.com/au/ebook/microsoft-teams-office-365-groups?ref=jag-modernwork
Dux Raymond Sy Twitter | LinkedIn
Alexander Dick, Enterprise Account Executive - VIC, SA at AvePoint, Melbourne, Australia LinkedIn

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In episode 11 of the Stories of Modern Work Podcast, I speak with James Dellow a Digital strategist, collaboration consultant and human-centred designer as our guest to share his experiences and thoughts on Intranet in a box solution offerings and employee engagement.

James and I discuss our thoughts on.

What is Intranet in a box application
When should a business look to procure a Intranet in Box solution
What is Employment Engagement
How do you measure employee engagement
Impact of technology on employee engagement
What is Digital Placemaking in the context of Modern Workplace
Using Digital Placemaking to drive employee engagement
Advice on how to use Microsoft Office 365 apps to support employee engagement

Resource Links:

Here is list of resources mentioned in the podcast.

Digital Workplace Company, Sydney - https://digitalworkplace.co/
James' Blog - https://chieftech.com.au/
Clearbox Intranet in a box report - https://www.clearbox.co.uk/portfolio-item/sharepoint-intranets-in-a-box-report-2019/
Modern Work Consulting & Training, Melbourne - https://modernwork.cloud

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May the Flow be with you!! 😎

In episode 10 of the Stories of Modern Work Podcast, I speak with Geetha Sivasailam a Consultant specializing in the Microsoft Power Platform as our guest to share her experiences and thoughts on Office 365 and Power Platform. This is a must listen episode for anyone who is interested in getting started with Microsoft Power Platform.

Episode Summary Here are some key points we discussed in the episode.

Introduction to the #PowerAddicts community
Overview of Power Platform - the three main building blocks - Flow, PowerApps and Power BI
Power Platform as glue for business data and services
Perquisites for building apps using Power Platform
Employee On-boarding use case using Power Platform
Challenges of Change Management in organisations where they have already made prior investments in classic apps and experiences
Backup and Restore strategy for PowerApps, Flows
Need for recycle bin in Microsoft Flow
How to debug Flow
Best Practice to manage Team Flows
Resources and strategies you can used to master the Power Platform.
Need for version control for PowerApps and Flow

Connect with Geetha Sivasailam I highly encourage you to follow Geetha either or Twitter or LinkedIn to be part of the Power Platform community. Twitter | LinkedIn

Links to resources mentioned in the episode. * Community Blog Post on Geetha's blog * How to debug Flow * Product Team Power Platform Learning Resources * App in a day * Office 365 Developer Program - Get 1 year of Office 365 for Free. * State Machine Workflow Patterns in Microsoft Flow.

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In this episode of Stories of Modern Work Podcast, we will talk about the need for using Office 365 as Modern Work Tool to support Human Resource teams. We will look in how NGA Human Resources a global HR services provider is using Office 365. Also we will about how we use Flow, PowerApps, Planner, Forms and SharePoint to improve employee engagement in your organisation.

Check out Modern Work website for the shownotes.

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In this episode, will look into not one but two business case studies, where both these organisations are using OneDrive for Business as part of their secure Modern Work journey.

This is a must listen episode if you are planning to use OneDrive for Business as the mainstream cloud storage platform.

Case Study 1 - Lotus F1 Racing

Case Study 2 - Microsoft

Checkout the episode show notes at modernwork.cloud

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This is a special episode where we look at a business case study published by Microsoft at their Customer Stories website.

This is a must listen episode if you are planning to streamline business data and systems using the Microsoft 365.

In this episode we will look into the Modern Work journey of TransBlue a professional services business based in Lynnwood, Washington.

Transblue employs 20 people split between a general contracting business and a facility management company.

Before embarking on the Modern Work journey, TransBlue was facing issues with:

Problems:

Lack of data security - Users are using Dropbox to store and work on business critical data.
Lacked a unified data aggregation solution - If anyone left the company, there was a strong chance that their data would leave with them.
Microsoft Office 365 underutilisation - TransBlue had three individual subscriptions to Microsoft Office 365, used mainly for email.

Not just TransBlue, I come across other organisations having similar issues. They have Office 365 licenses but are very much under utilitised.

Once TransBlue has identified these three main concerns, here is how they have resolved them.

Solution:

They have consolidated the three Office 365 subscriptions into one Microsoft 365 Business subscription, TransBlue was able to retire the company's instance of Dropbox, eliminating hundreds of dollars in monthly costs. They have also eliminated unnecessary tasks and redundant employee accounts and created efficiency gains of 80 work hours every week, resulting in a further $2,400 reduction in monthly costs.

Now personal work files are protected in employee-specific OneDrive for Business accounts and organizational content is easily managed and shared with SharePoint, both inside and outside the company. With this change, TransBlue employees now have access to all of those files anywhere, on any device.

Benefits

TransBlue employees now use SharePoint from the job site to quickly access and review contract details with subcontractors. In the past, project managers had to send emails or text messages to the head office and then wait for a PDF or photo of a document to be sent back, which resulted in delays and miscommunications. Now, working from the same smartphones as before, project managers have full access to company documents whenever and wherever the need arises.

TransBlue has also started using Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business to streamline their business communications. Let’s hear an Audio clip where TransBlue employees and management share their Modern Work experiences.

Lessons Learned:

Here are some key takeaways and lessons learned for me from this case study.

Conduct an audit of business systems in your organisation.
If you have an existing Office 365 subscription, Conduct an audit of user licenses and adoption.
Track the data lifecycle across these business system and look for security loopholes.
Start the rollout of a subset of Office 365 Apps such as OneDrive for Business and SharePoint before looking into advanced tools such as Teams and Power Platform.
Setup and Use the mobile apps of the Office 365 to maximise ROI and user adoption.

Links mentioned:

https://customers.microsoft.com/en-us/story/transblue-professional-services-microsoft365

Vlog 46 - OneDrive for Business vs SharePoint Online

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In episode 6 of the Stories of Modern Work Podcast, I spoke with Mr Joel Oleson a Microsoft MVP and Senior IT Manager at Blizzard Entertainment as our guest to share his experiences and thoughts on Office 365 as a Modern Work tool.

Here are some key points we discussed in the episode.

Joel shared the genesis of Office 365. The story about how it all started!
Office 365 Feature Release cadence (inner ring and outer ring) and how to deal with ever changing product suite.
Feedback on Office 365 message center and roadmap.
Targeted Release vs Standard Release - Which one should you be on?
Modern Work is about taking the advantage of the tools and technologies today to work the best you can right now!
OneDrive for Business - File On-Demand is changing the way users think about the cloud file storage.
OneDrive for storage limits.
Setting up Information Architecture using Hub Sites, Managed Metadata, User segmentation using location based metadata classification.
Guidance on how to deal with out of the box limitations in Office 365 Apps and Services.
Usage of the Power Platform starting to pick up and users are already getting some business value.
Guidance on InfoPath Form migrations.
Strengths of Office 365 when compared with other similar SaaS products.
Easy of using Microsoft Stream
Guidance on branding Office 365 Apps.
Content Panda Link
Windows Edge using Chromium browser engine will bring in the possibility to use browser extensions to enhance UX of Office 365 users.
Guidance on Yammer vs Microsoft Teams

Links mentioned in the episode:

https://collabshow.com/2019/01/07/how-to-get-unlimited-onedrive-for-business-in-a-nutshell/

https://github.com/SharePoint/PnP

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In episode 5 of the Stories of Modern Work Podcast, I spoke with Mr Asish Padhy, Senior Consultant in Office 365 and Azure Cloud technologies as our guest to share his experiences and thoughts on using Office 365 as Modern Work tool and also deploying solutions such as Intranets to his clients. Here are some key points we discussed in the episode.

How to stay on top of constant Office 365 updates and feature releases. - The trick is use social media and stay in contact with other experts in the field and the Office 365 product team. Checking and participation in the Tech Community is recommended. Switching between Classic and Modern UX. Capitalize your investments in Office 365. Mobile experience is the game changer. Highly encourage businesses to look into how to use Office 365 mobile apps into the day-to-day workflow. User care about solutions not the technology. Microsoft Teams should be looked as a wrapper of services for better user experience. Modern Work is about having the flexibility and control to get work done. OneDrive Files On-demand a game changer Best way to implement new business solutions is to start with minimal viable product and iterate on user feedback. Helps with user adoption. An example of how you can use PowerApps for service desk operations. Best practices to building and managing Modern Intranets. Intranets should be managed by the business users not IT. Tip: Maximize the usage of Microsoft Teams.

Here are the links to the resources related to this episode

Asish Blog: https://asishpadhy.com/ Asish's LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asishpadhy/ Twitter - @asishpadhy Tech Community - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/ Use Voice - https://office365.uservoice.com/

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In episode 4 of the Stories of Modern Work Podcast, I spoke with Mr Haniel Croitoru, an Enterprise Architect and Microsoft MVP in Office 365 as our guest to share his experiences and thoughts on using Office 365 as Modern Work tool. Here are some key points we discussed in the episode.

Modern Work is about leveraging the tools they have to get the work done effectively.
Businesses need to think about cutting down the paper trail in business processes.
Out of box functionality using Power Platform vs 3rd party applications for business process automation and the Need of turnkey solutions in Office 365 platform
Artificial Intelligence in Modern Workplaces
Adoption of Power Platform • Best practices to manage and administer Flows.
Strenght of Office 365 Mobility
Need for improvements in Authentication & Authorisation in Office 365.
Philosophy on how to tackle ‘Which tool when’ conundrum in Office 365.
Minimise the use of emails for internal communications. Embrace Microsoft Teams.

Haniel‘s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hanielcroitoru

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In episode 3 of the Stories of Modern Work Podcast, I spoke with Mr Nate Chamberlain from sharepointlibrarian.com talking about the story of Office 365 at LMH Health and Kansas University

Here are some key points we discussed in the episode.

Modern Work is meant to empower end users to get their work done with the assistance of modern technologies.
How to deal with shadow IT concerns? Don’t restrict users and find out what users want and give it them at the right moment.
Be transparent and upfront about the change.
Training end users of Office 365 Apps and Services is tricky. - Focus on business solutions and value.
Information Architecture should be built to support scalability.
Use Intelligent Automation to support Governance.
Folder vs Metadata paradigm.
Governance Plan is an evolution.
Get customer/user feedback early as you build business solutions.
Use visual media like Gifs and videos in user education.
Change Management for Office 365 Administrators to manage system changes and updates to Office 365 tenant.

Nate, Thanks for coming on the podcast and sharing your thoughts and experiences about Modern Work.

Here are some links to the resources mentioned in the podcast.

https://sharepointlibrarian.com/

Nate's LinkedIn Profile

The ABCs of SharePoint book

Visual SP

Content Panda

Sharegate

If you want to come on the podcast to share your Modern Work Story, ping me on LinkedIn @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jagkakarlapudi/

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In episode 2 of the Stories of Modern Work Podcast, I spoke with Mr Mitul Rana on how a large telecom provider is embarking on their Office 365 User Adoption journey.

Here are some key points we discussed in the episode.

InfoPath to PowerApps - Don't migrate InfoPath forms, instead use the opportunity to rebuild the business process using latest technologies.
Lotus Notes to SharePoint Applications - How change management is key to move users from Lotus Notes.
Adoption of PowerApps is still in infancy and has a great potential.
How marketing teams can use Microsoft Flow to track Social Sentiment of the brand and campaigns.
How to sell external sharing features to end users and get them on-board?
Drive the user adoption by showing the business value than the focusing on the technology.
Use OneDrive links to document. Stop sending document attachments. - This is killer tip.

Thanks for coming on the podcast and sharing your thoughts and experiences about Modern Work.

If you want to come on the podcast to share your Modern Work Story, ping me on LinkedIn @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jagkakarlapudi/

Music Source: WOWA

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Welcome to the first episode of the Stories of Modern Work podcast. In this episode I chat with Mr Mark Aschemeyer from BA Insight on how Intuitive Search powers Modern Work by bringing the content to the user. We also touch base on what is Modern Work and how Microsoft Teams is taking off.

Here is the links to the resources mentioned in the episode.

It Should Be All About Me!

https://www.bainsight.com/blog/it-should-be-all-about-me/

The Art of Listening

https://www.bainsight.com/blog/the-art-of-listening/

Great Search is Step One Toward Great Collaboration

https://www.bainsight.com/podcasts/podcast-60/

SmartHub (AI driven Platform for internet like search)

https://www.bainsight.com/smarthub/

O365 Connectors

https://www.bainsight.com/indexing-connectors/

Auto Classification (intelligent tagging)

https://www.bainsight.com/classification/

If you want to come on the show, please get in touch with me using the link below.

https://modernwork.cloud/podcast-invitation-form

Music: WOWA

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Stories of Modern Work: Recent Episodes

Jag Kakarlapudi