Join us at 365 EduCon DC 2023Microsoft 365 EduCon,&nbsp;a Microsoft 365 and Power Platform training conference,&nbsp;brings to you the world’s leading experts in&nbsp;Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Power Platform, Microsoft Teams and Azure. Whether you are&nbsp;new to SharePoint or an experienced power user, admin or developer, 365 EduCon has content designed to fit your experience level and area of interest. Our workshops and sessions are taught by Microsoft Certified Trainers, Microsoft MVPs, Microsoft Regional Directors and Microsoft engineers.
At&nbsp;Microsoft&nbsp;365 EduCon, subject matter is divided into tracks and each session is designated for beginner, intermediate or advanced. Tracks are offered for the following subjects:&nbsp;Microsoft 365, Azure, Teams, Power Apps, Search, Content Management, Power Users, Business Value, Implementation/Administration, Workflow/ Power Automate, Business Intelligence, SharePoint Development, Microsoft Viva and more. Choose one complete learning track or mix and match based on what content best meets you and your organization’s current needs!

365 EduCon DC - A Microsoft 365 Conference

Room 152a

Every organization that uses Teams needs an effective long-term strategy. Microsoft Teams is the fastest-growing Microsoft application in history! Most organizations hear this news and immediately go into risk management mode. Who’s already using Teams? Should we stop people from using Teams? Do we need to put provisioning processes in place? What do we do with all this STUFF that gets created whenever someone spins up a new Team? What about SharePoint? It’s possible that more questions arise from a successful Teams deployment than an unsuccessful one! But how should you address your deployment and long-term strategy of Microsoft Teams? How does Teams fit into your overall Modern Workplace vision?

Attend this full-day workshop with Microsoft MVP’s Stephanie Donahue and Mark Rackley from Avanade and:
- Understand how Teams fits into your overall Microsoft 365 strategy
- Learn to effectively manage your Teams environment including:
   + Scale
   + Governance
   + Retention
- Dig into options for customizing Teams to get even more out of your Teams deployment including:
   + bots
   + web parts
   + provisioning
- Tackle how to train users on best practices and prevent secure information from being accidentally shared
- Learn what Viva is and why your company should be planning to embrace it to get the most out of your investments in Teams

Microsoft Teams is here, it’s being adopted like crazy, and proper strategy and education is key to making the most of your Microsoft 365 investment.

Check out our workshop preview: https://youtu.be/p4ikBeuodmk

We’ve Deployed Microsoft Teams… Now What?

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Power BI is the gold standard for cloud based report delivery. It’s very approachable – you can get up and running with it in minutes, at the same time, it’s very robust, secure and extensible. As you might expect, it has many pieces and nuances, and it’s important to understand what is possible, even if you may not take immediate advantage of some features, in order to understand what to use when.

Join John White (MVP) and Jason Himmelstein (Principal Program Manager @ Microsoft) for this all-day tutorial which will help to guide you through building a complete analytical solution, using all the features of Power BI. We will start from nothing, and create queries that import and integrate data from many different sources. You will also learn how to refresh data using the on-premises data gateway and the personal gateway to connect to existing on-premises data from a variety of sources. In addition, you will see an overview of the many other additional features available in Power BI.

At the end of this workshop you will be ready to not only start using Power BI for your projects, but you will also understand which approach is best for different situations. Bring your questions, and we’ll do our best to answer them.

Check out our workshop preview: https://youtu.be/YrgXIwSii6Q

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

Many organizations rely heavily on email to send out newsletters, and also run into adoption issues with SharePoint. What if you could solve both of those problems at the same time? You can do exactly that with SharePoint News!

In this session, we will discuss SharePoint Online's News functionality, and how your organization can use it to communicate effectively while driving users to your intranet. 

We will go over topics such as:
1. What is the current state of the news functionality?
2. How can you curate which news is displayed on which sites?
3. Is it possible to still mail out a newsletter?
4. How can organizations share news to multiple sites?
5. Which features are rolling out next?

If you are looking for a newsletter, and/or you want to learn a new adoption trick or two, don't miss this session!


Communicating intelligently with SharePoint News

This session will help you get started with planning and organizing your intranet in SharePoint and Viva Connections. You will learn considerations for navigation and site architecture, designing and organizing pages, connecting content with metadata, and planning great search experiences. 

You will also learn things to consider when bringing your intranet into Microsoft Teams with Viva Connections, including best practices for your home site, overall governance, and how to think about leveraging audiences to create personalized experiences. 

You will take away practical ideas to help you get started and tips and best practices to optimize your existing experiences.

Getting Started with Information Architecture for Microsoft 365 Intranets

A lot has changed since Microsoft began recommending flat information architecture for modern SharePoint intranets.

In this session we’ll discuss:
  - The advantages of flat information architecture
  - How hub sites provide consistent navigation and content rollups
  - How Teams connected team sites play a role in the intranet
  - Using Yammer to engage employees 
  - Creating a single-pane-of-glass experience for employees  with Microsoft Viva


Creating Intelligent Intranets Using Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Yammer!

With all the machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) available in Microsoft 365 these days, do we still need to think about information architecture? Can automation fulfil the promise of reducing the load on information architects and developers?

In this session, we’re review some of the better practices for constructing a powerful information architecture and why it still matters. We’ll look at real-world examples and talk about what automation can and can’t do for you. 

Technology is evolving quickly, so expect to see a few tidbits you don't expect, as well as healthy doses of reality.

Does Information Architecture Matter Anymore?

If you are shopping for or planning a new intranet, what capabilities do you need to have? What do you need to think about to ensure that you deliver success? How does Microsoft Teams factor into your intranet? What do Microsoft Viva, Viva Connections, and Viva Engage mean for your intranet? 

If you are wondering about the answers to these questions and more, this session is for you! We’ll review key concepts, ideas, capabilities, and planning tips to help ensure that your intranet drives value for everyone in the organization – in every place where it is delivered. 

Your Intranet Shopping List - Must Have Capabilities for Your Modern, Intelligent Intranet

Intranet teams are responsible for creating intuitive experiences for employees to find the right content at the right time, enabling them to do their jobs better. Many organizations forget to include employees in the development process, introducing the risk of creating a solution that does not meet the real need. 

In this session, we will discuss how to develop a user research plan, conduct virtual usability testing, and communicate the results across your organization. Learn how user research can help you achieve your business goals and identify 85% of the usability problems early in your development process. 

Create a human-centered process in your organization to yield the best results.

Conducting user research to drive your intranet design

Digital Transformation has taken businesses on a journey of technical advances resulting in a new way of working.  SharePoint Intranets are no longer static file repositories. They’re dynamic venues for knowledge sharing, productivity, and collaboration. A well-managed modern SharePoint Intranet streamlines communication, improves employee experience, and facilitates connection.  How can you tell if your investments in modernizing successfully result in a well-managed intranet?   

In this session, we will cover: 

Top KPIs you should be monitoring to evaluate the health of your SharePoint Intranet 

How to implement those metrics with actionable steps that will increase user adoption, improve site performance, and help provide usage data to your key stakeholders. 

From Insights to Impact: Measuring Your Intranet ROI

You've created your "quick and dirty starter intranet," and users and groups are starting to ask for their own SharePoint sites and Teams. 

Maybe you work for a conglomerate and want to host multiple brands inside a single Microsoft 365 Tenant. Maybe you've even done a migration from your older SharePoint environment.

No matter the case, scaling out your intranet can become a daunting task with many branching paths.

In this session, join Nick Brattoli as he discusses strategies around scaling your intranet. 

He'll talk about topics such as:
  • Keeping your architecture scalable and secure
  • Avoiding Sprawl
  • Adoption recommendations
  • Admin and site owner tips and tricks

Scaling your SharePoint intranet for large organizations

One of the brightest stars (and lowest cost) member of the Microsoft Viva family is Viva Connections, but it also seems to be the most misunderstood. What exactly is Viva Connections, what features does it offer, and how can your organization start using  it today?  

In this lively session, attendees will learn:
  - What is the difference between Viva Connections Desktop and Viva Connections Mobile?
  - How to best use the Viva Connections Newsfeed
  -  How to use and customize the Viva Connections Dashboard
  -  How to take advantage of out of the box ACE's (Adaptive Card Extensions) and how to use the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) to create your own to create a more powerful dashboard experience

A Real World Introduction to Viva Connections

When managing Microsoft 365 services, data backup and recovery is normally not top of mind. Do you know Microsoft’s retention policy for M365 data? Not often are retention policies researched considered until there is a disaster, cyberattack, or necessity for data recovery.

Join our session to learn more about Microsoft M365 data retention policies, choosing a data retention policy, and how backing up your M365 data from the cloud can not only save you money, but also save you from potential disasters.

Microsoft 365 Backup & Recovery: Are You Protected?

Microsoft Teams is rapidly positioning itself to be the connecting tool across much of the Office 365 suite. How can we take advantage of this platform and create new user experiences?

In this session we'll talk about all the ways that we can interact with, automate, and supplement Microsoft Teams. We will talk about cards, bots, connectors, and custom applications. 

Session Benefits:
- Understand how to use Microsoft Teams as a tool for better user experience
- Understand all the options that are available for customizing the MS Teams interaction

Microsoft Teams as a Development Platform

You can create a powerful digital employee experience in Microsoft 365 without ever touching custom coding. With the launch of Viva, there is now a suite of tools to support the unique needs of our new hybrid work scenarios. 

Learn more about how:
  • Viva Connections can bring your intranet to where people are working in Microsoft Teams
  • Viva Learning supports upskilling and educating your organization
  • Viva Engage fosters communication across work units

Creating a powerful employee experience with Viva

In a modern Intranet, we generally want to store content in the site where it should be managed. We think of this as distributed content management and it's similar to the way News works in modern SharePoint. This usually means each department or organizational unit can manage their content using a process which makes sense for them. 

At the same time, we may want to roll up that content in one central location for ease of access. A Policy Center is a great example of this approach and one we find ourselves building for many of our clients.

In this session, you'll see how the following components add up to make a Policy Center:
  - Information architecture (IA) in the form of Site Columns and a Content Type to represent a Policy
  - A Site Template which only instantiates a Policy library in the site and applies the IA
  - A Policy library in each Intranet site, deployed using the Site Template, with Policies specific to that department
  - Changes to the search schema to support metadata filtering
  - A Policy Center page built using PnP Modern Search Web Parts to display the Policies from across the Intranet

Additionally, we'll discuss various approaches to solve the content management puzzle - before the Policy is even visible on the Intranet.

Building a Policy Center with PnP Modern Search

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