<p>Welcome
to CollabDays Finland 2024, a conference dedicated to exploring the latest
trends, tools, and technologies in the world of Microsoft. Hosted by a team of
industry experts, MVPs, and thought leaders, this event is designed to provide
valuable insights, practical strategies, and hands-on learning opportunities to
help you navigate the ever-changing landscape of digital collaboration,
development and security.</p>

<p>Throughout
the conference, you’ll have the opportunity to attend a diverse range of
sessions covering everything from Microsoft Teams and SharePoint to Security,
Azure and Power Platform - not to forget about AI and Copilot. Whether you’re a
seasoned IT professional, a business leader looking to drive innovation, or a
developer looking to build cutting-edge solutions, CollabDays Finland has
something tailored just for you.</p>

CollabDays Finland 2024

Edison

Lahti

Auditorio

Meri

Lobby

Breakfast & registration

In the age of AI, our community is here to help us to succeed together. Change of innovation has never been faster and it can feel that it's hard to stay up to date on the pace of change. You are not alone. We are here together and there are other community members here to help you to succeed.

Let's talk about the latest innovation, direction and impact of the AI for our work and how the community can help us to keep up to date and achieve our career goals.

Power of the community in the age of AI

Break

AI is everywhere, and it's essential to keep it up-to-date. This session explores tools like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and fine-tuning that ensure your AI stays relevant as data evolves. We'll simplify these technologies, explore how they work, and help you decide which is best for your projects.

For those intrigued by the potential of RAG, our session will offer a comprehensive guide to crafting your own solution. You’ll see firsthand how to integrate these methods into your own AI applications, focusing on practical benefits such as cost, scalability, and maintenance. Plus, we’ll cover how to keep an eye on performance to ensure your AI continues to perform well.

This won't be a one-way street – we encourage active participation, questions, and discussions to ensure that you leave with a deeper understanding and actionable strategies to elevate your AI applications to new heights. Whether you're a developer eager to enhance your skills or a leader driving AI innovation, this session is designed to provide valuable insights and hands-on learning to help you succeed.

Keeping AI Smart with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

In the ever-evolving world of Microsoft 365, it's easy to get distracted by the latest features and shiny new tools. But what about the basics? 

Our team has conducted countless security assessments, and the results are clear: too many environments are still vulnerable due to overlooked essentials. Join us for a no-nonsense, 20-minute deep dive into the top 10 security issues that most M365 environments still haven't fixed. Learn what to prioritize to keep your organization secure, and ensure you're not making the same mistakes. 

This session is your wake-up call to focus on what really matters in M365 security. Don't miss it!

Lessons learned from too many security assessments for M365: TOP10 things that everybody should fix.

Microsoft Teams is constantly evolving and gaining new capabilities. Do you know the latest ones and what you can accomplish when you learn how to use them?

Set course onto the heart of collaboration and discover the latest and coolest features and a bucket of Teams tricks there are to transform your collaborative experience. See, in action with demos, what you can do in Teams, and what Copilot in Teams and other AI-driven innovations add to the experience.

Participants receive knowledge and ideas how it is possible to get more out of Microsoft Teams. 

Join the session and see why Teams is the Future of Work tool and become a Teams Jedi!

Jedi mastering Microsoft Teams: The latest, the coolest and the jedi tricks

Canvas apps are often underestimated. You might think that they are just slow and ugly mobile applications built on top of SharePoint. But no. They offer much more. If you are building low-code solutions with Power Platform, mastering the canvas app is one of the most important skills for you.

Why?

Canvas apps seamlessly integrate across the Power Platform ecosystem. You can enrich model-driven apps with them in many ways. You can also use them with Power BI reports. If you are working with SharePoint, you can extend SharePoint with canvas apps as well! Usually, all this has been done with custom development. But not anymore.

In this session, I walk through different ways you can extend your solutions with canvas app.

While canvas Power Apps serve as a powerful tool, it's not a solution for everything. So when you shouldn't use it? This question is also addressed in this presentation.


Mastering canvas Power Apps

Have a walk around the venue, visit the sponsor booths and high five with the community colleagues.

Have a break & stretch your legs

Would you like Microsoft M365 Copilot to provide even more features and information for your organization's needs?

In this breakout session, we will discuss the possibilities of customizing and expanding the Copilot service. You will learn about the transformative power of Copilot Studio extensions, provide a comprehensive picture of the necessary solution options, and illustrate the importance of extensions in a constantly evolving IT environment with practical examples.

The need and importance of customization: Tailor Microsoft M365 Copilot to your business needs.

Low-Code Revolution: Simplifies the creation of extension and AI assistants for everyone.

Review of Copilot Studio Extensions: What Are They and Why Do They Matter? Explore extensions through practical examples.



Copilot extensions & their possibilities

Join my session on 'How to increase your comms reach using Microsoft Viva', where we explore the dynamic capabilities of Microsoft Viva for enhancing internal communication in organizations. We'll focus on Viva Connections and Viva Amplify, key components that can help you expand the reach of your messages. Discover how Viva Connections offers various options for increasing and boosting communication visibility and learn when to apply them. Understand also Viva Amplify and its role in amplifying your messaging strategies. Additionally, we'll explore Viva Engage articles and how they can be used to extend your messaging reach. If you want to learn more about Viva Amplify, Viva Engage, and Viva Connections in the context of internal comms, I strongly recommend that you join this session. Looking forward to seeing you there!

How to increase your comms reach using Microsoft Viva

"$30" ... What's the first thing you hear when talking about Copilot for Microsoft 365's pricing? Right ... "What is its ROI?" (Return on Investmen). Don't be fooled by some finance-magicians out there. It is not just a simple 'back of the napkin' calculation that will answer this question. It is much more complicated than that!

I was one of the lucky ones to use Copilot since August 2023. Based on personal experiences and a many discussion with (potential) customers, today, I will take you through a very good approach to calculate the ROI of Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Is it worth it? Let's find out!

The real ROI of Copilot (for Microsoft 365)

This deep dive session will focus on protecting sensitive data in Azure SQL database. We will explore the various ways of securing data in the cloud, with an emphasis on encryption. Attendees will gain a comprehensive understanding of the different encryption schemes available in SQL Always Encrypted and Always Encrypted with secure enclaves.
We will compare and contrast these methods to find out the most practical and secure approach for storing and managing data in Azure SQL. 
This session will provide valuable insights into data encryption best practices and help attendees make informed decisions about protecting sensitive data in Azure SQL database.

Protecting sensitive data in Azure SQL database

Have some refreshments, visit the sponsor booths and introduce yourself to at least 3 new people! #Communityrocks

In 2019, shortly after presenting at this community event in Helsinki I suffered a major life event in the form of a heart attack. This resulted in me having major heart surgery and taking 3 months out before I returned to the workforce and the community.

Since my return to work I recognised that all of the blame for my event lay solely at my feet. The lifestyle I chose and how I managed my workload played a huge role in what happened. Whilst I've made a lot of changes in my personal life around health and fitness, I've also made a number of changes in how I work with technology to help assist the work life balance.

In this session, we'll look at how tools across the Microsoft 365 suite can be used alongside a bit of willpower to make positive changes in both yours and your colleagues behaviours to help ensure a healthy balance between your work and personal lives. Examining tools like Viva Insights, To Do, power Automate and the Microsoft Mobile Apps, I'll talk you through some of the ways I've made life changing changes to my work styles using the tools available to me in M365, coupled with some healthy education of my co-workers.

Making positive change in your work habits with M365 tools

Embracing the #SharingIsCaring mindset, Advania Finland and Fresh are excited to use their sponsor session slot for an engaging interview. Jarbas Horst (Fresh) will sit down with Katja (Advania Finland), who has successfully delivered over 70 intranet projects, to explore her learnings and insights from these extensive experiences. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain expert knowledge on effective intranet implementations, common challenges, future trends, and more. Attend the session "#SharingIsCaring: Insights of 70+ Intranet Projects" to enhance your understanding and drive success in your own intranet initiatives.

#SharingIsCaring: Insights of 70+ Intranet Projects

In today's evolving cyber landscape, the Zero Trust model stands paramount, offering robust defenses against a myriad of threats. 

But how can organizations ensure their teams fully grasp the significance of Zero Trust? And more importantly, how can they inspire genuine commitment to its principles?

Enter gamification. By turning cybersecurity strategy education into an interactive experience, we can make the complexities of Zero Trust not just comprehensible, but engaging. This session delves deep into the transformative power of gamification and how it can be the linchpin to fostering a culture of cybersecurity diligence.

What attendees will gain:

Insight into why traditional methods of explaining Zero Trust might fall short.

Strategies to introduce and implement gamified methods in cybersecurity training.

Tools to measure the effectiveness of a gamified approach in terms of compliance and understanding.

Motivation to champion this novel approach in their organizations, aligning personal and company-wide cybersecurity goals.

Join the session to discover how addressing the personal needs of employees through gamified learning can be the game-changer in your organization's cybersecurity strategy. 

Equip yourself with the tools to lead, inspire, and safeguard in an era where understanding is just as crucial as compliance.


Gamifying Zero Trust: The Key to Understanding and Adoption

In today's software landscape, user experiences are held to high standards. The use of applications should be intuitive, efficient, and straightforward. Power Apps model-driven application offers a highly effective way to create interfaces on top of Dataverse data model, leveraging its application framework, views, and forms. However, as the interface creation process is swift, it's easy to overlook the end-user experience, which can result in a confusing outcome for the user. User interface design capabilities of a model-driven application are limited to predefined components and logic, making certain tasks unnecessarily complex and time-consuming.

By utilizing custom pages within the model-driven interface, you can break free from these constraints and create modern user experiences and processes that are logical and easy for users to navigate. Combining the efficiency of the model-driven application framework with the agility of Canvas app user experiences, you can achieve outstanding results. Join this session to learn different ways you can leverage custom pages in your interface design.

Key takeaways
- Understand what to consider for user experience when customizing model-driven interfaces
- Learn different methods to utilize custom page capabilities as part of model-driven applications to achieve more
- Consider the possibilities of custom pages when building your next model-driven application

Breaking boundaries with custom pages for intuitive Power Apps model-driven UI

Lunch

In this session, I will showcase how we leveraged the power of the Azure OpenAI service to craft engaging social media posts, tailored specifically to the submitted speaker sessions for CollabDays Finland 2024. Our goal was to highlight each speaker’s unique contribution while maintaining a cohesive and appealing social media presence for the event.

One key aspect of our approach was ensuring that each speaker had a say in how their session was represented. To achieve this, we utilized the App Power Forms connector, allowing speakers to review and provide input on the generated content. This collaborative process not only fostered inclusivity but also ensured that every post truly reflected the speaker’s voice.

Join this sponsor session to discover how these tools were integrated into our workflow and see the them in action. Whether you’re interested in AI-driven content creation or including external stakeholders to your business processes, this session has valuable insights for you!

Using Azure OpenAI and App Power Forms to create and collaborate on social media posts

Sensitivity labels, powered by Microsoft Purview Information Protection, serve as the foundation for classifying and protecting your sensitive data within Microsoft 365. Their significance extends beyond classification and play a crucial role in enforcing governance policies across your Microsoft 365 environment. Join me, a Data Security Consultant and Microsoft MVP, as I unveil practical tips and tricks to leverage the full potential of sensitivity labels. Together, we'll explore their versatility, covering sensitive information types, automatic labeling, and seamless integration with Data Loss Prevention, Teams Premium, and Copilot for Microsoft 365. By the session's conclusion, you'll be equipped with the latest insights and strategies to harness the capabilities of sensitivity labels effectively.


Unlocking the Power of Sensitivity Labels: A Comprehensive Guide

With Microsoft Search you have several options to support your users find the content they are looking for when they need, from any search box. Knowing each capability and how they work is key to ensure Microsoft Search is set up and works to your expectations.

This session will dive into when and how you can customize the Microsoft Search experience across Microsoft 365 tenant wide, to work best with intranets and hub sites, and what your options are when the out of the box capabilities are not matching your needs. We will cover following topics:

- Scoping search to cover a limited set of content
- Using answers
- Customising filters/refiners
- Customising how a result is displayed
- Vertical configuration and external data sources
- Difference between Microsoft Search and PnP Modern Search web parts

Configuring and Customising Microsoft Search

One of the biggest concerns of any organization thinking on deploying Copilot for Microsoft 365 is to ensure data stored in SharePoint is being accessed by the right people with the right permissions. Until not a long time ago, the lack of governance tools and controls made almost impossible for SharePoint Admins to properly address those concerns. Fortunately for us, with SAM (SharePoint Advanced Management) in SharePoint Premium we have a set of out the box governance controls (with the required licensing in place) intended to help on manage and govern SharePoint and OneDrive as well as enhance secure collaboration so we can be ready (at least in theory) for a safe arrival of Copilot. In this session we will review current governance features in SharePoint Premium that will boost your work as a SharePoint Admin.

Getting ready for Copilot for Microsoft 365 with Governance features in SharePoint Premium

Stretching break

In this session, Isabelle Van Campenhoudt (Data Platform MVP) and Doctor Flow (Serge Luca- Business Application MVP) will illustrate their proposal for a unified pragmatic Power Platform governance and adoption plan combining Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI. 
Even though Power BI and the Power Platform app creation tools differ, the governance and adoption challenges remain the same.
Conceptually, when it comes to self-service BI and citizen developers, the classical centralized governance approach does not fit the needs of flexibility required by the business.
The presenters will detail the benefit of having a single polymorphic approach where the concrete associated actions can be product-specific.
Many elements of this governance have been experimented on in the field by Isabelle during the last eight years for Power BI and the previous seven years for Power Automate and Power Apps by Doctor Flow.
Many use cases will illustrate this session to be aligned with real-world requirements.


Unified Power Platform Governance - lessons learned after seven years

AI is here to stay. Early adopters and early investors are seeing the business value and potential gains from integrating AI into their ways of working in ways that are sustainable, fosters innovation through collaboration and enhances productivity. But it requires leadership and vision and most importantly it requires people across the organization being engaged and involved. Leaders need to build trust, but trust is earned and requires a positive and inclusive work experience, with instant access to relevant knowledge in context.

In this session we will explore how AI-powered Knowledge solutions can help us shift focus from mundane work to value-add activities that drive real business and customer value, while fostering a culture that ensures the wellbeing of its people. And it starts with building a Knowledge-centric culture. What drives us? What motivates us as humans? And how can you, as a leader, inspire and motivate the people in your organization to build confidence in the organization and in themselves? Understanding the need for cultural and mindset changes, to reap the full benefits of AI-powered Knowledge, will be essential to organizational success!

Embracing AI: Transforming Workplaces and Cultivating Knowledge

Power Apps are powerful, elegant and versatile tools that require teamwork to build. In conventional app development, teams would collaborate and each member would contribute to a small piece of the final product. However, Power Platform is not very friendly to co-creation or co-operation in app development or automation scenarios. It's more like creating side by side, rather than together. To help your design, development and business teams work more efficiently and deliver better apps faster, Microsoft has improved the collaboration features in their products over the past year.
Vivian will share her insights on the various collaboration options within the Power Platform and show you what is possible and what is not when working together on your apps.

- Who? - This session is for anyone who builds canvas or model-driven apps
- What? - Exploring collaboration features, such as copresence and coauthoring, and how to use them wisely
- How? - Through demonstrations and lessons learned from different projects
- Why? - To enhance your teamwork, discover what is available in each region and how to optimize the functionality


Better together - Learn what's possible for Collaboration within Power Apps

Embark on a transformative journey with SharePoint Premium, where innovation meets content management excellence. Beyond the conventional, SharePoint Premium is not just a platform; it's a paradigm shift. Introducing AI, automation, and advanced security, it redefines how you engage with critical content throughout its lifecycle, setting the stage for the future with Copilot for Microsoft 365, the next-generation AI assistant revolutionizing productivity.

Key Features:
Content Experiences and Solutions: Elevate employee productivity, enhance business processes, and facilitate collaboration on diverse file types. SharePoint Premium optimizes crucial document processes like contracts, invoices, and SOWs with AI, security, and streamlined workflows.

Content Processing: Seamlessly organize your content to maximize its value through AI-driven automation. Build, classify, tag documents, and effortlessly prepare content for integration with Copilot, unlocking new realms of efficiency.

Content Governance: Proactively address oversharing and content sprawl. SharePoint Premium provides robust tools for managing the content lifecycle and controlling access, ensuring a structured and secure digital environment.

Join us as we explore these groundbreaking features, demonstrating how SharePoint Premium not only manages and protects your content but also propels it into the future, perfectly aligned with the transformative capabilities of Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Revolutionizing Content Management with SharePoint Premium: Unlocking AI-Powered Experiences

Afternoon coffee break

Microsoft 365 lets you work with external users in different apps and services. But managing these users can be hard, especially if you want to comply with your security and governance policies. In this session, you will see how to set up and control guest and external access in Microsoft 365. You will find out how to automate and track guest and external access scenarios, such as adding, deleting, or changing guests, applying conditional access and multi-factor authentication, and auditing guest actions and permissions. You will also learn how to fix common problems and how to use the newest features and updates for guest and external access.


Making sense of Microsoft 365 Guest & External access

With Power Platform and Dynamics 365 powering an increasing number of business-critical solutions, there is a growing need to understand and govern sensitive information stored in Dataverse databases. This is where Microsoft Purview Data Map and Data Catalog come in. 

In this session I demonstrate how to integrate Dataverse into an organization's existing data security strategy while discovering, classifying and labeling business-critical information at-scale.

To help you navigate your own development efforts, I also share my experience-driven insights, tips and best practices for integrating Purview with Dataverse and raise awareness around some potential (avoidable) pitfalls when considering a move to production.

Dataverse detective: Managing sensitive information with Purview Data Map

In a world where collaboration no longer has boundaries, Microsoft Loops enables seamless experience either working synchronously, asynchronously or combining best of both methods. Collaboration happens where users are, in Teams, emails, OneNote, Whiteboards, or the Loop app.

This session introduces the power of Microsoft Loop for enabling collaboration within and outside the organization. In this session you will learn:
- How to use Microsoft Loop components in different Microsoft 365 apps
- How to use Loop workspaces and Loop pages efficiently
- Prepare for meeting using Loops
- Working together with partners and customer using Loops
- Copilot with Loop

Microsoft Loop: Collaboration without Borders

When you have been in the Microsoft Business Application space since 2006 you really think you have seen it all……… Until Microsoft decide to change something.
It could be a total rebrand of the product, a new look and feel of the user interface or a complete rebuild of a product! Ohhhh and did we mention that they might just decide they don’t want to do anything with that product anymore?

In this session we will go through the history of where the Power Platform started, where it is going, what Is new, what won't be there when you wake up in the morning. There will also be some tips on how to communicate these with your customer and also some things you should be sacked for ever using. 

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Community Days | CollabDays Finland 2024