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 Netherlands - link coming soon

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