A podcast where we talk about working at the speed of technology. Topics may include information management, data governance, compliance and security, collaboration and productivity, the cloud(s), and much much more.
In this episode of This Week in Teams, Jay and I continue with our Microsoft Viva series by talking with Asif Rehmani, the CEO and founder of VisualSP, about Employee Learning and Training | Microsoft Viva.
In this episode of This Week in Teams, Jay and Craig talk about the new releases feature updates from Microsoft for January 2022. They talked about how, due to the holiday season, it seemed like there were few exciting announcements, they then proceeded to talk for 25+mintues.
While Jay and I were speaking at 365 EduCon D.C., we were able to sit down with Jeremy Wood and talk about Teams in Government and how the US Government uses Teams. Jeremy Wood is a Federal IT implementer, strategist, and enthusiast specializing in complex business systems. His expertise and career spans infrastructure, service desk,... Continue Reading →
This Week in Teams, Craig and Jay jump into the November 2021 Microsoft Teams Team product blog where ALL the goodies that were announced for commercial and US Government tenants. Following the lead from last month, we jumped into the Government announcements before discussing the full commercial tenants releases.
In this episode, Hunter and I review a bit about how we got here, from careers to kindness. We thank you for sticking with us through this past 19 episodes and hope you have enjoyed these conversations as much as we have.
This week Jay & Craig are joined by Stephanie Donahue, founder of The PAIT Group and Microsoft Regional Director and MVP, to discuss Viva Insights. Often confused as a “big brother” tool, enabling organizations to see what their employees are doing with their time; Viva Insights is designed to make those very statistics more generalized,... Continue Reading →
This Week in Teams, Craig and Jay jump into the October 2021 Microsoft Teams Team product blog where ALL the goodies that were announced for commercial and US Government tenants. We jumped into the Government announcements first, because Jay wanted to and because for the first time in forever, there seem to be a lot of them. We discussed how often times the Government tenants feel left behind in all the great teams news, but now it seems Microsoft is trying hard for speedier delivery times. Then we jumped through all of the end-user focused features, and a few management features, throughout the commercial tenants.
Yehudah Sunshine is the Chief Evangelist at ohttps://www.odi-x.com/dix, a Content Disarm and Reconstruction specialist in the world of cybersecurity. Continuing the IT security series, Yehudah brings a base-line understanding of ransomware, a greater-than 30 year old technological trade, which required the physical acceptance and use of floppy disks, and now it hardly requires the installation of an app or opening of the wrong email. Join Yehudah on this episode as we learn about Ransomware's history and why you need to pay attention to it.
This episode is the first in a 6-part series where Craig and Jay look into Microsoft Viva, the new Employee Experience platform that brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights in the flow of work. They are joined by Eddie Lee, the EduTech North America lead for AvePoint, in discussing Connections, Topics, Insights, Learning, and Ally.io, Viva's four core modules and its soon-to-be fifth, announced as a recent acquisition by Microsoft.
This Week in Teams, Craig and Jay jump into the September 2021 Microsoft Teams Team product blog where ALL the goodies that were announced for commercial and US Government tenants
In this episode of Buzzkill, Thomas Heinz joins Hunter and Jay to continue the identity discussion. This time, we dig in and talk about the importance of MFA and even uncover a little of the mystery of why it often feels like we're either getting constant requests for an MFA check or following no distinguishable pattern. Either way, Thomas, Jay, and Hunter dig deep on this one and try to keep this as non-technical as possible while deep diving into a highly technical topic. Join us, and let us know what questions you have so we can get you answers!
July 26-30, 2021, marked the first wholly-in-person conference for the SharePoint community in a l-o-n-g time. While only a couple hundred people attended, the attendees and speakers alike all seemed to agree that in-person was very much missed. To kick off the live podcast recording, Craig and Jay discussed the conference and some of their presentations, with a focus on SharePoint to SharePoint Online Migration and the importance of Information Architecture as you change versions. They were then joined by Microsoft Office Apps & Services MVP William "Andy" Huneycutt to discuss his on-the-go-ready production studio for virtual training and web meetings.
Microsoft Teams is Captain Marvel, SharePoint is Captain America. Do you agree? Who is your M365 Iron Man? The Hulk? On this episode of This Week in Teams, Jay and I talked with Oluwatosin Anishere (Tosi), a technical consultant for Wragby Business Solutions. Technologies in Nigeria. She specialize in Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft 365, also a Microsoft certified trainer. In this episode Tosi tells us who are her M365 Marvel superheroes.
This Week in Teams, Craig and Jay jump into the April 2021 Microsoft Teams Team product blog where ALL the goodies that were announced for commercial and US Government tentants
This week on Buzzkill we talk about Identity Management and its relationship to the modern IT infrastructure with we Stephanie Donahue - a Microsoft MVP and Regional Director and the President at PAIT Group. This conversation is an excellent summary of Identity security and how things have changed, especially with a transition to the cloud.
This week on buzzkill, we continue the IT Security Series with Liam Cleary, talking about Personal Security and how it relates to not only the security of yourself and your family but your organization's data. We hope you enjoy this conversation as we traverse everything from wifi to social media and relate it all to the many important tools and techniques your organization should take advantage.
On the heels of the global breach using SolarWinds, we decided this would be a good time to bring Security to Buzzkill. In this episode Hunter and Jay provide an introduction to our IT Security Series. As we explore the topic, we will talk to ACTUAL security experts about why it is so important to plan for security, not only as an IT professional or programmer, but as an individual.
In this episode, we spoke with Amie Seisay about considerations organizations should have when building their IT teams. We had a great time exploring some of the reasons why, when it comes to strategy, communication, change management and other aspects of project implementation, having a diverse team is essential. We all agreed organizations really need more than developers and administrators to get things done. Training, communication and project management skills are fundamentally necessary in getting things done!
This week on Buzzkill, Jay and Hunter discuss what it means to successfully roll out technology in today's climate. We discuss traditional IT success criteria, budget and time, but then dig into adoption and value. We posit that a modern IT rollout must consider adoption and value across the entire project, from planning through implementation to training and metrics.
This episode explores important aspects of communication, including how communication between IT and the organization is vital both to implementations and ongoing operations. Though the stereotype of the cynical, introverted and sheltered IT admin may have some legitimacy, there are increasingly many kinds of people IT. Though this means there may be more sociality and better communication skills among IT members than in years past, it’s still very important to hone in on and improve IT communication skills on a regular basis.
Jay and Craig talked about of the newest features rolling out, or soon to be rolling out for the Microsoft Teams platform from Lists to Breakout Rooms to Meeting Publishing and Ignite. There's a lot to unpack, This Week in Teams.
This week Jay and Craig talked about some important considerations around managing your Teams, such as: naming conventions, team creation, managing membership, and the ever popular guest accesses vs. external users.
After weeks of new features and deep dives into various capabilities that compliment the Teams platform, Jay and Craig decided to go back to basics. This Week in Teams we provide an introduction to #MicrosoftTeams. We talk about what Teams IS: the hub for M365 but also the hub for the enterprise with its ever-expanding extensibility. We also talked about the base for Teams: SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange Server. And, we discussed if a Team should be Organizational or Functional (sneak peek: It depends).
Over the last two weeks Hunter and I had conversations with two people from very different backgrounds to help showcase the need for, but also the value of developing customer feedback loops in your engagements. Maxine Teller of Maximize Strategies shared her experiences supporting customer journeys with change. Samit Saini shared his own journey from the end user to the service adoption specialist.
This Week in Teams, Craig and Jay focus on the new Tasks App, it's connection to the To Dos in Outlook, and the incredible business value of Planner. All the with help of our special guest, Stacy Deere-Strole (MVP).
It's a regular struggle between end users and the IT shop: features versus security (and budget, and time, and actual value vs perceived value). The list is actually a lot longer than that, but the general point is this: end users, the drivers for mission success, often feel as though the technical solutions provided to them miss the mark and your Information Technology team feels as though end users don't understand the unrealistic burden being put on IT to support the business. Sound familiar? In this conversation Hunter and Jay discuss the Shadow IT problem and provide strategies for combatting it - but the focus isn't on simply locking down your network, it's understanding the problem and providing solutions that remove the symptoms causing it.
This week, Craig and Jay invite Bobby Chang, a Microsoft Business Apps Technical Specialist for the US Federal/Civilian market, to talk about DataFlex. DataFlex Pro and DataFlex for Teams were recently announced at Microsoft Inspire and in this conversation Bobby tells us why this is important, not just to technologists, but to end users and the business side of your enterprise.
Slack is suing Microsoft, Google thinks Gmail is "the way", Zoom is no longer leading live meeting usage, the NBA and Microsoft are "Together" Mode. And Microsoft Inpspire was last week.
This week Hunter and Jay enter the world of Information Management and Information Architecture. Information Management and Information Architecture are key components to the usability of an information system - IM helps you know the processes for managing tacit knowledge, documenting it as elicit knowledge, and finally recording it as authoritative, or records. IA is all about how your people FIND that information, how it's organized. To aid in the conversation, Jay and Hunter are very thankful to have solution architects Erin Glenn and Matt Barns to join us and tell their stories.
Who are these people, and what happened to Craig? This week we invited Sven and Matt to talk about their newly released eBook, Rockstar Meetings with Microsoft Teams. Unfortunately, Craig’s internet service provider decided it was a good time for an outage, so he couldn’t join us. Hopefully, Jay sufficiently kept the conversation going without... Continue Reading →
This week Craig and Jay dig into the recent meeting enhancement updates. We've been talking about 7x7 video mode since Microsoft announced 3x3, and we've started to see the new 49-person mode in the wild. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, they released "together" mode. Other things we discussed included Cortana in the mobile app, a little more information on the Tasks app (joining Outlook Tasks, Planner, and more), and some updates on the Power Platform.
On This Week in Teams, July 4, 2020, we talk about Zoom's 90 day Security release cycle, Reliance Jio Platform's new Meet product, and the Microsoft Store closures. Then, we get into the products.
This Week (in Teams, I couldn’t resist) we talk about Teams Live and how to get the most out of producing video content for broadcast. Teams Live, in contrast to Teams Meetings, gives producers a one-way broadcast capability for education events, town halls, and other events where sending out audio, video, and screen sharing is of value, but it makes more sense to have few content creators and many listeners. Up to 20,000 per meeting in fact. Check out these post-event details to see how they did this MASSIVE event. To start, our examples focus on the Microsoft community itself. Well known for our Microsoft/Azure/Office365/SharePoint User Groups and (SPS) Saturday events, like much of the world, the community has found itself canceling events and moving online. The big sample is a 36-hour event with nearly 400 presentations and over 20,000 attendees -- the Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon was an impressive feat and a spotlight of our Teams Live use case. Lest we not forget to announce the third panel in our video, we are joined by the Cloud Talk Show (cloudtalkshow.com) co-host, Software Architect, and self-proclaimed Microsoft Aficionado, Ralph Rivas.
After Microsoft Build, last week, there wasn’t much news for Microsoft Teams, but we found enough to have a short conversation: 7UP (49 people in a 7×7 video grid) is official, but no release date was mentioned; Free Teams now get Meetings; Slack and AWS are going to partner to compete with Microsoft’s enterprise voice... Continue Reading →
This Week in Teams brings you updates from Microsoft Build! Everything from the GraphAPI to Power Automate, from SSO and and Template Management to end user improvements like more pop outs, contextual search, Lists, HIPAA compliant bookings apps and more broadcast capabilities. SO MUCH HAPPENING!!!! This week in Teams!
This Week in Teams we saw a bug appear with the latest iOS release (with a very quick update to the Teams app to resolve it), and enhancements across Office 365 that effect Teams like updates to the SharePoint admin portal, Stream recordings for training videos, advanced eDiscovery, and General Availability of Sensitivity Labels. We... Continue Reading →
Change Management is a vast topic, and no one in Information Technology is ever given the time, money, or respect that Change Management deserves, yet it remains an integral part of any Digital Transformation. During this episode, Hunter and Jay dig into the importance of Change Management and provide some tips for gaining buy-in and money as well as some quick tips to roll out the starting line.
Teams adoption is up nearly 100% in 4 weeks, while Zoom is backtracking its stats (and rapidly attempting to patch its flaws). Microsoft has pushed a LOT of features out in that time period (3×3 video, raised hands, background effects, and much more) and patched a previously unknown vulnerability. Also, Facebook and Google are trying... Continue Reading →
Craig and Jay breakdown new meetings features, multi-window Chat support, Teams Communities (aka Yammer integration), some GDPR conversations, and discuss a few new OTSQT videos that we’ll put out next week.
This week Craig and Jay discuss custom backgrounds, breakout rooms, the Brady Bunch view of videos, how the NFL and NBA are partnering with Microsoft, the DOD’s new O365 tenant for Teams, and Google’s attempt at the virtual meeting space with Google Meet. Recorded April 17, 2020.
This week, we discuss Zoom's privacy and security issues, Microsoft's recently announced security posture, Microsoft Teams's extreme growth, and the importance of understand how various O365 tools affect Teams (Exchange and calendars, SharePoint and Onedrive with files, etc). A couple customer stories about Exchange on premises and Teams chat data retention round out our inaugural episode.
In today’s On the SPOT News Brief, Jay Leask and Craig Jahnke talk Microsoft collaboration systems, specifically: SharePoint and OneDrive. To oversimplify their thoughts, inspired by the recently released Document Circle of Life in Office 365, the two ultimately agree that SharePoint is for co-authoring and publishing, while OneDrive is for individuals working on individual content -- but there's always more to it than any simplification can properly document.
In today’s On the SPOT News Brief, Jay Leask and Craig Jahnke review some recent SCOTUS decisions, dabble in politics, and discuss the probability of the Machine's taking over the world through civil debate and mind control. Today's source material, and a few others mentioned in passing, are found below: SCOTUS says your privacy data is yours - go get a warrant -- SCOTUS says it's a State's right to tax your internet purchase -- EU Article 13 wants to block your meme - or something like that -- The GitHub 100 say "It's us or ICE" -- IBM's Project Debater AI changes your mind - and here come the machines -- Microsoft aquires FlipGrid -- Microsoft publishes open research data sets
In today’s On the SPOT News Brief, Jay Leask and Craig Jahnke catch up after a multi-month hiatus with Jay's move, and newborn son, and Craig's new job and summer plans. And they discuss their goals for the podcast and how hard it can be to find the motivation to record, edit, and release this. So thank you for putting up with us as we try to rebuild our cadence! In technology they discuss news out of the SharePoint conference, GitHub, a sunken data center, Project Maven, WWDC, GDPR and those pesky privacy policies. They also put out a call for someone to help them understand what Apple has been doing for the past 5+ years - I mean, really, what's iNew?
During this episode, recorded November 2017, Jay sat down with Liam Cleary, MVP and Associate Director at Protiviti, to discuss cognitive services, the speed of technology (no pun intended), and the rise of the machines. We also discuss Liam's path to the IT Consultant known for [REDACTED] (I kid, ask him about personal security at conferences, it's fun), and the importance of giving back to the community that helped you get where you are.
today’s On the SPOT News Brief, Jay Leask and Craig Jahnke continue the Cloud Series with a focus on a four phase migration process: Discovery, Assessment, Pilot, and Execution. They even touch on the importance of user acceptance testing and automated governance to support end-user buy-in. Throughout each of these phases, Jay and Craig provide real-world customer examples which showcase the importance for each phase.
Recorded March 3, 2018, Jay Leask and Craig Jahnke continue the Cloud Series by diving into the importance of a proper readiness assessment when considering a move to the cloud. Primary categories of discussion included cloud viability for business and legacy applications, up-front and hidden costs, brand and type of cloud (such as brands, private vs multi-tenant, and data segregation options), governance, and migration preparedness.
In today’s On the SPOT News Brief, Jay Leask and Craig Jahnke introduce a new series of upcoming episodes around Security and Compliance in the Cloud. We know the cloud offers the combined resources and finances of hundreds of thousands of organizations, but why does that give it a chance to be more secure than your on premises infrastructure? And what considerations do you need to keep in mind when you plan your move? In the coming weeks we will dig into each of the topics discussed today.
During this episode, Craig took some time out of the SharePoint Saturday festivities to sit down with Sharon Weaver, VP of Operations at Focal Point Solutions, LLC. Sharon shares her introduction to the many uses of SharePoint (including Alerts back in 2003), her presentation on governance, and the importance of end-user training.
During this episode, Craig took some time out of the SharePoint Saturday festivities to sit down with Don Miller, Director of BA Insight. Craig and Don discuss Don's journey in SharePoint, his presentation and the "Intelligent Intranet", and what excites him about the collaboration ecosystem.