In today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape, maintaining network reliability is paramount. Our team in Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization, keeps the company connected and maintains foundational network services for all our employees and guests. With an environment comprising 64,000 network devices, over 700 buildings supporting 350,000 users with over 1 million connected devices generating 170,000 incidents per year, traditional methods of network management can often be insufficient.  

To manage at this scale, we’re envisioning and executing a future of AI transformation and are creating new AI solutions that will help us to be more efficient and agile. This is a critical part of our role as the team that’s responsible for powering, protecting, and transforming our digital employee experience across devices, applications, and hybrid infrastructure at Microsoft.

“As the organization that acts as Customer Zero for the company, we are leading with AI to help power Microsoft and keep things like our network infrastructure secure and reliable,” says Brian Fielder, vice president of Microsoft Digital. “We must aggressively experiment and adopt AI agents to foster innovation and model the future of service engineering.”

Within Microsoft Digital, our AIOps and Network Infrastructure Copilot (NiC) AI solutions have emerged as transformative new tools for enhancing network performance. These tools take advantage of AI-powered capabilities by turning data and knowledge into powerful insights and, eventually, meaningful actions to run the industry’s most secure and reliable enterprise network. 

These tools share a common data architecture comprised of millions of telemetry points but perform unique AI functions in both running and supporting the network. AIOps is an automation solution that uses data insights to prevent and resolve network issues before they become impactful. NiC is an interactive experience that helps network practitioners, and a variety of other personas more easily interact in natural language with complex network services to get rapid answers and intelligent suggestions.  

AIOps: Transforming how we deliver operational excellence 

AIOps integrates AI into IT operations by automating and enhancing various aspects of network management. This approach significantly reduces manual intervention, allowing network engineers to focus on higher-value tasks. Key components of AIOps include: 

• Automated ticketing and remediation: AIOps automates the creation and resolution of tickets, reducing the time and effort required to manage incidents. This automation is particularly beneficial in environments with high ticket volumes, ensuring timely and efficient resolution of network issues. 
• Ticket noise reduction: AIOps uses AI-powered ticket correlation, suppression, and enrichment capabilities to significantly reduce ticketing noise, enabling engineers to concentrate on the most critical issues.  
• Automatic remediation: AIOps executes automatic troubleshooting and remediation actions on behalf of engineers to mitigate issues and keep outage duration and the associated business impact to a minimum. This is accomplished based on troubleshooting knowledge and successful remediation steps executed. 
• Postmortem report generation: AI-powered tools generate detailed postmortem reports for network incidents, providing insights into the root causes and recommended remediation steps. This capability enhances the learning process and helps prevent future occurrences. 

AIOps components mapping (based on Gartner’s AIOps model)

Network Infrastructure Copilot (NiC): The everyday AI assistant

NiC is an AI assistant designed to support network engineers in managing complex network environments. NiC provides powerful data insights and documentation, enabling engineers to design, configure, analyze, and troubleshoot network issues using natural language queries. Key features of NiC include: 

• Data insights: NiC helps engineers extract valuable data insights from various sources, such as wikis, SharePoint libraries, troubleshooting guides, and the infrastructure data lake (IDL). This capability streamlines data analysis and enhances decision-making to take impactful actions. 
• Network artifacts interpretation: NiC understands key artifacts such as device logs and configurations, providing engineers with concise and relevant information. This capability greatly reduces the cognitive load on engineers to access and process the most critical data and insights required to manage a complex network environment. 
• Simplified network observability: NiC enables non-networking personas (such as conference room technicians and facilities managers) to get quick glances at the health and configuration of their services without requiring deep understanding of network protocols and taxonomies. 

“NiC has dramatically reduced the time engineers spend searching through documentation and other network artifacts to yield actionable insights, slashing effort from 25 minutes to under 5 minutes,” says Phil Suver, a principal group product manager in Microsoft Digital. 

Transforming network engineering with a Copilot agent

Driving impact through AIOps and NiC 

The integration of AIOps and NiC has significantly improved network reliability in several ways: 

• Efficiency gains: The automation of routine tasks and the provision of actionable insights through AIOps and NiC has drastically reduced the cognitive load on network engineers. In the past several months, network practitioners have cumulatively saved over 11,000 hours in network service management. This efficiency gain frees up engineers to focus on strategic initiatives that further enhance network performance. 
• Rapid issue detection and resolution: AI-powered anomaly detection and automated remediation ensure that potential issues are identified and resolved before they impact network performance. This proactive approach minimizes downtime and enhances overall network reliability.  

Lessons learned in building and deploying AIOps and NiC 

To achieve measurable and sustainable business impact, we established an AI-focused feedback loop that emphasizes rapid experimentation, value validation, and a continuous improvement mindset. The following are key lessons learned from our journey in developing and scaling AI solutions that enhance Microsoft’s network reliability.     

• Prioritization: One of the significant tradeoffs was the allocation of resources. The team had to decide how to distribute resources effectively to support the development of network AI solutions while maintaining other critical priorities such as the Secure Future Initiative (SFI). 
• Change management: Implementing AIOps and NiC required significant changes in how network engineers and other stakeholders worked. The team had to manage organizational changes and enable network engineers to streamline workflows to incorporate AI effectively. This involved providing training, gathering feedback, and continuously improving the tools based on usage and learnings. 
• Impact measurement: Measuring the impact of AI on time savings and productivity gains was essential. The team established baselines and targets—in the form of KPI—to track employee productivity gains realized through AI, helping them achieve more.  
• Scalability and performance: Ensuring that NiC and AIOps could scale to handle the large number of devices and tickets was a critical consideration. The team had to make decisions about the architecture and design of these solutions to ensure they could support the growing demands of the network. 

“By focusing on these key areas, we were able to deploy AI solutions that not only met immediate needs but also positioned us for long-term success and innovation,” says Eddie Lau, a principal product manager in Microsoft Digital. 

Here are four key insights into how AIOps and Network Infrastructure Copilot (NiC) have transformed network management and performance:

• The integration of AIOps and Network Infrastructure Copilot (NiC) has automated routine tasks and provided actionable insights, reducing the cognitive load on network engineers and enhancing overall network performance. 
• AI-powered anomaly detection and automated remediation ensure potential issues are identified and resolved before impacting network performance, minimizing downtime and enhancing reliability. 
• Implementing AIOps and NiC required managing organizational changes, providing training, gathering feedback, and continuously improving the tools based on usage and learnings. 
• Ensuring NiC and AIOps could scale to handle the large number of devices and tickets was crucial, requiring careful decisions about architecture and design.  

• See what your company can do with Microsoft 365 Copilot.

• Learn how we’re transforming our approach to patch management at Microsoft.
• Take a peek inside the councils steering AI projects at Microsoft.
• Read how we’re keeping our network infrastructure healthy at Microsoft with an employee-built AI agent.
• Learn how we’re using an employee-built AI agent to keep our network infrastructure healthy.

• Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

The post Enhancing Microsoft network reliability with AIOps and Network Infrastructure Copilot appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

At Microsoft, the Total Rewards Portal (TRP) is the mechanism by which this value proposition is communicated and shared worldwide to our 220,000-plus global employees on an individual level.

The TRP has been on a journey since it first launched over a decade ago, undergoing several iterations, including initially being hosted by a third-party vendor. In 2021, it was brought in-house and hosted on Microsoft Azure, giving us more control and flexibility to further enhance the experience. As part of this continual improvement, hearing from employees and managers about their usage and satisfaction with the tool has been critical to its overall success and further development. 

“We took a three-phased approach to help us inform the most recent design, as well as guide the objectives, goals, and principles for the future state of this tool,” says Nur Sheikhassan, a principal group engineering manager on the Rewards and Compensation team in Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization.

Phase 1—Understand TRP usage 

The goal of phase one was to establish a baseline understanding of usage and gather insights into what was working and what wasn’t. One-on-one interviews were conducted with both employees and managers to obtain feedback. Our key findings included: 

1. Integration of tangible and intangible total rewards: Understanding that total compensation and benefits are often comprised of both tangible elements (such as money) and intangible elements (such as culture and work/life balance), we found it’s important to surface both in order to clearly communicate the total value of the compensation and benefits package and highlight it in a way that provides clarity rather than clutter. 
2. Make TRP more discoverable: The discoverability of TRP, particularly outside of rewards season, had been particularly low. Clearly and consistently branding the site and situating it within areas employees commonly use could help them discover employee tools and content related to rewards more easily.
3. Optimize for the complete task flow: The tool needed to fully consider the complete flow of a potential task. We identified all the information one might be in search of to learn about their total compensation to ensure users do not feel the need to seek out additional resources on other sites and tools.
4. Consider surfacing contextual data: We needed to think critically about the contextual data brought in to TRP, and to use data that will only enhance employees’ understanding of the value of the Microsoft compensation and benefits packages. Focusing on common scenarios—such as hiring, managers’ rewards conversations with directs, and modeling future rewards—would help provide a clearer picture of what data should be included.

Phase 2—Develop common TRP scenarios 

The next phase was designed to build on the learnings from phase one, leveraging common TRP scenarios to help us understand what’s working and what’s not. Exploring these scenarios uncovered opportunities for consideration and started to light up themes around the need to get to overall rewards understanding faster, to drive meaning through contextual data, and to seamlessly connect related tools and sites. The three key themes that came out of this phase were: 

1. Clearly communicate the value of total rewards opportunity: We wanted to display total rewards clearly, succinctly, and comprehensively, indicating relevant timeframes and breaking out cash base value and bonus. We looked at utilizing data visualizations (i.e., charts) more strategically to help give users a clearer view of changes and trends; otherwise, more detailed data in a table was considered to increase usability.
2. Empower rewards conversations: We needed to provide more conversation starters or pointers within the tool to help managers be prepared and have more meaningful rewards conversations with their teams.
3. Optimize rewards workflows: Better access to related content and websites to enable task completion across the tools in the HR ecosystem was evaluated. This helps managers traverse the fragmented manager-tool ecosystem by providing relevant links, on-ramps, and off-ramps to related tools and information for a more seamless experience that improves workflow.

“It was abundantly clear the immediate appeal the new TRP design had on employees and managers alike.”

Jennifer Hugill, principal program manager, Rewards and Compensation team

Phase 3—Optimize TRP design

Building on the learnings captured from the first two phases, a redesigned user experience was developed, including a high-fidelity prototype. The goal of phase three was to assess the usability of the new site and ultimately ensure that user needs and pain points were addressed with the new design.

“It was abundantly clear the immediate appeal the new TRP design had on employees and managers alike,” says Jennifer Hugill, a principal program manager on the Rewards and Compensation team. “The clean, welcoming visuals and the ability to see more detail on each page in an easy-to-understand layout were all enhancements that were very well-received.”

Total Rewards Portal: Employee view

Key benefits of the newly configured site include: 

1. Seamless task completion and delightful moments: Core tasks were easily completed, with participants noting the ability to see multiple pieces of information in a single view. Calculations that had real impact were already done for the user, and thoughtful additions like talking points and personal notes are considered both helpful and delightful. 
2. Continued focus on aggregation of information as a key value-add: Bringing together information from disparate systems and tools is important to users. For individual contributor (IC) views, it means showing all compensation-related information in TRP, including hourly wages for hourly workers and revenue and/or commitment-based incentives for sales employees. For managers, it’s bringing together information on direct reports into a single table. 
3. System “insights” that help fulfill business and user goals: Providing system-derived “insights” in both manager and IC views allows employees to spend less time connecting the dots between pieces of information and more time making decisions and taking action. For managers, it provides team insights to ensure fair compensation and talent retention. In an IC view, it showcases opportunities to take advantage of additional benefits left on the table. 

“Ultimately, the goal of the TRP is to show the value of an employee’s individual rewards, while empowering rewards conversations for managers and providing a complete data set to inform decisions.”

Nur Sheikhassan, principal group engineering manager, Rewards and Compensation team

“The Total Rewards Portal provides seamless access to information about my team’s comprehensive rewards and compensation, allowing me to have meaningful discussions with my employees and leadership during Connect season and beyond,” says Michelle Huenink, a Microsoft manager and global enablement leader in Customer Service and Support.

Total Rewards Portal: Manager view

Vision and future state

Putting all the user research findings together leads to clear business objectives and user experience goals for the future state of the TRP solution. These foundational elements ensure the right principles are in place for the product team, providing the guideposts to stay true to the product objectives and goals. 

“Ultimately, the goal of the TRP is to show the value of an employee’s individual rewards, while empowering rewards conversations for managers and providing a complete data set to inform decisions,” Sheikhassan says. “Keeping these core objectives at the heart of our future enhancements enables us to continue to have a tool that provides a consistent experience that our employees will use and enjoy as part of their overall Microsoft employee experience journey.”

Key takeaways

Here are some of our top learnings from our experience with the Totals Rewards Portal:

• In a competitive talent market, having a tool like the TRP helps clearly represent the value of Microsoft compensation and benefits and reminds employees of the company’s investment in them.
• By using multiple micro-services, we can build a better experience to represent employee compensation at various stages of an employee’s journey with Microsoft.
• Developing and using the Total Rewards Portal is providing us with a strong return on investment (ROI) over time, especially because it was developed in-house and is now hosted on Microsoft Azure. 
• Our sensitive compensation information for 220,000-plus employees stays securely within the control of Microsoft while still informing our employees of their compensation value. 

Try it out

Learn more about the benefits of Microsoft Azure and how you can try it out for free.

Related links

• Read about the ways Microsoft HR is empowering employees with Microsoft Viva and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• Discover how we’re enabling advanced HR analytics and AI with Microsoft Azure Data Lake.
• Explore how Microsoft Viva became a business transformation engine at Microsoft.
• Find out how AI is revolutionizing the way we support corporate functions at Microsoft.

We’d like to hear from you!

• Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

The post Helping Microsoft employees understand their value with the Total Rewards Portal appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

The role of IT at most organizations has experienced profound evolution over the past several decades, and Microsoft is no exception. From humble beginnings with Bill Gates and Paul Allen programming and debugging simple applications on the MITS Altair 8800 to the current era of sleek, powerful devices (some that fit in the palms of our hands), the ways we interact with technology have changed dramatically.

“The main tenets of the modern engineering era at Microsoft Digital are being vision-led; embracing user-centric, coherent design; fostering innovation to drive exceptional employee experiences; and prioritizing our role as Customer Zero to create a blueprint for our customers to follow.”

Nathalie D’Hers, corporate vice president, Microsoft Employee Experience

And just like the internet became an indispensable tool for global commerce and connection, the advent of cloud computing and advances in AI, machine learning, and automation are enabling the next IT revolution, which has already greatly enhanced efficiency and unlocked new possibilities for organizations.

Nathalie D’Hers, who led Microsoft Digital for 10 years and is now corporate vice president of Employee Experience at the company, explains how the organization’s purpose has evolved from a purely IT role to a more modern, AI vision-led engineering function.

“The main tenets of the modern engineering era at Microsoft Digital are being vision-led; embracing user-centric, coherent design; fostering innovation to drive exceptional employee experiences; and prioritizing our role as Customer Zero to create a blueprint for our customers to follow,” D’Hers says.

Recently, I had the privilege of speaking with D’Hers and some other Microsoft leaders. During our conversations, they shared significant lessons learned and profound experiences from their time at the company. They also provided valuable insights into the future, as we look ahead to the next 50 years of IT.

Several themes emerged from our discussions, themes that they believe have enabled Microsoft to lead the IT revolution over the last 50 years, and that will shape the future of technology for the next five decades and beyond.

1. Digital transformation is a continuous journey

Digital transformation isn’t a one-time event; it’s a continuous journey that involves integrating technologies to stay competitive and to improve customer and employee experiences. In the past 50 years, there have been multiple stages of digital transformation, from adopting basic IT systems to embracing modern technologies like AI, machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and automation.

“From making solutions designed for enterprise scale, shipping software securely (on CDs or digitally) to building AI-driven experiences, from on-prem solutions to Azure’s global cloud presence, and from traditional IT solutions to AI copilots reshaping productivity, we at Microsoft have been continuously innovating.”

Monika Gupta, partner group engineering manager, Microsoft Digital

The digital transformation of Microsoft spans the entire personal computing revolution, from the early days of DOS and Windows desktops through to our current era, which is highlighted by the rise of AI. Our transformation journey can be divided into four major eras:

1. On-premises IT (1985 to 2009): Characterized by the setup, operation, and maintenance of onsite physical technology.
2. Cloud and culture (2010-2017): Marked by our shift to the Microsoft Azure cloud and a cultural transformation.
3. Modern engineering (2017-2020): Focused on modernizing our engineering practices.
4. AI (2020-present): Embracing AI to revolutionize IT services and operations.

Most leaders felt that both the era of cloud services and our present era of AI have been pivotal in redefining traditional IT services at Microsoft and that these technologies have revolutionized how we think about IT, making processes more efficient and scalable. And all of them mentioned that no matter what the era, robust security and governance play a critical role and are the backbone to any successful IT organization. Enabling a safe and compliant environment ensure that digital transformation leads to sustainable growth without compromising safety or trust.

Monika Gupta, a partner group engineering manager within Microsoft Digital who has been with Microsoft for nearly 20 years, reflects on her continuous digital transformation journey at the company.

“When I joined Microsoft in 2006, Windows XP was still king, Internet Explorer ruled the web, the mobile revolution was starting, and the idea of cloud computing was a distant dream,” Gupta says. “I’ve had the privilege of working in a variety of roles across the company, witnessing and contributing to some of the most transformative shifts in technology. From making solutions designed for enterprise scale, shipping software securely (on CDs or digitally) to building AI-driven experiences, from on-prem solutions to Azure’s global cloud presence, and from traditional IT solutions to AI copilots reshaping productivity, we at Microsoft have been continuously innovating.”

2. Continuous change means change management is critical

Technological changes can be disruptive, requiring significant shifts in processes, individual behavior, and organization culture. Without effective change management, organizations risk facing resistance from employees, disrupted workflows, and ultimately, failure to fully capitalize on the benefits of new technologies.

Within Microsoft Digital, change management best practices have been critically important to our success.

“Dedicated focus on change management is critical within large enterprises when you’re attempting to improve or evolve business processes and drive adoption of technology changes that directly benefit users.”

Andrew Osten, general manager of Business Operations and Programs, Microsoft Digital

As Microsoft is a global enterprise with more than 220,000 employees worldwide, it’s imperative that we have a well-executed change management plan in place to help guide our employees each time there is any major transition, starting from piloting to gathering localized feedback from employees across the globe, through to initial deployment and subsequent full adoption of the technology.

This includes several best practices including clearly communicating the reasons for change, providing adequate and thorough training in various forms, and targeted activities post deployment, in addition to using adoption data insights to help our employees adapt to the new technology. Moreover, change management helps to align technology upgrades with organizational goals by ensuring that all stakeholders are involved and that there is a shared vision and collective buy-in for the future. When employees feel prepared and supported, including sufficient active sponsorship from leadership, they are more likely to embrace new systems, leading to greater productivity and innovation.

And we know that a well-executed change management plan fosters a culture of continuous improvement. By building a framework for managing change, we have ensured that our technological shifts are met with less resistance and greater success. Ultimately, successful change management is not just about technology, it’s about enabling the people and processes that will use the technology and ensuring that the focus is on the benefits to the users rather than the technology itself to achieve the desired outcomes of digital transformation.

With a career at Microsoft that spans more than 20 years, Andrew Osten, general manager of Business Operations and Programs for Microsoft Digital, talks about the key role change management plays within Microsoft.

“Dedicated focus on change management is critical within large enterprises when you’re attempting to improve or evolve business processes and drive adoption of technology changes that directly benefit users,” Osten says. “Our team has recognized the importance of investing time and talent into crafting an operationalized adoption program with proven techniques that help accelerate both user and company ROI from our IT investments.”

3. The role of IT is a customer-first experience

One of the most significant lessons learned came from Trent Berghofer, general manager of the Microsoft Digital Modern Support team. It’s a trifecta of sorts, focused on the importance of leading with a customer-centric approach combined with operational excellence and cutting-edge technology.

“One of the first times I ever did an IT portfolio initiative check-in with an internal VP in our sales organization, I was fortunate that the executive made time for some coaching at the end of our session. His feedback was along the lines of ‘This looks like great work, but what are you doing to make me and my team successful?’ I’ll never forget this feedback, and I’ve incorporated this customer-first mindset into all my decision making ever since.”

Trent Berghofer, general manager, Microsoft Digital Modern Support team

User experience (UX) and stakeholder satisfaction are central to all of Microsoft Digital’s technology investments. And as the value of customer data, personalized experiences and seamless customer service have become increasingly more important throughout the years, IT systems that support these functions have become integral to business success, boosting not only customer loyalty but revenues as well.

Berghofer, a 26-year veteran of Microsoft, reflects on a time early in his career when the idea that leading with a customer-centric approach rang loud and clear for him.  

“One of the first times I ever did an IT portfolio initiative check-in with an internal VP in our sales organization, I was fortunate that the executive made time for some coaching at the end of our session,” Berghofer says. “His feedback was along the lines of ‘This looks to be great work, but what are you doing to make me and my team successful?’ I’ll never forget this feedback, and I’ve incorporated this customer-first mindset into all my decision making ever since.”

4. People and talent are our greatest asset

A main theme that’s consistent among every leader of Microsoft Digital is that IT isn’t just about technology; it’s about having the right people and culture that’s the cornerstone for success. Investing in people with not only the skills, but also the commitment, to drive innovation and providing opportunities for training and development to upskill employees results in more agility in adapting to technological changes. Something everyone felt is critically important in the ever-changing and evolving IT landscape.

The journey within Microsoft Digital has been remarkable not just because of all the technological advances, but also because of the unique culture of the organization. Because the role of IT continues to evolve, it’s important that you have people who are willing to evolve as well. Having a good mix of individuals with strong technical skills, problem-solving abilities, adaptability, and effective communication is critical. Cultivating a culture of collaboration, continuous learning, and innovation, and where employees feel empowered to experiment, fail fast, and grow from their mistakes are all important factors in a successful IT organization.   

D’Hers, who not only led Microsoft Digital and the teams that preceded it for more than a decade but is also a 25-year veteran of Microsoft, characterizes the organization’s culture as one that exudes a collective enthusiasm and provides a winning combination of passion, resilience, grit, and teamwork.

“Beyond the technology, what has made this journey truly special is the culture we’ve created together,” D’Hers says. “It’s a shared passion for solving the complex challenges, the resilience we have to embracing constant change, and the camaraderie we have that can turn even the hardest of issues into learning experiences and growth.”

5. AI is the future of IT

As we celebrate 50 years of IT at Microsoft, it’s exciting to envision the future, especially as AI continues to transform the world and our lives. It will no doubt play a critical role in the function and future of IT. Together with continuous improvement (CI), AI and machine learning will enable greater automation and self-serve functions, meeting users where and how they work, and will be central to improving efficiency and enhancing customer experiences.

“Agentic AI can act as an intelligent companion that can autonomously reason and adapt to changing environments.”

Monika Panpaliya, partner director of Product Management, Microsoft Digital

From AI-powered agents integrated with Microsoft 365 Copilot, to chatbots providing customer support to AI-driven supply chain optimization, the ongoing shift toward better automation is not only reshaping IT, but every single industry from manufacturing, retail, to even healthcare.

As Monika Panpaliya, partner director of the Product Management team and the newest member of the Microsoft Digital leadership team, shares how AI agents are poised to transform IT.

“Agentic AI can act as an intelligent companion that can autonomously reason and adapt to changing environments,” Panpaliya says. “It operationalizes decision-making and collaborates with humans to enhance efficiency and effectiveness across various domains, such as network security, helpdesk support, and HR processes.”

Fifty years of IT evolution at Microsoft has taught us valuable lessons about agility, innovation, people and culture, and the critical importance of technology in maintaining competitive advantage. There is no doubt that just like the last five decades, IT will continue to rapidly evolve; companies who want to continue to succeed will need to remain adaptable, constantly exploring new technologies and making sure they align with the changing needs of their workforce and customers.

Our digital transformation journey at Microsoft has been marked by continuous innovation, and the next 50 years promise to be just as transformative!

Key takeaways

Here are some of the key learnings we’ve had on our decades-long journey as the company’s IT organization:

• IT has drastically evolved over the years and is no longer considered “just a support function” like it once was. It’s now a fundamental driver of business success.
• Agility, innovation, and having the right people are big keys to running a successful IT organization.
• Investing in people is critical. Make sure your workforce has the skills to keep pace with technological advancements.

Try it out

Visit our Microsoft Digital Inside Track website to learn more about how we’re transforming the way we do IT at Microsoft.

Related links

• Learn more about our digital transformation journey here at Microsoft.
• Find out how we’re helping propel Microsoft into the AI-powered future as a Frontier Firm.
• Read our guide for executives on deploying and driving adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• Check out how we’re embracing this new ‘agentic’ moment at Microsoft.
• Discover how we serve as the company’s Customer Zero.

The post Reflecting on 50 years of IT at Microsoft: Five key lessons and insights on the future appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

This article is the first in a series dedicated to showing how our team in Microsoft Digital, Microsoft’s internal IT organization, is collaborating with our internal partners to use AI to accelerate growth and radically improve operational efficiencies, specifically for corporate functions such as HR, legal, and real estate. The hope is that by providing concrete examples and outcomes, we can provide our customers with inspiration, a blueprint, and in some cases, a solution, to do the same.

Within Microsoft Digital, the organization that powers, protects, and transforms the digital experience here at Microsoft, we have the pleasure of working day in and day out with our corporate function partners across the company. From HR and legal, to our real estate team, all are being asked to do more with less, with a focus on keeping operational costs down while maintaining or improving productivity. As a partner to these organizations, it’s our job to find ways to allow them to do just that!

“With AI, we have so many new ways to innovate. We have incredible potential to make our corporate functions more efficient and impactful.”

Patrice Pelland, partner software group engineering manager, Microsoft Digital

And we’re sure it comes as no surprise that AI has been at the center of all this, playing a fundamental role in transforming business workflows while improving operational efficiency, user productivity, regulatory and corporate compliance, and data-driven decision making.

Over the last year, we’ve seen how it can revolutionize the way our internal corporate functions operate by automating repetitive and time-consuming operational tasks. Let’s look at our internal project, an AI-powered document lifecycle management platform, as one of the first examples of this. 

“With AI, we have so many new ways to innovate. From saving valuable time for our legal professionals, to optimizing building occupancy, to helping our HR professionals support employees in the hybrid workplace, to enabling many self-service experiences for our employees; we have incredible potential to make our corporate functions more efficient and impactful,” says Patrice Pelland, a partner software group engineering manager for HR & CELA in Microsoft Digital.

Document management gets a major makeover

Our new AI-powered platform aims to empower our corporate functions teams by revolutionizing end-to-end document management. From crafting templates, authoring documents, and facilitating collaboration to orchestrating seamless workflows, offering secure storage, and managing records, this system uses AI enriched capabilities to bring operational efficiencies, reduce costs, and ensure accurate compliance to any document-based process.

“This platform was developed to address the critical need for end-to-end document management across various verticals within Microsoft,” says Mohit Chand, a principal group engineering manager in Microsoft Digital. “It was created to streamline processes like digitizing documents and address the common pain points that typically makes this activity take months to complete.”

The Microsoft Digital team set out to develop the document lifecycle management platform with six core principles in mind:

1. Automation empowerment: Automate document management to enhance productivity and efficiency.
2. Seamless integration: Integrate with Microsoft 365 and Azure for a seamless user experience.
3. AI-driven innovation: Use cutting-edge AI technology to enhance functionalities in search and analysis.
4. User-centric design: Focus on intuitive interfaces that simplify complex functionalities.
5. Scalable flexibility: Adapt to the needs of different organization sizes and processes.
6. Cost efficiency: Reduce operational costs through optimized document processes.

Transforming our document lifecycle

“Our intention after aligning on the core principles and key platform capabilities was to reduce the digitization process from three to six months to less than fourteen days. It was a North Star goal that I’m happy to say has now been achieved for all of our onboarded processes thus far.”

Andrew Voss, senior product manager, Microsoft Digital

The team used Microsoft 365, Azure Open AI, Azure Cognitive Services, and Microsoft Purview to create the following system capabilities:

• Template digitization and management: Digitize and manage templates by creating and modifying snippets and operational data fields.
• Secure and controlled editing: Easily manage and update templates and snippets with controlled workflows to ensure only approved and published templates are used.
• Efficient document drafting: Start with standard templates and dynamically assemble documents, incorporating required metadata and content snippets seamlessly in Word.
• Streamlined approval processes: Automate review and approval workflows, integrate eSignatures, and keep everyone updated with real-time notifications and status changes.
• Smart ingestion and storage: Automatically ingest documents, perform validation checks, and securely store them while keeping track of all changes and updates.
• Intelligent content analysis: Extract and use metadata and content snippets for enhanced document classification, improving search capabilities and document retrieval using both keyword and natural language processing (NLP) techniques.
• Automated compliance enforcement: Apply retention labels, manage document lifecycles, and enforce policies to ensure compliance with legal and regulatory standards.

“Our intention after aligning on the core principles and key platform capabilities was to reduce the digitization process from three to six months to less than fourteen days,” says Andrew Voss, a senior product manager in Microsoft Digital. “It was a North Star goal that I’m happy to say has now been achieved for all of our onboarded processes thus far.”

No gaming around: The results speak volumes

One of the first internal organizations to put the new platform to the test was Xbox. They were looking to automate one of their most frequent contract types, a critical process for onboarding new games into the Xbox ecosystem.

Historically this process was done manually, involving non-digitized templates and redundant data entry across multiple systems. The process typically consumed about 1,800 hours of staff time annually.

“Our collaboration with Xbox showcases the effectiveness of this solution for optimizing complex business processes. As Xbox continues to expand their use across a wider range of contract types, we are committed to introducing new technical advancements that will contribute to the platform’s growing autonomy, adaptability, and sophistication.”

Alpa Jain, senior product manager, Microsoft Digital

This manual contract creation process was more than just time-consuming; it could also be error-prone, significantly delaying the onboarding of new content and impacting service level agreements (SLAs).

In fact, the solution has saved the Xbox team over 1,600 hours resulting in an 88% time savings in the contract generation process, reducing the time it takes for these contracts from 1,800 hours to just 158 hours annually!

“The amount of business impact and return on investment that we’ve been able to deliver by partnering with the Microsoft Digital team has been outstanding,” says Hoss Hostetler, a senior service engineer in Xbox. “The ability to automate initial contract generation from configured templates through to sending out signatures and getting notified of fully signed contracts via application programming interfaces (APIs) has been absolutely game-changing for our team.”

Xbox has been so encouraged by the initial outcome of their results that they are preparing to extend the solution to automate two more of their standard contracts. By doing this, the team is anticipating an additional 600+ hours per year in time savings.

“Our collaboration with Xbox showcases the effectiveness of this solution for optimizing complex business processes,” says Alpa Jain, a senior product manager in Microsoft Digital. “As Xbox continues to expand their use across a wider range of contract types, we are committed to introducing new technical advancements that will contribute to the platform’s growing autonomy, adaptability, and sophistication.”

Making its way to our customers through SharePoint Premium

While the AI-powered platform started as an end-to-end document management solution for our internal Microsoft Corporate Functions teams, many of its capabilities will be showing up in SharePoint Premium. 

“This represents a unique case where Microsoft Digital, as Customer Zero, developed a product to solve the needs and challenges that our internal corporate function customers face, and that solution is now being incorporated into an external customer-facing product.”

Bidyadhar Patra, principal software engineering manager, Microsoft Digital

SharePoint Premium is Microsoft’s advanced content management and experiences platform for customers and brings AI, automation, and added security to content experiences, processing, and governance.

This collaboration with the SharePoint team exemplifies Microsoft Digital’s internal innovation being leveraged for external product development. The transfer of knowledge, capabilities, and insights from the internal document management product and Microsoft Digital team is sure to make the SharePoint Premium product much more effective for our customers from the get-go.

“This represents a unique case where Microsoft Digital, as Customer Zero, developed a product to solve the needs and challenges that our internal corporate function customers face, and that solution is now being incorporated into an external customer-facing product,” says Bidyadhar Patra, a principal software engineering manager in Microsoft Digital. “For us, this approach highlights a new way of leveraging internal needs for broader product development.”

Key takeaways

Here are some points to keep in mind as you contemplate transforming your content lifecycle with AI at your company:

• AI is accelerating corporate functions growth across HR, legal, and real estate through operational efficiency, automated compliance, data-driven insights, and productivity for individuals. 
• By using AI and natural language processing, corporate function leaders can digitize templates for any business process, streamline reviews with AI-assisted analysis, and more easily govern their documents, with considerable time savings. The document lifecycle management platform, developed within Microsoft Digital, is a great example of this.
• Don’t fall behind when it comes to AI. The time is now to start experimenting with and using these technologies to improve business results and maximize return on investment.

Try it out

Get started with Microsoft SharePoint today.

Related links

• Learn how we’re reimagining content management at Microsoft with SharePoint.
• Read how we’re supercharging our SharePoint sites at Microsoft with Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• Check out how we’re empowering employee self-service with guardrails with sensitivity labels.
• Explore how we’re leveraging the power of AI agents to improve employee self-service at Microsoft.

The post AI is revolutionizing the way we support corporate functions at Microsoft appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

At Microsoft, hybrid work is a way of life and it’s how our employees and partners will continue to innovate. With more than 220 thousand full-time employees and 100 thousand vendors across 150 geographies, 24 different time zones, over 580 Microsoft office buildings worldwide, and an abundance of additional remote and home office locations—all of which are using a myriad of technological devices and applications—no one is more immersed in the realities of a phygital or hybrid working world than we are.

And while a flexible, hybrid working environment continues to be a competitive advantage for many companies and their employees, it’s critical that their physical environment and workspace experiences adapt and evolve to meet this new norm.

With so many companies, including Microsoft, operating in a hybrid work world, now is the time to reimagine our meeting room experiences and make sure they are optimal and inclusive for all participants, whether they are in person or remote.

— Nathalie D’Hers, corporate vice president, Microsoft Digital

Hybrid is here to stay but the workplace remains the critical place for collaboration

At Microsoft, we’ve dedicated an entire team of designers, engineers, and researchers comprised of folks from Microsoft Digital (Microsoft’s IT organization), Global Workplace Services (GWS), and the Microsoft Teams product group to think through our new phygital reality and ensure that we’re creating work environments for our employees and customers that make sense now and into the future.

“With so many companies, including Microsoft, operating in a hybrid work world, now is the time to reimagine our meeting room experiences and make sure they are optimal and inclusive for all participants, whether they are in person or remote,” says Nathalie D’Hers, corporate vice president of Microsoft Digital.

Going forward, we know that it’s imperative that companies ensure that every meeting space is enabled for hybrid work success. With that said, no one understands how daunting, expensive, and time-consuming it is to upgrade spaces more than the team here at Microsoft that’s responsible for solving that challenge. That’s why they’re taking out some of the guesswork for our customers and helping them approach the issue head on. Whether they’re optimizing experiences for new construction or remodeling existing spaces with updated capabilities, the team is focused on helping customers figure out the smartest and most efficient ways to invest in their workspaces.

[Check out our suite of content that shows how we’re using Microsoft Teams Rooms internally at Microsoft.]

The Hive affords us the ability to ‘try-storm’ if you will, which is a combination of brainstorming and rapid prototyping to quickly determine if our ideas will work or not. This helps the team get to resolution faster and ensures that we produce workplace solutions that will be a value-add for our employees straight out of the gate. We’re also helping our customers by removing the guess work for them and providing a significant blueprint to save them time and resources.

— Matthew Marzynski, principal product manager, Microsoft Digital

‘Thinking through making’ to help alleviate much of the guesswork

By now, you’ve probably heard about Microsoft’s on-campus workplace innovation laboratory, The Hive. The Hive is a critical space and the think tank for our team to solve for some of these workspace challenges and opportunities. Companies like Boeing have long used warehouses dedicated to mocking up the interiors of aircraft at full scale to better understand how to solve physical space, engineering, and experience design challenges, and The Hive has become that space for Microsoft.

As a design expert who worked in the aerospace industry, Matthew Marzynski, a principal product manager with Microsoft Digital, knows all too well the importance of having a space like The Hive to allow the art of “thinking through making,” a process in which making and thinking alternate back and forth constantly, in rapid iterations, and when the making or designing is taking place intuitively. The Hive provides this necessary playground, allowing for a diverse group of thinkers and doers to share ideas and rapid prototype “what if” concepts, and where these ideas often lead to business-critical outcomes.

“The Hive affords us the ability to ‘try-storm’ if you will, which is a combination of brainstorming and rapid prototyping to quickly determine if our ideas will work or not,” Marzynski says. “This helps the team get to resolution faster and ensures that we produce workplace solutions that will be a value-add for our employees straight out of the gate. We’re also helping our customers by removing the guess work for them and providing a significant blueprint to save them time and resources.”

Creating a holistic experience for all participants

So, what’s been the focus in The Hive as of late? The team there is working on ensuring that Microsoft is creating exceptional workspace experiences that put the phygital at the forefront, and make attending meetings worthwhile for all employees, whether they’re working from the office or remotely. This includes redesigning meeting room spaces to be less table-centric (i.e. the generic, large conference table in the middle of the room that everyone is expected to gather around). This traditional setup is a byproduct of pre-pandemic times when most of the workforce attended in-office meetings and there was little thought put into making these spaces feel inclusive.

But we know that it’s not enough to just improve the in-room layout, it’s also imperative that these spaces are more hybrid-friendly, which means incorporating the right mix of technology, spatial audio, and design elements to create a more holistic and enhanced experience.

“A meeting space should have the same ‘feeling’ as a well-engineered movie theatre experience, where participants do not notice the technology, the audio equipment or acoustics, the furniture or theatre’s design while they are in the space. In fact, it’s not until they walk out of the room that perhaps, subconsciously, they might recognize those things in harmony added to the enjoyment of their experience,” Marzynski says.

And it’s this harmony that the team is looking for in concepts in-progress at The Hive. Where their solutions result in true integration and a sense of inclusion, and where all colleagues, whether they’re physically sitting next to each other in the room, or participating from a remote location, are perceived as equals.

We simply cannot redesign and transform every space into a Signature showcase room with new furniture, new technology, etc. Instead, we are innovating and reducing cost and complexity at scale. With the Teams platform and strategic investments, we can still accomplish a powerful, productive hybrid experience with minimal amount of impact to existing, traditional rooms with boring furniture.

— Sam Albert, principal product manager, Microsoft Digital

A great example of some of the workspace solutions to come from The Hive, includes the new Microsoft Teams Rooms Signature Boardroom experience, a reimagined executive boardroom that’s now being used by Microsoft’s senior leadership, including CEO Satya Nadella. This new Boardroom experience provides the best possible scenario for in-person and hybrid, by using a specific layout, furniture and finishes, spatial audio, and the latest Teams technology to create a more immersive experience, taking remote attendees from being merely observers of a meeting to engaged, active participants.

We realize that there are certain high value spaces, like Signature Rooms and Boardrooms, where Microsoft and other companies are willing and able to fully optimize for the best hybrid experience and that these projects will come at a higher cost, specifically in a retrofit scenario versus new construction. By aiming to reduce costs and have the highest impact across an entire workspace portfolio, tradeoffs will need to be made.

“We simply cannot redesign and transform every space into a Signature showcase room with new furniture, new technology, etc. Instead, we are innovating and reducing cost and complexity at scale,” says Sam Albert, a principal product manager in Microsoft Digital. “With the Teams platform and strategic investments, we can still accomplish a powerful, productive hybrid experience with minimal amount of impact to existing, traditional rooms with boring furniture.”

We’re helping Microsoft, and our customers, maximize their real estate portfolios by creating agile spaces that can be deployed quickly and cost-effectively to help make the best use of these large spaces.

— Roy Sherry, principal product manager, Microsoft Digital

The cost of getting it right

Companies, especially Fortune 50 enterprises, are spending billions of dollars annually on their real estate footprint, with large meeting rooms and event spaces being among the most expensive to build and operate. That’s why The Hive team is looking to reduce the cost of meeting rooms by up to 75 percent over the next year. One of the ways they aim to do this is by creating more flexible and scalable spaces that can be used for different scenarios.

“All-hands meetings, training sessions, senior leadership gatherings, recognition and culture activities all tend to take place in larger spaces but can have very different needs and requirements,” says Roy Sherry, a principal product manager in Microsoft Digital. “We’re helping Microsoft, and our customers, maximize their real estate portfolios by creating agile spaces that can be deployed quickly and cost-effectively to help make the best use of these large spaces.”

That’s why multi-purpose event rooms are part of The Hive’s next order of business. With these types of large-scale spaces costing companies hundreds of thousands of dollars to deploy, it’s critical that they’re optimized with the products and solutions that will provide the most amount of flexibility, that align the physical space with the best digital capabilities, and that will stand the test of time.

For customers wanting to get a more detailed understanding and behind-the-scenes look at the work being done in The Hive, in addition to their customer tours of the space.

The bottom line is that many companies need to start rethinking how their real estate is being used, specifically their workspaces and conference rooms, before millions are wasted. And one of the best, most cost-effective ways to do so is by using the Teams Rooms archetypes and specifications that The Hive has created for Microsoft as Customer Zero. These archetypes are agile and adaptable to customers’ spaces, helping to make real estate and technology investments that are durable and tuned to evolving workplace needs.

Microsoft and the team at The Hive are here to lead the way and help customers get the most out of the new phygital workplace reality, ensuring that conference spaces and meeting room experiences are aligned to these new expectations. By making the best use of Microsoft Teams (digital) and combining it with the right hardware, infrastructure, furniture, audio, and finishes (physical), your workplace will be transformed and at its full potential.

Here are some suggestions for rethinking your physical and digital spaces:

• Embrace the phygital reality: You should aim to seamlessly integrate digital experiences with physical ones to adapt to the new norm of hybrid work. This includes ensuring that every meeting space is enabled for hybrid work success and that the physical environment and workspace experiences evolve to meet the needs of a flexible, hybrid working environment.
• Invest in workspace optimization: Upgrading workspaces to meet the demands of hybrid work can be daunting, expensive, and time-consuming. However, it’s imperative for you to invest in your workspaces in the smartest and most efficient ways, whether that means optimizing experiences for new construction or remodeling existing spaces with updated capabilities.
• Innovate through collaboration: You can benefit from bringing together a diverse group of thinkers and doers, such as designers, engineers, and researchers, to collaborate and solve workspace challenges and opportunities. This can be achieved through the creation of dedicated spaces, such as Microsoft’s on-campus workplace innovation laboratory, The Hive, where ideas can be shared, rapid prototyping can take place, and business-critical outcomes can be achieved through the art of thinking through making.

Here’s where you can go to try Microsoft Teams Rooms for free.

Check out our suite of content that shows how we’re using Microsoft Teams Rooms internally at Microsoft.

Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

Please share your feedback with us—take our survey and let us know what kind of content is most useful to you.

The post Working in a phygital world: Why businesses need to rethink their workspace experiences now appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Microsoft is in the productivity business, with a mission “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” What matters to Microsoft is not just helping to envision the workplace of the future, but to create it as a sustainable model of productivity and empowerment for its employees.

Microsoft’s headquarters is like a small city. Located in the Puget Sound region near Seattle, the busy corporate campus encompasses over 100 buildings spanning nearly 14 million square feet, accommodating more than 60,000 employees and external staff, plus numerous visitors each day.

We had a pretty audacious vision for what we wanted to do. We were looking for a bold example of a logistics and operations system that could provide efficient business processes, support sustainability, and enable best-in-class employee and guest experiences. Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform was the perfect solution.

—Michelle Schaefer, principal product manager at Microsoft

In 2021, we saw an opportunity to digitally transform our campus logistics and operations. The vision? Empower a relatively small logistics crew to do more with less, resulting in better employee experiences, cost savings and efficiencies, and support environmentally responsible practices.

For a transcript, please view the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhA72nAk6cs, select the “More actions” button (three dots icon) below the video, and then select “Show transcript.”

“We had a pretty audacious vision for what we wanted to do,” says Michelle Schaefer, principal product manager at Microsoft. “We were looking for a bold example of a logistics and operations system that could provide efficient business processes, support sustainability, and enable best-in-class employee and guest experiences. Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform was the perfect solution.”

But Microsoft’s vision wasn’t limited to our own campus. By using our technologies to implement a best-in-class system at home, we aimed to create a showcase, one that would inspire other companies to transform their own logistics and operations processes, for a campus or for any purpose.

The Solution

To help make this dream a reality, Microsoft turned to our trusted partners and Microsoft ecosystem experts: Accenture and Avanade—a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft.

The team has focused on configuring Microsoft solutions and tools and integrating third-party applications into the overall user interface. Avanade’s in-depth knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform helped define the requirements for external vendor applications, ensuring that they could integrate seamlessly and securely with the overall solution.

So, how does the reimagined logistics process look in practice? Consider a day in the life of the small but productive crew working behind the scenes to provide a great experience to an employee who has ordered a new keyboard:

• After the order is placed, a third-party package carrier logs into a Dynamics 365 portal to book an appointment at a campus logistics center to deliver the keyboard.
• The package carrier is checked-in by a campus dock manager with Dynamics 365 Field Service. A Logistics Control Tower Dashboard built on Power BI is used to make delivery schedules more efficient.
• A campus driver loads the keyboard, along with many other packages, onto their vehicle and consults the integrated route optimization and delivery management system to ensure the most efficient route is used and service level agreements are met.
• Once the new keyboard is delivered to the productive employee, a waste and recycling manager uses Dynamics 365 Inventory Management to track reusable items and ensure the old keyboard is properly disposed of and other supplies are re-used if possible.

The solution also includes capabilities to measure and report results, both from a logistics aspect as well as from an employee experience perspective. Easy access to this data will allow the team to address issues and look for opportunities to improve both operations and experiences.

“By transforming our back-of-house logistics, we can closely identify the movement of deliveries and materials as well as evaluate employee feedback,” says Katy Flaherty, senior district facilities manager at Microsoft. “This provides our team with up-to-date status on these deliveries.  We’ve moved beyond more manual processes and lists to real time tracking data. This also gives us the ability to learn from this information and adjust our operations to be more efficient and cost effective.”

For a transcript, please view the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8azD8E2ZtM, select the “More actions” button (three dots icon) below the video, and then select “Show transcript.”

Results

Microsoft’s campus logistics digital transformation provides employees and suppliers with an experience unlike any other workspace in the world. The entire modernization effort has been guided by a commitment to sustainability, with a focus on waste reduction and energy optimization. Benefits include:

• Route optimization for all logistics and operations vehicles results in increased efficiency and a smaller carbon footprint.
• The hundreds of suppliers visiting the campus each week benefit from reliable and efficient delivery and offloading times, enabling them to quickly resume their journey to the next delivery.
• Through efficient ordering, tracking, and management of supplies, the logistics and operations team can visualize data quickly and efficiently for quick decisions and cost savings.
• By automating delivery orders for food, packages, furniture, and more, Microsoft improves the employee experience through improved compliance with service level agreements, reduces costs, and works towards its sustainability goals.

The consolidation of disparate data sources through Microsoft’s digital transformation unlocks exciting new opportunities to leverage Generative AI and other data-driven technologies.

“Transforming the logistics and operations for the entire Puget Sound campus really shows the Microsoft, Accenture and Avanade partnership at its best,” adds Schaefer. “We’re bringing possibilities to life and showing the true power of the Microsoft platform. And, at the same time, we’re living out our values of sustainability and empowering people to do more.”

Digital Transformation for Efficiency and Sustainability:

• Microsoft’s campus logistics digital transformation exemplifies how leveraging technologies like Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform can significantly enhance efficiency and sustainability in operations.

End-to-End Integration for Seamless Operations:

• The success of Microsoft’s initiative is attributed to the end-to-end integration of Microsoft solutions and third-party applications, showcasing the importance of a comprehensive approach.

Measurable Results and Continuous Improvement:

• Microsoft’s commitment to sustainability is reflected in its ability to measure and report results, enabling the team to address issues promptly and identify opportunities for improvement.

Get started with a Dynamics 365 free trial.

• Watch how Microsoft used Dynamics 365 to transform campus Facilities Management
• Discover creating the digital workplace at Microsoft.
• Explore transforming Microsoft’s lobby experience with a new Microsoft Guest Management System.
• Unpack how Microsoft is delivering smart building experiences with CI/CD for Azure Digital Twins.
• Transforming facilities management with Dynamics 365 at Microsoft

Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

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The post Modernizing campus logistics and operations at Microsoft appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

While use of apps for Microsoft Teams can be daunting for IT Teams to implement, due to the oversight of such things as security, compliance, access permissions, connectivity, etc., the benefits of the ecosystem greatly outweigh any perceived challenges.

There’s an endless amount of opportunity for organizations that take full advantage of the apps catalog available in Teams. By integrating with other tools and services, Teams apps can help users by automating routine tasks and manual processes and enabling access to the information and resources they need. This can help reduce distractions and interruptions, allowing users to stay focused on their work and be more productive.

—Mykhailo Sydorchuk, senior product manager, Microsoft Digital

I sat down with the Microsoft Digital team responsible for managing the Teams apps ecosystem here at Microsoft to find out what customers should be thinking about when it comes to supporting their organizations. The following summarizes what they had to say about accelerating the deployment and management of apps in Microsoft Teams, what users need to know when evaluating Teams apps, and the lessons we’ve learned as Customer Zero for Microsoft.

“There’s an endless amount of opportunity for organizations that take full advantage of the apps catalog available in Teams,” says Mykhailo Sydorchuk, Teams productivity senior product manager with Microsoft Digital. “By integrating with other tools and services, Teams apps can help users by automating routine tasks and manual processes and enabling access to the information and resources they need. This can help reduce distractions and interruptions, allowing users to stay focused on their work and be more productive.”

How does an organization go about deploying and managing their Teams app ecosystem?

It starts with the Microsoft Teams Admin Center, which allows administrators to customize their Teams app store experience to add company-specific branding and to manage which apps are made available to users. In addition, administrators should consider the following controls for creating a guided experience for users.

Four best practices for administrators to manage how users discover and request apps:

1. Only allow approved apps in the catalog. You want users to know they can trust the apps available to them, so make sure you are only enabling apps that have been reviewed and pre-approved by your compliance team. Additionally, the manage requests function can be utilized by tenant users to request any unapproved/blocked apps, or can redirect user requests to your existing app request process outside of Teams.
2. Use app permissions policies to control which apps are available to users in scenarios where only a subset of company users should have access to a specific app or group of apps. This article provides the steps on how to create an app permissions policy for your organization.
3. Proactively direct users to approved apps for your organization. Use this app setup policies article to help install approved apps for users, so such apps are readily available to them. Additionally, you can utilize auto install approved apps feature for an automatic installation of allowed apps for users who already access these apps on the web.
4. Customize your app store. A branded Teams app store gives users more confidence that its admin team has taken the time to make the experience feel more custom and user-friendly. The customize store location in the Teams admin center allows administrators to select:
   • Organization logo
   • Logomark
   • Background image
   • Text color of organization name
   This article provides more information about customizing your store.

Once administrators have had the chance to set up the above guided experience for their organization’s users. It’s now time for the users to better understand how to best evaluate an app for use. To do this, it’s important to understand a bit about an app’s components and features.

1. 1. Understanding app components: Microsoft Teams apps are composed of one or more components defined in an app manifest. Apps by app features are noted in this article that better helps users understand the permissions of and the information accessed. Before adding an app from the app store, a user can see the access an app will have by looking at the app’s features and permissions section in the About tab (example About tab featured below).

      

   2. Understanding app features: In the image above for example, the app features section references Tabs and Messages, these refer to this third-party apps’ features. The following image includes a breakdown of the various app features descriptions, and refers to the components or experiences included in the app.

      

   3. Evaluating app permissions: This is the most important aspect of app evaluation, as this determines what types of data will be shared with the application. Access to M365 data via Microsoft Graph leverage Azure Active Directory (AD) app registrations, which allows access to other services configured in API permissions in Azure AD.
      Teams data sets can also provide access to data with Resource Specific Consent, which provides scoped access to Teams chats, channels and meetings when specified in the app manifest.
      An application can only access the information described and consent is provided. A global administrator can consent on behalf of an organization. The permissions requested by a Teams app can be reviewed in the Teams admin center (Teams RSC permissions) and the Azure AD Portal (other Graph permissions).

      

   4. Microsoft 365 Certification: This certification is designed to show customers that an app has been vetted against controls derived from leading industry standard frameworks, and that strong security and compliance practices are in place to protect customer data. Users and admins can have confidence that if a third-party app has gone through the certification process that it has underwent strict quality controls, further helping to remove any risks.

   With a general understanding of the components, features, and permissions an app has, and with best practices put in place by the IT team to manage the use of apps, a user can feel confident about adding new apps to their Microsoft Teams ecosystem. In addition, if an app has gone through the Microsoft 365 certification process, that is a further layer of protection that users can trust.

   How do Microsoft Teams users know what apps to add to their ecosystem?

   With the wide-ranging apps available to Teams users, it might be overwhelming to know which ones you want to add. There are many that can help increase a user’s productivity or help with team collaboration. For instance, some of the more popular Teams apps include Microsoft first-party apps like Polls, Whiteboard, Power Automate, Praise and the various Viva modules like Learning, Insights, and Engage. While third-party apps like Adobe Acrobat, Trello and Kahoot! can also help make employees more efficient, create a better learning environment, and greatly add to the overall employee experience.

   Consider the following information and additional resources when it comes to making the most out of the Microsoft Teams apps ecosystem.

   1. It’s important to gain a full understanding of the applications and software being used within an organization and identify any parallels that can be used within the Teams ecosystem. Moving those users into Teams could provide additional efficiencies and methods of collaboration.
   2. Have a predetermined compliance process and enforce it in the App Catalog as early as possible. This will help maintain a sufficient security and privacy posture that is consistent with the org norms.
   3. Teams App Store: Accessed through the left rail on Microsoft Teams, the App Store is the best place for users to acquire and get details on the apps available. It shows the full catalog, and the catalog fully respects the admin policies that have been set-up within each environment by the admin team.
   4. Microsoft AppSource: AppSource is Microsoft’s marketplace for all Microsoft apps (not just Teams apps). You can browse through the extensive collection of apps, sorted by categories and popularity. It provides user ratings, reviews, and detailed descriptions of each app to help you make an informed decision.
   5. Peer Recommendations: Ask colleagues, friends and other professionals who use Microsoft Teams about the apps they find most useful. Their insights and experiences can provide valuable recommendations.
   6. Microsoft communities and forums: the Microsoft Tech Community Teams blog is a great place to keep up-to-date on new apps and Teams features, as well as following Microsoft Teams-related social media channels.
   7. Third-party reviews: Look for external reviews and comparisons of Microsoft Teams apps on tech-related web sites. These reviews can often provide an in-depth analysis, feature comparisons and insights into the usability and functionality of different first and third-party apps.

   From Microsoft first party apps to third party apps, to custom apps built by internal and citizen developers, the breadth that’s at our disposal lends to a richer, more integrated user experience. However, administrators and users should carefully consider the benefits of any app and ensure that it meets their organization’s compliance standards. In addition, M365 certification, least privileged access principle, and data classification labels can also help to remove most risks.

   —Dexion Kornegay, senior product manager, Microsoft Digital

   Remember to consider specific needs and requirements when evaluating Teams apps. Consider factors such as functionality, integration capabilities, security, and use purposes. It’s also important to check the compatibility and system requirements for the app to ensure it works seamlessly with your organization’s version of Microsoft Teams. As well as making sure it meets your organization’s compliance standards including security, privacy, accessibility, and licensing requirements.

   

   “From Microsoft first party apps to third party apps, to custom apps built by internal and citizen developers, the breadth that’s at our disposal lends to a richer, more integrated user experience,” says Dexion Kornegay, senior product manager with Microsoft Digital. “However, administrators and users should carefully consider the benefits of any app and ensure that it meets their organization’s compliance standards. In addition, M365 certification, least privileged access principle, and data classification labels can also help to remove most risks.”

   The Teams app ecosystem will continue to play a critical role in helping our employees and customers connect, collaborate, and get the best out of their overall Microsoft Teams experience. It’s up to the IT team to make the experience as seamless and user-friendly as possible. In turn, it’s important for users to explore and experiment with the vast catalog of apps that are available to help them increase productivity, efficiency, and innovation.

3. 

   • Having a well-documented process with transparent controls improves app onboarding for everyone and creates a guided experience for users.
   • Only allow approved apps. At Microsoft, we only enable those apps that have successfully completed governance review process.
   • Disabling user-delegated consent and enabling user consent requests in Azure Active Directory helps IT to minimize the risk of exposing sensitive M365 data through Graph.
   • Reliance on M365 Certification can reduce compliance assessment load.
   • Providing users with a self-service app request process that lists already approved apps in the same category can redirect them for quicker resolution.
   • There are significant resources available to help users better understand what apps will help them improve their productivity, collaboration, and efficiency to work smarter in Microsoft Teams.

   

   • New Microsoft Teams app helps facilitate employee connectivity in a challenging hybrid work environment.
   • Enabling hybrid work internally at Microsoft with ‘digital fabric’ Microsoft Teams.
   • Microsoft Teams increases collaboration in the modern workplace at Microsoft.
   • Five ways Microsoft Teams has transformed Microsoft.

The post Work smarter in Microsoft Teams by leveraging the apps ecosystem appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Microsoft Teams Premium is an exciting new offer for Microsoft customers with enhanced features and the latest AI-powered technologies. It provides a seamless, one-stop shop experience to improve any kind of Microsoft Teams meeting from personal one-on-one discussions to large-scale events or webinars.

The aim of the new Microsoft Teams Premium experience is to make any Microsoft Teams meeting more personalized, intelligent, and secure. But to ensure these features are indeed a value-add for our customers, Microsoft employees must first use and test them extensively to understand the additional benefits they bring.

After using some of the initial Teams Premium capabilities internally, with the latest technologies including AI-powered language models, Teams Premium is going to provide a real advantage for users. It offers a set of solutions that makes Microsoft Teams meetings highly customizable and intelligent.

—Sara Bush, principal PM manager, Microsoft Digital

For the past several months, Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization that is responsible for serving as Customer Zero, along with the Teams product group, have been working together to ensure Microsoft Teams Premium lives up to its promise and provides an enriched set of features for our customers.

“After using some of the initial Teams Premium capabilities internally, with the latest technologies including AI-powered language models, Teams Premium is going to provide a real advantage for users,” says Sara Bush, a principal PM manager in Microsoft Digital. “It offers a set of solutions that makes Microsoft Teams meetings highly customizable and intelligent.”

To learn more about Microsoft Teams Premium, I spoke with several Microsoft employees who have been at the forefront of testing the new capabilities and are some of the early users to find out more about the new features and additional benefits.

Live translated captions

Virtual Microsoft Teams meetings have allowed more people than ever to connect, engage, learn, and collaborate. Currently, within a regular Teams meeting, you can easily follow along with who’s talking with speaker-attributed live captions and transcription. But what happens if you are presenting to people who don’t speak the same language as you? How do you ensure the conversation is seamless and easy for them to understand?

The new live translation for captions capability delivers AI-powered, real-time translations from 40 spoken languages, so meeting participants can read captions in the language that they prefer most. This is thanks to the help of Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service Speech Translation. For instance, if the meeting organizer has Microsoft Teams Premium, then all meeting attendees can enjoy live translated captions. This capability helps break down language barriers, putting participants at ease and allowing for a more productive and frictionless experience.

“Live translated captions is a real game changer, especially for large, global companies,” says Jan Steberl, a product manager in the Microsoft Teams product group. “This feature really puts all meeting participants on an even playing field, no matter what their language of choice is or where they are located. For someone like me, who is based in the Czech Republic and participates in virtual Teams meetings with colleagues from all over the world, it really has been a difference maker.”

Advanced webinar features

Building upon the basic webinar functionality available in Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft 365 offerings, with advanced webinar in Microsoft Teams Premium, users get the familiar and secure experience of Microsoft Teams combined with new host and event management controls that make it easier to connect with your audience. Whether presenting a keynote, training new employees, or showing off a new product to customers, the advanced webinar capabilities deliver a high-quality experience that improves overall event logistics.

Building upon the basic webinar capabilities in Microsoft Teams today, with the new registration waitlist and manual approval capability within Microsoft Teams Premium, the registration experience is now a lot more robust. Enabling the waitlist will allow the event organizer to keep webinar registration open (even after the event has reached capacity), allowing additional people to register and be automatically added to the waitlist. As new spots open, people are automatically moved to the pending approval state, enabling the organizer to approve or reject the additional registrants. In addition, organizers can customize the start and end time and specify when they want registration to start and end, making it much easier to manage an event.

Virtual green room

Remember pre-COVID days, when presenters used to gather with the event host in the physical green room to go through a dry run or hammer our last-minute details of an event? With virtual green room, the host and participants are still able to connect and manage all the behind-the-scenes action prior to the meeting start.

“Anyone who plans virtual events, team meetings, or presentations knows that there are always eleventh-hour changes leading right up to the start, so the addition of the green room has been a much-needed, welcome feature,” says Michelle Strub, an executive and internal communications lead in Microsoft Digital. “It allows presenters a dedicated space, separate from attendees, to hash those final details out, socialize, monitor the chat or Q&A window, and manage what attendees see before the event begins.”

For more information on how to manage the meeting experience go to this Microsoft Learn page: Manage your meeting presentation experience for sensitive Microsoft Teams meetings.

And the benefits of green room are there for the attendees of the event as well! As attendees wait for the meeting to get started, green room will provide a welcome screen, and participants can use the chat and Q&A windows to engage with each other or prepare questions for the upcoming presenters.

End-to-end encryption and confidentiality settings

Managing and protecting confidential information in virtual meetings is now much more secure thanks to some of the end-to-end encryption features and advanced meeting protection available in Microsoft Teams Premium.

For those extremely sensitive meetings that require disabling some of the features for an advanced security option, users can apply end-to-end encryption to the meeting. Data is always secure within Microsoft Teams, but there may be some customers that need an extra layer of protection for ultra-sensitive business topics that Microsoft Teams Premium now provides.

Upgrading safeguards for confidential business meetings, like watermarking to deter information from being leaked or limiting who can record a meeting, gives customers the additional assurance they need to keep a virtual meeting private. With Microsoft Teams Premium, meeting organizers can leverage unique watermarks over attendees’ screen shares and video feeds to confidently display and present any confidential information.

In addition to the added benefits you get with Teams Premium, I see it providing a real opportunity for customizing and securing the meeting experience for our customers. Given the myriad capabilities to set options, brand visuals, and even templates for meeting types, it is a huge value-add.

—Chanda Jensen, senior product manager, Microsoft Digital

“These new features are really good for those who are obsessed with security,” says Hongsik Choi, a principal program manager in the Microsoft Autonomy, Space, Critical Industry and Innovation (ASCII) group. “Customers who prioritize security in general tend to worry about the security of online virtual meetings, but end-to-end encryption is very useful and provides that next level security layer for audio, video, and shared screen.”

Through intense internal testing and use and by incorporating the latest in AI-powered capabilities, Microsoft employees are ensuring that Microsoft Teams, and specifically the new Microsoft Teams Premium offering, provides customers with the solutions they need to adapt to the ever-changing workplace environment and improve their organization’s productivity. The increased security, personalization, and modern technology that comes with Teams Premium makes the new offering a no-brainer for customers trying to up their game when it comes to communication, collaboration, and managing virtual meetings. The additional investment will be a boost to our customers, supporting the new ways of working, securely collaborating, and personalizing their enterprise experience.

“In addition to the added benefits you get with Teams Premium, I see it providing a real opportunity for customizing and securing the meeting experience for our customers,” says Chanda Jensen, a senior product manager in Microsoft Digital. “Given the myriad capabilities to set options, brand visuals, and even templates for meeting types, it is a huge value-add.”

Since its launch six years ago, Microsoft Teams continues to innovate at a rapid pace. With the introduction of Microsoft Teams Premium and with new features continuing to roll out, we can feel confident that the feedback we’re providing as Customer Zero for Microsoft will only continue to fuel the innovation and keep the bar very high for Microsoft Teams solutions for years to come.

Get started with Microsoft Teams Premium.

• • Discover how we’re transforming Microsoft with Microsoft Teams and AI agents.
  • Learn how we’re enabling hybrid work internally at Microsoft with ‘digital fabric’ Microsoft Teams.
  • Read about how Teams uses AI to generate rich meeting recaps for our employees.
  • See five ways we’re getting more out of Microsoft Teams, thanks to Copilot and AI.

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