Author: Alex Fleck

I’ve always had a passion for story, whether I find it in a novel, a medieval epic, a movie, or a game. Now, I’m helping tell stories about the people and teams at Microsoft who build the technology that moves our world. When I’m not reading, writing, translating, or gaming, you’ll find me on a backcountry trek in Canada’s woods and mountains.

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November 19, 2024

Boosting HR and IT services at Microsoft with our new Employee Self-Service Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Our employees at Microsoft are already using Microsoft 365 Copilot to find answers, work faster, communicate more effectively, and boost their creativity. Copilot has become a true personal AI assistant. To make this tool even more valuable to our employees and users at all companies, we’re creating new agents with specialized AI-powered skills and capabilities… Read More
August 29, 2024

Finding and fixing network outages in minutes—not hours—with real-time telemetry at Microsoft

With more than 600 physical worksites around the world, Microsoft has one of the largest network infrastructure footprints on the planet. Managing the thousands of devices that keep those locations connected demands constant attention from a global team of network engineers. It’s their job to monitor and maintain those devices. And when outages occur, they… Read More
August 15, 2024

How Microsoft HR is using Viva and Microsoft 365 Copilot to empower our employees

Technology is about people, and no Microsoft organization understands that better than Human Resources. When our HR team started rolling out Microsoft 365 Copilot to the global HR organization, a human-centered approach was a natural fit. And what better way to focus on the human side of adoption than Microsoft Viva? This story shares how… Read More

All posts by Alex Fleck

October 21, 2024

Measuring the success of our Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout at Microsoft

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a first-of-its-kind technology and demands a first-of-its-kind adoption process. We’re using new approaches to learning and development, community engagement and, of course, measuring success. Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization, has been leading the charge on…
August 1, 2024

Driving Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption with our Copilot Champs Community

Nobody helps employees adopt a new tool like their peers—the people who know their responsibilities, their organizational culture, and their day-to-day tasks. In the initial stages of our Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption, a technology that brings many new possibilities and…
May 24, 2024

Enabling advanced HR analytics and AI with Microsoft Azure Data Lake

We’re on a mission to transform our human resources systems here at Microsoft. To make it happen, we’re upgrading the way we use analytics and AI. Our digital transformation has been a twofold journey. First, we upgraded our core processes,…
April 10, 2024

Dining transformation at Microsoft eases the transition as employees return to work

A profound dining transformation is happening at Microsoft as the company’s employees return to an office that’s evolved into a hybrid workplace. The pandemic has changed the way we work—and with it, the way we eat. Consumer expectations are evolving…
March 4, 2024

Enhancing Microsoft’s security posture with Microsoft Azure Firewall Manager

Imagine an enterprise company with dozens or hundreds of firewalls, each with its own set of policies for keeping corporate networks secure. That was the situation here at Microsoft until our IT teams started using Microsoft Azure Firewall Manager. This…
January 24, 2024

Rethinking software licensing at Microsoft with ServiceNow Software Asset Management

In an organization the size of Microsoft, employees need a wide array of tools to accomplish their work. For many, third-party software is part of their toolbox, and that means we need to purchase, organize, and manage software licenses on…
January 10, 2024

Simplifying Microsoft’s royalty ecosystem with connected data service

In any given month, Microsoft manages about 1.5 billion royalty transactions related to an estimated nine million products that span more than 3,000 partners, whose relationships are governed by over 5,000 active contracts. That’s a lot of transacting. Through smart…
December 14, 2023

Shifting to paperless contract lifecycle management to help schools navigate COVID-19

[Editor’s note: This content was written to highlight a particular event or moment in time. Although that moment has passed, we’re republishing it here so you can see what our thinking and experience was like at the time.] Paperless contract…
October 26, 2023

Microsoft workers’ council partnerships boost the company’s product and service rollouts

Ensuring compliance doesn’t have to be a roadblock—just ask the Microsoft workers’ council in Germany. This group of employee representatives has partnered with their employer, Microsoft, to speed up how the company develops and deploys new products and services to…
October 16, 2023

Transforming how contract creation works at Microsoft with automation

At Microsoft, we do business with an immense number of vendors and suppliers, and many of the services they provide require a statement of work (SOW) contract. Creating, approving, and managing those contracts is an immense task. We developed an…
April 20, 2023

Maximizing Microsoft Finance’s support experience with dynamic feedback and machine learning sentiment analysis

[Editor’s note: This content was written to highlight a particular event or moment in time. Although that moment has passed, we’re republishing it here so you can see what our thinking and experience was like at the time.] Managing financial…
March 28, 2023

Responding to site outages at Microsoft with machine learning and AI

Responding to site outages at Microsoft used to be very challenging. Large organizations have a lot of moving parts, and when internal sites experience outages and connectivity problems, those moving parts can grind to a halt. Getting things up and…