Mark Smith, Harry Bamber and Delroy McKenzie, Universal Services, attended the Microsoft Evolve conference recently, at the National Conference Centre in Birmingham. Here is their write-up of the event:
The content at Evolve helped inform us about the approach to releasing services across the Microsoft 365 platform. It confirmed that a technical approach with a core focus on culture and adoption is the key to a successful launch.
Evolve was previously known as UC (Unified Comms) Day; that telecoms legacy can still be seen throughout the conference. The latest telephony products were on display with plenty of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) devices, and touchscreens to cater to all communication scenarios.
The event has now shifted towards Microsoft’s Could services – so our attention was focused on Microsoft 365. After a wonderful breakfast of miniature food we headed out to the intro and then to our chosen sessions. The event ran five competing sessions at each time slot, with roughly aligned themes.
The sessions: in detail
My first session was ‘The Anatomy of a Modern Workplace’ which focused on the human element of technology adoption. Of particular interest was the Working Our Loud principle which looks to create serendipitous moments that bring disparate people together in the workplace. A principle like this, facilitated by a service like Yammer, could be really positive for the University.
Next up was ‘Manage Teams for Success’. Teams is a game changer for many organisations and many of us are excited to release it in the coming months. This session reviewed the technical capabilities for managing Teams and some of the typical adoption hurdles. The session also touched on Teams Etiquette such as muting microphones when not talking and using the subject formatting when starting a new chat in a General conversation tab.
The third session of the day focused on adoption. This developed on the Personas approach and combined it with Scenarios (regular activity when Personas interact) and prioritisation to ensure appropriate workforce analysis could be performed. The session demonstrated that small gains in productivity or increased collaboration could result in genuine savings or increased revenue.
The next session was ‘Is OneDrive really Enterprise ready?’. Spoilers! Yes it is. It now has 42 distinct policies that can be configured. It also benefits from the wider Security and Compliance capabilities of the platform.
Other members of the team focused on Windows 10 management and security with most sessions proving worthwhile.
Find out more and register for next year
If you’re interested in Microsoft’s Cloud Platform then we’d recommend attending this well organised, local, free conference. Plus, mini food! You can subscribe to their mailing list here.
Want even more about Microsoft Cloud?
If you can’t wait a year to talk all things Microsoft Cloud then don’t forget you can join us at the Midlands Microsoft 365 and Azure User Group co-hosted by our very own Adrian Newton at the ERI Building once a month. You can find out more or sign up at Meetup.