MidDay Cafe

In this week’s MidDay Café hosts Tyrelle Barnes and Michael Gannotti are talking AI in Modern Work. The context around this discussion is an executive event that took place this week in New York City as well as the new web series The 12 Days of Copilot.

The Microsoft Graph is foundational to the new Microsoft 365 Copilot. As the world’s largest dataset, it is the source of all information that feeds Microsoft 365 Copilot. With the addition of the Semantic Fabric and Graph Connectors it provides Microsoft 365 customers with an unbeatable wealth of information and usefulness right within the applications that users are already using today.

The data is in and in a do more with less reality today organizations that foster an engaged workforce are delivering better metrics than their counterparts, including in revenue generation. (see Work Trend Index 2023) Microsoft Viva Glint helps organizations create a culture of feedback and action. With Viva Glint organizations can see and analyze strengths and opportunities, compare benchmarks, and use suggested actions to drive business outcomes.

In this MidDay Café hosts Tyrelle Barnes and Michael Gannotti host Principal People Science Manager, Justin Bethke, Microsoft Viva Glint. During the session Justin covers topics such as:

• What is Glint and how does it fit into Microsoft Viva?: Justin explained that Glint is a tool to measure and improve employee experience and happiness, and that it was acquired by LinkedIn and then moved to Microsoft as part of Viva, the employee experience platform.

• What are the trends and best practices in employee listening and surveying?: Justin shared that the frequency and cadence of surveys should depend on the business outcomes and problems that the organization is trying to solve, and that combining active and passive data (such as from Viva Insights) can provide more insights and actionability.

• How to transition and transform to a newer approach of employee listening?: Justin suggested that organizations can start with smaller or more targeted surveys that match their talent or business rhythms, and that they should push the ownership and accountability of the results and actions to the lowest level possible, such as frontline managers.

• How to leverage AI to assist in employee listening and action taking?: Justin mentioned that Microsoft Copilot, the AI engine, can help leaders and managers to analyze and interpret the survey data and comments, and to suggest next steps and actions based on the insights.

• *(topics pulled from video using Copilot in Teams Meetings asking Copilot to recap the meeting)

Microsoft Viva Glint has the potential to help transform an organization and it comes with the Microsoft Viva Suite.

In this week’s episode of MidDay Café hosts Tyrelle Barnes and Michael Gannotti welcome special guest Chris Bortlik. Chris is a Principal Architect at the Boston MTC (Microsoft Technology Center) and he discusses the various offerings and methodology of the MTC designed to help organizations digitally transform their businesses in order to deliver an improved employee experience while increasing productivity as well as revenue.

In this episode:

• Happy Friday and welcome

• What we’ve been up to

• Special guest Chris Bortlik, Principal Architect, Boston MTC

• Final thoughts

• Wrap Up

  In this MidDay Café hosts Tyrelle Barnes and Michael Gannotti discuss the importance of gaining actionable insight into employee well-being and sentiment. Key in these type of organization efforts are Viva Insights, Glint, and Pulse. Take a listen and see how taking action can benefit your organization.

In this episode:

• Podcast kickoff
• Viva Insights and Glint
• Employee Pulse Survey – Actionable Insight
• Employee Listening Strategy
• People Analytics
• Accessibility
• Measure > Communicate > Act
• More…

In this episode of MidDay Café Microsoft’s Tyrelle Barnes and Michael Gannotti discuss how the Semantic Index helps unlock corporate knowledge, whether structured or not, while helping to ensure data privacy and compliance are maintained when implementing Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Additionally, Tyrelle and Michael discuss the analogy of the Tour de France Peloton to companies and their embracing of new technology like AI, and much more.

In this episode:

• Podcast kickoff
• Tour de France and Peloton as analogy to corporate embrace of AI or not
• Digital HR Podcast with David Green
• Rethinking Leadership for the Future of Work by Heather McGown
• Data Privacy and Unlocking Corporate Knowledge with Microsoft Copilot
• Wrap Up

MidDay Café gets rebooted in a new weekly format in Episode 35 with hosts Tyrelle Barnes and Michael Gannotti. For this kickoff/reboot episode they cover:

• Welcome and introductions.
• Discussion of some real-world examples of real-world highlights around Microsoft Viva and Copilot – Success Measurement with Learning and Copilot demand.
• Discussion of the Microsoft Graph… What is it? How it works, ways in which leveraged? Also discussed the Trends Analysis Report, discussion around the various Viva modules and Copilot for Microsoft 365 (with a bit of Bing generative AI thrown in.
• Org Explorer in Outlook and also…..

As organizations seek to simplify, and improve, the employee experience in a do more with less reality providing an intuitive, unified experience becomes paramount. Providing a number of disjointed employee experiences across various pillars like Learning, Organizational Health/Sentiment Analysis, Communications/Employee Engagement, doesn’t improve the overall employee experience but rather adds to additional employee dissatisfaction. Thankfully, the Microsoft Viva suite and Viva Connections Home is here to help.

Microsoft Viva suite provides the most comprehensive set of employee experiences all from a single point within the single pane of glass to get work done, Microsoft Teams. The best of breed modules covering Employee Connections, Insight, Purpose, and Growth, come to life for employees within the Viva Connections Home. Whether mobile or desktop, Viva Connections Home provides tailored experiences to specific employee groups, roles, or geos with targeted news, conversations, applications, and content powered by AI and Microsoft Graph.

In this MidDay Café Viva edition podcast, we take a look at Microsoft Viva Connections Home, what’s locked, what’s customizable, and how it can benefit your organization. Finally, we also look at some tips/tricks in use of the Dashboard to deliver immediate impact.

In this episode host Michael Gannotti is joined by special guest Denzil Fernandes as they show how you can add professional overlays with titles, location and more to add a more polished delivery of your Microsoft Teams Webinars/Live Events, as well as meetings.

In this episode of MidDay Café, we had a great series of topics we discussed and demonstrated including: Teams Breakout Rooms V2, Word Clouds for Forms, Audio Podcasting with Viva Connections, Power BI Roadmap, and Surface Hub and Collaboration Rooms.

Capturing data and collaborating with others are daily occurrences across all workstreams withing Healthcare and Life Sciences, as well as other industries. To assist users in these activities Microsoft 365 provides for rich data capture and reporting within Microsoft Lists and uber rich collaboration across all devices with Whiteboard.

As organizations look to increase their inclusiveness accessibility becomes a key pillar to be addressed. Ensuring that content and systems are accessible by all employees is not only a matter of compliance but also the right thing to do.

In this episode of MidDay Cafe, the MidDay crew addresses the topic of accessibility in this demonstration rich coverage of Microsoft Immersive Reader (within OneNote, Word, Edge, and Microsoft Teams), Dictation in Microsoft Outlook/Word in iOS, Accessibility settings and capability within Microsoft Windows, as well as Accessibility in Power BI.

Microsoft Teams steals the spotlight in this week’s MidDay Café podcast. First up the panel discusses the release of Microsoft Teams Large Events (Webinars) and what it brings to large organizations. The panel closes out with a discussion of the newly announced Microsoft Teams for Home and its features for bring together friends and family.

Microsoft Teams Shared Channels have been a top request by customers as it facilitates secured, focused collaboration and sharing with external individuals and entities at the more granular channel level vs Team level.

On Monday, 03-01-2021, the MidDay Café crew was joined by special guest Microsoft’s Dan Holme, Principal Program Manager, Microsoft. Dan talked all things communities and Yammer and showed how organizations could digitally transform and create a more employee centric, engaging environment, that foster increased company loyalty while increasing productivity and job satisfaction.

Epic integration with the Microsoft 365 stack, including Microsoft Teams, is a hot topic these days with healthcare/life sciences organizations looking to deliver increasingly integrated experiences for their clinicians. On February 8th at 12 noon eastern we were joined by Microsoft’s Andres Santamaria , Senior Program Manager, Microsoft, who covered the Epic FHIR API Integration. 

On Monday, February 1st at 12 noon EST,  Microsoft’s Gregory Lisiak and Nikita Pitliya covered the Microsoft COVID Vaccine Health Bot to assist organizations in implementing, and leveraging, the bot. Additionally, Microsoft’s Samantha Brown, Mark Litwin, Pete Anello, and Patrick Miller, joined to bring you the latest in Microsoft News, Events, and more.  Mid-Day Café is a new, weekly, fast paced, live web series by the HLS Group. Join us each Monday at 12 noon eastern.