Stories of Modern Work

In episode 4 of season 2, we have Chander Ramanathan, Intelligent Workplace Lead from SXiQ based in Melbourne, Victoria back on the show to share his experiences using Microsoft Teams during Remote Work.

Here is the summary of what we discussed in the episode:

1. Both Chander and I got carried away with the custom backgrounds in MS Teams!
2. Security concerns with Zoom Meetings
3. Using Microsoft Teams web and desktop clients
4. 3x3 video grid coming to Teams
5. How a music academy seamlessly switched to Teams from Zoom to continue to deliver their music classes online.
6. How a small General Practitioner health group in Melbourne were able to consolidate diverse business systems into the Office 365 ecosystem and save on licensing fee along with being ready to support remote work and remote patient consultations.
7. We shared our views on how we Microsoft improve Teams to provide better support for Remote Workers.
8. We had a bit of fun trying to give a new name to Microsoft Teams! Happy Call 😉

Welcome back to Season 2 on Stories of Modern Work Podcast. After a long hiatus in 2019, we are back in 2020 with some amazing interviews where we learn from Office 365 stories and tips from our guests. In season 2, we are doing things differently. Podcast episodes will be published in both Audio and Video formats. This will enable us to go deep into some of the topics we will be covering in the coming episodes.

In episode 1 of season 2, we have Chander Ramanathan, Intelligent Workplace Lead from SXiQ based in Melbourne, Victoria. Chander has agreed to share his Office 365 stories and tips in a five-part mini-series. In this mini-series, we will be concentrating on using Office 365 as a Remote Work platform.

In this introductory episode, we discuss:

• Intelligent Intranet
• The democratisation of Intranet Development
• How is SXiQ doing Remote Work
• How to stay productive during Remote Work using Office 365.
• Using Microsoft Planner and White Board app to be more productive while working remotely.

There is a bit of singing and talking about Indian music legend AR Rahman too.

Here are links to some of the resources we mentioned in the episode.

In this episode of the stories of modern work podcast, I chat with Alexander Dick from AvePoint about  How to setup Office 365 Governance in three steps. 

Summary on points discussed in this episode

• What is Governance and how to go about creating governance plan
• Importance of Governance Plan before things go out of reach
• Best practice to setup approval process for team creation
• Re-certification of permissions in your Teams and Office 365 groups
• Clean-up of unused Teams
• Implications of miss configured permissions in Delve

Links to products and resources mentioned in this episode 

In episode 11 of the Stories of Modern Work Podcast, I speak with James Dellow a Digital strategist, collaboration consultant and human-centred designer as our guest to share his experiences and thoughts on Intranet in a box solution offerings and employee engagement. 

James and I discuss our thoughts on. 

• What is Intranet in a box application
• When should a business look to procure a Intranet in Box solution
• What is Employment Engagement
• How do you measure employee engagement
• Impact of technology on employee engagement 
• What is Digital Placemaking in the context of Modern Workplace
• Using Digital Placemaking to drive employee engagement
• Advice on how to use Microsoft Office 365 apps to support employee engagement

Resource Links: 

Here is list of resources mentioned in the podcast. 

May the Flow be with you!! 😎 

In episode 10 of the Stories of Modern Work Podcast, I speak with Geetha Sivasailam a Consultant specializing in the Microsoft Power Platform  as our guest to share her experiences and thoughts on Office 365 and Power Platform. This is a must listen episode for anyone who is interested in getting started with Microsoft Power Platform. 

Here are some key points we discussed in the episode.

1. Introduction to the #PowerAddicts community
2. Overview of Power Platform - the three main building blocks - Flow, PowerApps and Power BI
3. Power Platform as glue for business data and services
4. Perquisites for building apps using Power Platform 
5. Employee On-boarding use case using Power Platform
6. Challenges of Change Management in organisations where they have already made prior investments in classic apps and experiences
7. Backup and Restore strategy for PowerApps, Flows
8. Need for recycle bin in Microsoft Flow
9. How to debug Flow 
10. Best Practice to manage Team Flows
11. Resources and strategies you can used to master the Power Platform.
12. Need for version control for PowerApps and Flow

In this episode of Stories of Modern Work Podcast, we will talk about the need for using Office 365 as Modern Work Tool to support Human Resource teams. We will look in how NGA Human Resources a global HR services provider is using Office 365. Also we will about how we use Flow, PowerApps, Planner, Forms and SharePoint to improve employee engagement in your organisation. 

In this episode, will look into not one but two business case studies, where both these organisations are using OneDrive for Business as part of their secure Modern Work journey. 

This is a must listen episode if you are planning to use OneDrive for Business as the mainstream cloud storage platform. 

Case Study 1 - Lotus F1 Racing

Case Study 2 - Microsoft 

This is a special episode where we look at a business case study published by Microsoft at their Customer Stories website. 

This is a must listen episode if you are planning to streamline business data and systems using the Microsoft 365. 

In this episode we will look into the Modern Work journey of TransBlue a professional services business based in Lynnwood, Washington. 

Transblue employs 20 people split between a general contracting business and a facility management company.

Before embarking on the Modern Work journey, TransBlue was facing issues with: 

Problems: 

1. Lack of data security - Users are using Dropbox to store and work on business critical data. 
2. Lacked a unified data aggregation solution - If anyone left the company, there was a strong chance that their data would leave with them.
3. Microsoft Office 365 underutilisation - TransBlue had three individual subscriptions to Microsoft Office 365, used mainly for email.

Not just TransBlue, I come across other organisations having similar issues. They have Office 365 licenses but are very much under utilitised. 

Once TransBlue has identified these three main concerns, here is how they have resolved them. 

Solution: 

They have consolidated the three Office 365 subscriptions into one Microsoft 365 Business subscription, TransBlue was able to retire the company's instance of Dropbox, eliminating hundreds of dollars in monthly costs. They have also eliminated unnecessary tasks and redundant employee accounts and created efficiency gains of 80 work hours every week, resulting in a further $2,400 reduction in monthly costs. 

Now personal work files are protected in employee-specific OneDrive for Business accounts and organizational content is easily managed and shared with SharePoint, both inside and outside the company. With this change, TransBlue employees now have access to all of those files anywhere, on any device. 

Benefits

TransBlue employees now use SharePoint from the job site to quickly access and review contract details with subcontractors. In the past, project managers had to send emails or text messages to the head office and then wait for a PDF or photo of a document to be sent back, which resulted in delays and miscommunications. Now, working from the same smartphones as before, project managers have full access to company documents whenever and wherever the need arises. 

TransBlue has also started using Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business to streamline their business communications. Let’s hear an Audio clip where TransBlue employees and management share their Modern Work experiences. 

Lessons Learned: 

Here are some key takeaways and lessons learned for me from this case study. 

1. Conduct an audit of business systems in your organisation. 
2. If you have an existing Office 365 subscription, Conduct an audit of user licenses and adoption. 
3. Track the data lifecycle across these business system and look for security loopholes. 
4. Start the rollout of a subset of Office 365 Apps such as OneDrive for Business and SharePoint before looking into advanced tools such as Teams and Power Platform. 
5. Setup and Use the mobile apps of the Office 365 to maximise ROI and user adoption. 

Links mentioned: 

In episode 6 of the Stories of Modern Work Podcast, I spoke with Mr Joel Oleson a Microsoft MVP and Senior IT Manager at Blizzard Entertainment as our guest to share his experiences and thoughts on Office 365 as a Modern Work tool. 

Here are some key points we discussed in the episode.

• Joel shared the genesis of Office 365. The story about how it all started! 
• Office 365 Feature Release cadence (inner ring and outer ring) and how to deal with ever changing product suite. 
• Feedback on Office 365 message center and roadmap. 
• Targeted Release vs Standard Release - Which one should you be on? 
• Modern Work is about taking the advantage of the tools and technologies today to work the best you can right now! 
• OneDrive for Business -  File On-Demand is changing the way users think about the cloud file storage. 
• OneDrive for storage limits. 
• Setting up Information Architecture using Hub Sites, Managed Metadata, User segmentation using location based metadata classification. 
• Guidance on how to deal with out of the box limitations in Office 365 Apps and Services. 
• Usage of the Power Platform starting to pick up and users are already getting some business value. 
• Guidance on InfoPath Form migrations. 
• Strengths of Office 365 when compared with other similar SaaS products. 
• Easy of using Microsoft Stream
• Guidance on branding Office 365 Apps. 
• Content Panda Link
• Windows Edge using Chromium browser engine will bring in the possibility to use browser  extensions to enhance UX of Office 365 users. 
• Guidance on Yammer vs Microsoft Teams

Links mentioned in the episode: 

In episode 3 of the Stories of Modern Work Podcast, I spoke with Mr Nate Chamberlain from sharepointlibrarian.com talking about the story of Office 365 at LMH Health and Kansas University

Here are some key points we discussed in the episode. 

• Modern Work is meant to empower end users to get their work done with the assistance of modern technologies. 
• How to deal with shadow IT concerns? Don’t restrict users and find out what users want and give it  them at the right moment. 
• Be transparent and upfront about the change. 
• Training end users of Office 365 Apps and Services is tricky. - Focus on business solutions and value. 
• Information Architecture should be built to support scalability. 
• Use Intelligent Automation to support Governance. 
• Folder vs Metadata paradigm. 
• Governance Plan is an evolution. 
• Get customer/user feedback early as you build business solutions. 
• Use visual media like Gifs and videos in user education. 
• Change Management for Office 365 Administrators to manage system changes and updates to Office 365 tenant. 

Nate, Thanks for coming on the podcast and sharing your thoughts and experiences about Modern Work. 

Here are some links to the resources mentioned in the podcast.

In episode 2 of the Stories of Modern Work Podcast, I spoke with Mr Mitul Rana on how a large telecom provider is embarking on their Office 365 User Adoption journey. 

Here are some key points we discussed in the episode. 

• InfoPath to PowerApps - Don't migrate InfoPath forms, instead use the opportunity to rebuild the business process using latest technologies. 
• Lotus Notes to SharePoint Applications - How change management is key to move users from Lotus Notes. 
• Adoption of PowerApps is still in infancy and has a great potential. 
• How marketing teams can use Microsoft Flow to track Social Sentiment of the brand and campaigns. 
• How to sell external sharing features to end users and get them on-board?
• Drive the user adoption by showing the business value than the focusing on the technology. 
• Use OneDrive links to document. Stop sending document attachments. - This is killer tip. 

Thanks for coming on the podcast and sharing your thoughts and experiences about Modern Work. 

Welcome to the first episode of the Stories of Modern Work podcast. In this episode I chat with Mr Mark Aschemeyer  from BA Insight on how Intuitive Search powers Modern Work by bringing the content to the user. We also touch base on what is Modern Work and how Microsoft Teams is taking off. 

Here is the links to the resources mentioned in the episode. 

It Should Be All About Me!