Realizing I haven't blogged at all over the last year is, I suppose, one of those personal self-discoveries we were all challenged to learn over the last year due to the seismic impact of Covid-19.  One thing we've all become better at in work and personal life is virtual / video meeting.  

For Teams, there are some great enhancements to administration, sharing, engagement, and live events - but one that I want to highlight is Live Meeting Transcription.  

​Do you participate in regular or recurring meetings?  Perhaps for strategic planning, project management?  Following our Women's History Month theme, do you find that - as a woman - you might be expected to capture action items and notes for your meetings?  Your life in Teams is about to get easier.  Besides being a tool that you can utilize to break the group habit of expecting the woman in the group, or the new hire, or the junior member to take meeting notes - now you can turn on Live Transcription.  ​

This article provides a good overview and demo, and this MS Doc info provides some detail. At the time of drafting this blog entry, neither had step-by-step instructions so I've created them here, with a screenshot below. 

• Transcription must be enabled by a Global admin, and depending on your tenant seat volume, it could take 48-72 hours to deploy globally.  
• Visit 365 Admin Center
• Visit Teams Admin Center
• Select Meetings / Meeting Policies tabs at left
• Create new or modify an existing one (I added the one for my tenant to Global policy, because I want to empower everyone to use technology to do some of their lesser-value, time impact work)
• Under Audio & Video heading, turn on the slider for Allow Transcription

Caveats: 

• Right now there is no automated Governance around the Teams Transcription creations in the Teams channel. 
  
• Someone from a recurring meeting group would still need to scan transcriptions for ACTION ITEM or FOLLOW UP or a few key phrases to capture those from the meeting. 
  
• I suspect a PowerAutomate / Flow is on the horizon that can help with this, or perhaps the AI in Viva will do this for users in the near future. 

But for now:  Please, set your team free of taking manual meeting notes!

Happy International Women's Day! I first learned of this global celebration while in Norway in 2005. I was shopping for shoes at a mall, and kept being handed a long stem rose in each store I visited, and as I exited the mall. I had to ask my colleague Anita Holmebakken Jakobsen what it all meant. Then we were both surprised it wasn't a 'thing' in America.

I'm happy to say that it is more a 'thing' in America than it has ever been before, for lots of reasons. I applaud all who take the time on this day to recognize the efforts women have been making historically in order to be taken with equal seriousness and respect as men, and applaud all male allies who have worked to further equality. It started over a century ago motivated by women demanding the right to vote and hold office.

​We all have an opportunity to call out bias and inequality, in any form. Collectively, we can all help create a more inclusive world. From challenge comes change, so let's all choose to challenge.
#ChooseToChallenge #choosetochallenge2021 #IWD2021

Image from Sarah Rose Creative; the 2021 IWD Theme:  Choose to Challenge

Many people and students who are able to are being asked to work from home, and online collaboration and meeting solutions are reflecting that sudden surge in bandwidth consumption. This will improve over time as resources are better allocated to suit this shift in demand, but for the time being that often means notable lag when joining online meetings, regardless of platform or provider. ​

I tend to be punctual and efficient in leading meetings, but one adaptation I've made this week is to reserve the first 5-10 minutes of online meetings for group intermission.  This allows attendees flexibility as they navigate bandwidth-related lag and delays.  This has been a little bit of an adjustment for me but it has paid dividends in alleviating one small stress for remote teams. I even include it right on the meeting notice:

I may post additional tips and tricks related to successfully navigating remote work in the time of Covid-19.  What are some that you've encountered?

I was pleased to present "Making Room for Governance" at this year's SharePoint Saturday in Denver's Microsoft Tech Center.  The pop-up blizzard on Thursday made travel and travel delays an adventure level-up, and I had a wonderful time learning from other consultants and experts about the challenges and opportunities they're working on with Microsoft 365 (and sometimes on-premise) tools.   

Governance is just a downright un-sexy topic.  It's about as exciting as an annual wellness exam.  No one likes it, no one looks forward to it, but we all know it's good to do.  So you can imagine my surprise when I had a great crowd in a first-morning presentation slot, AND they had wonderful questions and engagement!  I was also pleased to see that there were FIVE other presenters touching on Governance topics through the day, so if this is a topic you're interested in, please be sure to check those out as well.

My approach - in Governance and other business solutions - is to define solutions with an eye toward utilizing the tools you already have in place.  Most of my passion is with Office 365 and Microsoft 365, so these were the platform assumptions that I used generally - but I wanted to start off with some over-arching principles about what Governance is, what it can do, how to manage it, and make it as seamless and painless as possible.  Fortunately there are more  tools onboard the O365 experience that help with this, including AI-driven automation opportunities. There is still a lag in what Governance tools are natively offered and what third-party tools have been able to provide that allow IT departments and global admins to better manage their tenants, but it's getting better all the time.  

I'm embedding my slide presentation, but there aren't speakers notes that accompany these.  During the live presentation, I elicited input from the audience as to what platforms they're using, where they are and are not using Governance, and challenges they're seeing in their rapidly changing industries - and tailored discussion for recommendations that could be easily adopted.  What that means for these slides is that they might look a little boring without that context.  Or, without the context of the theme music accompanying the discussion.  If you're curious about that, or anything else touched on here, please reach out and ask.  

If you're in the Denver area, join these great folks at the Denver Office 365 and SharePoint Meetups!
Be sure to check out the collection of speakers and slide decks on the SharePoint Saturday - Denver speakers page. 

I had a wonderful time at SharePoint Saturday in Denver - and am already making plans for next year!

In the August features announcement about new features in SharePoint, I see my old arch-enemy, World Clocks and Time Zone webparts make an appearance.  I never have had much use for these web parts personally.  And honestly, I've never really understood their appeal beyond usenet groups and Myspace, when they were standard attributes. 

But I am wise enough to know that my way isn't the only way, and over time I have been repeatedly surprised by enterprise clients who really, really love these web parts. 

Over the years I've had to build custom code web parts to display the time and date.  With Office 365 and SharePoint Online, there have been a few solutions around for the last year or so available on Github or via third parties, but now there is a built-in weather and world clock web part option for modern page layouts.  

There are lots of other neat features too - call to action buttons, hero web part updates, News and announcement rollups - but what I'm betting right here and now that the biggest "wins" out of this rollout will be the time and weather features.  

Read more at the tech community blog announcement here.  It looks like some of the ideas that OlivierCC has had available over on GitHub for 2 years are finally making their way into the Office 365 ecosystem!  Here is a link to his sampling of SharePoint Framework /SPFx webparts. 

So saying the use of JSON scripts (even if just copying and pasting) is "no code" has always seemed a little weaselly to me.  now / Soon, some types of column formatting in SharePoint will be able to be done through the UI in a more user-friendly manner. This hits targeted release folks in December, and general availability in January.  In the article, you can try it out through a demo.