The Intrazone by Microsoft

Microsoft Ignite 2020 is upon us. We’ve got a front-row seat with Omar Shahine, VP of OneDrive and SharePoint Program Management. Omar discusses the recent back-to-school surge, Ignite updates for Project Cortex, Microsoft Lists, Microsoft Stream, new SharePoint innovation in Microsoft Teams, the Leadership Connection site offering, OneDrive sync reports, and more. We also learn how he and his team take an overall design approach that best provides for consumers in the commercial space.

In this episode, Chris and Mark talk with Shane Young (Power Apps guru from PowerApps911) and Chris Kent (Office 365 Practice Lead at DMI) – *maker* magicians both – Shane, a Power Apps sorcerer, and Chris, a wizard of lists. Throughout the discussion, we learn how makers make, the approach to making, which tools, what techniques, and how you, too, can be a maker.

August brought some nice innovations, some to help get back to school, some to help you stay more informed, with new ways to keep sharing and stay better connected. This month we discuss SharePoint site templates for Education, the retiring of SharePoint 2010 Workflows, accessing Visio as a tab within Teams, and more. Our guest is Lincoln DeMaris, a principal program manager on the SharePoint team focused on Microsoft Lists. We talk about the Lists roll out, the early feedback, and some common questions.

We talk with Bob German, Cloud developer advocate at Microsoft, and friend of the community who consistently puts complex concepts into simple, meaningful terms. He is also a contributor of samples and ideas via GitHub and PnP. Using his blog posts as a guide, we cover the evolution of SharePoint as a modern development platform, alongside the approach to brand and customize SharePoint – to develop once and deploy into SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. You’ll gain clarity, tips and tricks along the way.

In our fifth partner episode, we talk with Jeff Willinger (Digital Workplace Innovator and Microsoft MVP, Fujitsu) and his customer, Pete Schweiss (Data and Support Specialist, Boys Hope Girls Hope). BHGH is a not-for-profit helping academically capable and motivated children-in-need to meet their full potential. Fujitsu delivers innovative scanning solutions and services to streamline operations and overcome critical business productivity challenges.

July 2020 brought many new features: a New Employee Onboarding Hub, Hub permissions for visitors, SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) support for SharePoint Server 2019 (GA), Microsoft Lists, Quick Edit improvements, Add to OneDrive, and more. Plus, we talk with John Sanders, a principal program manager on the SharePoint team focused on all things pages and web parts. We discuss improvements for page navigation and the continued focus on accessibility throughout the intranet.

In this episode, Chris and Mark talk with Shin-Yi Lim (Senior PMM) and Howard Crow (Partner GPM) about Tasks in Teams. The new Tasks app brings a cohesive task management experience to Microsoft Teams, integrating personal tasks powered by Microsoft To Do and team tasks powered by Planner - all in one place. We dive into Microsoft tasks’ journey, task coherence, app integration, the use of AI, and the overall user experience.

Microsoft Lists is a go! We talk with Harini Saladi (PM Lists home and templates) and her peer, Lyndsey Gill (lead designer on both home and the new list creation experience) about making Lists intuitive, friendly and consistent across the various locations where you can create lists - from Lists home, from within Teams and SharePoint - all with a consistent user experience for creating and using lists.

This episode is our update on Project Cortex – digging into the manage metadata service (MMS), classification and knowledge curation – to learn how you and your company will further the union between people, content, and work processes. Mark and Chris talk with CJ Tan and Sean Squires, principal program managers on the Cortex team in Microsoft 365 engineering.

June 2020 brought 100GB file uploads, Microsoft Search: Acronym Answers, site analytics updates, Quick Edit updates, a new default teal site theme, sharing links to block downloads of PDFs, images and audio, and more. Also this month, Mark talks with Cathy Dew, senior program manager and design expert managing user experiences across the whole of SharePoint - most recently aligning with and adopting to the Microsoft Fluent Design System, providing consistency throughout.

Chris and Mark sit down with Jeff Teper (CVP SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams) to get his take on “how things are going” personally, with Microsoft Teams and the Microsoft 365 service, and his recent connections with the tech community. We discuss the recent response to the COVID-19 crisis, progress on #ProjectCortex, the coming Microsoft Lists, service performance and more. Plus, Jeff reveals a big education metric number about a new feature in Teams; I’ll raise my hand to hear that one!

In this episode, #YearOfYammer – part 2, Chris and Mark talk to Angus Florance and Michael Holste – from the Yammer marketing team. We discuss insight into customer use and adoption, best practices, and big news in features lined up for the Year of Yammer.

May 2020 brought the Save for later web part, updated Yammer Conversations web part, scheduling pages and news, an extended site footer, ease of migration into Microsoft Teams, lists flexibility, and more. Guest Simon Bourdages, senior program manager at Microsoft, works on content migration technology. Learn about the broader migration portfolio and capabilities offered by Microsoft and our partners – with a highlight on how you can bring content in from on-premises directly into Microsoft Teams.

In this episode, #YearOfYammer – part 1, Chris and Mark talk to Murali Sitaram and Luc Feuvrier-Danziger – from the Yammer engineering team. They reveal the strategy and vision of Yammer within the intelligent intranet. You’ll learn more about Yammer history, engineering excellence, integrations with Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, and about the cross-service employee engagement solution: Microsoft Live Events.

In this episode, Chris and Mark talk to Miceile Barrett and Lincoln DeMaris – both from the Lists engineering team. Miceile and Lincoln discuss the innovation in development to bring Microsoft Lists to market – evolving SharePoint lists and beyond across Microsoft 365. You'll hear insights about the new Lists home page, ready-made templates, rules, the coming mobile app, Microsoft Teams integration and more – plus give some fun examples of real customer lists in use today.