Microsoft 365 Community Conference – Top highlights for IT Administrators
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It brought together over 3,000 community members and 300 Microsoft employees from across the world in the magical city of Orlando, Florida. We were there in person, attending many of the sessions to keep up to date with the latest in Microsoft 365 and in the expo hall to share how Syskit Point can help organizations prepare for all the AI features Microsoft is talking about.
Now that we have had a few days to process the amazing knowledge from the conference, I wanted to share the top announcements for Microsoft 365 administrators.
Keynote highlights from the Microsoft 365 Community Conference
In most Microsoft conferences, the keynote highlights section is usually the biggest, but this time, the keynote didn’t include that many new announcements. I will still include them here as bullet points, as they are still important.
- Copilot in OneDrive will be available this summer.
- Copilot reached a maturity point where we had live demos of Copilot on stage. In the past, those were pre-recorded, but Copilot has got to the point where they can be done live.
- Microsoft now manages 11 Exabytes of data—that is a lot of content and a great reminder that we should each check our tenant to make sure we do not have inactive content we do not need anymore.
- Microsoft Teams now has over 320 million Monthly Active Users.
- We saw a demo of Copilot in SharePoint and how it can help you create beautiful pages and content. (But no details on when we will get our hands on it ☹ ).
You can watch a more detailed video of the keynote highlights and impressions with Microsoft MVP Gokan Ozcifci and myself on YouTube here:
Luckily, sessions had a ton of new content for Microsoft 365 administrators, and below, I will share some of my top news with you.
Copilot experiences in the admin center(s)
One of my favorite announcements was that we would get a Copilot for Microsoft 365 Administrators inside the different Microsoft 365 admin centers. So, we will have a Copilot to help us manage Microsoft 365.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 has five different pillars or ways that it’s built to help administrators manage their Microsoft 365 tenants.
Copilot prompts
Below are some example prompts from each pillar, which are things that Copilot can do for you.
Help & Guidance
Data Source: Public documentation and internal knowledge base.
- How do I set up multi-factor authentication?
- How can I find sites that are overshared?
- Where can I assign phone numbers to users?
Troubleshooting
Data Source: Settings, policies, logs, service health information, and message center posts.
- Why was adi@contoso.com unable to join a meeting organized by Charlotte Waltson?
- I had access to the site named “Marketing Events,” but now I can’t access it. Why?
- Are there any service health incidents?
Commanding
Data Source: Users, licenses, roles, conditional access settings, and various M365 services.
- I’d like to onboard Phil Mickelson as a new user.
- Assign an available phone number to Phil Mickelson.
- Run a Data Access Report for SPO sites and initiate an Access Review.
Intelligent search
Data Source: Users, groups, Microsoft catalog, Teams policies, and various M365 services.
- Find all the mailboxes that are hidden from address lists.
- Which users have a Teams Premium license?
- Show me all the sites shared externally in the last 30 days.
- Identify all users in my organization without an assigned manager.
Recommendations
Insights from Devices, Apps, Policy areas, Usage
- Visualizations for key M365 Copilot insights such as license assignment status and usage frequency.
- Organizations like yours have deployed Walkie Talkie. Would you like to learn more?
- Based on your last SLM report, 35% of your sites were identified as inactive. You may want to review these sites for archiving or deletion to optimize SharePoint resources.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 Administrators is currently in private preview, and I cannot wait for it to be available. However, we did not see a live demo during the conference—only a representational video—so I do not expect this to be available until the fall.
SharePoint Premium – SharePoint Advanced Management news
SharePoint Premium was the star of the conference to me (okay, it wasn’t mentioned as much as Copilot, but it got the most news)! We had so much news that I will share some of my favorites and give you some additional reading at the bottom of the blog post so you can see more details directly from Microsoft.
As you know, SharePoint Premium has multiple pillars. Let me start with my favorite for administrators: SharePoint Advanced Management. First, Microsoft has announced two new reports as part of the Data Access Governance (DAG) reports.
Our first one is the Permission state report. Using the new permission state report, SharePoint admins can get details on sites with permissions for more than X users, say, >5000 users. This report includes files and folders that broke inheritance from site permission. It can be run for OneDrive and SharePoint sites.
The second is the EEEU (Everyone except external users) report. One of the common sources for overshared sites is when users mistakenly share content with the EEEU group, which will allow all users in the organization except external users. Now, with the EEEU report, you can view the list of all sites that were shared with the EEEU group. This report can be run for OneDrive and SharePoint sites.
Another new feature we now have is SharePoint Site Access Reviews. In the past, we could only do Access Reviews on Microsoft 365 Groups, but now we can do it on individual SharePoint sites as well. With the new site access reviews capability, SharePoint admins can initiate access reviews with site owners noted in Permission state and EEEU reports. This requests site owners to review and attest that the access pattern seen in their sites is expected or if it requires action.
Another exciting feature we only had for Microsoft 365 Groups before is Restricted provisioning control (RPC), now in private preview. With this policy, SharePoint administrators can give site creation rights to specific groups in an organization. This policy can be controlled granularly for team sites, communication sites, and all sites.
In the past, we could do this for Microsoft 365 Groups, but we can now do it for individual SharePoint sites. As this is a blog post for Microsoft 365 admins – Microsoft showed some of the PowerShell to configure this.
While I would like to cover all the new SharePoint Advanced Management features here, Microsoft has a very detailed blog post on the Microsoft Tech Community that you should definitely check out.
SharePoint Premium – Content solutions news
We also received a lot of news from the Content Solutions pillar of SharePoint Premium, and two of them stood out to me.
The first one is the agreements solution. This new solution is designed to help you create, manage, and sign agreements faster and smarter. Agreements are the foundation of business transactions, and they are high-value documents associated with monetary value, legally binding, and kept as records. However, the current process of creating and finalizing agreements is often challenging, time-consuming, error-prone, and inconsistent. Not to mention the sheer number of agreements created per year in large organizations. I am sure some of you probably expected this number – but I was very surprised!
Agreements solutions
The agreements solution aims to solve these challenges by providing an end-to-end solution for agreements infused with AI. The solution consists of five steps:
1. Define templates – Build once, use forever. You can create templates in Word, insert custom fields and snippets from a library, configure reviewers and approvers, and publish templates for reuse.
2. Generate agreements with self-service creation. You can create agreements from your templates, edit them, and send them for review and approval. You can also track the status and history of each agreement.
3. Review and negotiate, which results in faster closing. You can use AI-driven deviation analysis to compare agreements with templates and flag any changes or risks. You can also collaborate with internal and external parties, suggest, and accept changes, as well as resolve issues.
4. Sign and store with native e-signature. You can send e-signature requests from Word or Teams, sign agreements with Microsoft eSignature or third-party providers, and store signed agreements in SharePoint.
5. Report and analyze, which enables you to unlock insights. You can access reports and dashboards to monitor the performance and compliance of your agreements and use AI to extract metadata and insights from your agreements.
If you are interested in previewing the feature, you can request to be in the preview at the following link: https://aka.ms/ContentManagementPreviews
SharePoint eSignature
The second solution that was a highlight for me was the new SharePoint eSignature service. Today, every company needs to send documents for eSignature, but we are often stuck using third-party systems and getting the data outside of our trusted SharePoint tenant. While SharePoint eSignature is nothing new from the Microsoft 365 Community conference, we learned about the eSignature integration with Adobe and DocuSign.
Soon, you will be able to request an eSignature using DocuSign or Adobe (if you already use those services) directly from SharePoint. Once the document is signed, it will be stored inside your trusted SharePoint tenant. Even better – there will be no cost for this integration, so you can leverage it for free if you are already using DocuSign or Adobe eSignature. You can learn more about this integration on the Microsoft Tech Community.
Why are the agreements and the eSignature solutions my highlights? The main reason is that before, we had to use third-party systems to manage those workloads, which meant additional identities, audit logs, and compliance requirements. However, with Microsoft now offering options directly in Microsoft 365, we can centralize everything and simplify our admin tasks.
Closing thoughts
Keeping up to date is part of our job as Microsoft 365 Administrators, and with the number of features that Microsoft releases, it needs to be a job we do every week. Attending conferences such as the Microsoft 365 Community Conference is the perfect way to hear the latest news directly from Microsoft, and hopefully, this blog showed you the most important news that came out of it for Microsoft 365 Administrators.
If you were hoping for more news, do not worry; Microsoft Build is just around the corner. As it’s one of the few first-party Microsoft conferences happening every year, I am sure we will get a ton of new announcements for Microsoft 365.
