May 2023 brought great new offerings to SharePoint and Microsoft 365: Customizable Viva Connections mobile dashboard, Syntex image tagger, Syntex prebuilt model for contracts, OneDrive: Simplified sharing, Loop components in Outlook Mobile, and more.  We also highlight public disclosures from two recent events, Microsoft 365 Conference and Microsoft Build. We also share an audio clip of Rajesh Jha, EVP for experiences and devices at Microsoft, when he spoke recently at the Microsoft 365 Conference about his first time seeing ChatGPT 4 with Bill Gates, Sam Brockman from OpenAI and others - that initial wow impact that laid the foundation for Copilot innovation at Microsoft.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post and transcript.

01:15 Two upcoming June events: 1) Viva Round the World, and 2) AMA - SharePoint, OneDrive, Lists, and Stream

04:30 Employee engagement

08:53 Audio snippet of Rajesh Jha about ChatGPT and AI (from the Microsoft 365 Conference keynote)

11:35 Teamwork

13:51 Related items

18:58 Announcements from Microsoft 365 Conference and Microsoft Build)

26:35 Teasers

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

“Welcome to the new era of SharePoint and OneDrive in Microsoft 365” by Jeff Teper.

“SharePoint in the AI Era: Introducing 'Copilot in SharePoint' and 10 more innovations for creators” by Adam Harmetz.

“Experience the New OneDrive: Fast, Organized, and Personalized” by Jason Moore.

“Microsoft Lists: Easier, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Lincoln DeMaris.

“Enhanced Video in Microsoft 365” by Owen Paulus.

“New era in content management and security in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams” by Sesha Mani.

Microsoft Build "Book of News" (May 23, 2023)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Viva Round the World | June.2.2023

CollabDays Netherlands | June.10.2023 Vianen, Utrecht

365 EduCon - DC | June.12-16 Washington D.C. - USA

AMA | SharePoint, OneDrive, Lists, and Stream | June.14.2023 at 10am PT (90 minutes)

CollabDays - Central Europe | June.17.2023 Technopark Zuerich

European Power Platform Conference | Jun.20-22 Dublin, Ireland

Microsoft Inspire (Partner event) | July.18-19.2023 (virtual only)

365 EduCon - Seattle (plus 365 PWRCon) | Aug.21-25.2023

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

How do Adobe and Microsoft work together? And what are the outcomes? In this episode, you'll hear from Ben Vanderberg - SaaS Tech Evangelist, Strategist, and Speaker from Adobe. We dig into the core of the partnership from a content collaboration perspective. We touch on Adobe integration with Microsoft 365, Power Platform, Teams, Edge, SharePoint and more. We, too, take a trip down PDF memory lane and some of the recent Adobe AI announcements like coming out of the recent Adobe Summit 2023 AND NAB 2023.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

Ben Vanderberg | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback 

Learn more about the Adobe + Microsoft partnership: On MS.com and on Adobe business site

Adobe document cloud

Adobe Summit 2023 

Adobe Podcast: Recording and editing, all on the web - aka "Project Shasta"

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

CollabDays Italy | May.20.2023 in Milan

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Düsseldorf Fair, Germany

Document Strategy Forum 2023 | May 22-24 Le Méridien Charlotte, NC

Microsoft Build 2023 | May 23-25, 2023 build.microsoft.com

CollabDays Netherlands | June.10.2023 Vianen, Utrecht

365 EduCon - DC | June.12-16 Washington D.C. - USA

European Power Platform Conference | Jun.20-22 Dublin, Ireland

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 Amsterdam, Netherlands

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

On today's episode, we dig into a slew of announcements with Jeff Teper (President of Collaborative Apps and Platforms at Microsoft). We spoke to Jeff onsite in Vegas shortly after he and his team delivered a 90-minute whirlwind opening keynote – one that covered the value of community, tech Copilot, Teams, SharePoint - including Copilot in SharePoint, OneDrive, Lists, and goodness for IT with recent admin and security innovation. There were a ton of new announcements, plus the culmination of what Jeff coined "The wave of AI" - meaning the past few weeks have been a surge of AI news across Microsoft 365, Teams, Viva, Security, Loop – the big reveal being the notion of bringing that same AI service value into our beloved SharePoint.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

00:00 Intro with Chris and Mark

07:25 Conversation with Jeff Teper

50:40 Upcoming Events

Jeff Teper | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback 

“Welcome to the new era of SharePoint and OneDrive in Microsoft 365” by Jeff Teper.

“SharePoint in the AI Era: Introducing 'Copilot in SharePoint' and 10 more innovations for creators” by Adam Harmetz.

“Experience the New OneDrive: Fast, Organized, and Personalized” by Jason Moore.

“Microsoft Lists: Easier, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Lincoln DeMaris.

“Enhanced Video in Microsoft 365” by Owen Paulus.

“New era in content management and security in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams” by Sesha Mani.

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland - formerly known as SPS Warsaw.

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

CollabDays Italy | May.20.2023 in Milan

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Düsseldorf Fair, Germany

Microsoft Build 2023 |May 23-25, 2023 build.microsoft.com | Hybrid Global Digital and in-person in Seattle. Register now.

Document Strategy Forum 2023 | May 22-24 in Charlotte, NC, USA (Le Méridien Charlotte)

CollabDays Netherlands | June.10.2023 Vianen, Utrecht

365 EduCon - DC | June.12-16 Washington D.C. - USA

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

April 2023 brought some great new offerings to SharePoint and Microsoft 365: Project integration in Viva Goals, Viva Connections: Mobile SharePoint site navigation, improved Graph Connector content results, eDiscovery document version shared, Microsoft Lists: Applied filters, Microsoft Loop: .fluid > .loop, new files experience in Teams, Create pages and news in the SharePoint app bar, and more. We chat with Ben Truelove, Principal Designer at Microsoft focused on Microsoft Lists about recent user interface updates - narrowing in on the new experiences when working with and creating views + what was released this past month: Applied Filters. April showers truly brought May Features.

Click here to view this episode's corresponding blog post.

01:13 Employee engagement

05:54 Conversation with Ben Truelove

18:11 Teamwork

23:05 Related Items

29:41 Teasers

SharePoint | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Ben Truelove | LinkedIn [guest]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Düsseldorf Fair, Germany

Microsoft Build 2023 | May 23-25, 2023. Register now.

The AIIM Conference 2023 | May.25-27.2023 Hyatt Regency, New Orleans

CollabDays Netherlands | June.10.2023 Vianen, Utrecht

365 EduCon - DC | June.12-16 Washington D.C. - USA

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

March 2023 brought both new updates and big announcements. In this episode, we cover: File web part now: “File and Media”, Viva Connections on iPad, Microsoft Edge + Adobe Acrobat PDF Engine, Microsoft Lists + Approvals app in Teams, OneDrive: Favorite/Unfavorite, Suggested files in 1:1 chat, Microsoft Word: Send to Kindle, and more. Plus, we have two guests: 1) Matt McKenzie, Director of Microsoft 365 product marketing, shares insights about the upcoming Microsoft 365 Conference in Vegas (May 2-3), and 2) Sudha Narayanan explains how Microsoft Lists supports approval scenarios natively within info tracking incorporating the Approvals app in Teams. Our related tech segment highlights three big disclosures: 1) Microsoft 365 Copilot, 2) the Loop app (Public Preview), and the New Teams app (Public Preview); #Speed.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

1:46 Conversation with Matt McKenzie

12:09 Employee engagement updates

18:43 Conversation with Sudha Narayanan

33:18 Teamwork updates

37:15 Related tech + Teasers

Matt McKenzie | LinkedIn | Twitter

Sudha Narayanan | LinkedIn

Microsoft 365 Conference (May 2-4, 2023) | Website | Twitter | Register

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Resources:

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Adobe Summit 2023 (Past | keynote and breakout sessions now on-demand)

Microsoft Viva Summit | April.20.2023 Online

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Düsseldorf Fair, Germany

Microsoft Build 2023 | May 23-25, 2023. Register now.

The AIIM Conference 2023 | May.25-27.2023 Hyatt Regency, New Orleans

CollabDays Netherlands | June.10.2023 Vianen, Utrecht

365 EduCon - DC | June.12-16 Washington D.C. - USA

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Viva Topics in Engage doubles the impact and access of your knowledge at your fingertips - and how you pay it forward to others. On today's episode, we hear from Raj Jain (Principal product manager at Microsoft) about all things topical about Viva Topics, specifically - the role of Viva Topics within your Viva Engage community discussions, questions, and announcements posts. The real value gives you a built-in knowledge management system that balances and refines the length of your internal communications without sacrificing the depth you pay forward to each person that reads your comm. Two Viva apps, one great outcome.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

05:35 Conversation with Raj Jain

19:08 Upcoming Events

Raj Jain | (Principal Product Manager - Viva Engage and Answers team) [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Viva Topics | Website | Viva adoption center | @MicrosoftViva

Viva Engage | Website | Viva adoption center | @MicrosoftViva

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Modern Workplace Conference 2023 | March.27-29.2023 Paris, France

Microsoft Secure | March.28.2023 Online

Microsoft Viva Summit | April.20.2023 Online

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Düsseldorf Fair, Germany

Microsoft Build 2023 | May 23-25, 2023. Register now.

The AIIM Conference 2023 | May.25-27.2023 Hyatt Regency, New Orleans

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

In this episode, we cover: Yammer > Engage rebrand, Viva Topics in Viva Engage, Stream Playlists, SharePoint Advanced Management, updated OneDrive Home and Shared, external file requests for SharePoint document libraries, export Microsoft Lists as datasets for Power BI, update to rules email notifications, and more. Plus, we talk with Sesha Mani, Principal group product manager on the SharePoint team focused on admin, security, and compliance. Sesha highlights the value of new SharePoint Advanced Management capabilities when working with proposals, contracts, invoices, and more - to help IT address sprawl and oversharing with a new set of advanced security and content management capabilities - broadly speaking advanced access policies for secure content collaboration AND advanced sites content lifecycle management.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

1:30 Employee Engagement

7:40 Conversation with Sesha Mani

21:10 Teamwork

28:25 Related Technology

Sesha Mani | LinkedIn | Twitter

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

"Microsoft Syntex – SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) Add-on – Announcing General Availability" (blog post)

Learn more about SharePoint Advanced Management (MS Learn)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Modern Workplace Conference 2023 | March.27-29.2023 Paris, France

Culturati | Apr.2-3.2023 Austin, Texas

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

Technorama Belgium - the Jungle Edition | May.15-17 Kinepolis Antwerp

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

CollabDays Italy | May.20.2023 Milan, Italy

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Dusseldorf, Germany

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

You have questions. Viva has answers. On today's episode, we chat with Michael Holste and Steve Nguyen, Microsoft employees who focus on Microsoft Viva Engage and all the goodness it brings - with many exciting announcements disclosed today. You'll learn about things geared toward leadership communications, ways to host and run internal AMAs, and the general notion of getting answers to your questions when using Microsoft Viva, what is referred to as Answers in Viva. Plus, a little future news on Yammer branding… it's a packed episode that will warm the community part of your heart.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

06:10 Conversation with Michael and Steve

37:06 Upcoming Events

Michael Holste | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Steve Nguyen | LinkedIn | Twitter [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Viva Engage | Website | Viva adoption center | @Microsoft365

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

“New Leadership, Analytics, and Knowledge Experiences for Viva Engage are now rolling out” by Michael Holste

Yammer rebrand 2023 (blog)

Insights for Yammer customers (blog)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Microsoft Viva Engage AMA | Feb.23.2023 online at 9am PST

WorkPlaceDudes Summit | Feb.24.2023 Holland

Modern Workplace Conference 2023 | March.27-29.2023 Paris, France

Culturati | Apr.2-3.2023 Austin, Texas

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

Technorama Belgium - the Jungle Edition | May.15-17 Kinepolis Antwerp

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

It's a templates world, from start to finish - if you want to finish on time. In this episode, we first chat with Cathy Dew, senior product manager on the SharePoint team, about the value and design of SharePoint templates, Microsoft 365 templates, Lists templates, and more. We then connect with two of our partners from Pointwork in Copenhagen, Denmark: Peter Larsen, their CTO, and Lars Kristensen, a Principal consultant; we drill down into the real-world use and adoption of templates + governance and hear how they help streamline your business in production.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for transcript of this episode.

06:55 Conversation with Cathy Dew

26:15 Conversation with Pointwork

53:30 Upcoming Events

Cathy Dew (Microsoft - Senior product manager) | LinkedIn | Twitter

Peter Larsen (Pointwork - CTO) | LinkedIn | Twitter

Lars Kristensen (Pointwork - Principal consultant) | LinkedIn | Twitter

Pointwork | Website | LinkedIn | Twitter

SharePoint | Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

Collab365 | Three-hour Microsoft Lists workshop online with Mark Kashman | Feb.8.2023

Reimagine Education | Feb.9.2023 (online)

WorkPlaceDudes Summit | Feb.24.2023 Holland

Modern Workplace Conference 2023 | March.27-29.2023 Paris, France

Culturati | Apr.2-3.2023 Austin, Texas

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

Technorama Belgium - the Jungle Edition | May.15-17 Kinepolis Antwerp

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

CollabDays Italy | May.20.2023 Milan, Italy

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Dusseldorf, Germany

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

In this episode, you’ll hear about all the new features and updates: Microsoft Feed, Planner integration with Viva Goals, extracting PDFs in OneDrive for Android, Microsoft Lists: Calendar week layout, Microsoft Teams @Everyone, Microsoft named a Leader in 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Insight Engines, Stream (Classic) sets to retire: February 15, 2024, and more. Plus, we talk with Bill Bär from the 'content AI' team focused on Search, Syntex, and a whole lot of AI. Bill shares insights into the design and value of Microsoft Feed - a smart aggregate of all sorts of things happening around - content, people, videos, reminders, actionable tasks, and more -- coming to Outlook and the Office mobile apps.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, review transcript of this episode.

Bill Bär | LinkedIn | Twitter

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Learn about Outlook mobile search, aka - Microsoft Feed in Outlook

Deploying Outlook for iOS and Android app config in Exchange

Download your own complimentary copy of the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Insight Engines.

Make Your Goals a Reality with OKRs and New Capabilities from Microsoft Viva Goals

Panel discussion at #ESPC22 w/Jeff Teper & Suzy Dean (AddIn365): https://youtu.be/gmltQ85QM54

Timeline for Stream (Classic) retirement:  https://aka.ms/StreamClassicRetireTimeline

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming 2023 events:

Collab365 | Three-hour Microsoft Lists workshop online with Mark Kashman

Reimagine Education | Feb.9.2023 (online)

WorkPlaceDudes Summit | Feb.24.2023 Holland

Modern Workplace Conference 2023 | March.27-29.2023 Paris, France

Culturati | Apr.2-3.2023 Austin, Texas

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

Technorama Belgium - the Jungle Edition | May.15-17 Kinepolis Antwerp

Power Automate & Power Apps Developer Bootcamp Automation Summit 2023 | May.19-20.2023 London, Paddington

CollabDays Italy | May.20.2023 Milan, Italy

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Dusseldorf, Germany

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

We chat with Jeff Teper to dig into what he calls "Fast Friday" - his use of technology to record his thoughts about what he's up to each week - where he spends time, anecdotes on internal and external meetings, and things he's working on - big and small. Fast Fridays are about capturing thoughts, putting them together, and then getting them out there - and that it's OK to be scrappy, consistent, and engaged versus over-polished and less available. For Jeff, it's all about transparency, communication, and leadership - every week. You'll learn about his approach to leadership, why he creates and publishes his Fast Fridays, and the importance of Microsoft Teams and other tools for communications.  Get ready to grab some Teper tidbits on The Intrazone.

Read this episode's corresponding blog post.

Plus, click here for a transcript of this episode.

Jeff Teper | LinkedIn | Twitter

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming events:

M365 Twin Cities | Jan.21.2023 Brooklyn Park, Minneapolis

Culturati | Apr.2-3.2023 Austin, Texas

Microsoft 365 Conference | May.2-4.2023 Las Vegas, Nevada

CollabDays Poland | May.13.2023 Warsaw, Poland

European Collaboration Summit | May.22-24.2023 Dusseldorf, Germany

European Power Platform Conference | Jun.20-22 Dublin, Ireland

European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 Amsterdam, Netherlands

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Our team spent most of December 2022 refining the cloud, improving it for your return to work – whenever that may be. In this episode, you’ll find details about a load of great new offerings: Microsoft Syntex Pay-as-you-go (Preview), search video transcript for Stream (on SharePoint), SharePoint Apps: Add to teams when enabling an app, OneDrive: Sensitivity labels appear on the sharing dialog, OneDrive sync reports (GA), SharePoint sites search in usage analytics, Microsoft Teams Premium (Preview), Microsoft Whiteboard mobile apps, and more.

Plus, we included audio from my co-host Chris McNulty, Director of product marketing for Syntex and Viva Topics – from his recent keynote segment during the European SharePoint Conference - to provide an update on all things Microsoft Syntex. Happy holidays, and welcome to 2023.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Click here for transcript of this episode.

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Microsoft 365 Setup site (Getting started and deployment guides)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Sink your ears into clip highlights from each of the four Microsoft keynotes from the European SharePoint Conference 2022 (ESPC22 | Copenhagen, Denmark). You'll hear from Jeff Teper covering the approach Microsoft takes in making Microsoft 365 the best productivity offering, from Karuana Gatimu sharing insights about the metaverse in Teams, Scott Hanselman about how many keystrokes you have left, Vesa Juvonen on the continuum of opportunity for developers -- no-to-low-to-pro code. And last, a fun selection of questions and answers from the Microsoft AMA. Tons of insights on Microsoft technology for all roles, plus an audible glimpse on the value of content and community.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Click here for a transcript of this episode. 

European SharePoint Conference Twitter | Instagram | Website

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Scott Hanselman's KeysLeft.com site

Microsoft Graph Developer Proxy

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Upcoming 2023 EU Events from the ESPC event team:

• European Power Platform Conference (EPPC23) | Jun.20-22 Dublin, Ireland
• European SharePoint Conference (ESPC23) | Nov.27-30 Amsterdam, Netherlands

Listen and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts.

Follow the Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

Gobble, gobble - time to gobble up all the updates that landed for SharePoint and related tech on the month of November 2022 - a load of great new offerings: Briefing email enhancements, a new praise compose experience, a new Viva admin experience, SharePoint tenant URL rename (GA), three new SharePoint site templates, updated management for site information, sign language via in Microsoft Teams, Editor using Context IQ in Word, and more. We also pulled audio from Cathy Dew, Senior product manager from the SharePoint team, to give share more behind the design and application of SharePoint site templates. It's a packed edition, minus the tryptophan.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

ESPC22 (Nov.28 - Dec. 1, 2022 | in-person Copenhagen, Denmark, Bella Center)

Microsoft 365 Conference (Dec.6-8.2022 | In-person Las Vegas, NV MGM Grand)

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

On this episode, we hear from Gaia Carini and Katy Erlandson from the OneDrive engineering team. We dig into OneDrive to distinguish the value between the "Add to OneDrive" feature and general sync of team site document libraries - sometimes referred to as "Shared libraries". You’ll hear more about what each capability does, the path forward by design to make it easy for you, plus guidance for today and going forward. The whole of this episode spawned from a Twitter thread request, and we think you'll like this audible response.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Full transcript below.

Gaia Carini (Principal GPM) | Twitter | LinkedIn 

Katy Erlandson (Senior product manager) | LinkedIn

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

OneDrive | Website | Help and learning | @OneDrive | OneDrive community blog | Feedback

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

Resources:

The @RippedOrange tweet thread that started it all: "Sync vs Add Shortcut to OneDrive"

"Add shortcuts to shared folders in OneDrive for work or school" (support article)

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

European SharePoint Conference 2022 (Nov.28 - Dec. 1) Copenhagen, Denmark at the Bella Center

Microsoft 365 Conference (Dec.6-8.2022) Las Vegas, NV

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

TRANSCRIPT

MARK KASHMAN: Welcome to the Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365 Intelligent Intranet. I’m Mark Kashman, Senior Product Manager on the Microsoft 365 marketing team. And on today’s episode, we hear from Gaia Carini, Principal Group Product Manager, and Katy Erlandson, Senior Product Manager, both from the OneDrive engineering team, here to dig in to distinguish the value between Add to OneDrive, the feature, and general sync of Teams Site Document Libraries.

There’s a lot that you can do, and there’s some best practices. And just so you know, document libraries in this case are sometimes referred to as shared libraries, those that you share with your, or in a shared space, effectively outside of your OneDrive, your own personal work OneDrive, but you want to bring in all of those files and folders even if they’re shared.

So you’re going to hear about each of these capabilities, the Add to OneDrive and the common notion of sync, and the path forward—by design—to make it easier for you and pervasive. You’ll hear guidance today and going forward, plus a few favorite tips and tricks—direct from the team—that designs the overall user experience of OneDrive. And the of the whole of this episode kicked off by request from our audience on a unique platform discussion, and we will share that as we kick off the episode with Gaia and Katy. Just a fun way where we heard some great feedback that turned into a great episode.

So I just have a few thoughts to share. When you actually think about the Add to OneDrive feature, it’s really easy. You just locate the folder that you want to add to your OneDrive, select the circle of the Folders tile, so that you can take an action on it, and then select Add Shortcut to My Files—effectively Add to OneDrive at the top of the menu—or you just right-click a folder and select that same notion, Add Shortcut to My Files.

So this is a feature that I use, the Add to OneDrive, for all of the files in this podcast, really forever – for wherever I am in my OneDrive. Most commonly, here at my desk at home, I go into the Windows Explorer, I find the Mark-Microsoft OneDrive icon, I click into the Documents-The Intrazone folder, and there it is, even though this comes from a document library in a SharePoint site that’s connected to a Teams’ team that we use to help manage this podcast. It’s really just a one-or-two-click-away action for me to get to those show notes and the folders, and all of the things we do per each episode across the various Microsoft Teams channel, effectively a folder in a document library.

I have access to all of that. No matter where I look across OneDrive, once I’ve added it to OneDrive, created that shortcut for my common My Files experience, and it takes me to wherever those files are located, without moving them, but it’s a great reference with some real ease of access.

So I do this for the Intrazone, I do it for the Microsoft Lists product management that I help manage here at Microsoft, and of course with various conferences, some of which are managed by other people, which I think is one of the best possible use cases where somebody else is managing files and folders, and I go in and I add those that are most relevant to me, during that event, to my OneDrive, by just clicking on their folders and files and add to my OneDrive.

I have access, so I can do that, and then I will have access, more directly, without having to navigate to that site or that team. It’s just right there in Windows Explorer, same experience, document/name of event, even if it’s managed by somebody else who’s invited me into that team, and then we all work on a variety of files, but then I have access to all of that, with fewer clicks and more in my own domain so I know which files are mine and which files are coming from a shared location.

That’s a little bit of how it works, how I use it. I think the best thing, though, is to get clarity of what we’re really here to answer, which is, how do I distinguish that Add to OneDrive feature with Team Site sync when I’m using OneDrive? And no better people to help answer that than from the product team, so let’s bring in Gaia and Katy to address this and much more.

(Music.)

All right, it is enough of you hearing Chris and I speculating what this OneDrive sync and all the things you can do in this modern era of files experiences everywhere. We are here talking with Gaia and Katy from the OneDrive team, joining us on the Intrazone. Gaia and Katy, welcome.

GAIA CARINI: Thanks, Mark, we’re excited to be here.

MARK KASHMAN: And I’m excited that you’re here. Before we get into the why we’re here, which might be obvious to everybody, but we have a really particular reason that’s kind of a fun reason of the way this episode came about. But if you don’t mind, both of you sharing just a little bit about what you do on the OneDrive team, and of course there – if there’s more that you do here at Microsoft, people would love to know a little bit more about you.

So I thought, Katy, we would start with you.

KATY ERLANDSON: I’m a PM on the OneDrive sync team. I’ve been working primarily on our enterprise features, the last few years, and Add to OneDrive being one of them, so I’m happy to be here today and talk more about that.

MARK KASHMAN: Very nice, and Gaia.

GAIA CARINI: Hi, everyone. I’m Gaia. I am the Group Product Manager of the OneDrive sync team. So my team, including Katy, works on OneDrive for Windows and macOS across consumer and commercial users and scenarios. And yeah, I’ve been working on sync for several years now, and I love being on the OneDrive team, and it’s been really fun.

MARK KASHMAN: What I thought was fun about this episode, I know you both know, but for our audience, you should know that the impetus of this episode truly came from our audience in the broadest way. There was a Twitter discussion that was going on, and the focus of that was "when do I use the Add to OneDrive feature versus sync?"

And of course, you can imagine somebody out there was thinking about who they should pull into this conversation, and we now have Gaia and Katy who are about as close to the source of answering that question, which we will address it in the exact way that you’d imagine, the OneDrive team as the accurate way.

You know, when you first saw that Twitter discussion, there was that twee threat. A. I was really happy that you said yes to joining us on the Intrazone to provide the answer. Is that a common thing that you see people asking, or as they’re trying to navigate some of the feature sets and capabilities of OneDrive?

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, it is a question that we have been getting, and so I was looking forward to us coming here on the Intrazone to talk more about the two different ways to sync files from either shared libraries in SharePoint, or just a folder someone has shared with you in – from their OneDrive, or files from Teams. Since it is a common question, we’re really excited to go more into the differences and what our recommendations are, and what we see the long-term plan to be.

MARK KASHMAN: So where do we start? We come off this thread and we start to stare at – you know, what is a great way to answer that, which I know you both have some nice thoughts around that. I thought Gaia, just to start with you, let’s set some ground foundational elements of, when we talk about sync, maybe at the Teams Site level, you know, what is that, syncing the Teams Site and then answering in that same vein of thought, what is Add to OneDrive.

GAIA CARINI: So first, starting with just OneDrive sync as the app, OneDrive sync lets you access and edit and share files from Windows and macOS, no matter where they are, in your own OneDrive, in someone else’s OneDrive or in a Teams Site, you know, or in – you know, from a channel in Teams, including if you are offline. And to sync the files that are in those shared locations, we have two models that are supported, the sync button and Add to OneDrive.

And so first, I thought I’d just share what are some of the differences between those. So the sync button is something that we’ve had since we started supporting with the new sync client when we were on our journey to replace Groove. We added the sync button and that syncs the folder or library to that specific device.

And so let’s say I’m here on my Windows PC, and I go to, you know, our team, the folder where our team saves all of our specs. I can click the sync button and that will sync it to this PC specifically. But then if I go on my Mac, I won’t see that same folder, and that’s where Add to OneDrive comes in.

Add to OneDrive allows you to add that folder—let’s say in this case a spec folder that’s really important and I go to all the time—to your OneDrive so that it’s easy to find, no matter which device you’re on. And it’ll start syncing, you know, on that device where you added it to your OneDrive but across all your devices too.

So now, if I go back to my Mac, I’ll see that same folder also being synced, but I’ll also see it on my mobile device, through the OneDrive mobile app, or on Teams if I go navigate my OneDrive files through Teams, and on the web and in Office. And so it just allows you to easily find your files in those shared locations.

MARK KASHMAN: So I’ve used the Add to OneDrive feature, and I – I’ve done it four or five times, consistently, with – the right use case—at least for me—is when I go into my Windows machine, any Windows machine and I get into my OneDrive, and I see those shared folders that I’ve added to my OneDrive. It’s the quickest way for me to get to them, and it also is the kind of spaces that I work in, pretty much throughout the year.

I have one Add to OneDrive for my next-gen events site, so any event that I work on, I can get into the folder of the individual event, see the sessions, PowerPoints, any videos, and you know, some of the pre-material that we have for people to use for like graphics to tweet out, and stuff like that.

And I also have another one that I use for Microsoft Lists, with the Lists team. It’s a place where we create a lot of different outbound presentations. We also manage, you know, the different feature sets that are upcoming, but from a content and document perspective, I just go into my Windows Explorer, click on OneDrive and then go right into the name of that team, which is either Microsoft Lists or Next-gen Events, and it’s just right there, and it’s – it’s really easy to navigate.

I know it’s there, and it just – like you said, it doesn’t matter which machine I’m on, so I really do love that feature, and I think it’s really important for people to understand how to leverage that in the different scenarios, which I thought, Katy, if we could get some of that insight from you, you know, whether you’re thinking about sync or Add to OneDrive, or what we know, kind of into the future, what we’ll get to, is what do you recommend and why, when – when you think about different ways that you would guide people to use the technology.

KATY ERLANDSON: Yeah, so we definitely recommend Add to OneDrive. It is a newer, shiny feature. From Team Site sync, as Gaia mentioned, it’s kind of a more holistic OneDrive experience, so you’re not just getting it on whichever device you chose to sync it on, but you’re getting that content across all of your devices. And it’s also more – more performant. I’m not sure how many people realize this, but with Team Site sync, we’re actually also syncing all of the metadata for the whole library, even if you go and you only sync at the subfolder level, like in Gaia’s case in the spec folder.

In Add to OneDrive, if you go and you add the shortcut right at the spec folder level, then we’re only syncing that content. So for really, really big document libraries, this can actually be a pretty big gamechanger.

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, to add to what Katy was saying, with Add to OneDrive, we’ve also made several improvements to the experience where, for example, if you decide, you know, you’re done with a certain project and you no longer need that folder, and so you remove the shortcut from your OneDrive, we’ll go and clean that up from the device, which I know is feedback we get from the sync button experience.

So we’ve made improvements like that to the experience. We also have a group policy that allows removing the shortcut content if users no longer have access, for example, to the content. So we’ve been continuing to improve on the experience, based on feedback, in addition to all of the advantages Katy mentioned.

MARK KASHMAN: Maybe, Kattie, back to you, you – you know, thoughts around guidance. If I’m IT, and I’m thinking Microsoft is describing, you know, these different ways that I can configure for my employees, my end user, what would be some of the things that we might guide them to consider—if not even pass along—to their end user?

KATY ERLANDSON: If you know that no one in your company right now is using Teams Site sync, we recommend just guiding everybody to only using Add to OneDrive. In our documentation there is a script where you can actually turn off the sync button for your whole site, and so if you know that – that no one in your – in your organization is using Teams Site sync, I would just go ahead and turn that off now and start taking advantage of – of all the things that Add to OneDrive has to offer.

If you are in a mixed state, I would definitely stay tuned for our guidance here. We will be migrating users off of Teams Site sync and into – on to Add to OneDrive, eventually, but first, we really want to make sure that we’re addressing feedback and that we can make sure that the migration will be seamless. So definitely stay tuned here but know that that’s where we’re heading.

MARK KASHMAN: So one thing that I’ve been just curious about, hearing you talk about the administrative capability to turn off the sync button in the Teams Site, from the Teams Site level, does that same sync button disappearing experience actually happen also in Microsoft Teams? If I’m in the Files tab, which effectively is that shame – same connected SharePoint document library, does the sync button also disappear in Teams?

KATY ERLANDSON: Yeah, so it will also go away in Teams. It’s the setting that removes the button for the whole tenant, so – so yeah, Teams will be included in that.

GAIA CARINI: But the Add shortcut to OneDrive option that we’ve been talking about is already available in Teams, and so if you go to the Files tab and there is – you know, in the general channel—or whichever channel—a folder that you want to make sure you’re syncing, you can still use the Add shortcut to OneDrive button from Teams.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, that’s great, because I think a lot of people kind of ask a broader question, you know, when I’m working in SharePoint versus working in Teams, files being the – what they’re talking about. It’s that – sometimes that delta of experience.

I know the team is broadly working on, you know, having the capabilities be the same, and I think from a sync perspective it’s really important that, if you—from an admin perspective—chose to remove the sync button, by guidance of, you know, using the Add to OneDrive more, as we go into the future, I think a lot of that is kind of comfort food for admins to go, "Okay, I changed it once and that will be adhered to these different entry points that people might be making those choices," which kind of leads me into where I at least wanted to pick your brain.

The Twitter topic was more around what we’ve been talking about, the sync and Add to OneDrive, how they work together and maybe, you know, a little bit more guidance on what – what to use, when. If we were to step back and just ask the OneDrive team, whether it’s a sync question or broader than that, what is the long-term plan? You know, where would you tell people the – the direction that we’re going, either in this space or even broader than that?

Gaia, I would start with you.

GAIA CARINI: As Katy mentioned, the long-term plan is to really use the Add shortcut to OneDrive, or Add to OneDrive functionality, to allow users to sync their files across all devices and access them really easily, no matter where they are. As part of that, we have been talking to a lot of customers, and we have heard feedback on some of the gaps in the experiences, or some of the – you know, just feedback from users interacting with Add to One Drive and comparing it to this – the way the sync button syncs files.

And so we were really focused on really understanding all of that feedback and addressing that. We also, in addition to that, need to work on making the migration from the sync button synced content to Add to OneDrive really seamless, both on Windows and Mac, and so that’s another thing that we’ve been looking at and planning.

Eventually, the goal is to fully replace the sync button, and so stay tuned for more information and timelines on that. We don’t have timelines on it right now. Again, the – the current focus is really addressing the feedback so we can really make the Add to OneDrive experience the best possible one for users across different scenarios.

MARK KASHMAN: Anything from a – a robust service like OneDrive, especially one that’s been in use at scale, managing our customers, especially – you know, for giving IT the tools that they need, and obviously the awareness change management of what’s coming or best practices and guidance, I – I certainly think that’s a great investment area.

I know, you know, knowing a lot of change, and if it affects our customers negatively because it’s a bigger impact or something that they didn’t see coming, and this one sounds like it’s a perfect way to both blend getting users to think about doing things a little bit differently and that impact not being something that is unmanageable by IT when we make that change.

So Katy, you know, there’s probably a lot of feedback that’s coming in. What would you say is the number one or top piece of feedback that we’re actually working to address?

KATY ERLANDSON: The thing that we hear the most, probably, is this concept of, like confusion around me versus we. With Teams Sites, we kind of said, "Okay, if it’s in your OneDrive node, you can think of it as your personal stuff; if it’s in your Teams Sites node, you can think of it as shared content, but then users can still share from their OneDrive and then it’s – there’s a mix of shared content there.

And now, by adding shortcuts into OneDrive, it just adds a little bit more to that confusion, and so our primary focus is to clear that up. It becomes the most problematic around deletes. So if somebody deletes a file that they think is in their OneDrive, and it’s just for them, and then that delete is propagated, and then now that’s deleted for everybody, and then they don’t find out about it until somebody else needs to work on it, and then it’s missing.

So that’s our top priority. We want to make sure that deletes are super clear. It’s clear when it’s being deleted for just you or it’s being deleted for everyone, and we want users to confirm that before they actually do send that delete out to everybody.

So that’s number one. We kind of had this same feedback with Teams Site sync also. It’s not really a new problem to add to OneDrive, but it is definitely still there.

MARK KASHMAN: It sounds like, to me, you’re going to be increasing—in a positive way—the use and value of the recycle bin and the awareness of "before you throw it away …" and of course, always the awareness of "if it’s been thrown away …" you know, the recovery and – and the value there, the value for OneDrive if it’s your own set of files, and certainly value if it’s a shared set of files.

And it’s interesting, the me/we space, I’ve heard both internally working with MVPs, hearing how they discuss it, and I think the way you’re describing it, Katy, a lot of it is the – how does the technology work, and what are the things that, you know, are blocking people from either understanding it or, if they’re using it, and they hit some of these—especially like a delete scenario—how to make it so that they do delete something effectively, or if they delete it and they’re aware before they maybe accidentally do it.

KATY ERLANDSON: Exactly. We want to make sure that we can prevent it if it’s not what they meant to do, and when accidents do happen, we also want to invest in making that recovery be easier.

MARK KASHMAN: Gaia, did you have a thought?

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, I think you both are spot on. On the me versus we topic, I think some of the things we’re looking at is really how to surface the fact that the shortcut is from a shared location in File Explorer and Finder. You know, whether that’s through the icons we use, or even where the shortcut goes by default.

And so we’re exploring different potential paths there, but we know it’s definitely a common theme across a lot of customers we’ve talked to, and so it’s really top of mind for our team.

MARK KASHMAN: Do you have – because you work on OneDrive, you most likely use it as much as I do, on a daily basis – you know, if people listening to this, if there was something that’s either a recent innovation or something that people, you know, might be just one or two clicks in, and they should know about it, or if it’s staring them in the face and – you know, we just want to increase, we know how many times people are using it. Is there any recent or relevant tip or trick of using OneDrive, of just something that you actually use, each and every day, and – and really enjoy?

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, I can start. I have the exciting announcement, as of yesterday. We reached 100% on our file backup, also known as Known Folder Move, for macOS. This feature is something I use every day, across both my Windows PC and my Mac, basically to ensure that all my files on my desktop and my documents folder are in OneDrive, and I can access them across devices, from my phone, if I’m out.

And so it’s something we’ve had on Windows for a long time, and we used – we’re really focused on continuing to improve that experience as well. And yeah, as of yesterday, we got to 100% in production on macOS, and it’s been something that our team has been working on for a while, and really excited about that.

MARK KASHMAN: Well, congratulations. KFM on Mac is not a small feature to – to build and deliver. Now, it’s up to our customers to actually take advantage of it.

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, so we’re really looking forward to the feedback on that.

MARK KASHMAN: That’s great. Katy, any particular feature or capability that you love about OneDrive, that you use?

KATY ERLANDSON: I think mine also has to be KFM. It’s not something that I think about appreciating every day, but just the fact that I don’t have to worry about what files are where, on what device. I mean, I’m constantly working on multiple devices every day. I have three going, most days.

So the fact that they’re all in sync with where my files are, I know that, you know, I can find a certain spec on my desktop, every time. It’s easy, I like it.

MARK KASHMAN: You both keep saying this word, spec. And I’m thinking, maybe we can put all of your specs in your OneDrive for Consumer, and we can share that folder so that the world can sync all of your specs. Do you think that’s a good idea?

KATY ERLANDSON: Probably not.

GAIA CARINI: I do have every single file I own—both in my personal life and in my work life—in my OneDrive. Now, of course, whether that’s in my personal account or my work account is really important, but yeah, I wouldn’t be able to function at all without my OneDrive.

Since you told us to go beyond just sync, I’ll tell you one of my other favorite features I use a ton, especially even both at work and outside of work. I love using the PDF signing feature from the mobile app. I feel like that’s something that not everyone might know about, but it’s so, so useful, so you don’t have to print something out and sign it.

For folks listening, if you haven’t checked that out, you definitely should.

KATY ERLANDSON: And the PDF scan. I think that’s my favorite one –

GAIA CARINI: Yeah.

KATY ERLANDSON: My favorite non-sync feature would be the PDF scan.

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, totally, the PDF scan and then sign, both, whether you’re using them together or separate, yeah, for sure.

MARK KASHMAN: That’s awesome, I – I think I’m mentioning the same feature. I was just going to say, real quickly, my favorite features is on the OneDrive mobile, and it’s when using the expense tool. Sometimes you have a receipt that requires it to be in the system, and I use OneDrive religiously because I typically create a folder for each event that I attend, or each travel, and so I collect my PowerPoints and my videos, and all the – kind of the marketing stuff, but then, inevitably, I have a meal out, and I’ve got my – my folio from the hotel and all those things.

And I immediately as soon – much sooner than later, I will go into OneDrive, navigate through, sometimes through my Add to OneDrive for these next-gen events folder, and I go to the folder of the event, and then I just save it, and you know, I do a – basically a scan, a document scan of the receipt, and it’s very easy to give it a name, put it in the right folder, and then I’m ready to put it in the expense tool when I return.

And it does a great job of cropping the receipt, no matter form the – the receipt is in, and it just puts it – you know, again, kind of in the most compliant space for me, OneDrive, and then is very then easy to upload into that expense tool for each expense report.

So thank you for – for building off of Office Lens, but I think taking it to a level of real usability. It’s very easy.

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, I agree, the Clutch feature. We don’t thank the mobile team enough for that one.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, I mean, honestly, whoever did the Office Lens integration did such a nice job because what you described, around PDF markup, the inking capabilities, you know, that’s next level. If you haven’t ever done that, it really is – there’s a lot that you can accomplish, and it’s not a hard-to-use feature. It’s really friendly.

Well, thank you for giving us a lot to think about, and to kind of answer this Twitter question in a really nice long form to learn about it and more, especially, you know, kind of the – to get your head on where the team is going, and you know, the best ways to navigate through from an IT perspective, for the benefit of end users. I know that you always – you and your teammates always have the customer in mind for the experience, but also for change management. It’s very, very – very important.

So thank you both for hopping off of Twitter and coming to the Intrazone.

GAIA CARINI: Yeah, thanks for having us.

KATY ERLANDSON: Yeah, thanks so much.

(Music.)

MARK KASHMAN: Now you know the difference of using the feature Add to OneDrive, what it does, bringing your shared libraries closer to home within your OneDrive domain, easy access, and how it balances the ways that you might adjust, syncing directly from a Teams Site or directly from a Teams’ team. Just Add to OneDrive and then you can get all the sync goodness and more.

Always great to hear directly from the product team, and of course, it’s based on that feedback that you’ve got that I want some clarity on how these things work and what they are. So I really appreciate having Gaia and Katy come in and share all of that insight, plus the insights into how they designed the product, going forward, which I think brings a lot of value—I hope—to you, in your use of OneDrive, going forward.

So let’s talk about events. I really just have two events and then a little tickler about what I know about is coming in 2023, without some specific dates. But to round out the year, next up, very soon, at the end of November, is the European SharePoint Conference. This is from November 28th to December 1st, in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the Bella Center. There’s going to be four Microsoft keynotes, one with Jeff Teper, another with Scott Hanselman. Karuana Gatimu will have a keynote, and then there will be a developer keynote with Vesa Juvonen.

Of course, there are breakout sessions with Microsoft, Microsoft MVPs and community leads. There’s "Ask the Experts," which is a really great one-to-one/one-to-few, just individual chat, "I have a question … here’s an answer … or here’s some feedback, please listen." Those are always great, and I will be doing three of those, and I know my peers across Microsoft and a lot of our MVPs are taking that time to support the ATEs as well.

And at the European SharePoint Conference there’s a really fun "Ask Microsoft Anything," with all of the Microsoft speakers in attendance to answer questions with a SharePoint Connect. This is a nice evening event, sponsored by Microsoft, and we’re really pleased and privileged to be in Copenhagen to represent our teams, but also to be a part of the community, engaging in Copenhagen.

Literally the next week, in Las Vegas, is the Microsoft 365 Conference. This is from December 6th through the 8th, again, in Vegas. It’s co-located with a couple of events, so you’ll see a few other events in the same exact location at the MGM Hotel. There are a number of Microsoft keynotes.

You’ll first hear from Scott Guthrie, followed by Jeff Teper. You can imagine the value there, with some of the broader leadership across those broad product portfolios of Azure and Microsoft 365. And similar to a lot of great events, it’ll dive into then a lot of breakout sessions, workshops, differing ways to engage. There are of course booths and expo halls, and all of that, to get up to speed with what partners offer, and just a lot of time to network, across both these events.

Whether you’re in Denmark, whether you’re in Nevada, you have really, really nice back-to-back offerings, and the Microsoft 365 Conference is always a really nice event to plug into and get the depth of knowledge you need, and to get answers and provide feedback so that you can have that nice two-way engagement of the community.

So a little teaser ahead into 2023. These aren’t really solid dates, but I know that the 365 Educon team has a number of events in 2023, in Washington, DC, in Seattle, in Chicago. There’s the European Collaboration Summit. There’s of course different events from the Microsoft 365 Conference team, focused on events on the Power Platform. There will be unique moments for things like Viva and Syntex, and of course, expect some of the larger first-party events that Microsoft put son, like Build, Inspire and Ignite, which has already got the data on it.

If you’re interested in Ignite, that’s November 15th through the 16th, 2023, which feels like a long time from now, but I can already feel that some of the engines internally are warming up into what does that event look like.

So 2023 is certainly going to be a great year for events. It’s something that we, in the broad teams that I represent here, just in referencing, very much look forward to, in plugging in, to round up 2022 with ESPC22, and Microsoft 365 Conference, and then gearing up to have a great 2023, of which of course, Chris and I will always keep you informed on every episode with ones that are upcoming.

(Music.)

We want to thank our guests, Gaia and Katy, for being on the show, and for giving us insights about the value and future of Add to OneDrive. So if you haven’t ever added to OneDrive, this episode is the encouragement that you needed. It’s a really great feature, and we really appreciate having Gaia and Katy on to explain it, and to also give guidance and a little bit of a look ahead.

We encourage you to check out our show page for the links to all of what was discussed today, and more. You can go to aka.ms/theintrazone, and send us your questions, send us your feedback, whether it’s to the SharePoint team, or the OneDrive team, or pretty much anybody here at Microsoft. I’ll navigate to what it is that you’re looking for, as best as I can.

Just email us at theintrazone@microsoft.com, or find us on Twitter @sharepoint, @onedrive and @mkashman with a K. Remember to rate, review and tell all your friends about the show. This really is the way that we hope to get the word even more broad, to anyone that you know, that you work with, friends, peers, partners, customers that would benefit from the knowledge that we aim to share through this show. We hope that you can encourage other people to follow, and of course, you can get this show where you get your other favorite tech podcasts.

Thank you so much for listening. I’m your host, Mark Kashman. This has been The Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365, add to cart, Intelligent Intranet.

END

To the echoes of ghostly gasps and looming, deadly fog - the spirit of Halloween cast an eerie shadow this past month. No need to fear. October 2022 brought some great new, welcome offerings: Viva Engage GA, Viva Insights: Focus mode in Teams, Stream (on SharePoint) GA, Excel Live in Teams, OneDrive: Folder backup for macOS, conditional access improvement for Lists for Android, Office app becoming Microsoft 365 app, and more. You’ll hear more about Viva Engage and Yammer Storylines that both hit general availability. We also pulled audio from Marc Mroz, Principal product manager from the Stream team, to give you a sense of how video in the flow of work evolved as Stream (on SharePoint) hit general availability this past month. It's a treat full-of-new-tricks Halloween edition.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Marc Mroz | Twitter | LinkedIn

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Learn more about Viva Engage

Learn more about Stream (on SharePoint)

"Microsoft Ignite 2022 guide to Viva, Syntex, SharePoint, OneDrive, Lists, Stream, Project and more" - updated with on-demand video content links, new section with 25+ links to relevant announcements blogs, and more.

"5 hidden gems from Microsoft Ignite 2022" - new Kashbox article about a few hidden gems from Ignite.

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

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Time to turn the crank on your Syntex knowledge - now an elevated brand and loads of new innovation. Every workday, Microsoft customers add 1.6 billion documents to Microsoft 365. That content is essential to your organization -- carrying knowledge, decisions, and transactions that are vital to the flow of work. Microsoft Syntex, announced this week at Microsoft Ignite 2022, brings the power of content management and AI together to transform the way we work. We chat with Ian Story, Principal GPM on the Syntex product team and Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Founder of analyst firm, Deep Analysis, and learn the behind the scenes of this exciting new "Content AI" category and solution.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Full transcript below and if you click here. 

Social and Info Links:

Ian Story (Principal group product manager - Syntex) Twitter | LinkedIn

Analyst | Alan Pelz-Sharpe (Founder | Deep Analysis) Twitter | LinkedIn | Website

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

Microsoft Syntex | Website | Get started today | Resources |

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Resources:

Microsoft Ignite 2022 announcement blog, "Welcome to Microsoft Syntex – Content AI integrated in the flow of work"

New Microsoft Mechanics episode: "Introducing Microsoft Syntex | Content AI" with Omar Shahine, CVP - Product management, Microsoft, and Jeremy Chapman, Director, Microsoft product marketing

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Microsoft Tech Community Home

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Upcoming Events:

Microsoft Ignite (Oct.12-14, 2022; virtual + SCC + six regional "spotlights")

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South Coast Summit (Oct.14-15, 2022; Ageas Bowl, Southampton, UK)

CollabDays New England (Oct.22 in-person Burlington, MA at the Microsoft MTC)

ESPC22 (Nov.28 - Dec. 1, 2022 | in-person Copenhagen, Denmark)

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

TRANSCRIPT

MARK KASHMAN: Welcome to the interzone, a show about the Microsoft 365 Intelligent Intranet. I’m Mark Kashman here with my cohost, Chris, who is exhaling with all the news that’s out there, McNulty.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Well, thanks, Mark. Today, we’ll hear from Ian Story, who is the Principal Group Product Manager at mm, and Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Founder and Principal of the Analyst Firm, Deep Analysis. And I’ll be interviewing myself, Chris McNulty.

MARK KASHMAN: And you’ve got a mirror, right? So that during this you can be both guest, subject matter expert and cohost.

CHRIS MCNULTY: For my day job, I am Director of Product Marketing for the Next-Gen Content Services Team, here at Microsoft, and so that’s a fairly broad range of capabilities that includes OneDrive and SharePoint and Stream, and some parts of our newer technologies, Viva, and of course, what we’re doing with Syntex. So I’m kind of playing a dual role today.

MARK KASHMAN: I like it, I like asking you questions, Chris.

CHRIS MCNULTY: But today, we are going to be digging into the wonderful world of content, the artist formerly known as ECM, or Content Services, what’s going on in the industry as a whole, what we’re observing from our customers, and how Microsoft is proposing a whole set of solutions to help you address the challenges that you may face with content in your organization, using cloud, using AI and using processing.

MARK KASHMAN: Yes, and the answer to all of your challenges, the thing that you’re going to hear more about today is, what is new for Syntex. We’re going to get insights of what’s most valuable for customers. We’re going to get a breakdown in the direction and the goals of the products, two of the human-managed content, at scale, with a little help from AI.

CHRIS MCNULTY: You know, if you jump back in time, not super far, but a few years back, we launched a research project, looking for ways that we could add more value to what at the time was still usually referred to as Office 365, and we recognize that the ways that people interact with content and knowledge were a gap. And so we launched a long-term research and engineering project to innovate in those spaces, and that project was – essentially had two main threads, one of which was released last year as the first module of Microsoft Viva, Viva Topics, helping you discover knowledge in your organization.

But we recognized that there was still a lot more that we could be, and should be, doing for those core content experiences, which has led us to incubate a number of capabilities for Syntex, and then today, at Ignite, to unveil the next stage, which for us is Microsoft Syntex.

MARK KASHMAN: You know, one way to think about it, certainly for our audience, with SharePoint in their history and their DNA, it is the pie, you know, the chart of what SharePoint is, when you get the SharePoint server and you deploy it, and you deploy it for X, Y and Z. There are six main components. One of them, like you mentioned earlier, was enterprise content management, and if I literally went around the wheel of the pie, we could see that what used to be SharePoint Social grew up and became what is now managed and owned by Yammer, that social aspect of community. Search went to Microsoft Search. BI investments went to Power BI, and on and on, around the corner, but Content Management, ECM, always had its foothold in SharePoint, and it still does, but it really now is manifesting in SharePoint Syntex, now Microsoft Syntex, just like you said.

So it really is a huge investment, a huge evolution, but also to address everything that people were doing or trying to do with ECM, but now in this modern era, to be able to do it at scale, and to do it with less of the tactical work and doing more of the – the business value that the people can own.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah, scale is really one of the things that we’re mindful of. And so one of the signals that we’ve looked at, looking at some of the analyst research is that the world is on track to have 130 billion terabytes of unstructured files and videos and documents, and all the rest, in just 3 years. And to kind of tear that down into just the Microsoft side of that, every day, on average, our customers add 1.6 billion new documents to M365, and then tomorrow, we wake up and we do another billion-six. And that kind of scale, even inside of a single organization, is just mind-boggling.

When we think about some of the innovations that we brought to market, and our colleagues have brought to market, around automation, certainly, the Power Platform is a great way to have a structured process around data and experience and reporting, and it’s really powerful, but when it comes back to the content that people use, you know, to capture – I don’t know, notes about a podcast or recordings or decisions or contracts or proposals, all of these things are the lifeblood of organizations, and they flow in and out of an organization with people who live outside. If there is one automation tool people are using to try to make sense of it, it might be Outlook, but fundamentally, it’s just too much for people to keep track of.

MARK KASHMAN: And I heard one of our colleagues, Karuana, in a pre-Ignite call, literally just describe her inbox as she’s got her hands thrown up for the next week or two, but if it were in a more structured way, or just in a way that wasn’t such a disconnected-type information sharing, if it was a little bit more structured for her and teams, and take that to the next level for the things that really need to be archived and distributed and shared in the right way, with the right automated process behind it, I can hear, even in her voice – you know, to do that in something like Outlook would – it is and would be a nightmare for a lot of people, especially at the scale that you just described.

And knowing some of our tools that help automate, obviously the AI behind it, I know one other important component which you’ve been driving from a partner program perspective, but with this evolution to Microsoft Syntex, and all of the tendrils that kind of make the art of the possible even more possible, how would you describe the ecosystem in this era of Syntex?

CHRIS MCNULTY: I think it’s waking up. You know, I don’t want to rob too much from things I expect we’re going to talk to Alan about, because we’ve done some prep work with him as well, but it’s been a very interesting time. Like things have been relatively quiet for a number of years, and we’ve seen kind of a huge growth rate pop in content management across the cloud. And a lot of that growth is happening beyond that core set of services for content sharing and collaboration in – well, business processes, in search, in areas like e-signature, which is one of the things that we’re readying for Syntex.

And one of our hypotheses is that we have all of this cloud power that’s out there, and content management sits sort of right next to both business process and productivity. And at its worst, what people used to describe ECM as, ECM is the most expensive place to put documents that nobody ever looks at ever again. So you can build all the workflows you’d like, but it’s not meaningful, unless you keep a human element in it.

And so how do we take all of this scale and all of this power, and frankly, all of this AI, and make it accessible to people through the apps they use every day? You know, one of the things that we took forward from Microsoft Viva is the importance of not taking a rip-and-replace approach to the platform, of not standing up something that is completely brand new with a whole new set of experiences, which is why Viva is based on and delivered through Teams and the rest of M365.

And we take a similar approach. It definitely has a strong heritage, coming from SharePoint, for how it interacts with content, but making sure that we have rich experiences that you can get to, through Word, through Outlook, and through the rest of the apps that you use every day in M365.

MARK KASHMAN: And that’s important because, first, with the IT hat who might be reviewing "how do I put this in place … what does it run on … are there any security measures I need to be aware of that are new, that aren’t what I’m used to with SharePoint, Exchange and of course Teams," you know, as a frontend and a backend to a lot of that. So if I – if I take on a – you know, the CISO and ITDMs, look at it, and go, "Look this is a – a benefit to the investments we’ve already made," over time – a lot of our content is already in the right place. It’s just going to get better tagged, maybe even better used because of that tagging and the exposure through some of the discovery mechanisms, or the investments that are coming for Search.

So if I take off the IT hat, I know there’s another component, you know, so that people just start to wrap their heads around "what is Syntex … how do I get it … what do I need to do and what value does it bring to me?" Can you shine a little light on the commercial model that probably is evolving, but I think, if anybody on this – audience, just assume that it’s new to them, what – what does that commercial model look like for Mic – Microsoft Syntax?

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah, so one of the things you’ll hear us talking about, increasingly, as we roll out new capabilities, is the pay-as-you-go model. We’re mindful that there are core capabilities in Syntex, tagging documents, building new ones, electronic signature, summarization, translation, all the rest. There are some people who are hardcore content consumers and generators who need to use those capabilities every day, but for every one of then, there’s 10, 20 or 50 people in the organization who might need to do that once a month, or once a year.

And so, increasingly, we’re shifting to a pay-as-you-go model. So all of those services and capabilities can be distributed, as I mentioned, without buying and extra seat license for anyone who might need them. All we are focused on is who are our Microsoft 365 commercial users, and then allowing those services to be available on a pay-as-you-go basis, so just as couple of cents per page to tag a document, or to get it translated, providing much more flexibility in how people get access to them and making sure that you’re not paying for things that you don’t need and don’t use.

MARK KASHMAN: I think that’s going to resonate really well, both with how the technology works – like that just makes sense when you describe it, but also in that consumption space. You know, when people see the value and they do use it, that will be the cost, and if people aren’t using it, then the cost isn’t going to be something that just is almost like unused, the lease that you’ve never used to drive the car. It’s when you drive the car that those costs will – will come through, for good reason.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Well, there’s a lot that I can say about this, but there’s plenty of other people far more knowledgeable than me who can talk about our vision in this space.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, so before we jump into today’s discussion with Ian and Alan, we did want to pause and play an audio clip of Jeff Teper, who is President of Collaborative Apps and Platforms at Microsoft, which under his team includes Syntex. And from his Syntex breakout session from the Microsoft Ignite 2022 show, this audio clip gives a really nice framing to, what is Microsoft Syntex and why Microsoft went this way.

AUDIO CLIP/JEFF TEPER: Hello, everyone, we’re thrilled to be here with you today to share our new innovations that put people at the center with content seamlessly integrated into collaboration and workflows. My name’s Jeff Teper, and I’m the President of Collaborative Apps and Platforms at Microsoft, and I’m joining you here today from Microsoft Studios.

The amount of content created for collaboration in business processes is growing dramatically, and we’re honored that so many of you have chosen the Microsoft Cloud as your foundation for content collaboration. You’re creating over 1.6 billion new documents in Microsoft 365, every day. That’s over 10 times versus just 5 years ago. And this growth will continue with increased internal and external collaboration and the digitization of work in the cloud.

By industry estimates, we’ll have over 130 billion terabytes of unstructured content by 2025, and organizations are already spending over $46 billion a year to store and manage that content, but all too often, critical information remains locked up in disconnected silos, or even stored as paper in warehouses. This scale creates real challenges and exciting opportunities for a better solution, one that builds on your existing investments but brings a breakthrough from new technologies, augmenting the lifecycle of content management so people can be more effective, and organizations can drive their transformations with more agility at lower costs.

What’s needed is a novel approach to enhance, connect, manage and build your content at scale. We call this emerging area, content AI. To harness the power of content AI, we’re very excited today to introduce Microsoft Syntex. It’s a comprehensive new set of capabilities that bring content AI into the flow of work.

CHRIS MCNULTY: So it’s always great to hear Jeff outline the whats and whys of any technology, and I’m personally especially excited to hear him frame Microsoft Syntex for us today. We hope that helps land the discussion now, as we get ready to bring Ian and Alan onto the Intrazone.

MARK KASHMAN: And you Chris, we’re bringing you on the Intrazone.

(Music.)

MARK KASHMAN: So you got a little teaser of what is this thing we call Syntex, but to dive under the covers, both inside Microsoft, outbound today through the Intrazone, and a nice analyst perspective from outside of Microsoft to really see and give a sense of what does the industry expect, and what is this thing that’s called Syntex? From a different point of view, I want to bring onto the show, Ian Story, who is a Principal Group Product Manager here at Microsoft, focused on a lot of what we’re doing around enterprise content management, content services, content AI, and now in the form of Syntex Outbound.

And analyst, Alan Pelz-Sharpe, who is the Founder of Deep Analysis, but also an industry expert in all of those same categories. So Alan, Ian, and of course, Chris, welcome to the Intrazone.

IAN STORY: Thanks, Mark, it’s great to be here.

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Excellent, yeah, I’m looking forward to the discussion.

MARK KASHMAN: So maybe we’ll start with Ian, just for the nature of – you know, let’s start with Microsoft and we’ll move out. Ian, can you just give us the 101 of what you do here at Microsoft and the perspective of, you know, this evolution of content AI?

IAN STORY: Thanks, Mark, as you noted, I lead the product team for Syntex, and I’ve been with the company for a little more than six years. Day to day, we are building the product. You know, I’ve been working on Syntex for a couple of years now, and you know, to the earlier capabilities in and around SharePoint, to now growing it to really be Microsoft Syntex and all the capabilities therein. So lots of exciting things in the space, and being a former customer myself, and having worked in this industry for over 20 years, I’m very excited about it, and every customer and partner, and even Microsoft person that we chat about Syntex with, seems to really start to see how this is going to change a lot of what folks have traditionally thought of as document management – I’ll throw a different one at you there, enterprise content management, content services, now content AI. So we’re very excited about it.

MARK KASHMAN: I’m very happy for you and your team to be at this moment in time. The milestone is – is a big one and I’m really excited to hear what you have to share today. Alan, before we go too much further, do – can we get a deep analysis of who Alan is, and give a sense of, you know, your take kind of at the – at the ongoing and now current bump of evolution for Syntex?

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Yeah, indeed, I am an industry analyst, and I’ve been covering the – the news that’s in document management there, so I’ll use it, this sort of space, the technologies, the practices for over 20 years. And Deep Analysis, I founded the company, coming up six years ago, and that’s what me and my colleagues focus on, so it’s the one thing we sort of like to think we really do know what we’re talking about.

The thing is, when we founded Deep Analysis, it seemed like nothing had changed in the industry for the best part of 20 years. It was certainly not exciting, that’s to be for sure, but a lot happened in a short period of time. I mean, you’ve got cloud mobility, you know, sort of easy access to AI, and people like Amazon and Google and yourselves, suddenly coming along and releasing modules that developers could get their hands on, which was, you know, a real first.

Alongside that, a ton of VC money flooded into the market, so it’s never been so vibrant, frankly – I mean, it really hasn’t been this vibrant for over 20 years, so there’s an understanding that we can’t carry on the way we’ve been going. Some of our clients have – I’m not exaggerating here – I mean, they have tens of billions of files they’ve accumulated. They don’t know what they’ve got. They don’t know what to do with it, and people are always looking to automate, to make things more efficient, more effective, and documents are – are often the stumbling block. They seem to be the hardest thing to sort out, and so – you know, Syntex has come along at a time where there’s a lot of interest, not just within Microsoft but outside of it, and a real need in the buyer community to – to start tackling these tough problems, frankly.

So yeah, it’s good timing for Syntex, and I think the next four or five years, Syntex and – you know, some of the startups will do very, very well, and my hope is, more importantly, that we finally stop sorting documents out, you know, start to understand what it is we’ve got and make better use of this, instead of just piling them up in – in another repository and then move them to cheap storage, so that’s the goal. That’s the hope.

MARK KASHMAN: My hope through this conversation is to – to take it on that same journey. You know, there was this category of document management, content management, and adding in the – the benefits now to customers who are doing things at scale or – or possibly even coming to you, Alan, and saying, "We are under water because of the sheer volume that we have, ether because the repositories that we’re now combining are moving to the cloud. We’re exposing a lot of things that we kind of forgot about, but we need to categorize and better be able to find and use and repurpose."

Before we get too deep into, you know, the benefits and some of the news of the day, as far as we’re now at Ignite, we’ve exposed a lot of new – of new disclosures and information, Ian, can I get from you the kind of primer, 101, 201, as far as you want to go, of what Syntex does, if we got the problem space a little bit from what Alan just shared, how Syntex starts to help that content throughout its lifecycle?

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: I’d say the first thing with Syntex is we bring, you know, content AI, you know, kind of an artificial intelligence to your content, and we do basic things, like we classify it and say, "Oh, that’s a contract. And that’s an invoice. And that’s a receipt." And we extract metadata from it and apply that metadata so that you can more easily find it in the future, like, "Oh, that the contract number is this. So the vendor name is that," or the total on your receipt is, you know, $11, or what have you.

We take all that metadata, and then we can use it to help route the content around. We can put the right retention on the content, the right sensitivity labels to help protect it, and so forth. And you know, that’s often kind of the start of the content lifecycle, is a piece of content comes into an organization or is created within the organization, and you need to do some very basic management. And you know, in the industry, there’s the old saying that everybody loves the library. It’s so great to go to the library and browse and use the card catalog to find what you’re looking for, but nobody wants to be the librarian, the person that types in all that information and manages it, and so forth. And so that’s the first thing Syntex helps you with.

But from there, whether you’re taking it through a business process with Power Automate, or you’re doing some simple review and approvals, maybe you need to do an e-signature, at the end of that business process, maybe you want to archive the content and apply even some more security around it, depending on the nature of what the process was, and so forth. And we’ve really expanded Syntex to handle all those types of use cases as well, all those requirements.

And you know, my colleague, Chris, I’m going to beat him to it here, but he loves to say, you know, in the past, we would find that content would often begin its life in Microsoft 365, but then end its life in another repository, because it had been archived off to a so-called system of record or be moved out to another repository as part of a signing process or something like that. And it gets complicated to keep track of all that stuff, and the chain of custody, and you know, some of these things are very high value, that’s why you’re using this type of technology for them. And we want to help you keep it all organized, keep it all within M365, and really take advantage of your investment in the platform.

And so that’s, you know, in a very high-level nutshell, what Syntex does, and we can do that, whether it’s images attached to an email, or embedded in an email, or files in SharePoint, or you know, you’ve got images that you want to just identify what’s in the image. Is it a picture of solar panels, like we showed at Ignite; we’ll identify solar panels in the image or do optical character recognition to pull out that text and be able to use it for search and so forth.

So it’s really, I kind of think of it like a little bit of a Swiss army knife for your content with lots of different tools that are, you know, integrated into the knife itself. In our case, that’s Microsoft 365. And yeah, it’s just right there at the ready for you. And I’d say something – the last thing that I’ll note that we’re pretty excited about is the ability for our customers to pay as they go. You don’t have to buy an upfront license that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to use Syntex. It’s right there in Microsoft 365. You set up your very basic billing information, and this isn’t a punch in your credit card or something like that, this is something that your admin does. And then you can start translating documents, summarizing documents, signing documents, getting the capacity for archiving, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, in a really seamless pay-as-you-go fashion.

MARK KASHMAN: Alan, I’d love to just get your perspective on listening to what Ian just said. Knowing of course, a – a primer to the product, and of course, the space, does that land with what you know, you’ve been hearing from customers, or expect to hear from them once they become familiar with what Syntex does?

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Well, yeah, I mean, it’s – and, and again, you know, just to sort of wave my industry analyst independence flag here, I mean, as I say, there’s – there’s a lot of products coming to market to do this. I mean, the big difference here is that most of the customers out there are already Microsoft customers, so you have a massive advantage here. And, and Syntex and the team have done a pretty good job, I mean, let me say that, but I think just to echo, or maybe to emphasize what Ian was saying there, I mean, you’d be surprised, even in the largest, you know, best-known companies, you want to get a copy of a contract. Trust me, people are digging through email folders to find it. So you know, a lot of this is basic stuff, right? Tagging, summarizing, translating, filing away. It’s all basic stuff, really, but it doesn’t happen inside most organizations. That’s the truth of it, right? It happens in somebody’s head, but you have to kind of ask that person.

So it’s a huge step forward to be able to use content AI to be able to automate these basic administrative steps because, without these basis administrative steps, you actually cant’ do very much, other than store. You really can’t do very much. So it’s one of those things. It’s sort of a sleeping giant, I would say, in the sense that it’s the kind of work nobody wants to do, nobody has ever wanted to do, and in most cases have never done. If you can now automate that with AI, it’s not about just bringing order to chaos; it’s about – you know, absolutely unleashing the value of the content. The benefits here are potentially huge.

I don’t want to overstate it because there’s work to be done, and you know, you – you’ve got to start with baby steps, but over time, this is – this is a very big deal for organizations, you know, this is a real change.

MARK KASHMAN: You know, you mentioned the notion that we have a lot of customers and certainly that is on the backbone of a lot of great progress in technology into the cloud for Microsoft, just the industry and – and getting customers comfortable moving there. And now truly seeing content at scale, they’re in the cloud or moving to it. And I think there’s a bit of more of an expectation of what happens when my content is in the cloud, or lands in the cloud? And that also the benefit in the balance of perception of AI and – and those companies. And I think Microsoft is one of them that can actually do the promise of AI. There are not just this notion of AI, and it’s the next solution to all your problems, but it is also a balance between what value humans and AI bring together, taking off some of the things like Ian mentioned, the – the library and that nobody wants to be, but it’s of benefit to everybody, and moving into them the value of getting through to the business process and not just having to be a content that may or may not bring value.

My hope with this question that I have for Chris is a – a – kind of a branding question. But I think it also leads into you know, what is and why is Microsoft doing more in this space? We’ve said Syntex a few times, Chris. And before Ignite, it was known as SharePoint Syntex, now Microsoft Syntex. Can you give us a little behind the scenes branding around what that name update means? And certainly, I think it encompasses a lot of what we’ve heard already, but just to give us a little foundation of why Microsoft Syntex?

CHRIS MCNULTY: Well, that’s a good question, Mark. Obviously, you know, our roots for content management go way back through SharePoint back to the earliest days of what was Project Tahoe, at the close of the 20th century, in fact. And so it’s made sense, as we’ve been developing all of our AI capabilities that we’re introducing in Microsoft Syntex. It made sense for us to kind of first explore how they worked in and around SharePoint, which was how we’ve originally incubated the product.

When we, though, think about this massive scale and customer demand for these kinds of solutions, we think is really important to signal that, you know, Microsoft is fully committed to carving out this new category of content AI, and our entrance into that space as Microsoft Syntex, to really reflect the fact that we’re not just integrating capabilities that are being developed from the OneDrive and SharePoint teams, but looking left to right across Microsoft to make sure we’re fully integrating the partnerships that we’ve established, whether it’s coming from Power, or the Word team or the Azure teams. And so calling it Microsoft Syntex really helps us convey that comprehensive breadth of what we’re doing beyond kind of our SharePoint history.

MARK KASHMAN: All right, so we know this thing, Microsoft Syntex. We know why we’re doing it. We know what the industry is doing. And we get thoughts both inside and outside of Microsoft of how we’re going about it and – and the effect over time. Ian, I’d like to start with you. You know, there’s a lot of new innovation. There’s the basis of what is Syntex already, but it’s growing. And it’s really growing. You know, a lot of disclosures and announcements for people to learn more about in blogs and updated websites. And of course, through this podcast, we hope to achieve some of that. Where I wanted to start was the – this notion of generating content from templates. Can you speak to a little bit of the design and approach and of course, you know, layer in value and benefits?

IAN STORY: You know, one of the key things that happens, you think about content that comes into an organization, whether that’s an invoice that needs to be paid or an insurance claim that needs to be processed, or a new account opening, or mortgage application or a car loan that needs to get handled and approved or denied, part of that content coming in, yeah, you extract the metadata and you store it, and you make it easy to find, and so forth. But you ultimately need to respond somehow, right? That’s part of the process. And so being able to respond in a standardized fashion, using a template that you can create very easily, just pick a Word document, make sure it’s of course, been reviewed, and approved by your legal department and corporate communications, and so forth before you start just sending these out. Once you have a standard template, you can then take advantage of all that metadata and other information that comes from the business process itself to either bulk generate documents to respond. Maybe those are account statements or something like that. Or on a onesie twosie basis, ad hoc respond, using content assembly.

So imagine, you know, I work in a call center somewhere, and maybe I’m a utility, and you have a problem with one of our services, and you call in and complain and, yep, sure enough, we screwed up. And I need to send you an apology letter. Well, I can pull in your name and your address and what the mishap was that happened to you, and so forth, into a standardized template, and then, you know, email that to you, or print it and stuff it in an envelope and send to you and so forth. And that’s really what this content assembly document generation capability is all about in Syntex.

And you know, it’s a little crazy, we – we’ve been leaders in content creation with Office for decades. And yet, we’ve never really had that easy bulk content generation capability, except for, you know, things like mail merges, and now Syntex is really bringing that in and, of course, all the content that you generate then is managed by the rest of Syntex with all the right metadata and security and retention and sensitivity, and so forth, applied to it. So it’s really like kind of the last mile in getting back to your customers after you have a request that comes in that you need to respond to.

MARK KASHMAN: So you know, if from templates, we can turn a little bit to our – our content processing capabilities. And of course, also at scale. Alan, I’d love to – you know, start with you on this one because I know your firm focuses on document and information processing. And with what you’ve learned with some of the new capabilities for Syntex, you know, maybe just give the – the 101 of content processing leads to X or Y. And with what you know about Syntex, if you wouldn’t mind layering in, from your perspective, how it addresses that.

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Well, yeah, document processing – I mean this – this term has been around a long time and it – it is what it is, right, document processing documents. So it’s this combination of automation and, you know, the – the document itself, how you actually automate things. So in truth, a lot of things Ian was just talking about there, about assembling documents and invoices, you could say the same thing about processing documents, except in reverse, right? So you’re – you’re accepting something into your organization, you know, take something like an invoice as the most sort of obvious example of – there are thousands of different examples. And you’re extracting out the relevant fields, invoice number, value, addresses, you know, whatever, description of goods, whatever. And using that extracted data, pointing it to the right triggers, and as much as possible, automating what happens to that information and the document through it’s lifecycle.

So an invoice, through it being sort, you know, reviewed, approved and – and paid, that’s basic, but up until today – and again, to pick up on what Ian was just saying about sort of building the documents, it’s been possible to do that, and it’s not – this is not sort of a brand-new concept—far from it—people have been able to do this for – for a very long time, but it’s been very difficult to do and very expensive to do, and often not very accurately done at that.

So the thing is, with Syntex, it’s coming in here at a low price point, and it’s easily accessible, and it relies on advanced AI, and in theory—and I’m sure in practice—you’re basically – you know, it’s just sort of an overused phrase, but you’re basically commoditizing and - and democratizing what have been advanced very-expensive-to-implement technology, and that’s a big deal. You know, even small organizations deal with invoices and contracts and statements, and all sorts of documentation. So anything that helps with that is going to be make customers very happy, indeed, but the key thing here is that the – the concepts are not new. What’s new here is that the technology has moved on a long way, and it’s an awful lot cheaper, it’s an awful lot accurate – more accurate, and it’s an awful lot easier to use.

So the uptick of this, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s – if it’s not very substantial over the next couple of years.

MARK KASHMAN: Ian, any tech bits to fill in there if what Alan is saying, price point, and obviously the technology being the enabler, that you would share around new or – or at least significant to point out, around content processing that Syntex offers?

IAN STORY: First, I’ll thank Alan for basically saying, faster, easier, less expensive. That’s like the Holy Trinity for – in this business. But new and exciting things, we have image tagging, which now can recognize almost 10,000 things in images, automatically, you don’t have to train it. We have taxonomy tagging, that uses the taxonomy that you’ve already built out in SharePoint. You know, things like all the jurisdictions that you do business in, or all your customers, and we’ll automatically tagged documents, again, with no training, based on those jurisdictions and customers and so forth.

More prebuilt models. We’ve announced contracts and ID cards, like passports and so forth, come into Syntex here, shortly. Translation and summarization. You’ve seen those demoed in Satya’s keynote, in fact, where we can translate documents into dozens and dozens of different languages, or many sourced – not any, but again, dozens of sources to dozens of different target languages. Summarizing documents. You know, you get those really long statements of work, and you need to summarize them. So we’ve really increased with a bunch of new services, what we could already do, which was simple extraction of metadata from structured forms, and kind of semi-structured documents, and unstructured documents with kind of computer training or computer teaching, as opposed to computer learning.

So we’re very excited about all the features here, in and around Syntex, to help you with this part of your business.

MARK KASHMAN: Excellent. I think I’m just going to use Syntex to do the audio processing on this podcast, and then we’ll get it converted into 12 different languages. And we’re doing – we’re just going to take The Intrazone to the next level.

IAN STORY: (Laughter.) We can’t synthesize your voice quite yet, but we’ll – we’ll see when we can get that for you and translate this to German, and French, and so forth.

MARK KASHMAN: All right. Well, this is exactly where I wanted to go next because another one of the big announcements wasn’t voice processing, although there’s some sense of digital signature that you both have already provided by introducing yourself and be – making the audience aware of who’s speaking. But there’s a big one that is a part of Syntex now, which is the eSignature, and probably, to Alan’s point, not new to the industry, but very new to Microsoft, and would love to hear your approach to both how we’re doing it, partnering in a way, you know, to accomplish the benefit of what customers want or have. Can you talk a little bit about the approach to eSignature, Ian?

IAN STORY: So, first and foremost, you know, we have really wonderful partners with Adobe Acrobat Sign and DocuSign, and many other signature partners. And so, as we embarked on building an e-signature feature for Syntex, the first thing is any place where you can use our eSignature capabilities, you can use our partners. We are very focused on keeping a vibrant, healthy ecosystem in and around this.

But what we heard from customers just over and over was that they really wanted to keep the content in Microsoft 365. They didn’t want to have to export it, move it out, even if it was just temporary. You know, there’s things about the chain of custody and who has access and what permissions, and so forth. And so, that’s really, you know, from customer necessity, where we’ve built this eSignature capability that you’ll see from us next year, that allows customers to both use a wet signature on a document, like ink, basically, or use digital signature, an electronic signature that actually, you know, cryptographically signs it with a certificate; and of course, use both of those in tandem.

So, we’re thrilled to be bringing that to all of the Microsoft 365 customers out there but would again reiterate but if you’re already using one of our partners, you certainly are welcome to continue to do that.

MARK KASHMAN: Chris, I wanted to throw to you, you know, we’ve mentioned a couple of things around generating content, content processing for that inbound or existing content to be able to make sure it’s processing properly. And now with eSignature, just, you know, we’ll go into a little bit more tech, of course, but to get your perspective on, you know, hearing this and knowing that you’re pretty much putting foot forward on how we market it, and how we talk about it, and of course, how our customers – what they’re saying, just a lens on, you know, what does this mean for getting the word out and your take on some of these features?

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a couple of trends kind of – and e-signature is a good lens to use to interpret these trends. And they move across two dimensions.

So, the first is, how do we take all of these AI and workflow capabilities that we are orchestrating from across Microsoft, and bring them into the flow of work, which I know is a catchphrase. But from a commercial level, it doesn’t always make sense to bundle up, you know, an exhaustive menu of capabilities, and then go buy expensive licensing, just so everyone in your organization who might ever need to do something has access to it.

So, it’s really about breaking down the availability to a way that everyone can have access to these and only pay for what they need. So, some people need heavy users of a capability like eSignatures. Some people may only lightly need to generate one, maybe once a year. And so, it’s about taking those capabilities that come from all different aspects of Microsoft and introducing them in a way that everyone can benefit from it without a lot of startup cost and getting things deployed.

I think the second thing, and again, eSignature is a good lens on this, is helping you continue to accelerate the value of your content by keeping it all in the M365 platform. You know, there are certainly ways and places where integrating with some other content repositories can make sense for making it searchable.

But we hear a lot from customers who say, you know, “The moment I have an approved contract, it goes off to some other contract management system. And then I can’t really find it all that easily.” And whether it’s looking at things like archiving or e-signature, or some of our line of business integration work that we’re doing, it’s really about keeping that information available to you personally, and also available to that broad range of M365 capabilities so that if you have meta data security, compliance, all of those attributes that you’ve added to your content continue to have value because they stay inside of your trust boundary.

MARK KASHMAN: To the point of if it’s inside your trust boundary, which certainly can be a pretty broad boundary, but the value of the cloud also means you should be able to repurpose the content. You should be able to ingest it just fine and at scale.

But the other area that I want to turn to that I think is really critical, as far as how much awareness does your system have of your content, wherever it resides, is the investments that we’re making with Microsoft Search, and everything that’s been derived from the content, whether it’s from templates or content processing. You have all of this metadata, and on top of that, a better understanding beyond the metadata.

And this might be a kind of a triple punch, because I’d love to get the how important and what role does general search play into this space with Alan, and then to hear, you know, the investments that we’re making, Ian, on the engineering side. And Chris, of course, the broader value of Syntex goes now beyond Syntex, because it’s inclusive of big investments with Search, big investments that we’ll talk about next around access and governance.

But for this one, Alan, do you mind kicking off a little bit of when you’re working with customers, how easy it is for them to find this content, or if they’re finding it challenging, how important that is as a part of the solution?

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Yeah, it’s – it’s an odd one this because, I mean, search is certainly important. That – there’s no question about that, but the reality is most search doesn’t work very well. And it doesn’t work well because most content isn’t tagged very well, right? And we’ve been sort of saying this for years, but I’ll repeat it on here, because I’m sure most people haven’t heard this analogy anyway.

You know, you’ve got every customer out there in every enterprise, be it government organization, for that matter, that expects their – their work search to work like Google, or Bing, or whatever, right? It’s supposed to work like that. It doesn’t, and they scratch their heads as to why. Well, the reason being the content hasn’t been tagged properly, and the search engine doesn’t know what to do.

So, any improvement to your work search is going to be something which will be very much appreciated by workers to – so that they can actually find things as opposed to e-mailing and – and asking their colleagues, because that’s the reality for a lot of workers today. That’s really their search engine. So, you can’t really underestimate that.

I think the flip side is, the better you manage content – so, again, if you’re automating all of this tagging, if you’re automating categorization, etcetera, then your dependence on search becomes less. And you, in an ideal world, which I don’t think anybody’s at today, but in an ideal world, search is for finding things that are lost, right? It’s not your default. It’s not your starting place. It’s the last place you go. You only use it when you really, really can’t find it. So, it’s a spectrum of problems, really.

Today, most search engines really don’t work very well. It’s not because the search engine is faulty, it’s because the content it’s searching against is very hard to understand, and it’s not labeled. But ultimately, you go on a journey where your search gets better. People like that, but if you really sort of fulfill on the dream here, you reach a point where the search becomes really quite secondary and is a place of last resort, because you know where things are. And they’re prompted to you and they’re where they should be.

MARK KASHMAN: Ian, if that’s a lead into what – what is maybe at scale for the world, a use case or I don’t want to say limitation, but it may be a limitation for how people don’t necessarily have a great search experience, you know, without great tagging or great archiving or, you know, being able to discover it, but can you just speak to, you know, how we’re upping our game and adding to the capabilities of when somebody searches sometimes might be more of an automated experience, because it finds them versus going in searching for it? But just the levels of investment in search for Syntex.

IAN STORY: You know, we’ve started, of course, years ago with Microsoft Search and all the capabilities that we have built and acquired over the years. And it’s, I would say, really, quite good, but it does come down to, as Alan noted, you have to have your content at least a little bit organized, and tagged, and properly secured, and so forth.

And so, that’s where Syntex comes in. It kind of enriches all that content or, to use our marketing term since we have Chris here on the podcast as well, enhances that content to make sure that it’s more easily indexed or more easy to find after it’s been indexed. You know, major improvements that we’ve done, first, it starts with what we call content query, which instead of giving you kind of an Internet-style search, like you might find in Bing or one of the other Internet search engines, or even on your intranet, we give you a rich taxonomy that you can easily customize and extend.

If you’re looking for invoices, instead of saying, I’m looking for invoices from this vendor for this date, and just getting like keywords back, we actually have a structured content query that allows you to specifically find only invoices from that vendor, only invoices, you know, for this specific date and this specific amount, and so forth. It’s a very nice experience, because sometimes folks just use the search to think, oh, well, I didn’t realize I could find things based on the vendor number. Of course, that’s what I’m going to type in, because that will give me an absolute match.

Beyond that, we’re investing in things like Q&A, question and answering, so that you can ask questions and get human answers back instead of just a list of documents. And this is incredibly, you know, overdue in this industry where folks, to this point, really have just these big archives of content that maybe you go in and search, and then you get a bunch of documents back, and maybe you can open the document and get some hit highlighting or jump down to the spot in the document. But to synthesize that as actual knowledge, and this is where we work with things like Viva Topics as well, to get real information back and not just, you know, keywords that came back, that’s a place where Syntex is really, I think, raising the bar.

We’re also adding natural language searches so that if you, you know, just want to search the way you would ask a friend to find this document, instead of using a structured query, we can do that; and then last but not least, semantic understanding where you can just kind of give the gist of what you’re looking for. You don’t know the exact right way to say it, even. And our search can actually understand, again, using these AI capabilities through Syntex Content AI, kind of understand what you were looking for and find the right thing.

So, a lot of investment and improvement to Search that we’re very bullish on and optimistic for.

MARK KASHMAN: So, I’m going to try a little natural language querying of my co-host, Chris Mc-Syntex. Chris, this is for you, in natural language. We’ve gotten a lot around investments to this point, but I think when we really approach IT, and when they’re thinking through how people can better lock down content, based on some of the information that’s derived or processed out of Syntex and if you is the word “enhanced,” I think then Ian proves his point, but how are we enhancing security, and access and government when we think of the value that Syntex brings for lifecycle management, for storage? You know, there’s a lot that now comes or is a part of Syntex,

CHRIS MCNULTY: Well, if – if you go back and think about that – that run rate of adding a billion-point-six documents a day to M365, it’s really hard to, like, bring that into human centric understanding of what the processes are, which is why we’ve architected Syntex the way we have. That extends to management. So, we have an increasing number of customers who have billions of pieces of content in M365.

And so, one of the best ways of helping people manage that in the aggregate, rather than dealing with onesie-twosie access requests, is being able to establish policies to use simple rules to move less used content into storage tiers, which run at a reduced cost to kind of match the expectation for how people are working with that content, being able to protect information with backup and restore capabilities, and to use AI to discover parts of your information architecture, that are currently at risk of being over shared, to be able to deploy fine-grained conditional access policies, to shape the way that a particularly external parties get access to that content, and to enlist site owners in periodic reviews of that content.

So, the scale of AI helps an admin drill into the areas where they should be focusing their attention to make sure that information is being stored, protected and secure throughout that lifecycle.

MARK KASHMAN: Ian, you know, there’s been a lot of capabilities have been brought into Syntex, some very specific to IT and managing content. You know, is there anything that you want to add there, Ian?

IAN STORY: Yeah. I think we’ve heard for so long from our customers that you really want a backup capability, that you really want tiered storage and archival capability, that you want even more security around managing, you know, sensitivity, and internal and external folks, and who can see what and, you know, more reporting and data, and so forth around your content. And so, we’ve – we’ve made a lot of investments there with Syntex with, you know, a full-on backup and restore capability, and an archiving capability, bringing tiered storage at a lower price point to Syntex.

And so, there’s a lot there for the IT folks that are listening in, and the folks that have to manage all this content beyond all the unbelievable content AI and end user value that we provide.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, and it really wraps up, you know, so much IT value that pays off, of course, if there is work that can be offboarded from IT having to do some of this deeper work. And the benefits automatically come to end users when they can automate their processes, and – and certainly everything that we’ve talked about up until this point. A lot of that depends on, then what is the storage mechanism? And how much of – of the solution is the storage component helping? So, that’s great to hear.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah. You know, I would just observe that some of the work that we’re doing on that security management piece also, it’s really important to set the technology so it can be an IT business partnership, because if you’re in IT, and you’re being asked to supervise 10,000 sites, and you get a flag that, hey, there may be oversharing happening on, you know, the Project Delta site, you go over there. You look and you see, there’s 10 internal people and three external people. How do you know if that security makes sense, unless you kind of dig deeply and inject yourself into that project?

So, providing a way to let IT offer service to those content owners in a way that enlists their guidance, I think, is another way that we can sort of accelerate that business technology partnership here.

MARK KASHMAN: So, I’m betting that a lot of presentations, conferences, consultations, of course, this podcast that you get brought on, lands at some point to ask you what does the future hold. And I think we’ve heard a lot of technology and a lot of – of customer requests or customer requirements, as far as what they need to better manage their content. And I hope that our audience is really starting to see what is Syntex and how does it help them with a lot of those challenges.

But if we were to put on your futuristic hat, whether it’s like Johnny Carson would do with the card to his head, or something like the Zoltar machine in Big, and your customers are asking you these same questions, what is it that they can start thinking to ensure that their content, security, processing, a lot of the automation and everything is intact and working for them? Really just want to understand, you know, what – what do you tell every customer as they go forward?

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Yeah. I mean, as an industry analyst, theoretically, we have crystal balls, and we can tell where the market is going to be in 10 years’ time. It’s not quite as simple as that, unfortunately. But I – I think there’s a couple of things going on here.

One I think I’ve already touched on, is that, you know, you’re – you’re basically, with Syntex, you’re automating the work that people don’t want to do, have never wanted to do and, frankly, will never do. Nobody wants to add metadata to a file. Nobody wants to file a document away in the right place. They – they’ve, again, never have never will. So, just that alone is a great step forward.

But I think what’s exciting is that, you know, we’ve got advances in AI now. Those advances have come at an incredibly fast pace over the last five years. So, just like everything else we’ve talked about on this podcast, none of this is new, right? AI is not new. It’s how much easier it is, how much quicker it is, how much more accurate is and how much more affordable it is.

And so, with – with that in mind, you know, we’ve – we’ve got this potential to really rethink, reimagine, reinvent the way the back office, not just the back office, but how back-offices work. I think that’s what’s exciting, and I think that’s what does excite some of the people we speak to, in that, you know, ultimately, the world of document management and workflow, right up to this current day, has always just simply mimicked paper processes. No matter how digital it is, it’s always just been a copy, but an electronic copy of manual paper activities. But with AI, we’ve got the potential here to – to really rethink it and say, is there a better way? And in many cases, there are.

So, if we touch on something Ian mentioned earlier around contracts, I mean, contracts are big, hairy, dangerous things, right? But if you’re able to, you know, in a few years’ time, bring in AI that can not just read them, but genuinely understand, to a large degree, what they are, you know, you can have them triggering clauses. You know, you can have automatic renewal of contracts or automatic closure of contracts. And that’s sort of interesting, but it’s revolutionary if you’re a law office. It’s revolutionary if you’re in the accounting department.

So, I think the potential here is – is that we have, over the next however many years, an opportunity to absolutely reinvent the way we’ve been working for the last 50, 60, maybe even 100 years. And that sounds like hyperbole, but it’s really not. The technology can do it. A lack of imagination and maybe just a lack of knowing where to start, for many organizations, is the biggest barrier, not the technology.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah, I’m glad to hear you say that. You know, I had a similar point of view for a couple of years that one of the things that holds people back is a failure of imagination, you know, to imagine that things actually could be better. And the technology enables it, but people need to be inspired, I do think, to ask the questions about is there a better way of doing this, instead of just continuing along the same old, same old path that they’ve been on for years.

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Yes, and – and it’s true. I mean, you know, to give a sort of nonsense Syntex, although Syntex could certainly play in this space, I did some work pre-pandemic in supply chain. And, you know, there was a bunch of – I won’t go into the technology or the startups, but there was a bunch of startups who came along who could really revolutionize the supply chain operations from – from start to end, dramatically reduce costs, dramatically reduce the number of disputes – I mean, really exciting stuff.

Those – those startups went nowhere. And the reason they went nowhere is that people just couldn’t get their head around it. This is the way it’s always been done. And it was a lack of imagination. I think maybe not those startups, but I think, you know, the supply chain will change. But that’s our biggest challenge, is educating exciting, empowering people and – and, frankly, getting them to have a passion around what is, dare I say it, ultimately a boring topic, right, paperwork. But getting them passionate about that and the possibilities, that’s our biggest challenge.

I mean, the technology is just… I – I’ve been doing this a long time, and it’s hard to describe just how much better the technology today is that it was just five years ago. (Laughter.)

IAN STORY: So, Alan, I’ll – I’ll play on that, and I’ll say when you say technology, in our world, that means Syntex, so much better than this technology was five years ago. But, you know, it’s not just, to me, the lack of imagination. I think it’s the lack of empowerment for folks to actually make these changes. I think there are folks in all these departments that process documents in every organization that can imagine that better way, but they’re just not empowered.

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Yes.

IAN STORY: There’s so many processes and constraints. And this system only does this, and you can’t use it for that. We’re not licensed for it, and so forth. And that’s, you know, to such a large degree, what we’ve always done at Microsoft is take these very powerful capabilities and get them into the hands of more folks, and at a lower price point, and with more flexibility and more integration that lets you start to take the imagination that you have and, you know, make it happen, right?

And that’s – that’s really what I’m the most excited about with Syntex, is getting this stuff that, you know, has been the domains of developers, and data scientists and so forth, and get it, you know, more into the hands of folks that can, you know, just like, say, 20 years ago, what SharePoint did for ECM, now bringing, you know, Microsoft Syntex to the table to do this for AI for everyone.

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: Yeah, and I agree with you, and – and I’m going to do something which I rarely ever do, which I’ll be an optimist. I actually think that there’s never been a better time for change. You know, we can’t sort of blame it all on the pandemic, but there’s just been so many shifts over the last couple of years that, you know, people are open to new ideas and doing things better.

I spoke at a conference just a few weeks ago to a lot of people from higher education. And we were talking about the sort of reinvention of the credentials of – of academic credentials, and the systems and processes there. And I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty darn sure that if I’d given that same taught three or four years before, people would have been polite about it, I hope, and would have said, that’s a nice idea, maybe one day. No, not this time. They’re taking down notes, they’re asking questions. They want to do it.

So, I think we’re in a world now where I don’t know how long this window of opportunity will last, but I think people do want change. And they are open to new ideas.

I come back to, though, my – my challenge here is that they’re excited about it, they do want change, but they don’t really know how to start. You can’t just go in and say, hey, I’ve got better technology. (Laughter.) You know, you’ve got to actually say, well, this is how we get you from where you are today to where you want to be in the future. And they need their hands holding. But I think their hands are – I’m mangling analogies here, but I think that their hands are outstretched. They – they want that.

MARK KASHMAN: Anytime Syntex comes up or the conversations like this, I can’t help but think a lot of customers might be staring at that warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. And it’s just boxes and content, and the Ark of the Covenant gets put to who knows where, and whenever that might be discovered again. That might be a little silly way to frame it, but it – it does sound a lot of how you describe the now, even if it’s somebody’s recent past, you know, that they’ve come from there, and they’ve just got a lot more to go.

But off of what Alan was just ending on there with where to start, maybe that’s where we end. To both Chris and Ian, Ian, I’d love to start, you know, just to understand if somebody were to get their hands on Syntex to – to give it a trial or to try out some capabilities, where does a common customer start with Syntex? Where would you suggest?

IAN STORY: Two things right off the top of my mind: Number one, we have today, and you don’t even need Syntex or any kind of license from Syntex or pay-as-you-go to use this. We have an assessment tool, the Syntex Assessment tool. You can run that against your environment today, just the things you have access to. It doesn’t even have to be a system administrator that runs it. You can run it against your sites, the ones that you manage as a person on the business side. And it can help identify places where Syntex can help.

Hey, there’s a whole bunch of content over here that doesn’t have any metadata on it, or hey, there’s a whole bunch of metadata structure set up over here, but people aren’t using it. That’s the first thing.

And then once you identify some of those places, before you start building models, which, again, can be built in minutes trained on just a handful, five or six documents. But before you do that, try the pre-built models that we have, whether that’s image tagging, or taxonomy tagging, or even one of the prebuilts to recognize receipts or invoices or student contracts and ID cards, start – start with something like that. You know, find a place that has the need, and we can help identify that, and then use one of the prebuilts that are really easy to use, even translation or summarization, right, before you have to start building custom models, and so forth.

That’s probably where you’ll end up, is doing lots of really interesting custom things with, again, minutes of work, not hours or days or weeks of training. But start really simple. Find the place and use one of the prebuilt things to tag all your images, or tag all your documents or process some invoices, or some receipts, or some contracts or some ID cards.

MARK KASHMAN: Chris, do you mind expanding just a little on that and peppering in, when – when it’s appropriate, a couple of aka.ms links that I know you’ve got up your sleeve?

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah. So at Ignite this week, we are landing kind of a world of videos to help explain and let you see what these experiences look like in action. These are being distributed across our Microsoft.com Web properties, and they are in a couple of different places. But if there’s one URL to remember, it would be aka.ms/Syntex, which will bring you to our product page. And from there, you can navigate to our adoption hub with more extensive videos, customer evidence, white papers and the like.

If there’s a second URL that you’re going to let me promote, it’s going to be aka.ms/Syntex/start, which provides you an overview of everything that we’re doing and engaging at Ignite, along with some guidance as to how to get started with workshops, how to experience the right demos, and how to think about the kinds of processes in your organization where Syntex may have the most relevance, including links to our assessment tool and more.

MARK KASHMAN: Very good. Well, I will make sure those are in the show notes and in the blog. And of course, I know they’re going to be lots of places. And maybe this is an appropriate time where we can re-up the – the rights that we have to Start Me Up, the music from the Windows 95 launch. That’s probably still within our realm.

Joking aside, thank you all for joining The Intrazone. Congratulations to the – all the innovation that went into what I know internally, we’ve talked about a while as Syntex 2.0, but it really is times, you know, 10 or 20. It’s just a huge growth spike here at the Ignite moment and beyond. And, Alan, thank you for your perspective today. Appreciate you all being here on The Intrazone.

IAN STORY: Well, thanks so much for having us, Mark. And we’re thrilled for everyone to go out and try out Microsoft Syntex. It’s been great being here.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Yeah, Mark, thanks for letting me swivel the chair around and be on kind of the other side of the interview this time. I just want to, you know, in closing, just reflect back to the audience.

You know, our work is not done. You know, we think we’re very excited about everything that we’re landing, but we are really interested in getting your feedback and making sure that we’re providing kind of the best ways for you to engage our capabilities in the flow of work. So definitely, please be in touch.

ALAN PELZ-SHARPE: And yeah, thank you for inviting me. It’s been a great discussion. I’m really interested as an analyst, and to see where this all goes. I’ll be watching it very closely, as will my colleagues at Deep Analysis. And if you want some independent sort of viewpoints, you can always check out our website where our research is open source. But again, thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate it and enjoyed the conversation.

(Music.)

CHRIS MCNULTY: Up next on The Intrazone, events. This week, we’re returning to Microsoft Ignite Live. And we’re really excited to be able to spotlight current and upcoming events here on The Intrazone.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah. So, on this day of this podcast going live, Microsoft Syntex news out there. Where we funneled a lot of that news and excitement was through Microsoft Ignite. It’s happening right now, October 12th through the 14th. There’s a lot of great sessions live, on demand. You can – you can dive into Ignite.microsoft.com, get registered, get in and access the content. But like we said, it’s happening now.

There’s a lot of content for Syntex, both in person, and online and on demand. You’ll hear from Jeff. You can meet Chris. There’s a whole lot of things coming from Ian and Sean (ph) and Kristen (ph). The whole Syntex team is firing on all pistons. And guess what? So is the Viva team, and so is the SharePoint team, and the Teams team, and the Azure team. It’s Microsoft coming together as one, big party of news, big disclosures, big announcements from keynotes to breakout sessions to on demand. And if you’re in a couple of the regions where we’re doing regional spotlights, there are six of them. Raise your hand and try to get into those in person, if you’re in any of those six regions.

We’ll put a link with all the information. Of course it’s happening now. So, it’s a hurry up if you want to get engaged, but a lot of the content will live on – very quickly on demand. So, that will be almost in immediately available to you.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Also coming up incredibly quickly, this weekend, October 14th and 15th the South Coast Summit. This will be happening at the Ageas Bowl in Southampton, not the one on Long Island, Southampton, UK for our friends across the pond.

MARK KASHMAN: Next coming across the pond back from England to New England, that is Collab Days New England, October 22nd. This is in person in Burlington, Massachusetts at the Microsoft MTC. That is the Microsoft Technology Center, really cool building, lot of great local folks that are helping put on that show. We know one of them. They’ve been on this show before, Chris Bortlik. But there’s a lot of great people, of course, from the community all gathering together. It’s one of those big SharePoint Saturdays that isn’t called that anymore, bringing together multiple SharePoint Saturdays into one. It is now Collab Days New England, October 22nd.

CHRIS MCNULTY: And if you’re in the Boston area, you have no reason not to go because the Red Sox are absolutely not playing that day. (Laughter.)

MARK KASHMAN: (Laughter.) You heard it here first on The Intrazone. Chris, what is our last kind of –kind of a little bit further down the road, but a really nice event that’s coming around the corner?

CHRIS MCNULTY: It’s further down the road, but it’s not that far. It is next month, so the other side of U.S. Thanksgiving. The European SharePoint Conference, ESPC 22 will be kicking off November 28th in Copenhagen, Denmark. This has always been a really large event for Microsoft’s European community. We tend to bring a decent number of folks over from Redmond as well. But you will be able to meet over 100 speakers, and there’s usually a great crowd. Jeff Teper is delivering one of the event keynotes, and it’s a real don’t miss if you’re free.

MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, so Jeff’s bringing it. We also have Heather Newman, who has a Power Platform oriented keynote. Vesa Juvonen is going to be one, doing one for developers specifically, and also Scott Hanselman. So, there are four Microsoft keynotes. There are probably about 20 to 25 Microsoft sessions right next to all of the community and MVP sessions. I’ve seen the list of sessions. If you haven’t, we have a link in the show notes. It’s a really great show, and always a really nice event that this team puts on.

CHRIS MCNULTY: And of course, if you have an event coming up to spotlight on a future episode of The Intrazone, just write to the show and we’ll be happy to share the news.

MARK KASHMAN: We want to thank our guests, Ian Story and Alan Pelz-Sharpe. And Chris, I want to double thank you for being co-host and guest this go around. And to all of you for being on the show and for giving us insights about the value and feature set of this thing we now call Microsoft Syntex.

CHRIS MCNULTY: And you’re doubly welcome. We encourage you to check out our show page for links to all of what was discussed today and more. Go to aka.ms/TheIntrazone.

MARK KASHMAN: You can send us your questions and feedback for the SharePoint teams anytime. You can reach us via e-mail at TheIntrazone@microsoft.com or via Twitter @SharePoint, @MKashman and @CMcNulty 2000.

CHRIS MCNULTY: Of course, thank you for listening and supporting The Intrazone. Remember to rate, review and tell all your friends about the show. Follow the show at Ignite or wherever you get your favorite tech podcasts.

MARK KASHMAN: We thank you for listening. We’re your hosts, Mark Kashman and Chris McNulty. And this has been The Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365, AI is for letters, invoicing, and contracts at scale intelligent intranet.

(Music.)

END

September brought some great new offerings: Cultural site template for Hispanic Heritage Month, Manage site access based on sensitivity label, Viva Learning cards for the Viva Connections Dashboard, New 'Activity' column in OneDrive, Granular Policies for OneDrive: Request Files, Quick Access to SharePoint document libraries in Office backstage, Schedule send for Teams chat, Video clips in Teams chat (Preview), new Stream mobile app (beta) - iOS and Android, improved Adobe PDF experience in Microsoft Teams, and more. Plus, we chat with Sesha Mani, Principal group product manager on the SharePoint team focused on all the goodness SharePoint and OneDrive IT Pros can do to manage and control their collaborative, content management environments.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Sesha Mani | Twitter | LinkedIn [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Resources:

SharePoint and OneDrive Security "cookbook": https://aka.ms/sharepointsecuritycookbook

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

Microsoft Ignite (Oct.12-14, 2022; virtual + SCC + six regional "spotlights")

North American Cloud Summit (Oct.12-14; Branson, MO)

South Coast Summit (Oct.14-15, 2022; Ageas Bowl, Southampton, UK)

European SharePoint Conference (ESPC22 | Nov.28 - Dec.1 | Copenhagen, Denmark)

Microsoft Lists workshop [now available on-demand]

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

Chris and Mark chat with April Dunnam, Principal cloud advocate on Power Platform Developer Advocacy Team at Microsoft. April is also a Power Platform MVP alumni, a Microsoft Certified Trainer, and previously a SharePoint developer out of Tulsa, OK. This episode brings the live Intrazone breakout session from 365 EduCon - Dallas right into your Intrazone ears. We asked April to share insights and best practices for user experiences designed to build 'sticky apps', plus her take on new Power Platform innovations: covering Power Pages, Power Automate: the Pay-as-you-go model, modern commanding, RPA, and governance with 'Managed Environments'. You'll also hear an audio clip from Jeff Teper's keynote about 'collab apps' from the recent Power Platform Conference in Orlando, FL.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

04:50 Jeff Teper and Vesa Juvonen at Power Platform Conference

10:30 April Dunnam at 365 EduCon Dallas

43:15 Events

Social and Info Links:

April Dunnam (Principal cloud advocate | Microsoft) | @AprilDunnam | LinkedIn | Low-Code Revolution (show) | Blog

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | Feedback

Power Platform @MSPowerPlat | Blog | Overview

Resources:

April Dunnam's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/aprildunnam

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

European Cloud Summit (Sept.26-28; Mainz, GE)

365 EduCon - Chicago (Sept.26-30; Chicago, IL)

Teams 10x (Virtual Summit; Sept.28-29, 2022)

Microsoft Ignite (Oct.12-14, 2022; virtual + SCC + six regional "spotlights")

North American Cloud Summit (Branson, MO)

South Coast Summit (Oct.14-15, 2022; Ageas Bowl, Southampton, UK)

CollabDays New England (Oct.22 in-person Burlington, MA at the Microsoft MTC)

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone

August 2022 brought a lot of new tech to Microsoft 365 - lots of SharePoint and related tech goodness: Viva Goals GA, Viva Engage GA, Viva Insights updates, Microsoft Lists - MSA Preview for iOS (beta), new SharePoint team site templates, new web parts and site theme, co-authoring encrypted documents on mobile, new OneDrive home experience, To Do in Outlook for Windows, and more. We also hear from Ankur Madan and Sahil Baid discuss progress in the mobile Lists space, namely bringing access to the Lists - MSA Preview to the Lists iOS app, and more about overall progress to date and innovation for Lists on the Android platform.

Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post.

Ankur Madan (Senior product manager) | LinkedIn [guest]

Sahil Baid (Product manager) | LinkedIn [guest]

Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host]

Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host]

SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice

Resources:

Download and install the Microsoft Lists - MSA Preview iOS beta: https://aka.ms/ListsiOSMSA 

"15 reasons to love OneDrive"

Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. 

Microsoft Tech Community Home

Stay on top of Office 365 changes

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts

Upcoming Events:

HR Tech (Sept.13-16.2022; Vegas - Mandalay Bay)

Microsoft Power Platform Conference (Sept.20-22.2022; Orlando, FL)

European Cloud Summit (Sept.26-28; Mainz, GE)

365 EduCon - Chicago (Sept.26-30; Chicago, IL)

Teams 10x (Virtual Summit; Sept.28-29, 2022)

Microsoft Ignite (Oct.12-14, 2022; virtual + SCC + six regional "spotlights")

North American Cloud Summit (Oct.12-14; Branson, MO)

South Coast Summit (Oct.14-15, 2022; Ageas Bowl, Southampton, UK)

Microsoft Lists workshop [now available on-demand] 

Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone