2023 quick thoughts with Adam

We got a quick chat with company founder and Director Adam Clark after he returned refreshed and ready for 2023.  Here’s some thoughts he shared:

SOMETHING FOR THE IT INDUSTRY:

This year we’re going to see a renewed focus on the hybrid workplace.  Businesses like ours are the ones who make it possible for others to do more with less.  So the question is, how can we ensure that an organisation’s various departments spread across geographical chasms, with all the uncertainty we continue to see, can operate with confidence and even more resilience?

I believe with the tightening of the market at the moment, that we’re going to see a lot of people trying to do better with their time, their agility and their technology.

I’m actually really interested to see what kind of innovations will start coming out, especially with people trying to do more with less.  I’m interested to see if organisations are looking to do big capital works to achieve large change, or incremental works to embed a more organic style?

SOMETHING ABOUT SHARING MINDS:

Quite a few of our customers have a need for efficiency, getting back to basics and not being so worried about perception, but using technology to amplify what they can do and getting the job done.  Our focus is definitely on efficiency and outcomes.

SOMETHING FOR ME:

• Something I’d like to focus on this year is swimming with the kids more often. 

• A quote I’ve been thinking about is from James Clear, author of ‘Atomic Habits’:
  If you never question things, your life ends up being limited by other people's imaginations.

• I’m looking forward to being able to smoke the perfect brisket.

If you think we can help with clarifying your organisation’s technology roadmap for the year, or working with your team to bring about internal change, please reach out. I’m always up for a chat, especially where there’s coffee.

All the best for 2023.

WORK FROM HOME SERIES: New Microsoft Teams preview feature - Live Captions

For those working from home or remote spaces, with hearing impairment or with loud or distracting noises in the background, a new preview feature in Microsoft Teams is Live Captions.

With live captions, Teams can detect what’s said in a meeting and present real-time captions for anyone who wants them.

To find out more on this feature and how to turn it on/off, visit:

Published by: Sharing Minds’ Communication Dept.
Published: Tuesday 24 March, 2020

Sharing Minds' Lead Trainers - What Makes Them Tick

Above: Owen Huth and Ben Creamer delivering a training session to a client

Who are they?

Ben Creamer (BC): I joined Sharing Minds in January 2018 as the General Manager. Over the last 20 years, my career has taken me around the world supporting a range of businesses on Microsoft technology. I have experience in a wide array of skills from my early technical days in IT, to managing and growing teams and building businesses. I love advising customers and partners on the most appropriate use of cloud services and technology but it’s training and change management that really excites me.

Owen Huth (OH): I joined Sharing Minds in 2019 as a Change Manager to support an existing team of IT professionals. During my career, I have had the opportunity to work in organisations that have various sized footprints, which has given me great insight into various IT ecosystems. Through working and living through the range of technology lifecycles, I have developed a passion for enabling organisations and their people to embrace the challenges these changes bring about.

Best part about the job?

BC: It is fantastic to work as part of a close-knit team of knowledgeable, fun-loving people who are passionate about what they do. I really enjoy the days when I’m out visiting our clients and get the chance to show and teach them how their new online environment works and what they can achieve with it. Recently, I was on a client site in the middle of outback Queensland delivering training on Office 365, which is a testament to how easily accessible the product is, even from the most remote places.

OH: Working with a team that supports one another to achieve a delivery that exceeds the expectations of our customers. This has been achieved by working with highly motivated individuals from different backgrounds banding together. A recent project required a very quick turnaround of a deliverable that I was able to share with my peers, get and action feedback to confidently deliver to a customer (collaborated through Microsoft Teams).

Above: Ben Creamer onsite delivering training to a client in regional QLD

Favourite moment at Sharing Minds so far?

BC: I was delighted to be a part of Sharing Minds’ 10-year anniversary celebrations in mid-2018. Building a business and growing it over a 10-year period is a significant milestone and credit for the guys before me in making this possible. We made sure to celebrate with the team and stop and smell the roses!

OH: Watching the team band together to face a recent resourcing issue with a deliverable. It was a proud moment to watch as team members came in to assist on the project. This was a favourite moment as I know if I were facing the same issue, the team would have my back.

Why do you love training?

BC: This may sound a little cheesy, but I will never get tired of watching someone’s face during a training session when they realise how much more productive, they can be with their new solution. Whether it’s that taxing task they would usually dread doing everyday now being automated, or the moment when all the dots connect and they discover a new way to do something. That’s the best part about being a Trainer.

OH: Everyone has a different way of working and approaching a task, sometimes the approach works, other times it does not. What I love about training is the delivery of ‘wow moments’, where users realise that something that has been giving them grief for a long time is now resolved.

Above: Owen Huth presenting a training session on Office 365 to a client.

What’s the best training you have received?

BC: I have sat in on many courses over the last 20 years when mentoring and growing my trainer’s capabilities. I always look for energy in the delivery of material, subject matter knowledge and the ability of the trainer to build trust so participants can get involved in discussions and ask questions. I once saw a junior trainer deliver a course to a dozen experts in their field and rather than lecture them, he used their knowledge to facilitate the course and share the info between students.

OH: Throughout my career, I have attended many sessions to achieve a level of professional development. While everyone has a slightly different delivery method, I have found the best deliveries to engage and incorporate the participants. One method involved participants of a lecture in forming groups before delivering their theories on a concept; the trainer then used these theories to expand and enrich everyone’s idea of the concept. This method has always resonated with me when training users, as understanding where a user has come from allows you to deliver much more value.

What do you get up to when you’re not in the office?

BC: Living on the beautiful Sunshine Coast, nothing is better than getting out and about and enjoying the region. I keep busy by playing any sport I can as I love exercising and spending time with friends. My kids love taking their dog down to the beach so that means plenty of weekends by the water.

OH: When I am not in the office, I am spending time with family and enjoying trips out to the family farm. I enjoy playing team sports and am an active Volleyball player. I enjoy drinking coffee, listening to audio books and am a big fan of the Marvel and DC universes.

Are you interested in Office 365 training with Sharing Minds? Please contact us to book your session or for more information.

A Guide to Making the Most of Microsoft Inspire

Microsoft Inspire 2018.

Article originally published on 30 May 2019 on the Microsoft Partner Network.

Every year Microsoft Inspire provides diverse opportunities for partners to network and learn with peers, and Microsoft teams and leaders from all over the world.

Last year was the largest conference yet with more than 17,000 partners in attendance from 130 countries. To maximise your Microsoft Inspire ROI, we asked three partners who attended last year’s event to share their top tips.

1. Be Clear

“Be clear on what you want to achieve.” Tim Goodman, CTO and Founder BizTech Enterprise Solutions

“Ideally”, Tim continues, “you should have one full day of scheduled meetings and one full day left open for networking and setting up meetings through your networking. Preparation made our Inspire experience so much better than we had expected.”

Tim recommends working closely with your Partner Account Manager to set goals for Microsoft Inspire and advice on how to reach them. He also suggests doing research on the partners you will/want to meet with and have a solid understanding of your desired meeting outcomes. Also deliver clarity, by preparing a 15-30 second elevator pitch to explain your business quickly and effectively.

2. Be Open

“Be open to inspiration. This was the first time I was inspired by a CEO’s views on how technology companies should behave, what their role is in the world and what we as technology professionals should be striving for.” Michael Patishman, CEO BizTech Enterprise Solutions

Microsoft Inspire is a unique opportunity to hear directly from Microsoft executives, including CEO Satya Nadella, about the role of partners in Microsoft’s strategy; and the technology and partner strategies that are driving the most impactful change and transformation for customers. Michael believes being open to new ideas and new ways of thinking can give you a step ahead of your competitors.

This came to life for BizTech following Microsoft Inspire last year. As BizTech’s customers became more interested in the industry direction on AI, Michael and his team used insights from Microsoft Inspire to drive customer conversations. “AI is something a lot of our customers are wanting to talk about. We have the pleasure of demonstrating Microsoft AI and business intelligence tools and it has been received really well by our customers.”

3. Be Brave

“Be brave. Chat to people. Find like-minded people to partner with.” Ben Creamer, General Manager Sharing Minds

“My Microsoft Inspire goal was to meet people and help other businesses deliver more Services! I wanted to meet businesses who were looking for capability and delivery services in the SharePoint and Office 365 space, and then discuss how we could provide value to them and their customers.”

There are no shortages of opportunities to meet partners and start a conversation while at Microsoft Inspire. Ben recalls that some of the best conversations happened in the most unlikely locations during the event. Whether it was across a lunchroom table, after a session finished, or even on a party bus while heading to the Bruno Mars concert; every moment provides an opportunity to reach out and connect with other partners.

As Sharing Minds provides specialised Microsoft SharePoint Services, Microsoft Inspire also helped Ben find partners to expand its own solution delivery capability: “By going to Inspire, I can meet partners who deliver complimentary services to ours. I can make trusted connections and that helps me build my standing as a trusted advisor to my customers. It also delivers a competitive advantage by having the latest Microsoft knowledge in your toolkit direct when its delivered, rather than wait for it to hit Australian shores.”

Ben credits his attendance at Microsoft Inspire with signing new partners, numerous new projects, and increased service delivery across Australia.

4. Be Better

“The way I measure my life is ‘Am I better than I was last year?’” Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft

Each year Microsoft Inspire evolves into a better and more inspiring event than it was the year before. And each year brings new industry insights, new ideas to be workshopped and new connections to be made.

Michael, Tim and Ben all agree that if you’re a Microsoft partner, then there is no question that there will be great value in attending Microsoft Inspire. As Ben puts it: “Where else do you get a chance to mingle and meet with that many people who are partner focused in the one room?”

Sharing Minds’ Ben Creamer and Adam Clark will be heading to Vegas for Microsoft Inspire 2019. If you would like to arrange a time to meet while there, please get in touch.

SharePoint Conference 2019 Wrap Up

This year, I had the pleasure of attending the annual SharePoint Conference (SPC) with one of our Senior Consultants, Shannon Carey, in tow. SPC is the premier SharePoint event offering sessions with expert tips on how to best utilise the platform and updates about the product roadmap as well as providing opportunities for networking with colleagues across the industry. This year was no exception as it was the 20th year since SharePoint’s humble beginnings running on an old server under Jeff Teper’s desk.

SharePoint Home Sites. Image credit: Microsoft

SharePoint Home Sites

The keynote session opened the conference with a range of speakers from Microsoft, and so too came one of the biggest announcements of the event, the launch of SharePoint Home sites. Through leveraging Communication sites, Home sites combines news, events, content, conversations and video which will emphasise organisational priorities and branding. Home sites are intended to be used with one per Office 365 tenancy and will eventually become the Home page on the SharePoint mobile app. 15 SharePoint Home sites launch partners were announced to coincide with the release and we were proud to hear Sharing Minds partners LiveTiles, Hyperfish and Wizdom are part of this cohort.

SharePoint Search Updates

There are many improvements to the Search functionality rolled out across the Microsoft 365 suite. In December 2019 custom refiners and verticals, display templates, more extensibility, more scalability, more content types, inline @Office help assistance and many more updates will be made available. As a result, content will be searchable within 15 seconds of an addition or change.

Multi-Geo Capabilities. Image credit: Microsoft

Multi-Geo Capability

New multi-geo capabilities have been announced for Office 365 Groups and SharePoint, which will enable users to store data in one or more locations they have selected. These capabilities satisfy data sovereignty requirements in each location and the user requirement has been lowered to organisations with 500+ users. This makes this feature available to more businesses that before and provides enterprise functionality for mid-sized organisations.

SharePoint Admin Centre Site URL Rename Functionality. Image credit: Microsoft.

SharePoint Admin Centre - Site URL Rename

A host of improvements and updates to the SharePoint Admin Centre were announced during Jeff Teper’s opening keynote address. The most notable of which, site URL rename, was met with a raucous applause by the room of SharePoint devotees. This change will allow for the URL address of a site to be updated simultaneously when the site name changes and all future requests redirected to the new URL.

OneDrive Updates

Rolling out later in 2019 will be OneDrive Differential Sync, a new functionality which will only sync changes to files within a OneDrive, avoiding the need for the whole listing to be synced. This will save data and time usage for OneDrive users on the move.

Between sessions, I managed to find a few friendly faces around the exhibition, including Sharing Minds partners AvePoint, LiveTiles, Nintex and ShareGate. Keep an eye out on the Sharing Minds social media channels for some exclusive interviews I recorded with each of the partners about their product roadmaps and exciting updates.

Ben Creamer with Jeff Teper, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Office, OneDrive SharePoint and Office Media Group.

A personal highlight of the event for me was meeting the legendary Jeff Teper. Known in the industry as the Godfather of SharePoint, it was a real honour to meet with Jeff and have a quick chat about the journey of SharePoint and where its headed in the future.

Already looking forward to next year’s SPC!

Cheers,
Ben
Ben.Creamer(at)sharingminds.com.au

Making Your New Intranet a Success: Change Management Tips to Encourage User Adoption Rates

You could spend thousands of project dollars developing and designing a new intranet, but if it isn’t going to be used (or used to its potential) what’s the (Share)point? Here are three common threats to successful adoption and some suggestions on how to avoid them when developing your Change Management Plan.

Lack of engagement with staff during decision-making (staff don’t want to use the new platform)

You could build the most visually stunning intranet design with every possible feature of the cloud, but if your staff feel disenfranchised and not involved in the process, they will be reluctant to use it. It sounds strange to say, but your staff need to feel a connection with the new platform, that their input has been valued and appreciate the intended benefits of the change – early on.

Our top tip to avoid this is to have a communication plan that engages staff early and informs them:

• What the change is about

• Why it is being introduced

• What the expected benefits are

• The impact to their work

• When it will be happening

• Where they can find out more

Ensure information is available to everyone in the organisation and provide them with a mechanism to participate. Messaging needs to be clear and cohesive with visible support and leadership from an ambassador or sponsor.

This may mean different types of engagement like workshops, video conferences or something more straightforward such as an intranet portal with direct information sources. Incorporate feedback channels into your communications plan so any queries or concerns can be addressed before a system-wide change is made.

Inadequate support or training (staff are resisting the new platform)

If your staff don’t know how to operate their new platform, or how it will make their life easier and more effective, they will be reluctant to use it. Ensure that the training needs of staff are well understood and remember that we are all different and have different learning styles so think about training and support that is multifaceted. The days of just running a traditional classroom training course are over!

Once the design is complete and deployed, organise training sessions for your staff on how to use their new solution. Factors to be considered when designing a Training Plan include:

•  Are some staff members time-poor?

• Would they benefit from short demonstration video clips, or would they prefer to flick through a procedure manual? 

• Would you be better off arranging a Change Champion to spend time walking the floor and troubleshooting face-to-face?

Lack of UI/UX (staff don’t like using the new platform)

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, so User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) are an essential component of any intranet design. The layout and look and feel of the new site must inherently make sense to your end-users otherwise they won’t use it. One way to prevent this from happening is to widely consult your organisation and find out what your staff like about their current site and what they would like to change. Collate these responses and incorporate the feedback into the design process. Just because the legacy system is outdated doesn’t necessarily mean it should be scrapped altogether. Make sure the features and design choices that still work well are retained in the new solution. Remember: incremental change is just as important as revolutionary change.

Another recommendation is to make sure the naming system and menus of the final design are clear so any user from any department of the organisation can easily navigate their way around.

A new intranet is an exciting time and can be a great step for any business offering a new and innovative way to operate. Focusing only on the completion of the project and not the bigger picture could jeopardise your user adoption rates and value of the new site.

Engagement, and early engagement, is key. Set out with a clear vision of what the project is, what it means and why you’re doing it - then communicate widely and in a variety of ways. Allow the whole organisation to be as excited about the change as you are.

Are you interested in Change Management Services? For more information, or to book your first Change Management consultation, please contact us via the form below or call 1300 611 359.

Microsoft Ignite The Tour | Sydney Wrap-Up

L-R: Shannon Carey, Ben Creamer, Adam Clark and Geoff Boddington.

Now that Ignite Sydney has come to a close for 2019, I’d like to share some of my experiences throughout the two days of the event. Firstly, I’ll start out by acknowledging everyone that made it such a special event for us - from mingling with our fellow industry colleagues, to our network of partners we were able to catch up with in and around the event, and of course the many, invaluable, one-on-one conversations we were able to have with the Microsoft experts.

To set the scene, The Hub is where we met with different vendors and partners showcasing their vast array of products and capabilities. AvePoint’s ‘The Claw’ vending machine was a favourite, as was, Logitech’s Microsoft Teams Meeting Room devices and Vive’s headsets.  

As always, it was great to see our partners Rhipe and Nintex at their separate booths and the team at LiveTiles roaming around the exhibition floor. There were so many others we managed to catch up with over the two days; it’s always great to see so many familiar faces in the crowd.  

Adam Clark with Nintex Sales Engineer Mathew Johnson at the Nintex booth. Photo credit: Nintex.

Of all the sessions, my favourite was a presentation from Brian Holt, all about designing resilient cloud applications. It really made me think about all the different possibilities when designing solutions. Brian is proficient at building out applications using node.js and showed how the infrastructure can be stood up in Azure in just a matter of minutes.  

He then showed how this could be made globally redundant and efficient using a new feature in Azure Front Door which was a highlight for me.  

It also got me thinking about how to incorporate Cosmos DB into applications, rather than relying on SQL. 

Logic Apps made its way into most of the sessions that I attended. Generally, this was spoken about as the glue that wires up application in Azure, or even to spin up Azure infrastructure. I hopped into a session on custom connectors that can be consumed in Logic Apps or Power Apps and was surprised by how easy this process is. Drop me a line if you would like some more information on this.

It was refreshing to hear stories around how AI is being used for good and solving complex problems, never before possible.  

A case study about the counting of rare fish using underwater drones and AI, which enables government policy to be written in a timely manner to protect the fish in the Northern Territory, really stood out as a perfect example of AI being embraced in a new and innovative way to help society.  

Finally, I’ll leave you with a learning which has really stuck with me since returning to the office after Ignite: 

Traditional monitoring and alerting are built from the server level up, modern monitoring and alerting happens from the client down. 

Cheers

Shannon
Shannon.Carey(at)sharingminds.com.au

LiveTiles Featured Article: Three intelligent transformation tools for your business

A featured article originally written
by Kane Grose, LiveTiles

The phrase ‘work smarter, not harder’ has been around since the 1930s, but it’s something we’ve taken to heart here at LiveTiles. So much so, that even our workplaces are intelligent now!

The intelligent workplace, as we see it, is the natural progression from the digital workplace. It allows us to work more efficiently and creatively and progress into a realm of genuine ideation, instead of just mindlessly trudging through our daily tasks.

This is done through the infusion of simple artificial intelligence, usage analytics, and informed design iteration into our online work environments.

Three intelligent transformation tools for your business

We’ve built our intelligent workplace platform using a combination of three elements. These are LiveTiles Design, Bots, and Intelligence. Here’s a bit of a breakdown:

LiveTiles Design is the foundation of our intelligent workplace. Instead of jumping between a bunch of disparate apps and sites in order to do your work, Design allows you to pull all your tools together in one mobile-friendly interface, making your workspace more efficient and easier to navigate.

(above) LiveTiles Design-built Human Resources Portal

LiveTiles Intelligence takes the design platform to the next level. Gone of the days of ‘close enough is good enough’ when it comes to our collaborative workspaces.

Intelligence provides ongoing usage analytics and feedback that designers can use to inform their redesign choices. This means that the intelligent workplace can evolve to be precisely what users need it to be, instead of collecting a bunch of stale, redundant pages that no-one uses.

(above) LiveTiles site wide Intelligence Visitor Overview dashboard

To truly have an intelligent workplace, though, you need one that will learn how to work with you. That’s where our bots come in.

Essentially, LiveTiles Bots will be your digital personal assistants that can help you with a wide range of repeatable, mundane tasks. This gives you more time to concentrate on the tasks that need genuine human cognition to complete.

(above) LiveTiles Bots’ ability selection menu

Don’t be daunted though – the UI of our bot design platform makes it simple to update your helpers, meaning that they can evolve at the pace your workplace requires.

Through a combination of these components, you can create a dynamic and engaging workplace that has the capacity to grow and change to meet all your user needs.

Request your own LiveTiles demo here.

Find out more about how Sharing Minds can help you explore the world of LiveTiles’ technologies by contacting us here, or give us a call on 1300 611 359.

TableFilter.JS - Part of a SharePoint Solution

What options do you have when you’ve got several lists of data in SharePoint, and wish to present them as a merged, contiguous data set?

THE SCENARIO

Our client had developed several lists of contractor related information on licenses, technical and safety certifications, and medical/vaccination states, all with attached copies of certificates etc. Every time the HR Team needed to check someone's status or current qualifications, they needed to check each of these lists and download the files to desktop or a folder, before they could forward them to prospective clients.

THE REQUIREMENTS

Sharing Minds was approached to assist in developing a SharePoint-based solution to display a single consolidated view of the contractor details, and to allow the selection to be downloaded in a single archive of selected certificate files.

There was also the requirement for a ‘light weight’ solution with few or no libraries to be installed on the server.

OUR OPTIONS

Some of the default options such as a content query web part or search results were not suitable, as apart from 2 fields per list (e.g. ID  and Name) there wasn't a common content type or data structure.  

With no common content types, or other centralising elements that we could use it had become a custom solution, as we did not want to show tuples (i.e. repeated row caused by joining dissimilar lists). 

In a database, we could create a query using unions and joins and flatten it out.  

But we're using SharePoint.  

Using a client-side approach we were able to leverage JavaScript to create a common data structure of nested objects populated by a REST call per list, before pushing the compound list of objects into a table for display. 

Add in the further requirement to sort, search and filter by the many columns imported from the lists, and our first trial was with TableFilter.JS.

TABLEFILTER.JS 

Available from GitHub, well documented with great examples, Max Guglielmi has provided a great framework which takes our humble HTML table and puts a very handy HTML5 spin on it just by pointing it at the table ID.  

Starting out with simple text search on each field (Fig.1) it was able convert selected columns into multiple-checklist, drop down selectors.(Fig.2)

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

LIMITATIONS

Now there are caveats here.   

While it can do cascading filters based on selected column, multi-selector cascading filters (think Excel) are still on the feature request list (or we can recommend Chosen.JS if you want program it yourself). There is some limitation to the functionality of the library.  

However, given it is on an MIT license, it's a very generous framework and Mr Guglielmi has a set of commercial extensions available as well.  

So instead of a relatively static table or form which passes filter values back to a second, third etc. REST calls and data refresh, we have a large dataset which we can load, sort, filter and reset quickly and easily. 

Some of the limitations we encountered were time to load with very large data sets (20K+ items), especially when using Internet Explorer due to its rendering engine and loading dynamic content, as well as the default 5000 item list threshold on REST calls.  

If you’re having similar issues with your SharePoint environment and would like assistance, please contact our Service Delivery Team to arrange for a consultation.

Phone   1300 611 359
Email    info@sharingminds.com.au

Cheers,

Rob
Rob.Bayly(at)sharingminds.com.au

Why are we excited about SharePoint 2019?

Some exciting news has been coming out of Microsoft's latest edition of the Ignite conference (Sept 2017), where more than 25,000 customers and partners converged to talk all things Microsoft.

A great deal of announcements were made, including interesting applications of AI and mixed-reality into various products. As you might expect, the announcement we found the most exciting is the pending release of SharePoint 2019, expected in preview as soon as June this year.

Further announcements included big plans to better bridge the gap between on-premise environments and the cloud. While today only 35% of licenses are on-premise (reducing steadily from previous years), Microsoft is clearly still focused on providing businesses with both online and on-premises versions and supporting these with updates and improvements.

Reports from Microsoft MVPs give hope to the future availability of the modern experiences seen in SharePoint online in SharePoint Server 2019. This support could include the availability of modern Team and Communication Sites as well as the new Sync Client, which is said to be a vast improvement over its predecessor. SharePoint 2019 will also bring support for PowerApps, another tool which has become increasingly useful and powerful in SharePoint Online.

Communication Site

Team Site

Broad plans also encompass the forthcoming Office 2019 productivity suite, as well as Exchange Server 2019, Skype for Business Server 2019 alongside the release of SharePoint Server 2019, outlined in a Collab365 Global Conference keynote talk hosted by Collaboris.

All of this means the next stage of releases will lay the groundwork for a better, more fully featured SharePoint experience no matter whether you are operating on-premise or online. With these platforms right around the corner, now is the time to begin planning how your organisation will evolve alongside.

Would you like some advice on your SharePoint 2019 roadmap?  We'd love to help, so please get in touch today.

Cheers,

Jordan
info(at)sharingminds.com.au