Welcome to the Microsoft 365 Strategies For Internal Communications conference. In this fast-paced forum, you'll get to know your fellow peers, their biggest internal communications challenges, and a few fun facts.

When it comes to new ways of working, Prime Therapeutics was on the leading edge. We rapidly transitioned to remote work at the start of the pandemic in 2020. When offices reopened, our hybrid approach met employees’ needs for flexibility and connection. In today’s complex health care system, helping people get the medicine they need demands a variety of digital tools . M365 was that driving transformation.

You’ll learn:

• How we harnessed M365 tools to respond to world events
• Change management principles that build employee awareness and motivation for M365
• How to increase employee engagement by using the tools to tell the story

Comcast's digital workplace is evolving into a very engaging platform on SharePoint and enables employees to be at the forefront of the experience.

In this presentation you will discover:

• How to create design for modern SharePoint
• What channels support employee engagement and company culture
• How to give employees a space regardless of their location and how to make digital experience personal

You can drive a fully-engaged employee experience with Yammer at the center. But as communicators, we’re often unsure which tool to use when across O365, or even how to best use Yammer. With the advent of Viva as well, you’ll learn how Yammer plays a key part in your integrated employee experience and ensures you have a connected work culture.

In this session you will learn:

• Which tool to use when with Yammer and Teams
• How a great Yammer network will set you up for a great Viva experience
• What are the key requirements to drive a great Yammer network

In this presentation, Jamie Stokes will share the unique features of Cox Communications’ intranet and share her innovative approaches for how to sustain a large enterprise intranet with employees spread across the country:

• How do you use analytics to keep content engaging?
• How do keep search clean and relevant?
• How do you continue to building new engagement features?

Jamie manages all digital channels for internal communications across the company including the enterprise portal, video production and streaming and mass communications messaging. She helped spearhead the redesign of Cox Communications’ enterprise-wide social intranet including a fully integrated HR system tying together SharePoint Online, PeopleSoft and Oracle into one seamless user experience.

You will learn how CBN uses Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Microsoft 365 to:

• Communicate important information across the organization
• Collaborate across departments to break down silos and improve productivity
• Improve morale through Teams by spotlighting excellence

Grant County Public Utility District transitioned from an onsite environment to O365 by using all of the tools in the Microsoft Tool Box—plus Sharegate to help move to the cloud.  Their biggest challenges were moving 4500 InfoPath forms and workflows to the Power Platform and migrating 500+ sites into SharePoint Online—all the while ensuring the tightest security around their CIP data.

Hear how they accomplished this and how they are changing the PUD one app at a time.

Topics covered:

• Engaging Stakeholder in project involvement and adoption
• Early adoption from Excel Spreadsheets into O365 and Power Apps and Power Automate
• Migration tips and tricks
• Continued engagement with departments to simplify process improvement using Power Automate

In this "no-pressure" setting, you'll be able to ask your most pressing questions and receive honest feedback from your peers.

In this session you’ll get a tour of some of the recently introduced employee engagement offerings from Microsoft including:

• Viva Connections: For integrating Teams and SharePoint
• Viva Insights: For real-time feedback on productivity, well being, management and leadership
• Viva Learning: A simple and free learning solution built into Teams
• Viva Topics: Making knowledge and communication more findable across the organization

You’ll learn what each of these solutions are, see brief demonstrations of each, learn about the free versus premium features, and how to interact with your SharePoint Administrator or Partner to get these deployed within your organization.

Users are given new tools and ways to work at an alarming rate. We need to understand what aspects of these tool are best suited for the work at hand.

More importantly, we need to ensure the customer experience is the main measurable in these efforts, including how to:

• Understand the Personas in your organization
• Forget how we used to do things
• Lead with problems & solutions not technology
• Measure the customer experience and pivot quickly

During this bonus session Comcast will cover diverse angles of aligning the people-first approach by identifying the needs of your target group with M365 tools.

Topics Covered:

• What are the challenges of understanding the needs of the employees in a large company?
• How to create an engaging communication strategy on digital platforms?
• How to embrace a people-first approach in the digital workplace?
• What are the channels to create a successful information flow?
• How to get the feedback from the employees and reflect it to the digital workplace?

The evolving workplace means organizations need to focus on people more than ever.

Technology is guiding this change by offering content and communication opportunities, as these new capabilities arise communicators need to evolve with them.

This session is designed to help you understand why the shift is happening and how you can evolve your communication practices.

In a world of hybrid and remote work, great communities in Yammer can form the basis of strong connection and engagement.

But it can take time to really get communities to take off.

In this breakout you’ll learn how to purposely design your communities to drive the success of your Yammer network.

In this session you will learn:

• How to plan great communities for Yammer
• What Yammer capabilities can align with your community goals
• How you can align with company goals and measure community success

Building off the group discussions from Day 1, you’ll have a chance to talk to your peers about what digital workplace success looks like and share the biggest take-aways so far.

Work patterns we've relied on for decades are undergoing a dramatic change.

Human ingenuity is being amplified by artificial intelligence in a manner that feels like magic.

Every organization needs a digital fabric that binds the organization together with secure communication, collaboration, and design. Join this session to learn how Microsoft 365 is empowering us with powerful new hybrid features.

Takeaways:

• Know what's new in Microsoft 365 Hybrid work
• Improve hybrid meeting experiences through a new way of collaboration
• Learn about increasing employee experiences through Microsoft Loop and Viva

You've submitted your biggest internal communication challenges; now is the time to have those challenges addressed by an expert speaker panel!

Hear from a variety of professionals and leave with practical ideas that will immediately enhance your internal communications strategies.

Maura Danehey, Communications Leader | Momentive

Additional panelists to be announced soon...