In July, myself and the Evolve Conference organizer team put on a two-day event at Microsoft’s Reactor in London – Teams in Two Days.
If you haven’t heard of the Evolve Conference, let me give you a quick recap. It was born in 2015 after visiting Lync Day in Norway, as UC Day in the UK. The original intention was after the last ever TechEd Europe in 2014 there wasn’t a conference in Europe focused on Microsoft Unified Communication. Therefore UC Day was born with the intent to bring world-class speakers to the UK to present on real-world topics and give practical advice. With the help of sponsors, the conference was held at the UK’s National Conference Centre, in Birmingham and completely free to attend.
This year, Evolve Conference is happening this October 21st, back in Birmingham – and as usual completely free for attendees, with tracks focused on the Teamwork & Productivity sides of Microsoft 365, Security and Microsoft Azure. With some of the best speakers – most Microsoft MVPs – travelling from all over the globe it is on many Office 365 professionals must-attend list. You can register for Evolve for free here.
On the back of last year’s Evolve Conference the organizing team, including myself, Jason Wynn, Ben Lee and Brian Reid decided with the help of fellow MVP, Tom Morgan, to put on a two-day mini conference in London focused solely around Microsoft Teams, at Microsoft’s Reactor. We called it Evolve Conference on Tour – Teams in Two Days.
The intention of Teams in Two days was to give IT Pros a foundation in the core components that make up Microsoft Teams – including identity, Exchange and Skype integration, security and governance, calling, phone system integration, application development and user adoption.
With the help of Microsoft, we recorded the whole two days for your enjoyment so you can watch Teams in Two days in your own time. It’s here on the Practical 365 Youtube channel:
Introduction
Join me for a quick introduction on Teams in Two days before we dive into each session.
Managing your users for Teams – Brian Reid
On the surface it can seem easy to synchronise your users with O365, however, there are many choices and pitfalls that can be encountered, not least about how to do this securely. This session will provide guidance, based on real-world experiences, on how to best navigate your options and ensure you have everything shipshape and secured.
You can find Brian Reid on Twitter, Practical 365 and on his blog.
How Teams works with Exchange and Skype – Steve Goodman
Many organizations use Exchange Server and are moving to Office 365 as part of their deployment, and use Skype for Business. In this session, you’ll learn about the dependencies Teams has on Exchange and how it can be used online or with on-premises, and the basics of enabling Hybrid should you need to co-exist or migrate. If you are using Skype for Business today, you’ll learn how Teams works with Skype for Business and how to configure Teams to coexist.
Data protection and compliance for Teams – Brian Reid
Teams is built from the ground up to be a compliant platform and incorporate all of the data protection tooling available as part of O365 due to its use of OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online. These tools are changing frequently and there are overlapping feature sets between the tools. This session will look at how to best configure these options for your company needs and ensure that you can meet any industry best practices or guidance that you have.
Calling with Teams – Ben Lee
Bringing telephony capabilities to Teams can seem a daunting task, however, it does not need to be. In this session we will look at the choices available and how to approach adding telephony into your Teams environment, including Direct Routing vs Calling Plans and how Teams media flows work.
You can find Ben Lee on Twitter and on his blog.
Managing and maintaining quality for Calls and Conferences – Jason Wynn
Microsoft provides a number of tools that can be used to help achieve and then maintain a good quality user experience for your network. Following on from Session 1 this will cover how to perform “pre-flight” checks for a site before migration and then how to monitor and trend quality so you can proactively deal with any problems.
Find Jason Wynn on Twitter, Practical 365, on the All About 365 podcast and on his blog.
Building your first Teams Application – Tom Morgan
The way we work is changing. Bots are the new Apps. Data is King. Technology is evolving and you need to evolve with it. Teams has a rich platform for developers with multiple ways to bring new capabilities to your users. But what if you’re not a developer and don’t know where to start? Then this talk is for you! Join Tom Morgan as he navigates all the ways that Microsoft have made it easy to get started building your first Teams application, tips and tricks he has picked up over the past few years, Azure hacks to make sure you’re not wasting money and more.
As an example, he’ll share experiences from publishing his most recent Teams App, RememberThis. If you’ve always wanted to write a Teams application and see your name in the App Store, this talk will fill in the gaps to going from Big Idea to Published App.
You can find Tom Morgan on Twitter and on his blog.
Driving Teams Usage – Jason Wynn
All of the work from the other sessions presented here will be in vain if users do not engage with the platform on a daily basis. It can seem straightforward to deploy the Teams client and then leave your users to it, however, to maximise the return and productivity benefits of this platform it is important to engage with your business and most importantly your users. This session will give you the tools and ideas that you need to excite your users and evolve your business with the best communication and collaboration platform on the market – Teams.
Want more content like this?
Head over to the Practical 365 YouTube channel, and make sure you subscribe for notifications when a new video is published.
We’ll be at Evolve Conference this October, and of course Microsoft Ignite 2019 in Orlando, this November.
If you’re looking for ways to enhance your Microsoft Teams management skills, don’t forget to check out this must-read guide: ‘How to Manage Microsoft Teams: An Admin Guide’.
