microsoft office 365 case study

• IT Management
• Communications

Moving to the Cloud: A Microsoft Office 365 Case Study

Levick , a leading strategic communications firm, employs about sixty people in its offices in Washington, D.C., and New York City.

The entire staff used versions of Microsoft’s Office suite ranging from Office 2003 to Office 2010. The company stored documents on a central file server with no versioning capability, and when employees needed to collaborate on a document, they emailed it back and forth. The process was cumbersome and inefficient; something had to change.

The Small Business IT Challenge: Introduce efficient document sharing and manage Office more easily.

When a new IT director, Kate Tikoian, arrived at the company, she recognized the need for a more effective method for document collaboration. Employees also used a combination of Office 2003, 2007, and 2010 beta software, and these licenses needed rationalizing to make training and support more straightforward.

The Small Business IT Solution: Move to Microsoft’s cloud-based Office 365 suite.

“I believe in forward thinking, so I made the decision to move to Microsoft Office 365 ,” said Tikoian. “We also started testing Microsoft’s SharePoint online to provide a better way of sharing documents.”

Before moving to Office 365, Tikoian considered Google Apps, but decided to stick with the Microsoft Office product that her colleagues were familiar with. “If we had moved to Google Apps, then our staff, who are used to the look and functionality of Microsoft products, would have faced a significant learning curve, and the feature set would have been less robust,” she said.

She added that Office 365’s administration capabilities are far better than those available for Google Docs. “You still have fully featured management consoles and can customize just about everything in the 365 cloud that you could if you deployed the software on-premises,” she said. “Most other services offer dumbed-down admin features,” she added.

Implementing Office 365

Before starting to switch employees from the traditional desktop Office suite to Office 365, Tikoian spent several weeks talking to staff members to understand how they worked and to allay any misgivings they had about moving to the new system. Microsoft IT solutions partner New Signature assisted in the planning, implementation, and migration.

The change happened gradually, with most employees migrated to Office 365, and the commonly used templates and documents moved from Levick’s file server to SharePoint online. “SharePoint replaced the old file server and added document management—as well as collaboration capabilities, an intranet and client portals. Those were the things that people were slower to adopt,” remarked Tikoian.

After a few weeks, everyone had moved over to Office 365’s office productivity applications, SharePoint Online was up and running, and the employees who needed it also had access to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. A few staff members were also using Microsoft’s Lync instant messaging, voice over IP, and video conferencing client, which, along with Lync Online, is also included as part of Office 365 Enterprise E3.

Initially, the company did not opt for Office 365’s Exchange Online capabilities, but Tikoian said plans to move over to that at some point in the future. “My senior executives were skeptical about migrating email to the cloud, because they had so many issues with email migrations under my predecessors,” she explained. “I migrate to Office 365 slowly so that I had time to show them how seamlessly we could migrate and how reliably and easily we could access our information stored there.”

Benefits of Migrating to Microsoft Office 365

One of the main benefits to using Office 365 is the ability to access Office 365 applications and documents from anywhere, Tikoian said. “We don’t have an official BYOD program, but employees want to use any device they choose. And nearly 10 percent of our staff use Macs as well,” she added. Since the interface is relatively consistent regardless of the device used to access Office 365 applications, Levick employees didn’t need additional training for different devices or operating systems.

As another benefit, SharePoint provides a central repository for documents and a way of sharing them with version and access controls. The previous method of emailing documents to colleagues made it very hard to keep track of which document was the most up-to-date, and resulted in a very large amount of data being stored on the company’s email server, Tikoian said.

Moving to Office 365 has resulted in considerable financial savings, Tikoian said. Purchasing conventional Office licenses for Levick’s staff would have cost the equivalent of six years’ subscription to Office 365. “That would have been an up-front cost, rather than a cost spread over time. And with Office 365, we always have the most up-to-date software.”

The company has also saved more than $30,000 by using SharePoint as a document repository instead of paying for a new file server (as the old one needed replacing), operating system and client access license fees, and the cost of running a backup system, disaster recovery and business continuity solutions.

 “All in all, we were paying something like $1.75 per GB per month for our offsite backup file storage before,” said Tikoian. “Now that we store our documents in the 365 cloud, we don’t paying for backups or anything else. It costs about one eighth as much as before to keep our data in the cloud.”

For other companies considering a move to Office 365, Tikoian recommends working with a Microsoft solutions partner to ensure that the migration goes smoothly. But in her experience, the change can be made fairly easily and without disruption.

Problems Moving to Microsoft Office 365

Her only reservation is with the quality of the free support that Microsoft provides for Office 365, specifically for Dynamics CRM Online. “It’s improving, but it can be a little frustrating. It takes them a pretty long chunk of time to resolve an issue, and I am not inclined to solely rely on it. That could potentially be a drawback for a smaller company that doesn’t have its own IT staff.”

 Important Takeaways

• Take the time to understand how your employees work, both individually and collaboratively, before you make the move
• For small and mid-sized companies, work with a Microsoft solutions partner, if possible, to get assistance with the design, implementation, and migration
• Be aware of potential support issues when moving to the cloud

Office 365 Pricing Details

• Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus and Office 365 Enterprise E3: $12 and $20 per user, per month (plus $.20/GB for SharePoint Storage)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online: $44 per user per month

Paul Rubens is a technology journalist and contributor to Enterprise Networking Planet, ServerWatch and Enterprise Mobile Today. He has also covered technology for international newspapers and magazines, including The Economist and the Financial Times, since 1991.

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Accenture’s journey to Microsoft 365

• Call for Change
• When Tech Meets Human Ingenuity
• A Valuable Difference
• Meet the Team
• Related Capabilities

Call for change

Enabling our global workforce of hundreds of thousands of employees around the world to be fully empowered to work seamlessly is crucial to the services we at Accenture deliver. Our people need leading capabilities to unleash their ingenuity to help clients harness change with technology. And, we need to be conscious of our impact on the environment as we do it.

To address this need, our global IT organization has been implementing a program of enabling employees with cloud-based capabilities, leading applications and tools, collaboration capabilities and mobile apps that provide expanded options to work from anywhere on any device with consistent functionality and experiences.

At the core of our program is Microsoft 365 including Office applications, Teams , OneDrive for Business, Exchange and SharePoint, supported by several security products. These products and services keep our organization productive anywhere, whether working remotely at home or at client sites. Getting to this point involved migrating from legacy on-premise environments, moving to the cloud and building new capabilities on our foundation.

When tech meets human ingenuity

Enabling Microsoft 365 for any company is a unique process. For Accenture, typically an early adopter, our journey was based on embracing leading technology to transform how we work. We moved to the cloud at a time when cloud-based offerings were just emerging, optimized for scale and speed, and focused on employee productivity.

Once in the cloud, we put the fundamental capabilities in place. As Microsoft services matured, we implemented a series of subsequent transformations that supported our  digital worker vision  and  elastic workplace strategy . These included projects that achieved Accenture-wide scale and speed as well as the adoption of new security features.

A key enabler of our digital worker vision is OneDrive for Business. Cloud storage lets employees access files regardless of the device they are using. Access is available through company-provided PCs and personal devices, including tablets and mobile phones using Microsoft’s  Intune  mobile application management (MAM) solution. OneDrive also played a role in our innovative In-Place Upgrade tool that accelerated Accenture’s deployment of Windows 10 at scale.

Accenture employees now take advantage of capabilities that include Teams, OneDrive for Business,  Power BI , Planner, Power Apps, Power Automate and others as they are released. These capabilities support Accenture’s digital worker vision of providing capabilities that are integrated and seamless, increase productivity and enable employees to work from anywhere, anytime, and do it sustainably.

“As companies, including Accenture, face change in our world, it creates an opportunity to reimagine their organizations with Microsoft technologies to transform how people work.” — KAREN ODEGAARD , Managing Director – Global IT, Digital Worker Technology, Accenture

Forging future value

Today, we are building on the foundational Microsoft 365 capabilities we have put in place and driving further value from our investments by adding new capabilities and enhancing the digital experience. We have pivoted to performing ongoing releases versus implementing major upgrades.

Initiatives we are undertaking include:

Expanding Teams as a platform.  We are  expanding Teams  from a chat and conferencing tool to a digital cockpit where work gets done by bringing more custom and third-party application integrations directly into Teams. For example, our people can embed Power BI reports and Planner to-do’s in Teams. They can use custom apps, such as CALM (CAL + Machine) that delivers in-context insights, such as financial filings or Twitter news, to our Client Account Leads (CALS). Another app is Accenture Pilot for quickly looking up Accenture people. We have rolled out 30 apps to date, with more planned.

We are also planning to launch a full AI-driven support experience that handles all employee support requests via our  ServiceNow  integration. We’re also integrating Salesforce into Teams to enable stronger collaboration with clients and provide customer insights. And, we have published apps and starter kits for our new Human Capital Management platform, Workday. In short, our aim with Teams is to create a single, consolidated place to work.

Developing a bots ecosystem.  We are empowering Accenture teams to develop custom bots to provide relevant information at the time of need without leaving Teams while at the same time establishing the necessary governance to protect and improve the end-user experience. Our Ask @Accenture bot, for example, is an Accenture universal bot pinned of all employees’ left navigation bar in Teams. This bot launched with a rich Q&A experience, but quickly evolved to be an employee’s digital twin that can start to assist them with rich context on topics at point of need.

Our COVID-19 Response Bot was used to automatically check in daily with more than 90,000 employees who had quickly pivoted to working from home. It checked on their technology enablement status and initiated assistance for laptop, internet connection or other technology issues.

Enabling citizen app development.  To help meet the growing demand for app-based solutions, we are putting more power in the hands of users by deploying low/no-code platforms such as Power Apps and Power Automate and establishing the required governance. This option is intended to reduce shadow IT, accelerate time to market and increase the productivity of individuals and teams. Non-IT Accenture “citizen developers” will have the freedom to develop their own applications with no or minimal writing of code while remaining in compliance with legal and security requirements.

Analytics.  As these tools become a greater part of how employees get work done, analytics hold the potential to provide insights to the individual (e.g., “MyAnalytics”). Analytics can help shed light in knowing what ways of working are most effective, where to focus change and adoption efforts, and how to identify and address potential burnout through wellness initiatives.

Artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML).  We are taking advantage of the power of Microsoft Graph combined with AI and ML to make employees more productive through capabilities like surfacing key documents at time of need, automating workflows through intelligent content processing, and enhancing search capabilities by using tools like Delve and SharePoint Syntex.

Security.  Microsoft 365 provides a single, integrated platform to enable a more holistic approach to security. We are using multiple security products including Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender for O365, Data Loss Protection (DLP), and Advanced Threat Analytics, among others. These tools help protect Accenture from malicious attacks, provide advanced monitoring and analytics to identify and investigate potential threats, and provide end-to-end visibility and controls across the full suite of Microsoft 365 products. They minimize the need for individual third-party security tools that are typically limited to individual products (e.g., email).

Environmental Sustainability.  A key benefit of working with the Microsoft 365 product suite is the opportunity it presents to run our business sustainably. Through central policies and product features, we are able to limit data growth and in turn minimize energy consumption from the hardware storing our data. Furthermore, as this data is stored in the cloud, we can rely on Microsoft’s commitment to using renewable energy and increased efficiency in its data centers to support our commitments to reduce our environmental footprint.

Lessons learned

Through our experiences in deploying Microsoft, we have captured a few critical components an organization should have in place to manage the Microsoft 365 service effectively. These include:

• Plan with an eye toward the future to support what is now a quickly evolving platform.
• Have a team and processes in place to manage the ongoing rollout of updates and new features instead of planning large updates every few years.
• Have a focused change management approach to support employees along this journey. Technologies that introduce capabilities that foundationally change the way people work require company-wide change and adoption programs to ensure that new deployments are embraced. Through the various stages of Accenture’s Microsoft 365 journey, our global IT organization has applied  leading and innovative approaches  to engage our global workforce to adopt technology change.
• As the data privacy landscape evolves, seek guidance early and often for new products and features particularly for companies with a footprint in Europe.

A valuable difference

Accenture is experiencing the value of Microsoft 365 in many ways. Most notably, Microsoft 365 offers leading ways of working, enabling Accenture people to do their jobs efficiently and effectively—all at massive enterprise scale. In addition, a cloud-based approach enables easy activation of new capabilities and internet-based Office connectivity. OneDrive for Business gives our people new productivity features they want, improves our security posture, reduces our environmental footprint and enables cost savings.

By positioning Accenture in the cloud, we have been able to seamlessly scale and be secure at the same time—with no concerns about infrastructure capacity. This was the case as Accenture doubled in headcount with the addition of 250,000 employees over several years and did not experience any scale issues. This transformation has allowed us to grow our business, be more productive and confirm that we can still meet our ambitious environmental commitments.

It was also the case when the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded. We were able to swiftly respond and transition our business to one where our people work from home. Already among the world’s largest users of Teams, Accenture’s Teams volume grew four-fold. And, it happened for the most part seamlessly without disruption.

As with most IT initiatives today, our efforts are ongoing. We continue to enhance services that add value and further enable Accenture’s digital worker vision that Microsoft 365 enables.

Microsoft 365 outcomes as of December 2020:

Savings on Exchange and SharePoint costs, a combination of infrastructure and operations savings

Savings per user moving to lower-cost software profiles with browser-based versions of Office

Workstations deployed

Files stored in OneDrive for Business

Of data in OneDrive for Business

Teams video minutes/month

SharePoint sites

Meet the team

Karen Odegaard

Tony Leraris

Grant Gengelbach

Chad Sylwester

Related capabilities, how accenture does it, accenture runs on microsoft.

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Microsoft 365 security best practices case study: DynTek

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Finding the right fit with Office 365 security solutions

Office 365 Enterprise E5 provides a range of integrated security solutions like Advanced Threat Protection, Threat Intelligence, Advanced eDiscovery, and Advanced Data Governance. These solutions help Microsoft partners give customers peace of mind.

DynTek, a successful IT consulting firm based in Orange County, California, has a long history working with security technology and developing solutions for a variety of public sector and commercial organizations. Today, their security practice is an extension of their experience. “We typically build our consulting services around products and technologies where we have core competencies and expertise,” explained Steven Sanchez, National Alliance Director and Director of Sales for DynTek.

When it comes to securing customers’ productivity software, DynTek often finds that the solutions within Office 365 provide a better fit than the over-built solutions customers already possess. “Once we start a conversation about what they’re trying to accomplish and how much of their existing solutions they’re actually utilizing, we can usually draw a compelling correlation between what they need and what Office 365 can do for them,” Sanchez said. “In those scenarios, Office 365 wins almost every time because it’s a better fit for customers who own way more than they need.”

Driving upgrades to Office 365 Enterprise E5

The sales case for Office 365 becomes even more persuasive when DynTek helps customers understand how many additional tools they get when they upgrade to Office 365 Enterprise E5. “Once we start talking about security, it’s an easy next step to explain how customers can get all the benefits of solutions like Advanced Threat Protection, Threat Intelligence, and Advanced eDiscovery for an incremental upgrade,” Sanchez explained.

The hidden value of Advanced eDiscovery

One of the key values that customers get with Office 365 Enterprise E5 is Advanced eDiscovery, which makes it easier for organizations to identify relevant documents, reconstruct email threads, and find relationships in unstructured data.

While people see obvious value in eDiscovery for the legal industry, DynTek has found that it’s a valuable tool for a wide variety of organizations. “We see applications for eDiscovery all over the place, whether it’s K-12 education, financial services, insurance, or healthcare,” Sanchez said. “Any organization that has to be litigation-responsive benefits from eDiscovery. It’s especially important in HR environments that have to produce documents in cases related to terminated employees, disability claims, or discrimination cases–and that’s a potential requirement just about everywhere.”

In some situations, DynTek has found that Office 365 Enterprise E5 can sell itself once clients see just how much time and money can be saved when Advanced eDiscovery is used to fulfill document production requests.

Sanchez related DynTek’s experience with a state Attorney General’s office that was so impressed with the speed and accuracy of the eDiscovery responses they received from other state agencies that were using Office 365, they were compelled to look at it for their own needs. “The responses they received from other agencies drove their interest in seeing if they could cull their own data more effectively.” Sanchez said. “What’s interesting is that because they were requiring eDiscovery of others and getting results in such a clean fashion, it drove them in the direction of Office 365.”

“If you have shared documents that you store in SharePoint, if you have individual documents that are shared in OneDrive, if you have emails that are all in one environment, now you can see all the data that’s within your tenant with one simple eDiscovery query,” Sanchez explained.

To illustrate the value of Advanced eDiscovery, Sanchez related the story of a state healthcare agency that needed to respond to a lawsuit. “The Office 365 solution gave them the ability to go in and look at all of the historical information around that case very easily,” he said. “In the past, they would have had to do it using spreadsheets, manually culling all the data.”

"The game-changing nature of Office 365 is that it is a fully encapsulated solution."

- steven sanchez, national alliance director, dyntek, making a case that customers easily relate to.

DynTek stresses to customers that the benefits of Office 365 Enterprise E5 are easily within reach. “The game-changing nature of Office 365 is that it is a fully encapsulated solution that we can present to customers versus distributed architecture that may or may not be based on best-of-breed technologies. That’s the conversation we have with customers: It’s a fully integrated solution, and in many cases, it’s something you already own or something that you can get for a small upgrade,” Sanchez said. “The key is to help customers understand that Office 365 security solutions give customers a lot of benefit and let them retire an existing solution where they may be paying for more than they need.”

Build a security practice

The global need for protection against data breaches and other cyberthreats presents a great opportunity for your business. Learn more about adding security offerings to your portfolio with help from Microsoft.

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Operations scenario: Create change management plan

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Using Copilot to create change management plan

1. conduct change discovery.

Meet with core stakeholders to understand the change and how it will impact people in the organization. Use Copilot in Teams to summarize the meeting, with action items.​

Copilot in Teams

Dedicate your focus to the meeting while Copilot focuses on capturing the notes. ​

2. Analyze change impacts

Use Copilot in Excel to support data analysis as you build a detailed change impact assessment. ​

Copilot in Excel

3. Brainstorm an engagement plan

Brainstorm the best way to engage your impacted stakeholders and support change adoption. Prompt Copilot in Whiteboard to identify similar ideas and tactics discussed. ​

Copilot in Whiteboard

Quickly categorize inputs, identify winning ideas, and summarize results to share with participants.

4. Build the engagement plan

Use Copilot in PowerPoint to transform a detailed change management plan from Word into an executive presentation.​

Copilot in PowerPoint

Save time transforming existing content and accelerate content design.

5. Schedule planned events

Prompt Copilot to summarize meeting details over time, like how many events related to the change you have each week.​

Manage events more easily. ​

6. Draft communications

Use Copilot in Outlook to create and email to notify the team of the change management plan.​

Copilot in Outlook

Accelerate copy writing and iterate more efficiently. ​

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Value for students

• Work together with real-time coauthoring, autosaving, and easy sharing in your favorite web apps, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
• Stay on top of your email with Outlook for the web and a 50 GB mailbox. 1
• Leverage Microsoft Teams, your digital hub that integrates the conversations, calls, content, and apps your school needs to be more collaborative and engaged.
• Improve learning outcomes with built-in accessibility features and Learning Tools that support reading, writing, math, and communication.
• Keep organized with OneNote, your digital notebook.
• Stay connected with Class Teams and OneNote Notebooks.
• Take authentic assessments with Forms.
• Enable digital storytelling with Sway.
• Never run out of space with unlimited personal cloud storage. 2
• Create professional-looking, educational diagrams with Visio for the web.

All the features in A1 plus full access to the Office desktop apps and additional management and security tools.

• Microsoft Publisher (PC only)
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Includes all the value for students in A1, plus

• Install Office apps on up to five tablets and five phones per user. 3
• Install Office apps on up to five tablets and five phones per user. 4

All the features in A3 plus Microsoft’s best-in-class intelligent security management, advanced compliance, and analytics systems.

• Microsoft Power BI

Includes all the value for students in A3, plus:

• Microsoft's best-in-class security management.
• Advanced compliance systems.
• Advanced analytics systems.

Values for teachers

• Stay connected with your colleagues with Class, Staff, and PLC Teams and OneNote Notebooks.
• Conduct and take authentic assessments with Forms.

Value for faculty and staff:

• Inform and engage with communication sites and team sites throughout your intranet using SharePoint.
• Support compliance with solutions from the unified eDiscovery center.
• Stay protected with rights management, data loss prevention, and encryption.
• Create, manage, and share videos securely across your school with enterprise video service.
• Develop apps without writing code to extend business data quickly with custom web and mobile apps.
• Utilize workflow automation across apps and services to automate business processes without writing code.
• Communicate easily with HD video conferencing.
• Unlimited email storage with in-place archiving.
• Get advanced email with archiving and legal hold.
• Maximum number of users: unlimited. 
• Create, edit, and collaborate on business processes and communicate them visually to students and teachers.   

Includes all the value for teachers in A1, plus:

• Install the Office desktop apps on up to five PCs or Macs per user. 3

Includes all the value for faculty and staff in A1, plus

• Host meetings for up to 10,000 people with Microsoft Teams live events.
• Help assess risk and gain insight into potential threats with Office 365 Cloud App Security.
• Let parents or guardians and students schedule appointments with faculty online using Microsoft Bookings.
• Gain insight into advanced personal analytics with Microsoft Viva Insights (personal insights).

Includes all the value for teachers in A3, plus:

Includes all the value for faculty and staff in A3, plus:

• Control how support accesses your mailbox with Customer Lockbox.
• Protect against sophisticated threats like phishing and zero-day malware with the ability to investigate and remediate attacks post breach.
• See advanced personal and organizational analytics with Microsoft Viva Insights personal analytics and Power BI Pro.
• Get enhanced visibility and control of your Office 365 environment.
• Create meetings with a dial-in number that attendees can join by telephone with Audio Conferencing.
• Make, receive, and transfer calls across a wide range of devices with an option to add Calling Plan. Learn more .
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• Get email with 100 GB mailbox. 1
• Take advantage of unlimited personal cloud storage. 2

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The OneDrive account is assigned to you but associated with the school and should be used for school-appropriate content. Permissions and access can be changed by the school’s IT administrator at any time.

Office 365 Education is individually licensed for use only by the eligible teacher. If you have colleagues who want to use Office 365 Education, they can get their own license on the Office 365 Education webpage .

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Microsoft Build 2024 Recap: The Age of AI

May 28 2024

Last week I attended the Microsoft Build 2024 conference in Seattle. This annual event, known for its groundbreaking announcements and insightful sessions, lived up to its reputation with a strong focus on artificial intelligence (AI). With keynote presentations from industry leaders like CEO Satya Nadella and CTO Kevin Scott, the event showcased Microsoft's vision for integrating AI into every facet of development and business productivity. Highlights included the much-anticipated updates to Microsoft Copilot and the innovative ChatGPT-powered Bing Chat, promising to revolutionize how developers and users interact with technology. Join me as I delve into the key moments and takeaways from this year's Microsoft Build, exploring how these innovations will shape the future of development.

Location and Convention Center

Held at the Seattle Convention Center, Summit, Microsoft Build 2024 benefited from its prime location in a hub of technological innovation. This central setting provided easy access for local and international attendees, allowing valuable networking opportunities. The state-of-the-art facilities ensured a seamless experience for keynotes, workshops, and collaborative sessions, enhancing the conference's overall learning and community engagement.

Day 1 – May 21st 

Microsoft Build 2024 kicked off with an energetic keynote from CEO Satya Nadella, CTO Kevin Scott, and Executive VP Rajesh Jha. The spotlight was on AI, focusing on Copilot's new capabilities and deeper integration into Windows and Office. Microsoft unveiled new Surface Copilot+ PCs, including the latest Surface Laptop and Surface Pro, designed to enhance productivity with AI features like the Recall function. The day also featured the Imagine Cup World Championship, celebrating innovative projects from student developers. This blend of groundbreaking technology and creative showcases set a dynamic and inspiring tone for the rest of the conference.

Day 2 – May 22nd 

The second day continued the AI-centric theme with a keynote by Scott Guthrie, who introduced the next generation of AI tools for developers within the Microsoft Cloud. Sessions throughout the day delved into new AI features for Windows, including bringing advanced AI experiences to all Windows devices. Highlights included talks on designing for new Windows AI capabilities and navigating Win32 app development with WinUI and WPF. This day emphasized practical AI applications, demonstrating Microsoft's commitment to integrating AI seamlessly into their ecosystem. Outside of the talks and sessions, attendees could enjoy several activities. Personally, I visited the AMD AI Café for some coffee and a picture with an AI-generated background using the newly available AMD MI300X accelerator, and I also visited the Meta booth featuring the "Meta Mixed Reality Playground," where attendees could explore and interact with the latest in mixed reality technology.

Day 3 – May 23rd

The final day of Microsoft Build 2024 maintained momentum, focusing on wrapping up the conference's key themes. The day began with a series of deep-dive sessions on advanced AI and cloud technologies, showcasing practical implementations and future trends. Notable sessions included discussions on ethical AI development and the future of quantum computing in Microsoft Azure.

The conference concluded with a wrap-up party at the iconic Lumen Stadium, home of the Seahawks, where attendees enjoyed food and drinks, were able to walk down onto the stadium's field, kick a field goal, sing karaoke with a live band, and even dance with the group during a silent disco. 

Final Thoughts

Microsoft Build 2024 was an unforgettable experience, showcasing the forefront of AI and cloud computing. Working at the MESCIUS booth allowed me to connect with attendees one-on-one and learn more about their projects and needs. Our giveaway survey revealed that 69.60% of participants were .NET developers and 30.40% were JavaScript developers, with 52.90% using third-party libraries.

These interactions revealed key trends: many front-end developers are using React and there is a growing interest in Blazor and MAUI. There was also notable curiosity about our WPF controls, indicating a resurgence in WPF development. We were excited to share some notes with the WPF developer attendees about our C1 and Spread.NET teams at MESCIUS expanding their WPF controls. C1 is adding support for Fluent 365 Themes, while Spread.NET has plans to release an updated WPF spreadsheet control to support newer development environments and enhanced spreadsheet features and behaviors. 

These personal interactions, along with the cutting-edge revelations at the conference, left me optimistic about the future of technology. The event underscored Microsoft's dedication to innovation, promising a future where AI and advanced technologies make development more intuitive and productivity tools more powerful.

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Use Semantic Kernel to create a Restaurant Bookings Sample with Python

Sophia Lagerkrans-Pandey

Evan Mattson

Eduard van Valkenburg

May 21st, 2024 0 1

We’re looking forward to highlight a Python sample today focused on a Restaurant Bookings sample here .

Booking Restaurant – Demo Application

This sample provides a practical demonstration of how to leverage features from the  Semantic Kernel  to build a console application. Specifically, the application utilizes the  Business Schedule and Booking API  through Microsoft Graph to enable a Large Language Model (LLM) to book restaurant appointments efficiently. This guide will walk you through the necessary steps to integrate these technologies seamlessly. This sample will introduce a kernel syntax example that shows how to integrate with the Microsoft Graph API to create a Restaurant Booking. Note, this doesn’t place a real reservation, but shows how to interact with MS Graph.

Semantic Kernel Features Used

• Plugin  – Creating a Python Bookings Plugin shown here: bookings_plugin.py
• Chat Completion Service  – Using the Chat Completion Service  Chat GPT API  to generate responses from the LLM.
• Chat History – Using the Chat History abstraction to create, update and retrieve chat history from Chat Completion Models.
• Auto Function Calling – Enables the LLM to have knowledge of current imported plugins using the Function Calling feature, which automatically calls the Booking Plugin from the LLM.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10, 3.11 or 3.12.
• Microsoft 365 Business License  to use  Business Schedule and Booking API .

Configuring the Sample

The sample can be configured by using either environment variables, a .env file, or manually supplying the required parameters as covered in the sample’s README .

Create an App Registration in Azure Active Directory

• Go to the  Azure Portal .
• Select the Azure Active Directory service.
• Select App registrations and click on new registration.
• Fill in the required fields and click on Register.
• Copy the Application  (client) Id  for later use.
• Save Directory  (tenant) Id  for later use.
• Click on Certificates & secrets and create a new client secret. (Any name and expiration date will work)
• Copy the  client secret  value for later use.
• BookingsAppointment.ReadWrite.All
• offline_access

Create Or Use a Booking Service and Business

• Go to the  Bookings Homepage  website.
• Create a new Booking Page and add a Service to the Booking (Skip if you don’t ).
• Access  Graph Explorer
• Run the following query to get the Booking Business Id:

GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/solutions/bookingBusinesses

• Copy the  Booking Business Id  for later use.
• Run the following query and replace it with your  Booking Business Id  to get the Booking Service Id

GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/solutions/bookingBusinesses/{bookingBusiness-id}/services

• Copy the  Booking Service Id  for later use.

Below are the fields you’ll need to update, as called out above:

• “BOOKING_SAMPLE_CLIENT_ID”
• “BOOKING_SAMPLE_TENANT_ID”
• “BOOKING_SAMPLE_CLIENT_SECRET”
• “BOOKING_SAMPLE_BUSINESS_ID”
• “BOOKING_SAMPLE_SERVICE_ID”

Running the Sample

After configuring the sample, you’re ready to run it. The sample should return a conversation similar to the one below.

Example of a Conversation

User  > Please book a restaurant for me.

Assistant  > Sure, I can help you with that. Could you please provide me with the following information:

• Name of the restaurant you would like to book.
• Date and time of the reservation.
• Number of people in your party.
• Your email address.
• Your phone number.

Once I have all this information, I will proceed with the booking.

User  > I would like to book a table at the restaurant “The French Laundry” on the 15th of March at 7:00 PM for 4 people. My name is John Doe, my email address is  [email protected] , and my phone number is 123-456-7890.

System  > Do you want to book a table at The French Laundry on 15/03/2023 19:00:00 for 4 people?

System  > Please confirm by typing ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

User  > yes

Assistant  > Great! I have successfully booked a table for you at “The French Laundry” on the 15th of March at 7:00 PM for 4 people.

Your reservation has been made under the name John Doe.

If you have any further questions or need to make any changes to your reservation, please let me know.

User  > List my current bookings

Assistant  > You currently have one booking:

• Restaurant: The French Laundry
• Date and Time: 15th of March at 7:00 PM
• Party Size: 4 people

If you need any further assistance or if there’s anything else I can help you with, please let me know.

User  > Cancel my booking

System  > [Cancelling a reservation for 4 at The French Laundry on 2023-03-15 at 19:00:00]

Assistant  > I have successfully canceled your booking at “The French Laundry” on the 15th of March at 7:00 PM for 4 people.

Dive Deeper

Please reach out if you have any questions or feedback through our Semantic Kernel GitHub Discussion Channel . We look forward to hearing from you!

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How generative AI is transforming te reo Māori translation

May 28, 2024  |   Grant Straker, CEO of Straker

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Language is one the greatest gifts our world has ever received. Through language we’re able to communicate with each other and also express our uniqueness.

Languages are a way of seeing things. The way we explain different concepts – or whether the concepts exist in our language at all – provides a vital window to our culture. As Microsoft President Brad Smith put it: “When a community loses a language, it loses its connection to the past – and part of its present. It loses a piece of its identity.”

Te reo Māori is part of Aotearoa’s identity. When Kiwis travel, we communicate with others in English, the international language of business. But when we share what makes us unique, what do we talk about? Thanks to the success of the All Blacks, people know us for the haka. We’re also known for being “Kiwi”, for our celebrities such as Taika Waititi and places like Rotorua, Kaikoura and Waiheke. What all of these people, places and things have in common is a language – te reo Māori.

Growing up, I wasn’t able to express myself in the language of my people, something that’s helped shape who I am and what I do as the founder of a translation technology company today. Not only do we have to be open to using te reo Māori, we have to get smarter about harnessing technology to ensure more New Zealanders have an opportunity to engage with it as they go about their day.

The World Economic Forum is predicting that within the next 100 years, around 1,500 languages could disappear forever. The research found that regionally dominant languages taught in class often overshadow indigenous tongues. Unless they’re used regularly and encouraged to become a part of people’s daily lives, these foundations of our culture get lost. Without them, we lose so much more than just words – we lose what makes us uniquely us .

News organisations in Aotearoa are clearly aware of this. It’s been encouraging to see the great changes that have been made in the past two decades, from the foundation of Whakaata Māori (formerly Māori Television) 20 years ago, to the common usage of te reo Māori on our mainstream television news, to a greater focus on providing content for and by Māori in Stuff and many other major outlets across the motu.

However, getting more content actually in te reo Māori into mainstream media is a real challenge. The problem is that there just aren’t enough te reo Māori speakers in news organisations to generate or translate the news at speed or at scale. Of the 140 languages we translate, Māori and Pacific languages are among the most expensive, because of the scarcity of translators. We have strong data that shows the more expensive the language is to translate, the less it is used and the less it flourishes.

When I travelled to Microsoft headquarters in the US two years ago, I approached Brad Smith and put the challenge to him. Was there anything technology could do to help?

I’m now thrilled to be seeing the results of that conversation, with the launch of Stuff’s new te reo Māori translation tool. After that fateful meeting, Microsoft provided support to my company, Straker, to develop an automated translation platform. The platform combines Straker’s existing translation tools with the Microsoft Translator platform and AI technology. This is now enabling Stuff to translate entire news articles and other content into te reo Māori at scale.

This partnership aims to dramatically boost inclusion of te reo Māori speakers, and support te reo Māori as a living, vibrant language people can use in their everyday lives. And we hope it’s just the start, inspiring more organisations to consider how they can use new tools like generative AI to boost equality, diversity and inclusion and preserve our cultural treasures.

The beauty of the model that we’ve developed together is that humans remain at the centre of the translations. Te reo Māori is rich in nuance, with one term able to mean many things. While the AI can create a draft in seconds, context is essential. We’re excited to see that Stuff has created new roles, appointing a kaiwhakamāori (translator) to oversee bilingual content and check translations before they’re published. The more they work alongside the AI platform and our own experts at Straker, the faster and better its translations will be – and the more content can be translated.

More than anything, this partnership shows how technology can be a real enabler for Aotearoa society and culture, provided there’s a real human at the heart. Beyond preserving language, a willingness to explore and collaborate on these kinds of solutions can help us address the major challenges our societies face, from climate change to loss of our native species. By doing so, we not only reinforce the foundations we’re built on, we build a much stronger future.

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