An exciting week for Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business at Microsoft Ignite

Ignite is fast approaching, and everyone at Microsoft Teams is really excited to make the debut appearance at the event. We have a lot of exciting content for you across Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business - ranging from overview sessions, deep dives, ask-the-expert panels, interactions with the product team on the expo floor, live studio, community-led sessions and much more. As you build your schedule for your week in sunny Orlando, I wanted to take a few minutes and summarize the key activities for you.

 

Kicking off the week on Monday is the keynote - Microsoft 365: Transform your communications with Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business.  Join Lori Wright and Bob Davis as they unveil exciting news for the future of Unified Communications in Office 365. You do not want to miss these action-packed 75 minutes. Following the keynote, we have a lot of great breakout sessions across a variety of topics: 

 

Product deep-dive sessions 

• Join me to tune into how Microsoft Teams can enable new ways of collaboration in your organization. Patience Wooton, Office 365 product owner within Dentsu Aegis Network, will be sharing how Teams is fostering a modern workplace and accelerating productivity for them.
• Collaboration on the go is ubiquitous - check out how it's a breeze with the Teams mobile applications. Get ready for some cool demos!
• Learn how you can build an app for Microsoft Teams and leverage the rich developer capabilities, so that you can bring your everyday apps and services into Microsoft Teams and enable higher performing teams.
• Find out how Microsoft Teams is enabling new classroom experiences
• If you are interested in learning how Microsoft Teams has been architected, or want to learn about how e-discovery or legal hold work in Microsoft Teams, bookmark Get an overview of Microsoft Teams' architecture , and Learn about enterprise security and compliance with Microsoft Teams.
• Want to learn about what's hot and new with the meetings experiences in Office 365? You do not want to miss these set of sessions:
  • Understanding Meetings with Microsoft Teams
  • Transform your large-scale meetings with Skype Meeting Broadcast
  • Adding Audio Conferencing services to your meeting experiences in Office 365 
  • Explore the Microsoft Meeting Room Portfolio
• Looking at moving voice capabilities to the cloud with Office 365? Get some expert guidance by joining Is Voice in the Cloud right for you? Learn how to choose and configure calling plans for your users in Office 365: from acquiring new phone numbers to porting existing phone numbers

 

Deployment and Adoption sessions

We have some great content covering the breadth of deployment and adoption guidance:

• Learn how to drive successful adoption of Microsoft Teams - we will share some of the adoption best practices, pitfalls to avoid, and hear from customers who have been through the journey.
• You have seen all the cool stuff with Microsoft Teams and wondering how do you enable it for users? We have a session  for you to take you through that experience. 
• Setting up new Meeting Room Systems? We have some great guidance for you in Deploying and Managing Skype Room Systems and MS certified devices

 

IT Manageability sessions

Whether you are looking at how best to manage the communications workloads in Office 365, or doing network planning, we have some in-depth sessions to whet our IT Pros' appetite. Join our experts in these sessions to hear how can you provide the best experience for your users, and the tools available to help you make smarter IT decisions:

 

• Manage all your communications workload in Office 365
• Elevate your communications management using qualified IT Pro Tools
• Troubleshooting Microsoft Teams 
• Call quality management for Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business

 

Live action at the expo floor and studio

• Meet our product experts, partners and MVPs on the expo floor to check out product experiences, share feedback with the team building the product, and ask your top-of-mind questions. If that is not enticing enough, we will have some cool branded swag for each of you! If you are feeling lucky, drop by for a chance to win a Surface Laptop daily. Grab a booth map, or locate us using the Ignite mobile app.
• We will be broadcasting live from the Microsoft Mechanics studio at Ignite, showing cool demos and also hosting two live broadcasts from the Ignite Podcast  studio. Engineers, product managers and our MVPs will be joining these sessions to recap announcements and share an insider's view of the future.  

Community Engagement

Our community members bring a lot of knowledge and expertise, and they are more than willing to share it with the broader community. Whether you are an MVP, running a user group, or looking to engage with the community members, add the following to your schedule:

 

• Karuana_Gatimu_MSFT will be at the theater area talking about best practices for user group leaders, and sharing tips around how to become a Microsoft adoption specialist
• Join us on Wednesday between 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. at the Community booth during Office Takeover Day.  MVPs and members of the product group will be there to answer your questions, and may even challenge you to a round of ping pong.  Be one of the first to pick up your branded sweatband - you will likely need it to get through the rest of the week! 

You can look at the exhaustive list of sessions on our agenda, and search by product, role, the level of the session and more. Start building your personalized schedule today so that you don't miss the important activities during the busy week. If you are unable to make it to Orlando in-person, we have got you covered! The general session will be streamed live, and all the sessions will be available on-demand so that you can watch them at your convenience. Tune-in to our broadcast  on September 15th at 9 a.m. PST to hear more, and ask your Ignite questions before you travel to Orlando.

 

We look forward to seeing you all in a few days!