M365 Updates You Should Know About
Everyone, welcome back to Make Others Successful, a podcast where we share insights, stories, and strategies to help you build a better workplace, and in turn, make others successful. We'll do intros really quick. If this is your first time here, my name is Mitch Arama. I do a lot of our operations here in marketing and sometimes get on technical projects too.
Speaker 2:Matt Dressel. I am in charge of communication collaboration here at Vault Digital.
Speaker 3:And I'm Emma. I'm our project manager. So I work on a little bit of everything, which leads us to our topic, which will be about a little bit of everything. Mhmm. We like to talk about ourselves and kind of call ourselves Microsoft three sixty five experts, which is a big term because Microsoft three sixty five is always changing.
Speaker 1:He's the expert.
Speaker 3:He's the expert. Yeah. I'm not sure I'd put myself in the bucket. But between all of us, we do work within Microsoft three sixty five on quite a few of the tools. So today we want to talk through what has changed.
Speaker 3:We'll go back as far as maybe the last three to six months. And what are our thoughts on some of the updates and what is coming down the pipeline? I
Speaker 1:feel like normally we talk about workplace strategy and sort of pass over the actual, like, technical tools and leave that up to others. But I do feel like enough has happened where it would make sense for us to just talk through what we're seeing, what we like and don't like. Yeah, where should we start?
Speaker 3:Maybe with the new Teams.
Speaker 1:New Teams.
Speaker 3:Yeah. What what
Speaker 1:we've Is new seen Teams the name for it officially?
Speaker 2:No. It's gonna be Teams eventually. But I mean, the reality is today they still are living in the two different worlds. I think it was only a month or so ago that they've officially, like, everybody should be pushed to the new teams unless you choose to not be in the new teams.
Speaker 1:I think Teams Classic is now a thing
Speaker 2:with Double Persian. I believe, yep. And they're but eventually it's just gonna be Teams. Like, the old one's gonna go away. I don't remember really the exact timeline, but I mean, eventually the classic Teams is going to go away and the new Teams will just be Teams.
Speaker 1:So what is new Teams for
Speaker 2:New someone who doesn't Teams is functionality. It's really a rebuilding of the existing functionality. So if anybody's looking for radically different UI and a different feature set and new functionality, nope, that's not what you're going get. You're going to basically just get Teams, only better.
Speaker 3:Right. As someone who's relatively new to the tool, I'd use Zoom at many of the companies I worked for before and had just started with Classic Teams a year ago. The new Teams to me feels like it's just iterating in a more intuitive way. So a few of the changes, I don't know if you want to outline some of those, but like messages no longer being How did they switch that?
Speaker 2:So that's actually one of the things they didn't do, or they did do, but it's different now. Right. So they've gone through basically what started the whole thing off, as Microsoft said, the current tool was built in such a way, technically, the underpinnings, that you can't actually solve some of the major complaints the customer have about memory consumption, performance, like all of these So they said, we're going to rewrite it. And so they rewrote it from scratch, the ground up, to solve a lot of those problems. But then they also started, that started to be the place where all new features were going, which one of the features you're talking about is channels, channel messages in particular, they were switching where the post message, so the box where you can actually put your text in, from the bottom and having all of the old messages being on the top to the other way around, putting the, post message on the top and then your messages flowing down.
Speaker 2:I have an article or a blog, or a video about Teams, new Teams, and it shows some of that that feature. But subsequent to that video, they got, I believe they got feedback and they basically said, by default, we'll have that off. You can turn it on. So actually today, the default is still the same way it always has been. But if you want to turn that on, you can.
Speaker 2:Flip flop. Flip flop. Flip back and forth. It's an interesting thing because actually I, using it, my biggest complaint about it is that they didn't do it to chat. Right?
Speaker 2:So chat was the same way as before.
Speaker 1:They were opposite.
Speaker 2:And they were opposite. And I'm like, that's dumb. Yeah. If they had a vote the same, I would have been like, oh, okay. Like I could, you could make a case for this.
Speaker 2:I'm okay. I'm down. Let's try it. But
Speaker 1:chat is traditionally bottom up. Even on your phone. Like it's always and so that's normal. And so then they tried to fix channels into being more like a forum type place.
Speaker 2:Well, their problem with channels is that it's natively threaded, much like Yeah,
Speaker 1:it's not a conversation. People have multiple conversations.
Speaker 2:People have different conversations about Slack in this regard because people forget all the time to do threads because in Slack everything is message based and then you can choose to be threaded. Whereas in channels, everything is a conversation or a thread basis. It's really, there's a lot of interesting things, but the bottom line is, the main thing is there's now a new Teams, which is a new app and a new bunch of new functionality.
Speaker 1:It's faster.
Speaker 2:So it's faster, but it also has bugs still. Mean, it's relatively brand new. So if you've, in the last month, noticed that Teams has been working a little different or having little problems, That's likely where it's coming from, but it is the way forward. They're not going back. They're not going to not have that.
Speaker 2:And it's where all the new features are going be.
Speaker 3:I feel like the one thing we've talked about the most that we like is the new tenant
Speaker 2:switching. Yes. So as part of whatever they did under the hood, they are now allowing you to have way, way, way tighter integration with other tenants, which is a big deal for us. Our customers, you know, I don't know that it's as big of a deal for them, but for us, you pretty much can be, I can be in my main, you know, bulb tenant and interact and see messages from any other tenant I'm a part of
Speaker 3:pretty
Speaker 2:seamlessly. Right? The biggest challenge or difficulty we found with that feature is knowing what tenant you're actually in when you click on buttons. Because you can get notifications now from another tenant, then you click on it and it does the thing, but you just signed into a meeting, but the user that you're signing in is not the user that you thought, like, there's some weirdness there that you have to deal with. But otherwise, that's been fun.
Speaker 2:It's been great for us.
Speaker 3:Which was a huge pain point before, so it feels like they really listened.
Speaker 1:I used to avoid switching tenants, like, almost at all costs. And now I'm like, let's go pop into this other one and see what's going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Just because it's
Speaker 3:so much work to go check a message
Speaker 2:in a different tenant. I would always have multiple web browsers open with profiles for the different ones, and that's what I was using to manage But it's just, it was very inconvenient. For the scenarios where I, as a Bulb user, am in another tenant. I still do that for scenarios where I've got, you know, dedicated accounts for a particular customer, but, you know, it's just way better, way, way better than what it was before.
Speaker 3:I want to skip ahead to my favorite new feature, which is Loop, but maybe we need to talk about new Outlook first.
Speaker 2:We don't have to, but new Outlook is probably a pretty quick one that we can go over. Microsoft has basically created much like they, it's not the same, it's the same concept, new Outlook and there's old Outlook, classic Outlook, but it's not exactly the same. So this is basically taking the web version of Outlook and putting it into a desktop app that you can actually, you know, install locally on your machine. You know, it's a big change. People would have seen it come up with a little slider that you can choose to go back and forth with.
Speaker 2:My take on it is I think that new Outlook is good enough for a lot of people. A lot of people who are adopting the approach that we are, which is that email should only be used in certain scenarios and that you should be leveraging Teams and leveraging other communication platforms for, you know, the more broader collaboration and communication space. However, for people who are live and breathe out of Outlook, and that is pretty much their only communication collaboration platform, it's not there. Like it's not all the way, all the features aren't there that you would need. But I think they're moving kind of ahead of the curve and still moving forward.
Speaker 2:But it's not, they're not forcing it. It's not the same as what Teams is. You're not going it's not going to be really rapid, don't think. But I would guess that in the next two years you're going to be forced to do that model in some way, shape or form. But I switched to it.
Speaker 2:We've had this discussion because you took a little bit longer to even try it out.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:But like, I love it. But I also had been using the web version for customers for quite a long time. And I got addicted to some of the features that were in the web version.
Speaker 3:Yeah. What were
Speaker 2:some of
Speaker 3:the features that you really liked?
Speaker 2:So it's another one that we can talk about that Microsoft has changed, which is reactions. Yes. Being able to
Speaker 3:react to an email.
Speaker 2:That has pretty much always been there in the web version, like for a very long time, but it never worked on, you know, you would react and you would say, Hey, did you see, like, they'll say, Hey, did you read my message? I'm like, Yeah, I gave you a thumbs up. Right? They're like, I didn't see it. Well, then you figured out that, Oh, the web version, the reactions in the web version only worked for the web version.
Speaker 2:Right? And that was the way it was for years. And now it's available in both. Right. A little bit different interaction and stuff, but reactions is something that I craved to be able to use, but we never really could because not everybody was using the web version.
Speaker 2:And now it's available in both, just to be really clear. Now, you can do that in both the web and the regular or classic experience. And that's been a couple months in the works. But then the other thing is pinning. Like pinning messages was like, I don't know.
Speaker 2:It was amazing. I always used flagging. Flagging was a big thing for me, but then you flag something and then you had to go into a flagged list. And for me, the pinning, the ability to just pin it and it shows up at the top of my, keeps it at the top of my email list, was so much a better experience for me and how I worked with email that I really, like, I had the opportunity, I was like, I'm using it.
Speaker 3:That pushed you over the top to actually then want to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a 100%.
Speaker 3:All right. So that was new Outlook. Let's talk about live events. What has been the big change there?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there's a couple actually tools in the last year that are going away that either Microsoft announced or like actually are going away this year. So some of them would be live events. Live events is 2024 is when it's really going to be gone, but they're well on their way to, that's not going to be And available it's going be replaced with webinars and town halls and all of that stuff within Teams. Another one will be Stream.
Speaker 2:You know, it's been a long journey. We've documented it for, I don't know, probably four years now, where Stream has been moving from Stream Classic to Stream on SharePoint, and that's coming to a closure this year. I can't remember if there's another one.
Speaker 3:What will Stream be replaced with?
Speaker 2:Stream is getting replaced with basically SharePoint. They call it Stream on SharePoint, but it's basically Stream as a service is getting integrated into all of the Office three sixty five platform. The primary thing is Outlook or OneDrive and Stream is really the main areas, but
Speaker 1:You know, what's interesting is they have other products in their suite like Windows seven, Windows eight, Windows 10, with all numbers behind them. But all of these apps, I feel like they want to just remain exactly named the way that they are.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Doesn't go along with the cloud model evergreen Right. Always improving So
Speaker 1:they label something classic. What happens when the new version, there is a classic?
Speaker 3:It's the new of the new.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But that's the thing is that new will become the normal and then new will become the new again.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It just is, it's kind of
Speaker 1:like It's the Apple model. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's truly, when you think about the way features roll out and how that all happens, it just, that is a more natural, like the numbers don't matter because really the truth of the matter is you're currently on, you know, Outlook version 14.777544, you know, whatever just it don't know. And tomorrow you'll get a new one. Just the way it is.
Speaker 3:Right. Let's transition to talking about Loop because that was rolled out kind of interesting in the last six to maybe even twelve months when they started with Loop Components and have now talked through releasing the Loop App. So let's start with components. And what struck the both of you when you first saw the power of Loop Components?
Speaker 2:So loop components were always interesting to me. They were really exciting to me. However, they have always been, like I pretty quickly said, they're not really going to be very helpful to me. And it's because they didn't have the ability to really share with external users the way I wanted to. They weren't in channels.
Speaker 2:Like I don't do stuff in chat. Like we don't chat. We use channels. Well, I can't do a Loop component in a channel. Can only do it in a chat.
Speaker 2:For me, it pretty quickly, it became not useful to me in any way, shape or form. But the vision of where it was headed, having these components where I can, you know, edit content in a very collaborative way, in a very ad hoc way was very powerful and was exciting for sure.
Speaker 1:Let's overview Loop really quick, just for someone who probably doesn't know, because it's, it has just been announced for general availability. Been this weird like preview state for a long time where IT had to enable it for you and it never felt like it was like fully baked, like should I put my stuff in here and really start using it? We're junkies for that stuff, so we jumped in and decided to use it. But a lot of people probably don't, you know, really realize what Loop is. So the components aspect of it is where it started.
Speaker 1:So they built this thing where it's like, hey, you can create a table right here in a chat and have multiple people edit it and work on it together and it always stays up to date. And this concept of just this constantly live thing that lived in context of other apps was really cool.
Speaker 3:I'll give a real world example that I think blew my mind the first time I saw it is how many times have you sat down and thought, oh, I really want someone else to review this email before we send this off. To edit an email real time with another person in the email, both sitting at your own computers wherever you are in the world, was pretty radical. Mean, I just, that never, you never really were able to do that. But Loop Components made it possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And truly was a component model. Like they started with a model that is very much, we're going to do this for a small piece of content that you can live in a Word document and can live in a chat. It can live in, you know, an email. It can live wherever you need it to live, it can live.
Speaker 2:And as you said it, like you update it in one location, so you update it in the chat and the person who has the email also sees that update immediately. Transcends all of the, you know, the mediums And that we're using for it's a great concept, but like I said, for us,
Speaker 1:it's I remember the moment where I said, Matt, I'm so excited for Loop. Like Loop is coming out and you're like, Loop has existed for a long time. Like we don't even use it. It's just these couple things in Teams or whatever. And I was like, no, no, no, don't get it.
Speaker 1:There's Loop is, that's not Loop, that's like Loop components. Like that's, there's something broader outside of that and that's what leads us to the app, the Loop app, which again, wasn't immediately obvious what it was, but it
Speaker 2:Their marketing on it was not great.
Speaker 1:Well, it's in the preview, it's in this like not released state really. And so, yeah, we weren't even sure if we should call it the app, the So Loop app for a the gist of that is there's three kind of layers to Loop. One is workspaces. So you can collaborate with people on your team, you can add them to a workspace and see a collection of hierarchical pages, which is the next segment, which is just a very simple text based, think like a Microsoft Word document but without any of the strings of a document and more just like on a page. And then within those pages, could have components, which then you could link out to the other But
Speaker 2:you don't have to have components. Right. Right? So the component concept is to say, well, I want to be able to take this piece of this page and share it with someone else separate from the rest of the page. So you could just have loop the page and have content in the page.
Speaker 2:So it's a, as I said, it's been, I think their discussion of the strategy and how it fits has been a challenge from the get go, but I, it has been the app itself has been the transformative thing for us in particular.
Speaker 3:And I think what really sticks out to me is their long term vision with all of it is to bring as many of the tools that they've created within Teams into one place that integrates everything. And I feel like I haven't seen an app from Microsoft that really does that well until Loop. I know they've potentially tried this before, but I actually really think it's going to work with Loop and the way I'm seeing meeting notes and just everything tied together where the meeting recording is. And it feels like their vision is to make it a one stop shop spot. I don't know if they're there yet, but I think they will get there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think about teams when you think about that concept of like, this is your one place to go for your workday. And that has some success, think, like depending on your how much you have adopted that tool. But Loop is sort of this this like stepchild, like this thing that is coming from behind that I think, yeah, you're right, is gonna serve as this. It's it's like, it's somewhere in between Teams and like a SharePoint team site and like OneNote, like somewhere it's storing information about things that is in a casual setting that allows people to all just go in and consume content in a, like I'll keep saying the word casual way,
Speaker 3:Collaborate but it's in a casual I way mean, it's a place that serves where you can be working together, not on a finished document.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:You know, it really provides for that brainstorming. And the thing I love the most about Loop, you know, has copied other tools as well, the formatting is just so simple. You kind of are forced to choose between the three headings and, you know, the different bulleted lists.
Speaker 1:Stripped down.
Speaker 3:Has everything you need and it makes everything look really consistent and ready to share externally or to a leadership
Speaker 1:It has guardrails where you're not going to make something ugly.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:Right? You're not gonna be able to choose your Yeah, like I digress. People can make some crazy looking, I remember SharePoint classic pages, Strange, like, yes. But Loop is bare bones, simple,
Speaker 3:looks You're not going to waste any time
Speaker 1:on No, just focus on the content and it does a good job.
Speaker 2:You talk about it being the one stop shop and there was a conversation about it being like, I think that's the thing that Microsoft still has to figure out with it, which is loop is not going to replace teams. Teams can't do what loop does. How are we going to make them seamless together? How are we going to make it, all of the things work? You know, with teams, it's one of the things that I think they really have challenges with.
Speaker 2:I mean, the reality is when they built the tool and kind of had that, that's the last tool that they, you know, this is the place where you do your work. You know, a lot of the deep nuances of how that really works in the real world was left to kind of an afterthought or a future thing to figure out. And they need to sort, that is the next thing they need to sort out, right?
Speaker 1:I think they will.
Speaker 2:In order for it to be successful, I think they have to figure that out. So bottom line, like, don't want this to become a loop podcast. I do. Well, we should have chosen a different topic.
Speaker 1:Last thing that I'll, just for extra context, if anyone has used Notion before, it's like Microsoft's version of Notion. It's not as fully baked as Notion yet because of the, it's a preview, it's still getting there. But for someone that understands the concept of Notion and how you manage data and have all information in one spot, very similar concept. And so I'm super excited to see Microsoft tackling that.
Speaker 2:So the big thing that I, because when we started using Loop, Notion was the, was another alternative that was discussed.
Speaker 1:Almost did it.
Speaker 2:Almost The huge did benefit is that it's integrated with everything else.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, it's seamless to get in, out of it, manage it, maintain it, you know, manage compliance. Like all of that is all the same as everything else that we're dealing with on a regular basis.
Speaker 3:If you remember the feeling of going from using a Walkman to an iPad, that's what it feels like going from OneNote to Loop. It would be fine, you know, or a flip phone to a smartphone. It just feels just as see someone VP
Speaker 1:player to m p three player. That was me.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I could have 13 songs in this little
Speaker 3:Loop just feels like it organizes information and integrates at such a higher level than not that it's supposed to replace OneNote, but if you're using OneNote and you're not using Loop.
Speaker 2:I think it should replace OneNote. I'll be I'll be used up front.
Speaker 3:Well, it definitely replaces OneNote, but I mean, it's not only doing that. Not actually. It's usually so
Speaker 1:much more. Yeah. They'll they'll never say.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They'll never say that. But I mean,
Speaker 2:I don't think they've they've decided as I think their
Speaker 3:answer. I don't see a place where you would ever need OneNote if you started using Loop to its We full
Speaker 1:also haven't said, we're part of like a private preview. So we've been like working with their team, or like helping give feedback to their team. And one of the things on every survey that they give us is how upset would you be if Loop went away?
Speaker 3:I would not want to do our work the way we do it if Loop went away because it supports the way we do projects.
Speaker 1:It's become integral Yeah. For
Speaker 3:I'd really miss it.
Speaker 1:Me too.
Speaker 3:Hope they don't take it away. So
Speaker 1:to wrap it all up, it's in general availability now. It's not this weird preview thing. So go out there like again, the external access thing is still an issue. But if you want to collaborate internally with your team, go try Loop.
Speaker 3:Or even just to organize your own thoughts. Yes. Yes. It is a really great tool. So let's talk about Copilot and where that falls.
Speaker 3:AI. Yeah. What's going on with Microsoft AI, Matt?
Speaker 2:We have this topic as Copilot, but I mean, it's really AI is the topic. And I don't know much to say about it other than you cannot look any way and not see AI being this topic of conversation before all the Microsoft products. Microsoft invested billions of dollars into AI in the last, you know, I don't know, twenty four months, I would imagine, I guess.
Speaker 1:I was just watching Ignite and like literally the first hour is nothing Like but
Speaker 2:the bottom line is Microsoft has been making a heavy investment in that. They're also charging a lot for it. Like everything is becoming AI enabled and they're charging for it. I'm not going to say like AI is, from a business perspective, is something that is getting way more use and it's going to continue to get way more use and it's going to become more advanced and it's going to become more commonplace in the marketplace. Beyond that, I mean, I don't have much more to say about it other than it is the thing that is continuing to be pushed and continuing to be talked about.
Speaker 2:I have yet to see it be a natural outcome of what a person does day to day outside of the things that Microsoft or the company or the technology providers embed into what we're doing. I've said it for a long time. AI is not new. AI is all, part of AI is all the predictive stuff about when you're writing an email or a text on your phone that says, Oh, I think you're trying to say this. So let me allow you to say the thing next to it.
Speaker 2:Things like that people use all the time and people will continue to use it if it's that easy. If I have to create a model myself, is like edge case. Not very many people are going do it still. Right. It's just not going to happen.
Speaker 3:Let's take it to kind of a practical, real world example. You're a small business owner. You've got 30 employees. You're trying to decide if it makes sense to purchase that next level, that next step, it feels like there'll be always a more expensive option to start and implement Copilot. What do you say to that person?
Speaker 1:Well, you're talking about, you're getting at a, at the point of this recording, the small business community is a little bit upset with Microsoft because they are saying, hey, Copilot is now available. Go get it. And there's like subtext in like tiny other places that says you need to have 300 seats in order to get Copilot.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:And so people are upset because they're like, this marketing feels a little bit disingenuous because I'm a small business.
Speaker 3:Like to start using
Speaker 1:want Copilot. And so I told Matt that. I said, I'm using ChatGPT until we can get Copilot. And so he had a solution. What's your solution?
Speaker 2:Buy the 300 licenses.
Speaker 1:There you go, everyone. Small businesses, buy your 300 licenses.
Speaker 2:I mean, but so there's truth to that and there's not truth to that. I mean, the reality is you can use Copilot without paying that. Like I use it all the time. The reality is every time I put a search in, every time I do something like Copilot exists in lots of different places. The Copilot that's being talked about here is creating a model that is based on your internal data.
Speaker 2:So a model that you can use on your data set internal to your organization. That's not the same as the rest of the cloud. So do you really need that for what you're using it for? Probably not. But if that's the only way that I can get you to actually use that rather than the public version that is not protected in the same way, like, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's what I got to do.
Speaker 1:From what I understand, it's a lot of the internal app integrations is going to be behind that wall.
Speaker 2:For sure. A 100% a lot of the, a 100%. Okay. Right? But like, it's not
Speaker 1:if you have Copilot one place for
Speaker 2:what you use it for. Copilot, the publicly available one that's been out for
Speaker 1:sixty The conversation for nine nine years.
Speaker 2:Yeah. To go out and ask to summarize this piece of text. It's there today. You can do that today.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So in some ways for the small business owner, it's not even a decision at this point because they can't actually. Right. But I'm It's sure it'll come in now in
Speaker 2:just really expensive. Question is how, how can you
Speaker 3:justify, like
Speaker 2:how much value can you really get out of it? And to be clear, get out of having a model that is based on your internal content versus using the generic model. Like that's
Speaker 1:And having integrated in the tools.
Speaker 2:And having it deeply integrated in Yes. The Okay. So
Speaker 1:like, I just want to close that with, they're going to tackle small businesses at some point. Like there's no way that they're just going to say 300 or bust. Like I'm hopeful that comes soon, but right now it feels like it's all very much behind this curtain that we can't see behind right now.
Speaker 3:Okay. That was Copilot. What is going on with Power Pages? What has been
Speaker 2:updates So Power Pages, it's been out for maybe longer than six months, but I think now Microsoft is finally like fully migrated or fully moving us in this direction. It's basically the replacement for Power Portals, Power Apps Portals. So, you know, a lot of people, you can talk about it as a name change, but architecturally it's a revamp of the entire software package and a rename of what it is. You know, if you know what Power Apps portals are, you're going to be doing Power Pages now, is basically the gist of it. But it's also going be way easier to implement.
Speaker 2:It's going to be way, it is a better solution. There's a lot of investment and improvement to the solution, but it serves the same basic function and purpose.
Speaker 1:For someone that doesn't know Power Pages or Power Apps Portals was or still is the way to get information from Dataverse out to external people or
Speaker 2:have external creates a web page Yes. That can interact with Dataverse and, you know, you can have users that log into a customer portal.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And then use that customer portal to interact with your staff on the backend that use Dataverse or Power Apps So on the
Speaker 1:while a lot of the under the hood is still just Power Apps portals, a lot of the like, the outside of it is I mean, when you built a
Speaker 2:Power Pages or Power Apps portals before, it was like from the nineties Yeah. Quite frankly. Yeah. And now it's like more It's got a nice Current. Yeah, in
Speaker 1:front end. Yep. There's still like, you can tell you're working with a legacy like backend sometimes, like there's some weird interactions that I've had to do, but it's getting better. Like it's definitely a lot cleaner and
Speaker 2:I would lump this into actually a bigger, broader thing, which we don't really have a topic that we were going to discuss about this, but it's, this is part of Microsoft's overall revamping and modernizing of the Power Platform as a whole. Like the classic experience for Power, if you're dealing Power Apps and Power Automate, the classic editing experience is turned off by default now. You have to actually turn it back on if you want those features. Like for years, you've been dealing with this kind of bifurcated world where you can, most stuff you can do normally can kind of be done in the, in the modern UI, but I don't know, at some points it felt like 60% of what you had to do, you had Now, do in the classic as of like a couple months ago, they're like, Nope, the classic experience is off by default. Show us why you really need it.
Speaker 2:So, and it goes across the board. Like model driven apps have a modern controls. Canvas apps have modern controls. Like there's just a lot of that kind of thing going across and Power Pages is just another one of them.
Speaker 3:So it sounds like overall net positive.
Speaker 2:It is, it's for sure positive, yeah.
Speaker 3:A 100%.
Speaker 2:But it's a naming change, so you can hear, you know.
Speaker 1:So Sorry. Power Pages still deals with the weird licensing model that is not like just buy a seat for somebody. Yep. It's based on how many anonymous users or how many people log in.
Speaker 2:Sessions. It's
Speaker 1:a little bit strange to explain to people sometimes, but just know that there's one license for like someone building it, and then there's a different segment that is for access and someone using it.
Speaker 3:What's happening with Entra ID?
Speaker 2:So Entra is a branding change by and large. So it used to be called Azure AD and now it's
Speaker 1:Active Directory.
Speaker 2:Active Directory. So it used to, it used to be called Active Directory and then it became Azure AD when it went to the cloud, the cloud version of it. And now it's becoming Entra ID. And the big reason we're bringing that up is mostly because people are going to start seeing the name change all over the place. Things are lots of URLs and, you know, names of things are all getting changed.
Speaker 2:I don't know of any like major actual feature improvements that you're getting with the names. Like there's a bunch of stuff that's coming as part of it, but it's like just enhancements to Active Directory that were kind of already, I think, already in place or moving.
Speaker 3:Do you have any insight into just the why behind a change like that?
Speaker 2:It's not clear to me why they're changing the overall branding. I think it's because they want to separate it further from Azure and the whole suite of Azure services. I personally, I think it's going be a hard thing for me to stop saying Azure AD. Azure AD for me rolls off the tongue. Entra ID, I don't know.
Speaker 3:It feels like a lot of vowels got changed between one to the other.
Speaker 1:The thing that I pick up on is the ID portion of it is like, it's, it's obvious what it is. It's like your identification.
Speaker 2:AD versus ID
Speaker 3:is If you didn't know what AD meant, Directory, then AD wouldn't mean a Active lot to you if you were
Speaker 2:Directory is a term that's been in the industry for twenty, you know, twenty plus years. Sure. But it means a very specific Microsoft focused thing. Whereas ID, intra ID really speaks to more of what it is meant to be, which is an identities platform, like authentication platform.
Speaker 3:It's more of an approachable term. Sure. Let's close this out by talking through Viva.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Viva has been, had a lot of changes recently. It was launched as a rebranding of some products into the suite, but then also launching a bunch of new net solutions, Viva Insights, Viva Engage, which Viva Engage is Yammer renamed as Viva Engage. So there's a lot of those things, but then also Viva, more recently, they've added a bunch of new, net new products even in that suite. So you've got Viva Glint, Viva Amplify, Viva Pulse, and these are all more tools focused around We gotta take a quick
Speaker 3:pause, Matt, and say, good job Microsoft in coming
Speaker 2:up with really creative we get
Speaker 1:Oprah overlaying? Like, you get a name, Yeah. You get a
Speaker 3:you're going to talk through Glint, Amplify, Pulse.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So these tools are like, I'm not going to speak to them very specifically because they are naming these things and branding them separately under this Viva,
Speaker 1:old Employee experience.
Speaker 2:But it's really all, these are just different ways to talk about employee experience things. It seems to be the reason why they're doing it so they can, they can, so you don't, they don't have to charge so much for the entire suite all the time. Because if you just charged, you know, everybody gets Viva and it's all, you know, dollars 12 or $14 a person, I think it would be a very tough, tough sell for everybody. Because when you look at topics or you look at some of the features, go, I don't really, you know, I'm not going to use that piece, but I really, the goals is really important. Or, you know, the pulse, which is like getting surveys and feedback from employees.
Speaker 2:Like you could make a case for a smaller one, but then like, how do you manage that? Does that become
Speaker 3:So they want create it to be more of an a la carte option
Speaker 2:where you Well, have. Yeah. Unlike like project, a perfect example, as an alternative way that they brand and market things, but you got project plan one, two, three, five. Like, what does that mean? What does one mean versus five?
Speaker 2:I don't know. Right? Like, I mean, I do know, but like, doesn't
Speaker 1:Tell us, Max.
Speaker 2:Know, doesn't mean anything to just the numbers. Whereas this, they have created, carved out very specific feature sets that are encompassed for a particular business need related to employee engagement. It's So interesting it's more customized. To be a like, as you said, a la carte, right? Like you can choose any one.
Speaker 2:I think it's for $6 for, or maybe it's $3 for any one of the pieces. Then if you want little bit bigger, which is like the common ones that they think most people want, it's like a little bit more. And then if you really want everything, it's the full price.
Speaker 1:My only comment is props to anyone using all these tools well. Most of the time when we're dealing with clients, they're like way before this phase of like being able to embrace those tools.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really interesting. A lot of people are like, I want that. I want the outcomes that those things provide, but they also aren't ready to do, to use technology in that way. You know, if you want to do surveys for employees, you have to like know what you want to ask them and you have to like actually read the results and have to actually do something about it, right? And some people just aren't, they're not there yet on those things.
Speaker 2:So I agree with you. Like it's an interesting conversation to have with customers who I've seen some customers that have dove headfirst into, I want to try out all these things and then they get in, but they weren't ready to do goals, right? Right. They don't have goals.
Speaker 1:Even like topics, like we'll have a page on an intranet where it's like, here's your glossary of what these acronyms mean and sure, topics could do that, but like, is it worth spinning off that and incorporating
Speaker 2:But you have somebody who can focus on maintaining and managing and being effective with that.
Speaker 3:Okay, so to close this out, we're each going to give Microsoft a score from one to 10 on how we feel, all of the different updates that we talked through, how impactful we feel like they've been the last six months. So I'm putting you
Speaker 2:guys on the This was not in the plan.
Speaker 3:One to ten, ten being they couldn't have done any better. This has just been the best year of
Speaker 2:Yeah, this has been the best six months or year of changes.
Speaker 3:One being no, nothing was helpful. I can go first. I'm going to give a pretty high score. I'm going go 8.2 because LOOP has really changed my work life. LOOP is an exciting tool and whether the other ones have really affected how I do my my job, new teams has been great.
Speaker 3:But the idea of LOOP gets me really excited, so I'm giving them 8.2.
Speaker 1:She's just in direct contact with the people looking at Loop. She's trying to get brownie points.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Oh, man. See right through me.
Speaker 1:You go next. I'm gonna go seven six.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:I think there's an old version of Microsoft. I remember being at a an event where an employee from Microsoft came and they're like, we're not the same anymore. Don't hate us, please. We're trying to change. Like it was just this plea of we're we're trying to do things better.
Speaker 1:That was years ago, like eight years ago or something like that. I feel that the effects of that now, I think. Like I do feel the momentum and feel things coming together and it does feel like
Speaker 3:You see the effort.
Speaker 1:They're getting things in order. Yes. It doesn't feel as much like, oh gosh, I inherited this Microsoft junk just because we have accounts. Does really feel like they're becoming good tools in a holistic system. Obviously, I'll still have my I'll keep the other couple points for
Speaker 2:my little hangouts. For improvements.
Speaker 1:It's going good.
Speaker 3:All right, we'll let Matt close-up.
Speaker 2:I struggle. I could give them a score of four.
Speaker 3:Oh, rough.
Speaker 2:Because I think that Copilot has not been as transformative. That was honestly has been, in my opinion, the big new thing that could transform businesses. And I just don't see it transforming businesses twelve months in, in the same way, except for maybe big businesses or like, like, I think there are people who are being transformed, but I don't see it transform the marketplace like I think they were hoping right now. I think it's on the verge, I think in another six months, which is why I'm going to make it a seven. Woah.
Speaker 2:In reality, because I think what's going to happen, I'm going to give them credit for what I see happening over the next
Speaker 3:six The foundation that they're building.
Speaker 2:I think this year was a lot of foundation. Like Loop, it transformed your life because we've had access to it. Right?
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:The regular Marketplace has not really had access to it. If the regular Marketplace buys into it and people get access to it, I think it can transform lots of people. But I think it's up to them to make that happen.
Speaker 1:It just makes me want to put together more Loop Learning materials. Like, because of how we've seen it transform, I'm like, I just, I want to get ahead of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think, I think the big challenge with a lot of these things, with Copilot, Loop, all of these things, I think it's really interesting. Think for a lot, to make it have a really big impact, the people we need to teach and train are actually, unfortunately not the end users and as much the leadership and seeing how it can fit and seeing why it's valuable to enable it. Because lots of IT shops are burnt out over new teams, new Outlook, new, new, new. Everything's new.
Speaker 2:What do I do?
Speaker 1:It's not stopping anytime
Speaker 2:soon. Yeah, But it can be overwhelming. Yeah. And it can create easily and like legitimately creates a world where it's like, I'm not enabling anything new for the next six months because I need to catch up. Right?
Speaker 2:And that breathes the lack in adoption of Teams or of Loop and of like these new things. So teaching and explaining to businesses and to IT leadership about how this can help their business, which should be something valuable to everyone, regardless of their position within an organization. That's, you know, I think that's where if we were to produce content, that's where I would want to try to do it, figure out how to explain to people how it fits. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I'm going get to a rough average in my head. 7.5 out of 10 is kind of my response.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 3:So room for improvement, but overall, I think we see the momentum. Is that
Speaker 1:a C? Is that a C?
Speaker 3:Oh, jeez. Well, on the grading scale, I'd say in Net Promoter Score, 7.5 out of 10 is actually really
Speaker 2:great Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 3:Response. But, yeah, thanks for joining today, and we'll definitely do another one of these in six months and see what
Speaker 1:I love to know people's thoughts. It was this helpful, interesting. A little bit different than our normal format. So, yeah. Thanks everyone for the conversation.
Speaker 2:Cool. Thanks, everybody.
Speaker 1:Hey, thanks for joining us today. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app so you'll always be up to date on the most recent episodes. This podcast is hosted by the team members of Bulk Digital. And special thanks to Eric Veeneman for our music tracks and producing this episode. If you have any questions for us, head to makeotherssuccessful.com, and you can get in touch with us there.
Speaker 1:You'll also find a lot of blogs and videos and content that will help you modernize your workplace and get the the most out of Office '3 65. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.
