Today, Microsoft kicked off the annual partner conference, Inspire. Like Ignite, the annual developers conference that was held earlier this year, this conference will offer a peek at what we might expect from Microsoft in the coming months.
This conference important to us at Kiefer and we follow the announcements closely. We can see where Microsoft is investing their energy. This conference helps us in prioritizing our investments at Kiefer and ensures we are in alignment with Microsoft’s strategy.
As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we keep up on Microsoft news throughout the year and pivot accordingly, but this conference in particular is critical in better understanding Microsoft’s vision and strategy.
After day 1 of Inspire, we wanted to point out a few highlights from the conference and announcements that we think our clients and readers might find interesting.
Digital Contact Center
Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform. By leveraging Microsoft’s suite of enterprise tools, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Power Platform, and the newest member of the Microsoft family, Nuance, Microsoft is equipping contact centers with modern digital tools to engage customers. The contact center supports voice, video, and other digital engagement channels.
This solution has the power to improve customer experiences with self-service experiences (powered by AI), live customer engagements, and collaborative agent experiences. Microsoft Digital Contact Center also offers business process automation, advanced telephony, and fraud prevention capabilities.
Improvements to Microsoft Teams
Teams Connect Shared Channel
The Teams Connect Shared Channels feature is now generally available.
This feature allows Teams users to “collaborate with people inside and outside your organization in one shared space where everyone can work, chat, meet, share, co-author files, and develop apps together,” according to Microsoft.
Teams Connect allows for collaboration among multiple organizations and enables Teams users to chat with people outside the work network with a personal account.
Excel Live in Microsoft Teams
In May, Microsoft introduced the Live Share in Teams feature announced at Microsoft’s Build. Live Share allows users to collaborate within a Teams meeting window. At Inspire, Microsoft introduced Excel Live, which enables users to collaborate on workbooks in real time during a Microsoft Teams meeting.
Video Clip and Collaborative Annotations
Microsoft unveiled a new video clip feature that allows users to record, send and view short videos in Teams chat.
Building on the features of Microsoft Whiteboard, users can now use collaborative annotations within Teams. This feature is now generally available.
Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty
Public sector customers can harness the full power of Microsoft Cloud, including broad platform capabilities, resiliency, agility and security. According to Microsoft, “With the addition of Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty, they will have greater control over their data and increased transparency to the operational and governance processes of the cloud.”
This is key to helping more public-sector organizations make the move to the cloud.
Microsoft Viva
Microsoft Viva continues to be a focus for Microsoft. Two new Viva products were unveiled at Inspire.
Viva Engage
According to Microsoft’s blog post, “Viva Engage brings consumer-like social networking to the workplace building on the strength of Yammer to build community, spark engagement and grow personal networks, right in the flow of work. Engage also allows employees to express themselves and inform people more about themselves to build community and connections.
Viva Goals
Microsoft Viva Goals is a goal-setting and management solution that aligns teams to your organization’s strategic priorities, driving results and a thriving business. Viva Goals enables individuals and companies to organize and track their goals through “Objectives and Key Results” (OKRs).
We expect more exciting news over the next several days. Stay tuned for more updates!