April 2023 Content Wrap-Up

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VivaExplorers at MVP Summit 2023

VivaExplorers at MVP Summit 2023

Wrapping up an action-packed month of content, connections, and events. I’m sitting here late on a Monday evening in my hotel room at the Park MGM in Las Vegas, doing my best to work from a weak wifi connection and catalog all of my activities from this past month. I’m on my 3rd straight week of travel, which included a VERY busy week at the MVP Summit (first in-person since covid) in Redmond, WA, followed by a week in Denver, CO for the Comms vNext event, and now a short (5 hour) drive from home in Las Vegas for the M365 Conference with my Rencore team. No additional travel planned for May, but we’re waiting for the new house to complete so that we can move sometime at the end of May or early June, so watch for that update. Big travel plans for the summer and fall, but I’m intentionally keeping things light until I get through this move as we migrate from Utah to Texas. I am excited….to get this move over with. This will be our 4th (and final?) state move (fingers crossed).

As for content this past month…

Unaffiliated Content

While at the MVP Summit, fellow MVP Amy Dolzine (@amydolz) and I joined my teammate Ragnar Heil (@ragnarh) on his Alex & Ragnar Podcast to discuss Viva, Copilot, Yammer/Engage, and a few other tidbits that were announced and not under NDA at the summit. I also wrote some content that didn’t fit underneath one of the other topic buckets.

  • The Alex & Ragnar Podcast live stream from the MVP Summit [Twitter]
  • Are Organizations Shifting Back to On-Prem? [TekkiGurus]
  • Leveraging the Full Potential of LinkedIn [buckleyPLANET]
  • Navigating the Complex World of Microsoft 365 Management [buckleyPLANET]

Talking about AI

Everyone is talking about AI right now, and so I joined the fray with a couple blog posts — but also focused the April #CollabTalk TweetJam around the impact of AI on our productivity tools. We’ve had some similar topics in past tweetjams, but with Microsoft Loop app release and all of the news around Microsoft Copilot, I thought it made sense to once again cover the topic. Great online discussion that I ran from the Comms vNext event, which you can find via Twitter and a date search. Check out the blog post for more details on that discussion. Thanks to Eric Marsi for recording the post-tweetjam interview with my panel of Sharon Weaver, Shari Oswald, and Adam Ball. More details on when that recording goes live (on the TekkiGurus site).

Talking about email signatures with Exclaimer

Some of my guest posts went live this past month. I love the Exclaimer product — if you have not yet checked it out, I highly recommend a trial. Hoping to get it rolled out with the rest of the Rencore team, as well.

  • How to use email signatures to modernize your marketing campaigns [Exclaimer]
  • How to do more with less: 7 strategies for IT departments [Exclaimer]
  • Think email is dead? Think again! [Exclaimer]

Community Interviews

Microsoft Leadership at the MVP Summit 2023

Familiar faces at the MVP Summit 2023

As always, the weekly MVP interviews continue to roll out every Monday morning, and I was able to build out a full schedule of podcast episodes. May will be a bit lackluster on the podcast front, as I need to get some things scheduled. But if you’re interested in Unified Communications, be sure to check out my interview with VP of Product Management at Verizon Business Group, Alex Doyle, who talked at length about his company’s Microsoft Teams Phone offerings.

M365AMA

Another 14 community questions answered by the #M365AMA expert panel on a variety of topics. More recordings in the post-production queue, and new recordings being planned for late May and mid-June.

  • Do end users need a Power App license to view a SharePoint List? #M365AMA [blog | YouTube]
  • How is ChatGPT going to be integrated into M365? #M365AMA [blog | YouTube]
  • Why are some people unable to share screens in a Teams Room? #M365AMA [blog | YouTube]
  • Can Power Automate insert responses into specific Excel columns? #M365AMA [blog | YouTube]
  • How do I add a phone number into Teams meeting invites? #M365AMA [blog | YouTube]
  • How do I navigate the audit logs in SharePoint 2019? #M365AMA [blog | YouTube]
  • How do I remove a blue box from my blank Word document? #M365AMA [blog | YouTube]
  • Why won’t my new M365 login recognize my name and password? #M365AMA [blog | YouTube]
  • Is there a recurring meeting space for Teams? #M365AMA [blog | YouTube]
  • Can I use multiple templates inside a single Outlook email? #M365AMA [blog | YouTube]
  • Can I purchase Windows for a new PC through my M365 account? #M365AMA [blog | YouTube]
  • Can I see which email clients my employees are using? #M365AMA [blog | YouTube]
  • Can I create a M365 policy to stop password syncing with Gmail? #M365AMA [blog | YouTube]
  • Can I mount an ISO file via batch on Windows 11? #M365AMA [blog | podcast]

Blatant Self-Promotion

As always, a list of posts and recognitions under the self-promotion category.

  • TekkiGurus Announces Appointment of Leadership Board and Community Advisory Team [PRWeb]
  • Road Tripping [buckleyPLANET]
  • #4 on the #ChangeManagement Thought Leader & Influencer Leaderboard [Thinkers360]
  • #4 on the #CloudComputing Thought Leader & Influencer Leaderboard [Thinkers360]
  • March 2023 Content Wrap-Up [buckleyPLANET]

Music

And finally, I was able to add two posts on music. Enjoy.

 

So much going on these days, but excited to be back at events and seeing more of you in the community. As I mentioned above, after this week in Las Vegas, I’ll be home until the end of May, and then moving down to the Dallas, Texas area in early June. No travel plans for June (possibly one day in DC for EduCon, but I’m not committing anything yet), but I’ll be in Germany and, hopefully Redmond, in July, and then in Melbourne, Australia and back in Seattle in August. Until then, here’s a photo from the Rencore team from Las Vegas. Have a great week and month!

#TeamRencore at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas

#TeamRencore at M365 Conference 2023

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Christian Buckley

Christian is a Microsoft Regional Director and M365 Apps & Services MVP, and an award-winning product marketer and technology evangelist, based in Silicon Slopes (Lehi), Utah. He is a startup advisor and investor, and an independent consultant providing fractional marketing and channel development services for Microsoft partners. He hosts the weekly #CollabTalk Podcast, weekly #ProjectFailureFiles series, monthly Guardians of M365 Governance (#GoM365gov) series, and the Microsoft 365 Ask-Me-Anything (#M365AMA) series.