Empowering every person and organization with the next wave of innovation at Microsoft Ignite

Each fall Microsoft Ignite gives us a chance to come together with customers and tech industry pros to share our latest work and learn about what we need to focus on next.   

I have always prioritized sending my team's engineers to Ignite because that direct connection with customers is so important. We want to give engineers a chance to hang out in the booth and attend sessions, so they can get inspired, learn, and be challenged by the tech community firsthand. Today’s rapidly changing work environments make it critical to engage customers so we can help them build a resilient organization.  

While we’re missing the in-person dynamic this year, the virtual format is enabling us to increase access to the conference for many who may not have been able to attend otherwise. And we have plenty to share, including a range of innovations around collaboration, business processes, security and compliance, and the growing opportunities for partners to innovate and integrate on the platform.  

That means a bevy of new features and enhancements for Teams (including how Teams and SharePoint are getting better together), along with news about the future of SharePoint Syntex and some great stuff in the pipeline for OneDrive.  

Below I will comment on just a few of the announcements that I am excited about, and of course I’m curious to hear what’s on your minds as well.  Here are links to our more detailed blogs:

What's New in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Ignite 2020 - Microsoft Tech Community

Collaboration, communication and knowledge sharing with Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Project Cortex - Microsoft Tech Community

An emerging ecosystem to extend meetings with apps  

The future of work isn't going to be solely remote or in the office, but a continuum of both. As more work becomes hybrid, customers need the simplicity of having all their tools working harmoniously.  

As such, Microsoft 365 needs to be a platform that can adapt to the needs of any organization. An energy company is different from a hospital, which is different from a law firm. If you're a doctor talking to a patient, if you're a salesperson calling on a customer, you want access to the relevant information that often resides in other business systems—and you want to have that access right in the context of the meeting. In this way, the meeting transforms from a video call into a collaborative process. 

I’m excited about the potential of our ecosystem when it comes to building solutions tailored to these specific customer needs and the opportunity this creates for our partners. This week we're announcing Teams meeting extensions for more than 20 new third-party apps from partners like HireVue and ServiceNow as well as new integrations with healthcare partners like Nuance and Epic.  

Enabling people to build these employee engagement solutions, customize them and deliver them right in Teams is something we're committed to across Microsoft. Part of our strategy has been to align the SharePoint extensibility strategy with the Teams extensibility strategy, and we've partnered closely to deepen that platform integration.  

Because Microsoft 365 has all these sockets, it is becoming one of the most significant ecosystems in technology today. Many organizations across industries are investing in solutions and integrations, and we are building on this effort for the long term.  

Making information more accessible with Project Cortex  

Breaking down silos is a key benefit delivered by collaboration tools. One of the most powerful ways to do that is by facilitating the capture and sharing of expertise and knowledge. Last year, we introduced Project Cortex, which uses multiple AI services to identify, curate, and deliver content that can help accelerate processes, improve compliance, and facilitate learning and discovery in an organization.  

Starting next month, customers will be able to preview new capabilities based on Project Cortex to manage content-based processes. Among them is SharePoint Syntex, which applies AI to amplify individual human expertise, convert content into knowledge, and do it at scale.  

Using Syntex, we have worked with customers on scenarios like contract lifecycle management, figuring out how to streamline the process and increase compliance, and we’re looking forward to seeing what customers can do once we get this into their hands.  

Enhancing web application performance with Project Nucleus 

This week, we're also showing off a new concept called Project Nucleus, which is a breakthrough in performance for web experiences powered by SharePoint - starting with Microsoft Lists. It will be an intuitive way for people to get high-performance web applications in the browser and in Microsoft Teams.

Project Nucleus will deliver a new level of performance for large data sets on the web. The concept uses technologies we've developed for OneDrive in combination with progressive web apps architectures to drastically improve the performance of web apps running inside Teams. 

New scenes for Together mode 

Over at the Microsoft 365 blog yesterday, my colleague Jared Spataro shared seven principles that will help organizations succeed in the new world of work. Topping that list is how we reimagine teamwork, culture, and social capital so people can feel engaged and connected no matter where they may be. A cornerstone of that is designing better hybrid and remote meeting experiences.  

 As a first step, we released Together mode earlier this year to offer virtual meeting settings that feel lifelike and engaging, from the classroom to the NBA arena. Now we're cranking up that innovation and offering new Together mode scenes, including auditoriums, conference rooms, and coffee shops. The new settings can recreate the types of social scenarios you're used to having in the physical world, from a large public address to an intimate coffee klatch.  

Dynamic view gets more customizable 

We've also announced some enhancements to the Dynamic view functionality we released earlier this year, including new custom layouts that will let presenters control how their content shows up. We’re making more natural connections between expressions, gestures, and the content itself, just like you would get in a live setting.  

This work stems from what we’ve been hearing from customers about the different types of meetings people have and how we can better support them. Our focus on the interplay between the speaker and the content is a departure from what others in the industry have been working on, but we think it delivers unique value in terms of engagement and inclusiveness for meeting presenters and attendees alike.  

Breakout rooms are coming in October

One of our most requested Teams features—breakout rooms—will be available before the end of the year. This feature opens up a lot of new opportunities, and it has the potential to revolutionize remote learning in the education space especially.  

Breakout rooms will allow meeting organizers to split up participants for brainstorming or working sessions. Presenters can hop from room to room, make announcements to all rooms, and then close the breakout session to bring everyone back into the same meeting space.  

Besides this new functionality just being a natural, real-world feature for virtual meetings, we think our customers and power users will do what they always do with it: find creative ways to use it that will teach us even more about how to build great meetings online.  

A focus on wellbeing 

2020 has been challenging for people everywhere, and we know people are experiencing fatigue from their personal and work lives blurring. So while we're excited about Teams as a hub for work, we also want to bring more new experiences to help people make time for self-care.  

Here at Microsoft, we’ve been studying the impact of the pandemic on employee wellbeing and productivity for the past six months. We surveyed more than 6,000 information and Firstline workers around the world and studied Teams usage data to give us a better understanding of how we can help people reduce stress and burnout. You can read up on in the latest work trend report findings we published earlier this week.   

Piggybacking off those findings, we’re introducing a virtual commute option to Teams (coming early next year) that will help users approach their remote workdays in a mindful way with the help of our partners at Headspace. Finding an activity that helps you wind down is so important in this marathon we’re all in. I find that escape in running but am so excited that Teams will be able to offer this meditation option to help us all find more focus throughout our days.  

Ultimately, we want every individual and every team to realize their potential, so in the coming months, you'll see more and more solutions from us designed to help people balance their productivity and wellbeing in a way that can maximize both.  

A shout out to Ignite's unseen heroes 

We've seen unprecedented innovation and digital transformation this year, and we know that not everybody in every organization is digesting the intense pace at the same rate. But in every organization, there are power users looking at the latest Teams features and helping their organization use them. Every day we see in our communities and social media new examples of customers maximizing the capabilities of the product.  

These digital-first responders and change agents aren't always in the IT department, but they are the ones who go to Ignite and ask the questions we all need to keep innovating: Why is that? What knowledge can I bring back to my organization? How can I inspire people to be more productive in my company?  

So for everyone attending our sessions this year and engaging with us, here's to you. I'm excited to share the next round of customer and partner success stories often sparked by those questions, ideas, and inspiration, and the next round of platform mechanisms that developers can use to address those needs.  

Microsoft has always been a company focused on customer needs, listening to feedback, and adopting those priorities as part of our mission. It's through that engagement that we learn what to focus on next. That's why I send so many engineers to Ignite every year and why I look forward to engaging with our entire worldwide community not just this week but every week.