5 hidden gems from Microsoft Ignite 2022

Scoured a ton of news to uncover a few buried tech announcement nuggets

Hi Peer,

In perusal of 25+ Microsoft Ignite 2022 announcement blogs, I came across five hidden announcement gems that may not have gotten a ton of spotlight, and shine, nonetheless. My intent is to go beyond the big-ticket items across Viva, Syntex, Teams Premium, Azure AI, Power Platform, and others… and narrow in on a few smaller gems worth uncovering… ⛏️💎

Microsoft Ignite, October 12-14, 2022 | @MS_Ignite | Ignite.Microsoft.com

Hidden Ignite gem #1 💎 New Microsoft Loop component types (Polls and Q&A)

Microsoft Forms powers this newest component, Polls, which enables you to create quizzes and word clouds that stay in sync when they are shared. The Q&A component collects answers to questions in real-time across your team, making it clear and easy to stay in sync on responses and add follow-up questions as necessary.

Add a Poll Loop component to your next Outlook email or Teams chat.

Get looped in ➰ loop.microsoft.com.

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Hidden Ignite gem #2 💎 Microsoft Teams mention @everyone

Grab the attention of everyone in a chat quickly with @everyone. Everyone in the chat will receive a notification, removing the hassle of mentioning each person’s name one by one or missing someone. It’s helpful to have both a targeted nudge to an individual and a virtual blow horn when it’s important for all 📢.

Reach ‘everyone’ in a Teams chat by at-mentioning “Everyone” who is a part of the conversation.

Learn more about chatting in a Microsoft Teams.

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Hidden Ignite gem #3 💎 Power Automate description to cloud flow

Building on the success of GitHub Copilot, the Power Platform is bringing the same copilot principles to Power Automate with written description to cloud flow. Now users can describe what they want to automate in a sentence, and AI will build your flow in seconds. And you can use it as is - an easy quick start- or further customize and configure it in Power Automate designer canvas.

Start a Power Automate flow by using natural written language.

Learn more about Power Automate.

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Hidden Ignite gem #4 💎 Deliver organizational messages with Windows 11 and Microsoft Intune

Organizational messages for Windows 11 are configurable through Microsoft Intune. IT admins can then reach people within their organization with key messages delivered natively on Windows 11 devices. Admins use these messages to help users ramp up in new roles, learn about their organization, stay informed of new updates, and schedule requisite trainings. Half the battle of internal communications is getting eyeballs on the comms… and this capability puts important info front and center.

One type of message is the ‘taskbar messages,’ which appear attached to the user's taskbar, to deliver urgent notifications such as critical updates.

Learn more about configuring taskbar messages, Notification area messages, and Get Started app messages.

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Hidden Ignite gem #5 💎 Retention for Cloud Attachments – Find the file version shared in a message (Public Preview)

When you enable this feature, the version of the file shared as a cloud attachment in a message will be retained, allowing a compliance admin to later retrieve the exact version of the file shared in a message. It’s one of many security and access features enabling finer granularity in how you manage your content across your organization.

The above webinar focuses on a broad set of data lifecycle and records management innovation, presented by Erica Toelle, Arun Gedela, and David Robbins - all from Microsoft.

Learn more about data Lifecycle and records management using Microsoft Purview.

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BONUS gem 💎 ‘People view’ in Project for the Web

Since the advent of Microsoft Graph, some of the most important insights come from how content (and now tasks) is described and discovered through people - your peers and what they are working on. This new ‘People view’ in Project for the Web can help project managers quickly assess where team members may be over- or under-allocated and see potential reassignment opportunities for better workload balancing. 

Each project team member with at least one task assigned to them is represented with a People card which summarizes their assigned tasks - here showing as a tab in Microsoft Teams.

Learn more how to manage your team’s workloads with the new People view.

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That’s it. Those are the five (six) Ignite gems I discovered and thought worth sharing.

If you want to dig into all the above and then some, here is the full list of blogs I perused - each worth your time if it’s an area of interest:

• Re-energize your workforce in the office, at home, and everywhere in between by Jared Spataro

• Welcome to Microsoft Syntex: Content AI integrated in the flow of work by Seth Patton

• Microsoft Ignite 2022: Innovations and roadmap for Microsoft Viva by Seth Patton

• Storyline in Viva Engage and Microsoft 365 is now generally available by Michael Holste

• Connect daily work to OKRs with our latest Viva Goals integrations by Nirja Trivedi

• Viva Learning announcements at Ignite 2022 by John Mighell

• Microsoft Viva Insights - new productivity and wellbeing experiences coming soon by Malavika Rewari

• Viva Topics: New adoption dashboard and experiences in Teams Channels, Viva Connections and Outlook by Tehzeeb Versey-Patel

• What’s new for Viva Connections by Ling Ma

• Announcing new Microsoft Viva IT admin features by Geeta Ramakrishnan

• Microsoft Lists announcements at Ignite 2022 by Lincoln DeMaris

• Microsoft Loop at Ignite 2022 by Matt Anderson

• What's New in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Ignite 2022 by Anastasia Ustinova

• Enhance collaboration with Microsoft Teams chat and channels features for the hybrid workplace by Noga Ronen

• Announcements for files experiences in Microsoft 365 at Microsoft Ignite by Irfan Shahdad

• Stream (on SharePoint) is now generally available | Do more with video in Microsoft 365 by Paul Diamond

• What's new for Microsoft 365 admins at Microsoft Ignite 2022 by Tiffany Treacy

• What's new in Security and Management in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams Ignite 2022 Announcements by Sesha Mani

• Microsoft Project at Ignite 2022: Announcing Goals, Agile Support, Assigned to Me, and More MS Project/Planner team

• Planner at Ignite 2022 by the MS Project/Planner team

• Introducing new AI enhancements in Microsoft 365: New features coming to Microsoft Editor and more! By Andrea Eoanou

• Transform your frontline workforce with a single secure platform by Zoe Hawtof

• Leverage low-code to do more with less at Microsoft Ignite 2022 by Charles Lamanna

• Customize retention and deletion to help meet your specific business requirements by Erica Toelle

• Deliver organizational messages with Windows 11 and Microsoft Intune by Jesse Stein

• Manage your team’s workloads with the new People view! by the Project Team at Microsoft

• Post-it® Brand and Microsoft join up to create the Post-it® App for Microsoft Teams - a new Microsoft customer case study

• + the managed press release for the whole company: Microsoft Ignite 'Book of News'.

P.S. (Pun Sharing)

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