Most businesses use Microsoft. Few get the most out of it. In this episode, we're joined by Rebecca Ciancio from Maxsum Consulting to unpack the hidden power of Microsoft's tools. From underused features in Teams and SharePoint to automation with Power Platform and next-level security in Microsoft 365, there's a lot more on the table than most realise. Rebecca shares practical ways to align Microsoft tools with your business goals, boost productivity, and get your team working smarter. If you're using Microsoft and think you could be doing more with it, this one's for you.   Welcome to Tech Talks with Taylor, the podcast where we explore how the right technology can create better business outcomes, everytime. I'm Leanne Taylor, founder of Taylor Made Sales, and I'm passionate about helping Australian businesses connect with the tech solutions that drive success. For more details contact [email protected] or visit www.taylormadesales.com.au  Full Episode Transcript: [Intro Music] Leanne Taylor: Welcome to Tech Talks with Taylor. I'm Leanne Taylor, your host of 10 minute Tech Talks where we cut straight to the heart of tech for Australian businesses. In each session, we'll spend only 10 minutes with an industry expert unpacking the latest products, services, and solutions to help your business achieve great technical outcomes. Let's get started. Leanne Taylor: Hi everyone. It's Leanne Taylor here from Taylor Made Sales, and I'm really looking forward to today's chat. It's with Rebecca Ciancio from Maxon Consulting, and we're talking about all things Microsoft. Now, this is part one of a series of Microsoft podcasts that we're recording, and I'm really looking forward to deep diving into everything Microsoft. Welcome, Rebecca. Rebecca Ciancio: Thanks for having me, Leanne. I'm looking forward to it, too. Leanne Taylor: Thank you. So, the reason I invited Rebecca into the studio today to talk about Microsoft is on the back of a bunch of customer conversations that I've been having around what other things Microsoft can do outside of the usual applications that we all know and love. i.e. Outlook, Teams, OneNote, etc. And I was talking with a customer recently and one of their goals this year was to actually get rid of a whole bunch of bespoke applications. They seemed to be, you know, racking up quite the credit card bill with all these workplace productivity apps. And in that conversation, I sort of explained, "Oh, well, Microsoft can do that." and there's, "Microsoft can do that as well." and she looked at me and she goes, "I don't understand what Microsoft can and can't do. Can you explain some of these apps?" So, of course, I pulled in Rebecca and we we had a good chat about everything, and I'm still learning the depth of what Microsoft can do for my business as well. So, today, we're going to have a general overview of Microsoft, and then we're in future podcasts we're going to deep dive into some of the the more bespoke applications that uh and use cases for some of the other things that Microsoft can do. So, Rebecca, tell us. Microsoft. Tell us about it. Rebecca Ciancio: Microsoft. Okay. Rebecca Ciancio: All right. So, today we're going to be talking about Microsoft 365. So, just to get started off the bat, I'll just clarify that, you know, there used to be talk of the difference between Office 365, Microsoft 365. Microsoft only really uses the terminology Microsoft 365 now to talk about all its cloud licensing options. So, I'm not going to vary from that language today. But Microsoft 365 is obviously Microsoft's licensed cloud offering, and many organisations when they move to the cloud, having used Outlook on premises before, would have naturally moved to Microsoft 365 as their solution of choice. However, since that time, many people, as Leanne pointed out, are still relying only on Outlook or calendar and perhaps not leveraging the full power that's in the suite. So, the average Microsoft 365 licence probably has about 50 or so included apps and services that are available to everybody on your team who has a licence at the required level. What that means is that people are drastically underutilising what you as an organisation are paying for in that licence fee, and also it's causing them to look outside of the Microsoft suite for tools to do certain jobs that may already be available to them within Microsoft. So, you know, a lot of that has stems from the fact that, you know, we live in an app culture. We all have apps on our smartphones. And the only barrier to entry when you don't have a tool that you think you need is, as Leanne said earlier, a credit card. So you pull it out, you subscribe to a particular app that you think or service that's going to fulfill your need, whether it be to transfer a large file or create a video or, you know, run a project over a Kanban board or something, organisations have gotten into the habit of looking at external tools. So then we end up in a situation where there's lots of unmanaged data and unmanaged services and IT, which we call Shadow IT, existing in the organisation that your IT team may or may not know about, and the organisation may or may not have sanctioned. And there's some substantial risks around that, Leanne. Leanne Taylor: Absolutely. I did a workshop with a customer leading into Christmas last year, and I think we were at 50 plus applications that were being used across their network. So, it can escalate quite quickly. And from my own personal experience and and working with you and Joe, I was using Notion, which is another application, kind of like an internal wiki for collaboration, etc. And then I'd had no idea that Microsoft has an application called Loop. So I jumped straight into Loop on your recommendation and, oh my god, fabulous. Love it. And even now, I'll speak to customers about Loop and they look at me and go, "What are you talking about? I've never heard of it." So, the whole point of this podcast series is to educate and open up the conversation about many of these applications that that Microsoft can offer your business and also to touch on the the security and the data side of that as well, Rebecca. That's a a conversation quite close to you guys as well, isn't it? It's about keeping the data in the one spot. Can you maybe elaborate on that as well? Rebecca Ciancio: Absolutely. So as soon as you're signing up for an app or a service outside your ecosystem, you're stepping outside your organisation's, in inverted commas, data boundary. You know, your digital perimeter. And your IT controls will be set, you know hopefully, optimised to protect that boundary wherever possible. But if you choose a solution outside of your perimeter, then you're exposing your company data to potential breach or loss. So, if someone has downloaded an app or a service and started using an extra third-party solution on their personal device or their work device and then is pumping company data into it, there's a number of risks around that. So a, you lose control of a single version of the truth, and you end up with multiple versions of the truth because they'll bring back the work they do into your ecosystem at some point. Also, what happens then if if the employee leaves the organisation or the device is lost and stolen, you've got no way of cutting off access to the company data that might be in the service or on the device. Similarly, you lose control of any versioning or record history of how your document has changed or your data has changed or been touched over time, which in an increasingly regulatory environment is a real deal breaker for a lot of organisations who need to maintain that audit trail. So, lots of considerations there around the way that using apps outside your ecosystem, outside your digital boundary, outside your data boundary, can really have negative impacts on your organisation's security and your personal security for that matter, too, that you don't necessarily think of front of mind when you're trying to serve, solve an urgent problem and looking for an app to do that. Leanne Taylor: So looking forward to the next part of these podcast series on Microsoft. Let's break down all the different options that are within the ecosystem. So we spoke before we jumped into the studio about, you know, productivity and workflow. So, can you name a few of the Microsoft applications that come into that category? Rebecca Ciancio: Absolutely. So, you know, essentially out of the, you know, 40, 50, 60 apps you might have available to you in your licence, they can broadly be grouped into a number of categories. So, some of them are around creating content. And that's really where your traditional, you know, Word, PowerPoint, those kinds of apps come into play. But what people don't realise to the extent of the productivity and and workflow apps and services that are available within the suite. So, you know, Microsoft Planner, Microsoft lists, and Microsoft to do all work together to provide people with varying levels of task, job or project management capabilities. And they're incredibly connected and integrated both into Microsoft Teams and Outlook that allow you to, you know, track your own simple personal to dos or, you know, the activities of of whole organisations and and teams within it in a really safe and secure ecosystem within your Microsoft 365 boundary. So, we often see organisations, you know, who are heavy Microsoft Teams users, for example, but then using tools like monday.com or Trello or Asana and then, you know, connecting them through a third party APIs into Microsoft Teams to get that visibility without realising that there there isn't any need to use those third party tools. There is that capability already built into Microsoft 365. So, why not use what's natively available to you and you're already paying for it within your licence fee already. So that's a great example of where people often don't realise the extra value they can claw back by using a suite of native solutions within 365. Leanne Taylor: Let's talk about collaboration and meeting as well. That's a topic we're going to cover in future episodes. What does Microsoft provide in that space? Rebecca Ciancio: Well, collaboration and meeting services within 365 really spans how you communicate with people and then how you set up areas to communicate with them in. A lot of people don't realise that over and above your standard Outlook external outreach, Microsoft Teams is obviously an incredibly powerful collaboration platform. Teams calling added into Microsoft Teams, you know, allows organisations to once and for all move off their traditional PBX phone system and take their calling into the cloud. If we talk about collaborating in terms of documents and data, that's where both SharePoint and OneDrive come into play. And there's a lot of misunderstanding about the role of SharePoint and OneDrive for personal users and uh within Microsoft 365, but pretty much everything you do within 365 will be grounded in either SharePoint or OneDrive. And SharePoint is designed to be a group or communal file storage and repository area, whereas OneDrive is really where your personal work files and those that are work in progress and not really ready yet for sharing are designed to live. So there's always a lot of confusion between that, but understanding how the broader ecosystem and collaboration apps work is really stems from understanding what happens in SharePoint and OneDrive. So we like to talk about SharePoint as a bit like the state library of your organisation, whereas Microsoft often refers to OneDrive as the me drive. So we have a me drive where we do my own personal work and when it's ready for sharing, we move it over to the we drive, the state library in SharePoint. Leanne Taylor: Now that was the game changer for me. We did a workshop recently where you drew that on a whiteboard, and anyone that's got any confusion about how to best implement your OneDrive and SharePoint within your organisation, definitely call on Rebecca to come in and and do a high level education piece there because that was the first time, and I've been using these tools for many, many years, it was the first time it actually made sense and how to actually architect my personal network for my business. And I can see and I do hear a lot of customers having challenges with OneDrive and SharePoint. So I'm looking forward to that chat. That's going to be a fun session. Rebecca Ciancio: Absolutely. Yeah. I think it's a a really powerful understanding to have about how Microsoft 365 works and understanding how SharePoint and OneDrive underpin the majority of other apps and services that are available in the 365 ecosystem. So, one of the things that we commonly experience is people say, for example, in Microsoft Teams might be using the one-to-one chat feature and uploading or creating files in that chat space and then coming back to them much further down the track and not understanding why they they can't find them. And that's because uh even though Microsoft Teams is predominantly based on SharePoint, if you're having a one-to-one interaction between you and one other person within Microsoft 365, it's going to store that in your respective me drive areas. So, in that situation, you need to be looking in OneDrive as opposed to, you know, working in a group or a team where your files will automatically be stored in in SharePoint. And that same kind of corresponding logic will apply across the whole ecosystem. So if you're having a one-to-one or working solo, that content is always going to land or be saved in the OneDrive ecosystem as opposed to a broader group work or working as a team in your environment where it's more likely to be in the we drive area. Leanne Taylor: The next one we'll be covering off is content creation applications. And this one's been exciting for me to discover with the podcast series and editing and things like that. Can you touch on the content creation apps available? Rebecca Ciancio: Yeah, absolutely. So this is one of those areas where people have traditionally sought a range of outside tools to fill these needs. So, you know, we're all familiar with Word, Excel and PowerPoint. There's no need to really delve into that, although with the introduction of Microsoft Co-pilot now, there are substantial wins and gains to be had by integrating a bit of AI smarts into into using our traditional tools as well. But there's a range of other apps available in 365 that people just really are not aware of. So, stream is where the majority of videos that are recorded in Microsoft Teams meetings, so on and so forth, eventually land and are stored. But a lot of people don't realise that they can record natively out of stream as well by going to the stream app. So, you know, recording little training videos in house, turning on the webcam, producing a little how to guide or video, very easy to do directly from stream. And the benefit of being able to do that from stream is you can publish it immediately to a group or a team or a channel from there. Clipchamp is a a newer offering to be available in the 365 suite, and it's really a video editing tool that builds on what stream can do, but is more design and production focused. So you can add your own audio really easily, add in some thumbnails or some imagery. And especially if you're looking to create really short form content that you might be able to push out for even advertising and marketing purposes, lots of people don't realise that that's available to them natively within 365 and so we'll have fairly costly subscriptions through Canva, Camtasia, lots of other tools that they don't necessarily need to be using if they're not running a full scale advertising or media production agency. Leanne Taylor: That's unbelievable. And it's been so helpful already for the work that I'm doing. Another interesting one is people and culture. There's a lot of HR teams out there using a whole bunch of different applications and probably unaware of the capability that Microsoft has in the people and culture space. Can you elaborate on that? Rebecca Ciancio: Absolutely. So people and culture or HR in general, other than finance and accounting is probably the department that will source external apps and solutions to drive their work forward the most. If you think to your own organisation and think about how you provide feedback to your management team, does your organisation run like little surveys, polls and sentiment, employee experience surveys. Nine times out of 10, they'll be run through third-party external apps and solutions, whereas there is a lot of that capability baked into 365 as well. At the ordinary 365 level, Microsoft forms is an incredibly powerful tool to be able to collect data and get some really high level analysis, and within that there are some automated pre-formatted people in culture style tools, like employee sentiment surveys that are really a pre-built and be already integrated into your ecosystem that will present nicely as a Microsoft list or as an Excel spreadsheet as an output without having to use any uh third-party tool outside your ecosystem. There's also a lot of features like the Microsoft people app or functionality within 365 is really, really underutilised. Because if your active directory, if your team of users in 365 is set up correctly when you onboard new users and you actually identify their role in the organisation, people allows you to maintain and manage a really, really robust org chart even within 365. And at any place in the 365 ecosystem, if you're in Outlook, say for example, and you receive an email from somebody new, people is the tool that will show you what their role is in the organisation, what team they belong to, and even who they report to and who reports to them. So it's an immediate opportunity to get a little bit of context around who this person you may not have interacted with in your team is before. But there's also an opportunity in people for people to to customize that view a little bit and put in, you know, their three hobbies or something like that. So that when people do look at who you are in your organisation, they can get a little bit of a snapshot of about what's important to you over and above the email they might have just sent you. So lots and lots of different things to explore and unpack there. Uh, and I would really recommend people involved in HR, team management, uh, or HR teams in general really take a a closer and considered look at what's available to them in 365. Leanne Taylor: The next one which is a hot topic is AI at the moment. So there's been a lot of talk last year and and coming into this year about AI tools and we're getting flooded in the market with, you know, all these different companies that are popping up, you know, promising to record everything and summarise meetings and conversations and integrate into into Microsoft and various teams. Tell us a bit more about co-pilot because it's people have their varying views on co-pilot, so what do you think? Rebecca Ciancio: Well, I'm a big co-pilot advocate. I use it every day. It's replaced a lot of the administrative and and grunt work that took me many, many hours of the day. But essentially, the thing to know about generative AI is that there are a multitude of tools out there. They all more or less do something similar. And, you know, there will be peaks and troughs of which one is slightly ahead or behind others in terms of features and functionality. But they all essentially do the same thing. The thing that they don't all do is protect your data and protect the integrity of that data. So from the very beginning of any Microsoft 365 engagement, especially when we're providing training, one of the the points that we stress is the best way to create a culture of keeping your data secure in your organisation is to stress the mantra that you want to create it where you intend to keep it. So, by that we mean if if you're trying to create something in your your work environment, you should be creating it within the ecosystem where you intend it to live, use and be stored. So Microsoft Co-pilot gives organisations the opportunity to be able to create and generate content and work using best in class AI tool sets from within their Microsoft 365 ecosystem. What does that mean? Anybody can go to co-pilot.com just like they can with, you know, chat GPT and other tools and, you know, use it and get some kind of outcome. But within the 365 ecosystem, if you have a 365 licence and you actually log into co-pilot via Microsoft Edge, for example, using your work credentials, that data protection boundary gets enabled then around your co-pilot instance. So whatever you put into co-pilot at that point, it leverages the technology of large language models and generative AI, but it doesn't send your company data or anything you put into co-pilot up to train the large language model. And that's really important because you want to be able to leverage the best out of the technology, but you also don't want your sensitive company data being thrown up into the communal training knowledge pool that may or may not surface elsewhere in the future. Leanne Taylor: Thank you. That's amazing. So, the final one is security and compliance, and I know you've touched on that, but there's so much more to Microsoft, what they do offer customers with security. I think most people are aware of Microsoft Defender. I've got a bunch of customers using Sentinel. Can you jump in and elaborate on what Microsoft can offer in the security space? Rebecca Ciancio: For sure. So a lot of the security tools are not really designed for the average end user of any Microsoft 365 licence, but they provide really, really superior functionality and control options for IT teams or, you know, IT professionals, you know, you might have engaged with your organisation. So, you know, if I take the co-pilot example that we were speaking about just before, tools like Microsoft Purview and Microsoft Information protection are really, really robust enterprise level tools that will allow you to really control which parts of the organisation can have access to generative AI tools, for example, but also to protect data within your organisation by auto applying certain sensitivity labels to it, or even further beyond that, taking automated actions if an anomaly is detected. So, and I don't mean a breach anomaly here. I mean a situation where for example, an employee is sending an email outside the organisation, and let's just say that employee has plonked a credit card number or a password in the content of the email. Microsoft information protection, when configured correctly with the automated settings in place, will detect that email has something in it that looks like a a password or a credit card number, people block the email from being sent and automatically alert the IT team to address, you know, the fact that somebody in the organisation doesn't understand that they should not be doing that. So the fact that all of that can be done, you know, in real time without having to wait for auditing three or six months later, gives an incredible amount of uh power and grunt in the security space to any IT team. Leanne Taylor: There's so much to unpack, isn't there? And that's why we're going to be doing doing these sessions over a number of podcasts. So looking forward to deep diving into each and every one of them. So thank you, Rebecca. It's been a fantastic overview. Please stay tuned everyone for future episodes coming up, and uh hope you enjoy the sessions as we deep dive into each of these different topics and applications that Microsoft can provide. So, thanks for joining, Rebecca. Rebecca Ciancio: Thanks for having me, Leanne. I'm looking forward to talking about some of our favourites. [Outro Music] Leanne Taylor: Thank you for listening to Tech Talks with Taylor. I'm Leanne Taylor, and here at Taylor Made Sales, our mission is to keep you, our valued customers, up to date, informed about the latest technology innovations that can support and elevate your business. Stay curious, stay connected, and we'll see you next time.  

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