Microsoft 365 admin guide to Ignite 2022 – Helping IT do more with less

A banner image for the Microsoft Ignite event happening October 12-14, 2022.

For this year’s Microsoft Ignite on October 12-14, we’re looking forward to sharing our latest innovations to help you meet the opportunities and address the challenges of managing IT environments in the current economic climate.

IT organizations large and small are on a mission to ensure they’re getting the most value out of their current investments. To do this, many organizations are adding adoption specialists and other new roles in the IT department to help drive adoption and usage of new services and ensure positive user experience. Recently, we’ve evolved the Microsoft 365 admin center to help IT admins with everything from managing deployments and updates to understanding the adoption and usage across their organization.

At Ignite, we’re excited to share new innovations designed to address the needs of these new roles and also improvements to help you administer Microsoft 365 more efficiently. All to help you maximize the value of your investments.

Ignite will be offering a variety of content and many ways to engage with us and with each other. You can expect keynotes and breakout sessions, live virtual roundtables, community engagement, and expert discussions. We pulled together the most relevant pieces for Microsoft 365 admins to help you get better oriented at the event and get the most value for your time.

Realize value through new intelligent capabilities designed for Microsoft 365 admins and adoption specialists

Speakers: James Bell, Amisha Bhatia

Over the last few years, organizations of all sizes found themselves moving part or all their IT environments to the cloud to support remote employees, whether they were ready or not. Now that the dust has settled a bit, IT admins are taking a closer look at how they can continue driving adoption and improving the end user experience to ensure they’re getting everything they can out of those investments.

In this session, James and Amisha will discuss two new Microsoft 365 admin capabilities that provide deeper visibility into people and technology, usage, health, training, product feedback, and Net Promoter Score (NPS) trends. They’ll also talk about how IT admins and change experts can use this information—which includes tenant-level data only to ensure user privacy is protected—to drive awareness and adoption campaigns to help users understand the art of what’s possible and get the most out of Microsoft 365 capabilities. This information also helps IT admins identify trends and proactively address adoption issues.

Empower partners and SMB customers to achieve more with Microsoft 365

Speakers: Meg Garland, Nick Seidler

Our mission at Microsoft is always to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Today, more than ever, we want to ensure that achieving more doesn’t mean adding complexity, which can prevent you from getting the most out of your Microsoft 365 investment. This is especially important for our partners securing cloud transformations at small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) and for smaller organizations with small IT teams who are already stretched to their limits.

In this session, Meg and Nick will provide a closer look at new investments in the Microsoft 365 admin center, including the Microsoft 365 Lighthouse admin portal for Managed Service Providers (MSP) and the Microsoft 365 Admin mobile app and Admin app in Microsoft Teams, and the new Business Advisor program, designed to help our partners and SMB customers drive operational efficiency and ensure a secure environment for users.

How to optimize your environment and manage change using Microsoft 365 admin center

Speakers: Sandhya Shahdeo, Maryam Khabazan

Based on your feedback over the last year, we’ve continued to improve admin experiences to help you keep your Microsoft 365 environment healthy, and effectively manage change. Sandhya, Maryam, and team will give you an overview of the latest Microsoft 365 admin center innovations for managing your day-to-day efficiency with features like Global Search and ServiceNow integration, reducing security risks through greater visibility into updates, managing change for users more effectively, and improvements we’ve made to make tracking system health and monitoring your Microsoft 365 environment.

Unlock new experiences across Microsoft 365 to lower costs and empower employees

Speaker: Colette Stallbaumer

Organizations today face the challenge of engaging and empowering an increasingly distributed workforce at home, in the office, and everywhere in between. Leaders must reduce cost and complexity while continuing to invest in employees to meet changing expectations. To gain competitive advantage in this rapidly evolving business environment, organizations need integrated, cloud-powered solutions that enable employees to be productive and secure–from anywhere. Join us to learn about the new capabilities we are lighting up across Microsoft 365 to power this new world of work.

Roundtable sessions: A closer look at new Microsoft 365 admin center capabilities

Join us for our roundtable sessions where our product experts will provide more technical deep dives and discussions on how you can use the Microsoft 365 admin center to ensure you’re getting the most out of your Microsoft 365 investment:

What's New in Microsoft 365 administration and adoption tools

Karuana Gatimu and Amisha Bhatia will join you for a discussion about understanding Microsoft 365 usage across your organization. You’ll have a chance to provide feedback on our new user experience and usage features, such as new roles, analytics, and tools, and discuss how you envision using these features in your own organizations. They will also share best practices for making the most of these tools.

Microsoft 365 monitoring, alerts, and service health

Emine Atayurt and Vibin Chingapurath will talk with you about best practices for keeping tabs on your Microsoft 365 environment and reacting quickly to problems. They’ll explain how you get notified about issues in your tenant that require action, show you how to tag users for early issue detection, and demonstrate advanced monitoring for service incidents. Most importantly, they’ll get your input on what the product roadmap should look like to make you successful in these areas.

Self-expression in Microsoft 365: Creating a unified profile editing experience

Zina Ndugwa, Sonia Perunneparampil, and Samantha Kitetu will present the latest profile editor designs to understand how you might use the editor in your organization and any challenges you predict. They also want to learn what features resonate more with your organizations and how you think the profile experience can assist you in supporting hybrid work today.

We are excited to have you join us at this year’s Microsoft Ignite! 

Join us for a post-Ignite Microsoft 365 admin center AMA on Tuesday, November 1st at 10:00 AM PT to ask questions about news from Ignite. Make sure to RSVP to the event in the link above!

Continue the conversation or start your own in the Microsoft 365 community as Microsoft Ignite approaches! Make sure to Follow or Subscribe to the Microsoft 365 Blog space so you don't miss any announcements from Ignite.