September 21st, 11:30 am Central

Save the meeting in your calendar:  Azure Infrastructure: An Introduction

Topic: Azure Infrastructure: An Introduction
Location: In Person (Nashville) & Online
Speaker: Peter Shore
Cost: FREE

Topic Details

Azure infrastructure has a language all its own, yes, the words sound the same as the ones we are used to on-premises, they might even mean the same thing, or almost the same thing, or something mostly different. This session is entirely devoted to clarifying those terms, demystifying concepts and generally prepare you to have a better conversation about Azure. By the end of our time together you will be familiar with the major types of services in Azure, redundancy, and recovery, along with the concepts that will allow you to ask the questions which lead to success in Azure.

Be sure to forward this meeting info to your colleagues and friends!

Speaker Details

Peter is a seasoned IT professional with over 25 years experience. He took the accidentally intentional DBA plunge in 2013 and has discovered that he loves to find the stories the data has to tell. Peter is comfortable working with physical, virtual, and cloud instances where he tries to apply best practices to attain performance improvements. He is also adept at bridging the gap between technical and business language in order to bring technology solutions to business needs.

August 24th, 11:30 am Central

Save the meeting in your calendar:  Tracking What’s New and Next in *Your* Tenant

Topic: Tracking What’s New and Next in *Your* Tenant
Location: Online
Speaker: Michael Blumenthal, Microsoft MVP
Cost: FREE

Topic Details

Microsoft announces on average at least 2 changes per day to M365. Wondering how to keep up with all that? How to not be blindsided by the what’s changing in SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and more? Want to understand not only the changes that are coming to your environment this month, but also later this year? Learn the tools and resources you can use to keep track of what changes are coming to your Office 365 tenant and what processes you can put in place to manage those changes.

Be sure to forward this meeting info to your colleagues and friends!

Speaker Details

Michael Blumenthal is a Microsoft MVP and the Microsoft Product Manager at NORC. He helps teams of business people be more productive and ensures that the organization gets value from its Microsoft 365 investment. As a technical community leader, he is one of the organizers of the M365Chicago events. As a public speaker, he can be found speaking on business technology topics including employee experience, the modern workplace, business productivity, collaboration, knowledge and expertise management, communication and content management, cloud adoption, and Microsoft 365. See him year-round at technology events and user groups as well as national conferences such as Microsoft Ignite and 365 Educon Chicago. Michael has deep expertise in Microsoft collaboration technologies. After starting his career as a software developer building intranets for conferences, he started working with SharePoint Portal Server 2003 when it was in beta. His life has never been the same. He’s designed, implemented, and supported intranets, extranets, and Internet sites for clients in a diverse set of markets. He’s been leading teams to successfully plan, deploy, and support the broader set of Microsoft 365 collaboration workloads since 2014. Michael holds numerous Microsoft certifications including the Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert: Productivity certification and previously held the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) from the Project Management Institute. Microsoft first recognized Michael as an MVP in 2015. He has also been recognized as an INETA Community Champion in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. He was the first member of the Microsoft Midwest Toastmasters club to obtain the Competent Communicator, Advanced Communicator Bronze, and Advanced Communicator Silver awards. In January of 2023, Michael was recognized as one of the top 100 Unified Communications Influencers.

July 20th, 11:30 am Central

Save the meeting in your calendar:  Integrating with REST APIs using Microsoft Kiota

Topic: Integrating with REST APIs using Microsoft Kiota
Location: Online
Speaker: Vincent Biret, Microsoft & Sébastien Levert, Microsoft
Cost: FREE

Topic Details

Your application integration with 3rd party APIs can be difficult if your application platform does not offer SDKs for calling the APIs. Implementation of authentication, authorization, serialization, and exception handling for calling APIs adds a lot of work and risk to your project. Join us for a session filled with demos that showcase how to generate your own personalized SDK client for a complete OpenAPI spec in multiple programming languages with the help of Microsoft Kiota. By using your new personalized client that is generated by Kiota, all the complex aspects of calling APIs get handled for you automatically so that you could concentrate on what really counts: creating value for your end users.

Be sure to forward this meeting info to your colleagues and friends!

Speaker Details

Sébastien Levert
Sebastien is a Senior Product Manager on the Microsoft Graph Developer Experiences team where he is focusing on Kiota, the Microsoft Graph SDKs and the Microsoft Graph Toolkit.

Vincent Biret
Developer, international speaker, and blogger, I’m working on client SDKs generation for OpenAPI. I also have experience to share about APIs design, software development, and automation. I’m thrilled to share moments with you speaking about technology!

June 22nd, 11:30 am Central

Save the meeting in your calendar:  Master SharePoint and Power Automate like a Pro!

Topic: Master SharePoint and Power Automate like a Pro!
Location: Online
Speaker: Pam DeGraffenreid, Microsoft MVP
Cost: FREE

Topic Details

Build faster and smarter. These tips are based on real-world use cases and common problems that you can use immediately. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced user, these insights will help you work smarter, not harder.

Be sure to forward this meeting info to your colleagues and friends!

Speaker Details

Pam DeGraffenreid
Pam is a Senior M365 developer with fifteen years of experience in SharePoint & Microsoft 365 best practices, customization, development, and administration. Her focus is creating efficient, sustainable solutions leveraging Microsoft 365 low/no-code capabilities. She’s passionate about helping other developers work smarter by improving their processes and practices. She has been an active member of the user group community and has been leading the Knoxville M365 user group since 2014.

March 16th, 11:30 am

Save the meeting in your calendar:  Approvals in Microsoft Teams

Topic: Approvals in Microsoft Teams
Location: Online
Speaker: Marcin Siewnicki
Cost: FREE

Topic Details

Approvals play important role in documents life-cycle, projects, company processes, IT management and many other areas. It’s really hard to imagine company without any approval process. Holiday requests, project proposals, agreements, IT requests and more.
With latest updates Microsoft Teams become powerful approval center.
In this session I will go through approval options available in Teams and show how to use them and when.
In details:
• Available approval options in Teams
• What is Approval app
• Integration with Teams
• Management options
• DEMOS

Be sure to forward this meeting info to your colleagues and friends!

Speaker Details

Marcin Siewnicki
I am Microsoft 365 consultant and architect. I create applications and solutions that improve and facilitate work using Power Platform, SharePoint, and Teams. My adventure in IT began in 2005. Since then I have been creating and implementing business applications based on SharePoint and Microsoft 365 platforms. I am a big fan of task and process automation (Power Automate) and Modern Workplace platforms (Microsoft Teams). Privately a husband, father of 2 sons. Fan of science fiction and cyberpunk, futurist. I co-organize the SharePoint Saturday Warsaw conference and speak at Microsoft’s community events.

February 16th, 11:30 am

Save the meeting in your calendar: Power BI Reports: An Introduction to Creating Data Stories

Topic: Turning Content into Data with Microsoft Syntex and Power BI
Location: In-Person (Knoxville) & Online
Speaker: Treb Gatte, Microsoft MVP
Cost: FREE

Topic Details

Did you know that 72% of an organization’s data is stuck in content, like documents and PDFs? We can’t afford to ignore this data any longer. In this session, we’ll take you through how you can leverage Microsoft Syntex with Power BI to analyze data from documents at scale. I’ll take you through a demo where we are processing invoices that were sent to us to do some analysis.

Be sure to forward this meeting info to your colleagues and friends!

Speaker Details

Treb Gatte is CEO of MarqueeInsights.com and TopLine.io. He is a business intelligence expert with 24 years of experience. Prior to becoming CEO he worked in leadership positions at Microsoft, Starbucks, and Wachovia (now Wells Fargo). He has been recognized as Data Platform MVP from Microsoft. Treb lives in the Seattle area with his wife, children and corgi and holds an MBA from Wake Forest University and a B.S. from Louisiana State University.

January 18th, 11:30 am

Save the meeting in your calendar: Power BI Reports: An Introduction to Creating Data Stories

Topic: Power BI Reports: An Introduction to Creating Data Stories
Location: via Microsoft Teams
Speaker: Daniel Glenn, Microsoft MVP
Cost: FREE

Topic Details

Do you know the steps needed to create a Power BI report? Did you know you can tell a data story using Power BI?

Join Daniel as we take a walk through an introduction of Power BI reports and how you can quickly get started creating and sharing visual data in your organization. We will discuss available sources of data, how to layout pages, and how you can collaborate with Power BI.

Be sure to forward this meeting info to your colleagues and friends!

Speaker Details

Daniel Glenn is a Microsoft MVP and serves as Senior Director of Hybrid Office and U.S. Delivery at Creospark. Daniel works with the delivery team and clients throughout North America to better inform organizations and help them understand, adopt, and love their technology. Daniel is a sought-after trainer, providing customized Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Microsoft Viva, Power BI, and Power Automate training for companies around the world.
He is also co-host for the popular “365 Message Center Show” at https://365MCS.com. You can follow Daniel online at https://DanielGlenn.com and @DanielGlenn on Twitter.

December 1st, 11:30 am

Save the meeting in your calendar: Get started with Adaptive Cards for Microsoft Teams

Topic: Get started with Adaptive Cards for Microsoft Teams using Microsoft Lists and Power Automate
Location: via Microsoft Teams
Speaker: Norm Young
Cost: FREE

Topic Details

Adaptive Cards are everywhere. They are an incredibly versatile way to create actionable messages in the Microsoft 365 and Power Platform ecosystem.

In this session, we will transform traditional email reminders into interactive, informative, and actionable user experiences using Adaptive Cards. We will showcase Microsoft Lists, Microsoft Teams and Power Automate using a maker approach solution development.
We hope that after this session, you’ll want to integrate Adaptive Cards into every solution you build!

Be sure to forward this meeting info to your colleagues and friends!

Speaker Details

Norm Young is the tyGraph Director of Collaborative Analytics at AvePoint. He is a 3-time Microsoft MVP with a focus on building collaborative solutions using SharePoint, Microsoft Teams and the Power Platform. Prior to working at tyGraph – AvePoint, Norm worked in higher-education developing analytic and collaboration solutions using SharePoint, Teams and the Power Platform.

Norm blogs and speaks about Microsoft 365, the Power Platform and how they are better together and with a little bit of help from the community we can all do awesome things with technology

October 27th, 11:30 am

Save the meeting in your calendar: Microsoft Ignite 2022 After Party & Power Platform Conference Recap

Topic: Microsoft Ignite 2022 & Power Platform Conference After Party – Ask questions and discuss announcements with Microsoft MVPs and experts!
Location: via Microsoft Teams
Speakers: Pam DeGraffenreid, Daniel Christian (Microsoft MVP), Stephanie Donahue (Microsoft MVP), John P White (Microsoft MVP) 
Cost: FREE

Topic Details

Join us for our first-ever Microsoft Ignite After Party! We will also cover Microsoft’s announcements at the Power Platform conference too. This will be an interactive meeting where we will review new information from the conferences and give attendees the chance to ask questions and respond!

We will have Microsoft MVPs and experts to cover questions and discussions on Power Apps / Automate, Microsoft 365 collaboration, Microsoft Viva, and Power BI – live!

Pam DeGraffenreid – Power Apps, SharePoint
Daniel Christian – Power Apps / Automate, SharePoint
Stephanie Donahue – Microsoft 365 collaboration, Microsoft Viva
John P White – Power BI

Be sure to forward this meeting info to your colleagues and friends!

Speaker Details

Stephanie Donahue
Stephanie is the Technical Community Lead at Avanade, with a focus on engaging Avanade’s technical leadership communities and their passion for technology. As a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP, she has been setting a strategic path from discovery to successful implementations using an innovative approach and consistent methodology. Stephanie is an active blogger and event speaker with over 10 years of experience in SharePoint projects and over 20 years in IT – from basic deployments to information architecture, content management, to business process automation. You can follow Stephanie at @stephkdonahue

Daniel Christian
Daniel is a performance driven professional with a blend of leadership and business knowledge. He is an active participant in writing blogs and videos in the Microsoft Power Platform Community regarding deep integration with Azure Cognitive Services, Dataverse, SharePoint, Teams and Yammer. As an active speaker and influencer at events and social media, Daniel demonstrates his passion of being a big proponent of sharing his knowledge which has also made him a Microsoft MVP for 5 years.

Pam DeGraffenreid 
Pam is a leading member of the Knoxville M365 User Group. She has over 20 years of IT experience, focused primarily on SharePoint/O365 solution development.

John P White
John P White is the Chief Technical Officer and Co-Founder of tyGraph. He holds a Master’s degree in Engineering from the University of Guelph and has been a Microsoft MVP since 2010 and a dual MVP since 2018. He has spent far too long (since 1990) in the Information Technology space, and possesses a skill set that spans both architecture and development. He has been instrumental in delivering projects and applications that have been recognized with both local and global awards from Microsoft and IBM.
John has accumulated a plethora of legacy technologies like Novell, Lotus Notes and Java. This experience has proven invaluable when architecting systems alongside legacy applications. Over the past decade, he has been focused on the Microsoft SharePoint and Business Intelligence platforms and is a frequent speaker on these topics.
He blogs as actively as possible at the White Pages and is the co-host of the weekly BIFocal podcast which covers the Microsoft BI space. John lives in the country just outside of Guelph, Canada. He is the father of 3 boys, is an avid scuba diver, gardener, and photographer, both under and above the water (but mostly under).

August 18th, 11:30 am

Save the meeting in your calendar: Power Pages for Low-Code Developers

Topic: Power Pages for Low-Code Developers
Location: via Microsoft Teams
Speaker: Pam DeGraffenreid
Cost: FREE

Topic Details

Microsoft recently announce Power Pages, and it’s loaded with features for low-code developers to quickly create a site. In this session, we’ll cover the things you need to know to get started and build a Power Pages site.

Be sure to forward this meeting info to your colleagues and friends!

Speaker Details

Pam DeGraffenreid – SharePoint / O365 Developer