Five Highly Recommended Sessions at Microsoft 365 EduCon, Washington DC 2023

Just like you, we are super excited to both be attending and sponsoring Microsoft 365 EduCon 2023 in Washington, DC. Like last year, there are many amazing speakers covering areas of interest ranging from Power Apps, Microsoft 365 administration, and Teams, to Business Value and Intelligence. It truly is an opportunity to learn from some of the most influential thought leaders and MVPs in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem!

To help with navigating the conference, we shortlisted five sessions we are the most interested in attending. I am forced to admit that narrowing down this list was hard! The expertise of all the speakers was awe inspiring and, honestly, a bit humbling. Selecting a shortlist was like having to pick between your children!

I’m sure there are some amazing sessions we missed that deserve to be on the list. If you agree, please help us! Let us know via Twitter or Discord what we need to add either here or as a Part II of this blog post so that we can ensure comprehensive coverage of the event.

Finally, without further ado, let's explore, in no particular order, the top five sessions that we are eagerly looking forward to. Trust me, you won't want to miss any of these incredible sessions.

Our Top Five Recommended Sessions

Session 1: Collaboration and Compliance in the Modern Workplace

Talks from Joanne Klein always tend to be well attended, and we expect this one to be no different. This session, led by her and Daniel Glenn, should educate us all to seamlessly integrate compliance features into our Microsoft 365 collaboration tools. In this session, they will address the challenge of balancing collaboration and compliance in the modern workplace. Daniel will highlight the rich array of collaboration tools available in Microsoft 365, while Joanne will explore the application of Microsoft Purview compliance controls to enhance compliance efforts. Oh, you might want to check out their related full-day workshop too! 

Session 2: PnPjs and the SharePoint Framework: Version 3 - What's New

As you might know from our work on Corso, the only open-source backup solution for Microsoft 365, we love open source and are excited to see more open-source talks at 365 EduCon. In this session, Julie Turner will explore Version 3 of the PnPjs library. You will discover, through demos, how to utilize this open-source library to consume SharePoint,Microsoft Graph, and Office 365 services. She also plans on covering advanced scenarios like batching and cross-site execution with PnPjs.

Session 3: Unlocking Microsoft 365 with the Microsoft Graph

 We are BIG fans of the Microsoft Graph API and not only use it a ton at Alcion but also contribute upstream to its Go libraries. It can sometimes seem scary or complex to use but it really isn’t. This session by Bob German will show you how to get started with the basics and call theGraph API from the Power Platform, JS, PS, or just a web browser (using the GraphExplorer?). We are super excited that he plans to dive into OData queries too given how powerful it can be for you. He should also cover how to deal with API throttling, the bane of any Graph API developer!

Session 4: Everything you need to know about external sharing in OneDrive, SharePoint & Teams

If you are using SharePoint and OneDrive (and who isn’t?), you know that external sharing of data within it is a requirement. However, given that this has governance implications, you definitely want to attend this talk by Drew Madelung and Vlad Catrinescu that will dive into how external sharing actually works and explore the available management options. You’ll also learn how to securely deliver content to the right individuals at the right time without slowing things down.

Session 5: Data Security Breach in Microsoft 365, Now What?

If you are a Microsoft 365 admin, you very well know the increased security risk to all our data. Internally, at Alcion, we are always discussing the inevitability of ransomware. However, Microsoft is giving us at least some of the tools that will help you figure out what is happening and you should join Liam Cleary in this talk to dive in exactly that. He will walk you through where to start in the event of a breach, how to analyze logs, identify at-risk services and the breach, and then how to protect your infrastructure from future events.

If the above talks interest you...

If any of these talks interest you, you might also be interested in Alcion’s security-first AI-driven Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform that helps Microsoft 365 administrators quickly and intuitively protect data from cyber threats and accidental data loss. Come chat with us at booth 805 (and pick up some cool swag!) or find us on Twitter or Discord.