The New Zealand Digital Workplace Conference (DWCNZ) was held in Christchurch for the first time on the 27^th and 28^th of February 2024. More than 30 speakers from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Canada, and the United States spoke on a wide range of topics and presented case studies.

The conference was held at Te Pae, our fabulous new convention centre. This fantastic venue is located right in the heart of the city, with views over the Avon River. Many of our out-of-town guests commented on how great the venue is and how great our city has become after the earthquake rebuild.

The theme of this year’s conference was heavily influenced by the launch of Microsoft 365 Copilot in late 2023. Debbie set the scene by reminding us of the rate of change we will see in our lifetime and how it will be even greater for the next generation. The Keynote painted a vision of the Copilot enabled digital worker using AI to work smarter. It also came with a clear message on the importance of preparing both your information and your people rather than launching headfirst into the unknown!

I presented two sessions. The first a case study on building MyQDocs, a quality document management system at Synlait, with Meredith Evans. This was a major undertaking, designing, and building the DMS with SharePoint Online, PowerApps and Power Automate. There were many challenging aspects including migrating documents from Master Control, converting file formats with PowerShell, filling in gaps in Power Automate Approval functionality and doing all this in parallel to an ERP System replacement project during the Covid days!

The second talk was an Introduction to Microsoft 365 Copilot filled with live demos to show the functionality in action. Generating job interview questions, catching up on email highlights, authoring in Microsoft Word, creating PowerPoint slides from a document, and a whole lot more! (see my YouTube channel for demos)

I attended case study sessions from both Canterbury University (UC) and University of Waikato (UoW). Both Universities have large digital work programmes underway and have already achieved some great improvements. These are large organisations with complex operating environments and change management challenges that you might not see in other types of organisations. UC presented their new Intranet, built with SharePoint Online and replacing a very old Intranet with poorly maintained content. UoW have migrated from Google Apps to Microsoft 365. My hat goes off to both Clive Keylard (UC) and Glenn Penfold (UoW) and their respective teams for some incredible work.

Jenn Jones (NZ) gave us an excellent introduction to Purview compliance. Purview is an essential tool for securing and managing the lifecycle of content in Microsoft 365. Purview capabilities are included in both Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 (E5 for automated processes).

Michael Noel (USA) talked about how cyber criminals are using AI technology to make our lives miserable. His slides included AI generated images, some from 6 months or so ago and others from the last few weeks, highlighting the rapid improvement in ‘realness’ from AI generated content. This is concerning stuff and we all need to educate ourselves to avoid the traps! On a side note, you don’t need a WiFi enabled Toothbrush!

Alistair Pugin (South Africa) gave an excellent session on the Zero Trust framework tools available from Microsoft. You don’t need to be a Cyber Security expert to improve the security of your Microsoft 365 tenant, just follow the plan and you will sleep better at night.

Alistair West (NZ) gave an excellent refresher session on SharePoint Lists, showcasing templates and how to use Lists in 7 different ways. Sometimes we forget how good Lists are for non-technical users. I’ve seen this in my own team where non-technical people use Lists to manage various processes. Go and take another look!

Peter Carson (Canada) demonstrated building better employee search experiences. This is something most organisations struggle with because it usually requires people to add data to their profiles. He showed how data from various internal sources and public sources such as LinkedIn can be used to enrich the profile data.

One of the challenges with conferences with so many great speakers, is that you can’t see everything. What I did see and hear was a lot of conversations between sessions that everyone was getting something from the sessions they attended. It was also like a family reunion for quite a few of us, who hadn’t met in person for a while! It was also nice to meet people I had only ever spoken to in online meetings!

My big take-aways from the conference are:

• Make someone responsible for Change Management in EVERY project.
• Don’t just turn Copilot on, have a plan.
• Governance and security for Microsoft 365 should be a priority for everyone.
• The pace of AI is very high. Don’t try to learn it all at once.
• Don’t forget the boring things like training people to save files in the right place.

The inaugural New Zealand Digital Workplace Awards were held as part of the conference dinner. This is a great showcase of both the talent and innovation we have in this country. Congratulations to all the finalist and three cheers for the very deserving winners!

Thank you, Debbie Ireland, and the Digital Workplace Results team for putting on a fabulous conference. Thank you also to my fellow speakers who commit many hours of their time to prepare and present. Finally, thank you to the sponsors, who supported and helped make this world class event possible in my hometown.

Last and definitely not least, thank you the awesome Stratos Team!

Now the conference is over, I hope everyone makes time to put into practice the things we learnt. Be people centric and consider the impact of change. Review your environment and secure your content. Add error handling to your workflows. Implement things that take your organisation forward. Never stop learning!

The Australian Digital Workplace Conference will be in Sydney on the 31st July & 1st August. Save the date!