Microsoft Ignite 2021 (Spring) Day 2 – What I’m watching

I hope you enjoyed Day 1 of Microsoft Ignite. For me, I love the excitement of a keynote, and this year was certainly interesting and different. If you’re not a fan of the usual formulaic predictable and corporate stuffiness, well I think you might quite like how crazy this one got. No spoilers, but it’s worth watching.

Today, here are the sessions I’m looking out for: there’s more of an emphasis on core Microsoft Teams functionality today. Likely many of them will be on catch-up for me due to work and family commitments, but these are what I’m going to try and make time for:

1. Azure Communication Services | Build video, voice and chat apps interoperable with Microsoft Teams

This session already happened, but it was 6AM my time and I didn’t get up for it! This is likely to be a high-level overview of ACS by its CVP and hopefully will include some cool demos.

Watch this session on-demand: Azure Communication Services | Build video, voice and chat apps interoperable with Microsoft Teams

2. Easy, intuitive webinars with Microsoft Teams: Virtual engagement in the age of remote work

This is not really the blog for breaking news updates about Microsoft Teams unless it affect developers, (you should read Tom A’s blog for that) but I do think that this will be a good session to attend, in order to quickly get on board with new functionality in Teams around webinars. Two reasons for me: firstly I’m interested to know what developer extensibility points there are (if any), and secondly, I’d selfishly like to know if I can use this in some way in the production of my podcast 🙂

Watch this session on-demand: Easy, intuitive webinars with Microsoft Teams: Virtual engagement in the age of remote work

3. Microsoft Teams + Dynamics 365: The unified collaboration platform for modern business

I’ve seen some pretty interesting screenshots in blog posts talking about the integration between Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams, and so I’m hoping that this session will answer some of my questions about how it all works.

Watch this session on-demand: Microsoft Teams + Dynamics 365: The unified collaboration platform for modern business

4. Meet Microsoft Viva: a new kind of employee experience

Since it’s announcement a few weeks ago there’s been lots of buzz about Viva, but also lots of questions too. As a developer, I see it as a rich source of new data so I’m going to be attending to find out what those extensibility points are and how to write applications to both contribute to, and work with, the Viva experience.

Watch this session on-demand: Meet Microsoft Viva: a new kind of employee experience