Speaker

Jay Leask

Jay Leask

Modern Work Architect

Washington, Washington, D.C., United States

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I facilitate discussions on modern IT practices, using 20 years of IT experience to engage customers in solutions design with a focus on increased the value and decreased risk within collaboration investments. My focus over the last 15 years has been on public sector organizations including state, local, and Federal government, as well as education institutions.

Find more about my conference presentations, blogs, and podcasts at https://my.link.gallery/jayleask

Awards

  • Most Active Speaker 2022

Area of Expertise

  • Government, Social Sector & Education
  • Information & Communications Technology

Topics

  • M365
  • Governance
  • Records Management
  • Knowledge Management
  • Data Governance
  • modern workplace
  • Adoption
  • Adoption and Change Management
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Office 365 Governance
  • Power Platform Enterprise Management
  • Power Platform Administration
  • Power Platform Governance

Viva Underground. An Outcome-based Route to Success with Microsoft Viva

Have you begun your journey into Microsoft Viva or is the landscape too intimidating? Unsure which tech to deploy first? Consultants have too many opinions on which tool will improve your business?

Join Joy and Jay as they present their Viva Underground: a map of outcome-based paths to Viva success, focused on your business needs.

There is no one "starting place" for Viva, but there are many paths you can take based on your organizational objectives.

Key Takeaways:
- How to begin defining your Employee Experience priorities
- How to decide which route to take to help achieve your organizational goals
- Approaching Microsoft Viva from a people-first perspective

How to Win Friends (in the Business) and Solve Problems

Do you hate talking to people? Do you wish you could simply deploy a tool and move on to the next "problem"? Do you long for the olden days where the business left you alone?

During this session, Jay and Joy will help you look like you care (because we know you really do) about business needs, to fine tune your technological solutions, and ensure the successful adoption of these tools in helping your company succeed.

1. Care for the business
2. Deploy cool technology
3. ...
4. Profit

While we will discuss the Power Platform as a platform for developing solutions, we will not focus on the toolset itself, but instead we will focus on ensuring your requirements meet the needs of the stakeholders for whom you are developing solutions.

Governance, Information Management, and Teams - What you need to know!

As the fastest growing business application in Microsoft’s history, more and more data is being generated in and through use of Microsoft Teams. As a result of its extensibility, there are a lot of places this data can be created and stored, from chats and posts to files saved in a Teams channel.

Without governance in place Teams sprawl can negatively impact the business’ experience with Teams. What does governance look like for Microsoft Teams? Should sprawl be a concern and if so, how do we limit it without limiting Teams adoption functionality?

How can you ensure you’re adequately capturing the information your organization needs to be compliant with internal and external policies?

Join information management experts Joy Apple and Jay Leask as they show you:
- How Teams fits into the modern architecture model of Microsoft 365
- How to leverage proper architecture in Teams to facilitate collaboration
- The importance of an overall Office/Microsoft 365 information management strategy and how it will improve search and audit capabilities
- Base-line Teams governance best practices
- How to provision Microsoft Teams to automatically tag documents with appropriate metadata needed to meet records mandates
- Integration between Teams and SharePoint Online to give you full management over documents within Teams.

Copilot to Enhance the Employee Experience

Microsoft Copilot is getting a lot of hype for personal productivity, but how do you break beyond the simple technology and understand how Copilot truly enhances the Employee Experience?

During this session, we will use the common experience of onboarding a new employee to guide you in understanding not only what Copilot is available in the productivity suites, but dive into Microsoft's Employee Experience platform and showcase how combining those personal productivity solutions with Copilot in Microsoft Viva con take Employee Engagement to the next level.

OFF303 - Layers of the Onion: Managing External Sharing in Office 365

Office 365 can solve a long-standing problem—how to securely share information and content with partners, customers and guests outside your organization with maximum productivity and minimum risk. But the mere mention of “guest access” and external sharing has many legal, compliance and IT teams reaching for the “off” switch and leaving it there.

Microsoft has provided an easy and intuitive way to initiate external sharing in Teams, Groups and Sites, but the management of external sharing and the risk it can introduce are not so easily understood or implemented. There are tenant level controls, AAD level controls, and application level controls that need to be orchestrated to ensure the right blend of access and control.

In this session we will review the layers of management controls—and the roles that should be managing them—to help you formalize your guest access strategy for Office 365.

Secure Collaboration in M365 within a Zero Trust Lens

Microsoft 365 quickly brings together collaborators across your agency and your partners. That built-in collaboration, however, creates new concerns around tracking who has access across your environment. Organizations must monitor how users interact with data within a Zero Trust Architecture.

When viewed individually, core pillars of Zero Trust, such as network, data, and user, are bound in M365: How is our service secured? How do we protect sensitive data? Which users do we authenticate in our system? However, this approach misses the intersection across Zero Trusts pillars in the collaboration spaces themselves.

In the past years we've talked about Governance, but by not talking about security we are leaving a large hole in the security of our data.

In this presentation, we will discuss the importance of including your Collaboration Workspaces (Teams, SharePoint Site Collections, and Groups) in your security plans and how to leverage native and 3rd party tools to best accomplish this.

ADM102 - The Fun of a Modern SharePoint Migration

Many companies are considering moving their file shares to Office 365 and the new Modern SharePoint Online, While this creates opportunities for the company to be more productive and manage their data, Modern SharePoint migrations has its unique considerations and constraints.

Come to this session to learn tips, tricks, and gotchas while migrating to Modern SharePoint Online.

BV301 - Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Groups, SharePoint, Yammer...What Should I Use, and When?

For today's fast-paced, mobile-driven, and globally dispersed workplace, Microsoft offers tons of great ways to effectively communicate and collaborate. But which tools are right for your organisation?

Solutions like Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Groups, Yammer, Skype for Business, SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, PowerApps, and Microsoft Flow all offer something unique to your business.

In this interactive session, you will gain practical guidance on finding the right tools to facilitate efficient communications and collaboration both inside and outside the walls of your organisation.

You'll also learn how to drive adoption and keep your chosen solution under control. Learn from Arriva Sweden and get ready to walk away with the ability to chart a productive and pragmatic collaboration approach that delivers immediate and lasting value to your modern workplace.

CM202 - Information Management or Records - What do I need to know to be ready for NARA!

NARA's guidance on Records has begun to push away from a focus on "permanent" records towards the importance of full information lifecycle. During this topic we'll review the latest guidance from NARA and discuss important topics for modernizing your paper records processes using office 365 to support full information lifecycle management! Plus, how much do I get nativly with Office 365, and HOW do I get my users to care?

How to Protect your Highly Regulated Teams Data like a Federal Defense Contractor

Microsoft Teams is an open collaboration platform. Requestors create sites, bring in collaborators, control permissions, determine guest access, and manage lifecycle.

It's a business user's dream, but how can you make sure one person's dream doesn't become a cybersecurity nightmare?

In regulated industries, it is important to provide specific protections while enabling your end-users to meet their mission requirements.

In this session we will discuss some of the common requirements for data protection in a collaborative platform, some of the common workarounds we've seen for resolving these issues, and how AvePoint's Cloud Governance helped one Federal defense contractor enable their end-users through a self-service catalog with automated process and policy enforcement.

How Viva Insights and Workplace Analytics Enable you to Measure Business Productivity

Viva Insights and Workplace Analytics often get a wrap as a "big brother" tool, but that's not their purpose.

In this session, Microsoft's lead Customer Engineer for the Workplace Analytics platform and AvePoint's productivity and M365 strategic lead for Public Sector will show end-users how these tools surface in Microsoft Teams to enable a culture of self-improvement and productivity through an understanding of personal and company analytics.

We will show you how to measure the impact on business outcomes throughout a continuous cycle of discovery and change and how to customize these tools to ensure the data shown fits your specific needs.

OFF202 - Develop Your Office 365 Information Governance Strategy in 4 Steps

So you’ve made the decision to move to Office 365 – now how do you ensure your critical business information is secure in the cloud?

In this interactive session, you will learn how to reduce risk and ensure your users do the right thing by employing industry best practices for information governance, risk, and compliance. We’ll also explain how recent enhancements from Microsoft – including Advance Data Governance and Azure Information Protection – as well as other related technologies can help.

This session will empower you to implement proven tactics to ensure your Microsoft Cloud investment meets business needs while protecting your most sensitive data.

The Modern Workplace Architecture is Flat!

For years science has argued that your Information Architecture should follow your organizational structure and intranets have been built accordingly. However, Flat Architecturers Joy & Jay are here to break the conspiracies and show Flat Architecture is not only possible, but it works! Come join this INTERACTIVE session where they will indoctrinate you in the methods of building a flat architecture for your modern workplace.

For real though, here's what you'll learn:
• Using M365 as an example: Why is a Flat Architecture the best practice?
• How do you go from Nested to Flat?
• How is this best for business users? Admins? Security? Knowledge Management?

TMS201 - Information Management and Microsoft Teams - What you need to know!

As the fastest growing business application in Microsoft’s history, more and more data is being generated in and through use of Microsoft Teams.

As a result of its extensibility, there are a lot of places this data can be created and stored, from chats to files saved in a Teams channel.

How can you ensure you’re adequately capturing the information your organization needs to be compliant with internal and external policies?

Join AvePoint’s information management expert Jay Leask as he shows you:
• The importance of an overall Office 365 information management strategy and how it will improve search and audit capabilities
• Capabilities and limitations for retaining Teams Chats
• Integration between Teams and SharePoint Online to give you full management over documents within Teams
• How to provision Microsoft Teams to automatically tag documents with appropriate metadata needed to meet records mandates

TMS101 - Beginner to Super User: These are a Few of My Favorite #MicrosoftTeams Things!

Did you know you can filter your activity feed by “@mentions?” Or that you can type “/” into the search box for shortcuts and commands to appear? Have you seen the latest FILTER capabilities? Do you use tabs? And bots? And auto-translation? OH MY!

We're going to start with an overview of Microsoft Teams and some of its most basic benefits (like discussions, and easy file sharing, and co-authoring). We'll hit an overview of the architecture (where is my content stored, again?). Then we'll finally hit up some of the things I get most jazzed about!

If you are new to Teams or looking to sharpen your collaboration skills this session will give you the latest skills to boost your productivity.

WRK501 - Microsoft Viva (part 1): Employee Experience from Top to Bottom

During this workshop, Craig and Jay will cover the 4 (soon to be 5) pillars of Microsoft Viva, uncovering the mystery of what Employee Experience is and how it ties into Microsoft 365. More importantly, you will come out of this workshop understanding not just What Is Viva, but Why Is Viva! (thank you, Drax the Destroyer).

This session will start with an overview of the Employee Experience industry and why Microsft is poised to be a large part of it. Then we will dig into each of the pillars, showcasing the why and the how of Viva Topics, Connections, Insights, and Learning. And if possible, we'll dig into even newer announcements such as Ally.io (the soon-to-be fifth pillar of Viva) and any other announcements that have come out!

WRK105 - Accelerate Office 365 Success: How to Best Plan, Manage and Control Migration Projects

Organizations today are maximizing the cloud as a business enablement platform and many are in the process of migrating to Office 365.

To deliver successful Office 365 migration projects, having an effective business strategy, migration framework, and project management approach is paramount. Executive support, proper planning, realistic project team and appropriately managing expectations are crucial to ensure Office 365 migration success.

Join this interactive session and learn how to best plan, manage and control Office 365 migration projects.

Intro to Viva Insights and Workplace Analytics

Learn how Viva Insights can help you create a culture where people and business thrive through the power of MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics. Viva Insights can use your most powerful dataset using insights from everyday work in Microsoft 365 to help you discover opportunities to optimize business processes and identify patterns that lead to success. This session will show you how you can measure the impact on business outcomes throughout a continuous cycle of discovery and change.

Modern Architecture in Microsoft 365

What does "Architecture" mean anymore? SharePoint architecture? Information Architecture? Is Teams part of the architecture?

We keep using this word, but does it mean what we think it means?
Join the conversation with our M365 Virtual Community Architecture panel to talk through modern architecture best practices and gain insight on how to apply these practices in your M365 environment to get the most out of modern features and functionality.

M365 Government Community Call #TeamsNation

The M365 Government Community Call team brings the roundtable format to Teams Nation 2021 with a discussion about Adoption of Teams and the M365 Platform specific to U.S. Government.

During this session, we will discuss successful adoption techniques based on real-world examples specific to available technology in the US National Tenants (GCC, GCC-H, and DOD). We will also discuss the latest news and trends in these tenants and, maybe, have time for Community Questions, News, and Events.

COME JOIN US!

Craig Janhke (Special Guest) - Customer Engineer, Public Sector, Microsoft
Jay Leask (M365GCC Panelist) - Principal Solution Engineer, AvePoint Public Sector
Jeremy Wood (M365GCC Panelist) - Director of Programs, Millenium Challenge Corporation
Rima Reyes (M365GCC Panelist) - Teams Engineering Government, Microsoft
Sarah Gilbert (M365GCC Panelist) - Public Sector Community Lead, Microsoft

Demystifying Microsoft 365 for End Users and Business Decision Makers

Looking to demystify and make sense of Microsoft 365's many components and facets? Did you just buy Microsoft Office 365 or Windows? Or a Virtual Desktop on Azure? Looking for a sandbox to kick the tires on services? Come on over to this session as Dan and Jay help you wrap your head around the basics, from the ground up, and understand the capabilities you now have at your fingertips.

The Architecture is Flat!

For years science has argued that your Information Architecture should follow your organizational structure and intranets have been built accordingly. However, Flat Architecturers Joy & Jay are here to break the conspiracies and show Flat Architecture is not only possible, but it works! Come join this INTERACTIVE session where they will indoctrinate you in the methods of building a flat architecture for M365.

For real though, here's what you'll learn:
• Why is a Flat Architecture the best practice for M365?
• How do you go from Nested to Flat?
• How is this best for business users? Admins? Security? Knowledge Management?

Ensuring Microsoft Teams and Information Management Compliance

As the fastest growing business application in Microsoft’s history, more and more data is being generated in and through use of Microsoft Teams. As a result of its extensibility, there are a lot of places this data can be created and stored, from chats to files saved in a Teams channel. Learn from Jay & Tim how to use native and 3rd party solutions to ensure your organization is adequately capturing the information your organization needs to be compliant with internal and external policies.

Beginner to Super User: These are a Few of My Favorite #MicrosoftTeams Things!

Did you know you can filter your activity feed by “@mentions?” Or that you can type “/” into the search box for shortcuts and commands to appear? Have you seen the latest FILTER capabilities? Do you use tabs? And bots? And auto-translation? OH MY!

We're going to start with an overview of Microsoft Teams and some of its most basic benefits (like discussions, and easy file sharing, and co-authoring). We'll hit an overview of the architecture (where is my content stored, again?). Then we'll finally hit up some of the things I get most jazzed about!

If you are new to Teams or looking to sharpen your collaboration skills this webinar will give you the latest skills to boost your productivity.

Beginning Microsoft Teams Governance

Microsoft Teams has the power to change productivity in your organization, but with great power comes great responsibility! Come to this session to learn how govern your environment without inhibiting its use.

Office 365 and Microsoft Teams adoption from the real world (Government Edition)

Oak Ridge National Laboratories is mainly an Office of Science lab and as such, research and collaboration are key to the lab’s success. They had integrated Skype into their environment when it was still Lync, so naturally, end users had utilized it heavily throughout the years. It was then natural to move towards Microsoft Teams when it became available given its additional features, but many challenges stood in their way. While Skype for Business is easy to use because of its simplicity, Teams picks up the slack (no pun intended) from what Skype was missing. Learn how ORNL navigated the many challenges of transforming their team collaboration and created a new model for accomplishing their mission.

Why (and How) my SP2013 IA needs to be redesigned for the future?

For nearly 2 decades we've created a structure of SharePoint site collections and subsites that allowed us to segregate users and elevate privileges without negative repercussion on other users and content areas. However, since the release of SP2016, and in some cases SP2013, Microsoft has shifted gears towards a flatter infrastructure, with new site collections being created left-right-and-center - and admins were left in a scramble to keep things locked down.

This presentation is going to walk you through how to work with business to evaluate your current IA, suggestions on how to redesign it with a nod towards business/mission-driven design, and how to ensure your organization is ready for the next upgrade BEFORE the time comes, be it SP2016, 2019, or Office 365.

How to Ensure a Seamless Hybrid SharePoint Environment

Your agency isn't ready to go all-in with Office 365, but you know it's coming - you are NOT alone: while Office 365 use is skyrocketing, even across the government, the reality is that many agencies are are planning a hybrid SharePoint deployment, not 100% cloud.

A hybrid architecture does pose challenges for creating a seamless experience for your IT admins, users and entire organization. You must balance reporting, compliance and administration between on-premise and online components.

Join AvePoint Principal Solution Engineer Jay Leask and Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Craig Jahnke as they share best practices for hybrid deployments including:

- Addressing administration complexity
- Removing silos and connecting to legacy data
- Minimizing organizational disruption
- Comparison of SharePoint 2013, 2016, and 2019 hybrid capabilities

The Architecture is Flat! HANDS ON WORKSHOP

For years science has argued that your Information Architecture should follow your organizational structure and intranets have been built accordingly. However, Flat Architecturers Joy & Jay are here to break the conspiracies and show Flat Architecture is not only possible, but it works!
Come join this INTERACTIVE workshop where, through their indoctrination, you will build a flat architecture for M365 using their Flat Architecture Society example.
For real though, here is what you'll get hands-on learning for:
• How Teams, OneDrive, and other M365 apps work with SharePoint to create 3 dimensional information architecture
• How to go from Nested to Flat including sites, libraries, and Teams architecture
• Why Flat Architecture is the best practice for M365
• How Records and Information Management best practices have changed to support this model
• How this is best for everyone, from business users to knowledge managers and from admins to security

This one-day workshop will not only provide best practice knowledge but help you walk through the steps of creating a USABLE flat architecture.

Microsoft TechCon365 & PWRCON Seattle 2024 Sessionize Event

June 2024 Seattle, Washington, United States

Teams Nation 2024 Sessionize Event

February 2024

#shifthappens Conference 2023 Sessionize Event

October 2023 Washington, Washington, D.C., United States

Microsoft 365 EduCon & PWR EduCon Seattle 2023 Sessionize Event

August 2023 Seattle, Washington, United States

Microsoft 365 EduCon DC 2023 Sessionize Event

June 2023 Washington, Washington, D.C., United States

Teams10X - April 12 - 13, 2023 Sessionize Event

April 2023

Virtual M365 Friday Cincinnati Sessionize Event

October 2022

The North American Collaboration Summit 2022 Sessionize Event

October 2022 Branson, Missouri, United States

Microsoft 365 EduCon Chicago 2022 Sessionize Event

September 2022 Chicago, Illinois, United States

Comms vNext

Comms vNext is an independent, Community-led event, created and fashioned with the Community in mind.

August 2022 Denver, Colorado, United States

Microsoft 365 EduCon Dallas 2022 Sessionize Event

August 2022 Irving, Texas, United States

Microsoft 365 EduCon Seattle 2022 Sessionize Event

May 2022 Seattle, Washington, United States

Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon 2022 Sessionize Event

May 2022

Teams Nation 2022 Sessionize Event

March 2022

365 EduCon DC 2021 Sessionize Event

December 2021 Washington, Washington, D.C., United States

Microsoft Teams Day Online 4 Sessionize Event

November 2021

Microsoft 365 Friday Cabo San Lucas Sessionize Event

November 2021 Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

The North American Collaboration Summit 2021 Sessionize Event

August 2021 Branson, Missouri, United States

SPFest Chicago 2021 Sessionize Event

July 2021 Chicago, Illinois, United States

A Taste of M365 Chicago! Sessionize Event

June 2021

Teams Nation 2021 Sessionize Event

May 2021

Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon Sessionize Event

April 2021

Microsoft 365 Friday California 2021 Sessionize Event

January 2021

M365 Chicago Virtual Event

The M365 Chicago Virtual Conference brought to you by VEEAM is a free online, one day event on Friday, November 13 2020. We will have sessions with speakers from the area and many favorites from around the world. This event is free for all wanting to attend. Come join us as we talk about the many different pieces of Microsoft 365 including Azure.

We will be leveraging the Microsoft Teams Community Tenant and talk about how we (and you) can use it. Session recordings will be posted to our Youtube channel, after the event. Please note that some sessions may not be available if we are notified of any content restrictions by the speakers (none so far!)

The M365 Chicago Virtual Conference is a joint effort with Veeam and our other sponsors (thank you!), several Chicago M365 focused user groups, the technical team from the M365 Virtual Marathon and members of the M365 community.

Jay is a lead organizer for this event.

November 2020 Chicago, Illinois, United States

ARMA InfoCon

Microsoft Office 365 has evolved to meet more and more real-world requirements for the automated
lifecycle management of records, including better compliance and reduced storage costs. In this on-demand session, you’ll learn how organizations are implementing an ERM framework that leverages Office 365 for meeting compliance with records policies and helping control the growth of data storage costs. You’ll get an overview of a framework for improving the management of electronic records across all systems; learn how to optimize your file share cleanup and migration to the cloud and Office 365; and see how the ERM framework is being used to implement automated controls in Office 365.

October 2020

M365 Friday Cincinnati Sessionize Event

October 2020 Cincinnati, Ohio, United States

NLIT Summit 2020

1. AvePoint and ORNL Discuss Migration, Teams Deployment, and Office 365 Security - Jay Leask, AvePoint Public Sector | Tina Snyder, ORNL
2. Key Considerations When Adopting a Cloud First Mentality - Jay Leask, AvePoint Public Sector | Berta London, SNL | Bryan Lopez, Microsoft | Katie Knobbs, PNNL | Tina Snyder, ORNL

October 2020

M365 Saturday Gurgaon 2020 Sessionize Event

September 2020

#ShiftHappens Conference

So you’ve made the leap to Office 365 – now you need to ensure you’re striking the right balance between collaboration and control while setting your agency up for sustained long-term adoption of Office 365 and Microsoft Teams. The City of Seattle made it easy for their end users to do the right thing by implementing a multi-level training and awareness campaign. Combine that with the right Information Governance strategy and you have the recipe for cloud success.

June 2020

Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon Sessionize Event

May 2020

Modern Teamwork & Collaboration Conference Sessionize Event

October 2019 Washington, Washington, D.C., United States

Jay Leask

Modern Work Architect

Washington, Washington, D.C., United States

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