January 2023

Jan 31, 2023   |   Danielle Veluz

Location-based routing enables Microsoft India move to Microsoft Teams

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with new details and updated terminology. Location-based routing helped Microsoft overcome the challenge of finally moving its employees in India from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams. Made more challenging by the outbreak of COVID-19 and by India’s strict telecom regulations, the now-complete shift was the last large...

Jan 30, 2023   |   Jason Kellington

Doing more with less internally at Microsoft with Microsoft Azure

How do we at Microsoft get the best value from our Microsoft Azure environment? We’ve been refining and optimizing the way we use the cloud for years, and as such, our answer isn’t just about how much we’ve been able to push down our monthly Azure bill. Our migration from managing our own datacenters to...

Jan 26, 2023   |   Jason Kellington

Fueling Microsoft’s knowledge sharing culture with Microsoft Viva Topics

At Microsoft, we’re evolving our culture of learning. Part of that evolution is ensuring that our employees always have access to the information they need. We’re using Microsoft Viva Topics to consolidate and govern the vast breadth of collaborative knowledge sources across Microsoft, giving our employees access to the knowledge and expertise from their peers...

Jan 25, 2023   |   Josh Krenz

Building an anti-ransomware program at Microsoft focused on an Optimal Ransomware Resiliency State

Microsoft strives to deliver the productivity tools and services the world depends on. With this comes the responsibility of ensuring protection, continuity, and resilience from cyberattacks of all sorts—including emerging threats. Highlighted in the third edition of the Microsoft Digital Defense Report, ransomware and extortion are considered nation-level threats due to the sophistication and boldness...

Jan 25, 2023   |   Lukas Velush

Brain-friendly employee feedback turning the tide at Microsoft

[Editor’s note: This content was written to highlight a particular event or moment in time. Although that moment has passed, we’re republishing it here so you can see what our thinking and experience was like at the time.] As much as we might say we’re open to feedback from our peers, human nature can make...

Jan 25, 2023   |   Lukas Velush

Microsoft moves its Human Resources employee portal to SharePoint Online

[Editor’s note: This content was written to highlight a particular event or moment in time. Although that moment has passed, we’re republishing it here so you can see what our thinking and experience was like at the time.] Microsoft has migrated its internal Human Resources portal to the cloud, a key step in its ongoing...

Jan 20, 2023   |   Alex Fleck

Enhancing Microsoft’s security posture with Microsoft Azure Firewall Manager

Imagine an enterprise company with dozens or hundreds of firewalls, each with its own set of policies for keeping corporate networks secure. That was the situation here at Microsoft until our IT teams started using Microsoft Azure Firewall Manager. This platform helped streamline and centralize their control over our large firewall ecosystems. It also cleared...

Jan 18, 2023   |   Dodd Willingham

Getting to ‘search completeness’ internally at Microsoft

Microsoft is a big company with thousands of teams working in different ways based on the work they do. Despite that complexity, when our employees go looking for something, they expect an internal search portal that will find exactly what they’re looking for instantly—just like when they search on the internet. Yet when talking to...

Jan 12, 2023   |   Inside Track staff

Instrumenting ServiceNow with Microsoft Azure Monitor

At Microsoft we have integrated our ServiceNow environment with Microsoft Azure Monitor to create a comprehensive, end-to-end monitoring solution that helps us to ensure performance, reliability, and service excellence across our ServiceNow environment. Combining ServiceNow with Azure Monitor helps us monitor the availability, performance, and usage of the ServiceNow platform and provide actionable insights to...

Jan 11, 2023   |   Inside Track staff

Shining a light on how Microsoft manages Shadow IT

Shadow IT is the set of applications, services, and infrastructure that are developed and managed outside of defined company standards. These line-of-business-built solutions (aka Shadow IT) have always existed at Microsoft and are a common industry problem. Over the years, corporate function teams—including business development, legal, finance, human resources, marketing and sales, support, and consulting—have...

Jan 11, 2023   |   Inside Track staff

Advancing your meetings with the Microsoft Teams Meeting Guide

At Microsoft, we’re transforming the meeting experience to encourage collaboration and increase productivity. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the shift to predominantly remote meetings inspired our Microsoft Digital Employee Experience (MDEE) team to examine what makes an effective meeting in which everyone feels included. We then used this research to develop the Microsoft...