October 2023

Oct 17, 2023   |   Inside Track staff

Transforming how Microsoft manages its corporate real estate data

Microsoft manages hundreds of buildings around the world with various purposes—warehouses, offices, labs, cafes, and so on. Like all companies with large real estate footprints, the company wanted to find better ways of managing each building type. To do that, a team in Microsoft Digital set out to transform the way it categorizes its real...

Oct 16, 2023   |   Aleenah Ansari

Transforming Microsoft buildings with IoT technology and indoor mapping

Editor’s note: We’ve republished this blog with a new companion video. Sphoorti Patil is using Microsoft Azure indoor mapping and IoT technology that helps Microsoft employees find their way around the company’s campuses—and she hasn’t been in a Microsoft building yet. She’s not alone in this experience—Microsoft has hired a number of new employees since...

Oct 16, 2023   |   Alex Fleck

Transforming how contract creation works at Microsoft with automation

At Microsoft, we do business with an immense number of vendors and suppliers, and many of the services they provide require a statement of work (SOW) contract. Creating, approving, and managing those contracts is an immense task. We developed an automated contract creation tool to simplify this process for our internal users and to streamline...

Oct 13, 2023   |   Lukas Velush

How modernization is helping Microsoft along its internal device management journey

For a transcript, please view the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eteAvm72Ro, select the “More actions” button (three dots icon) below the video, and then select “Show transcript.” Modernization is helping Microsoft move forward on its internal device management journey. If you’re in IT, you know device management is a challenge all companies face. It’s especially difficult...

Oct 13, 2023   |   Nathalie D’Hers

How Microsoft is reimagining meetings for hybrid work

One of the most challenging aspects of leading the Employee Experience team at Microsoft is the deployment, maintenance, and support of thousands of conference rooms around the globe. Since employees often encounter different conference room technology—even within the same building—it can lead to frustration, delay, and even support calls. As a result, employees have consistently...

Oct 12, 2023   |   Anish Paranjpe

Building a secure and efficient self-service application using Azure ACI, Azure Compute Gallery, and the Microsoft Azure SDK

Editor’s note: This is the second in an ongoing series on moving our network to the cloud internally at Microsoft.  At Microsoft, the Microsoft Digital Employee Experience (MDEE) team—our company IT organization—is using the Azure SDK, Azure Container Instances, and the Azure Compute Gallery to create a platform for deploying our virtual labs into secure,...

Oct 11, 2023   |   Inside Track staff

Transforming how Microsoft connects with its 58,000 suppliers

Anyone procuring goods or services for Microsoft needs to do their homework. Not only must you make sure the supplier can provide what you need at a reasonable price, you must also make sure they meet certain standards and security compliance and obtain their contact information. Tracking down all that information is where supplier information...

Oct 6, 2023   |   Angela Gamba

Helping Microsoft employees understand their value with the Total Rewards Portal

Our total rewards communications are an essential aspect of empowering employees to understand the value of Microsoft compensation and, for employees in the United States, their benefits, while reminding them of the investment that the company is making in them. When done correctly, this empowerment leads to improved engagement and retention and increased quality of...

Oct 5, 2023   |   Josh Krenz

Internal search bookmarks boost productivity at Microsoft

Editor’s note: We’ve republished this blog with a new companion video. Search is part of our everyday life. It’s useful—we all know that—but how can you quantify that impact? That was the challenge faced by Dodd Willingham, principal program manager and internal search administrator in Microsoft Digital. “There’s an obvious value, we can see that...

Oct 2, 2023   |   Inside Track staff

Employees are at the heart of Microsoft’s internal Windows 11 upgrade

For a transcript, please view the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40B99JJpaUo, select the “More actions” button (three dots icon) below the video, and then select “Show transcript.” Wangui McKelvey and Nathalie D’Hers speak about Microsoft’s internal Windows 11 upgrade. McKelvey is the general manager of Microsoft 365 and D’Hers is Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Microsoft...