Smarter Retention in Microsoft 365: A Step Toward Cleaner, More Relevant Data - Coming soon

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Anyone who has worked with SharePoint management knows that data governance is a cornerstone of digital productivity, especially in large organizations where information can accumulate rapidly. Today, retention policies in Microsoft 365 allow administrators to manage data based on creation or modification dates. However, in my experience, this approach is not always sufficient. Files that haven’t been accessed in years may still linger in OneDrive or SharePoint, cluttering storage, slowing down search, and diluting the relevance of AI-powered tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot. A new feature in Microsoft Purview Retention Policies, expected this winter, promises to enhance Data Lifecycle Management. This upcoming setting will enable policies to identify files that have remained untouched for a specified period and automatically flag them for deletion or archival. This enhancement is particularly valuable for organizations leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot. By removing outdated or irreleva...

People Skills: Empowering Organizations with AI-Driven Skill Insights

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Microsoft 365 Introduces People Skills:

In large organizations (or when you're new to one) finding the right people with the right skills can often feel like searching for a needle in a haystack, and certainly time-consuming for you and everyone you ask. Talent may be all around, but visibility into the who what, and how well, is often limited. In an attempt to overcome this challenge, Microsoft is introducing two new service plans:
  • People Skills - Foundation, as part of the M365 license
  • People Skills - Advanced, as part of Microsoft 365 Copilot and Viva licenses. 
While the Foundation tier provides essential tools for managing and showcasing skills either by user updating their own profile or through organizational imports, the Advanced tier leverages AI to deliver deeper insights, such as identifying skill gaps, recommending development opportunities, and enhancing collaboration through intelligent skill matching.

Things to know for users and admins:

Once the feature is released, everyone gets the "Foundation" tier, and can then add skills to their own profile if they choose to do so. Also, users are in control of how their Skills can be added and shared on their profile. If the user have the advanced tier, they can also control how AI interacts in order to learn and populate each individual's list of skills. I think it is important for users to be informed of this.

As for admins, they can choose to control the default behavior of the advanced behaviour. The feature is called "Skills inferencing" and can be set to one of the following for users, groups or the entire tenant:
  • Admins can turn skills inferencing auto-on. Individual users can opt out.
  • Admins can turn skills inferencing auto-off. Individual users can opt in. 
  • Admins can disable skills inferencing for their tenant.
Here is a Learn article on how it works: Manage skills inferencing and visibility

The announcement from Microsoft has a lot of more in-depth information, and is a suggested read.

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