Microsoft Ignite 2022 | All the details and releases

As has become tradition, Microsoft returns in the fall with new tools, initiatives, and services in its latest edition of Microsoft Ignite 2022.

This year comes loaded with surprises, and one of the biggest is its format – take note because we have all the details!

* We will update this publication with the latest news as they are released daily.

What is Microsoft Ignite?

Microsoft Ignite is the technology giant’s largest annual event for technology professionals and developers worldwide. Each year it brings together an average of 25,000 attendees, although, in the new online format of recent editions, participation has risen to over 250,000 visitors. It is the moment when new tools, initiatives, and services are announced to continue advancing in the digital transformation we are immersed in.

Microsoft Ignite is a meeting for professionals who want to face and prepare for current and future challenges, anticipate their customer’s needs and improve their lives through technology.

When and where Microsoft Ignite is held

Microsoft Ignite 2022 will take place October 12-14. The 3-day meeting will be in a hybrid format, and it recovers the essence of its face-to-face meeting in Seattle but allows those who cannot travel to see it live from anywhere in the world.

After two years in an online format, one of the most significant events of the technological giant returns to its essence, without forgetting the success of broadcasting it also in streaming.

The event will be divided into four main sections:

• Plenary presentations: The most prominent names in the company will reveal the latest innovations that will shape the future of the business.
• Core thematic sessions: here, you will be able to explore in-depth the technologies and topics that will be presented in the plenary sessions.
• Products in detail: this will be the perfect opportunity to learn from Microsoft experts through demos and guides to the next evolution of products.
• Expanding networks: there will also be an opportunity to network and connect with community leaders and featured partners through live sessions, interactive chats, and more.
• Cloud Skills Challenge: complete interactive online learning modules for a chance to earn a free certification exam.
• One-on-one consultations: a unique opportunity to connect with an expert during the event and find the technical answers you need.

Once again this year, the event will once again feature figures such as Satya Nadella (CEO de Microsoft), Scott Guthrie (EVP, Cloud and AI Group), Alysa Taylor (CVP, INdustry and Data Marketing) or Vasu Jakkal (CVP, Microsoft Security, Compliance & Identity), among many others.

How to watch Microsoft Ignite 2022?

As mentioned above, there will be two options to attend the event:

• In-person: Microsoft Ignite 2022 will be held in Seattle at the Seattle Convention Center, so there are a limited number of tickets to attend in person. The price is $1,895.
• Online: like the last two years, anyone in the industry interested in the event can do so by filling out the registration form. This is the free option.

Microsoft Ignite Spotlights

It is one of the novelties of the event and that we could see similarly in the last edition of Microsoft Build.

It is exclusive content aimed at specific markets to connect opportunities. In this case, the chosen regions are China, France, Germany, Latin America, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

It is a unique experience to get connection opportunities that help businesses get insights from local leaders, expert partners, and the community. In addition, it is available in both digital and face-to-face versions.

Microsoft Ignite 2022 Recap

* Remember that, as the sessions take place, we will update this post with all the information presented.

To begin with, we leave you with Satya Nadella’s Keynote, which lists the most important releases:

Azure Cognitive Services

Numerous updates to this service have been announced, such as Azure OpenAI, which will offer access to Dall-E 2, a model that allows users to generate personalized images using text or images.

For its part, Azure Cognitive Service for Language enhances its capabilities, such as abstract summarization of documents and generic conversations, improved linguistic coverage, general access to Language Studio, etc.

Computer Vision adds Image Analysis 4.0, designed to extract a wide variety of visual features from images, and Spatial Analysis on the Edge, which is focused on improving security through video ingest and information extraction.

Mesh Avatars for Microsoft Teams

Mesh avatars are now available for Teams meetings in private preview. Users will now have more flexibility and will be able to choose a personalized, animated version of themselves without activating the camera.

The app can be purchased from Microsoft’s App Store, where up to three unique avatars can be designed using hundreds of customization options. Once created, they can be used by selecting from the “Effects and avatars” menu before entering a meeting and during a meeting, and during the meeting, they can choose from a wide range of gestures to react to what is being discussed.

Teams Premium

Continuing with one of the company’s crown jewels, it is launching this more exclusive service that will make all meetings more personalized, intelligent, and secure.

This new feature includes meeting guides, which will help users choose the right experience and will be easily customized. In addition, it will also be possible to use customized logos and backgrounds for the Teams lobby and customized scenes for the “Together” mode.

On the other hand, Teams will be smarter thanks to the introduction of intelligent recapping, AI-generated tasks that are automatically assigned from meetings, intelligent playback, personalized feedback in meeting recordings, intelligent search, live translations of subtitles, etc.

Viva Goals

With the goal of helping organizations align employee work with business results, Viva Goals was born. It now includes new third-party integrations, which bring goals and OKRs into the workflow.

Slack and Google Sheets are integrated, allowing you to directly receive notifications, reminders, and OKR check-ins from these apps.

Microsoft Places

This is a new application to optimize spaces for hybrid work. It uses AI to connect virtual and physical spaces to drive increased connections, engagement, and productivity while providing the holistic picture of hybrid work that we miss.

It will be in preview soon and will include: a dashboard view of the days workers will be in the office, their physical location, a view of the workspaces others have booked, commute information and guidance, space usage information and guidance, etc.

Microsoft Loop

We’ve talked about Microsoft Loop before, but now its private preview app will help teams think, plan and create together.

The app is available to work on projects collaboratively thanks to workspaces, pages, and components that sync across Microsoft 365. Private preview work will be done to incorporate customer feedback as the application continues to be developed.

In addition, new components will be added, such as the ability to insert a survey, checklist, or task list component into a Word document; copy an existing Loop component and paste it into Teams Whiteboard; Q&A to collect answers to questions in real-time; Polls components to create surveys and questionnaires; among others.

Power Pages

Announced during this year’s Microsoft Build, it is now generally available and with updates including:

• Design Studio helps builders design multi-step forms seamlessly and without code.
• Templates Hub, which offers 16 new template options.
• Learn Hub, which includes a tutorial section to guide users.
• Security and governance updates.

Power Automate

The Power Automate task automation tool introduces a new way to accelerate this automation using natural language and AI. Both will allow users to describe what they want to automate, and the flow will be built in seconds without searches or errors.

Once one of the suggested flows is selected, the appropriate connectors will be configured, and then it can be finalized within the flow designer.

Power Apps

Power Apps updates have been included to encourage collaboration, merger development, and micro-applications.

• Co-authoring has been implemented in the application designer, allowing developers to edit simultaneously in real-time according to feedback.
• Integrated virtual agent: will display external resources to assist users in the application development process and promote further knowledge creation.
• Cards: a new way to create and send micro-applications to share, collect, connect data, and make critical business decisions.

Power Platform Managed Environments

It is a collection of features that enable IT, administrators to manage Power Platform environments and govern low-code solutions at scale with greater control, more visibility, and less effort. Highlights include:

• Weekly Digest: gives proactive notifications with information about the most and least used applications to be able to clean up unused resources.
• It will be easier to activate managed environments for the platform in the platform administration center with a few clicks.
• It will be possible to limit sharing to curb the proliferation of applications and reduce their overuse by limiting who can and cannot use them.

Power BI

The platform includes new updates that will allow organizations to scale self-service analytics, further eliminating friction for deployment, creation and sharing.

In addition, an automatic Office installer is included; you will also be able to view and edit reports directly from OneDrive and SharePoint, a business-to-business (B2B) discovery feature has been added, extensive data set reporting support, Power BI reports and datasets in a Power App solution, and a Power BI solution that allows you to view and edit reports directly from OneDrive and SharePoint…

Security

In the security block, we saw new protections for comprehensive security in Microsoft Defender for Cloud. It will help organizations strengthen their cloud security posture, extend threat protection across workloads and integrate DevOps security in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

There is also good news for Microsoft 365 Defender, which now automatically disrupts ransomware attacks, such as endpoints or user identities.

Finally, there was talk of the Advanced Management Suite, which will be launched in March 2023 and is postulated as a new, cost-effective premium endpoint management plan.

Microsoft Project Bonsai

For those who don’t know, Project Bonsai is a low-code industrial AI development platform that helps improve product quality and efficiency.

New functionalities have been included, such as support for masking action, which speeds up system training; training from data with OffilineRL; evaluation 2.0, which gives full analytical tools to evaluate automation performance, etc.

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge Workspaces, a shared set of browser tabs allowing groups to view the same websites and the latest work files in one place, has been released.

As the team works together, tabs are updated in real-time so that everyone is on the same page.

Microsoft Ignite 2022 Agenda

This edition will focus, in particular, on five main themes:

• Get data-driven and data-optimized with Azure.
• Deliver efficiency with automation and AI.
• Re-engage workers with Microsoft 365.
• Innovate with a developer platform in the cloud.
• Protect everything, everyone, everywhere.

October 12th

• 5:45 PM – 6:00 PM (CEST Hour): Welcome to Microsoft Build, Day 1: Meet your daily hosts who will help you prepare for the day ahead.
• 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM: Keynotes and sessions on the Keynote: Learn from Microsoft leaders how to do more with less with Microsoft Cloud. Learn more about the Microsoft Ignite Spotlights.
• 9:00 AM – 12:30 AM: Breakout Sessions: Seek out and participate in sessions that best fit your position and interests.
• 9:00 AM -12:30 AM: Network and learn: Network and engage with your global community in live interactive sessions.
• 9:15 PM – 9:45 PM: Microsoft Ignite Into Focus: Industry.
• 10:15-10:55: Microsoft Ignite Into Focus: Protect everything, everyone, everywhere.
• 11:15-11:55: Microsoft Ignite Into Focus: Business applications.

October 13th

• 3:00 AM – 6:00 AM: Rebroadcast of Keynote Speeches and Focus Sessions.
• 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM: Rebroadcast of Keynote Speeches and Focus Sessions.
• 5:45 PM – 6:00 PM: Welcome to Microsoft Build, Day 2: Meet your daily hosts who will help you prepare for the day ahead.
• 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM: Programmatic Keynote Day 2: Advance your discovery journey on how to do more with less with the Microsoft Cloud.
• 6:30 PM – 12:00 AM: Breakout sessions: Find and participate in sessions that best match your position and interests.
• 6:30 PM – 12:00 AM: Network and learn.
• 7:30 PM – 8:00 PM: Microsoft Ignite Into Focus: Get data-driven and optimize with Azure
• 8:30 PM – 9:00 PM: Microsoft Ignite Into Focus: Generates efficiency through automation and AI
• 9:30 PM – 10:00 PM: Microsoft Ignite Into Focus: Empowering staff to work in new ways.
• 10:30 PM – 11:00 PM: Microsoft Ignite Into Focus: Innovate with a cloud developer platform.

October 14th

• 3:00 AM – 4:00 AM: Rebroadcast of the programmatic speech of day 2.
• 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM: Rebroadcast of the programmatic speech of day 2.