Innovative Microsoft Implementation for Communities Wins Silver Stevie Award

Sandy Rivas, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, was in New York City last week to receive a Silver Stevie® Award for Women in Business in the Best New Product of the Year category. 

The award was given in recognition of an innovation that Sandy and her team implemented across Microsoft’s Business Applications Communities, called Intelligent Content Syndication™ (ICS). Developed by iTalent Digital, ICS is a powerful tool for ensuring that Power Platform Community members can easily access relevant content from across Microsoft’s product ecosystem of web properties, without having to leave the community.

This supports Microsoft Corporate Vice President, James Phillips’ “Better Together” vision for the Power Platform and Dynamics 365 products by surfacing information where the user chooses to be, no matter where it originated. ICS also allows community members to interact bi-directionally in real time with users and subject matter experts in other communities, without either party having to leave their “home” platform.

You may have noticed content from the Microsoft Business Applications Summit last June posted inside the various Power Platform communities:

This content was all hosted on the MBAS website, but thanks to ICS, it was “syndicated” or published to all of the communities represented at the Summit within hours of the event. The innovative bi-directional nature of ICS has allowed users across the different communities to engage with each other around the same pieces of content.

For example, if someone commented on an MBAS video or thread in the Power BI Community, users from the Power Automate, Power Apps or Dynamics communities could all see that comment and add their replies to the same thread, without leaving their home property. This has truly taken engagement around content to new heights!

We were pleased to see the value that members derived from this new functionality, as measured in the level of engagement around the content. Within the first 30 days, the syndicated content drove 30% of all the traffic across the target properties, with some communities seeing as much as an 80% increase in page views. We also saw an average 43% increase in visits. Significantly, the boost was sustained, with ongoing user activity lifted by 10% across all properties.

What’s more, over 70% of the viewed content referenced Microsoft products to which the user was not currently subscribed, which means that community members were able to access information that helped them better understand how Microsoft’s ecosystem of products work together and complement each other. It has also enabled super-users in the different communities to gain exposure to users of other communities and assist them with their questions, all without having to leave their “home” property.

ICS is a recent example of our commitment to delivering a valuable and satisfying experience around our products for the benefit of our customers. Being recognized with a Stevie® Award has been a great confirmation for us, but even more gratifying has been the positive response from all of you and seeing the value you have derived from it.