039 Defensible Discovery and Content AI with Chirag Patel

In this episode, Jacqueline Stockwell interviews Chirag Patel, a London-based independent consultant and Microsoft MVP, who specializes in helping organisations leverage Microsoft 365, particularly through Purview and generative AI. With over 25 years of experience in technology, Chirag discusses the importance of bridging the gap between complex technology and real-world productivity. He emphasizes the need for organizations to adopt AI with a secure and compliant foundation, ensuring that they can effectively utilize the tools at their disposal.Chirag talks about the challenges organizations face with information management, particularly within Microsoft 365. He highlights the common pitfalls of poor metadata management and the necessity for organizations to understand their data's lifecycle. The conversation also touches on the significance of SharePoint Premium in transforming unstructured data into structured assets, enhancing compliance, and ultimately driving productivity. Chirag provides actionable insights for information managers, stressing the importance of a solid metadata strategy and the need for organizations to quantify the costs associated with inefficiencies to build a compelling business case for adopting advanced features.KeywordsMicrosoft 365, AI adoption, information management, SharePoint Premium, metadata strategy, compliance, productivity, generative AI, technology consulting, business caseTakeaways"You have to think about how not to be too reactive.""If you don't provide enough context, it becomes a dumping ground for files.""AI readiness is not just about having the tools, but also about protecting your files.""Automation is key with SharePoint Premium.""You need to quantify how much pain is costing you to get budget approval."Sound bites"Microsoft 365 is getting bigger.""You have to think about how not to be too reactive.""SharePoint Premium changes the ROI of information."Chapters00:00 Introduction to Chirag Patel and His Expertise01:11 Becoming a Microsoft MVP and Community Engagement02:35 The Role of Information Managers in Business04:37 Challenges in Information Management with Microsoft 36506:28 AI Readiness vs. Compliance Readiness08:13 Understanding SharePoint Premium11:07 Transforming Unstructured Data into Structured Assets12:41 The Importance of Metadata15:11 Real-World Applications of SharePoint Premium17:14 Actionable Takeaways for Information Managers19:17 Building a Business Case for Technology Investments21:49 Ensuring Compliance with Guest Access in Teams24:34 Learning and Mastering Microsoft 365Need some training or help with your information management? Visit https://leadershipthroughdata.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to the data. I'm just the leadership through data. I'm in multiple information leadership. Hello, and welcome to the show. I'm joining to the shramic potello. Now he is a London-based independent consultant and Microsoft MVP. He's also a trainer for leadership through data. Now sure Ramack has spent 25 years at the forefront of technology from database development to cloud architecture. Through his business, potato consultants consulting. I've using purview and generative he is a hands-on problem solver who balances high-level solution architecture with deep technical training to ensure teams can actually use the tools that they deploy. He's on a mission to ensure that organizations adopt AI. They do so with a foundation that is secure, compliant, and built to scale. So Shrag, tell me how you got into tell me how you became a Microsoft MVP.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yeah, sure. Well, look, first of all, thanks for having me. Great to be here. And uh Microsoft MVP, a program which has been going on for many, many years. Uh I've been part of it for now, what, six years? And time's kind of really flown by. But you know, it's uh it's it's a great program to be in, to be able to, you know, help out Microsoft uh in their products developments. Uh and obviously the main part uh is about the community. So I speak at various community events uh in and around UK, various parts of the of the world as well. So Microsoft 365 uh and Teams is my categories uh within MVP program that I uh kind of dive into those uh technologies.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

It's your bag, baby, as they say. That's your bag.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Yes, I mean there's a lot more. Microsoft 365 is getting bigger, so yeah, I mean the bag is getting bigger.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Much bigger, much bigger. So you focus on secure and compliant collaboration, and I want to talk about Microsoft and information management. So, how does an information manager move from being a cost center to an information, and I call them entrepreneurs, but they're normally called entrepreneurs who can create value for the business?

SPEAKER_00 2:45

It yeah, I mean, great question. I mean, I think uh sometimes there's tendency, isn't there, to just be more technical oriented and focused um as opposed to uh almost thinking outside of the box from a from a business perspective. I think uh uh the answer to that particular question, I think it's there's a lot of answers to it. I think sometimes you've got to think about how not to be too reactive about the you know this the situations that you're in, but try and sort of dig out the insights from the you know from the compliance perspective to to try and sort of somehow map to your business scenarios. So you know whether that's you know the revenues or or you know whether you're kind of satisfying all the customer service calls, insights, whatever it is, right? Try and map across those uh those areas so you can try and at least be mindful from a business point of view.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Yeah, brilliant. And it's not saying Microsoft 365 is the answer to everything here, install it, is it? So you've got to kind of think about all the other security and compliance that comes with it. Um, and I also do think it's um around information leaders selling themselves and also having the power and the confidence to actually simulate this is the value for the business, this is the ROI, and talking in simple language so it can connect to their um emotional core using storytelling rather than the big technical jargon that you understand that sometimes I get, but sometimes I need it to be explained. And it's it's just how you can move those things within the organization.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Right, and I think part of that is also to form sort of key relationships with the businesses, you know, what is it that they're doing? You know, what is it that's kind of working for them? You know, what are the pain points that you can try and turn into productive uh in our productivity uh areas? So all those things helps to build you in your your insights for it. So yeah, absolutely, those things really help.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Amazing. And you've got 25 years in the field. So, what is the biggest information issue that you've seen organizations accumulate today that they haven't been aware of in the Microsoft 365 space?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

It is a long time, isn't it? I mean, I think 25 years and kind of talking about it in a bit, especially with SharePoint, right? So I've been working since what 2002 now. Um, and in fact, this year is uh is SharePoint's 25th birthday, right? So that's happening out uh M365 conference in Orlando, so which is the conference I'm I'm gonna be speaking at as well. So looking forward to the celebrations. Uh but yeah, I mean that's obviously the slide we digress. But I think the biggest problem we have is uh the files exist in these environments, and sometimes we don't know who the owners are of these files, you know, what is the life of these files, uh, because by default everything is permanent in your SharePoint uh environment. So you have those issues, and then you've also got the areas of metadata, you know, information about your files. So that's not being captured sometimes, so you really are left with a problem to try and work with if it's relevant to have those files or should we delete it as a cleanup and all those things? So I think to add the context is very important about the files that you store in your environment.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Amazing, amazing. So let's talk about AI, let's talk a bit about Copilot. So, from a purview and SharePoint perspective, what happens if an organization is AI ready but not compliant ready?

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Yeah, I mean it's it's the kind of an area for a lot of organizations because I think pretty much everybody's AI ready, right? In the sense that not just from a data point of view, but if you've got all the tools that you need, whether that's chat GPT or you know, even co-pilot personal or uh the sorry, the co-pilot chat or for work, it's kind of there, you can use it. Okay, unless you haven't got the license, then you can't use the uh the work part. But I think the biggest area from compliance point of view is and it's kind of slightly going back to the previous question that if you got all the content, all the files stored in your environment, you don't know if they're gonna give you if Copilot is gonna give you all the right answers, because some of those answers could be out of date, and especially if you're not classifying or protecting you know your files, so you don't know how sensitive the content will be. So, pretty much all those things will start to surface when you try and run copilot to these things because copilot, just the same as your user-level permissions, is gonna have access to all those things. Of course, it owners the security, so if it doesn't have access, what you don't have access to, it's not gonna go and look for that. So, from that point of view, I think sensitivity of your files is very important because you don't want that to just leak out. Because if anything, copilot is now gonna race ahead and get all the content you need more than what search will give you.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Amazing, thank you. So, let's talk about SharePoint Premium. So, you've delivered some of leadership through data SharePoint Premium training courses. Can you just explain to the listeners what it is and how it works?

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah, absolutely. I mean SharePoint Premium. I think the name's kind of gone away or going away. I think it's uh it's now all about uh document processing capability, if you like. It is, as you say, you know, it is a premium uh feature, it's obviously an add-on licenses to it, and there's flexibility on that. But for me, the biggest advantage for SharePoint Premium is the fact that you're able to kind of you know assemble your files from you know various metadata pieces that you might collect, you know, whether that's your statement of works, whether that's particular contract, you're able to kind of synthesize that content through various pieces of metadata, but also looking at the other way as well, that you can actually capture the key metadata from your various files, so you can go to the other way as well to try and give more context about your files through the use of metadata, bulk, editing, and all these capabilities. And the final point on that is that you are able to add your compliance layer to so you can add sensitivity labels, you can have your retention labels part of the model that exists within SharePoint Premium, so that when you're creating all these documents, then they can also be uh incorporated with those compliance labels. So to me, that's a very uh an area that if you're working with a lot of files, it will make your life easier for sure, and obviously, you know, save the long term and the long-term costs.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

Long-term costs, yeah. So it's a bit like an umbrella then. So you're putting an umbrella, safety um protective umbrella over the top using SharePoint premium to attach to all the things that you've described.

unknown 10:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Is that correct in my analogy assumption there?

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, uh you're kind of giving that more kind of the large-scale work that you normally do. I mean, because if you if you don't do those sort of things, you might just work with your daily regular files that you do, and you could almost just capture metadata almost manually if we take the contracts, for example. So the automation is the key with the uh SharePoint premium. We can that that can do it for you without you even knowing it, because it's very much based on the model that you design, which is very simple, there's no code involved, and it's literally just you know, uh fill in the blanks for what the model you want to be able to create.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

You make it sound so easy, but it's it is it is trust me. I love that, I love that. So many organizations uh still treat SharePoint as a piling cabinet. How does SharePoint premium change the return of investment of information by turning unstructured files into structured assets?

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think uh sometimes I think it's the lack of knowledge that really gives us rise to these scenarios in which we tend to classify it as a dumping ground, isn't it, for for the files. So I think uh, you know, from from from that perspective, I mean it's kind of going back that if you if you don't provide enough context around probably just repeating partly from the previous questions, that if you don't capture those key metadatas and not give enough context, then for sure, even for your AI capabilities, you're gonna struggle with that because you want to be able to get the accurate responses and the you know the the insights you get from the co-pilot. So SharePoint premium will help you at least get there to an extent in in which you can start to capture all these things. You know, I mean I think the other part as well is that if you got like any receipts, invoices, or any kind of structured data, then those things are also included as part of that models that you define to be able to create all those automated solutions to be able to accelerate your content management.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Amazing. So let's talk a bit more about metadata. So a common mistake is thinking AI will fix poor metadata automatically. What foundational work must an organization uh an information manager do before SharePoint Premium can actually work that magic?

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Yeah, I mean the the common answer here that's recurring is of course uh metadata, isn't it? Again, yet yet again we are, right? So it's an answer to a lot of the questions, you know. Um and I say that because in this particular case, when we want to try and fix, you you gotta have some kind of a schema, right? You gotta have what we call the taxonomy, you know. That taxonomy capability in SharePoint has been there pretty much since day one, right? You know, what we call the term store, for example. So if you've got already that investment where you're looking after your term store values in which you're populating your document metadata across your SharePoint document libraries, then you're kind of almost there, except you might need to clean up if there are things in there which you're not using it anymore, right? So that's the that's the first part from your metadata. So we call that structured metadata. So everybody in the organization kind of benefits. The second part is the permissions. Historically, Microsoft have made it very easier for us to be able to kind of be able to share our files to internal or external users if that's enabled, but sometimes these are permissions that's been overshared, for example, or maybe they've just been left there for permanent access by somebody. So you want to try and tighten those things, and there are various tools to help you do that, such as the SharePoint Advanced Management, which is a kind of part of your Microsoft 365 co-pilot, so there you can run various kinds of reports to be able to fix those permissions. And then the the other one I see is this the labeling from a compliance point of view. You know, a lot of organizations they use data loss prevention, some probably are trying out maybe sensitivity labels. I know that's been matured as well, so I'm sure a lot of organizations are using it. But I see some organizations where they've not got that implemented, so you want to try and get up to that quickly as possible to be able to try and at least classify what should be available for co-pilot and shouldn't be. So that that will help you from that classification point.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Amazing, amazing. So, can you share a story for me where SharePoint Premium has saved an organization from a massive manual sort of data tagging nightmare as some of the information leaders come across?

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Yeah, it's the contracts, it's the contracts I will use. I mean, especially with the public sector organizations, you know, when you're working with huge volumes of data, um, where in actual fact some of this data is just stored in plain ordinary folders and they are you know they've got good sort of uh housekeeping, if you like, where the contracts are stored and everything else. Uh, but a lot of that is very manual. There are a lot of kind of workflows built around it to be able to try and you know kind of help meet their needs to be able to search and so forth. SharePoint premium comes along where you have particular kind of templates uh you know that you're basically using it and be able to sort of drive that to be able to extract your key data items within your contracts to be able to kind of suffice to to uh to populate all your various metadata within your SharePoint document library. So from there, what you're able to do then is obviously you can do your usual kind of sorting, filtering, and and so on for you know various types of data you have extracted from your contracts, but also it you're helping with the search experiences too. Um and in one example where I've kind of built the the search kind of uh experiences in terms of the refiners, for example, so you're able to search for then uh those contracts by various filters within the search results. So you can do all those clever things once you've got that key metadata extracted from the contract. So um, so yeah, that that that's uh that's the example of the story, I would say, but that's been most beneficial.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

Amazing, amazing. So I'm gonna now take you to looking at some practical advice and some pitfalls. So um, can you give the audience some actionable takeaways from today's session? So if you look at so if you tell me what we've discussed today and give them some practical takeaways that they can implement straight away.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think firstly, I mean, definitely read up on the document processing because there are various capabilities and there are various feature sets within that SharePoint premium brackets document processing. So definitely look at those things, you know, where you have the uh various uh auto metadata and all the other refiners that you can use to try and read up on that, but also Microsoft provides lots and lots of good videos and you know, Microsoft Mechanics, for example, one of the YouTube channel. That's probably one of the key areas uh to look for. Uh but also look through the your own environment, you know, which is you know which area of the work is costing you more time and effort, you know, something that's more repetitive, you know. Try and identify those so that you can at least look into SharePoint premium, and of course, then you know look into your further work within the within the AI side of things. Also, maybe you know, try out Copilot, you know, even if you want to try it out on one SharePoint site, for example, and be able to put your various sensitive data as a test and to see what sort of things you're getting it out, you know, try and test some of those things out before you go full scale implementing some of the the compliance efficiencies you have. So that would be my my my biggest takeaways from this, but also at the same time, follow the community, various good examples out there as well, and just search for MVP communities and you will see lots of practical examples there.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Beautiful, beautiful. And leadership through data will also do our quarterly catch-ups, um, which take all the new features into a webinar, so it's a subscription-based service. So if you didn't want to do all the lovely stuff that you could do, you can head over to the website um and carry on with those. Now, one thing you talked earlier about SharePoint Premium being a premium, so it's an add-on. What suggestions can you give listeners who want to build a business case to their leaderships that proves these tools pay for themselves? So getting a business case through the board, what would you suggest that they put in that?

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Yeah, I mean, I think it takes a lot of convincing, doesn't it, to try and get that budget right? I think um a lot of the time, I think uh you I mean I spend a lot of the time sometimes to quantify, you know, how much pain is costing you, you know, with with a lot of these things. So if we're able to justify something, again you just have to pick maybe a few business scenarios in which you know where you're kind of costing a lot of this time and efforts, and then almost try and weigh that up with what you get with some of these advanced features to almost do that kind of you know, the cost-benefit analysis, if you like, to be able to try and work out the the investment that will potentially bring you the good uh ROIs, right? Yeah, I mean it's the same with five licensing too, right? You know, I mean we haven't really talked about things like you know, some of the uh discovery elements of it, insider risk management, and you know, these various things in there that can potentially cost you a lot, you know, even from a record management point of view, you know. So those kind of things is more to understand, you know. Again, you know, how much would a cost of breach would would be to you versus your investment on that? So I think those sort of things uh you just want to list them out to call them out and at least then understand roughly what are your cost buckets. It doesn't have to be an exact cost, of course, right? You can just say it's either small, medium, or large cost elements to it, but then that will give you an idea, roughly the you know how you can get your your premium subscriptions or add-ons, and a lot of this sometimes is pay as you go, right? So, you know, that's all been documented very clearly for the features that you might use on a pay as you go basis too.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Be good. And also, I would say create stories so you use the contract story, stories that actually really are going to get to the heart of getting that business case through, what the return of investment they're gonna get from it, and then obviously presenting that in a sort of engaging and enthusiastic way that they can get the buy-in for the technology. And no, we didn't talk about e-discovery, but we just kind of run them at tumbling with all the amazing content that you've given us. One question um that I'd like to ask. So, with the rumors of teams and guest access, how do we ensure um eDiscovery and premium policies aren't leaving massive gaps in our information?

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Yeah, I mean I think the good thing about the the guests or even shared channels, for example, in in Teams, you know, I mean all those things, you're able to at least use things, you know, for e-discovery, right? When you're trying to collect your review sets. So you're able to go through those as well. So in that sense, you're closing the gap very much significantly when you're searching for for various cases you might have. But at the same time, even for the sensitivity labels, if you want to ensure the guests can't get to those some of those uh uh items, yeah, you gotta you gotta put those those guardrails in place. So and again, a lot of these, if you like, a lot of these capabilities they overlap into some of your other well-known problems you might have. So, you know, the solutions for a lot of these problems, some of these scenarios, the gaps you have, they're typically fulfilled by these compliance capabilities, which there's a whole variety of those solutions, and you know, like I say, you know, this this information protection, you've got your kind of data lifecycle management for records management, insider risk management. I think probably the key one I would say is also excuse me, is looking at the compliance manager as well. So there you're able to actually just run through what we call the assessment of your environment. So it basically looks at your M365 environment, your configurations, whatever the policies you've got, you run through the assessment, and I think there's you know, there's a few of them. Well, there's quite a lot based on the ISO standards and various other standards too. I think the the new one is the AI, uh AI assessment that covers, I think, something like three or four different standards, including the one from the EU. So you run that and it will tell you exactly you know what your environment is good in terms of the score-wise, and you can make improvements. And it could be maybe that say you haven't got uh good identity covered in there as well, you know, anything like that. So it will say, you know, those are the things you might want to uh implement, and it tells you in a clear language what that is, how you do it, gives you a link, and you kind of work through your assessment there. So there's there's a lot of things that will help you close the gap for your external users or guests uh accessing the environment.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Fantastic piece of advice there. So I think that's sensational. Last question. So if you're starting as an information entrepreneur within an organization, where would you tell them to head first to understand the Microsoft 365 stack? What app would you master?

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Yeah, learning for me it's it's the learning, right? Learning never stops. And I would say, I mean, again, if you're using various cloud technologies and so forth, it helps to just understand at a high level what are the technologies your organization's using, what are those capabilities, and then be able to try and at least understand how you can go about formulating your learning plan, right? So there are various resources on Microsoft Learn, which you can create yourself the plan, and then work through that, and there's various ready-made learning paths as well, so you can actually go through some of those uh learning courses. And I think you know, I mean, again, you got various certifications, credentials, scenario-based kind of you know, the interactive testing that goes on. So a lot of that kind of comes in that learning, learning bucket, but also speak to your peers in the in the industry, you know. If you're not visiting any conferences or any events, visit them, you know, have those questions out there come to us, or for example, leadership through data, you know, where we can sort of you know give you a bit of a landscape view around what's what's going on. But yeah, all those things are very much in in kind of in action because a lot of this technologies we work with, they're constantly evolving and updating all the time. So you know, even I'm learning every day something. So it's it's it's it's it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Amazing, amazing. And how can listeners reach out to you, Shirag?

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Very easy. I'm on LinkedIn. Search me up uh on Tech Chirag, or I've got a new short URL. I think it's uh on Linktree and forward slash tech chirag. But otherwise, yeah, absolutely. I would love to help you out where I can within my time that I can, which I get very little spare time these days.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

So I'm really grateful today. I'm sorry we couldn't cover everything. No, no, no, that has been great.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me, Jackie.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

Absolutely sensational. Thank you so much, Shrek, for your time. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Thank you for listening to the journals of the information entrepreneur with me, Jacqueline Stockwell. I hope you found this episode inspiring and helpful and have some takeaway tips that can be useful to you. If you liked this episode, please like, review, and share it with your friends. Your pull helps us reach more information, leave us to the comment and listen to great content. Content that you're strength and we listen to it, and measurement again and find the book. Please complete the school comment. It's a great way to improve and a few way of skills. You can find the school comment at the end of the description of this product comment. Follow the new product comment, and click the link to link and remember to be promoted, be promoted, and be beautiful.