I am an experienced, hands on, client facing information technology consultant specialising in Microsoft365, Microsoft Viva, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Teams (including Teams for Telephony), Azure and Azure OpenAI including Microsoft CoPilot.
As an information technology consultant I have held project management, IT management and lead development roles. I have 14 years experience of delivering Live@Edu, Microsoft Office365 and Microsoft365 services in higher education.
During the 2023 Microsoft Ignite conference in Seattle and the 2023 European SharePoint Conference in Amsterdam, Dona Sarker, Director of Technology at Microsoft highlighted the Azure OpenAI (Bot Framework) work that I have been supporting at the University of Surrey.
Microsoft Ignite 2023 Keynote: Adopting, extending and building your own copilots
European SharePoint Conference (ESPC) 2023 Keynote: AI, Copilots and what it means for you
From a development perspective I am comfortable working with Microsoft on-premise and cloud development toolsets. As part of this development experience I have supported developers move from on-premise to cloud developers. I use GitLab, GitHub and Azure DevOps on a regular basis and have integrated CICD pipelines and Docker into developer patterns and practices.
I have also completed large scale SharePoint and file share migrations from on-premise to the cloud. As part of this work I have been responsible for developing and helping to deliver migration, adoption, communications and training plans for many of the services included in Microsoft365.
As an IT Manager I have been responsible for working with NHS Trusts to deliver the information technology required to support clinical research centres enabling them to conduct large scale longitudinal clinical studies.
I have successfully project managed and implemented Microsoft365 with a broad range of organisations in higher education, health, government and the private sectors. Working within the organisations project management frameworks I have delivered a number of projects including building business cases, working with IT PMO’s to manage projects budgets up to £10 million running over a period of five years, managing risks and issues, monthly project reporting and dashboards, creating and managing delivery plans, working with stakeholders to gather requirements and completing and signing off projects.
Supporting service transition has been an important part of the roles I have completed. This has included developing service certification, adoption planning, service acceptance and supporting the help desk understand what is needed to support Microsoft365 services, building communication plans and developing service transition. I have also been involved in developing exit criteria for early life support.
As a product owner I have been responsible for managing a number of SharePoint projects using GitLab and Azure DevOps projects. This includes building and developing the product backlog, tagging, agreeing a prioritisation approach, working with developers to size tasks, refining the backlog and working with the programme delivery manager to plan sprints. Additional responsibilities have been resolving developer issues and acting as a liaison between developers, stake holders and delivery managers.
In addition to my Microsoft365 and SharePoint experience I have also developed several solutions using Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics 365. This includes a solution to manage participants, sensitive biological samples and social collaboration for a research project aiming to find out how microbes influence a baby’s immune system as well a case management solution for the NSPCC and Childline.
With 20 years’ experience with the Microsoft SharePoint platform I have deployed, configured and administered large scale, high availability farms through to single box environments used for intranets, extranets and web content publishing sites.
As part of the University of Surrey’s answer to the call from the NHS for more support resources in response to Covid-19 I have worked with the South, Central and West Clinical Commissioning Groups support unit to provide support and guidance on adopting Microsoft Teams in clinical settings including General Practices, hospitals and health centres. I was also been involved in providing support with NHSMail, password changes, updating distribution lists and configuring shared mailboxes.