TEI Midyear, Washington, D.C. | March 16-18, 2026

The Problem: For many tax departments, the research credit stands out as the one project they would love an easier solution for. Too often, work is manual, money is left on the table, SMEs ignore emails, and supporting records are scattered or incomplete.

The Lab Objectives: This interactive lab will show how to build a practical, end-to-end “R&D workspace” using Microsoft 365 tools your company likely already licenses—Teams, SharePoint, Planner, Bookings, Power Automate, Power BI, and Copilot—to make your next credit cycle more repeatable, less manual, and more audit-ready.

We will walk through a concrete workflow that improves SME participation, standardizes questionnaires, and organizes contemporaneous documentation so you can spend more time on judgment and less time chasing people and files.

During this session, you will learn how to:

• Design a central R&D hub in Teams/SharePoint, including a branded landing page with short explainer videos, a contacts page, and a clear “front door” for SMEs and stakeholders.
• Make it easier for SMEs to participate by using Teams, channels, and Bookings for scheduling, plus a plain-English FAQ that answers “What is this, what do you need, and how long will it take?”
• Build activity-based four-part test questionnaires with hover-over sample answers drawn from strong prior-year responses, delivered through an easy-to-use questionnaire portal.
• Run the study like a project using tasks and automation—assigning SME tasks, tracking status, and sending reminders through Power Automate so follow-up is not entirely manual and email-driven.
• Turn inputs into audit-ready outputs by standardizing how documentation is uploaded (e.g., dropdown lists and metadata) and using Power BI dashboards to visualize project counts, hours, and Qualified Research Expenses (QREs).

This session is designed for in-house tax professionals and advisors who want a practical blueprint for running research credit studies inside Microsoft 365, using tools they already have but may not be fully leveraging today. You will leave with specific ideas and patterns you can adapt to your own environment in the very next credit cycle.