[Kevin 00:07]
So Zoe and I recorded a whole load of mini-interviews at the MVP Summit, and we thought rather than build those into a few larger episodes, we'd release those to you in short little snippets like this. So enjoy a set of our interviews live from Seattle with various people from Microsoft and MVPs.
[Zoe 00:29]
Hi, this is Zoe from MVP Summit in Seattle, and I'm delighted to be joined by Simon. Would you like to introduce yourself?
[Simon 00:36]
Hi there. I'm Simon Doy, owner of iThink365, and I specialize in helping businesses get more out of the Microsoft 365 platform. It's great to be with you today.
[Zoe 00:48]
Brilliant. Well, thank you for joining. Let's start with the first question. What does CoPilot mean to you?
[Simon 00:55]
So, the thing that I love is the development side of things, extensibility, and I'm all about breaking down application barriers and the silos of information and copilot. The bit that excites me is that extensibility with Codefile Studio, with Teams AI Library. So, that's the bit that there's so much opportunity to bring that information, that over the business's data, I think that's where it's really exciting.
[Zoe 01:27]
Yeah, I think we've talked about bringing things into the flow of work for years in that team space, but it feels like CoPilot is the next iteration of that, doesn't it? And actually being able to completely transform how data flows and how people interact with data that's in other systems, I think it has so much potential.
[Simon 01:44]
Definitely, and especially when you start being able to not just retrieve information, do something with it.
[Zoe 01:52]
Yeah take action yeah and.
[Simon 01:54]
Take some actions then yeah.
[Zoe 01:55]
Yeah brilliant so what are your personal experiences as a copilot that have made a difference to to you or how you work.
[Simon 02:04]
Okay so um you know the meetings one is it's very good but um?
[Zoe 02:10]
The that's the most common one that we hear unsurprisingly i'll tell.
[Simon 02:14]
You a different story so um my daughter bethany uh It was her birthday and we just got access to Copilot through a sandbox and every year I had to have to do a treasure hunt and this year she's like can you do a treasure hunt and use riddles please and I'm like.
[Zoe 02:30]
So. How old is she?
[Simon 02:32]
She's ten.
[Zoe 02:33]
Yeah. So getting increasingly harder every year as well.
[Simon 02:36]
Yeah exactly. So I was like how the heck am I going to do this? I'm going to use Copilot and so I put these presents in different places, asked it to come up with some poems and that's what it gave me and I was done in about 10 minutes. Brilliant! And she absolutely loved it and dad looked pretty good so yeah that's one.
[Zoe 02:58]
Yeah that's awesome and it's really nice actually to get an example that's not necessarily kind of business or work related. So when you're looking at Copilot, what it could do, maybe how you help clients, things like that, is there anything that you're worried about?
[Simon 03:16]
So I think the thing is it's always you know is the hype gonna exceed reality and that is you know a concern and you know there's things which people have to do companies have to do they need to have their data in Microsoft 365 they need to have it governed well I mean it's not that isn't new though I mean you know we go back to you know sessions around searched like 10 years ago and people being able to search for salaries and suddenly get a CEO. It's similar things now with co-pilots so that's a concern of me. Also I'm a bit worried about getting arrested by the copilot cops too.
[Zoe 03:54]
So do you want to explain what you mean by the copilot cops? I do, I do.
[Simon 03:58]
I listen to your show, actually when I swim, and often I I love how you guys correct, there was the myth-busting, there was the spelling.
[Zoe 04:12]
Of copilot.
[Simon 04:13]
I've seen an example of that in a session just now, so. So yeah, but yeah, so, but it's right, isn't it? You know, that makes the challenge of understanding copilot, because there's so many, you know, so many co-pilots, understanding which one is, you know, is it copilot in sales, is it, you know, and I don't want to get arrested, so I won't.
[Zoe 04:35]
Go into that. It can copilot in-sales, copilot for-sales. I think it's just such an ubiquitous term now that's used across kind of the entire Microsoft stack in lots of different products and places and with custom co-pilots and things like that. So, that myth-busting and cutting through the noise I think is really needed. Yeah.
[Simon 04:56]
Definitely, definitely. And it also gives people trust as well, you know, one of the ones that you talked about was the myth of it being trading on your data and you know that could be scary to some people.
[Zoe 05:09]
Yeah and I still see that one being quite pervasive even though it's clearly stated in Microsoft's responsible AI approach you know it's a commitment they make to customers yeah and it's a really important one. Okay so last question what are you most excited about or what are you hoping to see next?
[Simon 05:28]
So again, you know, we've seen some amazing stuff at the summit and some of the things we can't of course talk about that. But the things which I would like to see is more extensibility in all of the tools. Like I'd like to be able to extend Word Copilot or Copilot in Word.
[Zoe 05:44]
What kind of use case would you see for...
[Simon 05:48]
Yeah, so we've got a customer and they sort of, they use, they're involved in silicon and finding prices of silicon components off the third-party market and being able to bring that data in from an API into Excel and manipulate that with Copilot and maybe reason over that as well I think would be...
[Zoe 06:13]
Quite powerful. Yeah, would.
[Simon 06:14]
Be very, very powerful. The other areas are just continued extensibility support for co-piloting teams and those experiences as well. We're doing quite a lot with copilot studio and that's getting better with, recently there's been a new component to allow single sign-on so when you're using it in SharePoint for example you're not having to put in a code to be able to start using it and that's making much much easier to.
[Zoe 06:45]
Use. Yeah so exciting lots of lots of potential lots of opportunities lots of hype.
[Simon 06:50]
Yes that.
[Zoe 06:51]
Is also.
[Simon 06:51]
True but yeah and I think it's going to be it's going to be an exciting year.
[Zoe 06:55]
Yeah awesome well thanks for joining Simon. Thank.
[Simon 06:58]
You for having us. you