The Copilot Connection

Ep 18 - Summer Copilot News Recap

• Zoe Wilson and Kevin McDonnell • Episode 18

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As the days in the UK get shorter, the grass looks brown and tired and the kids looked bored and ready for school, it's time to recap some of the news that has crept out while many were distracted with holidays. There's certainly been a few things coming through as momentum builds towards the second conference season of year. Zoe and Kevin cover some worrying news on hacking Copilot, some positive news on accessing models and some great events coming up.

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[Kevin 00:22]  

Hello and welcome to the Copilot Connection.  

  

[Zoe 00:26]  

We're here to share with you all the news, insights, and capabilities of the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem from across the entire Microsoft stack. I'm Zoe Wilson and I work at Avanade and I'm Modern work business. I'm an MVP for M365A Regional Director and the Viva Explorer.  

  

[Kevin 00:43]  

And I'm Kevin McDonnell, MVP, Viva Explorer and the Copilot strategy and modern workplace AI leader Avanade. We'll be releasing these episodes of podcast and on YouTube with insights from experts from the community and Microsoft on all the different areas of Copilot, the impact they can make to you and your organization, what you need to do to prepare for them or start implementing now, and even how you can extend them.  

  

[Zoe 01:09]  

So this week we thought we'd take a bit of time just to catch up on what's been happening in the world of copilot. I mean it, it's been fairly quiet over the last few weeks. I think once we got to the end of the conference season.  

  

[Kevin 01:23]  

Yourself.  

  

[Zoe 01:24]  

Well, I'm not talking about work. I'm talking about in the world of copilot news that.  

  

[Kevin 01:29]  

Is true, that is.  

  

[Zoe 01:30]  

True, Yeah. I mean, lots of people have got, you know, lots of people are taking their nice long summer vacations. So it's been a little bit of a a lull, but there have been some interesting things happening and we're expecting as we hit September that things are going to start accelerating and with lots more news and and updates coming.  

  

[Kevin 01:51]  

Yeah, because I think we've got Ignite in October, isn't it? And there's usually.  

  

[Zoe 01:55]  

That.  

  

[Kevin 01:56]  

It's November, is it?  

  

[Zoe 01:57]  

Oh gosh, yeah, in November.  

  

[Kevin 01:58]  

I know the Scottish summit is October, isn't it? So there's usually that kind of bump before some excitement to keep people going leading into that. So yeah, be good to see some interesting things coming out in September.  

  

[Zoe 02:12]  

Yeah. And, and talking of talking of the, the, the Scottish Summit and things that are going to start happening in, in autumn, let's talk a little bit about Scottish Summit.  

  

[Kevin 02:26]  

Absolutely. And, and there's some exciting things and hopefully you're listening to this before the 1st of September because the Microsoft Technology UK community, sorry, Microsoft Technology UK community and partner awards are happening. Although we do need to speak to Aaron. I think they're just doing community awards this year, aren't they? Thinking it's we'll, we'll have to get go and slap him round a bit and to remind him to update that. But there are nominations open at UK Community awards.co.uk. And there's categories such as best user group, best Blogger, modern work, evangelist, biz apps, community, rising star, communities, community hero and and a really good award called best podcast on YouTube channel. I'm saying nothing more than that. But just just putting those thoughts out there to people and the, the way it works, we're asking people for nominees. So Zoe and I are both part of the committee on there. We're asking people to nominate there within going to assess those nominations. It's not just purely based on the, the number of nominations. We want to see that the kind of quality that comes through. We want to see how many different people nominate from there. And when we say different people, we we do mean different people. We don't want your agents that are writing things and pushing the and I mean that agents in an automated way. And we're not talking about getting your friends and family or to copy something out from copilot to go in there. So please, please, you know, I'm happy that people go and ask people to nominate them and things like that, but make it interesting. Share a good reason. Don't just send the same thing again and again and again because it doesn't really help. Trust me.  

  

[Zoe 04:10]  

Yeah, yeah. I mean to the point where if it's obvious that someone's cheating, we will disqualify them. You know, having having repeated nominations from very similar names with the same ChatGPT generated text using every one of them is it's not in the spirit.  

  

[Kevin 04:27]  

Of the sorry, sorry, I I said copilot. I fitted on brands there, you know GPT stuff today. Thank you.  

  

[Zoe 04:36]  

One of the thing I'd like to call out as well, actually I, I having worked in the Microsoft partner space for quite some time, I feel like this is fairly obvious to me. But just just for those people who maybe aren't in the partner space, I want to be really clear that when we say modern work evangelist, what we are asking for is people who sit in that M365, you know, the modern work Windows Copilot for M365, Viva Teams, Teams voice, you know, all that stuff that's in that Microsoft.  

  

[Kevin 05:07]  

365 in tune and stuff like that, yeah.  

  

[Zoe 05:11]  

Yeah, not, not just people who are doing good things about, you know, working in a modern way or or anything like that. And then likewise business applications that's specifically tied to dynamics and power platform. It's not people who are doing, doing stuff with apps that are used in business because we've seen, we saw this last year and we've also seen it a little bit this year as well where we're getting people who work with biz apps technologies who are being nominated for the modern work category and the other way around.  

  

[Kevin 05:38]  

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And. And there's only there's so many categories we can see Chris Huntingford in before we get ****** ***. So that's that's you.  

  

[Zoe 05:46]  

Know Chris Huntingford's an interesting one because he's actually he, you know, he's in the process of actually scaling up in that modern work area.  

  

[Kevin 05:54]  

So he is.  

  

[Zoe 05:55]  

He could be coming for multiple ones.  

  

[Kevin 05:57]  

We, I know we've been talking about getting on the show, but I was having a lovely chat with him today about responsible AI and he's doing a lot in that space, so it'd be, it'd be good to get mum to talk about that as well. It's almost like that boy can't sit still. Anyway, talking of.  

  

[Zoe 06:12]  

Huntingford, Yeah, Talking of Huntingford, that's a nice.  

  

[Kevin 06:15]  

Segue all into the segues today. This is great.  

  

[Zoe 06:21]  

So Scottish Summit, Kevin and I are going to be hosting a fantastic session with some awesome special guests. We're we're intending to ask them lots of really hard questions about, about Copilot, about how how people should understand the difference, how they should use them.  

  

[Kevin 06:41]  

Is that what we're going to do? Think about that actually. But yeah, I think we're looking to cut across all the different Co pilots and, and take some questions from the the audience as well. So if you are up at Scottish Summit, make sure you're there for that session. I mean, just the people in there will be fabulous. But it it will have a lot of information as as well. And we'll, we'll make sure we let them shine for.  

  

[Zoe 07:07]  

That so, so, so for those who can't see the screen, who are just listening, we've got our special guests are Chris Huntingford, Donna Sarka, which is it will be absolutely fantastic to have her on the panel. We've got Jose Pignos, who comes from that security angle.  

  

[Kevin 07:24]  

Just quickly assuming Donna doesn't get rested first, then then.  

  

[Zoe 07:28]  

Yeah, as long as Donna's not in jail and then Sarah Fenner as well. So this is going to be a really great panel. I'm I'm looking forward to it.  

  

[Kevin 07:38]  

Yeah, no, it'd be a lot of fun and and you're keeping yourself busy ahead of that as well. You, you've got a webinar coming up with Luke, Luke Evans. Yeah.  

  

[Zoe 07:47]  

That's right. So, so I think it was September last year, Luke and I did a preparing for Copilot for Microsoft 365 webinar for Syskit. They've kindly invited us back. So on the 5th, I think it is on the 5th of September, Luke and I are going to be talking about what we've learnt after one year. So we'll put the link in the show notes if you want to register. This is going to be a lot of fun. I always love presenting with Luke. He, he was actually one of my original, well, I think he was the first person I ever did joint sessions with. And because we used to work together, we'd present them together a lot to clients. So we, you know, we bounce off each other really well, I think. So I'm I'm looking forward to that one.  

  

[Kevin 08:32]  

I was just chuckling my to myself because I suddenly remembered that he got a very awkward question about copilot in Yammer last year and the look of in his face as he kind of realised for the question and had no idea it would come from me. I might try to catch him out with something else again this year. Don't tell him though, we'll see if he's listening. We've also got another thing ahead of that for anyone you know. We're talking about Luke and doing joint sessions there. You very kindly invited me to join you, Sarah and Luke at the Community Day. It's something you've run a couple of times before, really, to help new speakers. It's kind of a guide for people who want to get into the community, start speaking. What is it you need to do? What do you need to think about? How can you help yourself be more likely to get accepted? How can you make your actual session run even more effectively as well on there? So really looking forward to to that one. And that's on September the 6th in London. In fact, the Microsoft Reactor in Paddington, so check out the show notes for the link to that or just do a search inthecommunitydays.org site. If you don't know the community days.org site, do check that out because all sorts of events in there as as well. But that, that'll be a really good day.  

  

[Zoe 09:48]  

Yeah, I mean, I know we've done technical workshops before, Kevin, but this is actually such a rewarding workshop to deliver to help people who, you know, have kind of experience to share and a story, but they just don't quite know how to get started or how to present themselves in the in the best way to be accepted more. And the I know that people aren't doing this to become MVPS. You know, they, they're doing it because they want to become more involved in the community. But one of the things that's been really rewarding to see over the last 18 months is just how many people have actually gone on to contribute to their community so much that they are actually now being recognised as MVPS.  

  

[Kevin 10:32]  

Yeah, absolutely. We know there's a few more kind of going going through that cycle as well. So it's I think it helps and and one of the things that I found in getting to an MVP is building community of other MVPS to kind of understand what they're doing as well. So by joining this, not only speaking to us, but also the others going through that journey as well, I think you've been part of a few groups of people kind of going through the journey at the same time and sharing that experience really helps as well. So definitely something worthwhile. It's like an antenatal class. Let's let's, let's call it that. Maybe it's the anti MVP. You can't say anti MVP that. That's with an E, not an I.  

  

[Zoe 11:12]  

Yeah, so, so, so this is where we're helping new MVPS be burst.  

  

[Kevin 11:18]  

Exactly, exactly. Oh gosh, that's a disturbing point. Moving swiftly on talking of MVPS, this was going to be our quick bits since we last recorded the the MVPS have had the renewal and I don't know, probably lots of you go, oh gosh, that day on social media when hash, hash tag MEP buzzes everywhere and I'm what's, what's the word, not flattered and honoured.  

  

[Zoe 11:44]  

Humbled and honoured.  

  

[Kevin 11:45]  

Humbled and honoured. Thank you on there of people all excited about that. But the reason we're pulling out this time is there's new technology areas in the way they're they're kind of putting together the MVPS. We're still in the M365 area, but there's now a copilot for M for M365 category within there, the sorry technology area within there. And there's actually 54 different ones on there. So we've got people like Amanda Stern, who we know, Anghel who's at AVANAR with us, Alex Pearce over at SOFCAT, Daniel Anderson, Daniel Rogue. I'm not going to go through too many more names. I'll, I'll let people who are looking on their scroll through there. But it's fantastic to see the number of people really seeing that importance of copilot for M365 and getting engaged with their SO and, and also the, the geographical spread of that. I, I think, you know, we get the European and a lot the US ones that we engage with a lot, but it's fantastic seeing sorts of some names from Korea and things on there as well that we're not necessarily always connected with. So really, really good to see that as well. First I was thinking there was 54. There's slightly more than 54.  

  

[Zoe 13:01]  

Yeah. I think because we've had, we've had another like new MBPD as well, haven't we? So there might be some new Mbps that have bumped that number up a little bit or people who've people who were delayed in going through the process to make their profile public.  

  

[Kevin 13:19]  

Yeah. So, so looking at I think around 70 MVPS come through there, which is fantastic seeing that excitement for copilot. But anyway, we did say we're going to cover news. We should probably go on to some specific news and probably the dominant story that I I'm assuming a lot of people have heard about, but he's probably not the most positive of stories on there has been around the black hacked conference that took place. So it's a what's the word for it's ethical, a cyber security conference and there's a lot of talk about ethical hacking and things like that. And a company called Zenity had been doing a lot of analysis on kind of hacking into copilot and, and that sounds, it sounds quite scary when you hear that. And, and this hit a lot of the press. I think I even saw it on BBC News. You can see this article here is from Fortune and a lot of it was about, I'm going to jump over to the the actual articles themselves, labs dot xenity dot IO. They've summarised a lot of their research that they published within there. And a lot of this is around kind of indirect prompt injection. So you can kind of put things into documents in certain ways that Copilot will analyse even if the end user doesn't see them. So it's very hard to kind of defend against directly. And you will kind of say when things like when you read this, I want you to do these kind of things. I'm not going to read out exactly. I'll let people do a little bit of digging before they start trying to cause trouble, but a lot of it is around that. There was another hole within copilot Studio especially that put this off. There was things around the rag poisoning, which is the retrieval augmented generation, which is the the kind of mechanism of having your large language model and using a search vector. So with that's kind of things like Microsoft, Microsoft Search as your AI search or your own search components to kind of ground your information within there by putting documents in there, you can inject unwanted items on there. And I imagine this probably scared quite a few people, especially those who are going through copilot for M365 and copilot studio initiatives at the moment on there. There was another article from I'd say fellow MVP, but I I think he he handed in his MVP, he decided he didn't want to continue. It's but Yuk and Niernan's been around the community for a while talking about why copilot could be a bigger security threat than ChatGPT. I would say this is a very click bait headline versus what he's saying on there. But what I liked from this is he raised the point that actually you shouldn't just trust Microsoft. You shouldn't just say it's Microsoft. It will be more secure. Organisations need to be asking the questions of what Microsoft is doing to make it more secure. And Microsoft is doing a lot, but that doesn't mean you say great, they're doing a lot. I'll let them handle it on there. I've worked with a client who raised some of this kind of prompt injection as a as a concern a while back and, and a lot of those were were addressed, but I think there's different ways of doing it. So it's fantastic to see organisations challenging the big vendors, not just saying give us new exciting stuff. We want to see you make sure that this continues to be safe as well. So while it's nerve racking to see this, it's much better that it's out there in the public eye and that Microsoft are making sure they give it the attention. I know since this was first announced, the the issues that were identified in copilot studio have been addressed. So it's, it's something to think about. I think we'll put all the links into the the show notes and our newsletter on LinkedIn for people to kind of dig into themselves. I think Xenity is doing some great work and others are looking at this and Microsoft is working with them. They're not just trying to cause trouble. They, they did announce all their findings to Microsoft ahead of publishing these as well, giving the opportunity to try and fix some of these items and work around them. But it's it's a good reminder that while all these copilot AI stuff is very exciting, you need to be aware of some of the risks that are coming through from that as well.  

  

[Zoe 17:49]  

Yeah, I think you're absolutely spot on there, Kevin. I mean, I've had conversations with clients and with, with colleagues and with people across the community as well, actually, where there's obviously a bit because perhaps because people have perceived that, you know, this is trustworthy because it's Microsoft, there's been almost a bit of a knee jerk reaction where there's lots of fear and uncertainty and it's muddying the waters a little bit. So I think, you know, I think people need to continue to challenge the big vendors to understand how they're making their tools secure from things like this. But equally, when you get those clickbait fear mongering articles, and I'm not saying that the one you showed is like that, but I have seen a lot of others that are very much in that category. It's also important that people question those as well, because this is such a popular topic. It's an easy thing for people to write about to get lots of views, to get lots of engagement. So we, we really need to apply critical thinking to this, to actually understand, you know, what, what it means, what the risk is and and to understand what Microsoft are doing to address it.  

  

[Kevin 18:55]  

What is the impact, actual impact of that risk to your organization? The potential, you know, it's, it's analyse things, things, not just hiding it. And you will have many other risks that this is similar to kind of a phishing attack to areas. And it's just something else to look at. And and again, being out in the public and think about it, not just Microsoft will be looking at this. We've talked about a lot of tools. I know we had Michael Bisaric from Orchestry and spoken with Avapoint and others, many others who are looking at those governance tools to look at that. Here's an opportunity to add additional things to some of those tools to check on these. So if you don't want to just trust Microsoft, look at some of the other partners working in these areas to kind of address some of these issues as well. We'll spend a lot of money and then fly. Microsoft fixes it quickly. So it's been with both sides, I think it's fair to say. So, yeah, we'd we'd certainly be interested in others who, who've got kind of opinions on that and who've dug into it deeper. I have to admit that the kind of hacking and injection, the security side is not in a deep area of expertise on mine. So I would always love to hear what what others thought on that. Follow us on social media and let us know what you think.  

  

[Zoe 20:12]  

Yeah, 100%. I have to agree. This isn't, this isn't an area where I've got like a particularly deep understanding either, but obviously it's something that I think we're both watching with interests so that we can understand how to guide and advise people. So definitely want your expert views.  

  

[Kevin 20:30]  

Absolutely. Should we go on to some more positive and exciting news? You know, and then we've terrified people. Let's let's bring them back. So news.  

  

[Zoe 20:40]  

Taking people on an emotional roller coaster.  

  

[Kevin 20:43]  

Absolutely up and down. Yeah, sorry, I got distracted there. I was thinking back to summer holidays and the the actual roller coaster I went to, which was slightly terrifying as well. For anyone coming to ESPC, I'm very hoping they open Grinlands theme park that's in central Stockholm for winter so we can all go on that. So if anyone's up for a roller coaster ride in real life and it's coming to ESPC, let me know. Anyway, moving on to the virtual roller coaster of this. I I guess it's kind of on the edge of copilot because it's not directly within GitHub copilot, but they announced was it back in, oh, beginning of August, the GitHub models and I was like, oh, this, this is intriguing. I have to admit I haven't quite picked up on this one, but effectively what it is, is if you've used things like Azure AI Studio or the Playground in Azure Open AI, where you can try out the models within the browser and work with them. This is effectively Github's version of that and it's open to AI, think a limited public beta. So you can join a waiting list to try this out and you can select different models like in this image. It's got the open AIG PT4-O and you can test your prompts in there. You can put different numbers of tokens, your temperature, you can apply that system prompts and work with it. I think if it's looking at this, I haven't actually been on the beta and tried this out, but looking at it, it's a bit like within the Azure Open AI Studio where you can kind of generate code from it. So it can allow you some code to work from there. What they haven't really said is what the pricing will be. This is a public beta, so I think it's included at that moment. They've talked a lot about this being able to deploy these into code spaces. So I suspect it will link in with some kind of pricing that to go with them there. But I think it's really, really interesting and especially where because a lot of people on GitHub, and this is going to sound strange to say and and sacrilegious to some of us, but some of them aren't actually doing Microsoft stuff. So bringing some of these kind of Azure Open AI, these, even these Open AI models into a more accessible place within GitHub makes a lot of sense for those as well.  

  

[Zoe 23:05]  

Yeah, I mean, I I, I know when we were preparing for this, I mentioned this to you, Kevin, but talking with people like Yannick, you know when he talks about Co.  

  

[Kevin 23:14]  

Pilots Yannick Rieckmann's.  

  

[Zoe 23:16]  

Yeah. So when when when he talks about Co piloting GitHub, one of the things that he says is a huge benefit of it is the fact that it's in the flow of work. It's in the space where the developers are. And for me, that's a similar benefit that we see here where it's, you know, these tools already exist, you can already go and do this. But by bringing it into the place where the developers are spending their time, it's actually making it easier for them to find, find and interact with it.  

  

[Kevin 23:44]  

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a great example here of running evaluations of your prompts across different models. And you can do that within GitHub Actions, which is that process of kind of publishing that through into your code. So you can automate analysis of some of your prompts and how they react in the different models. And and that's not just the open AI ones, people saw me scrolling there, but got ones from Meta, Mistral, AI21 and Cohere. And I imagine they will add more and more to that list, similar to the as they've been doing with the, oh, it's called in as you're the model of service. So really interesting. I think those many of our listeners will be out there doing Microsoft stuff and will already be doing this in Azure. But to bring this into GitHub, I think opens it up to to more people, which is really, really useful, right. We did have some copilot for M365 news and because we always talk about, we kind of shuffled that down a little bit to the end, but we should certainly cover a bit of that. And, and what's new? Was there anything I'm going to catch you up for the hoof here. Were there any of these that particularly caught your eye? Sorry.  

  

[Zoe 25:00]  

So that's, I mean, I think though the Copilot dashboard that being available to more people is helpful. I, I think this is going to be really useful for organisations who are fairly early on their early on their journey. You know, there's some of the things around like the adoption. So being able to enable that copilot adoption community in Beaver Engage. I mean, I know from our own journey with this and from a lot of the clients, you know, this is kind of the approach that many organisations are taking anyway. But things like this, you know, these are, these are signs to me that Microsoft is trying to make it easier for clients to put the right things in place to be successful and to have the right data that they need.  

  

[Kevin 25:43]  

Yeah, and to and to track how successful they are being as well. Is that I'm, I'm just reading that initial one, it's slightly confusing statement. It says the Microsoft Copilot dashboards as part of Copilot for M365 no longer requires a Viva Insights Premium licence. They're rolling out to to have over 100 copilot licence or 10 assigned Viva. So you don't need both. So you don't need to have the Viva Insights is a key as long as you have at least 100 copilot for M365 licences within there. So you do need to have a certain number of this. This won't help people who've kind of spun up Copilot for M365 in a demo tenant or a dev one and they're kind of just turned it on for one or two users. So there is a a slight limitation, but it certainly opens it up to to organisations who who are engaging with copilot for M365I. I'm guessing if you only have 5 licences, you can probably ask those five people if they're on there, it's it's less of an impact. So this, this really is looking at more of the, I wouldn't say large organisations, but that those that are kind of going ahead with Copilot who want to understand it at a broader sense within that.  

  

[Zoe 27:00]  

Yeah. And then the other one that I might be stealing your Thunder here because you you might be planning to talk like this. But the other one that I thought was interesting that I've not had chance to test yet is some of the new stuff in Outlook. So copilot to help with emails and one of the the one thing that's mentioned here that I'm really interested in testing actually is being able to use prompts like move all emails from Kevin into a Kevin folder.  

  

[Kevin 27:30]  

I don't know what to say about that, but yeah, really useful. I'll be be intrigued to know kind of what volume this works at. I'm not going to quote how many unread emails I have on there, but you know, be able to mark all as reads when when you get to a certain size of unread emails can be quite hard to do. So if you can help with some of those things as well be really useful within there as well. Suddenly got me thinking. One of the other things that's on the public road map, and I'm not going to get anyone in trouble here saying this is the the ability to run schedule prompts. So I wonder if any of these would work within the the kind of Copilot app itself rather than Copilot in Outlook, whether you could do this and run that on a regular basis on there that?  

  

[Zoe 28:21]  

That I'll test it. I'll I'll test it and after we finish recording this, I'm already planning to go and test some of those other things. So let's let's see if I can break it or how far I can get.  

  

[Kevin 28:32]  

Yeah. And, and I think where I like it is because let's be honest, it's not too hard to set up rules like everything, move everything from a single person. But if you want to move everything that mentions any topics around this that there's a bit vague that probably if you were kind of working with an executive assistant or maybe you've got an intern saying, can you do these things and you're not 100% specific because it's kind of things like this. It would be very interesting to see if it can work that. So everything around projects that I'm working with, with this particular client that it would identify which of those that are related to that be very interesting to see how well that's picked up. I really hope they haven't implemented the ability to delete emails like this because that could be very nerve wracking.  

  

[Zoe 29:26]  

Yeah, fairly easy to make a mistake there I think.  

  

[Kevin 29:29]  

Yeah, I, I'm, I'm guessing not, but you, you never know with these, the, the other bits, I think there's some nice Viva updates. So that adoption community and the centralised comms with the Viva amplifier editor really help them there. The last one is, I love they put improvements based on your feedback. So Microsoft's been very clear they aren't listening to what needs to be on there. You know, things like better transcript management on there. I'm not going to comment too far on that because I'll get in trouble on there, but better on that better summarisation. So they it, it kind of notes they are looking to a lot of these things and learning from what people are saying. So please do tell Microsoft what you're feeling from there. They are moving very rapidly within this and they're, they're going to miss things that are a priority. So make sure you're reflecting. And the reality is, if one person says it, they're not going to listen. If lots of people says it, it kind of adds to that weight. So make sure you're getting that voice out there to say that you want these features enabled.  

  

[Zoe 30:38]  

As well yeah what what I'd absolutely recommend that people do as well is actually use the feedback feature inside Copilot, regardless of which app you're in what it is you're trying to do use the thumbs up and the thumbs down to give feedback. So if you, if you have a really outstanding result, give it a thumbs up, let Microsoft know that this is the kind of thing that is really impactful. And if you don't, if, if something doesn't work or you don't get the result that you want, make sure you give it the thumbs down. Because I, I, I know that Microsoft are using that feedback extensively to determine things like how they prioritise their backlog, what things they need to fix, what things they need to make better. So if you're not already doing that, definitely start.  

  

[Kevin 31:21]  

Yeah, absolutely agree. And I'm guessing one of those things that came up was with OneNote, which I use a lot and I don't so much anymore, I think because I'm probably not out on the road quite as much. But I used to use my Surface or my iPads with a pen with OneNote. And I would take notes kind of in my handwriting. I, I find that I remember things better that way. And now Copilot supports those inked notes, which is really useful. So you can kind of do your writing, do your drawing. I know Rebecca Jackson over in Australia loves doing sort of these notes when she goes to events. She published some on her internal go ahead and we said Yammer fever engage site recently about a conference you've been at and and it's those kind of things that you you kind of capture quickly, but then want to remember where it is now. You've got that ability to summarise it quickly with Copilot, which I think is really, really useful.  

  

[Zoe 32:17]  

And yeah, so I, I, I love this. I think this is going to be fantastic. We need this in whiteboard as well. Yes, because you know I've.  

  

[Kevin 32:27]  

Whiteboard, to be fair.  

  

[Zoe 32:28]  

Yeah, I mean, so there are some things that are really useful in whiteboard. It's a shame that the UI is still a little bit clunky or not quite as feature rich as some of the virtual whiteboard competitors. But some of the stuff that you can do with copilot, I think, you know, makes it worth actually using whiteboard. But, you know, when I'm in sessions with people as they suddenly start drawing and actually writing instead of typing in sticky notes, my heart sinks a little bit because I can't I can't use copilot on that. It won't read it. So yeah, we need, we need ink to be something that copilot can interact with in my Bard as well.  

  

[Kevin 33:07]  

Absolutely agree. Absolutely agree on that. And then I think final note we've got this is more about the, I always love seeing how Microsoft tries to describe this because Co pilots everything else. The and, and in this one, they're talking about the free Microsoft Copilot services on there. So what they're talking about is that kind of copilot in Bing, copilot in Edge. It's the, the web-based copilot within there. And one of the ones they had that hang on, let me take a breath. It was copilot with commercial data protection, I think was the lovely phrase that they they used to call it. That's now being extended not just for those who've got an M365 licence, but anyone who has an intra, Microsoft intra I, I think it's an intro ID account. I think their marketing's missed a line there. But it, it's kind of extended the amount of people that can get protected by that, which means they can query that and use that in a way that will protect it. And make sure that what they're what they're writing in there will not be used to train the next generation the models and they won't be leaking internal information incorrectly on there. So a fairly small change, but I think a really useful, especially organisations who've maybe got a certain hour of M365, but maybe they've got some frontline workers and they're using entry ID to authenticate with other systems, but not necessarily give them M365 accounts. They're now covered with that ability to use copilot. So really nice open up and I think it's a great way with, you know, for frontline workers who maybe aren't on the keyboard all the time. The Microsoft Copilot works really nicely with voice. I use it to solve many an argument with the kids at the kitchen table.  

  

[Zoe 35:01]  

Love it. I love that. I love that you're kind of developing this next generation of AI powered workforce as well.  

  

[Kevin 35:09]  

It it really is and it's no longer our Siri because that kind of brings back a load of links. They want to hear Copilot talk to it as well, which is, and it's interesting, my 7 year olds, it needs a little encouraging with writing and he he's started using Copilot to kind of get some to listen to the voice and then write things down from there as well. So it's kind of helping him to which is, which is really good as well. I tried that. There was a couple, There was one other bit in this. Oh yeah, the option to pin Copilot as an app within there. I'm less sure about this one if I'm honest, but I I guess for those who don't have copilot for M365 it does. It does make a lot of sense.  

  

[Zoe 35:53]  

Yeah, it's a little easier for them to find it.  

  

[Kevin 35:56]  

Yeah, even if the naming confuses people a little bit. So I think could see some news coming through over the summer.  

  

[Zoe 36:03]  

Yeah, I mean, you know, there's been some news. I think, like I said, I'm expecting this to start picking up as we get into September and beyond and everyone comes back for their summer holidays. One thing we didn't write down in our planning, Kevin, but which has just occurred to me is actually September next month. That's one. That's our one year anniversary, I believe, of our first episode.  

  

[Kevin 36:25]  

Oh gosh, it is. That's very, very true. I'd forgotten about that. Feels like we'll be going for longer. Cracky it does.  

  

[Zoe 36:33]  

I think, I think that's just a that that's just a side effect or a symptom of the speed that which this whole copilot world has exploded over the last year or so.  

  

[Kevin 36:43]  

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That'd be quite interesting to go back to our earlier episode and see how things have changed or not as well with what we're talking about. And and I think that that brings, I know we've been chatting a little bit. I think we're looking to possibly in the future bring a bit more structure to some of these and kind of hit particular topics. Probably not necessarily removing some of these news and kind of general updates and interviews, but we're looking to bring people in to cover specific topics and to make sure we get that breadth of copilot. There obviously is a lot from the copilot for M365. We try to cover as many of the others, but we want to do it in a bit more intentional way. So we will be putting out a call for speakers for people to to kind of talk on specific subjects and and capture some of that information. So rather than just catching the latest to catch people up to where things are now as well. So yeah, that would be quite an awesome time with our one year anniversary and thoughts about that. I better get off my backside. Yeah, but that's a good. So we we will be back. I think we're going to try and get macked onto the two week cadence of these things as well. And certainly a September hits, we'll have plenty to talk about at that point as well.  

  

[Zoe 38:01]  

Yeah, definitely, definitely. And like I said, I think it will just kind of keep going and the speed will start picking back up again from September. So hopefully you're all ready for what is likely to be a wild ride as we get into the second year really of the not from our perspective, not just from our perspective, but the second year of this copilot journey.  

  

[Kevin 38:23]  

Yeah, I don't think it's just going to show. I don't think it's going to slow down at all as well. And if you want to hear more from us and continue to update that, please, please subscribe to us, follow on your podcast apps, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. Stroke X, we're on YouTube. Tell your clients, tell your friends, tell your colleagues, even tell your family to give us a listen on there. And if you're feeling so inclined, please do give us a rating. I know Spotify now has the ability to to rate podcasts. So wherever you are, please just drop a rating into there and give us some feedback and we'll keep an eye on that as well. So please help spread the word. We love it. I know Zoe and I have both had it now where clients have mentioned the podcast and it's like, oh, it's reaching out here. This is fantastic. Quick, put that into the appraisal notes. So yeah, please do spread the word about things as well.  

  

[Zoe 39:17]  

Yeah, one, 100% and all that's left to say really is thanks very much for listening and we look forward to seeing you next time.  

  

[Kevin 39:27]  

Thanks very much. Bye bye.  

  

[Zoe 39:29]  

Bye.