Ep 20 - A new Copilot and what to see at Ignite

In this episode of the Copilot Connection, hosts Zoe Wilson  and Kevin McDonnell discuss the latest updates in the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem, including a new feature called Copilot Labs (not Lab...), insights from the upcoming Microsoft Ignite conference, and the importance of AI integration in business. They also touch on the significance of empowering neurodivergent employees and the community's engagement in upcoming events. They also have a new AI generated summary - what do you think?

Links

• Introducing Copilot Vision
• Meet the new Copilot

Ignite sessions
Session catalog at https://ignite.microsoft.com where you can search for codes.

Build and extend agents with Microsoft Copilot studio  | LAB433
Code-first development workshop for Copilot agents  | LAB441
Extending M365 Copilot with Copilot agents: Best practices  | BRK170
Part 1:2 Declarative Agents: Build Agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot  | LAB445
Reinventing business processes with autonomous agents  | BRK169
Smarter workflows with ServiceNow Now Assist and Copilot integration  | ODFP974
 
Ground Microsoft 365 Copilot in your business knowledge  | BRK275
Microsoft 365 Copilot advantages: How does it compare with other AI solutions  | BRK276
SharePoint content management reimagined with Copilot  | BRK279
 Unlock smart collaboration with Microsoft Teams  | BRK280
  
 Revolutionizing Employee Experience with AI  | BRK283 
 The Future of Power Platform: Intelligent Apps  | BRK171
 
From Copilot to code-first: the power of Microsoft Fabric and AI  | THR618
Bring on-device ML to enterprise apps with Windows Copilot Library  | BRK303
Copilot+ PCs: Your new superpower  | THR650
Mastering custom plugins in Microsoft Security Copilot  | THR653
 Build real-time collab experiences with Fluid and Copilot  | LAB440
 Empowering neurodivergent employees with Copilot  | BRK297

Transcript

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (00:18)
Welcome to the Copolit Connection.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (00:22)
We're here to share with you all the news, insights and capabilities of the Microsoft Co-pilot ecosystem from across the entire Microsoft stack. I'm Zoe Wilson and I'm an Executive Avanade in our modern work business, an MVP for M365, a regional director and Beaver Explorer.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (00:41)
I'm Kevin MacDonald. I'm also at Avanade and I'm the co-pilot and strategy lead as well as being an MVP and Viva Explorer. And we'll be releasing episodes as podcasts on YouTube with insights from across the community and Microsoft on different areas of co-pilot, what they are, the impact they can make to you and your organization, what you need to do to prepare for them or even how you can start implementing now. And in fact, we may even occasionally touch on how to extend them.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (01:11)
So this week, we thought we'd talk about some of the new commercial copilot updates, as well as take a bit of a look into what's happening at Ignite now that the session catalog's been published.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (01:23)
And if we look a little distracted and put off, we've just changed platform and it is completely throwing me on how things work, which is why the the intro music did cut off a little bit briefly there. And I keep looking slightly perplexed for those who looking on video. So hopefully the rest of this should run a little bit more smoother and hopefully smoother than Copilot's been this week. But let's not comment too far on that before we get in trouble.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (01:31)
Hahaha

So commercial copilot updates, Kev. What news have we got for everyone?

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (01:55)
Well, I think this is really quite exciting. kind of came through slightly out of the blue and slightly confusing, but they released a blog out, when was it, on the 1st of October. And I think this really is the first time we've seen that input from Mustafa Suleyman and details there. So it's been fascinating seeing that come through as well. Let's see, that as big as it's going to get? Yes.

And Zoe, immediately jumped onto something around the title there.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (02:28)
Yeah, so I know that we've talked before about some of the naming strategies or naming approaches at Microsoft. when this was sent to me, it was by someone else actually who I've laughed about the naming strategy with. And the first thing that I noticed was Co-Pilot Labs, not to be confused with Co-Pilot Lab, which exists in the enterprise space.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (02:34)
You

occasionally mentioned.

So what do mean these are different things?

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (02:59)
completely different things. for those of you listening who aren't aware, Copilot Lab in Microsoft 365 Copilot is a way to find prompts and will be a way to share prompts and publish prompts with other people. What is Copilot Labs in the commercial space, Kevin?

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (03:19)
So the first feature available in Copilot Labs is Think Deeper. No, no, I shouldn't just read this out on there, but it's kind of for those... interesting they said available to Copilot Pro users and it's that early access to things and they've kind of talked about two here. One is Think Deeper and the other is Copilot Vision. Within that, I'm being very cautious about what I mention here and pausing slightly on there.

But I think we can take the think deeper as being something really interesting that has kind of come out the 401 as the new chat GPT model that's got that capability of reasoning over information. And that's going to be one of the things in the Copilot lab. And I'm stuttering because I'm just thinking we should also include in the show notes a link to Abram Jackson. Found this.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (04:14)
I was just about to mention that link that you sent me.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (04:19)
But was interesting because he said there he didn't have Copilot Pro, but he seemed to have access to this Think Deeper capability. And that's going to be the way you can kind of drill in and reason over things within there, which I'm kind of fascinated to see how people get to this because it's you've also got to be very specific around how you use it. And considering they're bringing this to the commercial market.

I feel this is something that needs quite a bit of training and support and detail to understand why you would do this versus some other things. I'm intrigued by this. I'm going to be honest here. I don't quite get this reasoning model and when you would use it, when it works and things like that. I haven't dug into it massively. I can understand where it is interesting, but I don't quite get the distinction around when this think deeper, ability to reason through things.

when you would use it. And I don't know if I want to know. I want Copilot to work it out for me. So it's going to be intriguing to see how this evolves as well.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (05:28)
Yeah, it's definitely going to be interesting, isn't it? And I think it's really interesting that you think this will take a lot of support for people who are maybe not in the enterprise space so much as that consumer space for them to be able to understand how to use this stuff. I do wonder if that's just because we're still relatively early on this whole AI-powered transformation.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (05:49)
Mm.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (05:58)
And as all of these products start to become more sophisticated and more intelligent, and as we start to see more agents that are able to do things for us and potentially work together and hand information off and things like that, what are the hopes that we see is that it becomes more more intuitive to the point where those who are maybe not as technically literate are able to actually get value out of it without requiring a lot of handholding.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (05:59)
Yeah.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (06:26)
I know we see a lot of need for adoption support in the enterprise space, but it'll really interesting to see what that looks like from a consumer perspective.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (06:33)
Yeah, I absolutely agree. So definitely keen to see this evolve. I guess it's because this morning I had to explain to someone on a client call what a hallucination was. you're kind of, I thought everyone knew this now and, you know, they're not AI connected. And it was me that was in the wrong of kind of making that assumption from there. But it's that reality of where people are as well. And the thought of having to say,

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (06:44)
Hahaha

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (06:58)
Yeah, the way you ask things has got to be different between these two. So you'll go here if you want to reason here, if you just want to ask a question. So I'm kind of intrigued.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (07:06)
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I think sometimes that we, we and people in worlds like us, we, you know, we need that reminder from people who are not in this tech bubble that we're in. You know, we, I think sometimes it, yeah, I think it's good to get a bit of a reality check because we live and breathe this stuff. You know, we do it for our jobs. We're interested in it from the perspective of the tech community and the stuff that we do as MVPs. But for a lot of people, it's just, it's on the periphery.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (07:17)
Yeah. Normal people.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The bit, the other bit of Copilot Labs, I'm going to switch around slightly the order, maybe we show things in a sec, but that was mentioned in this in that same article was around Copilot Vision. And this I found far more intriguing and useful on there. Now, do you think, I think we're going to play the video and then we'll explain it a bit afterwards, because it does have voice. So for those...

Just listening. Don't worry, you won't miss out too much on there, but you'll be able to go back and watch this. We'll share the video in the show notes so you can go and catch it there as well. But let me share that and play the video and see what we

So what did you think of that,

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (08:59)
I think it's super interesting, both in terms of what Co-Pilot could potentially do now. And actually, I mean, I've not tested this yet, just to be completely transparent, but I know people who have, and I know you've played around with it a little bit, haven't you, and had some fun with it.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (09:18)
I've played around with the new copilot, sorry, with the new copilot, not the copilot vision. So we'll play that video in a sec. But the the vision piece, that ability for you to recognise images and things, I'm fascinated to see. I know we were talking about whether we should go for a copilot pro license. And I'm like, I don't know if I can justify paying that. I might get it for a month to play around with, but it's intriguing.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (09:24)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so I can, so I've not played with it yet, so I can still get a free trial for it. So I'm considering getting the trial and just playing around. But there was part of me wondering if it was worth just waiting a little bit and seeing if anything else new drops into it. But you can start to see with the combination of this and with the voice stuff, just how much more powerful it will start to become as a virtual assistant and not just in the work context that we normally talk about, but in your personal life as well.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (09:56)
Yeah.

Well, I've actually to what I might play the second video and then let's let's talk about that because because this is something I have been using within there, especially around the kitchen and dinner table with the kids to answer those really stupid questions that only kids seem to come up with kids and clients possibly. So let me just share my screen and we'll play that video now.

So I think we're going to pretend that we just watched that live and we've just stopped it and in no way did my machine go wrong there Zoe. What did you think of that one?

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (11:28)
So again, I think it's just another powerful example of how Co-Pilot is going to be able to help you in a new and different way. And I really liked the conversational approach. I can see people using this when they're on the move. Imagine being able to have that kind of conversation in your car.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (11:49)
Yeah, that's another interesting thing we could talk about in a sec. But yeah, I've been using this quite a bit, as I mentioned just before there at the dinner table and kind of answering questions to the kids. We often used to ask Alexa, you kind of you can ask that one, it's that one shot, ask a question, you get an answer back. Maybe you ask another one, but it's not part of a conversation. But the fluidity of it is just so natural. And the voices, the kind of intonation, the way it speaks is just so natural on there.

My only grumble so far is, and it's kind of nice you can do this, you can interrupt it. So if it's talking too much and say, yeah, yeah, what about this? And it doesn't get upset. Well, at least not until Skynet takes over. My problem is that if people are talking in the background or the kids just don't shut up, then that interrupts it as well. So I'd love to see a little bit more intelligence, I think, in the interruptions that it doesn't just hear voice, it doesn't just hear noise, it actually reacts to what you're saying.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (12:32)
Hahaha

Yeah, so almost like a stop command, something specific that you could say to get it to stop that bit and then give it another question rather than it just stopping because there's general hubbub in the background.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (12:58)
I... No, I'd like it to be listening to me. I haven't even thought about technology. I'd like it listen.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (13:04)
Well, he's listening to the whole room though, isn't he?

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (13:08)
it should understand when I'm trying to talk to it and interrupt it versus telling the kids shut up, sit down. Just as a random example on that and then true story.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (13:10)
Yeah.

So when SkyNet takes over and you've been telling the AI to sit down and shut up.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (13:23)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that maybe that will help train it to that, but probably not. But no, it is it is very natural and I'm really been really impressed by I love the design of it as well. It looks good. It doesn't you know, when Cape Alec came out, it was a box and it looked nice. I thought I liked some of the logos, but this is really beautiful to use. It's added that extra panache to it. So, yeah, really intriguing.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (13:27)
Hahaha

and would you, would you like to, would you like to see any of, any of these kind of features flip over into the enterprise world? Or do you, do you, that was quite, quite definite. Yeah. I was going to say, would you want, would you want the way it works with you to be different depending on whether it's personal life or work life?

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (13:55)
Yes, quicker the better.

that's a good one. I think there are differences, in there, but I think it's been kind of interesting speaking with a few clients that, looking at some of the prompts that people are doing and they're a lot shorter, they're a lot briefer within there. And I wouldn't always want that conversation. I think I'd be probably a little bit ruder to it from work. I'm thinking about it a little bit more.

Less about me, more about other people is if I'm sat in the office and some, let's not kick off the explicit filter, someone is sat next to me talking to their co-pilot nonstop. I'm not going to be happy with that. So we need to balance some of that a little bit, but I think it'd be very interesting. I think it's very interesting. They're pushing that voice capability. If we look at things like Cortana and Lexa, they never really took off in a corporate situation because people weren't willing to do that.

Will this change things? Will the natural ability of this actually integrate it a lot more? Could it, you know, I sit most time here in this office with no one else here. Could that always be on next to me so I can kind of ask it questions and have it interact while I'm doing things? Maybe. Interesting.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (15:19)
Yeah, interesting, interesting. All right, so how about Microsoft Ignite? The session catalog went live this week.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (15:29)
It did. It did. And I in no way only had a look through about five minutes before we started recording so we could get this list together. I did flick through a little bit and I did do a search just to see how many copilot items are in there. I know you did the same. We had some intriguing numbers come up on that. And I think out of 577 sessions, there were 223

ones that said copilot in the title. A little trick for anyone who wants to look at everything. If you set page size equals in the URL, you can actually get everything to come back in one. And I found this 437 mentions of copilot in the title or in the initial summary on there. So I think it's fair to say AI and copilot might be quite a popular topic that's going to be coming up in Ignite.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (16:24)
Yeah, there was some other interesting stuff as well when we looked at the numbers and how many sessions were in each solutionary track. So out of that 577 sessions, and actually before we do the numbers, I think for those listening, it's just really important to recognize that at this Ignite, there's actually multiple events running underneath the Ignite umbrella. So we've got the technical track.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (16:36)
Mmm.

That's true. That's true.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (16:54)
which is like the typical Ignite. We've got the partner track, which is more aligned to the Inspire conference that used to happen in person in July. And then there's a CIO track as well, although I don't think I've any, I think the CIO sessions are not in the agenda yet. So we've got 577 sessions, 42 agent sessions. One of the things that I thought was really interesting,

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (17:11)
Hmm.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (17:22)
when I had a look through was there didn't seem to be a huge number of sessions talking about dynamics.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (17:30)
You're trying to get me to get myself in trouble by going, yeah, who cares about dynamics these days? But no, no, I wouldn't say things like that on there. Yeah, I think that's intriguing. But I think certainly some of the sessions that I dug into were about dynamics. And obviously there's a lot around Copilot Studio, and that's got a lot of links back to the kind of dynamics world. But I think very interesting that it's not mentioning that specifically. It's not that top level. And I know there's...

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (17:58)
Yeah

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (18:00)
Well, you know, they don't have the BizApps conference anymore, do they? But there are other events that are a bit more BizApps focused, but even too. So, it's surprising.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (18:07)
Yeah, but even in the BizApps track, think the majority of them were around Power Platform, Co-Pilot Studio, that kind of thing, with probably only about 20 % of them actually being Core Dynamics, which I think just shows that kind of in focus, which is interesting really. What were some of the other key topics that you...

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (18:17)
Yeah. Yeah.

But just quickly for you, I wonder, might do a quick search now, how many of them say SharePoint? You know, I kind of feel that Dynamics is probably that similar sort of thing, 17 sessions actually, more than I thought. Damn, that ruins that theory. But I think in the way that SharePoint is kind of that content manager powering things underneath, it's that digital core of content, similar to Dynamics, it's there, it's powering things away.

It's what you're doing with that data and that information that's key rather than that system itself right now. So I would say having mocked Dynamics at beginning, it's still vitally important to be able to get those things together and flow in there. It's not disappearing. It's just that there's a different focus right now.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (19:15)
Hmm.

Yeah, I think that's fair to say. And talking of focus, what were some of the other key topic areas?

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (19:30)
One thing I noticed is they have the keynote. Obviously, Satchar's, I assume, is there. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they've said he will be there in person doing the keynote. But alongside him is Charlie Bell, who looks after the security side of things. And I know security is a massive focus for Microsoft at the moment. They're trying to bring back that perception that they are secure way of working. And the fact they're bringing Charlie into that keynote, he's the second name down in there.

That says a lot to me that that is a really important point from it.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (20:03)
Yeah, I mean, for anyone who's listening, who works in the partner space, it's probably not a surprise because we know that for this year for Microsoft, security is one of their key objectives, along with copilot on every device and a few other things. So it's not surprising. And actually, I think it just demonstrates how fundamentally important security is for the widespread adoption of all of this AI stuff that Microsoft are pushing.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (20:09)
You

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think the other thing caught my attention, you know, we touched on agents there, mentioned a lot with this kind of rename of extensibility and plugins all being under this big agent banner of Salesforce talking about their agents. That wasn't surprising. What caught my eye going through the sessions a bit more is the number of times it mentioned multi-agent. And I think that's going to be a fantastic view of things. It's not just...

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (20:54)
Hmm.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (20:58)
The power of the agency is not in that individual item. It's how it talks to others. How do you connect those worlds together? How do you bring all these different kind of atomic needs into a wider program of work? So there's a few sessions that I think will cover that, both from, well, I'm hoping from a technology point of view, how to build it, but also how do you think about that? How do you build out your plan and your strategies around that as well? So that multi-agent view will be very interesting to keep an eye on too.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (21:28)
Yeah, absolutely. I did see a few sessions as well talking about some of the on-device AI and co-pilot PCs and some of the new innovations that are coming in that space. So I think that's going to be quite an interesting space to watch because the AI PCs, the ones that offload the AI processing locally, is a fairly new category of

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (21:35)
Mmm.

Mmm.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (21:54)
consumer device really. So I think again, we're probably just at the beginning of what that will allow us to do.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (22:02)
Yeah, and I know Paul Bullock that we work with, MVP, we chat to quite a bit. He's got one of those co-pilot plus PCs and he's looking to kind of explore how he can build out some of those offerings, how you can develop. And certainly there'll be a lot of sessions there for him. But I think it's that he's the foundation, he's the capability. How can we actually do things with that? I think we're probably looking a year.

18 months away from the reality of a lot of that and it actually landing and working well. all all the 5.3 staff, the small language models all play into that story. And I don't I don't think it's something that the the other big vendors are focusing on. I there's been talk about what's open AI having their own chip and things like that on there. But this this does feel like another area where Microsoft could see a bit of a march, possibly Apple as well.

I touched on earlier talking at the dinner table and I'm not going to mention its name because it will trigger off my phone. But I've been playing around with Apple intelligence and the kind of natural language of that has been really quite powerful. I'm loving the way it summarizes some of the notifications on there. So it feels like they're. can it can be amusing, I think once I can talk about without getting in trouble, but yes, it's it's.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (23:16)
Also a little bit amusing as well in some instances.

Hahaha

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (23:27)
Being quite funny, I she said to a few people some of those summaries that have come through and generally spot on as well in terms of how it summarises it. I think maybe that Apple is I haven't tried it on my Mac Mini, I'd love to hear from anyone who's tried Apple Intelligence on the Mac as well. But that kind of bringing together of that local plus clouds, I think that's going to be another another area that we see things move ahead in as well.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (23:34)
Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. So we did pull together a few of the sessions that we thought looked particularly interesting and maybe worth you taking a look at and adding to your session builder when that finally goes live.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (24:13)
Yeah, no, actually, you've made a point there, and I think that's a really important one that right now, yes, you can see the session catalogue, but you can't tick your favourites, even if you have registered, whether in person or remote, you can't start adding those to your catalogue right now. So you could see everything. Apparently, you can still write things down on a piece of paper or an Excel that is allowed, but you can't go through and put these. So what we thought we'd do is to share that.

and actually bring that forward. And I'm just getting the right one and give you some of the codes. So you'll see from these from these codes, which I hope to get to come up any second now that you can search for those. So things like BK 170, etc, etc. If you put that into the session catalog, you can very easily get to those.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (25:08)
Okay, so agents, I'll let you talk about this one, Kevin.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (25:13)
Yep, I have been the quick side tip. You may notice I occasionally deviate. I've been watching Slow Horses at the moment. This is nothing to do with secret agents. This is very much about autonomous uses of gen AI within there. And there's a couple of great labs going on there about building extending agents with Copilot Studio. Was that the one with Dan Laskovitz and April Dunham? I probably should have had that sheet next to me.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (25:41)
No, that is... Hang on.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (25:45)
We'll check that in a sec on there, but there's there's various ones on there. I do know that the second one we've got on here, Code First Development Workshop for Copilot Agents, that is a friend of the show and friend of mine, Gary Trinder, is involved in that with someone else who's, again, I've forgotten now, but I Gary's in there. So there's a set of labs for those only for those who are in person at Ignite in Chicago.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (25:47)
Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (26:13)
And also another one around declarative agents, building agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot. And what I found interesting with these is there's that build with Copilot Studio, that low code story, but then this phrase, which I've seen crop up in a few of the different sessions around code first as well, that it seems to this new name that's appeared for pro code within there. So it'd be interesting to go there. it says code first.

What do you do afterwards? Is that beer afterwards? I don't know.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (26:44)
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it? Cause we've, think we've seen this, like this paradigm shift towards low code over the past few years. it, is it that, you know, some of the complexity of the things that you need to think around, that you need to build around the, you know, the, API call to the LLM is all of those other things. Are we back to like the pro code realm where we actually need to approach it with.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (26:56)
Mm.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (27:12)
at a greater level of complexity or something like that. don't, mean, I'm not a developer, so I'm probably the worst person to be talking about this, but, that, that, so that first session, that was April and Dan, by the way, the, build and extend with Co-pilot Studio.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (27:24)
It was. It wasn't that one. Cool. So I think what I like is that they've got those two lamps. There's going to be two ways of doing this. And I know there's various sessions on what you should use when, but it gives options. And to me, that's the most important thing. It did feel at one point that Copilot Studio was almost being pushed as the only way of extending and the only way of building these things. This is saying, no, there's alternatives that you can bring to this, which is great.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (27:52)
Yeah, I mean, there was a really interesting video that I saw on LinkedIn yesterday, which was showing how to use a prompt to build a declarative copilot. But then when you start to look at the custom engine copilot, that's definitely kind of the pro-code route, isn't it? So again, I think it's just like levels of complexity.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (28:03)
yes, yeah, yeah.

Yes, yeah, probably is. Yeah, I don't know whether you build a copilot and copilot studio, whether that's a conversation for another time before I go off on one too much thinking about that. What I did like was these other two near the bottom here. So one, reinventing business processes with autonomous agents. I think that's going to be a very big field, that autonomous, that process side of things. I think we're going to see that automation being a

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (28:26)
Hahaha

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (28:43)
a very interesting topic within there, how you can bring that AI into those business side of things as well. And then a nice example of that of smarter workflows with ServiceNow, now assist, that's a lot of nows in there, and copilot integration, which kind of touches a little bit on that custom copilot integration. ServiceNow have their own assistant that can be in there, almost a custom copilot in its own.

And what Microsoft's saying is you can bring that into your own copilot worlds as well. So it's it's one of the things I enjoy about Microsoft for years and years. It was always that kind of ability with Windows that you could expand your PC. You weren't just stuck with that ecosystem. You could connect to other things. We've seen it with Teams even more so. And that's continuing here. It's not saying you have to move everything over to

co-pilot, you can still get the benefit of things like ServiceNow, like Salesforce, like Workday and their own AI capabilities all within that kind of single experience on there. So we'll definitely be well, I about to say we'll definitely be watching that one. We should double check. I see that's odfp974. So I'm hoping that's not just an in-person one. We'll double check that and make sure we're clear on that in the show notes around what's in person and what you'll be able to watch remotely.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (30:04)
Yeah, I would just add as well that for those who are listening rather than watching, we will include all of the session codes in the show notes as well. I know those of you watching can see them on the screen, but we'll make sure that you've got those to find these sessions.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (30:19)
Yeah, absolutely. So should we jump across to the next set of ones? look, the morph did work nicely there to make it look a bit prettier for those watching on video. There was a few around, I've called it M365 and Copilot. It's kind of those related to modern work side of things on there. Did any of these particularly jump out at you, Zoe?

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (30:45)
Yeah, so the SharePoint Content Management one, I re-imagine with Copilot, that's the Jeff Teaper session. I imagine that's going to be a really great session. When you look at the session description, you know, he talks about SharePoint OneDrive, SharePoint Advanced Management. So I'm hoping that we see some of these really nice content services, evolutions coming through. And we'll probably see some of that in the keynote, but I think you always get a little bit more meat on the bone when you actually go to the sessions with the product group leaders.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (31:15)
Yeah, absolutely. And I know we said we've just finished talking about agents, but hopefully we'll see some SharePoint agents brought up there as well.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (31:24)
Yeah, the other one, I know you found this in the catalog, but the other one that I think is really interesting is that second one in this list, which is the Microsoft 365 Co-Pilot advantages. How does it compare with other AI solutions? And I feel like it will be really interesting to actually see the Microsoft perspective on this.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (31:43)
Yeah, it wasn't quite clear from the the session description on exactly. Yeah, are they going to be comparing Gemini and Einstein with M365 copilot? I'm kind of hoping so that it will go to that sort of level of detail on there, or whether it's going to be talking about building yourself versus bringing other ones. I mean, it does say

highlighting how it stands out from other AI offerings in the market within there. And I'm really hoping for this one, this is something that can be used for people who are still considering M365 Copilot, not sure which to use that it will give that added benefit it brings. And it was with Seth Patton as well, who's quite a big name to be included on that session. This isn't a small kind of side someone.

quickly scribbling things together on there. This is putting a big name behind that, which I think will be intriguing.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (32:46)
Yeah, that'll definitely be interesting.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (32:49)
I think the other one there was grounding M365 Copilot in your business knowledge. What am I? Things I truly love are graph connectors where you can bring in all that outside information. I know there has been a message center update that there's going to be a few more of the canned ones. I think ServiceNow Knowledge and... what's that thing called? Zendesk.

and Zoom was listed in there. So you'll able to more easily connect to that other information, throw that in with the fact that every e-licensed organisation has 50 million index items from that. I definitely recommend people to take a look at that one.

I'd also recommend people to use copilots for when they're copying and pasting and especially to put things in order because otherwise, I think Zoe is smiling and has just noticed this as well, you end up duplicating the same thing twice in a slightly different list. So BRK 280.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (33:50)
Yeah, it's all right, Kevin. I noticed this as soon as you went onto the slide. I was smiling because you just spotted it.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (33:55)
Hahaha!

So yeah, this was unlocking smart collaboration with Microsoft Teams. I'm hoping you picked this one because I can't remember what this one was now.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (34:09)
I can't remember either. We looked at so many sessions, didn't we, in the hour before we started recording. What do we have on the next slide?

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (34:21)
So just had a quick look at this one. This is about investments in your security, simplicity and flexibility of the future with Teams. So it's going to have live demo of Teams, Copilot and Microsoft Places bringing things together. And it is Ilja... I see I've read his name a lot, but can't say Ilja Buchstein, I think it is, who I know has done a lot with Teams devices. So I'm sure there will be plenty in there about bringing things together as well. So it's not just going to be...

collaboration in the SharePoint sense. imagine talking and voice will play into that too.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (34:53)
Yeah, it's interesting as well because they've got the places bit in there. you know, do you, this is pure speculation. I've got no insight into any of this, but do you, do you see a scenario where we, where an organization has places configured and people are using it, you could actually query it with Co-Pilot. So I could ask Co-Pilot if you're going to be in the office and where you're sat and use it to book a desk for me and that kind of thing.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (35:12)
Yes.

Yes, I think is the answer. I was thinking more of being of kind of organizers being able to work out, know, do we have enough desks? What are the bad days? What's the kind of common patterns and having that natural language way of talking through some of that data as well, I think would be very interesting. let's be honest, any Microsoft product is going to have copilot in there if it doesn't already. So, yes, I think is the answer to that one. But definitely a thought.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (35:30)
Yeah.

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, they definitely need to talk to us to get the ideas for the products, I think, don't they? Okay, so what do we have on the other slide? So I want to call out one actually, which I think will be fantastic, which is a little bit different from some of the other sessions. And that's the bottom one on this list, empowering neurodivergent employees with Co-Pilot. And this is a bit of a

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (35:49)
Hahaha

Yeah.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (36:07)
passionate topic of mine anyway, but Jenny Lee Flurry from Microsoft, who's the chief accessibility officer, is on the panel. Jenny's deaf and she is absolutely incredible because I think we both saw her present at Future Decoded in London a few years ago where she did the keynote. And it was just so incredible listening to her talk about how she's overcome, how she, her hearing and...

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (36:24)
Mm-hmm.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (36:35)
the adaptations and things like that and the role that she plays in making sure that the technology that Microsoft are producing is inclusive. So that will be a really great session, I think.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (36:45)
Yeah, really, really interesting that one. And also the fact they've got some of the UK Home Office as well. So for those from the UK feeling bringing a bit of it home to Chicago as well. So it's not just talking theories, talking about the reality of what it's meant to organisations as well. I know those those sessions often go down well. So, yeah, really interesting that one. Jumping back to the top of the list, this one caught my attention.

It's got Fabric in there, it's got AI, it's got Copilot, but it was actually that to code first. So the sessions THR 618, so one of theater sessions from Copilot to Code First, the power of Microsoft Fabric and AI, and it of seemed to be suggesting it was more about the development side and bringing that data together with coding as well, which is really interesting. So I don't know massive amounts more about that, but it caught my eye as well.

And then we've got a couple more. touched on earlier the Copilot plus PC side. So there was a bring on device ML, I'm hoping is machine learning, to enterprise apps with the Windows Copilot library and also Copilot plus PCs, your new superpower. So I think there were a few other sessions, those around that kind of on device side of things that was really interesting, but those ones particularly caught my

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (38:07)
Yeah, and there's a few others on the agenda as well. There were quite a few security sessions as well. different Microsoft security copilot. Interesting that they're still calling it custom plugins here. I don't know if we'll see that terminology change or if they'll continue to be plugins in that security copilot context.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (38:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And then the last one, I've just noticed this is a lab, so only those lucky people like yourself who are going will be able to go to this, but build real time collab experiences with Fluid and Copilot. So for people who don't know, Fluid is the kind of technology that's used by Loop to bring that real time updates from things. bringing that in with Copilot, that's intriguing.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (38:56)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's used for like the collaborative sharing experiences as well, isn't it, in Teams. So yeah, it'd be interesting to see what they do with that one.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (39:03)
Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So

I have to say, I'm quite glad I'm not at Ignite because choosing which those labs I'd find time to go to would be virtually impossible.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (39:16)
Yeah, well, choosing which of the sessions and you know who to network with, who to speak to. Yeah, and talking of in-person.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (39:20)
Yeah.

and making time for deep pan pizzas as well. All the high important things.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (39:30)
deep, well you've got, know, if you're going to, if you're going all the way to Chicago, you've got to make time for the Chicago delicacies. Yeah. So talking of events, we've got another event coming up in the next week, haven't we Kev? Where are we going?

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (39:39)
Exactly.

I forgot for a minute that. It's like what? yes, yes we are off to Aberdeen for the Scottish Summit.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (39:51)
It's not a trick question by the way.

Yeah, and for those of you who are coming to Scottish Summit, we are hosting a very special panel as the Co-Pilot Connection, which is called Connecting the Co-Pilot. And we've got a number of special guests who'll be joining us. I think it's about 90 minutes, the session, isn't it? Which gives lots of time for Q &A, lots of time for you all to bring your hard questions. And I'm really excited about the guests that we've got joining us on stage.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (40:15)
It is, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So we've got the.

There's no words to describe the magic that is Don Asaka from there, who brings so much kind of copine extensibility magic from it. Hopefully we can get it to talk about some of our side hustles. We can sneak some of those into there, but there'll be plenty of chance to get some questions from there as well.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (40:52)
Yeah, and then we're also joined by Chris Huntingford, Jose Pinos and Sarah Fenner. So a really nice mix of skills and experiences and focus areas. yeah, I just I think it's going to be a great discussion. And you've got another session, haven't you? What else are you talking about?

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (41:13)
I do. I've got a really interesting session. Why I was partly late from speaking to Zoe and recording today was speaking with Simon Owen, because we're doing a joint session on using a center for enablement to help with your co-pilot strategy. thinking not just about center of excellence where you've kind of got all that techie good stuff there, but how you can actually enable people.

And he's come from it from that power platform perspective. He's spoken this a while, but really now we're talking about what this means to the copilot and especially copilot extensibility and agents from there as well. So really looking forward to that.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (41:51)
Yeah so yeah it will be absolutely brilliant and we do have a co-pilot connection competition that will be running for those who are there in person. We'll be sharing details of that on social over the next couple of days so if you are going Scottish Summit we can announce it now if you like.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (42:09)
Do we want to announce it now? We probably should have talked about this before, I think we should. I was just getting very distracted trying to find the picture. Let me just bring it up. So I think it's worth saying we're going to have a nice video. mean, spending far too long going through all the clips and finding our fun videos and even some of the outtakes from there to bring up. So you will find us.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (42:14)
If you've got the social card ready, let's announce it.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (42:39)
you will find our faces appearing around, smiling and dancing around to a certain degree. So we thought as part of that, we want people to scan the QR code that will be on the video and get a photo next to it within there and then share it on the socials. I'm sure I've missed something along there that Zoe will catch me in a sec, but we want people to do those things. So scan the QR code, share it to socials, photo of you next that sign.

And not only will you get the joy of being able to share things, but we're also putting a competition in for it as well. And there is the chance to win some Lego because what is a conference if you're not sharing Lego from there as well? So we've got some lovely they're not cacti. What's the lovely word? Begin with D from it's own. I'm suddenly going to forget anyway. They're the mini cactus. Yes, yeah.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (43:33)
Little Lego plants.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (43:37)
And I know these are good. These are so good. I better not tell this story because my son listens to it. remind me if you bump into me in Scottish Summit, ask why I don't have this Lego set and my son does on there. So you can ask that question as well.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (43:44)
Hahaha

Brilliant.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (43:58)
But it is Friday afternoon and we do have a few more things to do, so we should probably wrap up now.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (44:04)
Yes, that sounds like a plan. Let's get the weekend started and have some time to get ready for the long trip to Aberdeen next week.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (44:13)
Absolutely. And if you are listening to us on your way to Aberdeen, please tweet about it, put it out on LinkedIn, share with your friends. And if you're listening to us for the first time, don't forget to subscribe. on YouTube, we're on all your favourite podcasts app, on X, LinkedIn. We're not on Facebook, but we decided that was a bit weird. But generally we're all over the place. So please hunt us down, subscribe and ask other people to as well. And if you fancy giving us a review in your favourite podcast app.

would always go down well as well.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (44:45)
Brilliant. So thank you very much for listening and we look forward to talking to you more soon.

Kevin McDonnell | @kevmcdonk (44:52)
Thanks very much. Bye bye.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (44:53)
Thank you. Bye bye.