Ep 21 - Agents, AI Models and more pre-Ignite updates

In this episode of Copilot Connection, hosts Zoe and Kevin discuss the latest developments in the Copilot space, share insights from recent events like Scottish Summit and anticipate upcoming announcements from Ignite. They explore the significance of agents in the AI landscape, the challenges of governance, and the evolution of AI models. Hopefully, they managed to dodge any NDA content this close to Ignite...

Takeaways

• Excitement builds ahead of the Ignite conference.
• Bluesky offers a refreshing social media experience.
• The Copilot Fireside Chat will provide live insights post-Ignite.
• Anticipation for new agent announcements is high.
• Governance is a critical consideration for AI agents.
• New AI models are being tailored for specific industries.
• Understanding the hype cycle is essential for AI adoption.
• Strategic implementation is key to realizing AI's potential.

(Auto generated by Riverside.FM)

Useful links:

We’re on Bluesky! Copilot Connection 

Scottish Summit 2024 Closing Keynote With Dona Sarkar

Building a Centre For Enablement for your Copilot Strategy - Kevin & Simon

Copilot Fireside Chat

AGENTS

Earth copilot

Microsoft Viva community call (November 2024): New Employee Experience Announcements at Ignite 2024 | Microsoft Community Hub

Description of agents https://www.linkedin.com/posts/abramj_the-agentic-scope-of-work-ugcPost-7259233983639519234-0Rbh?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios

ADAPTED MODELS

Adapted AI models 

 Is Microsoft building their own model?

COPILOT UPDATES

Web page summary is back

Multi tenant orgs 

Reflecting on a year of copilot

Gartner Hype Cycle

Transcript

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (00:23)
Welcome to the Copilot Connection.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (00:27)
We're 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 a Teams and Co-Pilot MVP, regional director, a Viva explorer, and I work at Avanade in our global modern work business.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (00:47)
And I'm Kevin MacDonald, I'm an MVP, Viva Explorer and co-pilot strategy and modern workplace AI leader Avanade. Now we'll be releasing episodes as podcasts and on YouTube with insights from experts from the community and Microsoft on what the different areas of co-pilot are, the impact they can make to you and your organization and what you need to do to prepare for them or start implementing now and even how you can extend them.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (01:15)
So this week we're catching up immediately ahead of Ignite actually. I'm sitting in a hotel room in Chicago. It's like quarter past seven in the morning.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (01:26)
We should apologize because I Moraine will say something around the sound. We've had some fun and games with that.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (01:31)
Yeah, so sorry if anyone's listening and my mic quality isn't the best, but let's just say I've had a fun couple of days trying to get all of the tech that I brought actually working. So we're catching up ahead of Ignite. We're going to try not to share any NDA news, but there's lots of exciting things we can share with you.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (01:52)
Yeah, absolutely. I think before we get onto that and you touched on it slightly there, we should talk about some of the new ways that we're sharing and things as well, which is Blue Sky. So it is the new trendy place to be, I'm told. And somehow we're on there as well. So if you are, if you have made that hop over from X, whether it's permanent or just.

exploring other ones, do go and follow us at CopilotConnection.com on Blue Sky. We're trying to share things there. It's been quite nice. I noticed this last night. We've been included in a starter pack for artificial intelligence in the workplace, which is lovely to see. For those who haven't seen the starter packs, it's a way to kind of get a load of people to follow all in one place, which is very nice on there. And I'm also working on something. Apparently you can create custom feeds. So I'm looking to create a Copilot Connection feed.

for all those who are interested in that. So give us a follow and give us a shout on there.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (02:54)
What's your experience so far, Kevin, of Blue Sky? Obviously, I'm asking this as someone who's using it and has my own opinion, but what's your opinion so far?

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (03:04)
I'm absolutely loving it. feels like it feels like the old Twitter. And I love the fact I post and I'm getting all sorts of people, people that I know, but also people I don't know. And they're applying nice things and not just being rude on their end. It feels like engagement. I post I've been posting things on different areas. You know, of course, Twitter, LinkedIn, as well as Blue Sky.

And I'm enjoying the chat on Blue Sky most of the moment. And I would say that only over the last week to two weeks when there's been this sudden explosion, everyone's very active in there. So I hope it continues to carry on like that. I know it's not all been as interesting. I'm going to call him out and hope I don't get him in trouble. But Leon Armstrong, when he went, we went on there and he put it, I think he mentioned Twitter and he put an AI picture.

and know a lot of people roasting him for it. was like, Whoa, OK, there are still some trolls here, it seems. But generally, I haven't seen it. So I think it's been really, really engaging, really nice place to be. So having fun with it.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (04:03)
Hahaha!

Yeah, and you know what's just, it's really nice when you open the app and the content that you see is from people that you follow and things that you're interested in instead of stuff that is just not even at all relevant to you and has a political slant and is for a completely different part of the world. That's really refreshing.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (04:18)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. And with Twitter, I always used to use the following feed within there, but still wouldn't get things. I'd know people were posting things and they wouldn't show up. There was now I'm seeing them as like, I haven't heard from them. This is nice. So, yeah, it's it's a really engaging. I will still still keep my Twitter account. I'm not planning to get rid of it, but I blue sky is becoming the place that I go to first. Definitely.

been good.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (04:58)
Okay, so other exciting things that we've got to share. know that, what was it? about a month ago now, wasn't it, Kevin? We had a lot of fun at Scottish summits and in particular taking part in Donna Sarka's closing keynote.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (05:16)
That's right. Yeah. And yeah, that was an interesting experience. Not entirely what I was expecting, but we got to act out a co-pilot prompt, didn't we? And all got involved in various degrees. Some of us more molested. I mean, involved than others. Hello, Anna Ines, if you're listening. And Chris Huntingford, I am looking forward to you molesting me at ESPC for this one. For those who haven't seen it, I should probably justify that on there.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (05:39)
Hahaha!

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (05:45)
But basically, Chris was responsible, I. So he was checking everyone and making sure for any dodgy materials coming through after each each of the steps within there. So if you're coming to ESPC, come along to Donna's keynote. She will be replicating it there as well. And if not, we've got the link to the video that we have from two different angles, proper professional photography ish on that one. But it's it's great to watch and.

It's been nice sharing at work. I was had to miss a call the other day, but I was following the chat and someone I don't know actually shared the video, which is really entertaining. Someone I hadn't passed it on to is like, my gosh, it's getting further.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (06:27)
Yeah, mean, I know Donna said that some of her colleagues in the product group were really interested in seeing this as well. And I know it sounds a little bit cheesy, but actually it was a really good way of explaining all of the different steps and all of the things that happen when an end user submits a prompt into that copilot ecosystem of services and things that are running.

So if you want to understand how it works, like Kevin said, either go catch it in person if you're at ESPC because that always just makes it more engaging, I think. But it is on YouTube from Scottish Summit as well.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (07:05)
Yeah, absolutely. And while you're there, go and give my session with Simon Owen a watch, which is up there too. It's a brief interlude when the battery rang out, but well worth a watch on there too. And I think we've we've also got another event coming up, haven't we? Next next week, which is slightly scary.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (07:25)
Yes, so some of you might be familiar with the Teams Fireside Chat, which has been running for quite some time now. It's run by Tom Abuthnot and the folks over at Empowering Cloud. And this is a live interactive session specific to Teams. And we've been asked to host a new version of that, which is the Co-Pilot Fireside Chat. And the very first session will be taking place next Wednesday.

So after Ignite, at a point when we can talk about all of the exciting news and announcements coming out of this week and what that actually means.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (08:03)
Yes, I was just chuckling. Yes. A, that fact that we we can speak freely there, hopefully as well. And I think I was chuckling too much about that. And so if you said this already, but that is live, so it won't be recorded. You'll need to join live to come and join in, which means we can be sort of frank and honest on there without getting into trouble later and answer your questions as truthfully as possible without breaching our NDA before anyone from Microsoft listening and commenting.

on that as well. So yeah, do sign up for that one. It'll be a lot of fun. Right. So Zoe, you're over in Chicago and you're about to go to Ignite. So we've got to try and pull together news when in theory there's not much news. But I think it's been interesting. There's definitely been that I wouldn't say leaks, but we're starting to see kind of announcements come out that are kind of nudging towards the sort of thing that's coming on there, isn't it?

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (09:04)
Yeah, I I think from the marketing moment that Microsoft had in September, I think it's very clear, you know, we've had Co-Pilot, every product group has a Co-Pilot. If you ask someone a question about Co-Pilot, yeah, you get a different answer depending on which person in Microsoft or which technology area a person works with, you ask. The same is about to happen for agents, I think.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (09:19)
At least one.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (09:32)
So, know, suddenly everything's going to be called an agent. We're to have lots of different types of agents. Products are going to have different agents. And I was at the AppPoint Partner event yesterday and Donna described it in a really interesting way, actually, which is, you know, if you think about Co-Pilot like a mobile phone, then an agent is the app that's on the phone.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (09:45)
nice.

Yeah, yeah, I think that works quite nicely. I think and especially I'd say where it goes further than that even because and you can kind of do this with with apps, but those agents can talk to each other as well and connect with each other from there. And I think there's going to be different ways of engaging with those agents as well. I suppose, again, a bit like phones, some things will run in the background and process stuff when you're

not necessarily actively using it. Some will kind of talk and trigger on specific events. You get notifications coming through in other bits. So, yeah, I think that's that's absolutely true.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (10:35)
Yeah.

Yeah, and you know, if you think about all of the apps that are out there, you'll only use the ones that are relevant to you in the same way that we do today with apps on a smartphone. But one of the really interesting considerations is, you know, how do IT departments essentially manage and govern these? Because suddenly, if you think about, you know, this new app that essentially could function as like an insert and all, like, you

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (10:47)
Hmm.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (11:08)
you govern what data it can have access to and where can it send that data? Are there certain types of data that you're not going to let it go anywhere near? Where can it process it? What can it hand it off to? What does that mean? What level of autonomy will you actually give it, depending on the data source? I think there's this whole governance layer that we don't even understand yet.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (11:24)
Mm.

Sorry, I've got to cut you off because I'm chuckling too much. I can tell you've had a lovely partner day with F point there.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (11:43)
No, this wasn't AvePoint. This was Donner. mean, this stuff's too new for some... This stuff is too new. mean, you know, if you think about it, we know the agents are the hot topic. I'm expecting lots of agent announcements this week. And even though AvePoint have a close relationship with Microsoft, the levels of governance, because governance isn't only tooling, is it? It's the processes and the people and the levels of risk.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (11:46)
Okay. It is true.

Hmm.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (12:13)
within an organization and the types of data that they're processing. So we kind of need these agents to into the wild a little bit for us to be able to understand what some of these scenarios might be and what appropriate behavior is going to be for these agents.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (12:17)
Yeah, it's true.

Yeah, no, it's a very good point, much as I'd mock you. And I should say I do like the AvePoint tools and the people there as well. I'm not mocking them, but I can see that front of mind. And I think, to be honest, it's good to hear that, because I think, as you say, we will see these agents come out in the wild. And we've seen time and time again that Microsoft puts stuff out and then governance comes on a little bit later and they'll do a bit and other people will do a bit, which is good in there. So it'll be interesting.

When you come back from ignite be interesting talk about what the partners talking about and what's what's happening on the floor are we seeing the reality of being able to manage these things being a little bit better all the other partners and ISP is filling that gap at all.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (13:15)
Yeah, my expectation is they won't be there yet. I don't think anybody will be there yet in terms of an answer with this stuff, but you know, there will be, I'm assuming that some of the ISVs will work on this over the next year or two and their partners will fill in the gap with services.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (13:36)
Yeah, I agree. I'm going to jump around slightly from the notes, I think, because I think the chat we had there was a bit more interesting than some of the things. But you can see why do we think agents coming out? Microsoft already announced NASA's new Earth agent. So giving access to that data within their power through Microsoft Azure being able to surface those ones. I think this is very much a kind of standalone.

agent in that sense, we're not talking about this being embedded within copilot. And in fact, I don't even think you see the word copilot there, which is always intriguing. I have noticed the word copilot starting to drift away from being in every single sentence apart from the word of copilot at the top. So we're seeing that agent starts to come through. And the the other one I noticed, I think it was Leslie.

who picked this up on the Viva Community Core next week, that they've actually said they're going to have a run through of the employee self-service agent from Microsoft 365 Copilot. That's the only information we have so far on there. But that sounds like another agent that will get announced at Ignite. And hopefully there will be a few sessions that will cover a little bit of that. intriguing to see that.

But what I wanted to jump ahead a little bit was this post that Abram Jackson, Abram Jackson shared. So Abram's the PM for extensibility of copilot, copilot 4M365. Abram, if you're listening, you do need to update your title slightly there. And he shared this post from Kwame Nyanning, who works at EY's, I think it's Sorin or Serin.

which I believe is the design side. And he's put this lovely post on these big PDFs. What can you make that bigger? And talking about where Gen.ai is, we will come to this trough of enlightenment. For those who can't see on the screen, we're showing the version of the Gartner hype cycle there and saying we're moving towards a plateau of productivity for agents. But the slide I particularly liked here, and I think this kind of fits with

some of what you're saying in terms of the agentic scope. So when you're building agents, what is it that you consider that they should do? And I love this, talks about the scope of work. So what is what are the tasks they're actually going to be undertaking on there? What generative capabilities are you talking about using with those? The amount of automation that they take on within that the types of agent by that means, is it going to be predictive, gen AI or a combination of both?

The amount of human interaction, so how much direct user input is required for it to function? Will it be fully autonomous? Will it need people to kind of get involved at certain points? Will they review? Will they need to take action within there? And then, slightly depressingly at the end there, the technical feasibility. Because I think we're definitely at this stage where there's a lot of conversations around agents and is it truly capable of being able to do what it is that people want to do?

And I love this kind of description of that, that when you're thinking about and scoping out some ideas you have, taking these categories and almost planning ahead a little for those would be really powerful.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (16:58)
Yeah, I love this document. We'll make the link available. I'd highly recommend that people spend some time reading it because I really enjoyed it. I thought it was really well thought out. And listening to you talk there, Kevin, it almost sounds like we need a job description for an agent.

like an actual job spec.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (17:20)
testing. We didn't need a CV as well. They could talk about having like 10 years of copilot experience as it hallucinates and

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (17:26)
Yeah, I'm not sure we quite need the CV, but I think having that definition of what it is and what it does and what it does not and the boundaries and things like that is going to become important.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (17:42)
And I love that last word you used there, the boundaries, know, where does it stop? Where do you ensure that it doesn't do things as well? I think as well as describing what it does, describing what it shouldn't get involved in as well. I admit having three boys, the second you tell them what they shouldn't do, that to me is a menu of what they should be looking at during, because that means it's trouble. yeah, maybe that's something we can explore a bit further in a future episode.

you've taken me off thinking about other things now.

And so, I'm not going to keep going on agents too much because I think we will be talking about that post ignite an awful lot as well. So I wanted to pick up on a couple of interesting and another one of these announcements that's come out pre ignite from here as well. And this was around the adapted AI models from there. And.

These kind of a train because generally, you know that when Microsoft's been talking as your open AI has been talking a lot of it's been around Here is your model you will make use of this model, but nothing will be used to train it within there So you get your GPT for your 4o your 3.5 Whatever you're using and you'll make your your rag your cause against that and it will use that model with your grounded data Now what they starting to explore here?

is that shift of having specific models built. And I think they're talking in this case, especially around the Microsoft PHY models, the small language ones in the catalog, where they're kind of almost pre-trained with additional data from there. And you can see companies such as Bayer, who sit in that sort of farmer space, and they're talking about building on their agricultural intelligence.

It says here, trained on thousands of real world questions on buyer crop protection labels. So they've kind of taken that base model and then adding their own information from it as well. Coming up, it's like, I'm going to try and say this, apologies if I get this wrong, but Keerance or Kerence from there bringing their models with that one for the in-car controls, adjusting air conditioning systems, Rockwell Automations for their food and beverage model.

I'm sure I did see fidelity mentioned on here. Maybe that was somewhere else. I saw that. But I think it's really interesting where where it's moving towards as well as not just you get that model and you go and do the work that is starting to get that domain specific information come through as well and focus on on that side of things as well. And.

Taking this a little bit further, Chris O'Brien, who I believe is going to be over at Ignite, so do say hello if you see him over there. he noticed this job role from Mustafa Suleiman, the Microsoft AI CEO now, formerly of DeepMind and writer of, I've suddenly forgotten the name of the book, something Wave, isn't it? Coming Wave on there, which I've been gradually reading bit by bit.

And he shared that they're on a mission to create the largest and most advanced multimodal data set in the world. This data set spanning all modalities from across the web and beyond will power the training of the world's most capable AI frontier model. Now that to me, I don't know what you think, Zoe, but that seems to suggest that Microsoft are looking to build their own model now.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (21:25)
Yes, at least, well, build their own model or at least remove some of their reliance on other vendors, shall we say.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (21:36)
Yeah, so I know it certainly feels like it's been a shift away from just open AI with sort of deals with what they call the Anthropic and the Claude models and others there. But I thought this was very interesting. This sort of seems, as you say, to them to looking to be independent for themselves as well, which feels a very different move.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (22:02)
Yeah, isn't it interesting one for sure.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (22:07)
Now, I know many of people listening to this going, we just need one of these two to drop something into a. It's only sounding very cagey there, which makes me think she knows something I don't. So I know nothing about this either, but she's got me intrigued on that one.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (22:21)
Yeah, so there's nothing to be intrigued about. It's half past seven in the morning and I've only had one cup of crap hotel room coffee.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (22:29)
we'll go with that then on there. I think going back to this, I'm fascinated about this idea of people tailing their own models. know conversations with clients when when Gen.A first came out, a lot of clients are trying to say, we want to train our own models. want to build it. It's like, whoa, whoa, hold your horses. You don't need to do that. Actually, it turns out you do now. So it's kind of this is where you can kind of take hold and build on it.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (22:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, but it feels...

Yeah, but I do feel like the last kind of eight, eight, I mean, it's two years, isn't it actually two years this month since chat GPT became a thing that people were actually aware of. You know, I'm sure it was like the back end of November where it entered the collective consciousness. So if you think about what's happened since then, and the journey that we've been on and the introduction of the Azure Open AI service and all of the million co-pilots that we've had and now

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (23:07)
Mmm.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (23:26)
agents as well. feel like this is really important and necessary learning and foundational work that needs to be done so that people can then understand where best to invest their resources and their focus and what they actually need in terms of that thing that's a little bit more bespoke. What we're really starting to see now is that business and industry transformation or reinvention. That will be a combination of the foundation

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (23:36)
Yeah.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (23:56)
The foundation models are foundation co-pilots as well, the out of the box stuff. Agents and custom industry solutions that are trained on and fine tuned for specific industry knowledge and context.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (24:11)
Yeah. And even, you know, it's it's that specific element within an industry. You know, it talks about here that that specifically that food and agriculture, specifically those in-car control, such as air conditioning. can you imagine if there's kind of intelligence to your air conditioning? It learns depending on who's in the car, what their needs are, depending on where they sit and things like that. It's got all that information. It knows how often people are adjusting that and it could

build against that would be fantastic. I think it will be fascinating to see and again, I genuinely don't know, but what if this is being announced before Ignite, what are we going to see from Ignite that will back this even more? So certainly look out for some of those sessions.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (24:59)
Yeah, well, watch this space, I guess.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (25:03)
Absolutely. We did see a couple of other, not that one, small ones. And Peter Optibeak noticed this one, fantastic MVP from Belgium. And we've seen this a little bit, I'd say over the last month or so. Certain features seem to drift away very quietly and then come back again, which is nice. And one of those was being able to interact with web page content. So having that kind of being

or sorry, edge extension where you can chat about page and summarize it. That just seems to stop working for those using the enterprise data protection version of Copilot. I'm stuttering over names with Copilot. That's embarrassing. People are going to have me for that. it's having that ability was always really useful to summarize a page. And thankfully, that's come back again. So really, really happy to see that and have the controls over that one as well.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (26:02)
Yeah, I do think we've seen a couple of things kind of drop off and come back in an enterprise perspective as well. So for anyone who's listening pre-Ignite, I would just say actually, you know, there's a big conference coming this week. There'll be lots of announcements. Some of those announcements will be things that are switched to GA this week. So usually that week or two before a big conference, we do see instability, shall we say?

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (26:03)
is noise.

You

Yeah, I don't know, we haven't even had a sweepstake on how many renames that we're going to see this week. I hadn't thought about that.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (26:36)
Yeah, how many times will they use copilot or agent in the keynote?

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (26:47)
I think there's going to be less copilot, more agents. I think that'll be the interesting bit. but worth looking at. Yes. Anyway, getting distracted there and keeping on the time. wasn't that one interesting article about AI jobs that I will put into the show notes. And I've lost the other link I want to show, which is around multi-tenant organizations. So.

For me as a consultant, one of the most frustrating things, I'm lucky enough to have a copilot license in my personal account, my MVP accounts that I get from there. I've got one through Avanade, but the second I work with anyone else, I haven't got it. And we actually work in a multi-tenant org between Avanade and Accenture. If I'm there in the Accenture domain and someone's running the meeting there, I have no copilot and it's really irritating.

But now for those organizations who are multi-tenant, as in they have their entry ID domain linked, there will be that capability for B2B members, so business to business, to be able to set it up and effectively be able to use your copilot across there. So maybe you work for an organization that has different brands and you have different tenants as part of that, or maybe you've been working through an acquisition or a merger.

Soon, what's it begin rolling out mid December and expect to complete by late. It seems a very optimistic time of year to be rolling things out, but let's let's move on from that very quickly. There will be the capability to set up that multi-tenant org with BTB and then make use of that. Now, I'm really looking forward to this. know, Zoe, you and I have plenty of meetings between Avernade and Accenture. So to be able to use Copilot in those across them would be really, really useful.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (28:38)
Yeah, I completely agree with that. It's so frustrating, like you say, when you have it and you've built the habits to remember to use it and then you can't use it.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (28:50)
Yeah. So I think it's good. Now, one thing I want to be clear on this, this doesn't mean that if I join, let's say I have a good friend, Sarah Fenner, she organizes a meeting. We join that. There is no B2B between our organizations and therefore you wouldn't be able to use copilot in that meeting, only the originating org. So this doesn't mean any time you're on a call connected with anyone else, you will get it.

only if you've set up that particular relationship between the two organizations. Although that was probably a bad example because I have set up my own tenant to connect with Sarah's for doing shared channels. So if you happen to have set up shared channels, I think you're probably in a good place. But otherwise, no, you're not going to get that magic from there.

And final, almost final article I want to talk about. this one's a few weeks old, because Scottish Summit and well, life, we've been a bit slow getting this article out, getting this episode out. But this was something from Bobby Kishore that Zoe and I saw at the MVP Summit. And there's times you listen to someone speaking, like, I love what he's saying. I love the way he's saying things. I love the way he's approaching this.

So really enjoyed hearing from him, the corporate vice president of office AI at Microsoft. And he was just reflecting on what a journey it's been in the year. I think it's fair to say for both of us. So it's been quite a journey over the last year from this one as well. And he was kind of picking up some of things. And I liked it that he's picked up. He's got a slight bias in this in terms of his office side.

He's saying that Word, Excel and PowerPoint are more relevant than ever. I think it's fair to say some people might find that as quite a depressing view, but I think it is fair to say it's kind of brought them back to front and center and also the file formats are sticking around as well. So it's it's interesting to see that container as well remaining there. I think it talks about the importance of enterprise data.

And that kind of comes back to what you were talking about earlier with the governance side of things. And this is one I particularly loved on here, that kind of evolution of how we search. And it occurred to me the other day that I now naturally, I know where I want to think, I'll often use search in Office 365 to find it because I know what I'm looking for. If I don't, I will go to Co-Pilot. So the quick, simple things, I'll use the search bar. Other than that,

and copilot's become more and more the place I go to because I can give it a lot more descriptions and things on there. And I think many people we've spoken to see the same thing as well. So there's some nice there that natural language is the place to become the system to system interface on there. I think that's intriguing. I think we'll see that even more with agents at the resurgence of voice as well. I'm guessing Bobby isn't someone that goes into the office too much because

That would drive people crazy, but I think we're seeing that build out. It talks a lot about agents within there as well. And then this statement I particularly like as well, that work evolves to more assembling and directing, that those kind of day-to-day tasks, we can move away from there. I've spent quite a lot of this morning setting up an ADO environment and rejigging all the user stories that had in place and moving them to a slightly different one.

if I could just talk to an agent, say, I want to move these from this to this in natural language and have it done, my life will be so much better. And I think that is where we're seeing that time to kind of decide on that structure, agree how we're going to use it. Yes, that will stick around the time to actually action those that will drop off as well. So really, really good article and summary of the last year.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (32:58)
I'm really well timed as well I think just at this when we're on this cusp of all of the announcements and things that we expect this week in Chicago.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (33:09)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. To bring in that and kind of related to that and something that I partially disagree with. I was going to skip this, but I mentioned earlier, we talk about it. So I'm to bring it up now. But Dan Colby, who works over at Adphania, was posting on the Gartner hype cycle that's just been released, the hype cycle for generative AI. And he was commenting, probably those watching can't.

quite see this but the GenAI enabled virtual assistants are rapidly heading down towards that trough of a disillusionment, i.e. they've had their peak, they've had that excitement, they're now plummeting down. Now, to my view, and he kind of countered this, said no, they're really, really important and it's just about training and user adoption that will bring them there. And I kind of get his point, but

I certainly feel that now we're getting the most negativity from those that we've had for a while, that people are starting to be established with them and kind of going, yeah, I have my expectations of this isn't quite meeting that. But I think we're getting close to kind of just doing a shallow dip on that trough before they become more that plateau of productivity on there. I think we'll see that happen fairly quickly. That transition. And as he said, how do you manage this?

adoption, kind of going and chatting to people is key from that. So it's kind of interesting seeing that hype cycle and some of the items coming through. And I hope that we can shift right as the cheesy phrase goes and start to see it becoming more productive as well.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (34:45)
Yeah, I mean, I think it's just a natural part of the height cycle and for something that has been as height as generative AI and co-pilots and agents have been, then there is definitely a realignment needed in terms of what is the technology actually capable of today? What are the things that we need to do as users, as organizations, as teams?

to be able to make the most of it. And the hype kind of needs to tail off a little bit. And then all of these things need to meet in the middle. And that's where we get to the true widespread adoption and the plateau of productivity as they call it. So I think that journey's probably still got another couple of years to run. But you're right, there's a huge amount, not a huge amount, there's a lot more negativity that we're seeing in the press at the moment. And for some of it, I do think this is where

maybe the wrong buyer inside an organization as a board copilot or invested in a GEN.AI virtual assistant, something that they've built, either because they didn't have a plan, they just wanted it. They just thought like, need this thing, we need to be first movers, everybody else is doing it, so let's get it. Or because the board told them to do, because the CEO was chatting to their CEO mate on the golf course and that felt like they were missing out.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (36:12)
and it would change our life that's all we need to do and the reality is different isn't it.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (36:12)
some of the...

Yeah, yeah, so some of the some of the some of the negativity I see in the press are organizations where we know they've not necessarily had a plan or approached it in the right way. So I do think there's like organizations need to actually understand what they're trying to achieve with this as well, which is something I know we've both talked about before, where you need to actually understand

the objectives for GEN.AI in the organization and how per pilot feeds into that. And then you can actually drive that behavior that you want and measure against that behavior. But if you just don't have a plan and you just throw it out and see what sticks, then it's never going to meet your expectations.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (37:01)
Yeah, so I've got my notes. Where will we be this time next year? think maybe that's something we can carry over to the next show. But I think based on your last comments, we will have some people using and really engaged with co-pilot, whichever ones it is and generative AI in the workplace who are getting huge advantages. And those who've just tried to kind of shortcut it, sit in there going.

who spend all this time and money and nothing's working within there because they haven't looked at it the right way. They've gone through different expectations. But I think those who engage properly, those who've looked at the content from Microsoft, from partners, will be starting to zip ahead. And yeah, it's fair to say we've got a slight bias to like Copilot, but I was catching up with a friend I hadn't seen for about 15 years at the weekend and he was asking me, so is Copilot really worth it? And I was like, yeah.

actually think it is and I've got no reason to give you the BS from there but he's he was won over and wants his license now.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (38:08)
Brilliant. It's always nice to hear that people are convinced. So as we've mentioned a couple of times, I am in Chicago for Ignite this week. So if you're listening to this on your way to the conference, please do come and find me. I've got copilot connection, stickers and pin badges. And I'll also be armed with my camera and microphones that actually will work when they're not connected into my laptop.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (38:13)
Yeah.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (38:37)
I'd love to just get five, 10 minutes with some of you and understand from you what you're excited about, what your take is on some of the news and announcements that are being shared.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (38:49)
Yeah. And I, meanwhile, will be sat at home very jealously watching on the Internet.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (38:56)
Yeah, I mean to be honest Kevin, you'll probably be able to consume more of the content than me. You'll have a better idea of what's actually going on.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (39:01)
Yeah, it's true.

Possibly, on that side. But if you do want to hear more about what's happening with Copilot and you want to be the first to hear when we drop that Ignite episode, then please, please, please subscribe to us. Follow us on LinkedIn, X, Blue Sky. Subscribe on YouTube, on your favorite podcast. Tell your colleagues, tell your clients, tell your friends that you haven't seen for 15 years that they should give this a listen.

did ask him to listen to it. We'll find out if he did or not on there. But everyone is being intrigued by copilot. So keep an eye out and follow the copilot connection.

Zoe Wilson | @SharePoint_Zoe (39:47)
Also don't forget to register to join the Fireside Chat next week which will take place live as well. But all there's left to say is thanks very much for listening and we look forward to talking more soon.

Kevin McDonnell |  @kevmcdonk (40:03)
Thanks a lot, bye bye.