Ep 24 - Copilot Chat and the future of work

In this episode of Copilot Connection, hosts Zoe Wilson and Kevin McDonnell discuss the evolution of Microsoft's Copilot ecosystem, including the recent announcement of Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. They explore the implications of AI agents in business, insights from the Microsoft Research Future of Work report, and the importance of democratizing access to AI technologies. Finally, we talk about our exciting guest for the next Copilot Fireside Chat and her new team.

Takeaways

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• The Copilot ecosystem has evolved significantly over the past 18 months.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat aims to provide a unified experience for users.
• AI agents can democratize access to technology for frontline workers.
• Organizations need to balance AI adoption with sustainability concerns.
• The Future of Work report highlights the importance of readiness in organizations.
• Multi-agent systems have great potential but require further research.
• User experience design is crucial for effective AI integration.
• Real-world examples are needed to demonstrate the value of AI agents.
• The conversation around AI should focus on responsible and sustainable use.
• Engagement with the community is essential for successful AI adoption.

Mentioned links

Copilot Chat

• M365 hero blog: https://aka.ms/copilotchat
• Copilot Studio blog (includes pricing info): http://aka.ms/mcscopilotchat

Daniel Rohregger's post of different costs https://www.linkedin.com/posts/drohregger_what-does-the-new-payg-for-agents-in-copilot-activity-7285909965200904192-Djls?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Future of Work report - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/microsoft-new-future-of-work-report-2024

Debates with Saleforce
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Transcript

Kevin McDonnell (00:11)
Welcome to the Copilot Connection.

Zoe Wilson (00:15)
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 lead the Copilot Business Transformation Practice covering all Copilots and agents for Accenture and Avanade. I'm an MVP for Copilot and Teams and a Microsoft Regional Director.

Kevin McDonnell (00:36)
And I'm Kevin MacDonald. I'm an MVP, Viva Explorer and Copilot strategy and modern workplace AI lead here. And we'll be releasing episodes as podcasts on YouTube with insights from experts from across the community and Microsoft. What the different areas of Copilot are, the impact they can make to you and your organization, what you need to do to prepare for them, start implementing now and even how you can extend them.

Now I would say I'm listening to that kind of intro and thinking we might need to update that. it's kind of, we've used that for a while and you know, we don't even mention agents in there and bits like that.

Zoe Wilson (01:11)
Yeah, I was literally just

making a mental note to message you after we'd recorded it to say maybe we need to get a bit of agents and AI in there.

Kevin McDonnell (01:17)
you

Yeah, and it's it's interesting, you this is our first episode of 2025. How has copilot evolved in that time, which I think we'll cover a little bit in this show, won't we?

Zoe Wilson (01:33)
Yeah. I mean, I think it's nearly 18 months, isn't it? Since we did the first episode of this podcast. And actually it's a really good point because when you look back, the, I mean, the whole ecosystem has just evolved at peace and, you know, we've had this whole wealth of new products and things like that, but the whole vocabulary and the way that people talk about this world is quite different. And, I think we'll see much more.

Kevin McDonnell (01:38)
scary

Zoe Wilson (01:57)
use focus and use of the word agents, like in the same way Co-pilot was overused previously. think everyone's going to be sick of the word agents this year.

Kevin McDonnell (02:00)
You

going to be. Sorry. You mentioned our first show was 18 months ago. Probably one of the first things we should talk about that we haven't shared out on social quite yet is we have hit 10,000 downloads for Copilot Connection, which is really quite exciting from there as well. So thank you, everyone who has subscribed. If you're listening to it for the first time or you're kind of occasionally dropping it, now is the time to...

Zoe Wilson (02:07)
Hahaha!

Kevin McDonnell (02:34)
smash that subscribe button and follow us. Make sure you get that into your podcast feed, onto your YouTube feeds and things like that now as well. So thank you all those who have been listening. I know so many people come up to me. We've mentioned on the show before we've had a few clients come up and mention it, which is always very exciting as well. So please, if you're listening, drop us a note, let us know on there, give us a review. All the good stuff like that is much.

much appreciated generally. You know, I think it's fair to say that there's many people at the moment who feel kind of at wit's end that the excitement of starting the year hasn't necessarily kicked off. I think everyone's feeling a bit overwhelmed, so getting those messages does give us a bit of a boost and keeps us going. In fact, some people have been noting that I've got a big white space behind me for those who are looking on there. Usually I have my kind of inspirations for the year and I haven't quite worked it out because...

Right now, I'm going to write the year copilot agents and I'm like, now I want to be a bit more focused than that, a bit more aligned. And I haven't quite got my head around exactly what this so keep an eye out. Hopefully by next episode, we can have that up there.

Zoe Wilson (03:37)
Hahaha

Yay.

Yeah, I think that's an interesting point, isn't it? Because this whole world is so overwhelming at the moment and the pace of new announcements just continues to accelerate. And I know we've talked on previous episodes about some of the blurred lines between the different product areas or Microsoft solution areas.

What I'm expecting is that for a lot of people, they're struggling just to keep up with the copilot agent and AI announcements that are specific to the bit of technology that they're familiar with, let alone starting to understand how that works across everything else and what this means to the user experience and the employee experience.

Kevin McDonnell (04:32)
I think also, certainly for me personally that I felt that my expectation of what can be done is also slightly ahead of what can actually be done. And by that I don't necessarily mean the technology, I mean that with the people in terms of everyone being in a place to understand it, to have the habit. We're seeing organisations, I can't remember, I saw it now, but someone was talking about the budget cycles.

I think it was Dan Colby from Endvania that the budget cycles haven't been there. So some people have had the budgets to go for copilot. Others are kind of deciding on it. So we'll see the growth from that. And I think in my head, like, yeah, we can do everything that's been promised. The reality of that of the time it takes to make that happen in an effective way will take time. And some of the things are evolving. People are learning with this all the time. So it's kind of balancing those things and making sure we

try and ground this in some reality from there. And funny, that's that's another phrase that gets used an awful lot within there in terms of grounding. But and that's, that's something we try and do in this show is to make sure that we're not just a hype machine, because there is a lot of excitement around this. And I think justifiably, but trying to work out what that means as well.

Zoe Wilson (05:36)
Yay.

Yeah. And I think it's a really interesting topic that we'll actually get into a little bit later in this episode. So today we're going to talk about this week's latest announcement, which is Microsoft 365 Co-Pilot Chat. We'll talk about the future of work report that came out just before Christmas and some of the insights of that, which I think talks to some of that readiness that you mentioned, Kevin, in terms of people and organization readiness and culture and that kind of thing.

as well as a few other news items that have come out since we last connected with all of you.

Kevin McDonnell (06:25)
And I think one thing I'd say is there's an awful lot of news and some awesome community posts. They will be coming out in the LinkedIn newsletter. So there's quite a few things we're not going to cover because this episode is going to overrun. They're going to clash into meetings already. So we need to kind of focus a little bit. But I think should we kick off talking about M365 Copilot Chat? So.

Zoe Wilson (06:52)
Yep, let's do it.

Kevin McDonnell (06:54)
Let me share my window for those watching on video. sorry. I didn't didn't quite mean to share that one. That's a funny post about renames. For those who can't see it, Spider-Man pointing into each other with all the different names that copilot's been. Yeah, yeah, maybe we shouldn't start with that. But I think it's it's interesting because a lot of people are kind hearing this and that is their first reaction to the copilot chat is.

Zoe Wilson (07:05)
Hahaha

Kevin McDonnell (07:22)
this is another rename. And I think there's been a lot of noise before Christmas around the kind of rename of the M3 or the rebranding of the M365 logo to include the Copilot logo. What I love about this announcement is that this is this kind of justifies why on there. So when we're talking about Copilot chat, this is and do jump in and correct me at any point here, Zoe, but

This is the alignment for enterprises to have a single place to go to to access the copilot chat. So what was bitch chats, the thing that you go to in teams or from the M365 homepage, where it kind of brings together all the different elements of copilot. So this isn't affecting your copilot and words, your copilot.

I was going say in Teams, a copilot is not affecting copilot meetings. This is a general chat that you get the landing page. It gives you the guide on that. And what's going to happen now is whether you have an M365 copilot license or you don't, you will get the same sort of experience. The difference is from that main chat, whether it's grounded in your M365 data or not. So.

you will be able to flick between those work and web tabs within there and it will look the same. You'll be able to ask questions within there. If you're on the work tab, because you have a license, it will be grounded on your internal knowledge that you have permission to see. If you go on the web tab, it will be using external Bing knowledge and will be grounded on that as well. But all with the same security controls. So we can...

Bringing the data loss prevention, we can manage the prompts. We can do some lovely usage analytics. One of the posts I mentioned earlier, Laurence Strand has done a lovely post on that and the different ways you can get the usage analytics. But it's bringing that consistency to both sides as well.

Zoe Wilson (09:29)
Yeah. I'm going to have to disagree with some of what you've said actually there, Kevin, because I'm just looking at the license. Yeah. I'm just looking at the license table and actually Co-Pilot Chat isn't work grounded. It's only web grounded. If you look, there's a little dot missing on the second row.

Kevin McDonnell (09:33)
Which is why I paused.

yeah,

sorry. It's not work grounded if you haven't got a license. If you have got a license, then it's grounded on the data. Did I say that wrong?

Zoe Wilson (10:00)
Yeah, so for those who are using the

free or included enterprise version of Co-Pilot chat, you'll continue to be able to use that to interact with things that are on the web. But you can use it to access things that are grounded in your tenant using Pay As You Go agents. So leveraging things like Co-Pilot Studio or Azure AI Foundry.

Kevin McDonnell (10:21)
Yeah.

Zoe Wilson (10:27)
to be able to build agents for people who don't have the full fat Copilot license and allow them to start transforming the way that they work with agents. And for me, I think this is a really interesting scenario. And when you listen to Microsoft talk about it, the way that they describe this is AI for everyone. So I've heard people say to me this week that they see that they want to have a Copilot for every person and an agent for every process.

And what this is allowing organizations to do is to be able to start that process of agentification and applying agents to the processes and being able to give people access to AI where they might not necessarily see an immediate business case for a full $30 per user per month license. So I think it's really interesting. I can see this having huge, huge potential for frontline workers.

And I think we've talked before, Kevin, about people in maybe the retail industry or factory shop floor workers, where organizations complain of paying for an F license, let alone adding the full cost of a $30 copilot license. But this starts to allow people to be able to do things with agents with copilot as the experience layer without needing all of the embedded capability across the apps and teams and things like that.

Kevin McDonnell (11:26)
Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the the agents is a huge part of this that will bring that and I love the fact that they're there with that grounded elements. And I'm going to jump to another post because it may make sure I'm not going to say the wrong thing here. In terms of those agents. And I'm going to try and be clear, we're talking about those agents that are embedded within copilot. So

I'm going to get a little technical here. They are declarative agents that will be included in that as well. Where you've got in Copilot Studio, you can build an agent that you can put into our website, that you can put into Teams standalone. That's not what we're talking about at this stage from there. this is very much within that Copilot experience. Jump back to the other ones for those looking on the screen.

It's that way you have copilot to the top right now. will enable people to access those and talk about, and I love this. did a session for the festive tech counter and gave a demo because part of this is you can have those agents. You can continue the conversation across different agents. So the example I gave there, I had a DevOps one. was showing, keeping my Christmas presents as, as your DevOps stories and my Christmas list.

please don't do that. That's far too geeky and gone too far. But it kind of made a nice demo that I could return those items back. Then I could use the idea creator to say, these are what people want. Can you generate some ideas from that? And then I brought the visual creator agent into the same conversation and said, given those ideas, can you please generate an image of what these would look like under the Christmas tree? it gave you a nice picture of those and the Warhammer stuff, my son and by the one who wants.

Lots of Minecraft and Fox is on there and it generates some images all from that one conversation. So I think that power of bringing those agents into the one conversation available to to everyone will be fantastic. You touched on costs within there. in terms of this pay as you go, then you will be able to buy these prepaid message packs. So these are blocks of messages.

And then every time you use an agent, it will have different types of consumption. So a standard answer will be one message within there. If it's grounded on the web, it's no messages. And I think it was Ambram Jackson who made this comment that actually you could create an agent that is just using the power of the web. So things like the ideas coach that is one of the free ones that you can guide it with that system prompt, you can give it that.

personality. But if you're not using any actions, any grounded data, then there's no additional costs. So you could help guide people on external information without any costless, which I think is fantastic. I'm so happy they've included. And in fact, if we think back to the kind of early, I think they call them plugins and even extensions within chat, GPT and copilot, the copilot pro, that's what those initial plugins were. And that's now available for free. That was a fairly

heavy costs initially. it's a really good improvement just from that as well. And then if you want to start bringing in some sort of guided answers with Copilot Studio or using generative AI to pull that answer, so to construct your response, then that counts as two messages. If you want to ground it on your data, then every time you do that, that is in effect 30 messages from there.

Zoe Wilson (15:38)
Yeah, I think the thing that's interesting here as well is depending on the type of prompt or query that a person puts into this, it could actually end up stacking some of these as well. So there could be a scenario where you're using 30 messages to access graph grounded data and two messages for generative answers as well.

Kevin McDonnell (15:38)
I think I've got

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So there's a combination there. And I think Daniel Roehriger, he who put together my amazing misspelt copilot t-shirt to make sure people correct on that, that's behind me, did a lovely image of that, of things like if I want to get to the current weather, that's 25 messages. If I want to get a knowledge source exactly as you said there that will use knowledge plus graph grounding, it's that 32 messages from there.

things like booking a flight, it's an action 25 messages. So he's got a nice visualization on that. I kind of feel we're early days on this. This was announced what less than two days ago already. So I think there's going to be an evolution of what people understand. And what does this mean? You know, if I have an agent, how much is this going to cost me if I have this many? How much is this going to cost me? So I think we're going to

Zoe Wilson (16:40)
Wednesday, yeah, Wednesday.

Kevin McDonnell (16:57)
We're gonna see a bit of kind of understanding both from Microsoft and from the community to help guide people on what it means as well. it's, and you talked about this at beginning, it's gonna be working out that tipping point. At what point is it that you go for the full license versus using pay as you go is gonna be the decisions people need.

Zoe Wilson (17:16)
Yeah, because I

think that's an important point because if a user has a full license, then all of those scenarios that we just talked about are actually included in the M365 Co-Pilot license and it's only autonomous agents that are actually measured on a consumption basis. I think what this will do is democratize access.

Kevin McDonnell (17:30)
Yeah.

And sorry, just

just very quickly, autonomous agents, just in case you don't know, these are the agents that are not triggered by chatting, but by something happening. like an email comes in, you could have an autonomous agent that checks it a file drops. So just I know we use these phrases day in, day out, but just in case people aren't aware. Sorry.

Zoe Wilson (17:52)
Yeah, an event.

Yeah,

yeah, I think that's a good point. And like I was saying, for me, I think this is really interesting because it will start to democratize access a little bit to Co-Pilot in a business context, not just a web grounded context. And one of the things I know we've talked about previously and that I feel really passionate about is the risk of only deploying M365 Co-Pilot to part of the organization.

and that potentially creating this two tier system of the haves and the have nots and the potential impact on individuals, career development and promotion and salary and opportunities and all of those things. So this I think gives organizations.

Kevin McDonnell (18:41)
I know we talked before about how

do you appraise someone with a copilot license versus someone without, know, is that fair and things, which I think I loved when you came up with that.

Zoe Wilson (18:47)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And

I think this gives organizations a different way to approach that where there'll be some personas or some parts of their business that are in immediate high value scenario for a full license. And then being able to extend the agents that you build for those users to everybody else allows people to start being able to apply this to the way that they work.

And also allows organizations to understand, like you say, where that tipping point is, know, where is the point where either financially or from a business benefit perspective, it makes sense to roll people from the standard Copilot chapless agents into that full Copilot experience.

Kevin McDonnell (19:31)
Yeah, and let's not shy away from this. This is Microsoft, they are still looking to get more money from from people on there. So you're going to be paying a bit more if you want those agents. However, they've given a free tier, so you get one those message blocks within there. So there is an amount of utilisation that you get included. So it's not all more on this. There's actually that positive nature to that. And there's that decision point.

exactly as you say this at tipping point, there may be some people who've had copilot licenses that will drop down as well as those going up. So I have heard a lot of people say this is just a money, another money grab. I don't see it completely as that I see this as giving options to people which I really like from there as well. So I I've heard that multiple times in many comment sections on LinkedIn or from there.

I don't think it is. I genuinely don't think it is. I think it opens it up to more people and that's the power of this. I think again, what organizations will need to do is to work themselves or work with their partners to sort out the governance and management of this. how do you decide? You you can buy these message blocks and you can get a lot of reporting of where you are within this.

So you're going to want to decide how do we decide which agents who can publish these out? How do we control this and make sure we understand it? So there will be an evolution of this. There will be more things that people work out to make this more effective on there. This isn't a, must go full throttle or I must block this completely. It's got to be kind of graded and should be expanded over time as well for people to think about as well. But it.

It would be interesting to watch,

Zoe Wilson (21:17)
Yeah, definitely. So with that, if we to shift gears a little bit and look at the future of work reports.

Kevin McDonnell (21:24)
Yes. Now I know you've spoken about this a lot. And we kept saying we're going to read it. And then when I finally read it, I was like, this is really, good. I really like the bits in here as well.

Zoe Wilson (21:34)
Hahaha

Yeah, I think there's a lot of really useful insights. I mean, I have looked at it a few times and every time there's different things in it that kind of stand out to me, but I do still feel like I need to dedicate a solid half day just to actually going through it really with a real sense of detail to understand what these things actually mean.

Kevin McDonnell (21:59)
Yeah, yeah, and I think for me going through it, what do these things mean? And what should I do about it? As well? What is this about? I'm going through a project where we're building a virtual assistant. There's so many things in here that have got me thinking and changing on things as well. But maybe if we jump through something. So this was created by Microsoft Research. I can make sure I'm not saying the wrong thing there. You can see there's a set of people.

by the way, Jamie Teevan, I've started following a LinkedIn has got some fantastic posts. I picked up, they were on the work lab podcast, and absolutely fantastic to follow as well. But I think this, this is kind of the overview of the different, different sections that people have looked at. So productivity and work, you know, how do we measure productivity? It's a fun conversation that's been going on for many years.

Zoe Wilson (22:52)
That's always a

hard question.

Kevin McDonnell (22:56)
Yeah, absolutely. And I like the way they approach it from different ones. I found this very interesting, the prompting and interactions. We'll touch on this a bit more. How do we move beyond just a prompt? What is the evolution there that's looking at? I don't think we're to touch too much on this today, but the thinking and learning is very interesting. So what is the impact of AI on this element? And I find this an absolutely critical thing.

got into a conversation, I'm a cub leader, and someone was saying, how are we seeing the evolution of AI is that going to affect the way people learn. And I've kind of seen an evolution, know, map skills, for example, are dropping away. So not not because of AI, but things like Google Maps and others that the the kind of generation now are not seeing quite the same benefit of seeing a map, they're not even seeing parents using maps so much, there's not the same level of understanding. And will we see the same thick

thing happen with AI? How do we counter that to that longer term? And some interesting thoughts on there.

Zoe Wilson (23:57)
Yeah, I mean,

just a really interesting anecdotal example to bring that to life for anyone who's done their driving test in the last few years. They actually have a section in the driving test now, which focuses on driving with Sat Nav. So again, making sure that people are able to use their Sat Nav safely while driving, taking away the reliance on using their own sense of navigation to actually get around, which I think is just an interesting example of it.

Kevin McDonnell (24:26)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that then fits the appropriate reliance, you know, are we are we actually able to critically assess things and say this makes sense? Or this doesn't make sense? we go, AI knows the answer. I'm just going to blindly follow that. How do we help people to make sure within that as well? Again, that user experience agents comes up, who would have thought? And then the the society and culture and you know, again, you touched on this just now the how we benefiting people equally.

from within that as well. really interesting. And again, with this, Microsoft's going to be looking at this and it will steer what they're thinking as well. So if you want to get an understanding of where things are going, this is a great idea to look at that. But I Zoe, you wanted to pick up on a specific topic within here. I'm just going to find the right number. No, it's the one before, wasn't it? Around the different roles.

Zoe Wilson (25:18)
Yeah. So, so they've given examples of some of the role specific productivity gains for people who are starting to use AI within the context of their business processes. So, you know, as, as we can expect, we're seeing a great benefit across people in customer service, sales professionals type, type roles. I mean, the second point around entrepreneurs, I've actually seen a lot of anecdotal evidence across LinkedIn and other forms of social media where people are talking about how.

that they're using generative AI to help them write web copy and marketing and help them come up with their business plans and things like that. The one that really stood out to me here, which is a little bit of a controversial one, is the one around artists and the fact that where artists are adopting generative AI tools, it's resulting in them creating 25 % more artworks. They're getting 25 % more favorites per view online.

And the reason why I think this is interesting is the sustainability impact. So for those of you who might follow Scott Hanselman, there was a post he shared on Blue Sky within the last couple of weeks where someone was actually accusing him of being a corporate shill because he said like, Hey, look, there's some AI guidance we've done for devs.

Kevin McDonnell (26:26)
interesting.

Zoe, just to pause you, can you hear me? Because I can't hear you a sec.

Zoe Wilson (26:56)
Yes.

Can you hear me?

Kevin McDonnell (27:01)
Yes, I can hear you again now. I'm not sure if that was you or me.

Zoe Wilson (27:06)
a new recording track creator due to changes in your devices. haven't touched my devices.

Kevin McDonnell (27:11)
Yeah, no, sound good again now. Not quite sure what happened there. OK, you you you cut off about corporate shill. I'm going to make a note about 26 minutes and I'll come back and cut that. So I'll do a three, two, one and then say sorry. Three, two, one. Sorry, Zoe, I think we had a little bit of a technical glitch there. You were just talking about Scott Hanselman being a corporate shill, I think.

Zoe Wilson (27:18)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, so Scott

Hanselman absolutely is not a corporate shill, by the way. But it was really interesting that someone on social was accusing him of being a corporate shill because he'd posted a link to a new site Microsoft have created with guidance for devs around AI and agents.

Kevin McDonnell (27:39)
You

Zoe Wilson (27:53)
And Scott's actually really passionate about AI for good, about sustainability, responsible AI, all of these things. And we've talked before about the keynote that he did at Scottish Summit, which was just fantastic. And one of the things that Scott was talking about in the comments on this thread was how he doesn't actually use AI to generate images anymore because the sustainability impact for something that's often a bit funny is just so high.

Kevin McDonnell (27:59)
Absolutely.

Zoe Wilson (28:22)
And he talks a lot about making sure you use the smallest model, the smallest prompt or query to achieve the outcome that you want. So for a lot of people, know, and I did this at the start, like loads of people have fun creating all kinds of wacky images with designer, but that uses so much energy, like at least 10 times the magnitude of just a simple text-based query. So it's interesting when you see artists having this impact from using

I'm balancing that against sustainability as well. And I don't think this is necessarily for the artist to figure out, as an industry, we need to balance the use of these tools with the impacts.

Kevin McDonnell (29:09)
Yeah, I agree. And so for typing noises, but it might be Abram Jackson's done a few posts around this about trying to kind of put a few more calculations on the impact and comparing it to other things as well. That's I think it's interesting. Just just to balance and consider these because I agree we should be considering and using things where we need to as well. So it's it's

making sure you're doing things consciously, think, with all of these. I know that my gut reaction when I'm doing anything with these Euro-Penai is, I've got the latest model. Let's use that. And often now do it the other way around. I've kind of start and build up as to what I need within that. The other interesting thing I found about the artists is it's saying it benefits them more as well. It doesn't kind of go into

What is the impact? are we seeing people use artists less? It's kind of saying that actually, no, you should be using these tools to make you better at what you do, not just being afraid of other people challenging you and taking over. And I think that's what we've seen with technology is those that adopt these things to improve themselves and improve what they can do are those that that win out versus those that kind of fight against it. Digital, I still remember my

wedding photographer said, No, I don't use digital cameras on there. I take the perfect shots. And we absolutely thought that is fantastic. Absolutely agree. And if he'd been able to take the perfect shot with one shot, that would have been great, but he wasn't. And we had some awful ones. Thankfully had a friend with a digital camera who took lots of shots. And we had some much better ones from that as well. So it always kind of sticks in my head a little bit of I don't go against those who are countering it, but we need to kind of

make sure we are looking at some reality from there as well. But no, really, really interesting thinking of different roles. I think the the other part that I found really interesting in in these was around the the kind of UX and this there's quite a few different sections on the UX can jump to page 17 on here. Oops, and I need to take off the where I searching for it.

The micro prompting I found very interesting. And I know we've talked about the show and talked about with others that kind of putting a nice long prompt helps within there and helps you build up to have that story. That's the most effective use, but it takes more time. It takes more energy and things on there. I know that Copilot, one of the things it does fantastically is give you kind of guided prompts of like summarize this meeting that's just through those three letters. But behind the scenes has added a bit more.

What this evolution is looking at is kind of, yes, you have that large prompt, but that is almost created by looking at different things. For anyone who's used the image generator as part of the new Apple intelligence, you kind of get an image and then you want to add things to it and you add little chunks of words like this. Let me zoom in some of the bits there. So in this case, it's the full prompt is create a medieval castle in the mountains, sketch should be in black and white with detailed line art.

But with a micro prompt view, then you're talking about bringing medieval castle, black and white sketch in the mountains, detailed line art. You don't need that kind of full conversational way effectively or build that behind you on there. And it makes it easier to kind of build up what you want to get through. And I found this very interesting of thinking about how people are going to design these and whether we will see more UIs like that Apple intelligence that allows you to evolve your prompts rather than do that one hit.

from there as well. So I thought that was really intriguing on there.

Zoe Wilson (33:02)
Yeah, definitely.

think, again, just thinking about how things might have changed since we first started this podcast, I feel like at first putting in those longer prompts was necessary to give Co-Pilot the context to get the outcome that you want. But I think as that's improved and as the grounding has improved and the capabilities, not just Co-Pilot, but kind of across the stack, it's become possible to achieve what you want to do with

Kevin McDonnell (33:18)
Mm.

Zoe Wilson (33:31)
with a different prompting approach rather than having to have something that's super detailed.

Kevin McDonnell (33:36)
Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I think your comment there on context. So, you know, we touched way back on copilot chat being that one within that overall chat. But if you're in Word, then it's got some context, you've got a document open, you're in Word, you're going to want to be doing those things. So building solutions that understands that context, that context could be who you are, what you've done previously, all those elements can then reduce the amount that people need to ask as well.

And the other one I think is the founds really good with this. There's a few around the UX, but this one about using the UX to help people think about that appropriate reliance on this. So bringing making sure that you have that user vigilance. Too far, the appropriate user vigilance. I can see over here, for example, where it's put numbers into there, that it's highlighted in this UX to say.

Well, actually, we've got low confidence and a lot of this hallucination. It doesn't mean you have to take away and say this is a hallucination or this is not. It's that level of confidence again. You know what? You might need to double check this to kind of encourage people to check the right thing, because people are getting used to saying this is AI generated and they don't read that. They ignore it now because they kind of have seen that all the time. So bringing those specific highlights to certain areas that say

actually, this is probably more likely to be hallucination and elements like that. So there's quite a lot of guidance. And I love the fact within this report, it also goes into the deep studies as well. So you can go and read those very scientific papers that look within that as well. So I think it's for those kind of designing their own agents, their own elements, really useful tips within here from that as well.

And then the other bit, and I've just noticed I forgot to put the number, so I'm going to have to do a little bit of scrolling upon those, was around agents. obviously it touched on here that 2024 was all about developing agents. But the one thing that jumped out, and I heartily agree on this, is that the full potential of these multi-agentic systems

still need some more research to get the real value. I think the ideas are there and what it needs to happen. The potential of that is huge. There is still a little bit of effort to kind of get to the reality, not the reality, the full potential of that as well. And I think, you know, the phrase of agents has changed a bit. So where we were talking about a plugin, that's now an agent.

Zoe Wilson (36:15)
Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (36:22)
And those work well, those kind of atomic views work well. It's where we're starting to build these things together that we'll see even more happen within that.

Zoe Wilson (36:31)
Yeah. And again, if we, if we think back to the start of M365 Co-pilot, one of the most common questions and people still have this, but to a much lesser extent now was around, you know, the value and how do we get ready for this? What do we need to do to actually be able to understand the value? And it feels like from a multi-agent perspective, we're probably at a similar point where the promise of the technology is incredible, but

Kevin McDonnell (36:49)
Mm.

Zoe Wilson (37:00)
what we need to do is to actually start looking at end-to-end processes and how we can apply agents to different part of that. And for me, one of the biggest opportunities is not just incremental improvements. If I look at M365 Copilot, it makes me a little bit better. It makes me a bit more productive, more efficient, a bit more creative. It helps me do my job a little bit easier.

What we're talking about with agentic systems is actually being able to completely reinvent an end to end process or even an entire function within a business to achieve the same or better outcomes, but maybe in a completely different way. And this is the bit where we kind of need some real world evidence and examples so that people can fully understand and appreciate how transformational this can be.

Kevin McDonnell (37:56)
Absolutely

agree.

Zoe Wilson (37:57)
And

I think it's going to be, probably a one to maybe three year journey to really see how this transforms.

Kevin McDonnell (38:07)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely agree. And I think there's the technology of how that does exactly as you said there, there's that understanding of how we implement to make use of this. And I think that fits with one of these because when I originally looked at this, it was like, the technology is there, it can't do what it is. That's the initial reaction to things.

However, there's things like developing an effective UI to make it obvious where you are using agents and the transference between those. So the back end works nicely. It's the understanding for the user to help guide that needs to research and evolution as well on some of those. So it's that combination of different things that all comes together to to make that happen as well.

Zoe Wilson (38:53)
Yeah, super exciting though. And I think to the point you made right at the start, Kevin, maybe we need to think about the intro to the podcast and just how we describe it, because I definitely think we're going to be connecting co-pilots and agents a lot more this year.

Kevin McDonnell (38:54)
Right, I'm...

Absolutely. There were a couple of other things, talking of agents, and we'll put more links to these. There's been some fun conversations between various people, senior people in Microsoft and Salesforce around agents as well, which has been nicely entertaining for us on there as well.

Zoe Wilson (39:26)
Well, Mark

Benioff, I mean, he's had his gloves off for quite a while, hasn't he? He's not pulling his punches. And he's been incredibly, incredibly vocal about what he perceives their product can do, all of the different agents that they've got. And I just find it fascinating when, if you compare the kind of the breadth and depth of the Microsoft stack to the narrow business focus that

Kevin McDonnell (39:32)
Yeah.

Zoe Wilson (39:55)
the Salesforce products have. It's a completely different ball game.

Kevin McDonnell (39:57)
you

I'd be very cautious because I'm working with a lot of lovely Salesforce people at the moment. But I, yeah, I tend to agree from that as well. I have mixed feelings on this because I love a little bit of competition to kind of drive things happening. I would love it to be kind of more grounded in reality than anything else. And I'd love that people are not just throwing mud for the sake of it.

And I think the responses, and we'll put some of the links, people like Scott LaManna, Charles LaManna, that have put out there have been very grounded in facts rather than just, doesn't work, which has cheered me up. So yeah, keep an eye out for that. I don't think we'll see the end of that conversation going on.

And the other one you wanted to touch on, Donna Sarko put a lovely post up of her new team. I think it was today, wasn't it?

Zoe Wilson (41:01)
Yeah, that's right. So Donna's a huge favorite of ours. She has been driving a lot of the developer relations across copilot and agents via the Copilot Learning Hub and all of the events that she speaks at. What she shared on LinkedIn earlier was the new developer relations team who will work across all of the copilot and agents.

for AI power users. And it's good to see some familiar names in there like April Dunham. But for those of you who are wondering how to... Yeah, for those...

Kevin McDonnell (41:31)
I mean, Rick and Sonja are big names in themselves as well. And

I'm hearing more about Thomas Lewis.

Zoe Wilson (41:40)
Yeah. And

for those of you who are wondering, like, how do you find out more information about this? How do you get started with understanding how to build these solutions that regardless of which bit of the Microsoft tech start you work with? I think over the course of 2025, this team are going to be absolutely key to making sure that you've got the resources and everything that you need to be able to get started to build agents and Copilot solutions responsibly, sustainably.

So follow them now and you can see for those of you who are watching, Kevin's highlighting the homework that Donna's given all of us.

Kevin McDonnell (42:16)
Donna

always gives homework. Always.

Zoe Wilson (42:20)
So for those listening, Kevin, do you want to just share what the homework is?

Kevin McDonnell (42:24)
Yeah, so just for that, she talks about their they're starting their plans to kind of have virtual hack togethers in person agent cons, which I think be conferences around agents that I'm very excited about. But she's kind of asking people if you have any ideas on the kind of events, activities, what you want to hear them about making AI adoption easier, how it can work for their then let her know. So we'll put a link to this post in there. But to do to

speak to her. And in fact, if you want to speak to her real time, we do have an opportunity coming up for that, don't we?

Zoe Wilson (43:01)
We do indeed. So Donna will be the next very special guest joining us on the Co-Pilot Fireside Chat on the 29th of January at four o'clock GMT, so 8 a.m. Pacific time or somewhere in between for the rest of you, regardless of where you are. This session is live only. It's not recorded. It will not be available on demand. So if you want to hear directly from Donna, if you want to get the unfiltered view,

from her, of her world. Yeah, then make sure that you join in real time.

Kevin McDonnell (43:32)
Very unfiltered. Yeah.

And it is a far side chat. So it is the opportunity for you to ask those questions and get things in there. Donna, Zoe and I are very happy to just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. So that's not going to be a problem, but we want to kind of take it from your questions. So join with your questions and bring them there. We had Vesra and Weldek just before Christmas and it was fantastic to kind of answer the questions and the thoughts from people from there.

Be even more so with Donna and and she will be honest with you,

Zoe Wilson (44:11)
Yeah, brilliant. And then coming later this month as well, we will be recording a very special episode where we'll be focusing on all of the roadmap updates for Co-Pilot. We've done this before and it was a really, really popular episode. And one of the things that I think we've noticed over the last few weeks is just the sheer amount of new updates that are coming through. And some of them are really interesting.

And it's like they sneak through without a relevant blog or an explainer or something like that. So we wanted to do, take the opportunity to really go through some of those and talk about what they'll mean to people who are using Co-Pilot.

Kevin McDonnell (44:47)
And try and bring some context. think if we look at this copilot chat announcements, if you've been following the message center and some of the roadmap items that came out just before Christmas, you could kind of see what it was alluding to, but it maybe just felt like, more change, renames. Now we've seen the announcement, we can talk about a bit more, we can see the benefit of things like reducing those gaps between people, giving people options.

We won't just regurgitate what they are, we'll dig into those items as well, which would be really exciting. So if you do want to hear more from us, please let us know. We're kind of taking that roadmap section because we saw how popular the last one was. But if there are other things you want to hear about, there's people you want to hear from, let us know. And please, I know we said this beginning, but please, please, please, please, please.

Subscribe to us on LinkedIn or on Twitter or even on Blue Sky on there. Follow us on YouTube. Follow us on all your favourite podcast apps. Tell your colleagues, tell your clients on there. Tell your friends and even tell your parents. Everyone is hearing about Copilot and we want to bring the Copilot connection to as many people as possible.

Zoe Wilson (46:00)
So all that's left to say is thanks very much for listening and we'll see you next time.

Kevin McDonnell (46:06)
Thanks very much. Bye bye.

Zoe Wilson (46:07)
Bye.