Ep 29 - Copilot Wave 2 Spring Release

News, news, news - we have lots of new news! Zoe and Kevin discuss the latest announcements from Microsoft about Copilot Wave 2 Spring Release. We delve into the significance of the Work Trend Index, the new user interface and search experience, and the introduction of memory and notebooks features. Then we dig into the management and reporting of agents, the concept of the human-agent ratio (including some extreme reactions to some new phrases from Microsoft...) and the importance of leadership in leveraging AI capabilities. Finally, we cover some of the magical events coming up.

Takeaways

• Wave 2 announcements from Microsoft include significant updates and features.
• The Work Trend Index is crucial for understanding productivity trends.
• A new user interface is being introduced for a better user experience.
• Memory features will enhance user interactions with Copilot.
• Notebooks will allow users to group and summarize conversations.
• The Create Experience will simplify content creation across platforms.
• Agent management is becoming more streamlined with the Frontier Program.
• Understanding the human-agent ratio is essential for effective delegation.
• Upcoming conferences will provide opportunities for community engagement.

Sound Bites

• "The skill of delegation is something that everyone wanted to get."
• "Minutes saved isn't cashable."
• "It definitely feels like conference season is in full swing."

Transcript

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

Zoe Wilson (00:13)
We're 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 for Avanade and Accenture covering all Co-Pilots and agents. I'm an MVP for Copilot and Teams and a Microsoft Regional Director.

Kevin McDonnell (00:32)
And I'm Kevin McDonnell. I am an MVP, Viva Explorer, Copilot, strategy and modern workplace AI leader Avanade. And also an MVP and Copilot in Viva. I feel you're a Viva one rather than team. So you're just trying to confuse me Zoe.

Zoe Wilson (00:46)
No, I haven't been a team's well, it's nearly a year now, isn't it? Sorry, I've either MVP. Yeah. Even though I do the same intro on every one of these podcasts.

Kevin McDonnell (00:50)
I missed that. There we go. ⁓

It's only just occurred to me. Anyway, sorry. 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 Copilot are, the impact they can make to you and your organization, what you need to do to prepare for them or start implementing now, and also how you can extend them with agents.

Zoe Wilson (01:20)
So today we, well, I think on our last episode, Kevin, we mentioned that we might talk about MCP and A2A and bits like that, which Kevin was going to explain, but then this week Microsoft released a whole heap of news. So instead we're going to chat about some of the newly announced Copilot Wave 2 content.

Kevin McDonnell (01:39)
And when you say a whole heap of news, it was a whole heap of news. You know, I thought we might get a few drip feeds leading up to the M365 Conf and Builds, but it was like boom, boom. there's another one. I didn't know about that on there, which was really, really nice to see. It's always that I do like news articles, but finding time to read them is a little bit tricky. So hopefully we can summarize some of that for you all.

Zoe Wilson (02:04)
Yeah, I mean, it was interesting in one of the Copilot WhatsApp groups that we're in, there was a conversation this morning about not burning out from the volume and speed of announcements. And I think that's actually really good advice. But like you said, Kevin, hopefully we can help people actually understand and disseminate some of the wave two announcements, what this actually means.

Kevin McDonnell (02:25)
I'm chuckling slightly at people thinking, what do you mean one of the Copilot WhatsApp groups? How many do you have? Don't don't ask. Do not ask.

Zoe Wilson (02:32)
So before

we get into the news, we do have something else that we want to talk about, don't we, Kevin?

Kevin McDonnell (02:38)
That's right. So following on from the fantastic Copilot Fireside Chat we had with Jeff Teper, we've been a little bit slower kind of nailing down the guests. The Easter. Oh, no, not Easter break. was called Spring Break in America. I think it's had some fun and games with getting some of the amazing contacts who made it the MVP Summit. But we can happily announce we have finalized. Yina Arenas is going to be our next guest on the

Fireside Chat, which is fantastic. I know we both saw her slightly truncated part of the keynote at the MVP Summit, because I think things overran a bit. And I think it was a real shame because I absolutely loved her section and I thought it was really were interested. So, you know, many of you may know her from Microsoft Graph. She's come from that world, but now looks after the central AI platforms, isn't it, Microsoft?

Zoe Wilson (03:28)
It's the AI Foundry. she's the, yeah, she's the VP for Azure AI Foundry. And on the, mean, we talk a lot about agents on this show, but with the fireside chat, feel like our guests have been kind of firmly in that, you know, M365 extensibility agents in that context. So I'm really looking forward to having Yina on to bring that perspective from the Azure AI Foundry side of the house and, you know, talk about the

Kevin McDonnell (03:30)
AR Foundry in the PC.

Zoe Wilson (03:54)
the transformation and the changes that we'll see happening over the next couple of years, more from that kind pro-code Azure perspective.

Kevin McDonnell (04:02)
And I think we're seeing that better alignment happen. You can hear me hesitate going, this doesn't hit NTA, it? No. But I think we are seeing across the board the alignment with agents happening more and more and the common conversations that taking place, is really fantastic.

Zoe Wilson (04:18)
Yeah, so we'll pop the link to register to the Fireside Chat in the show notes. As always, the Fireside Chat is not recorded. It is streamed live. So if you want to hear directly from Yina in a really kind of intimate and open environment, you need to register and you need to join the meeting live.

Kevin McDonnell (04:37)
Yeah. And we'll also put a link to a form we've got for any questions you want to ask within there. But if you want to hear the answer exactly as you said, Zoe, you got to be in it to win it. So which means you got to be there for those who don't recognize the catchphrase there.

Zoe Wilson (04:49)
Yeah.

And then you'll also need to join live to hear about the fantastic guest that we've got lined up for me, which is another person from Microsoft who will bring a perspective this time of contact center and Copilot and agents in the customer service realm. So another really exciting guest for me.

Kevin McDonnell (05:09)
Yeah, no, we're looking for that. I was just thinking, is it going to become the copilot plus agents for our side chat? No, that's that's a bit too long, isn't it? No.

Zoe Wilson (05:16)
It's just not catchy though, is it? mean, you know,

do we, do we rename this to agent connection? Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (05:21)
Yeah, copilot plus agent connection. No, no, no, we do.

We'll stop that.

I know, my brain's gone. We could call it the CNA connection. No, no, that's going to make people think of 80s department stores in the UK. So let's let's not do that. Right. Moving on swiftly. Should we talk about wave two a little bit?

Zoe Wilson (05:29)
No.

Yeah.

Yeah,

let's get into it. So while you're bringing up the articles and things, Kevin, one of the things that people might not have realized if they don't follow WorkLab and the Work Trend Index is the actual reason that Microsoft announced all of this this week is to align with the 2025 Work Trend Index.

And the very first work trend index was published by Microsoft in the first year of the pandemic. And this was what actually spun up WorkLab as a research driven site. And the reason that Microsoft did this was because suddenly we had millions of people who hadn't used Teams, who had to start using it so that they could pivot to working remotely. And what this gave Microsoft was a whole heap of telemetry about people's working habits, productivity.

Kevin McDonnell (05:59)
Hmm.

Zoe Wilson (06:27)
how many meetings we had, all of these signals that were coming in. And what Microsoft did with this was they actually took a serious look at the research of it. And then every year since then, in the autumn or the fall for our American listeners, they publish a pulse report, which is just like a check-in to see what the productivity trends are through the year. But in the spring, we have the full work trend in the next report.

And I think Microsoft are quite clever with how they frame the work trend index because it's always very much on the things that are key to driving the growth in that business. But it's also things that are key just from an industry perspective as well. So it's no surprise that this year's work trend index report, the full report is all about AI and agents and how organizations are transforming with that.

Kevin McDonnell (07:21)
I mean, you've just ruined the agenda. I mean, we're going to get to that in a minute. But I guess it is a nice, nice segue. think the point you're getting to, and I think the important thing about the work trend index that I love is it's the evidence why this is what's happening within wave two, which I think is really good. I think it's really fascinating. I know we talked about the future of work reports back in January, I think, ⁓ wasn't it? It's the evidence of why Microsoft is doing these things. If you look at these numbers, these reports,

Zoe Wilson (07:24)
Hahaha

Kevin McDonnell (07:50)
that's what you're going to see addressed and that's what you're going to see the the messaging. I was about to say the marketing push, but I think it's wrong. The messaging around the why, which I think is so important with this. The technology is lovely. Why do you do the technology? That's where the work trend index comes into it as well. And we'll cover this phrase that's coming up on a few, a few other ones. I'm going to skip over that, because I think we'll talk about that in a minute and I'll get on my rant.

Zoe Wilson (08:07)
Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (08:17)
We'll start off talking about the tech and having a simple talk about the why. We'll start off talking about what's come within there. And I think I was hoping there was a picture, but I think there were all sort of videos slightly irritatingly, which I don't want to. Actually, maybe I'll kick it off and mute it on there. I think the big thing that jumps out once John Friedman stopped talking is a new UI. So we're starting to see

that left hand, that right hand rail with Copilot shift more to a left hand rail. I was just thinking actually it reminds me of the kind of SharePoint 2003. I can't remember which way around, but things are on the right and it shifted to the left, then it moved to the right again on there. We're almost doing that. It's like, yeah, it better over here. No, I like it over this way. But maybe there's some design gurus within Microsoft who are the left handed or right handed and change based on that. I don't know, but.

Zoe Wilson (09:10)
⁓ Yeah,

it's interesting though, isn't it? I mean, if you look at teams, you've got like the things you interact with on the left and the content on the right. If you look at Outlook, you've got the folder structure on the left and then the content on the right. So is it just trying to bring Copilot in line with the UI experience of the other products that have a similar kind of interaction?

Kevin McDonnell (09:19)
Mm.

And it's interesting, some my feedback to Microsoft was I worry how this will sit within Teams, because if you've got two things to the left, I hate that. You've got two levels of navigation that are kind of independent, but next to each other. That's why I kind of liked it on the right. Whereas if you go into the app itself, not in Teams, it makes sense. So it feels like there's this kind of shift towards copilot becoming the landing place. You know, we hear a lot about

Zoe Wilson (09:40)
Hmm.

Kevin McDonnell (10:00)
Copilot is the UI for AI. And we've heard a lot about Teams being that almost new operating system. This feels like a shift towards kind of copilot, you know, the copilot app they talk about. This will be there on the web. This will be there as an app within Teams. It will be there as a mobile app as well as a common, consistent view. So it's interesting seeing that shift towards things take place with this move. And I really like this bringing together effectively.

And this may trigger some people apologies. This is kind of replacing office dot com. This is taking in all those things where people used to go to office to come and see your documents. That's going to be there at the top. This I think it's there at the home app that's slightly on if I go back a bit. No, you can't quite see it there, but it's it's got that kind of central view where you go to things. And I think also we've got this search. And when I'm fascinated about this.

⁓ is a new search experience. And those who've listened to show know when Kev hesitates is I really think about something often, what he can talk about and what he isn't allowed to talk about. So I'm pausing slightly with this, but I think it's fair to say we'll see this Copilot powered search experience, which suggests you need to be Copilot powered for that as well. I think we'll start.

One of the things we haven't seen from Microsoft is what you get with a copilot license versus what you don't. So I would say keep an eye out for the M365 comp, keep an eye out for builds to hopefully get some more detail and visibility on that.

Zoe Wilson (11:36)
Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it? Because like you said, Teams has been pitched for a while or was pitched for a while. There's that single pane of glass that, know, the way that you'd kind of get into work. And Microsoft talks about this view that people would start their day in Teams and going through, you know, all the messages and actions and things like that. And what they're now doing is positioning Copilot app as that experience. And the one thing that I need to test really is what is that user experience like?

in what will it be like in this world if you don't actually have a Copilot license and yeah it's gonna be really interesting.

Kevin McDonnell (12:14)
Yeah, no, it will be. So glossing over that, which I know many of you go, ⁓ no, this is important. Yes, it is. And we will come back to this when we know more and can talk about more. Assuming you have an M365 license, as we understand it, you will get this search, but you'll get more from the search. You can see it's cutting across a lot more things for those who are watching on there. So you get...

The results you can filter on things like ServiceNow, Confluent, it becomes a lot easier to bring those connectors into it as well. I think if we hover a little further, you can see you get a summary up the top of the results, a bit like you're doing in Bing and in Google, you get this kind of AI-powered summary, which would be nice. And we're also getting a lot... If I jump ahead... ⁓ is it showing it here? But I've seen in one of the videos...

It kind of allows you to get a summary of a single file. And I really like this because I have heard occasionally some people name files in a similar way with V1, V1 final, V1 final, V2 and that kind of thing. So knowing which one you want apps in other companies, definitely not something we we would do at all. But it gives you that summary. You can see you're getting more

Zoe Wilson (13:21)
You mean people are still working like that, Kevin, in 2025?

Ha ha ha!

Kevin McDonnell (13:35)
indicators on the screen where you're mentioned in there, where there's new comments. So with this search, it's not just about searching in terms of getting the content, it's about things that are happening in the file that are relevant to you. It's going to make it easier to get to the right things. Now, I've only seen a few kind of bits and short demos of this search, but I'm really excited about this. I've always a fan of search and I think this is it's kind of expanding the way you think about search from it as well that we'll see. ⁓

I would say watch this space for building the M365 conf to get even more. If you are there, and I know we'll talk about vents a bit later. If you are there, look for the sessions around this because I think it'd be really interesting.

Zoe Wilson (14:15)
All right, moving on.

Kevin McDonnell (14:16)
Moving on, I'm going to touch on a couple of things. I think it mentions it in the text here, but one of other... I can't see it now. One of the other things is memory. So it will have a lot more understanding of who you are and what you've done within this. So it will kind of know your preferences. It will know what you've asked about before and kind of wait towards those things. Memory is going to be one of those things you don't necessarily know. It's not going to be a feature that's kind of ticked and...

you click and do something actively, it's just going to improve the way you do things. I'm really, really intrigued to see that. I think we've seen it with the copilot consumer one. There was a lovely post, which I remember I haven't been in the show notes, actually. So I'll try and get later from Mustafa Suleyman, where he talked about his copilot consumer experience. He was talking about the copilot vision in the airport. But it remembered that he's based in Seattle. It knew about him as a person.

And so said, this is the flight to Seattle, even though I was in Miami airport or something, or LA, something like that. LAX, that's what it was. ⁓ But it knew who he was because he was logged in as him, knew what he'd asked about before, knew where he's based and could kind of make that additional link to the context. I think, know, for example, for us, knowing that occasionally we talk about copilot, it's more likely to bring copilot context to things we're doing and asking about. So it'd be interesting.

Zoe Wilson (15:18)
Yeah. ⁓

Kevin McDonnell (15:41)
Be interested to see how well this works and how it actually brings that. So I'm really excited about memory from the bits I've seen of it and knowing about the memory that can be done with agents and built in pro code. This is some of the exciting areas. So really looking forward to that. And the one they talk about here and I think in one of the other links that we will share on there, the copilot notebooks. I'm really excited about this. Yeah.

Zoe Wilson (16:03)
I'm really excited about notebooks.

Kevin McDonnell (16:07)
think we've got there is a little bit more in the video that was creating. Not enough. I want to see more on notebooks, but this is kind of grouping together your conversations, isn't it? ⁓ No, it's just it be on the other videos. I'll dig out.

Zoe Wilson (16:20)
Yeah, so it's moved. If it's

going down in order, you might just need to go back about 20 or 30 seconds.

Kevin McDonnell (16:26)
No, it's not. really annoys me. It's it's in a different order to the bullets above. Don't get me started on that rant. But basically, you've got kind of common themes a bit like it's kind of like a scrapbook, isn't it? And it allows you with with AI to kind of pull things around that conversation. So say you're going to speak to a client, get the conversations you've had with that client, get information you maybe you know you're going to be talking about. will pull that into it.

Zoe Wilson (16:30)
yeah. well.

Kevin McDonnell (16:53)
But also it will be able to summarize that up into short audio notes. So say you're on the train, you can say, right, group this together with the client. I want to sit and listen to this for a little bit. Give me that kind of pep talk. Give me that. Keep fresh in my brain. Those key bullet points that we're going to cover from there. So really, really interesting. I think a lot of people have kind of seen pages and notebooks. And for me, I've sort of seen there's possibly a bit of confusion and connection between them. But I think notebooks is

pulling from a lot more sources into that one place and then helping you summarize that, which would be really useful.

Zoe Wilson (17:27)
Yeah,

it's from the way you've described it there, Kevin. It sounds like if AI search, one note and loop had a baby.

Kevin McDonnell (17:33)
Yes. Yes, absolutely. That's a lovely that's a lovely notebook summary of the notebook summary.

Zoe Wilson (17:40)
Hahaha

Kevin McDonnell (17:41)
And then the final one to touch on, which I'm slightly mixed on, and this is the video, it's that create experience.

Zoe Wilson (17:48)
It's basically like

Canva for work, isn't it?

Kevin McDonnell (17:50)
It is, yeah, it's bringing it all into one place. We've kind of had that create in the office app. I never use that because if I want to create a PowerPoint, I go to PowerPoint. If I want to create a word, I go to word. If I don't know what I want to create, I don't. I wouldn't have seen this as a place to go. However, it's starting to kind of bring more there by bringing images on there, things like designing a poster. It's I love for those who can see on here, what do you want to create?

It's not a PowerPoint, it's not a Word document, it's an image, a poster, a draft, convert to audio. That is particularly interesting. picked up on that one. ⁓ You know, it's the central place where you will go there and think about what you want to do, not the tools to do it. And I really like that. Plus, it's going to have the GBT, what's it, the 4.0 models. I'm getting more and more confused around the models. Don't get me started on that.

Zoe Wilson (18:47)
Hahaha

Kevin McDonnell (18:47)
But

it means that now with Copilot, you will be able to, in your organization, create Studio Ghibli pictures and mini-figs at work. And I mean, what could be better than that? Having not only your Facebook feeds, your LinkedIn feeds, now your Viva Engage and Teams messages and emails are going to be flooded with these images too. I mean, it's the most exciting thing ever, really, isn't it?

Zoe Wilson (19:02)
I

Yeah, maybe not.

Kevin McDonnell (19:16)
⁓

I'm working on agent the moment we got sarcasm detection built into it. It's going from this. But yeah.

Zoe Wilson (19:21)
You

Yeah. mean, I guess,

⁓ like just, just thinking about kind of funny uses of AI as well, maybe in the MCP session, we can talk about that Lascavitz ⁓ dad joke MCP server.

Kevin McDonnell (19:36)
Yes, yes, on that on a more serious note, which I do occasionally do within that create one of the things I'm really keen to look at and really should get a bit more hands on with these brand kits. Now, this I'm interested in now, obviously, we've got the the brand kits in terms of your your kind of PowerPoint templates, your word templates. In my head.

I see this as being kind of image templates. So where you're hopefully not creating Studio Ghibli ones, but creating ones aligned with your brand, you can see it's a lovely sailboat there. I'm hoping that we'll get something that allows you to have almost like a corporate prompt so you can create content in a way that matches your corporate view within there. Now, I may be hoping too much, but.

Zoe Wilson (20:20)
Yeah, ⁓ yeah, like,

yeah, that's an interesting, I've not thought of that, Kevin, that's an interesting one. I mean, would Copilot Lab not be the place for those things to be published? Or I guess they could, they could potentially be published in both. The prompt library. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (20:36)
Copilot Labs consumer, isn't it? the Prom Library one. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I would hope those things would come together and there's some prompts you can build that are kind of this will put you in the theme. So we know what you talk about. You know, we know your asset store. If you're creating new stuff, I don't want a Studio Ghibli image. I want a nice corporate one that fits the rest of our brand. And I think a lot of people think brand is colors and fonts.

Zoe Wilson (20:45)
Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (21:05)
But more and more we're seeing images and that image should reflect what you want, what you want your image to be. And it's lovely if you've got a massive, huge asset library. But I think we see time and time again, you get those common images that get used in every presentation and it all looks the same and it doesn't quite fit the message you're trying to say. But you've only got a limited, you might have a lot of images, but still you can't quite do it. Why can't we create more images that fit that?

Zoe Wilson (21:33)
Yeah, but

even if you've got a lot of images in the Orgasm library, it relies on having the right metadata in place to actually be able to find the ones that you want anyway.

Kevin McDonnell (21:41)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I, you know, there's other things when this tool like remove background, colour pop and things like that. So there's I can see these things up there of a raised object, which I think, no, there's a raise the tree. I thought they'd erased a phone and look like she was just looking at hand there. But no, that's just my small screen I'm looking at on that. So I think overall with this, it's bringing everything into one place, making it much easier to access these other capabilities.

Zoe Wilson (21:59)
Hahaha

Kevin McDonnell (22:10)
within this. So really, really excited to see that as well.

Zoe Wilson (22:14)
Yeah, I mean it's interesting because a lot of the feedback that I've heard on this has been really positive about the fact that it is just bringing everything into one place, it's making it easier for people to do things with Copilot and with agents and I'm really excited. So when is this rolling out, Kevin? Is there a date?

Kevin McDonnell (22:32)
Don't

ask me awkward questions that I don't know the answer to. Especially don't ask me awkward questions to things I kind of know the answer to, but I don't know if it's been talked about publicly. I don't think they've said, let's say like that. All I'll say is build in the M365 conference are coming up. I'm sure we will hear more details then.

Zoe Wilson (22:47)
Yeah, that's fine. Let's see if we can find it.

Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (22:59)
Let's leave that out. And in fact, I can see there is more details below on kind of the copilot notebook. So we'll put links to this for people who want to view a little more and dig into that. One of the things we didn't touch on on the left there was agents. And I think we might talk about agents quite a bit within there, but I think it's it's kind of bringing those agents more front and center, making it easier to find the agent store. Yes, making it.

no, they haven't put this on the video. Let me just jump back a little bit. ⁓ it is there. Good. Fantastic. Making it easier to create agents ⁓ on there. Not yet making it easier to edit agents, but we'll have that grumble a little bit later. Hopefully, Microsoft has heard the feedback from the summit and other sessions I've had that it's all very nice making it easy to create an agent, but

when you want to change the source or do anything with it, would be very nice to make it easier to edit those at some point. But hopefully that will that was something that will get reflected in soon on there. But we're seeing a lot more with agents and it touches on this article about the researcher and analyst, which I think we talked about in the last show. But one of the things they've kind of picked up even more is around this frontier program. Did you want to touch on that tool,

Zoe Wilson (24:17)
Yeah, so the Frontier program is interesting. There was a link to a blog that talks about how to sign up for this, but we couldn't find it before the show. So if we do find it, we'll include it in the show notes. basically the Frontier program is like an early access program for some of the new copilot announcements. My understanding is, I think this is US only, although it doesn't actually say they say, does it? But my understanding is this is in

in the first instance.

Kevin McDonnell (24:47)
So just quickly for those not watching, there is a tech community article where someone asked about is the Frontier program live and someone called Finley Knight who isn't from Microsoft. So we have to take this assumption that this is the right one until we can find that formal article. But there's some steps in there. And we'll put this in the show notes of how to sign up within that.

Zoe Wilson (25:11)
Yeah,

but basically, if you meet the requirements and you sign up to join the Frontier program, you will get early access to some of the newer things that Microsoft are announcing. they've talked about the researcher agent and the analyst agent will be available in the agent store to those who are in the Frontier program before they'll become generally available to everybody else. So if you are interested in getting hands on.

Kevin McDonnell (25:35)
It's a bit like a targeted

release, isn't it?

Zoe Wilson (25:37)
Yeah,

like an early release ring like TAP for those who are familiar with TAP for some of the other office products and things like that.

Kevin McDonnell (25:45)
Well,

I disagree slightly. I think this is a little bit more like having targeted release on your tenant. So you're getting early access isn't quite preview. It's something that's, I think, I believe they're considering it as general availability, but you're getting first general availability. So it's not beta, it's not preview. I think it's working. But until we can find that blog, I can't say for sure.

Zoe Wilson (26:09)
Yeah, I

wasn't entirely sure because in one of the blog posts that I read about it, was saying, you know, they'll be looking for people who were in the program to give feedback and things like that. So I think it might be just like a little bit of a hybrid really, because if they release things to the Frontier program and there are issues, they're going to pull it back, aren't they, before it goes to GE.

Kevin McDonnell (26:16)
Hmm.

Okay.

Yeah. So I guess the messaging is when you sign up, make sure you read, make sure you understand what it means to join that program, make sure you understand who is impacted by that. you're a large organization, can you roll that out to some people and not others? When you sign up, make sure you know what you're getting in for.

Zoe Wilson (26:55)
yeah 100 %

Kevin McDonnell (26:56)
Shall we move swiftly away before we put our foot in it again?

Zoe Wilson (26:59)
Yeah, definitely.

Kevin McDonnell (27:01)
So we talked about the the work trend index and what we're showing here is the the blog that announced the work trend index ⁓ as well. What's what's fascinating is we talked about that Frontier program just now. Shameless link here. The work trend index talks a little a lot about the Frontier firm.

Now Zoe, I'm going to be honest, I have skimmed read this. I'm hoping you've read it a little bit more. What on earth is a frontier firm?

Zoe Wilson (27:32)
Well, first of all, rather than looking at the Jared thought leadership blog, open up the full work trending next report because within that it actually has a glossary of terms. And one of the things that was really interesting with this, so let's just keep going. Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (27:49)
Keep on this page or download the actual report.

Zoe Wilson (27:50)
Yeah, just

keep going down. It's got like the, interact, keep going. It's got an interactive, there you go, Frontier Firm and Glossary. So one of the things that Microsoft have done with this, because they're introducing a new way of talking about, you know, about Copilot and agents and AI. They've introduced a whole heap of new terms and...

to help people understand what they mean. They've actually introduced this glossary as well. So if you click through this, Kevin, we can come back to some of the more offensive ones. There we go. So a frontier firm is a company powered by intelligence on tap, human agent teams, and a new role for everyone, agent boss.

Kevin McDonnell (28:23)
I don't know what you mean

So if I use agents, I'm not just using a bit of tech, I'm an agent boss. ⁓ Does this mean I need to set OKRs for those agents? Have I got to set objectives? Are they going to have HR issues I need to handle? I mean, it's a whole new world we're looking at.

Zoe Wilson (28:46)
Yes.

Yeah, well, I

yeah, I mean, I don't think there's HR issues, but I do think there is, I do think that it's really important that people actually understand what the role of the agent is, what is the scope of what they're doing? What do they have access to? How do we tell that they've gone outside of that scope? And there's a, there's an interesting graphic in this report where it shows, it's almost like Goldilocks with the, you know, the different ⁓ porridge.

Kevin McDonnell (29:02)
You

Zoe Wilson (29:26)
where it shows someone with like not enough agents, it shows someone with too many agents, and then it has like just the right amount of agents for someone to be able to use them effectively without actually becoming kind of burnt out and overwhelmed from the cognitive load of trying to manage too many agents.

Kevin McDonnell (29:46)
Yeah. And I hate the phrase agent boss. I'm not going to lie about that on there. And if people find me using it seriously, please just come up and maybe not physically slap me, but emotionally slap me and make sure I go on there. But we've talked a lot about Copilot being like an intern and, you know, looking at treating it like that. This kind of is that evolution.

Zoe Wilson (29:52)
I'm with you on that.

Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (30:15)
of that idea, that notion and having that. I think it's the same, you we're looking at these just the right number of agents. It's the same with employees, isn't it? Picking things there, you want just the right number. there is a lot of logic to what's in here, even if some of the phrasing we're not huge fans of.

Zoe Wilson (30:16)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, this is another one of the phrases that I think they're defining the glossary as well, which is that human to agent ratio. And I do have to wonder who is going to decide what the right human to agent ratio is and how are businesses actually start tracking this. And there's an assumption in this that in order for a

Kevin McDonnell (30:38)
Mm.

Zoe Wilson (30:54)
a person to have the right amount of agents and the agents to have the right amount of capability. They need to be better than they are today. And I think when you look at things like, you know, the researcher agent, the analyst agents, some of the other agents that are being built across the industry, you can start to see that. But I think this isn't going to be true after build, for example. You know, this is a journey that will take one to two years.

even for the most ambitious frontier firms who are at the forefront of understanding how to augment their human workforce with agents, actually getting the full benefit of this and understanding what that right ratio is and what the purpose of the agencies is and helping people understand how to actually offload things and reduce the cognitive load in a way that will allow them to manage it. This is a real big change for people and organizations.

Kevin McDonnell (31:49)
Hmm.

So I've got a serious point, a silly point. I'm to start with a silly one because I've just noticed the images in the background of this showing the kind of graphs and showing people flatlining with too few agents, too many agents. There's a lovely graph dropping off and then the right balance. There's a nice raising graph going at right pace, not too fast, not too... I love that. The imagery on there is great. But on a more serious note, and I think you're right, I absolutely agree with what you're saying about...

organizations can need to change. I see some of the the idea of getting that ratio right will be critical and task specific. I think if I have a worry, we've looked at things like Viva topics and Viva goals that have been killed off because organizations haven't been able to adapt to make the most of those within there. I hope the enthusiasm with generative AI and the capabilities of this will

lead to organizations looking at how they work, looking at optimizing work and using agents to help that. Because I think that is the key. It's looking not again, we talk about process and tools is looking at these as a tool and how they can use to help that. unless you change that underlying process, things aren't going to improve. So I do hope hope organizations look at doing this the right way and not just kind of throwing lots of agents at stuff.

for the sake of it and then going, it doesn't work within there. I think that's one of the one of the views I like is that we've got this kind of phase one, a human with assistant phase two, this human agent teams phase three, that human led agent operated. does kind of move towards that being a journey, being a steps that organizations need to talk through. So I don't think we'll

it will kind of eat into this too much more than they go and read the the report. We may come back to it in future episodes at sort of picking up some more of the detail within there ⁓ as well, but it will be interesting.

Zoe Wilson (33:48)
Yeah, I mean, there's like, if

I know we're not going to dig into it too much more, but if you just click on section three on that on the left hand side, Kevin and go down to the every employee becomes an agent boss. One of the things that yeah, one of the things that I thought was really interesting here, and I think this is this is where we're starting to see kind of the difference from a leadership perspective is when Microsoft have been doing this research, what they've seen is that leaders when we start to think about

Kevin McDonnell (33:59)
Sorry, I'm going to start doing that every time I hear the phrase.

Mm.

Zoe Wilson (34:16)
utilizing agents. It's the leaders who are now ahead of the curve compared to employees where I feel like before employees were the ones who were experimenting with copilot. And I really liked this graphic, which is talking about the kind of different indicators to, I hate this phrase, sorry, you're gonna hate me saying this, the indicators to identify who has an agent boss mindset.

Kevin McDonnell (34:39)
Sorry. I

hope that's not triggering anyone that noise but yeah, it's going to carry on every time Zoe says it.

Zoe Wilson (34:47)
Yeah, so this is interesting and it shows to me, think that people who are in leadership roles, not exclusively, but people who are in leadership roles understand that they need to get their head around this and they need to figure out how to leverage these capabilities to drive competitive advantage, to drive efficiencies. yeah, the challenge now is how do we bring everybody else on the journey as well?

Kevin McDonnell (35:05)
lady.

And I can't remember who was chatting about it in one of the WhatsApp groups ⁓ on there, but the notion of the skill of delegation is something that everyone wanted to get. And I think it's people who come into management. It's something you have to learn. You're going to I can do this, I can do this. And that's where burnout happens. Learning how to delegate effectively is something you're going to have to do with agents in the same way that you you do with employees. So I think that's a skill we need to start helping people out.

and apologies whoever I stole that from.

Right. So I think with these agents and you touch on something, how they're going to measure the ratio, I think measurement is something is another set of things that have been announced there. I'm going to jump slightly onto one other thing because it's in my list on there. One of the measurements is how much is this going to cost? And one of our good friends, ⁓ fellow MVP Lee Ford has actually built a copilot calculator.

to help you look and think about your usage of agents. So whether you're looking at an M365 Copilot license, whether you're looking at that Copilot chat license, you can size the number of users, you can put down the average salary of the users just quickly. And maybe Lee, you might need to put a statement in here. None of this data gets saved or recorded. This is only in memory while you're doing this. So there's no recollection of this average salary that's been

retains their data privacy and all that. But anyway, how many hours your users work per day, how many do they work per month? And then it starts to bring together some types of agents, so a self-service one, a company agent, and you can view the breakdown ⁓ within there of the kind of activities that they have taken place. So you can either keep it high level or you can drill into some of the detail and it gives you an indication of the monthly costs of that. So you can have that decision.

Does it make sense to have more people with a full M365 copilot license? Or does it make sense to keep these number of people with that copilot chat? I really like this. I think I've seen a few people build some of this logic, but I think this is the most complete one to kind of quickly throw some numbers in and work from there. So really love the work Lee's done with this.

Zoe Wilson (37:31)
Yeah, really like this, but Lee, let's have a chat around break even point not equaling minutes saved per day.

Kevin McDonnell (37:41)
Yes, good point. I missed that one. Yeah.

Zoe Wilson (37:45)
And just to expand on

that for those of who might not have heard me talk about this before, I think it's really dangerous to talk about ROI of copilot and AI investments in terms of MinuteSave because from a CFO perspective, that chief financial officer, for them to make such a big investment in technology, they actually need to understand what the ROI will be and MinuteSave isn't cashable. It's not something that you can directly link to either reducing the bottom line or increasing the top line.

It's one of the things that actually makes understanding the value and ROI in this space more difficult because it's going to mean different things to different people, different organisations, different industries.

Kevin McDonnell (38:23)
Absolutely. Now we're to go look at understanding cope agent usage. I'm laughing because I got a funny feeling somewhere in here it talks about ROI, but let's gloss over that fact. ⁓ So this is around kind of the usage of the agent. I think to me, don't think it explicitly calls this out, but that kind of human agent ratio.

Zoe Wilson (38:28)
All right, where are heading next, Kevin?

Kevin McDonnell (38:50)
This is how many you know, how much of those agents are being used. It's getting that Viva Insights ⁓ usage for your copilot, copilot studio agents. I hesitated there for a minute because yes, we are talking about just the copilot studio ones within that. And you can see you can see that agent satisfaction score. I was just looking.

No, it's not a kind of human agent ratio number showing up. You can see how many enabled users you've got and how much is being used. ⁓ you could work it back from that as well. But you can see how much that usage is. You can look at the top agents and dig into those things. So this is something I know people have been asking for for a long time is where we've had that copilot usage. Can we get things on agents? So this is now saying, yes, that is coming.

within there and how happy people are feeling for it. I find it very interesting that they put the average is three point eight that generally Microsoft puts these numbers kind of very positive. That doesn't feel like an amazing number on their own. Intrigued about that slightly. So I think we we're seeing a lot more of that copilot control system, that ability to report. I don't see the word are in there, so I think we are looking good from that. But we can see the the different types.

Zoe Wilson (39:53)
Hahaha

Interesting. Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (40:11)
⁓ I like this, so the user created agents where you've allowed those makers within your organization to build them. The number of those, the number of built centrally by org, the number used by Microsoft and their partners. You can get that visibility of the popular types and dig into a lot of that information from the M365 ⁓ admin center as well. So really looking forward to getting this and kind of dig into that a little bit further.

I'm sorry, good friend Lauren strength will have all sorts of fun pulling this apart and comparing with some of his own numbers and things on that as well. So ⁓ before anyone asks, ⁓ Yannick, if you're listening as well, I do not know if there will be an API for this as well. Hopefully it will come along soon ⁓ for that. But really good seeing those numbers come.

Zoe Wilson (40:52)
Hahaha

Yeah, I'm sure people

like Yannick and some of the others in the community will be asking Microsoft very loudly for that.

Kevin McDonnell (41:03)
If it isn't there straight away. Yeah, absolutely. The other one, I think there's another we'll put this in there. There's some few other things with the control system around security and governance. I think given the time, we won't dig into this, but check the show notes for that one. The other link that I haven't opened up here, but they also announced the computer use agents. So this is almost a bit like running.

the Power Automate Desktop, ⁓ and I'm desperately trying to remember the OpenAI one. it orchestrator? Something begins with O, isn't it? So you can kind of use generative AI to control your browser and perform activities. So that's been announced. Check out the show notes for the link to that one as well. Going back slightly to the Copilot Control System, ⁓ we'll put a link, but we are now seeing that SharePoint Advanced Management.

which was announced, I think it was back in Ignite, wasn't it, to be included with Copilot. Finally, that is rolling out to a lot more people. I've got it in my own personal tenants. hearing a lot of others starting to see that light up. So really, really excited about to dig and get hands on with that as well without having to pay the extra licenses for it. So really, really good to see that too.

Zoe Wilson (42:22)
Yeah, definitely. I know people have been chasing that up for a while because the announcement from Microsoft initially said that it would be early 2025 and here we are at the end of April. Good to see it finally rolling out before M365Conf and build.

Kevin McDonnell (42:37)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So another one, maybe we'll we'll do a ⁓ dedicated show. Certainly when this gets released and we get a bit more hands on with this. This one caught me by surprise. I thought it might be another month or so before we heard things about this. But the artist formerly known as Skills in Viva is now People Skills ⁓ on that and

you'll be shocked to hear that there's an agent with it as well. Who would have thought there'd be more agents coming in that? But this is something that's been going around for a while, the skills in VivaEd allows you to kind of take the skills that people have. they're, what's another word for it? So you're kind of qualified, not just qualifications, but how good are you at talking about Copilot? How good are you, you know, what is your skill sets? Do you talk about M365? Are you an engineer? Are you...

Zoe Wilson (43:05)
Hahaha

Kevin McDonnell (43:30)
fantastic at different things within HR. It's taking all those elements, using what you have flags within LinkedIn and the power of AI to kind of help look at what are the skills that you have within your org, and then to be able to say what are the skills that you need and where are the gaps within that. So this will then link in with Viva Learning as well, to kind of say, well, maybe we can help train people into the other areas within that ⁓ on there.

and obviously an agent to help you do that, because you'll just tap a few things in and that will answer all your questions on that. But I don't think we'll dig too deeply unless there's something you want to jump out ⁓ with this, but really excited by this.

Zoe Wilson (44:07)
No, think, ⁓

yeah, I mean, in the show notes will include a link to a Josh Bursin article as well, because one of the things that surprised me was actually how positively this was received in the HR tech community ⁓ as well. And like you say, Kevin, I think once this is available, we can dig into it more and actually go through what it means to people. But this Josh Bursin link is definitely worth taking a look at.

Kevin McDonnell (44:23)
Mmm, it's good show.

Yeah. So as we said at the start of show, a lot more announcements than I think we were expecting at this stage of the year. mostly because we're kind of coming into conference season, which leads very nicely onto a few conferences. And I think Zoe, you're about to ⁓ start heading off over to Vegas soon, aren't you?

Zoe Wilson (44:55)
Yeah, that's correct. So a week on Sunday, I'll be flying to Vegas for the M365 Community Conference. And I'm actually really excited because it's the first time I will have been to this event in person. Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (45:09)
Is it really? Have you

ever been to a SharePoint conference or?

Zoe Wilson (45:13)
Which one?

Kevin McDonnell (45:15)
with one of the kind of global SharePoint ones they used to have. No. Interesting.

Zoe Wilson (45:18)
No, no, no, no.

So I mean, like, well, you know, when those things first came onto my radar, I didn't really work in consulting and then I worked for a, you know, a UK consulting firm who didn't really send people to stuff like that. So it's only really in the last few years that I've been able to get to some of the bigger events. But yeah, I'm super excited. It's interesting though, because I'm not actually talking about Copilot. I'm going to give my...

Kevin McDonnell (45:33)
Mm.

Zoe Wilson (45:43)
presenting in Teams updated for 2025, masterclass rant at people about, you know, like, I mean, we've had Teams for how many years now? People should know how to present in Teams properly.

Kevin McDonnell (45:54)
Yeah, so that you mean share the screen, make sure you share their presentation in edit mode, all those good tips that just make it better.

Zoe Wilson (46:01)
yeah, yeah, you know, show people all of the notes, it, make it it's so small. Start the presentation

with, I can't see your hands, so just come off mute if you've got a question.

Kevin McDonnell (46:11)
All those good things.

I've not only seen that session, I've represented it on your behalf a couple of times as well. So I really enjoy that one. So I think people will be in for a treat with that.

Zoe Wilson (46:18)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And

then, I mean, if we, we look at other events, we've got a color cloud, which is happening at the moment.

Kevin McDonnell (46:28)
Yeah, yeah. Thank you, AJ so far, who did Instagram live from there as they were having their hair dyed. lots lots of fun happening there. I'm not jealous in the slightest.

Zoe Wilson (46:40)
Yeah.

And then if we look at other events in May, obviously Microsoft Build is taking place. We've talked about that a little bit already. Neither of us will be attending that this year, but I will be keeping an eye on this remotely. I think there's going to be a whole heap of excitement coming out of that. And then at the end of May, yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (46:53)
Yeah. Yeah, I'm just laughing. There's a link there. Convince your manager. I think convince your family is what

I need for that.

Zoe Wilson (47:03)
Well, I mean, my problem is just too much travel because, you know, I've convinced my family to come with me to Vegas and we're turning that into a holiday. So I just get back from the U S probably two days before I'd need to travel to Seattle for build. And then when, if I went, when I got home from build, I'd be more or less immediately flying to Dusseldorf for the European collapse of me. So when I looked at the diary, it was just too much travel for me.

Kevin McDonnell (47:06)
Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. And I will be very much missing out on the Collab Summit as well this year, but that's a love that event. It's a fantastic one. I seen this video actually. It's distracting me slightly on there, but it is always fantastic event and so many great people. I think they've got three different events, haven't they? Because it's Collab Summit, Cloud Summit and Power's Biz App Summit. That's it on there. Yeah, so all the stuff you can want in the Microsoft space.

Zoe Wilson (47:32)
Hmm.

Hahaha

BizApps. Yeah, BizApps was the new one for this year.

Yeah,

and I'm really looking forward to it because I was ill while we were at Collab Summit last year, wasn't I? That was really difficult, doing a brand new presentation on Copilot to a standing room only room after having spent most of the night throwing up. ⁓ And not self-inflicted, I was actually poorly. ⁓

Kevin McDonnell (47:56)
are in one place.

yes, of course. Yeah.

Yeah, I will vouch for that. I know it's not usually

so, what are you talking about this time?

Zoe Wilson (48:20)
I think it's a Copilot strategy session for that one.

Kevin McDonnell (48:24)
I don't be really good. It's amazing summit that once well. And then we are actually going to a conference together, which is comes with us as well, which would be fantastic over Mercedes Benz World in the ⁓ UK. So ⁓ I know there are still a few. Yeah, I think they're running low on tickets on that one. So if you are a fan of fire alarms, definitely worth attending for that one, because they're almost guaranteed to be one for an excuse to get outside into the sun.

Zoe Wilson (48:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's always a great venue that one.

Hahaha

Kevin McDonnell (48:53)
for that. So really, really great event. And I'm doing a 20 minute demo of Copilot and just trying to cram in as much as possible. One more shameless plug. I'm part of the Experts Live UK user group. We're doing a Power Platform session on May the 1st. Within that, we also, we haven't announced this, so I'm going to get in trouble for the others, but we are actually doing a Season of Agents workshop ⁓ in June, I think it's June the 6th or 5th.

within there when we talk about AI foundry and what you could do with that. So keep an eye out for announcements of that. And we do have the conference in September as well, which would be great for that. ⁓ And actually, need to speak to you about this, Zoe, in July, if you're around, we are doing a Copilot one looking for speakers. So I should probably speak to you separately on that one as well.

Zoe Wilson (49:38)
Yeah, yeah, let's chat. Yeah,

and then I guess what we didn't put this in the list, Kevin, but one final one final announcement from us. We are considering doing the month of copilot again for June this year, although this year it would be month of copilot and agents and we'll be getting a call for speakers or call for content out very soon. So keep an eye out for that.

Kevin McDonnell (50:01)
And for those who like me who are stuck at home and can't go to events, it will be an online only event and we'll have all the videos available afterwards. So no need to travel and get off your backside, which is ideal for some.

Right, think we missed one talking speakers for those who do want to travel in the UK, the call for speakers for South Coast Summit is out. So do do make sure you keep an eye out for that one as well.

Zoe Wilson (50:24)
Yep. So it definitely feels like conference season is in full swing, it? Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (50:28)
Yes, busy, busy,

But yeah, hopefully if see both of us at Comsverse, come and say hello and look out for Zoe at the M365 comp and comp and collab summit. But I think we should wrap up there. I'm going to head off and start playing around with some of the new things announced in there that are available and have a play with things. Mostly Sam is the one I really I've been looking forward to getting hands on with that and digging into it bit more. So.

Zoe Wilson (50:54)
Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (50:54)
do

like it with announcements, you can actually play with stuff as well. So let us know how you're finding things too.

Zoe Wilson (51:00)
Yeah, always fun. And I'm going to go and actually sort out my content for the conferences that I've got coming up. But thanks everybody for joining. It's been really great to go through some of these announcements this week. We've got more big things planned for future episodes. And if there's anything specific you'd like to hear about, please do get in touch and let us know.

Kevin McDonnell (51:06)
I feel the vacuum would suck.

Yeah, fantastic. Otherwise, hit that subscribe, share with everyone else, your friends, colleagues, family, clients, and let us know what you think. But otherwise for now, bye bye.

Zoe Wilson (51:30)
Bye bye, thanks for listening.