What is the True Value of Copilot?

Brett Johnson, Microsoft 365 Copilot GBB (Global Black Belt), shares his personal and customer experience of how Copilot in Microsoft Teams and beyond is streamlining meetings, communications and workflows. 

• Examples of Copilot for driving efficiency in customer operations
• How Copilot is revolutionising data handling
• The future of Copilot, including agent-based capabilities and customer Copilots

Thanks to Jabra, this episode's sponsor, for supporting the community and for helping to make content like this possible.

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Welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast. This week we have Brett Johnson who is a global black belt for Microsoft. 365 Copilot. Brett has been at Microsoft a long time. We talk a little bit about his journey and the current M365 Copilot role. What is a global black belt? What do they do? And then we talk about Copilot, how customers are deploying it, where the benefits are for customers and how adoptions going. I really appreciate Brett taking the time to talk to me about Copilot. And many thanks to Jabra, who are the sponsor of this podcast. Really appreciate their support of Empowering.Cloud. On with the show. Hi everybody. Welcome back to the pod. I've been looking forward to this one. Brett and I are long overdue a catch up, and he's just, recently changed role. So I saw it popping up on LinkedIn and said that we've got to have a chat. so, without further ado, Brett, just want to introduce yourself and give us a little bit about your kind of background inside of Microsoft. leading up to the kind of current new GBB Copilot role. Yeah. Well, thanks, Tom. And it was nice to get your ping, actually. And you're right, I, I've recently moved into a new role. The official title is Microsoft 365 Plus Copilot global black belt. I’ll explain what that means in a moment. Nice, snappy title, as these roles tend to be. Well, yeah. yeah. Normally all of this is just shortened toGBB and everybody kind of gets the gist. But like in, in simple terms, it's, it's, it's an EMEA role actually I'm not reporting into the UK anymore. but it's there to support the modern work SSP’s, So the solution sales professional, the technical sales professionals TSPs, and assists in the Copilot, conversations. To be honest, it's it's about progressing those, we tend to have we the GBB organization tends to have closer ties to engineering and some of our corporate friends. So that can help unblock. but we were on a call earlier than on this morning, actually, and I guess that was like one of the words to describe the GBB is it fills the void. Right? So if there are things that needs to be done or levers that need to be pulled in order to progress a customer conversation, that's where we can help. So yeah, very exciting. So not new to Microsoft as as I'm sure you know, we've known each other for many, many years. so know my way around Microsoft pretty well. but relatively new into the into the Copilot world, in an incredibly exciting place and very privileged to be in this position. Yeah so it's interesting because it's such a fast moving pace. I mean, I'm I'm fascinated at the speed Microsoft has adopted and transformed to be kind of very AI first. And that GBB row feels almost more important than ever at this level of pace to keep up with what's going on, how the products are changing, helping the customers. It's a big role. Well, you've probably heard of the Microsoft Firehose, right? Or people would have done the if they work for Microsoft before even it was even as a customer trying to keep up to date with everything. But my goodness me, the amount of information, technical, technical information, commercial information, you know, that comes over that we, that we need to, to learn and comprehend is is is significant. That's great. Right. That’s exactly where I want to be learning with the growth mindset of everything to do with this. Yeah. And your background, just to give people context, I mean, we probably first overlapped when you were doing you I know you originally kind of Exchange and then you did UC and you stepped into service for a while. Like tell us the story. I know that. Well, yeah. I don't want to give a full detail of my CV, but it's, it's all Microsoft. It's the only place I've ever worked for my sins. Very fortunate to have a but many careers actually. I've described it to some as a very squiggly career. Started off supporting Exchange, so I was on premiere support and debugging to a degree. Exchange servers and certainly escalating issues to the US. That was fun. As people know or the people that do know me, I can talk a lot. And so actually, that means I can be I can educate people on things. I moved into technical pre-sales for Exchange, which was an illuminating experience because I ended up basically competing with the earlier version of Exchange for, for many years. So what's the reason to upgrade? What's the what do we do? Why do we do that? and then that augmented to unified comms. So there was the conferencing server for those of that remember as part of Exchange 2000. and then that augmented into or the likes of Lync Skype for business, there's all sorts of weird and wonderful, terminologies and marketing strategies. We've been through. and then that then twisted into that was a secret thing, got kind of secret thing called, MMS, Microsoft managed services, which then moved into BPOS which was the business productivity online suite. and that's when I was a technical specialist, by the way, at that point. and then that what that's what became Office 365, then Microsoft 365, went into management and dabbled around in that for a few years. and then just before Covid, went and sold Surface, so got my hardware wings, and then, into the world of Viva did that for a couple of years and then, into the Copilot GBB role. So, yeah, there's a short prose of, well, it's good to get good together. Yeah. Yeah. Like and and I guess now this is in some ways, you know, probably a much wider role because essentially around Copilot from Microsoft 365 So it's more of a stack role. Is that right? yeah. So in short, the, the kind of the focus area for, for me and the team that I'm in is around Copilot that sits within Office. Right. So obviously, for those of you that have experienced it, it we've got Copilot for lots and lots of things and a lot of people. Everything I would hazard a guess at. We’lll come will come onto that in due course I'm sure. But if you think of Copilot in Teams being kind of the primary focus that a lot of people understand and arguably get the most benefit in the first instance, but then you've got Copilot across the Office stack. So Word, Excel, PowerPoint, happy to have those conversations as well as needed. OneNote Whiteboard. So wherever you see Copilot within the modern work cloud. So Microsoft 365, that's where we will kind of focus, but not forgetting the likes of Copilot Studio and extending that into, into third party. databases and connecting it to, the multiverse, essentially, to make it even more cleverer than it already is. Yeah. So it's such a, it's a fun time, but it's such a fast moving time, you say, because you have this Copilot conversation and like, I feel like the, the GitHub Copilot, which kind of where the brand came from, has been a bit of a slam dunk, like devs get it? It's it's they're the general Copilot. I'm not sure we’ve got a name for the old kind of web Bing chat Copilot. I feel like a lot of people are missing out on that, because that is included in almost all the Office 365 SKUs. Now, and you've got this opportunity to activate a service for your users that is commercially data protected and in, in the box kind of thing. and then. Yeah, no, you're right. But yeah. Having having what was Bing chat enterprise now Microsoft Copilot within within the browser is is a game changer. And actually for those of you that are listening that haven't perhaps made any, leaps into Copilot for whatever reason, that would be a good place to start, right? Absolutely. It's I'm glad you said that because I feel like so many customers I work with haven't activated it yet. And I'm like, there's no there's no commercial implication here. Obviously there's a consideration from a, you know, teaching users, but there's such good value to be had for no additional commercial charge. And obviously there's a lot of exciting things we'll get onto about the M365 Copilot. But there's there's value to be had. no additional cost in more cases, but no. Absolutely. And I think, not I think I know if, when I, when I do a demo for, for customers, whether that be across public sector enterprise commercial work, across a number of different industries and segments at the minute, that's probably where we will start, right? Because there's there's bound to be individuals in the room that have at least played and and they've looked at Chat GPT. Yeah. Almost certainly. Right. Working with OpenAI AI. Yeah. It just helps. It helps kind of paint the picture and provide the bridge into what Microsoft, 365 Copilot can bring them. Yeah. And so where'd. And so where do you start that Microsoft 365 Copilot conversation you mentioned it's across so many products is Teams. the typical starting place obviously on the Teams person. That's where I always start. I'm curious with you with your what even hat on. No it's a really good question. And actually tomorrow I'm doing a presentation for, a number of central government customers, actually. And in the in the midst of putting that demo together, and it varies, it can vary. But I think what again, what helps paint the picture is making an assumption that there'll be somebody in the room that doesn't really get it, and they're probably a little embarrassed to put their hand up with their peers to say, look, I've kind of heard about this thing, but, you know, I haven't played with it and that's fine. So literally starting dare I say from basics of, look, you know, here is what Microsoft Copilot or Bing Chat enterprise Microsoft Copilot is in the browser. and just ask it a question, and then you can then start to elaborate on the answer and ultimately start having a conversation with it in order to provide contextual examples as to what you're asking. So we start there. and then there's a mobile client as well. Right. Because I think a lot of this, a lot of customers just make this assumption that it's just something that you would do on your PC or Mac, but actually on your Android or iPhone, there are appropriate apps that you can connect to, whether that is directly to the web or to your, Microsoft 365 commercial tenant that you've got that experience as well. So mobile experience, Bing Chat Enterprise, Microsoft Copilot. and then you're right, Teams is probably the place where we will go primarily to showcase meeting recap and then go and start asking questions of the meeting, making an assumption that it's being recorded in the first place. and this would be a good point to, call out. Actually, I can't remember if it's being published yet, but there is a new white paper on best practices when it comes to call recording, transcription and those types of things. And if you've seen it yet. Oh, great. Yeah. And I heard itt was coming. I don't think I've seen it yet. So, if you ping me links afterwards, I'll put it in the show notes, because that's a really hot conversation. So I do a lot of work with legal customers, and it's like they're we're both really keen to get into AI because we know it's going to change the landscape quite a lot. And recording transcription considerations is is a tough one. No I'll, I'll definitely send you the link to that. And I think if it's not, if it's not publicly available, it will be very shortly. Probably by the time we've edited we’ll be we'll be there. So anyway, we kind of go off piste, well not off piste but just a reminder that there is this wonderful resource that will give you the advice and guidance of what to do with recording transcription. Yeah. And then obviously the compliance and how long you keep those recordings. so Teams is where we’ll stay. Sorry. I'm sorry. I'll just, just worth noting that you can do a lot now with just transcription as well, which has been a big unlock for certain customers that aren't ready to record the meetings. They can still do a lot of the cleverness of Copilot with just even transient transcription, not save transcription, which is exciting. Oh, I agree, and look, to be honest with you, Tom, I very rarely take notes now. And the result of that is, you know, trusting the transcription and the conversation that we're having across, you know, numerous people in a meeting. but I'm actually paying perhaps more attention to what's going on rather than actually scribbling notes down, you know, literally old school pen and paper or in OneNote. Right. It's, you kind of find yourself. Well, I found myself being a lot more attentive, frankly, which which is a great benefit. so, yeah. Teams and, what we can do with Copilot there and of course, Copilot in the top left can then can be your window essentially into the rest of the Microsoft Graph. So again, for those of you that don't know, the graph is the connection that I have with other Microsoft colleagues. and also the assets that live across Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. And so as a result of that, you can start asking some really insightful questions about the data and asking you to prepare for meetings and all sorts of things. So and this I'm sure this. Is Microsoft's kind of, you know, secret sauce slash power over say, another AI engine or ChatGPT. Is the graph access to all your data obviously compliant with what you were allowed to see, but your emails, your chat, your meeting notes, it's the it's the only AI tool that has all that data available, which is where it gets clever. Yeah. And you know and you're right. It is. It is a it is a significant USP that Copilot has across your Microsoft 365 to state accessing that that digital substrate, the graph of your of your breadcrumb of activity with who you've worked with and whatnot. But again just to re-emphasize it works on your behalf. It doesn't inherit permissions or, you know, unlock doors that you don't have keys to. Right? It it it's it's you. So it only has permissions to, to what you see as an individual doesn't get inherited actually access in any way, shape or form. So I'm curious, you have access to all the all the toys and capabilities internally. Talk me through day to day, where are you finding Copilot add value to your workflows? Yeah, that's a great question. I think every person's different and we can have a conversation around the use cases and industries and things like that. But for me, I use the summarize function in outlook quite a lot. Right. And I remember there's there's two versions of Outlook, there's Outlook New and Outlook Classic. And I must admit I'm still flip flopping between the two. so depending on what I need to do, I will, I will be in one or the other. But look, I think summarizing long email, trying that long email, threads is, is certainly something that I'm finding benefit from. But I'll give you an example actually, as to where it really did, it was just magical, to be brutally honest with you. We had a, we had an internal call not so long ago last week, and I think it was four of us on the call, relatively technical, logical people. And there was there was a technical scenario that we were that we were talking through, and it was quite complex. And actually individuals had different perceptions of what the problem actually was. So it probably took half an hour, 40 minutes just talking the scenario through. And then a couple of people dropped off and and the two that were left, me and another we it was our job to kind of summarize what went on and think, right, what is the actual question that we need to ask engineering. and guess what? We we used the the Copilot within Teams and the transcription, and it was incredible. So the prompt is key, right? Rather than just summarizing the problem statement, we were very clear with what we wanted it to do. Yeah. and it provided us with probably what would have taken another 30 or 40 minutes of, you know, wordsmithing and crafting and all that. In the end it took us five minutes. So it saved us a ton of time. And that and the values right there and. That prompting thing is you touched something that's really important. It's a skill I certainly I feel to drive the value out of the product. Like like like just hitting summarize the thing and actually intelligent meeting recap already add some value at one click, but the difference between someone who knows how to drive Copilot to get the maximum out of it. I feel like it's almost night and day. If you look at users side by side. Yeah, I look, I prompting is something that I think everybody needs to become more aware of, right? And the way I described it, I was with a colleague actually just, just before this call. and, you know, I said to them, just just remember it it's not in your head. Right? It's not. There's no telepathy link to to to Copilot. Right. So what you're asking it, it's going to do. But actually you need to be sometimes quite descriptive as to what you want. Yeah. So if you want a bulleted list in a table, tell it you want a bulleted list in a table. You know, if you only want three things then tell it you only want three things in a bulleted list in a table. And I just taken off my pinboard. You might have just seen then the, the context of GCSE. So G is for goal. what output do you want from Copilot. The context. So why do you need it and who is involved. The source. Because one of the things that we all forget is actually where the where are we looking. Is it a Word document in in SharePoint. Is it a Teams meeting that was recorded. Is it an email that Tom sent me to two years ago. So you can you got to kind of think, what where are you going to pull this from? And then and then the E is around the preferences of how should Copilot respond? So there's lots of things if you go on the adoption, site on Microsoft for Copilot, you'll find all this stuff. Yeah. But, yeah, it's it's an interesting methodology GCSE. That's right. Yeah. It's really useful I think is a certainly I've found since I've had Copilot, you have to put some effort into proactive habit change and like this is going to be slower to be faster. Like I'm going to have to learn how to drive the tool. And that prompting I found personally. Yeah, there's a there's a big difference of I heard the comparison from somebody else of kind of, you know, treating it like a, junior employee or employee new to the space, however you want to, how we want to phrase it, like you, you if you ask somebody to do something, you don't explain exactly what you want and you get a different result back. You can't be annoyed that you you didn't say I wanted the bulleted list, or I prefer a table. I yeah, it's an interesting analogy that you're right. It's exactly that. and then we'll see, you know, we'll see, we'll see things change as we go on this journey. You know, perhaps it being a little bit more proactive. So rather than it kind of waiting for, for, for input and maybe a little, you know, a little tap on the, on the shoulder to say, oh, by the way, it looks like you're writing a letter. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's that that's where getting into the agent, you know, team Copilot type scenarios, which got got previewed at Build and and it's interesting that that takes the whole conversation away from I drive. the tool, it's personally mine into, this is a agent slightly proactive. You know, I bring it into the team. I bring it into the conversation. It can draw down, you know, bullets and notes in real time. I'm really excited for that from an adoption point of view, because the tool will start to show off some of its capabilities a bit more proactively. and, and what we're beginning to see, the customers that are being on the AP, early access program and those of, invested, subsequently have deployed and adopted. That's kind of the next phase. Right? Is to go. Right. Okay. We get it. There's a ton of value that we're seeing from just the Microsoft 365 tenant. And the graph. What next. How do we how do we connect it into these other things that we've got that gives us even more superpowers. And that brings us into the Copilot Studio conversation and kind of custom Copilot, which, yeah, again, like from a pure talking to customers ROI perspective, very often I can say, because those are more consumption based and line of business use case, you can sometimes pick things out that are like, this might not apply to everybody in the business, but there's a win here. Just building a Copilot for this workflow, this scenario. Have you seen anything similar around that? Yeah. So in short, yes. and that and that, those conversations start to appear once or not once but throughout the business case conversation. Right. Because there is the there's the obvious business value of that it saves time. Right. And I've given you an example, I'm sure many people that are watching listening this have got their own examples. Right. You know, fundamentally it can help you save time, whether that's creating stuff, summarizing stuff, whatever. but actually if we then start to think about. Right, so what is it that a certain department does within an organization, what's their function? what KPI are they being either, you know, measured on or what's their goal for the organizational growth or for the, for the next fiscal. Right. So then aligning what that department does with a KPI key performance indicator. And how can Copilot help that particular department or individuals within that that that a key for the for the KPI to be hit. That's where we're going. Right. and then that can then connect into Copilot and then, you know, if the world extends out this, it's quite a big conversation. It's a huge conversation, isn't it? It's such an exciting one that we're still relatively early in the journey, and already it's starting to unlock so much value. I can't wait to see where we are in the next 12 to 24 months of agent based stuff, proactive workflows. And also, I mean, it feels like Copilot is bedding into the Office suite as well. Like, like it's it's very strong in Teams. I think Excel is coming along like that, that it will get better and better in each of those use cases. I feel. And and it is. And so there's a couple of things I just a comment so don't forget aka.ms/work lab. So another thing to add on to the show notes is where we Microsoft the Royal, we publish, all of our research. So there's, there's it shows you kind of where we've come in, if you're not aware of it, that that's a really interesting place just to kind of understand some of the fact that that goes on. Yeah. And I guess don't forget, it's probably, well, next month, July would be a year or so since the EAP became a real thing. There's, you know, hundreds of features and capabilities that have been added to Copilot across the Microsoft Modern work stack that you may not be even aware of. Right. So this thing is just isn't it? Isn't it funny that we used to think, you know, we went from you went on this journey from kind of server based products every three years to, to be passed to M365 and then we're like, that's fast. And we're like, oh, Teams is really fast. Like Teams is growing in the millions and growing in the features. And then this whole Copilot journey has been a whole different thing in terms of the number of Teams working on different integrations and the features coming through. It really is, a lot of change in the products set And don't forget, a lot of that stuff is visible up on our roadmap site. Right. So the public stuff is, yes, there's an NDA stuff, NDA deck and capabilities that that are not on there, but as and when those get locked and become, you know, confirmed and concrete, they arguably they will appear on the public roadmap. Right. So if you want some indication of what has landed and what is coming, then you know, that's a good place to start. Awesome. Oh, Brett, thanks for joining me on the pod. It's, it's good to hear about your your new role. I think you're in, arguably one of the most exciting spaces at the moment. So, maybe if it's okay with you, we'll, we'll give you another another six months, and then we'll we'll get you back around for some more customer ideas and conversations. Ah well before you, you know you're not going to disappear without me asking you a question, then Tom but what, what what are you using it for? Where are you getting the most value of Copilot? So so with Empowering Cloud I do loads of content. So it's it's podcast. It's the newsletter. it's loads of conversations. We try and talk to enterprise customers and in, in Teams the OEM vendors. So I do loads of meeting recap and summarizing of notes, pulling out like content ideas from conversations. So I say Teams is definitely my primary use case. but I also use just regular Copilot for things like, data manipulation. So like like take this list, CSV it, content it, table it, bullet it like there's not much I don't now have some kind of AI in my workflow, and I'm not really into the like generative writer thing for me stuff so much, but it's the summarizing, the extracting ideas that's been huge for me. That's cool. Well, there's a there's a lot of great stuff that we have landed. Build gave you some idea as to some of the things that are coming, but there's, there's a lot more that you'll see over the next 6 to 12 months. A very exciting time. So, Tom, thank you for the invite and I definitely look forward to doing this again with. You in the future. Awesome. Thanks, Brett.