Ep 1 - Welcome to the Copilot Connection

Welcome to Copilot Connection, the podcast that explores the world of Microsoft Copilots! Join your hosts, Zoe Wilson and Kevin McDonnell, as they take you on a journey through the different Copilots available and how they can help you in your day-to-day life. From the newly launch date announced Microsoft 365 Copilot to the Dynamics 365, GitHub, Windows, Custom and more Copilots, we'll cover it all. Our upbeat and engaging conversations with experts in the field will keep you entertained and informed. Tune in to Copilot Connection and discover how these AI-powered assistants can transform the way you work!

Transcript

[Kevin 00:06] 
Welcome to the Copilot connection. 

[Zoe 00:10] 
We're here to share with you all the news, insights and capabilities of the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem across the entire Microsoft stack. I'm Zoe Wilson and I'm a Senior Director at Avanade. I sit in our Europe modern work business, but for the last few months have been leading globally and all things Copilot related. And I'm really interested in how this is going to transform the way we work. 

[Kevin 00:34] 
And I'm Kevin McDonnell. I'm a Microsoft MVP and also a solutions architect at Avanade. But this isn't an Avanade project. This isn't an Avanade podcast. This Is Us loving Copilot, loving part of the community and really wanting to start to share some of this. We'll be releasing episodes as podcasts, hands up on YouTube. And we're going to bring insights from experts from across the community and Microsoft on what the different areas of Copilot are, the impacts they can make to you and your organization, and what you need to do to prepare for them or to start implementing now, and even how you can extend them. So Zoe, what? Why are we doing this? 

[Zoe 01:21] 
So I'm sure you've all seen the news over the last few months and actually started really in November last year when ChatGPT went mainstream generative AI became the the buzzword and in January Microsoft committed publicly to embedding Gen. AI capabilities into all of their products. And what we've seen since then is an absolute flurry of Copilot announcements with Microsoft actually fulfilling the commitment that they made and we're we're already seeing Copilot's lands in all of the different Microsoft products. And for me, why I'm 

[Kevin 01:55] 
interested? Well, from info path there is no Copilot for info path in case anyone gets excited there. 

[Zoe 02:01] 
It would be nice to have a Copilot that could help you migrate InfoPath. That 

[Kevin 02:06] 
would be good. That would be interesting, actually. 

[Zoe 02:09] 
So let's see if that lands in Power Apps, maybe at some point in the future. But I think, I think for me it's it's an opportunity to cut through the noise a little bit and to start to look at all of these different Copilots, what the capabilities of them are, what it really means to to people inside organisations, whether it's general Copilots like M365 or whether it's some things that are fairly specific. And roles. And what we want to do is just really help cut through some of this noise and get some clarity on what the different Copilots are, how they might work together and what the possibilities are as we go on this journey in the next year or two. 

[Kevin 02:49] 
Absolutely. And I think we're going to look to bring in some of the conversations, not just around what they do, how you can roll it out, but what some of the challenges might be. So we're hearing a lot about responsible AI and how you can make sure you're using it in the right way within your organisations sharing outside as well. But also we're going to bring someone in to talk about sustainability aspects of it. We're not going to shy away from some of the opposite sides to all the benefits and can bring. We want to bring this into the conversation and provide people with as much information about all this as possible. We talked a bit. Sorry, go on. Sorry. 

[Zoe 03:25] 
I was just saying I was agreeing with you. I was just saying yes, absolutely. 

[Kevin 03:30] 
I I guess the the question is what is Copilot because because for me I love the name but why is it Copilot? What does? What does that encompass? 

[Zoe 03:41] 
So the clues in the name really it's Copilot, not autopilot. So this isn't about replacing humans or people. This is about the human keeping the human in the loop. It's about each of us having a Copilot to help us do things better, faster, higher quality, more easily. It's about giving us capabilities that augment what we can do as individuals and make it easier, if there is, to do things that previously may have required specialist knowledge. So power automates an example. I could use power Automates data to automate some stuff, but actually I haven't touched it in years. You know, I probably wouldn't know where to start. But being able to do that in natural language, it's lowering that barrier to entry and giving all of us, our virtual assistant Copilots that can help us do do things we couldn't do before or help us do things that we can do today, but doing them better and faster. 

[Kevin 04:39] 
And I think it's also inspiring you. You know, the great thing about having a partner there with you is to kind of make you think of new ways and kind of helping you get started with stuff. And I think a lot of the Copilots will also help in that. If we look at GitHub Copilot helping you get start with I know we want this bit of code that's going to come through but I can't quite remember how to do it or I don't know how to get started. Being able to have that natural language and have it build out some of that foundation so you can focus on what you're trying to solve, not the bits around it. And that's where that's where Copilot will really help across the different stacks as well. 

[Zoe 05:17] 
Yeah, 100%. So what are the current Copilots? What's, what's been announced so far? 

[Kevin 05:24] 
So it's a good question and always a nervy question when it comes to Ndas and things like that. But if we pick up some of the announcements that we've had, we have those modern work Copilot with Bing Chat Enterprise that takes that Bing Chat capability much like ChatGPT, but they're within that power of being. But also then it guarantees that your data is not leaking out. So you can ask it about things without that concern, it's going to be using that information to train back or as Samsung workers found out that what you're searching for leaks out and that can be very sensitive. So really powerful way of bringing that to people in a either free if you've got your Microsoft 365 licenses or there is now a paid one that's just been announced, we've got that Microsoft 3, sorry. 

[Zoe 06:15] 
Yeah, sorry. Just on the Bing Chat enterprise one as well. I think, I think for me, this is 1 where actually it's really important for organizations just to enable it because people are using ChatGPT and Bing Chat already. So by turning this on, you can actually protect that corporate data and start, like, like you said, Kevin, stop it being used to train the model. Without that, people will be putting that data into Bing chat that's not protected or into ChatGPT. So. So for me, this is one that, you know, it's there. It's in the licensing. Get that 

[Kevin 06:47] 
turned on? Yeah. And and to be clear, it's not using your own data when it searches for that. You need to get into the Microsoft 365 Copilot, but it's making sure you're not providing your data outside there as well. And that Microsoft 365 Copilot, actually, sorry, I'm going to let you talk about that as it as it very much is your baby at the moment. 

[Zoe 07:09] 
Yeah, absolutely. So I've I've been very close to Microsoft 365 Copilot for for quite some time now. This is the this is the one that I think will have the the most potential to touch the most people and change how we work, giving us that productivity assistant inside the office apps that we all know and love and use every day. Maybe we don't love them, I'm not sure. Do you love Excel? 

[Kevin 07:36] 
I I hate Excel, but I love PowerPoint. So yeah, but actually it's those ones you hate that it's going to make easier. I love the example of I could never get conditional formatting right. Being able to use Copilot to use that natural language and say I want it to go from this colour range and these numbers on this one just makes things so much easier. 

[Zoe 07:57] 
Yeah, absolutely. And I think when we when we start seeing this being extended with connectors and plugins. It will really become that front door. You know, we've talked about Teams for the last few years, as you know, using Teams as a platform, bringing things into the flow of work. But I think with Microsoft 365 Copilot that will become. More possible, More easily and more powerful? 

[Kevin 08:23] 
Absolutely. And then leading onto Windows Copilot, bringing that conversation into Windows again. I talked about conditional formatting, but I'm always forgetting how to add accounts or even how to bring a new screen in. You know, clicking through the settings, trying to find the right one to have that button that's not Cortana and can bring all those things in in a very natural way will be really powerful. And I think we're seeing the announcements of more and more AI being brought into that Windows Copilot with things like removing backgrounds it from paint, all all sorts of AI capabilities coming into those apps that we've used regularly for years and years. It's transforming every single application people are using. They really will be a game changer. 

[Zoe 09:08] 
Yeah, I think Windows Copilot, some of one of the things I think will be quite useful is just being able to use natural language to get into things like the ease of access centre. So being able to really turn on and interact with accessibility settings without having to know where they are or how to get to them. I think from a from an accessibility perspective, there's some some really great opportunities there. 

[Kevin 09:35] 
And then moving on to business applications, probably an area that we're not quite as familiar with, I think it's fair to say Zoe in dynamics. So it will certainly be bringing some experts along to help us with that. But I think again you know we talked about that skills gap, it's great not being familiar. That's where Copilot can help. It can help me build views, it can help me understand if we look at the kind of sales side of things, what are the areas that are being there, what are the opportunities that people haven't tagged for example, always a discussion across many organizations I've worked overtime. So to try and identify and bring that information through again in natural language will be really interesting and extending that into power platform as well. And that sales Copilot all working closely together has disappeared from the the word of that sales Copilot. But you know, you've all got to have the exciting baby at the time. 

[Zoe 10:33] 
Yeah, it was always a bit of an outlier in the Beaver stack anyway, wasn't it? Just on the Dynamics Copilot, it's one of the ones that's really interesting to me is the customer service capabilities. So having that customer service agent being able to have their own Copilot that helps them when they're dealing with customer queries whether this is? In chat, you know it, having access to the customer records it, being able to point them to knowledge based articles and even help them draft the responses that they might want to send out. You know, I think when we think about the kinds of people who work in contact centres that, you know, if we can get them up to speed and having that corporate knowledge at their fingertips much more quickly. It significantly reduces that time to value and gets them operational and to a higher quality more quickly. 

[Kevin 11:25] 
Absolutely agree on that one and then kind of moving on to the digital app and innovation. I've been playing around with GitHub Copilot on its various guises. I genuinely could couldn't live without it. Now it just accelerates and I I think it's a great example of how you can bring those Copilots into your flow of work and it just feels natural. It doesn't feel like you have to do anything different for it. And I'm sure in future episodes we'll talk about that adoption and change and bringing in those habits. For me, GitHub Copilot is a great one that just puts it there in the habit of way we're doing things. So really strong with that to be able to to bring those elements together. 

[Zoe 12:08] 
Yeah, absolutely. And then from a from a data perspective, so Copilot and Power BI, I wondered 

[Kevin 12:13] 
if you're going to talk about coding at all. I thought I'd trick you up on that one by giving you a pause. 

[Zoe 12:19] 
Yeah, so if I just going back to the Power Ultimate example, you know if it's been a couple of years since I've touched Power Automate, unfortunately I don't get time to play in that depth anymore. But you know, I from a GitHub Copilot perspective, when I'm looking at the capabilities, I am actually thinking that this could this could help me. You know, with a big understanding of of some languages, this would actually help me get back up to speed and be able to deliver. 

[Kevin 12:45] 
And you were a build earlier this year when Scott Hanselman was it. Mark Russinovich kind of built out that they had that session there where they built out a game using GitHub Copilot in languages they didn't understand. And yeah, they're fairly capable developers to pick up new ideas, but it gives that demonstration of working together with people to get what you want working really nicely. Anyway, onto data. 

[Zoe 13:11] 
Yeah, well, actually. So if we just stay like stay with apps for a minute from a power platform perspective, one of the other really interesting demos that I saw at Build. Were the power apps. Creation capabilities. So being able to take a spreadsheet that has data in it and then build a power app from that data. And this was a live demo on stage that they did in like a matter of minutes. And then add Copilot to your app. So you use Copilot to build the app, and then you give Copilot to the people using the app so they can query the data that was in the original spreadsheet that you uploaded. It's a bit inception like, but just again, again, capabilities in the hands of people. It will make it so easy for people to be able to innovate to solve their own problems. Incredibly powerful. 

[Kevin 14:01] 
Yeah. And and we'll we'll come through this series of the reality of that, you know this this is a future view. Some elements of that will be fantastic from day one. Some will kind of be nice in some areas. And you know, you know I'm sure the Gartner Hype Cycle will creep into the conversation at some point around this as well. And that I think fits with the security elements as well. So being able to query your security posture, I, I, I was speaking to someone at Experts Live over in Prague last week. And one of the things they were really excited is when you're having those security attacks, when you're trying to narrow down where the issues are and you know, to many people it's almost the matrix seeing those hordes of audit logs, audit logs coming through and trying to identify those patterns, to be able to have Copilot to query that and dig into those elements even faster will be absolutely huge. 

[Zoe 14:56] 
Yeah, 100%. And this isn't even all of the Copilots that have been announced. There are lots more. And there's also the possibility to build custom Copilots and potentially start to connect them into these Microsoft Copilot ecosystem as well. And we'll start to explore all of this in coming episodes and if we just think about what we've got coming up. So we we've already got some interviews in the can haven't we Kevin? 

[Kevin 15:25] 
We do sorry that I mentioned experts live EU over in Prague last week and sorry Zoe was meant to be there but unfortunately had to pull out later on. But I still took my trusty GoPro with me and managed to get some interviews with Marine Summers, Ragnarill and and I'm always going to get his name wrong. So apologies Stoller Stella Hanson. I hope I got it close there, as long as I stop calling you Stella. But we have some lovely chats. So what we're going to do, there were short chats, 3 to 4 minutes or in stores case because he loves talking about 6 minutes. So we're going to play those in next episode and then Zoe and I will chat a bit about the topics they brought up afterwards just to kind of see. And it's it's why we want to bring guests. This is to bring those other perspectives that they bring to that as well as their expertise, especially people like Ragnar who are working in that governance space. That really helps with that preparation and we'll be bringing more and more experts along as well, won't we? 

[Zoe 16:28] 
Say. Yeah, absolutely. We we've already got a list of people that we're planning to bring into future episodes. If you're at South Coast Summit will be planning to find people to record interview. There's as well there as well. So if you've got an opinion on Copilot and you're at South Coast Summit, come and find us. And if you're doing things with Copilot, if you're starting to experiment or explore, or if you're if you've not been able to get your hands on the Copilot products yet, but you're just doing lots of research and you're really excited. Let us know. We'd love to have you on future episode episodes. Check the website for a link we'll have. We'll have a process that you can follow to tell us that you're interested and we can get you on a future episode. 

[Kevin 17:13] 
So yeah, the website isn't the most exciting right now, I will admit. And we're going to be improving on that as the episodes come out. But you can go to Copilotconnection.com, that's give you links to where you can subscribe, find out more, and we'll bring more and more into that as we set it up. Links to our social sections. You can see we've already got a YouTube channel. Well, you might even be watching on this right now, so please, please, please hit that subscribe button. I know we're sounding like cheesy Youtubers now, but please go and do that so we can see who's interested. Go and follow us on LinkedIn, on Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it today. Subscribe to us on the podcast. Follow that, follow that Channel on YouTube. Tell your colleagues. Tell your clients about it. Tell your friends and even your parents, Because right now Copilot is one of the hottest things. Generative AI is one of the hottest things that everyone is talking about. So please spread the message. Let's help get this information out to as many people as possible. 

[Zoe 18:17] 
Oh, so I couldn't agree more, Kevin. I think nearly every conversation I'm having at the moment is being dominated by Copilot. I just wanted to say to everybody, thanks very much for listening and we look forward to talking more soon. 

[Kevin 18:33] 
Thank you. Bye, bye.