The Copilot Connection

Ep 32 - catching up on news after a busy summer

• Zoe Wilson and Kevin McDonnell

Share episode

Send us a text

It has been a little while since the last episode with Zoe and Kevin so they share some of their own news on why things have been a little quieter over the summer and then discuss the latest updates and news from Microsoft 365 Copilot. We recap recent events, including the Collab Summit North America, Experts Live UK conference, and share our upcoming events. 

On the news side we delve into significant announcements from lasast couple of months, including the introduction of the Knowledge Agent to "Frontier Firms", licensing changes, and the implications of GPT-5. Plus, Zoe pulls off some awesome dance moves without even realising it.

AI powered Takeaways

  • The Knowledge Agent aims to enhance knowledge management within organizations.
  • Licensing changes are designed to encourage broader adoption of Copilot features.
  • AI's role in the workplace is becoming increasingly significant.
  • Organizations must address foundational knowledge management issues to leverage AI effectively.
  • The conversation highlights the need for ongoing discussions about AI's impact on work and society.

Useful links

Agents

Licensing

GPT 5

Copilot Chat in Office Apps

Viva Engage in Copilot

Copilot Mode in Edge

Deal with US Government

Copilot Memory

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

Zoe Wilson (00:14)
We're here to share with you all the news insights and capabilities of the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem from across the entire Microsoft stack. I'm Zoe Wilson and I'm the Global Digital Workplace Services Lead at Kyndryl a regional director and an MVP for Copilot.

Kevin McDonnell (00:29)
And I'm Kevin McDonnell, an MVP for Copilot and Copilot Extensibility and also the Copilot strategy and modern workplace AI leader at Avanade. 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 even start implementing them now, and even how you can extend them.

Zoe Wilson (00:57)
So it's been a little while, Kevin, hasn't it, since we've done one of these? we... So we, I know you've had sessions in between with the wonderful Gary Trinder looking at some of the co-pilot extensibility and agent stuff. But yeah, it's been a while since the two of us have been here doing one of these. So we thought we'd do a recap.

Kevin McDonnell (01:01)
We are so unbelievably rusty.

Nothing's

changed much in your world, has it? All the same, same backgrounds, same what you're up to.

Zoe Wilson (01:22)
Well, quite a lot has changed. For those of you who are listening with whatever the equivalent of an eagle eye is, you might have heard in my intro that my company and role has changed. So I started a new job at the end of July after having a nice few weeks of time in the garden, shall we say. ⁓ And yeah, it's been certainly been a busy, a busy few weeks.

Kevin McDonnell (01:41)
you

Yeah, I think we kind of hit some of your new job busyness all around. There is nothing more fun than starting a financial year in September for a nice bit of chaos. So it's taking us a little bit of while to try and find a pattern where we can record again.

Zoe Wilson (02:01)
Yeah, well, part of it for me as well is just starting a new role and then with your busyness, just even simple things like trying to align diaries has been a lot more challenging, hasn't it? But it's really great for us to be able to get back together and we will be much more regular from this point forward.

Kevin McDonnell (02:19)
Hopefully. ⁓ No, we will. We will. We will.

Zoe Wilson (02:20)
Hopefully. No, be positive. ⁓

Let's manifest the schedule that we want, Kevin.

Kevin McDonnell (02:26)
Absolutely.

But we haven't just been doing kind of holidays and sitting in the garden. We have had some community stuff going on, especially you. You had a fantastic trip, didn't you?

Zoe Wilson (02:37)
I did, yeah. So I just got back last week from a couple of weeks in the US. The reason that we went to the US was for North American Collab Summit, but I convinced my other half to come with me. We had a huge amount of fun on the way to Branson. And it was the first time I've been at the North American Collab Summit. So I think I presented virtually when everything went virtual a few years ago for a period of time.

But this was the first time that I've actually traveled over there and it was a really interesting look at a side of America that I wouldn't necessarily normally get to see. And really nice just to see what could, because I've been to big conferences in the US, it was really nice just to see something that was more akin to the smaller, more intimate community events that we go to regularly in the UK.

Kevin McDonnell (03:03)
Yeah.

Yeah, it was fascinating watching the photos and hearing from my youth. It's definitely been on a list of places I want to go to just because it is so unique as an event and things. And, you know, we've worked in good friends with Mark Crackley. So going over and sort of supporting him, seeing some of the people there does does look like a big idea. I'm not sure I can convince the whole family to go over there for that one or afford it.

Zoe Wilson (03:44)
Yeah,

yeah, I mean, it's quite, it is quite difficult to get to as well. So when we flew back out, we, we had, we had like an hour drive to get to Springfield Airport, and then you've got to fly from Springfield to an actual international hub airport for you to be able to even get home as well. The way that we did it, we actually managed to get a few hours in Houston. So we managed to cram in some

last Texas barbecue before we came home which was wonderful. But yeah it is tricky to get to but it's still worth visiting and it's always really nice to see people like Christine Buckley and Lindsay Shelton on their home turf rather than seeing them at ESPC or Scottish Summit or something like that.

Kevin McDonnell (04:13)
you

Yeah, no, I haven't done an event in America apart from MVP Summit. I've, it's on the list if I can work out how and afford it as well. Although I'm particularly jealous of what you did before that because you were in Vegas for the holiday part of it, weren't you?

Zoe Wilson (04:39)
Yeah.

Yeah, so we went to Vegas first and then we went to Fort Worth in Texas. So we got to have kind of that Texas barbecue both before and after Nax. Vegas was fantastic. We were really lucky to be able to get tickets to go to the Unity Tomorrowland event at the Sphere. And for anybody listening, if you're ever in Vegas and there is a music event on at the Sphere.

I would highly recommend that you go to it, even if it's music that you wouldn't normally pay to go see. that experience of being in a, I mean, it's a whole new way of experiencing a music event with the kind of the vibrations from the seats and the full immersive screen. Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (05:20)
Mm.

as well, I wouldn't thought about that.

I have to be honest, my local music venue has the same thing as well. The whole building shakes when music's playing, but I'm not sure that's entirely intentional.

Zoe Wilson (05:36)
Yeah, it's I mean, so I went to the Sphere in, except because I was in Vegas in May for the M365 conference. So we went to the Sphere then as well, but we went to see the postcard from a documentary, which was more of a, it was like a cross between a national geographic documentary and a climate change missive. the way that...

Kevin McDonnell (05:59)
Sorry, sorry,

sorry, hang on. The sphere, this giant glowing ball that blasts light and burns electricity all day long, has a climate change message on there. Interesting. Okay, I like the message, but that's... Okay.

Zoe Wilson (06:09)
Yeah, it's not, it's, it's, yeah, it's not called that, but the whole postcards for

documentary is in it's intending to show the beauty and wonder of our natural world. And it's, it's positioned in the context of it having been destroyed by climate change. But you get these like herds of elephants stampeding across the screen and you can feel the seats rumble. And when the wind blows, you get wind blowing in your face and things like that. So

Kevin McDonnell (06:26)
Right.

quick.

Zoe Wilson (06:38)
It was very good. The one in May was very good to show the technology, but it does not compare in the slightest to seeing a music event. So for anyone who's going to power platform conference or anything else that might be in Vegas, have a look at what's scheduled while you're there. And if there's something music related, go and see it because it will be phenomenal.

Kevin McDonnell (06:59)
I now got my head if I happen to be in Vegas, and there's country music at the spheres like, can I cope with that? Just to go? that's that's gonna really tear me apart.

Zoe Wilson (07:05)
Hahaha

So

even the Backstreet Boys, they did a run over summer.

Kevin McDonnell (07:12)
you see, that's my other band I hate as well. Could I do that?

Zoe Wilson (07:15)
Yes, so I'm not a Backstreet

Boys fan. Boy bands are not my jam at all. But because we were getting excited about going to the Sphere, our algorithms on social media were feeding us all of the footage from these events. And even for the Backstreet Boys, it still looks incredible.

Kevin McDonnell (07:21)
Yeah.

Hmm, might have to get very strong loopy plugs for that one. moving on prior upset too many backstroke points.

Zoe Wilson (07:40)
Yeah, so moving

on Kevin, there was another event this week that we were both at, but I think it would be great if you talk about that one.

Kevin McDonnell (07:52)
Yeah, no, it's very exciting. We've touched on Experts Live UK a few times as a user group, but this is our first conference. We want to do something a bit different. So we put it on, effectively, a sports bar just down from London Bridge on there. So lovely location, nice and easy for people to get to in the UK. And yeah.

It went fantastically. The whole point was to have a couple of different rooms, different sessions going on, and then we wanted to have games afterwards. So they have like cricket nets there. For those who might be joined from America or other countries, imagine like batting cages in the kind of baseball sense, it's a bit like that. we had kind of games there. We had the bar and a few drinks and we had a fantastic keynote all about how we're all grownups now. And that was my co-host Zoe Wilson on there. So was lovely to be able to...

kick off the event and have Zoe keynote on that one as well.

Zoe Wilson (08:46)
Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I can see you've got your Copilot Connection hoodie on, Kevin. It was great to see that doing double duty as a speaker muffler as well.

Kevin McDonnell (08:52)
Thank you.

⁓

Yeah, it's part of reason we wanted to have a of almost smaller event first was to work out what we learn and what we've learned is when venues promise, yeah, we can definitely turn that speaker off, make sure it's a person who's going to be there on the day who knows how to speak it off, because otherwise you end up having to tie a cushion round with a copilot connection hoodie to try and block the noise from the main room in the second room on there. So, yeah, always, always fun and games.

Zoe Wilson (09:21)
Yeah and for anybody listening who knows José Lazaro Pinos, please ask him to tell you about his journey to Experts Live because he has an incredible story.

Kevin McDonnell (09:26)
Yeah.

So about six different people said, have you heard Jose story? I was like, no, you've got to ask him. It's like, right, I'll find time to ask him. And it didn't disappoint. But we will we will leave that there and let you hunt him down. Maybe we have him on the show at some point and get him to talk about security, go pilots and travels.

Zoe Wilson (09:36)
Hahaha

Hmm.

Yeah, so

we can ask him on the show to talk about co-pilot insecurity or agents insecurity and AI in general, and then introduce him by asking him to share his travel woes.

Kevin McDonnell (09:56)
if

Oh, that'd good. And we got a few events coming up and we saw them off to collab days. Bletchley Park, it'd be my third time there at the National Museum of Computing in the UK. Just my favourite venue. I think this is it's what I love about conferences to get an effective conference. You need to have a venue that's kitted up for it, but to have an amazing different content conference, having somewhere a bit different.

National Museum of Computing with some of the oldest, you know, still working computers in the world behind you is literally makes my spine tingle. I can feel goosebumps appearing just thinking about it. This the history of this place and how many different things it has there is fantastic. And then with all the great content as well. So I also look at you actually, I might bring a special treat up for those who are watching on the camera behind me.

We are having a 90s party for the speakers and I was out and happened to find one of those retro shops and I've managed to find a fantastically horrific shell suit to wear for it. So that's going to be a truly beautiful moment for everybody's there.

Zoe Wilson (11:08)
Hahaha

I am looking forward to seeing the pictures after the event. Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (11:15)
Yes.

And then you're speaking that the same day as well, aren't you on a different event?

Zoe Wilson (11:19)
Yeah,

so the same day. Unfortunately for me, it's difficult, unless it's a big event where there's kind of strategic value in me being there from a work perspective, it's difficult for me to travel for full day midweek events. So I won't be at Bletchley Park. And it's really personally disappointing and frustrating because like you said, it's such a good event. It's such a good location. It's irritating me that I haven't managed to get there yet.

But on the same day, I will be speaking at a virtual conference, which is the AI Native Summit. And I'll be talking about building your copilot muscle. And then the same day later on, we've got another session as well, haven't we, Kevin?

Kevin McDonnell (12:03)
That's right. We've got our regular copilot fireside chats after a bit of a break for August. Well, we were all kind of away busy on holiday and it seemed everyone else was as well. So, yeah, that's that fell apart a little bit, but I think made sense to take that break. But we are back with Karoana Gatimu to talk about. I'm sure we'll talk a lot about adoption of both copilot and agents on that one with some of the news that we'll talk about in a minute.

Zoe Wilson (12:30)
Brilliant. So we will put the...

Kevin McDonnell (12:31)
When I forgot to mention that same day as well, I'm also

having done collab days, Bletchley, finding a place for the fireside chat. I'm then off for the Bletchley AI user group to talk to a panel about adoption. So I'm hoping not too many people join the fireside chat and that panel so I can regurgitate what Karawana says on that one as well.

Zoe Wilson (12:51)
Yeah, so you're going to be very busy that day, but we will put the link to register for the Fireside Chat in the show notes. If you haven't registered already, please register, get the invite. These sessions are not recorded, so you can't listen back to them on demand. You have to be there. And what that does is it allows us to create a much more intimate conversation with the leaders from Microsoft.

Kevin McDonnell (12:54)
Yes.

Zoe Wilson (13:14)
And what we find is that generally because it's not being recorded, because it won't be available anywhere afterwards, they tend to be a little bit more open and speak a little bit more freely. So it will be a great session.

Kevin McDonnell (13:26)
And trust us, it's frustrating as well because we go, oh, what was it there? Oh, we need to go. And I try and scribble notes where I can. But there's always some really nice content as well.

Zoe Wilson (13:33)
Hmm.

And then longer term, there's a busy, I mean, it's the start of the conference season now, isn't it? There's lots of things ramping up. There were a few other events where you'll be able to find us in the rest of the year.

Kevin McDonnell (13:48)
Yeah, so we've a pan... Well, I've got a workshop on... More on SharePoint rather than Copilot this time, so I'm joining Shrag Patel and Leon Armstrong. I'm sure Copilot and Agents will be fitted into that, as it is in everything. Sorry, it will be, that suggests that we haven't planned out the workshop yet. Hey, Shrag and Leon, if you're listening. It is in the agenda. We've had tickets sold, so we're going to be talking on that one.

Zoe Wilson (14:06)
It's definitely in the agenda. It's definitely...

Kevin McDonnell (14:12)
And then you and I have got a panel with some amazing guests lined up to come and talk on Copilot generally.

Zoe Wilson (14:18)
Yeah, and then I've also got a workshop as well. I'll be joining the Sarah Fenner, one of our friends in the community, will be doing the new speaker workshop on the Friday. And the thing that's really exciting to me is one of the presenters for the new speaker workshop is Rex de Kooning, who was actually one of the attendees in the very first one of these that we ever did. So that feels like a really nice full circle moment.

Kevin McDonnell (14:40)
Luffa.

Yeah, no, that'd be really good. And then you and I are joining Mr. Mr. Chuntingford, Chris himself at ESPC in Dublin on, what's that, the, is it 1st of December, I think, isn't it, the Monday? Yeah, for ESPC. we'll be talking lot about Agenda Geden on that one. So a full day workshop. If you haven't signed up, go to, was it SharepointEurope.com? I think it's still there.

Zoe Wilson (14:54)
Yes.

Kevin McDonnell (15:09)
their address for that one and check out the ESPC. And then we're speaking also later in the event as well. So lots, lots going on and we both love ESPC. It feels like kind of a start of the big journey for us with Copenhagen a few years back. Always, always a big fan of those events.

Zoe Wilson (15:25)
Yeah, it will be a great event. The one thing I guess that we've not talked to Chris about yet is with this Agentageddon theme, are we actually going to dress up in like an Armageddon theme for the workshop?

Kevin McDonnell (15:39)
Yeah, I thought

about that.

Hmm. Okay, we need to think about that one. I quite like that idea.

Zoe Wilson (15:44)
Yeah, but if you want to find out if we're going

to dress up, get your tickets now for that workshop because it will be a huge amount of fun.

Kevin McDonnell (15:51)
my

God. Chris dressed as Mad Max. I can actually see this as well. No, Chris, you cannot ride in on a motorbike. No, that is not going to happen. I know it's Dublin, but no. So, yeah, yeah, I know we've got a few good ideas for that one that we need to harness and make sure we can actually get them to work.

Zoe Wilson (15:56)
I can see that.

Yeah, and then I don't think you'll be there will you but the last one that I've got on my list is Ignite in San Francisco in November. So I will be there for the week. I am not speaking unless work brought me into something that I'm not aware of yet but I will be there. I'm really looking forward to connecting with a whole heap of people. So if you're going to be at Ignite make sure you come and find me.

Kevin McDonnell (16:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, One day I will get to a build early tonight, but I don't think so this time. For all those who haven't been to a big US conference, know that you are not alone. It's fair to say for this, and all those who wonder how on earth we get away with family and other animals and other things, yes, I wonder as well. I think it's good to see. We should probably get onto some news though today.

Zoe Wilson (16:54)
Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (16:59)
cause quite a lot's happened.

Zoe Wilson (16:59)
Yeah,

well yeah, I mean usually the summer is a bit of a quiet period in terms of releases and announcements and things like that but because it has been a little while since the last episode and actually it's not been as quiet as it normally might be in terms of announcements, we thought it might be helpful just to do a bit of a recap of some of the the releases, the announcements, what we think about them.

Kevin McDonnell (17:22)
Yeah, but having said that, we kind of planned that and then Microsoft sneaked another one in yesterday just to keep us entertained. So I think let's kick off with that one. And for those watching the screen, yes, I'm going to share the screen once I can find out where the share button's gone on there. this I'm going to start with a blog post of when it's

kind of news. I'm going to be a little bit cynical with this one on there and talk about some way copilot fatigue in a minute, but a really interesting article about Microsoft 365 copilot enabling human agent teams. And I think really this is the growth of that messaging of that lovely messaging where copilot is there by your side, helping enable humans that enabling of humans is starting to come a lot.

and talking about us working together with agents as a single team and not just as individuals, as part of a team themselves. So it's touching on things like the facilitator agent that will sit there within meetings. facilitatory, I hate saying that word, facilitator agent has been around for a little while now, but it helps with your meeting steps, agendas, all those kind of bad habits that people have with meetings. It's there to try and...

help and bring those things back on track ⁓ as well. And then that integrates and this is where this messaging is about. It integrates with a project manager agent, which helps to manage the tasks through the meeting, if you have the right license ⁓ from there as well. And then that links together with the sales community agent, which starts to handle some of those announcements within Viva Engage and citing sources from there as well.

This story is really about connecting together different agents for you as part of a team to kind of take on those different roles in the way that in an organization you have humans in different roles that take on or even within a team take on different roles. The view is agents will look to be that that place. Am I hesitating there? Because I'm not trying to say that they take the place of humans, but

there's definitely that change of messaging that it's not saying that they are taking the place of humans, but is also not as aggressively not saying that as well. Which is, it feels like a change of message rather than a change of necessary technology in this sense.

Zoe Wilson (19:45)
Yeah, I think.

Yeah, I think one of the things that has ⁓ become obvious to me recently is that, when, when companies like Microsoft talk about this multi agentic future, that's a little way away, both in terms of the technology that can actually orchestrate and manage this at scale ⁓ properly for it to be reliable. But also just in terms of people actually understanding that as well. So many of these things.

or like you said, they've been around for a little while, like facilitator agent, project manager agents, not new, that was announced some time ago. So this is starting to show how people can use multiple agents in their workflow rather than multi-agent solutions that kind of talk to each other if that makes sense. The other thing I noticed as well is it doesn't actually use the word agent boss in this article.

Kevin McDonnell (20:43)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that is good news. Maybe my puking noise ⁓ from that has started to come through a little bit. yeah, that is interesting. Because they talk at the top here, think, I think it was this article, but there's certainly a lot of talk about the frontier firm. I think we will see that phrase dominating. No, maybe it was one of the other articles.

Zoe Wilson (20:52)
Hahaha!

I think

it was in the Knowledge Agent one.

Kevin McDonnell (21:15)
And then I join on there specifically, but you're right, Agent Boss does seem to have drifted away a bit. Thank goodness.

Zoe Wilson (21:20)
you

Yeah, fingers

crossed it says that way. The other thing I am when I was researching for the keynote experts live earlier in the week, one of the things that I also realized was that I thought usually by this point in the year, we had the work lab pulse work trend index. do that, you know, they release kind of the big one in the spring, don't they? And then in the autumn or the fall for our American listeners, they released that pulse survey.

Kevin McDonnell (21:47)
Mm.

Zoe Wilson (21:51)
And for the last couple of years, typically they've had a marketing moment, which in September, where they released that Pulse survey and then they have big announcements. And whilst I don't think these are necessarily big announcements, they've, they've had announcements in September, but we're still, for me, I actually went and checked the work lab site. We're still missing that mid-year Pulse survey. So I'm going to be really interested to see when that comes out, what that's telling us and whether Microsoft double down on their.

Kevin McDonnell (21:53)
Mm.

Zoe Wilson (22:20)
frontier firm, agent boss language or whether they evolve that. I'll also be interested to see, Kevin, if Riverside ⁓ removes the puking noises again.

Kevin McDonnell (22:33)
It doesn't actually go back in and put them back in. Apologies for anyone who's feeling a bit ill on that. Yeah, I think I mean, very careful here. ⁓ think September, know, September is that what, two months ahead of Ignite. And it's where we see a lot of kind of post-summer. And I think we've seen quite a bit of that already. So I think over the next week to two weeks, we'll probably see more things.

Zoe Wilson (22:37)
Hahaha

Kevin McDonnell (23:03)
start to land ⁓ on there. know Jeff Teeper said watch this space last week, whether that was what we're about to talk about next with the Knowledge Agent or whether there's more coming as well, I would certainly be trying to keep your mind clear. I'm going to be brutally honest that I was at Experts Live, it was then my 20th wedding anniversary on Wednesday, it was away and I haven't had a chance to read through this and...

I'm kind of feeling like, especially with this article, I am feeling bit of kind of copilot and agent fatigue with some of these things, because I touch on it there, it feels like a big marketing moment, but nothing particularly new on a lot of these things. And I think it's the reality of these things landed versus what has been promised a lot upfront. feels like the kind of

Zoe Wilson (23:44)
Hmm.

Kevin McDonnell (23:57)
what's being pushed from marketing perspective has got faster and faster, but it's still taking time to develop and make these things not necessarily technically, because I think we are seeing AI make the development faster, but actually getting these to a working point and bringing people in a way that fits with the way they work. And I do like a lot of these things, but I think it's taken...

longer to get these things like facilitator agent into their working in a way that fits people's habits, project manager agent picking up the right things, it's all tweaking and evolving from there. And I think it is up to us to kind of shake our malaise a little bit, because there's some really good stuff on this. It's just we kind of thought it was doing it already and it hasn't. ⁓ So if you're feeling that, I'm kind of with you as well.

Zoe Wilson (24:29)
Mm-mm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm

amazed it took you so long, Kevin, to get to the point of feeling that Co-Pilot believes, because I think for people who are less immersed in this than we are, they've probably had that some time ago. And to that point around the development lifecycle and Microsoft announcing things and then having to do the work necessary to get them to work in a meaningful way. We've also seen things that were previously announced, like the Co-Pilot for

screen sharing in Teams meetings, which has actually been removed from the roadmap.

Kevin McDonnell (25:16)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, was saying to you earlier, I think another roadmap session will we go through and look at that. I've been starting trying to capture some of the roadmap and see how things change as well. So it'll be interesting to pick up on some of those. And I think while it's annoying, I'm kind of good with that because I want to see, I want to hear what Microsoft's trying. I almost wish they'd be a bit more public about saying

No, it didn't work. It wasn't as helpful as we thought. It wasn't as effective or whatever reason they did. I don't know if that will ever happen, but I think it would be nice.

Zoe Wilson (25:50)
Yeah, or it was, or it

was, you know, the other thing I'd like a bit more open to this about is, you know, we could get the technology to work and actually it worked really well, but we couldn't get the implementation to work in a way that aligned with compliance or responsible AI or individual privacy or anything like that.

Kevin McDonnell (26:08)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So I don't hold too much hope and I can't don't entirely blame Microsoft. I know some people are like, well, they should be doing this. But the problem is other people. And if they admit any sort of failure, this over excited level of AI will suddenly collapse a lot. So I think they have to be fairly annoying.

Zoe Wilson (26:30)
Yeah.

And it's not just Microsoft. think when you look at embedded AI in many other SaaS platforms, they're all running into similar things where I personally think the promise is still there. we're still early on this journey. It will take time for this to mature.

that I think there's a gap between people's expectations of where it is and what it could do versus the reality.

Kevin McDonnell (27:01)
Yeah. ⁓

Zoe Wilson (27:02)
recognizing that it

still actually can do some pretty fantastic things.

Kevin McDonnell (27:06)
Absolutely. I want to come back to that a little bit when we talk about copilot memory in a minute as well, but just keeping an eye on time. The big announcement, and I said I didn't feel there wasn't that much new in the kind of agents in Teams, whereas the knowledge agent, I think that there is some new stuff within this. It is in preview and there we go, you go right Zoe, there's the frontier firms mentioned within this. Interesting, it's in quotes. I'm going to forget my quotey fingers out for these ones as well, but...

I'm opening up into public preview today.

I'm hesitating, I thought it was a private preview. I didn't think anyone could use the knowledge agent, but maybe I've misread that. I'm trying to scroll and my machine's going quiet, so hopefully you can still hear me Zoe. Yes, excellent. ⁓ On there, but the the knowledge agent, as you expect, is there to try and build knowledge out, but

Zoe Wilson (27:56)
Yes, I can still hear you.

Kevin McDonnell (28:07)
One of the shifts we've talked about in Copilot Connection quite a lot is Copilot starts with harvesting knowledge, pulling information and surfacing that to people. But where it gets interesting is where it starts to become task-based and do things on your behalf as well. Now, that's a lot riskier place because you need to make sure it's not doing the wrong things within there. But that's that evolution that we're really seeing now with agents. And there's a few more we'll touch on on that.

What I find very interesting around the Knowledge Agent is it's not just harvesting information out based in what's there, but it's taking action of automatically tagging. So I think it's expanding on the, and I've suddenly forgotten what the columns are called within SharePoint. It's not metadata ones, it might touch on it, but effectively the Knowledge Agent will actually extract from the documents some recommended metadata to help you look at the things like the types of documents.

Maybe if we jump over to the demo and show some of this now. So we'll put a link to this in the show notes. And for those listening, we will talk through this as much as possible. But Microsoft provided a click through demo with a video at the beginning. just have muted this now, Zoe. So hopefully it's not distracting everyone. There we go. I can skip through that now.

Zoe Wilson (29:29)
And

while you're skipping through this, I actually think this is pretty cool of Microsoft to release these click-through demos with ⁓ a little bit more of an explainer, because one of the things that we've heard extensively is people want to kind of get their hands on this. They want to understand it a little bit more. A lot of this capability is in CDX, which partners use for things like demos.

Kevin McDonnell (29:39)
Mm.

Zoe Wilson (29:55)
So I like the fact that they've actually provided demo version of this and I'm hoping that this is a positive trend that we'll see for future announcements as well.

Kevin McDonnell (30:03)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely agree. That's a really good point. I hope you see there. So for those who can't see, this is the Zava product team site. There's a whole load of documents. There's a combination of Word, image files, PDF, six cells, PowerPoint, all you expect from a project and no folders. So no real structure within there. So kicking off the knowledge agent and

This is something that will be interesting. The knowledge agent gets kicked off through a SharePoint icon in the bottom right from there. So anyone who's been a little bit naughty and built extensibility points and used the kind of DOM interaction that Microsoft says you shouldn't do and decided to put their own agents or their own kind of buttons and chatbots within there, they're going to find that clashing slightly with this new SharePoint button. So it'll be...

interesting to see what noise happens and how many ⁓ ISVs are suddenly going, help, quick, we're going to recode this ⁓ on there. So keep an eye on that one as well. And Microsoft is aware of this and they're being careful with it and how they can work together. It's not a kind of we're going to knock your thing out the way, even though you did what we said you shouldn't do. yeah, interesting.

Zoe Wilson (31:18)
Yeah, so just

before you move on to the next one, Kevin, is it worth just kind of summarizing the directions that are on screen for those who are listening rather than watching?

Kevin McDonnell (31:29)
Yeah, absolutely. So what, again, you've got all these documents in one place by clicking on the SharePoint icon, a nice little menu pops up. There's ask a question in there, that traditional kind of agent style thing. But underneath that, there is Organize This Library within there. And this is kind of saying, right, how can we cut through this chaos? So clicking on this Organize This Library then starts to bring up some AI generated columns. So where there was all these

different just files, they had the list of names modified and modified by as the columns. There's now columns called ⁓ product, department and material type. And they've got a nice flag at the top to say that they are AI generated, so being very transparent on this, but it's automatically extracted that information. And I can see it's kind of picked up the product is always Zava core fiber in this case, it's picked up different departments aligned to it.

And it's picked out material types where it can, but ones like the core roadmap image, it says not mentioned. So it's kind of acknowledging where it can't pick that information out as well. And to the right, it's given you a list of the columns that it's created and given you the option to edit or remove those as well. So it's kind of suggested some columns. You're still in preview, hasn't actually applied those yet. And the good old thumbs up and thumbs down.

you can provide some feedback as to whether it works ⁓ on there as well. ⁓ And also in that kind of side window, there's a thing saying type your message, the kind of more standard copilot type chat within there. So you can actually in this case in demo, saying, let me know when new files are added and the product is Zavacore fiber. So it's not just kind of building out the columns, it's also building out rules on there.

You heard me hesitate there. It's interesting. It's rules, not workflows that it's talking about ⁓ with that. So every time a new file comes in for a particular product, then you can get an alert to come through. And yeah, it is creating that. Gosh, what was this called? Actions wasn't copilot actions type menu. So it's kind of built out a text based way of saying when a new file is added and then

Zoe Wilson (33:43)
Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (33:51)
if and you can make that a drop down on there the value of blah is blah then send an email to me within there so very easy to bring up that that end user side i know you and i've talked about a lot and others have said in the past power automate is for power users it's not always the easiest this is a very much an end user focused tool within there and it's kind of making it easy for anyone to be able to do this from that so

really interesting to bring those different elements up from there.

Zoe Wilson (34:23)
Yeah, I think this is going to be

Kevin McDonnell (34:24)
to click through and see if there's

anything particularly to call out but yeah any thoughts?

Zoe Wilson (34:27)
Yeah.

So I think this is going to be ⁓ really interesting for organizations. And I was reading some of the posts from people at Microsoft on LinkedIn yesterday. I don't know whether it was Abram Jackson or someone else who said that where content sources have metadata, the agent that utilizes those content sources is significantly more accurate and effective in terms of the

the way that it operates. I think that's really important. I feel like this is almost sorting that it's addressing the top of the pyramid issue though, where some organizations actually have much more fundamental knowledge management issues that they need to sort out first. So if all of your stuff's in SharePoint and you just don't have that level of governance, then this is going to be incredibly helpful. yeah, yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (35:12)
Yeah.

for a project or a kind of limited

scope.

Zoe Wilson (35:24)
for something that's kind of tightly scoped like that. If your content has no information architecture, it's all in the wrong place, you've got no governance on that, then yes, this might be helpful in terms of a project or a site where it will help drive better agent results, but you've still got some knowledge management stuff that you need to sort out.

Kevin McDonnell (35:44)
Yeah, I mean, a great example here, we talked about that material type or even department, it is extracted that department. I'm guessing it has no view of the central departments that each product could come up with one called marketing, one called product, was it product management it has here, there could be an overlap, it's not centralizing that ⁓ at this stage. So yeah.

Zoe Wilson (35:54)
Yeah.

Yeah, and that's a

really interesting one because ⁓ for the centralized metadata, I feel like there needs to be some sort of relationship where it's actually looking at the organizational metadata and then utilizing the org ones when it can and extracting the data that aligns to them. And maybe it's even part of the set up, it says, know, we think you've got department in here. Do you want to use the org level departments?

Kevin McDonnell (36:26)
Yeah.

Are you suggesting

Clippy could pop up and say?

Zoe Wilson (36:36)
Hahaha!

Kevin McDonnell (36:37)
Yeah, no, absolutely agree. And I'm sure this will expand and look at things like that. I think the challenge for Microsoft is always going to be the number of organizations that don't have that. Or if they have those lists of departments, it's in workday or even in a spreadsheet somewhere. So how do you know where to supply those things and different bits like that? yeah, I think it's a really good point.

Zoe Wilson (36:48)
Hmm.

Yeah, and

maybe if...

Kevin McDonnell (37:02)
Just for those

not watching on video, it's also showing how you can kind have that standard knowledge agent of asking questions and having that standard agent chat within there as well.

Zoe Wilson (37:11)
Yeah, and maybe for organizations that do have proper metadata set up, they're not the target audience for this.

Kevin McDonnell (37:20)
Yeah, yeah, agree. So I'm, I'm like a knowledge agent, want to, I hadn't gone this far on the demo. So I'm carrying on, we've had the kind of asking questions. There's now a button on site saying improve this site. ⁓ And it's, you see, this, this is where some of these agents, I do like some of the ideas here. So it's got things like retire inactive pages.

find content gaps, fix broken links and things on there. So this AI world of helping nudge people towards doing the right thing, ⁓ I think will be really helpful within that. And you can peek at the different pages to see what's no longer needed and move towards that archive. I would still hold that story you were talking about there a little bit, Zoe, where we need to make sure this all links in with everything else ⁓ as well.

⁓ and to link together, you know, this is looking at a single site and how you manage that content for that single site ⁓ within there rather than looking at everything. So you may have different policies and want to go to more details. This is very much helping those kind of simpler scenarios ⁓ and elements like that. And hopefully this is enough to nudge people to

to actually do a little bit more as well. I'm particularly excited about this one of find content gaps. So it's looking like explore related terms and discover the real needs of your audience within that. Now, funny enough, I've just taken on a role of the global community of practice leads within Avanade to kind of pull together knowledge around copilot and agents. And one of the things we're looking at is...

What are we missing? What is... We have a lot of content around that we're of pointing people towards. What is it we're missing? And this is trying to look at those items and make it easier to understand those gaps and invest that time most effectively, not recreating the wheel 10 different times on the same sort of thing and then missing out on some of the other ones. This is then looking at what could be missing. And you can see that here it's looking at the site visitor search and seeing that people were looking for pricing and price.

I'm guessing like licensing would be in there. So it's making a suggestion based on those search stats within there, summarizing some of the content that exists that it can look up there and helping you create a page using AI from that one. I really like this idea on that. I'd love to know how that, again, would scale within there. Looking at broken links as well. So all these kind of common things it's looking to tidy up.

⁓ I'm really liking how this is trying to bring those different items together.

Zoe Wilson (40:07)
Yeah, I think this is going to be a really great one. So if, this in public? I know you thought it was in private preview. ⁓ Is this in public preview straight away?

Kevin McDonnell (40:10)
Mm, no, intrigued.

Maybe let's scroll down to the bottom of this. ⁓ No, does suggest it's in public preview. Here we go. IT administrators can opt in by following the steps outlined in the article. thank you, Microsoft. It's an opt-in. It's not turned on by default. ⁓ They are listening on that one. That's really good news.

Zoe Wilson (40:29)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, and for those who are listening rather than watching and didn't see what we had on the screen, on the article around the Knowledge Agent, there is a link at the bottom as well where you can sign up for future private previews of things like Knowledge Agent if you want your organisation to be involved in testing and providing feedback on the future development roadmap of things like this.

Kevin McDonnell (41:09)
Yeah. Now, and also on the screen, can see that you currently, you can opt in at the tenant level for all sites and then exclude individual sites. But coming November the 1st, instead, you can opt in individual sites from there as well. there, yeah, a little bit of a gap coming between those, but acknowledging that things do need to be turned on and off. So really, really happy they've done that and not forcing it.

Zoe Wilson (41:32)
Yeah. I mean,

yeah, I can see some of the more risk averse organizations probably waiting until November 1st so that they can opt in at tenant level and then opt in at site level as well, rather than having to go turn it off for the sites they want to exclude. Cool. think this is going to be great. Like I said, I feel like it's only solving the problem at the tip of the spear really, but it's still a really important problem to solve for content to be properly AI ready.

Kevin McDonnell (41:45)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Interesting. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. you know, having been grumpy, you know, I think this is quite nice. And I hadn't realized quite how much more the knowledge agent was adding seeing those demos. So we'll get hands on. I'd love to see it work with the real site and not their kind of pretty sites as well. So we'll we'll see where that goes.

I kind of touched on there that one of the pieces it picked up was around pricing and licensing, and it feels like Microsoft's really taken a change of tact with licensing around agents as well. So this article's around moving the sales, service and finance to the frontier with Microsoft 365 Copilot. And for those who remember Zoe and I from the lovely days of Viva Explorers,

We were big fans of VivaSales. I had to stop and say, was it sales in Viva? It was VivaSales, wasn't it? Originally.

Zoe Wilson (42:56)
He was fever sales, yeah.

That was before the whole in for debacle. ⁓

Kevin McDonnell (43:01)
Yeah,

exactly. The brought through and now where that kind of was a something that sat with dynamics within there, so you'd get slightly confusing things with your dynamics licenses, they're now pulling that to the M365 Copilot license. So if you have your M365 Copilot license, you have the sales agent which can connect to Dynamics or Salesforce.

And if I remember rightly, it was a fairly hefty license to integrate Salesforce, wasn't it? And they're saying, now, if you've got Copilot, you get that included.

Zoe Wilson (43:38)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think, I think from a, and this is, this is my opinion. This is, this is not based on conversations I've had with Microsoft, but my take of it is the take up of these role-based co-pilots has not been at the point that they need it to be for them to really drive it. But equally, they recognize that when you look at a co-pilot plus agents plus AI, the

Kevin McDonnell (43:56)
Thank

Zoe Wilson (44:05)
biggest transformation opportunities look at when you, they come when you look at kind of a specific function or process or that kind of thing. So for them, I suspect they feel like there's more value in getting people into the copilot ecosystem by bundling that into the M365 Copilot Premium License. And then when you look at the work that's needed to actually get sales, for example, working with Salesforce,

they probably see this as a mechanism to drive future Salesforce to Dynamics migration. So, I think it's positive. They could have just scrapped these. If they don't feel like the take-up's where it needs to be, they could have just scrapped them or de-prioritized them. So I think the fact that they're making them more widely available will actually help make them more widely adopted and utilized.

Kevin McDonnell (44:40)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely agree. So it's kind of a nice move on there. And I think it also fits with, make sure I've got the right page, the kind of change in licensing that came through around Copilot Studio as well. So this was around starting September the 1st, this move from messages to Copilot credits for use of Copilot Studio. And if we scroll down to M365 Copilot,

If you have your Copilot Studio and M365 Copilot license, you can build any agents within Team SharePoint and M365 at no extra cost on there. So where there was a lot of complex, yes, you could build your declarative agents within Copilot Studio or build it through ⁓ Agent Builder, then deploy it into M365 Copilot. But if you build it in Copilot Studio independently and then publish it into Copilot,

then you could get charged on that. ⁓ And even I'm hesitating, making sure I've got that right, because I got so confused with it. And now Microsoft's now gone. If you're putting it into Copilot, then it's included within that. I think it's a lovely move.

Zoe Wilson (46:06)
Yeah, yeah,

the other thing as you were talking then Kevin that we should mention Agent Build Roll has also had a rename.

Kevin McDonnell (46:15)
Yeah, yeah, I like that.

Yes, so Agent Builder, which was if you're starting an M365 copilot, there was the option to create an agent, a very end user friendly one is now Copilot Studio Lite, ⁓ L-I-T-E, just for those ⁓ awkward people who like things being spelt properly. I know a couple of those here ⁓ on that one. So as far as I can tell, there's no real other change apart from the change of the name. I think it's...

It's very interesting that they're taking what's a slightly different technology. ⁓ And I will try and find a link, Andrew Connell, who does an awful lot with the kind of development world of Copilot and other M365 development, kind of noted that the old declarative agent, what was Teams toolkit, now Agent toolkit, that gets surfaced as that is Agent Builder. It's not the same engine as Copilot Studio.

but now it's been branded Copilot Studio. So I kind of like that Microsoft's making it simpler for people. Yeah, I have mixed feelings.

Zoe Wilson (47:30)
Yeah, well, I think we've lived through years of rebrands and renames and like you said, I'm not sure that this is doing anything apart from making it clear that it's a co-pilot thing.

Kevin McDonnell (47:35)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it was good. We have one other big, big bit of news. And stupidly, I don't think I have a link for this. I'm just looking. No, I haven't got one handy, but we will put it in the show notes within there. And this was around GPT-5 that got announced. So announced by OpenAI.

When was it? Was it beginning of August or mid-August? I'm trying to remember now. I have to go back and get my notes. I do actually have research notes on this, which I should probably use and try and trust. July the 30th, according to Copilot. I haven't validated that yet, so I will just make sure. No, 7th of August sounds a little bit closer on that one. And GPT-5 brand new model from

OpenAI, in fact actually that's not true. I think it was four new models, I did three or four new models off the of my head. The important thing about GPT-5 is that it would look at your prompt and use the most appropriate model based on what you're asking automatically from there. Thank you for mocking me Zoe for those who are listening and not watching. I thought you were doing the old stacking shelves 90s dance moves.

Zoe Wilson (48:55)
Yeah, it's no it's really I'm I'm routing the prompt. So so basically, no, no, no. So yeah, so

so so like you say, it looks at the prompt and then it determines which model will give you the best answer for the thing that you're asking. So essentially, it's routing, isn't it?

Kevin McDonnell (49:12)
Yes. Yeah. And it's kind of the way you had things like the researcher and the deep, deep research that you could trigger things. This will look at what you're saying, go, OK, actually, I need to spend a bit longer on this one versus I'll just do it. So it's kind of again, making it simpler for people. know those who have used it, who understood some of that deep research found that it didn't always trigger them when they wanted it to. But it's almost like this isn't for you.

This is intended for people who didn't understand the differences that it should just happen there. And there's ways you can kind of, I wouldn't say hack it, but you can say, I want to think deeply about this and it will will root more towards those ones on there. For Copilot though, for me, the most interesting thing was the announcement that they would take any new model from OpenAI and bring it to M365 Copilot within, I think was 30 days.

Zoe Wilson (49:41)
Hmm.

Kevin McDonnell (50:06)
was commitments, which again should have written down on there. But it's, it's really, it's really interesting that they're making that commitment to change within there to take on the very latest. I think to me, it's part of that challenge of chat GPT versus co pilot, what's the difference and everyone saying, well, hasn't got the latest models, it's not picking up this, it's just not true. They are bringing the latest models almost immediately. And I think it was what the day after

that when GPT-5 came out, that that landed in M365 Copilot. And I think that's really impressive, really exciting news.

Zoe Wilson (50:41)
Yeah, definitely. mean, it was a common thing that we heard, wasn't it? That, you know, new models would be available and then the people who were trying to build stuff in the Microsoft stack just couldn't get to them in studio.

Kevin McDonnell (50:53)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So that'd be very interesting on there. I think the last thing and maybe we'll, you know, we've talked a bit before about doing a chat GPT versus copilot session. I'd love to do that with copilot memory because that is something I haven't really seen impact my general usage. I haven't invested the time to kind of build a decent system prompt, but maybe that's something we can follow up in the next show or so.

just to see the impact it does make.

Zoe Wilson (51:21)
Yeah, definitely. I know we're out of time today for a kind of any detailed conversation on this, but I think as well as being able to do a comparison in the context of memory, it would also be interesting to talk about some of the implications of memory, not so much in the enterprise versions of things like Co-Pilot, but

For those who were experts like this week, one of the things I talked about was the rise of AI psychosis. And this is where people who are mentally vulnerable or on the verge of a psychotic break, when they turn to something like chat GPT or copilot, because it's quite sycophantic, it's basically reinforcing their delusional beliefs. And this is something that has actually been made worse by the introduction of memory.

Kevin McDonnell (52:07)
Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, we probably need to show on that one itself and to look into that. And I think there is a certain element from the enterprise side when you're working in a role or working on a project and move to another one and it's not readjusting to elements like that. So I think one of the things I love about doing copilot connection is we're there to bring the latest news, to bring the positives from Microsoft, but also to look at how we challenge those as well and make sure we're thinking there.

Zoe Wilson (52:21)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Kevin McDonnell (52:35)
We'll have a lot more of the, there were a few other articles we've slightly run out time to cover and we'll put those into the newsletter and the show notes as well to help act as a reminder for people who've maybe enjoyed this summer a bit too much as well.

Zoe Wilson (52:48)
Yeah, but hopefully you all enjoyed a bit of a break over the summer. But like we said at the start, we are back and we will be regularly popping up into your podcast platform of preference.

Kevin McDonnell (53:02)
So do provide us with feedback, know, let us know, pass it on to friends to let them know about Copilot Connection and let us know what you want to hear from as well. But I think we use that as a time to wrap up and thank you very much. Bye bye.

Zoe Wilson (53:15)
Thank you for listening. Speak soon.