The Copilot Connection

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

Send us a text In this episode of Copilot Connection, Zoe and Kevin are joined by Gary Raife to discuss the transformative potential of AI and Microsoft Copilot in the healthcare sector. We explore the challenges of interoperability, the role of AI in enhancing patient care, and the exciting developments of Dragon Copilot. The conversation also touches on the integration of personal health data, the importance of trust and transparency in AI applications, and the future of healthcare driven by data and technology. Takeaways Key links Gary's blogNews Introducing Researcher and Analyst in Microsoft 365 Copilot | Microsoft 365 BlogYour AI Companion - The Official Microsoft BlogNew capabilities in Azure AI Foundry to build advanced agentic applications | Microsoft Azure BlogInterpreter in Microsoft Teams meetings - Microsoft SupportKevin's view of Interpreter AgentCopilot Studio Toolkit updates announcedmicrosoft/Power-CAT-Copilot-Studio-KitIntroduction - Model Context ProtocolAnnouncing the Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A) - Google Developers BlogHealthcare related Meet Microsoft Dragon Copilot: Your new AI assistant for clinical workflow - Microsoft Industry BlogsMicrosoft Cloud for Healthcare | Microsoft

Send us a text How responsible are you with AI? Zoe Wilson and Kevin McDonnell are joined this week by Chris Huntingford (Director of AI at ANS among many other things!), focusing on responsible AI practices, data management, and the socio-economic impacts of technology. We covered the importance of transparency, accountability, and ethical practices in AI implementation. The discussion also touches on the cultural shifts required for successful AI adoption, the challenges of governance in AI systems, and the future of AI agents. We also had an amazing announcement for the Copilot Fireside Chat that you can hear at the end! Or get a sneak peak on the Fireside Chat site. Key takeaways:

Send us a text In this episode of Copilot Connection, Kevin goes solo and dives deep into the world of Microsoft Copilot, exploring the intricacies of prompt engineering and the practical applications of prompts in enhancing productivity. He discusses various techniques for effective prompting, the significance of community contributions, and how to utilize the Copilot prompt gallery to streamline workflows. The conversation emphasizes the evolving nature of AI and the need for users to adapt and refine their approaches to maximize the benefits of generative AI tools. Takeaways Useful links News: OWASP agentic threats https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jsotiropoulos_aisecurity-agenticai-owasp-activity-7297385436925095937-vQmg Beginner guide for agents https://www.linkedin.com/posts/donasarkar_happy-valentines-day-friends-as-a-activity-7296237085194084352-db7o New AI models include a gaming model https://www.geekwire.com/2025/microsoft-reveals-new-gaming-focused-generative-ai-model-muse-that-could-revive-classic-games/ Fabian Williams bring us some agentic magic with CAPs https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fabiangwilliams_autonomous-multi-agent-group-chat-working-activity-7297051837969358848-R4zG Prompts: Crafting effective prompts https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365copilotblog/getting-the-most-from-the-copilot-prompt-gallery/4383106 Prompt Engineering Guide | Prompt Engineering Guide Best practices for prompt engineering with the OpenAI API | OpenAI Help Center Stefan Bisser’s tool to write prompts https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stephan-bisser_agent-instructor-visual-studio-marketplace-activity-7298292501763780610-OAYW Prompts of the week pnp/copilot-prompts: Examples of p

Send us a text In this episode of Copilot Connection, Zoe and Kevin discuss the latest roadmap items for Microsoft 365 Copilot, highlighting Teams, Microsoft 365 apps, Extensibility, SharePoint, Admin and Purview. Hear about the latest batches coming in February and March and what it could mean to you. Takeaways Key links Roadmap - Teams Roadmap - M365 Apps Roadmap - Extensibility Roadmap - SharePoint and Admin Roadmap - Purview

Send us a text In this episode of Copilot Connection, hosts Zoe Wilson and Kevin McDonnell discuss the evolution of Microsoft's Copilot ecosystem, including the recent announcement of Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. They explore the implications of AI agents in business, insights from the Microsoft Research Future of Work report, and the importance of democratizing access to AI technologies. Finally, we talk about our exciting guest for the next Copilot Fireside Chat and her new team. Takeaways Powered by Riverside AI Mentioned links Copilot Chat https://aka.ms/copilotchathttp://aka.ms/mcscopilotchatDaniel Rohregger's post of different costs https://www.linkedin.com/posts/drohregger_what-does-the-new-payg-for-agents-in-copilot-activity-7285909965200904192-Djls?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop Future of Work report - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/microsoft-new-future-of-work-report-2024 Debates with Saleforce Full GenAI panic at Salesforce? | LinkedIn Clippy 2.0 is better than Agentforce 2.0? Dona's call to action - Post | Feed | LinkedIn Sign up for Copilot Fireside Chat - Copilot Fireside Chat

Send us a text In this episode, Zoe and Kevin discuss their thoughts on the biggest topics of the year in Copilot and what that means for next year before Kevin goes solo to talk about the importance of building a comprehensive AI strategy centered around Microsoft Copilot. They explore the evolution of AI tools, the need for alignment with organizational goals, and the significance of understanding agents and their capabilities. The conversation also delves into measuring success and ROI in AI implementation, the future of AI tools, governance and compliance, and the role of generative AI in business processes. They emphasize the need for a Center of Excellence to support AI initiatives and prepare for the future of work. Takeaways Key links Future of work report 2024GitHub Copilot free tierSimon Owen talking of CoE and C4E in his blog

Send us a text With Zoe stuffed full of deep pan pizza and Kevin trying to recover from the remote FOMO, we discuss the key takeaways from Microsoft Ignite 2024 focusing on the latest Copilot updates, the role of agents, integration and alignment at Microsoft, security updates, and more. We explore the significance of the Prompt Gallery and the evolution of Copilot Studio, emphasising the importance of collaboration and automation in modern workplaces. Key Takeaways: Key links Microsoft Ignite 2024 Book of NewsIntroducing Microsoft Copilot actions, new agents, and tools to empower ITAzure AI Agent Service: Revolutionizing AI Agent Development and DeploymentCopilot Studio is enhancing its platform with knowledge improvements, Azure AI integration, and moreRedefine development: AI-first innovation with agents and Microsoft Copilot in Power PlatformAzure AI Agent Service: Revolutionizing AI Agent Development and DeploymentThe next wave of Azure innovation: Azure AI Foundry, intelligent data, and moreAccelerate AI adoption with next-gen security and governance capabilitieshttps://aka.ms/AAti5u5Introducing the AI-Powered Workplace: Technology solutions for flexible workhttps://aka.ms/AAthyfghttps://aka.ms/AAti5rhIntrodu

Send us a text In this episode of Copilot Connection, hosts Zoe and Kevin discuss the latest developments in the Copilot space, share insights from recent events like Scottish Summit and anticipate upcoming announcements from Ignite. They explore the significance of agents in the AI landscape, the challenges of governance, and the evolution of AI models. Hopefully, they managed to dodge any NDA content this close to Ignite... Takeaways (Auto generated by Riverside.FM) Useful links: We’re on Bluesky! Copilot Connection Scottish Summit 2024 Closing Keynote With Dona Sarkar Building a Centre For Enablement for your Copilot Strategy - Kevin & Simon Copilot Fireside Chat AGENTS Earth copilot Microsoft Viva community call (November 2024): New Employee Experience Announcements at Ignite 2024 | Microsoft Community Hub Description of agents https://www.linkedin.com/posts/abramj_the-agentic-scope-of-work-ugcPost-7259233983639519234-0Rbh?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios ADAPTED MODELS Adapted AI models Is Microsoft building their own model? COPILOT UPDATES Web page summary is back Multi tenant orgs Reflecting on a year of copilot Gartner Hype Cycle

In this episode of the Copilot Connection, hosts Zoe Wilson and Kevin McDonnell discuss the latest updates in the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem, including a new feature called Copilot Labs (not Lab...), insights from the upcoming Microsoft Ignite conference, and the importance of AI integration in business. They also touch on the significance of empowering neurodivergent employees and the community's engagement in upcoming events. They also have a new AI generated summary - what do you think? Links Introducing Copilot VisionMeet the new CopilotIgnite sessions Session catalog at https://ignite.microsoft.com where you can search for codes. Build and extend agents with Microsoft Copilot studio | LAB433 Code-first development workshop for Copilot agents | LAB441 Extending M365 Copilot with Copilot agents: Best practices | BRK170 Part 1:2 Declarative Agents: Build Agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot | LAB445 Reinventing business processes with autonomous agents | BRK169 Smarter workflows with ServiceNow Now Assist and Copilot integration | ODFP974 Ground Microsoft 365 Copilot in your business knowledge | BRK275 Microsoft 365 Copilot advantages: How does it compare with other AI solutions | BRK276 SharePoint content management reimagined with Copilot | BRK279 Unlock smart collaboration with Microsoft Teams | BRK280 Revolutionizing Employee Experience with AI | BRK283 The Future of Power Platform: Intelligent Apps | BRK171 From Copilot to code-first: the power of Microsoft Fabric and AI | THR618 Bring on-device ML to enterprise apps with Windows Copilot Library | BRK303 Copilot+ PCs: Your new superpower | THR650 Mastering custom plugins in Microsoft Security Copilot | THR653 Build real-time collab experiences with Fluid and Copilot | LAB440 Empowering neurodivergent employees with Copilot | BRK297

It's our birthday today! We've managed to pull together some fantastic guests including Loryan Strant, Caroline Kallin and Tom Morgan to help us celebrate by sharing their thoughts on Copilot Wave 2 so hear what we thought and then a few interviews that we have been able to do. Great summary post from Sara Fennah on all the useful links for Copilot Wave 2 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sarafennah_did-the-deluge-of-announcements-in-the-wave-activity-7241481645957029888-gyfa?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

As the days in the UK get shorter, the grass looks brown and tired and the kids looked bored and ready for school, it's time to recap some of the news that has crept out while many were distracted with holidays. There's certainly been a few things coming through as momentum builds towards the second conference season of year. Zoe and Kevin cover some worrying news on hacking Copilot, some positive news on accessing models and some great events coming up. Related links: https://www.ukcommunityawards.co.uk/https://www.scottishsummit.comhttps://www.syskit.com/company/events/copilot-for-microsoft-365-after-one-year/http://www.communitydays.org/event/2024-09-06/microsoft-community-new-speakers-daySearch | MVP Communities (microsoft.com)Microsoft’s AI Copilot can be weaponized as an ‘automated phishing machine,’ but the problem is bigger than one company | Fortunehttps://www.perspectives.plus/p/copilot-bigger-security-threat-than-chatgpthttps://labs.zenity.ioIntroducing GitHub Models: A new generation of AI engineers building on GitHub - The GitHub BlogWhat’s new in Copilot | July 2024 - Microsoft Community Hubhttps://insider.microsoft365.com/blog/onenote-copilot-now-supports-inked-notes?ocid=usoc_TWITTER_M365_spl100006091250593Updates to Microsoft Copilot to bring enterprise data protection to more organizations - Microsoft Community Hub

After a slightly quieter time on the podcast, Kevin and Zoe are back and we pick some of the Month of Copilot sessions to share some interesting ideas from them that will interest you. Check out the rest of the Month of Copilot sessions in the Copilot Connection - YouTube. Kevin mentioned Commsverse and Experts Live UK so check out the links for more info. Finally, if you want to try out the super hero prompt that Zoe mentioned, copy the prompt below and let us know what it finds! Look at the emails and Teams meetings that I have sent in the last 6 months. Use these messages to distill a personal brand voice document that I can use to inform copilot of my personal voice and style. Based on the above analysis, what superhero represents my style of work best? What would my super powers be? Can you format that as a dossier for superheroes -- listing my real name, and most similar existing superhero, and include the rest of the information formatted and edited in dossier style?

In this episode of the Copilot Connection, Kevin McDonnell is joined by Garry Trinder, a developer advocate at Microsoft focused on Microsoft 365 and Copilot. With Microsoft Build taking place this week, they recap the Copilot related news that came out with a special focus on extensions and custom copilots. Plenty of chat about why you should extend, the different ways to extend and when to extend or go custom. Plus find out how many times Copilot was mentioned in the first day keynotes thanks to Vlad Catrinescu. Useful links: M365 Conf sessions - some online now including the age of copilots -Introducing the Community News Desk with essential content from Microsoft 365 Community Conference Vlad Catrinescu comedy recap Microsoft Build 2024 Keynote Recap in under 5 minutes! Book of News - https://news.microsoft.com/build-2024-book-of-news/ GPT-4o demo by Seth Juarez - Conversational website: Satya Nadella at Microsoft Build 2024 Copilot+PC - Introducing Copilot+ PCs - The Official Microsoft Blog VS Code for Education - https://vscodeedu.com Note that you need a Copilot license to use this with Copilot Studio - Use graph connections with knowledge sources - Microsoft Copilot Studio | Microsoft Learn https://aka.ms/extendcopilotm365/decide Useful Build sessions: BRK 150: Developers guide to customizing Copilot - slides available too BRK 151: Developer deep dive on building plugins for Microsoft Copilot BRK203: Building a copilot: Azure AI Studio or Copilot Studio

With all the announcements made last week at the M365 Conf in Orlando, Zoe and Kevin take a dive into the roadmap to see what is coming up in the short to medium term. With a lot of key updates around Excel, cross application capabilities and graph grounded chat in other applications, take a listen to find out what you can expect in the world of Copilot over the next few months. Key links: Month of CopilotMay Copilot be with youProject Copilot College M365 Conf announcements What’s New in Copilot | April 2024 - Microsoft Community HubWhat’s New in Microsoft Teams | April 2024 - Microsoft Community HubAnnouncing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era - Microsoft Community HubMicrosoft 365 Roadmap - See What's Coming | Microsoft 365 - Copilot Rolling Out items Microsoft 365 Roadmap - See What's Coming | Microsoft 365 - Copilot In Development items

Is your tenant ready for Copilot? Do you know what needs to be done to be ready? This week, Kevin was joined by Michal Pisarek, CEO and Janitor at Orchestry, who has been involved in governance in Microsoft 365 for many years. We talk about Copilot Readiness and three key areas for governance: - Understand the environment - Review oversharing - Sort out your sensitivity labels Zoe and Kevin also cover a few bits of the latest news, including some Drama Llama action with Whats App, some impressive custom copilot creation from Microsoft Research and a plea from Kevin to provide ideas and feedback to Microsoft. Don't forget that we are holding a Month of Copilot in June and still looking for people to share sessions. Submit your sessions at Month of Copilots: Call for Speakers. Useful links: Project VASA - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/vasa-1/ Lllama 3 launched - Meta steps up AI battle with OpenAI and Google with release of Llama 3 | Meta | The Guardian Comparison of recent models - https://x.com/rschu/status/1781007659493212215 Meta AI in WhatsApp - How to chat with Meta AI in a group | WhatsApp Help Center Privacy and Meta AI - https://www.facebook.com/privacy/guide/genai?entry_point=whatsapp_genai Feedback portal has Copilot for Sales and for Service - Community (microsoft.com) For more news, subscribe to your newsletter on LinkedIn at LinkedIn

With Copilot for Security released on 1 April, we thought we should bring some real experience of trying it out from one of the top MVPs in Security. Ru Campbell (Twitter, LinkedIn) joined us to talk about: - What is Copilot Security? - What is it used for and by who? - How has his experience with it been compared with the marketing? This was a great chat that cut through into the reality of using Copilot for Security to help with right of bang and left of bang (listen to find out what that means!) as well as how the product will evolve over time. Useful links: Ru's tweet threads on his initial experience with Copilot for Security https://x.com/rucam365/status/1778703094630523065 https://x.com/rucam365/status/1775181041474711702 Ru's book on Mastering Microsoft 365 Defender (co-authored with Viktor Hedberg) - Mastering Microsoft 365 Defender: Implement Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Identity, Cloud Apps, and Office 365 and respond to threats Copilot for Security group on LinkedIn - LinkedIn News and other updates: Sorry, there's a lot of Kevin stuff this week! Sign up for Month of Copilotregister to speakMVP Summit interviewsKevin chats with Peter Rising on CopilotsThink Copilot with Kevin McDonnell Global Copilot SummitKevin's Meeting Automator Announcing new Microsoft AI Hub in London - The Official Microsoft Blog Microsoft Copilot Dashboard now generally available - Microsoft Community Hub Extensibility options for Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn Google Workspace adds AI features to help with meetings and improve data security | VentureBeat Zoom announces Zoom Workplace Temp code pygiTO7rYkcTtHKJdX94

Twelth of twelve mini episodes as we bring our interviews from MVP Summit. Interviewee today - Mark Rackley Mark thinks that copilot is a vague term that can mean different things to different people, and he wants to help people understand what it is. Mark has some great use cases like finding presentations that were shared with him by using natural language queries. Listen to find out how he thinks the equity of availability of Copilot could impact the future and what he wishes for next. Mark Rackley | LinkedIn Mark Rackley 🐗 @NACollabSummit @Techsplaining (@mrackley) / X (twitter.com)

Eleven of twelve mini episodes as we bring our interviews from MVP Summit. Interviewee today - Angeliki Patsiavou Angeliki sees copilot as a way to increase productivity, creativity, and innovation for individuals, teams, and organizations. She uses copilot for M365 to get technical content and learn about power FX queries and functions. Listen to find out about what concerns her around governance in Copilot. Angeliki Patsiavou | LinkedIn Angeliki Patsiavou 🎶 MVP Biz Apps (@a_patsiavou) / X (twitter.com)

Tenth of twelve mini episodes as we bring our interviews from MVP Summit. Interviewee today - Angel David Carillo Angel uses Copilot a lot in Microsoft Teams, especially for searching for information. He finds it easier and faster than using other tools or navigating to the location of the information. He also uses Copilot as his personal assistant for finding answers to any kind of question. Listen to find out how he tries to focus on the value and confidence that Copilot provides to his customers. Ángel David Carrillo | LinkedIn