As the new era of AI is in full swing, I have the privilege of covering some of the hottest topics at the upcoming European SharePoint, Microsoft 365 and Azure Conference 2023 in Amsterdam, Europe’s biggest Microsoft-focused conference. The conference starts on Monday 27 November and I’ll be sharing experiences from the field with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Syntex, and “AI with your organisational data” projects using Azure OpenAI. I’ll be delivering three sessions plus an open mic talk on all things Copilot and AI with my good friend Jussi Roine. In 27 years of working, I don’t remembe ..read more

The last article focused on combining organisational data with ChatGPT and Large Language Models, specifically using Microsoft’s 'Azure OpenAI on your data' accelerator which is designed to simplify this. I’ve been focused on the general area of 'AI with your data' (though not the AOI accelerator specifically) for a while now with colleagues, and I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say that combining generative AI and organisational data will be a big thing for the next few years. The results can be astonishing – we all know what ChatGPT is capable of, but seeing it answer questions and gen ..read more

The idea of combining the power of ChatGPT and LLMs with organisational data has caught the attention of many. It seems to form the basis for many of the conversations I'm having with CIOs and tech leaders at the moment, and with good reason I think. After all, if you could "train" ChatGPT/generative AI everything about your company, your products and services, clients, employees and expertise, past projects and other valuable information, the potential would be huge. If you could further add a sprinkling of the most relevant content on the internet such as the latest industry regulations, ana ..read more

I've written quite a lot about Microsoft Syntex AI on this blog and spoken about it at various conferences, and my firm view is that while the arrival of ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilots changes many aspects of how we work, neither fundamentally change the value Syntex can bring to an organisation. I recently gave a talk with the snappy title "AI choices for apps and automation in 2023 - understanding AI Builder, Azure Cognitive Services, Microsoft Syntex, and Azure OpenAI" at the excellent European Power Platform Conference in Dublin, and as you might infer, this covered Syntex alongside other ..read more

In my last post I showed how to get started with Azure OpenAI, the service which is effectively "Microsoft-hosted ChatGPT" but also includes other OpenAI models. In particular I showed how to integrate ChatGPT with the Power Platform via a custom connector that talks to your instance in Azure. If you're doing anything with Azure OpenAI it's a good idea to monitor costs, particularly if the service will be open to a few consumers - it's not the cheapest Azure service, and costs could accumulate quickly in some usage patterns. The good news is that it is possible to monitor Azure OpenAI costs ju ..read more

Anyone in technology will know the buzz caused by ChatGPT since its launch, and beyond fooling schoolteachers with human-like essays and passing law exams we’ve seen many interesting real-world use cases already. Of course, the point isn’t that it’s just an interesting plaything - generative AI using large language models are powerful technology to integrate into apps, tools, and automated processes. The potential is almost limitless and entirely new categories of digital experience are opened up. As we all know, Microsoft were quick to identify this and their $11 billion investment in GPT cre ..read more

Along with Microsoft Syntex, Viva Topics is a technology close to my heart these days. I championed it's deployment at my employer (Content+Cloud) because, like every organisation, we're generating a huge volume of new documents and content each month and without new approaches and AI, it's becoming more difficult to find things and get questions answered, not easier. Microsoft's statistic that 1.6 billion documents per day are added to Microsoft 365 is eye-opening, and without some investment in content governance and tools that help you move beyond navigation and search, it's hard to ensure ..read more

In previous articles I've covered many of the capabilities of Syntex and how it can be used, and from my perspective organisations are becoming very interested in Syntex to automate processes involving documents. In a notable development Syntex now has a Pay As You Go (PAYG) model for pricing - in preview until February/March 2023 with no costs charged. In the same approach used for Power Platform PAYG, Azure billing is used and charges appear in Azure Cost Management within the subscription linked to your Microsoft 365 tenant. In this article we'll consider cases where the PAYG may be more ap ..read more

Microsoft Syntex has been one of Microsoft's biggest announcements in 2022 - which can be somewhat confusing because it existed previously as SharePoint Syntex since 2020 - but Syntex is expanding massively from "AI that understands your documents so you can automate processes" to an entire suite of advanced capabilities related not just to your documents, but also your images and videos. Some of the bigger recent or forthcoming features include document eSignatures, annotations, image recognition, automated document summaries and translations, auto video transcription and much more - many of ..read more

SharePoint Syntex, the AI-enabled document automation capability within Microsoft 365, has steadily been increasing in features since its introduction in October 2020. In relative terms Syntex is still quite a young product, and seeing the new features emerge it's clear that Microsoft are investing heavily in this area. If you're not familiar, Syntex offers a range of capabilities including: Automated creation of documents from your templates (known as Content Assembly) Automated classification and understanding of documents - once Syntex AI is trained it can not only identify and recognise y ..read more