2024 will be a pivotal year for Microsoft AI and their range of Copilots in particular - and it was great to hear plans and insights during a week on campus with Microsoft in Seattle for the MVP Summit recently. This is the year when the AI strategy is in full swing for most organisations (or at least, should be), and the need to understand and decide what to provide to employees really takes effect. Between Copilot for Microsoft 365, Microsoft Copilot, role-specific Copilots (such as GitHub Copilot, Copilot for Security, Copilot for Sales, Copilot for Service etc.), or custom Copilots built w ..read more

In my last post we looked at the return on investment for Copilot for Microsoft 365, specifically in terms of time savings required for the $30/£24.70 per user per month licensing investment to make sense. In this post I want to turn attention to extending Copilot and getting started in the world of Copilot plugins. Copilot for Microsoft 365 can become even more powerful when integrated with other company systems - I created the slide below recently for a deck I was working on, and the four areas provide ideas on where the value might be and potential scenarios: However, at the current time ..read more

Now that Copilot for Microsoft 365 can be purchased by anyone (with no minimum license count), organisations are starting to think about it more seriously as they form AI strategies and budgets. Looking across Microsoft's family of Copilots, some are free, some are licensed, some are general, and some are targeted as specific personas - but most would agree it's Copilot for Microsoft 365 which stands as the principal Copilot for workplace use. We could be moving from an era where countless hours go into creating and consuming information in very manual ways to a new era where generative AI is ..read more

Copilot for Microsoft 365 presents a huge opportunity to transform work and unlock productivity. If you're interested in the world of AI, Copilots, and Copilot for Microsoft 365 specifically, I'll be delivering a webinar on the topic as part of an event run by IntraTeam on January 11 - the event is free and hosted over Microsoft Teams, but note that it's for practitioners working with Microsoft 365 in global companies only I'm afraid - if you're a consultant, vendor, student etc. then apologies, but IntraTeam need to keep a more focused audience for this event. Hopefully anyone ..read more

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