“We believe in a future where there will be a Copilot for everyone and everything you do.”
- Satya Nadella
The curtains have drawn on Microsoft's largest annual conference, Ignite 2023. Under the visionary leadership of Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, Ignite wasn't just a showcase of new products; it was a manifesto for a future powered by AI. In his opening remarks, Nadella outlined Microsoft’s commitment to democratise AI, making its capabilities accessible to everyone.
Here’s a wrap up of some of the highlights from this year’s Ignite.
It’s All About Copilot
Not familiar with Microsoft Copilot? Been living under a rock? Never fear, we’ve got you covered with our Copilot explainer. Copilot was the main course at this year’s Ignite with a raft of announcements across the broad range of products that Copilot touches.
Copilot comes at a significant additional cost per user. To help support its use, Microsoft has announced the Copilot Dashboard, powered by Microsoft Viva. This is designed to help clarify how Copilot impacts the organisation and changes the way people work. This dashboard can also be used to plan Copilot readiness, drive adoption and measure overall impact.
To make Copilot more accessible, Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise will now become Copilot. This is currently in preview and will become generally available from December 2023.
To further extend Microsoft 365 Copilot, we will have the ability to build custom AI capabilities via Microsoft Copilot Studio. This can be customised to include datasets, automation flows and even custom copilots.
Say Hello to SharePoint Premium
Microsoft has unveiled SharePoint Premium, an AI-driven solution set to revolutionise content management and enhance content experiences. Designed to seamlessly integrate with Copilot, it introduces content experiences that support information workers by enabling discovery, interaction, and collaboration across various file types, enriched by AI analytics and branded document packaging.
SharePoint Premium is currently being previewed and is slated for general release early 2024.
Even More Teams Features
Immersive spaces will be introduced into the Teams platform and made generally available in January 2024. Currently in preview, immersive spaces enables users to transform 2D meetings into 3D experiences with the aid of avatars, spatial audio, seat assignments and audio zones which will allow users to have multiple simultaneous conversations without talking over each other.
Mesh for Teams (which we covered as part of Ignite 2022) will become generally available in January 2024. Users will be able to create custom spaces for events, trainings, tours and product showcases. It will also be easier for hosts to interact with attendees, for example facilitating a Q&A session by enabling attendees to raise hands.
Microsoft will also be rolling out a heap of new Teams meeting features including AI-driven voice isolation, background decoration and chat features including group chat profile pictures and forward chat.
Introducing Microsoft Fabric
Brand new and available now, Microsoft Fabric changes the way teams work with data, bringing everyone together on a single, AI-powered platform, creating an integrated and simplified experience. Microsoft Fabric will have deep integrations with Microsoft 365 applications and copilots to enhance analytics capabilities and scale data value creation.
A New Microsoft Planner Experience
To deliver a singular, unified task and project management experience, Microsoft is bringing To Do, Planner and Project for the web into one place, under the umbrella of Microsoft Planner. The new Planner experience will be more collaborative, scalable, and assisted by next-generation AI to help everyone manage their work and achieve business outcomes. This is expected to become available in Autumn 2024, followed by the web experience later in 2024.
Microsoft Loop Application Now Available
Microsoft Loop is now generally available for use on desktop and mobile. Here’s a reminder on what it’s about from its initial announcement at Ignite 2021.
Recent improvements and new capabilities include status and descriptions for workspaces, the ability to create workspaces from Teams and an integration with Power Automate.
More Updates from Microsoft Ignite 2023
For a full list of updates from Microsoft Ignite 2023, check out the Microsoft Ignite 2023 Book of News. There are so many exciting updates! If you’re unsure where to start or want to learn more about any of these updates, get in touch with WebVine.
The rise of generative AI has been meteoric with the launch of new technology like ChatGPT making waves across industries. It’s estimated that at its current level of capability, generative AI has the potential to automate or augment 44% of tasks on average.
With Microsoft’s own proprietary AI technology, Copilot, soon to be launched, we are at an exciting turning point. However, many organisations have not yet recognised the breadth of capabilities that AI will offer and how it can be applied to different business functions.
According to a recent poll conducted by WebVine on ‘Getting Ready for Microsoft Copilot’, 43% of organisations are currently using AI for content and/or idea generation. This only scratches the surface for what generative AI can achieve and as new technology, like Copilot, becomes readily available, organisations will have a wider scope to drive productivity.
A whopping 68% of knowledge workers agree that generative AI has the potential to help in their roles. Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways we can leverage generative AI.
Idea and content generation
Generative AI systems like ChatGPT can analyse vast amounts of data, generate ideas and produce content. Microsoft Copilot will also pull from your organisation’s data, including financial reports and presentations, to help with ideation and content creation.
Need to do some brainstorming? Leverage AI to generate new ideas for articles, web copy, emails, ad copy, product concepts and headlines. Remember that the prompts you use will significantly influence the outcomes you receive. One effective technique is to create a persona for the AI generator, including knowledge & experience, writing style, format and intended audience eg “Acting as a legal expert: What are some pain points law firms use with their content marketing to educate clients and attract new businesses?”
For content creation, AI can quickly generate written articles and web copy as well as design graphics and even compose music. This can be a huge time saver, however it’s essential to carefully review any output to achieve consistent and high-quality results.
Automating tasks and processes
AI’s ability to interpret and action content opens a world of possibilities for streamlining operations. AI automation can assist with scheduling such as creating and sending reports and summaries.
Or take the process of onboarding a new staff member: AI will be able to intuitively welcome a new employee; from collecting and storing details, ensuring the review and attestation of important policies to building a skills matrix for tailored learning and development.
Help with decision making
Generative AI can also play a significant role in decision-making. By accessing and reviewing organisational data, AI technology like Copilot can provide insights and recommendations, helping businesses make informed choices. For instance, in a retail context, AI could analyse customer data and identify noteworthy customer segments such as those at risk of churn or representing repeat purchase opportunities.
Data management
Organisations are often inundated with unstructured data, much of which is never used. With some learning and guidance, AI can be instrumental in ingesting, identifying, categorising, tagging and analysing data, even from inconsistent source formats.
AI can then use this data to generate reports, summarise large datasets and even predict future trends. What previously might have taken days or weeks can now be done in a fraction of the time.
Workplace chatbots
One of the special features of Microsoft Copilot is the new business chat function which will operate as a far more advanced office assistant (remember Clippy?). AI virtual assistance can be incredibly useful in helping employees to work more efficiently by surfacing information & insights and carrying out tasks. It will access a vast amount of information and can generate responses that mimic human conversation.
Current Limitations of Generative AI
As many exciting new features and developments become available, it's important to acknowledge the current limitations of generative AI. While AI can help with a variety of tasks from content generation to automation, it can lack the deeper understanding, context and reasoning abilities that humans possess. This limitation can lead to inaccuracies, biases and misinterpretations, which are critical areas that still require human input. AI is still in its infancy, so as the technology continues to learn and evolve, so will the quality of output.
On the AI journey, organisations must carefully manage privacy and security issues, as well as ethical considerations around information bias and ensuring transparency and accountability for AI decision-making.
The Road Ahead
As generative AI continues to evolve, its capacity to automate holds the promise of increased efficiency and productivity across almost every industry.
Our recent webinar “Microsoft Copilot: Getting Ready For Workplace AI” covers everything you need to know about preparing for Copilot. Watch it here.
As the financial year comes to an end, are you feeling like there was more that could have been achieved from your IT wish list, leveraging technology to improve processes, productivity and overall employee experience? There’s still time left to hit some home runs with any remaining budget. Whether you wish to say farewell to frustrating, repetitive manual forms or want to clean up your Microsoft Teams environment, there are several options that won’t break the bank.
Get inspired and tackle one of these projects to finish this financial year with a win. We guarantee your colleagues will love you for it.
Digitise forms or processes
It’s surprising how many organisations are still printing, signing and emailing forms like leave requests, employee expenses and purchase orders. Not only does this create opportunity for manual errors, but it’s time consuming and repetitive for employees.
You can automate forms and create process workflows to send automatic reminders, track approvals and guide users using the capabilities of Microsoft 365.
Single source of truth
While a full document management project might be unrealistic, you can address priority issues like compliance and risk management. Get your most important documents in order by conducting an audit, eliminating superfluous versions and creating a centralised hub where final approved documents can be accessed and managed.
Document home page experience for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority making it easy to navigate and find documents via a rich search experience.
Clean up Microsoft Teams
Has your Teams environment become painful and unruly? You may be suffering from Teams sprawl, with users creating and abandoning Teams and Channels unchecked. Teams sprawl impacts not only the usability of the platform, but has security implications, making it difficult to effectively manage and monitor access. With customised support, WebVine can help get your Teams structure back in shape and minimise further issues.
Get started with our webinar on how to tackle Teams Sprawl.
Training and workshops
Technical skills training is a smart budget allocation option. It will increase productivity, reduce calls to helpdesk and employees will value the opportunity for development. If your organisation is lacking in internal expertise, why not get a third party expert in to help lift your business capabilities. Consider breaking training down by:
1. Application upskilling
Is there a Microsoft 365 application like SharePoint, Teams or the Power Platform that your internal teams are not using effectively? WebVine offer bespoke training that is flexible, practical and interactive.
2. Adoption, governance and other strategic initiatives
While you might have a full digital workplace including a sparkling intranet, perhaps employees are still not as engaged as they could be. WebVine can work with you to shape and execute a strategy to drive user adoption and engagement, delivering return for your technology investment. If your organisation is lacking a proper governance framework, putting valuable data and technology at risk, we can work with you to create and implement best practice plans.
3. Citizen development
With citizen development on the rise, many organisations are looking at their everyday staff to drive new innovation and change.
WebVine provided technical support to Jacqui Peck, an audiologist with Hearing Australia, to help create a comprehensive solution consisting of a central model-driven app that works as a CRM system capturing information in the Microsoft Dataverse database.
Intranet optimisation
How healthy is your intranet? Are people using it? Instead of making your intranet next financial year’s problem, why not get a head start and look at what can be done to optimise it now by:
- Refreshing the design
- Integrating with Teams
- Adding a new module to address a business problem
- Revamping your staff directory
WebVine are intranet experts. With over 12 years of experience, we know what works and we have the technical skills to deliver. Get in touch for a free consultation.
Document migration
Enough is enough. It’s time to get your documents into the cloud. Engage a professional to do this right and ensure minimal business disruption. Your executive team (and colleagues) are sure to be impressed.
Learn more about why we’re the experts in document migrations.
It’s time to get started
These options are only the beginning, but trying to do everything will almost certainly result in hair loss. The key is prioritisation.
WebVine’s friendly team of consultants is here to assess your business needs and help you prioritise. Our proven system ensures the most valuable projects are completed first, and helps to manage stakeholders effectively and transparently.
To reconnect to the soul of our work, we don’t just need a better way of doing the same things. We need a whole new way to work.
Jared Spataro, Microsoft
Copilot is Microsoft’s new AI-driven personal assistant, allowing you to focus on the creative and the essential, streamlining mundane tasks and make work more efficient.
Microsoft used a lot of flowery words to introduce Copilot, but you can’t fault the intent: keeping work as efficient as possible to allow more time for what matters, whether that is teaching, learning, creating, solving or just enjoying a nice cappuccino with the newspaper.
What is Microsoft Copilot?
Microsoft describes Copilot as a co-worker, one that doesn’t nick your last yoghurt from the fridge.
It’s a new productivity tool designed to streamline and simplify your day. It’s an intermediary sitting between your Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc) and a natural language model, combining the power of artificial intelligence with applied practice to provide an intuitive and comprehensive platform.
Copilot offers recommendations on how to better manage workflow, adjusts priorities based on user feedback and habits, and actively seeks out improvements to increase efficiency.
What does it do? How will it impact my day?
Using advanced algorithms, it can detect inefficiencies and tactical errors, alerting users when those discrepancies are found. The system also takes interpersonal dynamics between team members into account and provides a platform to improve collaboration between workers who may not know each other well for example due to remote working.
You can use Copilot for:
- Business Chat – Use natural language prompts like “Tell my team how we updated the product strategy,” and it will generate a status update based on the morning’s meetings, emails and chat threads.
- Word – Flashing cursor getting you down? Copilot can give you a first draft to edit, potentially saving a lot of time. You can prompt Copilot to shorten, rewrite or give feedback.
- PowerPoint - Create beautiful presentations featuring graphics and animations with a simple prompt, adding relevant content from related documents INCLUDING Outlook and Teams.
- Excel – identify and analyse trends and create data visualisations in seconds. Use commands like “find our least profitable region” rather than =SUMIF(B2:B25,"<5")
- Teams – It can be difficult to simultaneously make notes and follow a discussion. Things can be missed. Teams Copilot can summarise key discussion points — including who said what — and suggest action items, all in real time during a meeting.
- Power Platform – automate repetitive tasks and go from idea to working app in minutes. Will it be robust, accurate, bug free? Maybe not. But a working model is better than nothing even if you just use it to brief IT.
- Level Up. Most of us use only a handful of features from the thousands available across Microsoft 365. Now, you can use natural language to initiate action, rather than having to sort through a bunch of complex menu items and commands.
Won’t that be annoying?
The idea of having an automated program providing step-by-step instructions on how to complete a task might sound helpful at first. However, nobody enjoys hearing 'Helpful hint' every few minutes, making us feel inadequate. Remember Clippy? A lot of people had strong feelings about Clippy. But with all the features Microsoft has added in, including personalised learning and smart suggestions, one can only hope that Copilot stays out of your way when you don't need it and isn't too intrusive when you do.
Is it secure?
As part of the Microsoft offering, we can be sure that Copilot has been engineered with a high level of security and privacy in mind. All data sent between you and the service is protected through secure protocols, and your end-user experience is encrypted for added safety. Two-factor authentication, compliance boundaries, privacy protections and more make Copilot more trustworthy than, say, ChatGPT. Though no service is ever impenetrable, Microsoft takes responsible steps to ensure your personal information remains safe when using Copilot.
Final verdict?
Microsoft Copilot has arrived and is set to revolutionise the way we work. It helps streamline our workflows; reducing time-consuming and mundane tasks, encouraging better interactions between colleagues, and providing accessible knowledge about the Microsoft Office tools. Put to use correctly, it can truly transform the way we do business today.
According to Microsoft, Copilot is currently being trialled by “20 companies,” but there’s no word on when the rest of us can have a go.
If nothing else, this is an astonishing demonstration of Microsoft’s progressiveness and ingenuity. Five months ago we were all Googling and writing our own copy like cavemen, now we have a whole ChatGPT ecosystem embedded within the tools we use every day. Impressive… and a bit scary.
Need help getting started? Get in touch with us today so we can optimise your Microsoft 365 environment. The power of a well-organised workplace should not be underestimated - let’s make the most of it!
1) MICROSOFT EDGE WORKSPACES
Now in preview Microsoft Edge Workspaces is a new shared space consisting of a set of browser tabs. Using this Workspace, groups will be able to view the same sites and documents in one place. Workspaces will be particularly handy when it comes to onboarding a team member into a project. Instead of sending them multiple links and files over email/chat, you can direct them to the shared space, where they’ll find everything in one place. A bonus is that tabs are updated in real-time, keeping everything and everyone up to date.
2) MICROSOFT PLACES
To support employees working both in the office and at home, Microsoft is creating a new category of technology solutions under the ‘Connected Workplace’. The Connected Workplace equips modern workplaces with the technology needed for employees to achieve the best results. To optimise spaces for hybrid work, Microsoft will roll out a new workplace app called Microsoft Places. This app will use intelligence to support where work is taking place and will focus on connecting digital and physical spaces:
• A dashboard view of days people are in the office
• Physical location indicator (in office, remote or mobile)
• Hot desk booking: seeing which workspaces other employees have booked (so you can potentially book one nearby)
• Insights and guidance on commuting time
• Wayfinding: Access directions on your mobile device to find the right office location
6) TEAMS MESH AVATARS
For those that are feeling a little camera shy, Mesh avatars are now available for Teams meetings in private preview. This will give employees the ability to choose to show up to a Teams meeting with a personalised, animated version of themselves – no camera needed.
