Preparing for Microsoft Copilot

Everyone got very excited when Microsoft introduced the world to Microsoft Copilot back in March this year and just yesterday they reached a new milestone, after annoucing a private preview with just 600 global customers.

But… One of the questions I get asked a lot (between colleagues, partners and customers) is “…are there things we need to do to be ready for Copilot when it becomes available”.

The simple answer is yes – if you want it to work as expected

The longer answer is “it depends” on if you plan to use it, how well your current data is structured, organised and governed, and what processes you have in place around user education, training and change management.

Based on the work I have been doing with Microsoft, this list is aimed to provide the key things, suggestions and considerations for IT, managers and leadership on things you’ll want to get ship-shape while we wait for Copilot to be more generally available, which my sources tell me will be late 2023 to Q1 2024.

1. Get your data in shape.

The reason Microsoft 365 is the productivity suite of choice for so many (arguably most) organisations is because it brings together applications, data, groups, users and services into a common and integrated suite, as well as providing thousands of connectors to allow organisations to connect third-party apps and data into mix.

Powered by the Microsoft Graph, Microsoft 365 already has the power to connect people, teams, and organisations across all their apps and services in an intelligent and context aware, with AI powered services scattered across the Microsoft 365 apps and services you use every day….

With Microsoft Copilot….this will move to a whole new level.

Copilot will put conversational AI at the front and centre of every app and service you know and use. Leveraging personal context, re-generative learning and of course the Microsoft Graph, Copilot will make its’ own deductions on what you ask, what you mean, and how you work. Whilst it will learn and evolve, it will of course, still be dependent on your organisational data, and how its structured, governed and secured.

This means if you have say 50 different documents spread out in 15 different locations that talk about your company strategy or business objectives, and only one of them is the up-to-date version. How will Copilot know which version is correct when it needs to surface information based on a request? In the same way, if the management and reporting structure, job titles and other information is incorrect in Azure AD, Copilots’ decisions and advice around people will also likely be incorrect.

To help, organisations get AI-ready, Microsoft have announced that they will soon start to roll out a service known as Semantic Index for Copilot. This is a new service coming to Microsoft 365 which will create a sophisticated map of your data to help you test how Copilot will ingest and act on your data. Image for example a sales manager asking for “FY23 Sales Report,”. Copilot will be data and context aware, meaning that it will not simply look for documents that contain keywords in the filename or text body. Instead, Copilot will try to “understand” and “learn” about who within the organisation produces such reports, when they are shared, and where they are shared to.

Microsoft say that Semantic Index for Copilot will be a vital tool to help organisations ensure that employees will get predicable, relevant, accurate, and actionable responses to their asks of Copilot and will help your organisation to “tweak” their data lifecycle and governance to ensure that the data Copilot acts on is correct and accessible (or not) by the right people.

What should you do?
1. Check and refine your SharePoint and Teams lifecycle, governance and compliance policies
2. Speak to your Microsoft partner about a funded data governance workshop
3. Review and update Active Directory (or connect to HR to ensure these are up-to-date)
4. Look out for the release of Semantic Index for Copilot to "test your data"

2. Get your security in order

In a similar fashion to making sure our data is correct from a version and validty perspective, if we dont get our security and access control polcies in shape, we risk Copilot duiscovering data that a employee or team may not “meant to have access to”.

In the much the same way that the Office 365 apps “discover” the data around you – presenting files that your collegaues and teams are working on together, Copilot will do the same but on a whole new level, as what is searches for, indexes and uses, will be instructed by the user rather than simply surfaced.

Just like the rest of Microsoft 365, Copilot will adhere to the security, privacy, data governance and data sensitivity policies that has been set-up within your organisation, and will not provide information that the user doesn’t have access to. It may suggest for, example, “you dont have access to that, you may need to request this from Pam in accounts”.

The potential problem of course is that many (ok most) organisations have a sprawl of Teams sites, poor or inconsistent data governance, and inadequate user training, meaning that put simply, you may not realise the sheer amount of information and documents that is being shared within your organisation, and more importantly who actually has access to what data and how many copies may exist and where!

We all worry about Security – do we have MFA? Do we have conditional access configured? Are account protected? Is sensitive information protected? etc. We know the slogan “hackers dont hack in, they login” – just imagine if you have Copilot, and a users’ identity gets compromised. They log in, and with Copilot at their fingertips, they don’t need to worry about where stuff is stored as Copilot will do all the discovery for them!

So what can you do?
1. Review and refine your document management, security and privacy policies - perhaps introduce or enforce DLP and Data Classifcation - aka Microsoft Purview
2. Review your security posture, MFA enforcement, risk based conditional access etc
3. Create straightforward instructions and train people where to store documents and how to protect and secure them
4. Run a pilot and look at adoption data loss prevention and information classification to protect sensitive data.
5. Speak to your Microsoft partner about a funded workshop for 1, 2 and 3.

3. Explore, Plan, Experiment – but treat it as organisational change!

The release of Microsoft Copilot is still a little way away (it is a closed Private Preview today with around 600 global organisations) and there are currently no dates on the roadmap for a public preview mainstream release. There is also no pricing yet about pricing.

What we do know is – it is coming and it will fundamentally impact and change how your people and teams will work. Yes, there is still an element of hype, lots of desire to test it out, loads and loads of questions and lots of unknowns.

Communication and training is going to be a key part of sucess. How do you interface with AI? Yes its’ intelligent, but it’s not a human, therefore people need to be taught how to best work with Copilot. Bear in mind most people use around ten percent of the functionality of say Teams (with most just using basic functions like chat and calling), but to get the most from it, users need to know what to expect, how to use it and how the organisation wants (or not) employees to use it…

Create a pilot group and mini success team. Use this team to keep up-to-date with the news and blogs and above all make sure leadership, management and IT are “in the know”.

Start communicating your plans for Copilot and AI in general. Employees will and should have questions. Are there roles that might change or not be needed? Will you stop hiring? Will you wait and see? It will be important to talk to, and listen to employees, and ideally form a “success with AI” unit, bringing people together from different parts of the business, to discover the challenges they face in their everyday work and how they think and hope AI will help them.

Above all – think of this like a project (one of continual change). Depending on your business, AI will have an impact, and the whole organisation will need to understand and embrace this change (once we have it all working of course). Consider an AI abmassador and follow your usual approach to change management with a roadmap, PoCs, pilots and feedback groups so you hit it head on, with ideas, and a solid vision but with room for hiccups, course changes and surprises on the way.

That sounds like a lot - what can we do?
1. Build a success unit (could be a Team site of Viva Community)
2. Get onto early adoptor programmes when availble, go to the AI conferences and start to leverage demos etc when available.
3. Talk to your peers, partners, and Microsoft Team and look out for funded workshops which will likely be available from summer.
4. Read Microsoft's Worklab report on working with next generation AI (it's a good read).

4. Keep Calm – it is coming but there is time to prepare

Microsoft has just announced the launch of their Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program. It’s an invitation-only, paid preview program that’s set to roll out to only 600 clients across the globe at first in the coming weeks.

They say that they have received overwhelming feedback from their initial early preview clients, they have been “testing the concepts” with. They say those clients have indicated huge benefits to business and the ways in which it can transform and reshape work. In recent months, Microsoft have also released further information around how Copilot will will impact other applications such as Viva, Dynamics 365, Teams and more with new capabilities being announced almost weekly.

This new generation of AI will remove the drudgery of work and unleash creativity…There’s an enormous opportunity for AI-powered tools to help alleviate digital debt, build AI aptitude, and empower employees

Satya Nadella |Chairman and CEO |Microsoft

We will know more as we move forward – there are lots of moving parts – previews, public previews, (potentially) governments getting in the way, data soverignty issues (today data is only processed in the US and not local in local geo), licensing prices and of course availabilty….

In fact – this is probably already out of date as its a rapid moving landscape, and this is just the tip of the iceberg and just Microsoft.

What should you do?
1. Keep checking with your Microsoft team,. your partner and the Microsoft 365 Roadmap
2. Start thinking roles that will be positively affected by AI in the workplace. Speak to users, buid your success team.
3. Think about new skills your teams will need to work along side AI.
4. Read Microsoft's Worklab report on working with next generational AI (it's a good read).

What is next in CoPilot?

A good question….

When Microsoft annouced Copilot in March, where they showed the value concepts in apps like teams, Powerpoint and Excel, they said that this was “just the beginning”. Over the last couple of months, Microsoft have continued to tease new Copilot capabilities to bring AI to every part of Microsoft apps and services. The key annoucements (since the actual annoucement include):

  • Copilot in Whiteboard – which will make Microsoft Teams meetings and brainstorms more creative and effective. Using natural language, you will be able to ask Copilot to generate ideas, organize ideas into themes, create designs that bring ideas to life and summarise whiteboard content.
  • Copilot in Outlook will offer coaching tips and suggestions on clarity, sentiment and tone to help users write more effective emails and communicate more confidently.
  • Copilot in OneNote will use prompts to draft plans, generate ideas, create lists and organize information to help customers find what they need easily.
  • Copilot in Loop will helps your team stay in sync by quickly summarising all the content on your Loop page to keep everyone aligned and able to collaborate effectively.
  • Copilot in Viva Learning will use a natural language chat interface to help users create a personalized learning journey including designing upskilling paths, discovering relevant learning resources and scheduling time for assigned trainings.

Q&A – This will evolve

QuestionWhat we knowSource
Where will the data be processed by Copilot?Microsoft have said that currently all processing will take place is the US. It will eventually be regionalised based on customer tennant. No time scales yetMay 2023: Microsoft 365 Conference
Will Copilot respect data seciuroty and soverienty?Yes -Microsoft have made it clear that Copilots’ sphere of access will be limited to the user context in which it runs, goverened by your organisation’s policies. May 2023: Microsoft 365 Conference.
When will Copilot enter public preview?No dates annouced yet. Be sure to keep an eye on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap.
Will there be charge for Copilot.No offical news but the expectation is yes.
Q&A Table.

What do you think?

Like you, I am still working out what this means for our business, my teams and my people. I welcome your feedback, thoughts and ideas.

Microsoft takes on Canva with Designer (in Edge)

Microsoft Designer Logo

Microsoft Designer was first announced back in August of 2022 and has been available in a limited preview to since January this year to gain early feedback from users.

This week however, Microsoft announced that (whilst still in preview), the AI driven social media content creation platform would be available for anyone to try. Microsoft also announced plans to include the tools into their Edge browser in much the same way they have provided the ability to use the new Bing AI search.

Screen showing sign-up for Designer social media creation tool

Introducing Microsoft Designer

Microsoft Designer is a “Canva-like” designer tool aims to provide a simple, sleek and AI infused tool to help business and consumers quickly produce high quality online content such as social media posts, greeting cards, banners, branding, alerts, promotions etc.

Powered by DALL·E and built as a progressive web app, Microsoft Designer is the latest AI powered tool now in ‘preview-mode, which joins Bing Chat and Bing Image Creator along with many other tools which can be accessed on their own or from within the sidebar of their Chromium powered Edge browser.

Available from https://designer.microsoft.com or from the Edge side bar, users can use Designer to manage and create animations, impressive visuals, text, and design templates specifically for sharing on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, TickTok and Instagram, or of course on enterprise social tools within an organisation like Viva Engage [aka Yammer].

Example of a Microsoft Designer Page for my upcoming fireside chat!
Example Designer design (c) Rob Quickenden

Here’s some of the great things you can do today in Designer.

  • Easily create designs with >20 different social media layout sizes across Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
  • Automatic (manual override) of elements such as text, video and images to best accommodate your chosen layout, reducing time needed to manually format you posts.
  • Wide range of animation features including auto text transitions and animated backgrounds.
  • Save or share directly with social media your finished creations.

Being in preview there is still more to come and the app will continue to evolved based on user feedback and their development lifecycle. Here’s more AI powered tools that Mcirosoft are working on which will be coming “soon”.

  • New Fill tool that allows users to select an area of a design and quickly place an object in that location
  • Simple erase function which will allow the user to brush over a person/object in the design and have Designer remove the object, generate and replace it with another image
  • Expand Background tool, which will be able to quickly fill any gaps within the foreground of your design, and
  • Replace Background which will be able to switch the background to a new one preserving the rest of your design.

Why integrate into Edge?

Microsoft say that by integrating Designer into Edge, they are bringing these capabilities straight into where people work. Since it will be accessible directly via the edge sidebar, users can access it by simply clicking on the Designer icon. Microsoft say this makes the tools accessible and “in the flow of creativity“, meaning users can quickly create unique designs instantly by simply describing the graphic you want without needing to leave the page they are, switch windows, load apps, or download custom extensions to the browser.

Coming soon - designer integrated into Microsoft Edge.
Coming soon: Designer integration directly into Edge sidebar. Image (c) Microsoft.

The aim is to improve the workflow and “keep you in the moment” – since whilst creating a social media post, Designer in Edge will provide AI-powered design suggestions to include in the post, which can then be customised and published without needing to leave the browser of switch apps.

As with any preview, Microsoft encourage users to feedback on their experience of using designer – both as a dedicated service and as a Edge browser integrated experience.

Competing with the Design giants

Designer is still in preview and there is lots Microsoft need to do to get it to the level of comparison with other apps like Canva and Adobe, both of whom have recently released their own AI-powered features. Microsoft have done a great job so far and by opening the preview up to the masses and with their recent investment in OpenAI, I expect a plethora of enhancements and new features to keep coming.

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