Late Night Brew is back!
Welcome to our new series on Copilot, the hot new AI tool in the world of Microsoft 365!
For this series, Insentra Senior Consultant Neil Wells-West joins our host Robert Buktenica to do a deep dive into all things Copilot. We’re kicking it off with answering the big question: What ISN’T Copilot?
You know the drill: grab your favourite brew and tune in now to find out!
TIMESTAMP
00:07 – Introduction
00:30 – The Brew
01:51 – What isn’t Copilot?
04:35 – What are some quick examples of what Copilot can do for organisations?
TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Robert Buktenica: Hello, everyone, and welcome to a new series of The Late Night Brew. Joining me for the first time is Neil Wells-West.
And before we dive into Copilot, and if I can remember what we’re supposed to be talking about, Neil, welcome, buddy.
The Brew
Robert: You’ve seen episodes so you know the drill. What are you having with me today?
Neil Wells-West: Hey, Buk. Yeah, nice to be joining you on this one. Yeah, my first time out of the gate. But obviously, kind of a little bit early in the afternoon for me to be drinking alcohol, but I am actually drinking something called Jimmy’s Iced Coffee. If you can see that, I think it’s blurring out for me.
Jimmy–this stuff is fantastic. It’s actually made by a friend of mine, Jimmy Kriegan, who lives down the road. It’s a very successful brand, so worldwide now, but keeps me going during the day anyway. So yeah, that’s what I’m having today.
Robert: Very nice. I am a fan of coffee, and coffee is endlessly customisable. So I don’t necessarily subscribe to the “It’s Too Early”. Occupational hazard, I’ll call it.
I do have a Radler though, from Two Pitchers. It is a very, very fruity, almost fruit punch, actually. It’s a little too easy drinking, and it’s near a session beer, it’s a little heavier, or a little higher octane than normal. However, it’s still one that as it heats up, it’s going to be good to have around.
Neil: Nice one.
What isn’t Copilot?
Robert: Now, Copilot is, of course, the hot new thing in the 365 world, and I think everyone has a rough idea.
So I’m going to ask you, what isn’t Copilot?
Neil: Okay, you kind of caught me a little bit there. I was expecting for you to go with the “What is Copilot?” but no, let’s go the other way around in that case. So I think great question straight out of the gate.
What it isn’t is a replacement for the work that people generally do. I think in these early days of the capabilities of generative AI and generative AI tools, there’s a bit of uncertainty, dare I say even some fear, around AI and what kind of issues it might cause. It’s certainly not designed to replace people’s knowledge, skills and capabilities in the workplace. It’s definitely not after your job in that sense.
So if anything, it’s going to help you do your job better, but then we’re sliding into the what is it.
Robert: Right. Well, and sometimes answering the what is is by saying what it isn’t.
To me, it sounds like it’s not necessarily the robot that builds the car. It’s more of an upgrade from a hand screwdriver to an impact wrench or a drill with a bit on it. It speeds up your work. It can really make it efficient, make you do more. It’s not going to build the car for you, though.
Neil: Yeah, very, very much. And I think the clue is in the name, Copilot. It’s not the pilot. It’s not in charge of the plane. It’s not in charge of the car.
As users, we are always in charge of these tools, or at least we should be. So what Copilot really brings to the picture, and I think Microsoft’s intent around this and the messaging, the way they want the messaging around Copilot to land, is this is about productivity.
I know it’s kind of one of those buzzwords, but it’s to help users achieve the results and the goals that they would otherwise still potentially be able to achieve, but over a longer period of time and maybe with a bit less finesse.
So Copilot brings augmentation and enhancement to the skills that people already have, using the familiar applications that they use on a daily basis.
What are some quick examples of what Copilot can do for organisations?
Robert: Absolutely. That’s a good one. And off the top of your head, because we’re going to dive into details in later episodes, what are some other quick examples to what the appetite, to bring forward the other episodes of what it can bring to an organisation and what it can do for it?
Neil: Yeah, so I think a couple of really off the top of my head examples are the simple ones and always the ones that are pertinent to my experience currently. One of the really powerful things that it actually does is summarises a lot of complicated information quite quickly.
So, as you know, Buk, we spend a lot of time in Teams. Going back over Teams recordings and looking at transcriptions can be a bit of a pain. Copilot allows me to summarise very quickly the main points, the main content from a Teams meeting, whether it’s a customer or a workshop or something like that.
So, that’s a huge time saver. Not only that, Copilot is learning through that process as well. So it’s learning to some degree to filter out the noise and only focus on the key information that’s actually pertinent to the subjects being discussed.
So that’s one example of what it does. Another example, I think, and we’ll probably get more into this further down the line, in terms of the generative capabilities of Copilot.
For organisations that are very template-driven, maybe not so much of a large impact. But for many organisations and myself, if you’re creating a PowerPoint presentation or creating a Word document from scratch, you have a few ideas about what the tone, what the focus, what the goals of that document may be. Co-pilot can get you started in that way and provide you with some background content structure, a bit of formatting and really just kind of get things up and running for you.
Obviously, it’s not writing the document. You’re still going to edit it after that. You’ve got to refine it, add your own content, check that the actual content is accurate as well. So, there’s a couple of examples there, but obviously the capability’s spread out across a lot of other applications as well.
Robert: Absolutely, and those are some great examples to end on as well. So, Neil, thank you very much for your time. I’m really looking forward to these next episodes.
All of our contact information is below. So please feel free to reach out if you can’t wait and you want to learn more now.
Until next time, everybody, take care and have a great day.
Neil: Cheers, Buk. Thank you. Take care.
Watch out for our next few episodes on Copilot! But if you can’t wait and want to learn more about this revolutionary AI tool now, feel free to download our Unleashing the Power of Microsoft Copilot: The Definitive Guide from Readiness to Deployment eBook.
Curious to see what other tools and technologies we’ve covered in the Late Night Brew? Check out our past Late Night Brew episodes! You may also contact us for assistance in all your digital transformation projects.
