Mastering Copilot: Practical AI for Business Productivity

00:00:06 Mark Smith
Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called How to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, Let's get on with the show. Welcome back to the MVP Show. Today we're here with Daniel Brown from South Australia. Welcome to the show, Daniel.

00:00:40 Daniel Brown
Thanks for having me, Mark.

00:00:42 Mark Smith
I always like to start with food, family, and fun. What do they mean to you?

00:00:46 Daniel Brown
Food's always good. Padflavour, I do love. Family, very important to me, of course. I mean, I've got a wife, three kids, and a pug, so very, very important to me. And fun? Well, of course. I mean, I love to have fun. I'm a bit odd in that sense that fun can be both dev coding, but also Opal mining and Cooper PD and everything in between. So, yeah.

00:01:11 Mark Smith
I like it. I like it. Opal mining. I don't have many people come on that have that type of experience.

00:01:17 Daniel Brown
Yeah, it's pretty unique. I got hooked through the father-in-law and, yeah, been several times where we've actually Opal mined and found some Opal, which is always great. And I've also developed an AI around that as well. So that's sort of the unique thing.

00:01:33 Mark Smith
That is so cool. My focus at the moment is specifically on AI. And I see two things. You're a copilot MVP and you're also an AI platform MVP.

00:01:44 Daniel Brown
Yes.

00:01:46 Mark Smith
And it looks like you've been in the program about five years. How has work changed now that AI is in the mix of the last couple of years?

00:01:55 Daniel Brown
Not a huge amount just yet, but it is certainly bleeding through. I mean, we're seeing a lot more rudimentary things being handled by AI, a lot more summarization, a lot more drafting, but we're also starting to see Agentic come through with agents and agent-to-agent communication, building into workflows and processes. So I think over the next 18 months, we'll start to see it bleed through a lot more. And then from there, for the next sort of 24 to 36 is when we'll really see AI bleeding through to work and actually becoming the norm, I think. I mean, it's already starting to become the norm. Like you think of things like Grammarly. I mean, even though it's not traditional in the sense of AI, it's still very much that assistance tool. And that's where I see AI coming through is being a lot of assistance.

00:02:44 Mark Smith
What's their appetite level for, let's say, something like M365 Copilot?

00:02:50 Daniel Brown
Mixed, I must admit. It is mixed. I've got customers that are just starting to dabble in it because they can see some benefit, but what benefit? They're unsure. They're looking for those use cases. Where others have already gone full steam ahead and gone, yes, we want to roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot. We want to have that productivity tool available. Not many to all staff, but certainly to select staff. That's what I sort of tell my customers and say, Look, you don't need to deploy it to everybody. But there are certainly use cases where in the business where a group of users can certainly benefit. Somewhat like Power BI, like you don't want to roll out Power BI authoring to everybody, but you want to have that certain select group that is going to benefit the most out of it.

00:03:37 Mark Smith
Yeah, that's interesting. And that's a good analogy, right? Authoring in Power BI is not something that necessarily want everybody, but they might consume Power BI reports. One of the things that Satya said is that because AI is changing the way we work, you need to seriously look at adoption. I mean, he didn't say it in those words, but he said something to that effect. He said, this is not like an iPhone app where you can just switch it on and you don't need any trading. It's good to go. And I noticed like, um, last year I was reading about the Australian federal government doing a 300 seat rollout of copilot and somebody, um, whether he was an external consultant of the organization, wrote a massive piece, slamming, because they didn't get people to use it, wanted the 300 seats removed. And I could tell the guy was just on a bent. He hated Microsoft, right? Because he spelled Copilot wrong. You could tell he didn't have the depth of knowledge. And of course, there was no background story about was an adoption program put in place, how was change management handled, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can't just switch this tech on and go, people just pick it up by osmosis, can you?

00:04:56 Daniel Brown
No. I mean, you can. Don't get me wrong. Plenty of people, as you know, have just switched it on and just gone, go for broke and just go wild. But no, it's really something that you need to have that adoption program in place. You want to have that training, that reinforcement. How do we actually use AI? So it's the whole, and I know this is a bit of a cliche term, but the prompt engineering, that does play a big role in it. A lot of people just go, one sentence, input, output, garbage in, garbage out sort of thing. Where if you start to really refine those prompts and refine how you interact with AI. that's going to lead you to get a better experience from it. So like, for example, how you use Copilot in Word is very different to how you use Copilot in Outlook. Outlook, you're looking for summarizations, you're looking for missed meetings, you're looking for tasks, you're looking for agendas. Where in Word, you're looking for either drafting documents, summarizing documents, creating information from documents, you know, sort of generating that second level of information. And you've got to know how to draw those insights, for lack of a better word, out of Copilot for the tool you're actually using, rather than just go, oh, can you give me all my emails if I missed? It's like, well, we need to narrow that down. What are you actually looking for? How are you looking for? How should the output be? And if you can sort of master those things, you'll get a much better user experience out of Copilot from the applications that you're sort of using, rather than just the generic chat like ChatGPT. It's a very different platform, very different beast and very different way to interact with it.

00:06:31 Mark Smith
How do you commonly interact with it? Like what's your, do you sit more in, for example, the Teams interface or you're more in the Outlook interface or more in the web interface when you're using Copilot yourself? What's your kind of daily with the tech?

00:06:46 Daniel Brown
My daily one probably starts off in Outlook, summarizing the emails overnight. I mean, as you can imagine, being an MVP, running my own business and sort of the profile I have. I do get a lot of emails when I'm asleep. So first cut is definitely through Outlook and then it's over to Teams or the BizChat, depends on where I'm going to be next. So if I'm in Teams, if I'm following up with people and conversations, I'm going to be using it in Teams. Although sometimes I do just do the alt-tab because it's a lot easier if I'm talking to say you and then somebody else and then somebody else, I don't have to go to you to copilot, there's somebody else to copilot, I just alt-tab through the BizChat. And then it's generally in Word. I'm sort of using it to help with proposals, help with drafting documents, such as documentation of how do we deploy Copilot or what's the next steps of the deployment process. So it is a mixed bag, but also I want to point out that I do use a lot of PowerPoint as well. So my social media posts, all those sort of images, that's all PowerPoint driven. And I also use Copilot heavily in that as well to give me that sort of level two review. And I also use that level two review in Word and Outlook as well. So it's a mix between sort of the Teams, the BizChat, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, sort of in that order with PowerPoint being the lowest and probably BizChat/Teams being the highest just because the BizChat gives me that alt tab ability where I can flick between things a lot quicker.

00:08:17 Mark Smith
What What do you mean by that level two?

00:08:20 Daniel Brown
So that level two is more devil's advocate. So have I missed anything? Can I include anything? Can I exclude anything? From X perspective, how is this perceived? So rather than just so, you know, as an example, draft this documentation about how we're rolling out copilot. All right, cool. Here's two or three pages of my notes. Here's A structured document that co-pilots drafted. Okay, fine. From a HR perspective with no IT experience, can you read this document? That's what I mean by that level too. So giving me that different perspectives that, yes, I mean, I can sort of imagine and summarize and surmise about how they interpret it. But I can use that AI personality or those personas back in the day, if they was called, to give me the different perspective of that information that I'm sort of generating or creating that content as well.

00:09:13 Mark Smith
What improvements have you seen to the PowerPoint experience with Copilot in recent times?

00:09:20 Daniel Brown
A little bit. I won't lie, I haven't seen too much, 'cause a lot of it is under the hood. But the design aspect has improved, that's kind of cool, using your own templates is very awesome. And the way that it starts to draft the content, so if I can create a presentation from a proposal or from documentation, I have seen the quality pick up with that. It does draw in more accurate information from sources such as Microsoft.com as well, you know, it goes out to the web and pulls in that information. So I've seen a lot of uptick in improvements, the image generation is a lot better. So, I mean, back in the day, everyone could see every image on LinkedIn that was generated by Copilot because it was the same style. It was the same colors, the same layout, where the image generation or designer, as it was once called in PowerPoint, I think it's still called design in there, but it's all Copilot under the hood, has come a long way in terms of it's more now, so using photorealistic images. Yes, some cliparty, but that's always been PowerPoint as well. but a lot more photorealistic images, people in meetings, people pointing at things, people putting on the whiteboard.

00:10:32 Daniel Brown
That's where I see the improvements on the image side. But on the tech side, it is becoming more concise and more businessy. Because I mean, keep in mind, Copilot for M365 is really aimed at the business user. So a lot of it is, you know, explaining the terms and keeping those terms really simple, but in a business professional way.

00:10:53 Mark Smith
When you look at your use, your application of it, and when you're particularly engaging with new companies for the first time, what do you consider low-hanging fruit when you've got a new client on board and you're going to have a copilot discussion?

00:11:12 Daniel Brown
Low-hanging fruit would be, I mean, I can pick three off the top of my head, and that's Outlook. What emails have I missed? What agenda items have I missed? What task items have I missed? Those are always good. Another one is create a presentation from a document. So a great example is let's have a look at a training manual for something, and let's create a simple presentation from that. That's always fairly well received. And likewise with you say using Word with creating information from information. So I've got this big document. All right, summarize the top 10 points that I need to be aware of. And then, you know, another one is then summarize the next 10 points that I should be or should be optionally aware of or that aren't so important, that are important potentially. And then the next one is teams. Teams is always good. Teams transcripts are great. Don't get me wrong. But then I take that and I say, okay, when you actually have a new onboarder, someone who's coming to your business for the first time, how do you explain your processes? And I get them to explain a process to me and we record it through Teams transcript and pump it into Copilot and there is a... detailed process map, so to speak. And that always gets some eye openers as well because they're like, Oh, well, we don't have all of our processes documented. I'm like, Well, as you explain them to your new onboard employee, we can be listening and we can make those processes documented. Now, is it 100%? No, but no AI is 100%. And I don't think 100% perfection is a realistic expectation, but it certainly gives you that structure, that outline, and it's really quick, really simple and requires no human interaction. Copilot, I'm really just taking the transcript and paste it into Copilot and say, Can you document this process for me? And it gives me the process. I mean, that's always a really good one to show.

00:13:01 Mark Smith
I like it. As we wrap, I really want to turn my attention to your website, danielbrown.id.au. And the reason that got my attention on your website is that I've been talking for a while now about people in the future of work needing to create what I call a portfolio website. Not just a blog, but it needs to be a rounded site that shows your skills, how you might be able to help somebody. And then who you've worked for, what industries, what's your experience, what projects have you been on? And then, what I call the wall of love, the testimonials, what are people saying about you, know, that kind of third-party validation and the tech and stuff that you work with. And when I look at your website, it's kind of like you've smashed every one of these. Your site is, it's modern, it's clean looking. You can tell that you're very copilot centric. And then, you know, I can see the organizations you've worked for, the services that you offer, how you can help organizations out. Great testimonial area, who you partner with and the user groups you're involved with. How did you, like, is that all built on, it looks to me it's built on Azure.

00:14:22 Daniel Brown
Yes, it's just an Azure static website. So I am of the old school. I originally was, I mean, this is going back several lifetimes, but I started out as a C/C /Assembler developer, went into .NET, got into C# .NET, HTML, JavaScript, all of that sort of stuff. So yeah, it's just an Azure static website that I've built. I mean, I did find a template that I liked and then worked from that. But yeah, all hosted on Azure. I mean, using CloudFlare for DNS, of course, 'cause just that's what I've been using. But I did have the blog. It was on SharePoint for decades. I started with SharePoint 2010, had the blog, and then just migrated up through there. But it's only relatively new, the website. I think it's only like three, four months old that I've pushed it out. But yeah, I mean, I'm pretty impressed with it. I'm pretty happy with the result.

00:15:13 Mark Smith
I love it. I love it. If people want to check it out, go to www.danielbrown.id.au. Brilliant example of how to showcase your expertise, experience, and third-party validation. Daniel, it's been great talking to you. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

00:15:29 Daniel Brown 
Not a problem. Thank you for having me, Mark.

00:15:35 Mark Smith
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host, business application MVP,  Mark Smith, otherwise known as the nz365guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffee.com/nz365guy. Thanks again and see you next time.