The Hidden Power of Copilot Agents in the Enterprise

Mark Smith: 0:19
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. Today's guest joins us from the vibrant Munich in Germany. He's a cloud architect and he specializes in modern work solutions. He's been a Microsoft MVP since 2024. He's deeply involved in co-pilot since its inception, bringing real world expertise to countless organizations through engaging workshops. He's also an active international speaker and instructor for Microsoft 365 services and hosts a popular podcast dedicated to helping the community build their ideal digital workplace podcast dedicated to helping the community build their ideal digital works place. You can find all the links to his bio and socials, as well as a link to his podcast, in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Daniel.

Daniel Rohregger: 1:25
Hello, mark, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. To be honest, I think it's my first appearance ever on an I would say international podcast.

Mark Smith: 1:35
Wow, wow, the thing is so. Your podcast is all in German, right?

Daniel Rohregger: 1:39
Yeah, yeah, currently, to be honest, I'm really working on it. I'm really trying to get my fingers around Azure AI speech service to maybe do it at least automatically, in two or even more languages, Because you know, the community is large and sometimes I feel like I need to do everything in English, but then you know, you're a little bit more comfortable in your home language, which for me is German. But yeah, it's so a fast changing world and you know, I want to share all this information, all the things that we do in the community, that I do with the customers, things that that we do in the community, that I do with the customers, and sometimes I feel like I need to split myself to make everything bilingual to get more people involved but the thing is, the german market's a big market yeah, yeah, quite so.

Daniel Rohregger: 2:30
We have germany, austria and also switzerland, where we, especially in switzerland, see a lot of large companies have their larger departments there and they're the home departments in Switzerland and, yeah, mostly decisions are being made there and I think, when dealing, for example, with Swiss customers, we speak more English than German or Swiss German even.

Mark Smith: 3:01
So when you're not doing IT stuff, tell me about food, family and fun. What do you do when you're not kind of working?

Daniel Rohregger: 3:07
So yeah, basically I would say enthusiastic musician playing a little bit of guitar, um and piano. We have a wedding band that we usually fill our saturdays with these activities and otherwise, yeah, I, I often have a nice company in my, in my home, with my two cats and my girlfriend. So yeah, that's, I would say, more or less the basic stuff, and everything else is mainly besides music and my cats.

Mark Smith: 3:39
I would say Microsoft 365-ish at least I have two cats as well.

Daniel Rohregger: 3:47
Oh well, that's nice.

Mark Smith: 3:49
I'm very interested in your journey through Copilot. Journey through Copilot. Tell me a bit about why you got involved from the get-go and what's been your experience over the last two to three years?

Daniel Rohregger: 4:08
Oh, yeah, so you're definitely not starting with the small questions here. Let's definitely just get right through the point. Well, yeah, so my previous employer was always very, I would say, good, connected with Microsoft. Of course, we got our hands a little bit earlier, or I would say, at the earliest time possible for a Europe-based Microsoft partner in November 2023. I think it was yeah, yeah, yeah and um, well, from there, you know, I was always so.

Daniel Rohregger: 4:47
I I was a project manager who thought that microsoft 365 is a great platform to um, to do project management, to do self-management, to do. You know, I really got to do a management, to do self-management to do. You know, I really got to do a lot of with Microsoft To-Do Planner Lists, sharepoint and those stuff. So I was always more on the, I would say, modem work guy, not the security or intern guys. I was always like on the call-up side of things. So, of course, Copilot was like a very welcome new thing for me, especially in Germany, the Viva thing that was the hype before Copilot was not that successful. Yeah, so I was quite happy to get a new friend to play with. Yeah, so of course I started and, yeah, you know, you quickly realized, wow, that's a little bit of a different thing here and customers get interested. We were really getting our hands on the first features. We were delivering the first workshops in Germany.

Daniel Rohregger: 5:51
I always remember the time when we said, okay, guys, we need to do our co-pilot workshops here in the mornings. When we said, okay, guys, we need to do our co-pilot workshops here in the mornings because as soon as we hit one o'clock, us wakes up and also tries out the technology. So in the early days we get some, you know, stumbling with the servers and feedback loops and waiting on answers for like forever. So, yeah, that's where it started and from there on I just stayed on the topic.


Daniel Rohregger: 6:21
I also then directly became an MVP a few months after because I just needed to do so much educational stuff. I was requested as somebody who just was in a lucky position to get their hands on the Oli Tech and I was speaking at conferences about those, about those tools, and, um, yeah, from then on, I think it just never stopped, yeah, so, uh, basically, from the moment, uh, um, I, I opened copilot the first time, it felt a little bit like a dream and I got pushed in those communities and I got more and more involved and it was a very incredible journey since then. And that was a little bit, yeah, where I come from, basically.

Mark Smith: 7:06
This is good. This is good. Tell me, In running a typical workshop on Copilot, I assume you'll have people that come in that this is the first time they're hearing about Copilot. Then you might have some that are maybe intermediate, some advanced. How do you run like kind of step me through what the routine of a Copilot workshop is for you?

Daniel Rohregger: 7:31
Well, of course, at first as, as you said, it depends who is sitting in front of you yeah, so um, but usually when we have like a first touch with a customer, the thing that we have people involved that have no idea about the um, about the topic, that's quite rare at these days. Yeah, uh, a year ago, yes, but right now we have. We have not the case that they are unaware of the topic, but we have the case that they have, I would say, wrong expectations, of course, or they have pre-assumptions that they have made based on what they maybe have seen two seconds in a video, on a LinkedIn post or something, what they have in mind. So the first thing is I don't ask them only hey, what's your name, what's your job, how important do you think you are in your company? I ask them what do you think about Copilot? And get those. You know, I really try to listen carefully what they're telling me and what they are thinking, and I don't especially point it out, but while I'm doing the rest of the workshop, I really try to correct those pre-assumptions if they're wrong, of course, or I try to go a little bit more into that detail so I can really fulfill the people.

Daniel Rohregger: 8:52
And yeah, of course, then we usually start with a little bit of, I would say, housekeeping and legal stuff. So people know, hey, what we're talking there is about the solution that is really well up to date. But we are always, for example, hanging on what OpenAI is doing in terms of technology wise. But the difference is Microsoft is doing that in a secure way and they will give you the opportunity to implement an AI solution that is completely or is the most possible way of implementing an AI solution that is regulatory, okay, that is held in your company regulations and all that stuff. Yeah, so that's where we usually try to push away those, I would say, legal boundaries, a little bit of that wrong expectations or problems that I think they're facing. And yeah, from there on, we try to I try to to to see a little bit in what vertical they are, what is the company doing, what?

Daniel Rohregger: 9:56
I think there are use cases. Of course, we have some typical use cases we see across the world when we have HR, marketing, legal stuff, those I would say typical personas or typical job descriptions, and yeah, then I try to get a mix of show them the nice latest features, like what is coming up, probably maybe in the next workshops, as soon as we ship the wave to spring. Update and co-pilot we will probably do some action figures or action packs, uh, um, of the people involved and uh, for now we are just doing, yeah, you know, the the things that we can do with Copilot. I show some technical stuff like Python and coding and cool stuff like that and, of course, we will talk a little bit about the use case, about the business side, especially when it's a first-time call.

Mark Smith: 10:46
Yeah, so are you predominantly staying in the Copilot chat experience using things like pages and things like that, or are you also do you do any of the broader M365 co-pilot stuff like Word Excel where it pops up in those PowerPoint? You know those type of applications.

Daniel Rohregger: 11:07
Depending on how much time is given for the workshop. Yeah, so of course, you know, usually besides the first touch workshop, if someone says, yeah, we have like a big thing with Excel, then of course I pull the Excel up and I show them a little bit about that co-pilot, roughly over it. But then of course, when we get involved into projects, uh, where we have, like you know, the task to board, board our champions, um onto the the tool, into copilot and get more details on that, of course, then we definitely go a little bit over all these nice tools and all the like. I, I, for example, I really like to show forms copilot because it's incredibly fast, incredibly effective and, yeah, so that's usually a Copilot that is often overseen, but I would always show in my demos.

Mark Smith: 12:04
You talked about the Wave 2 release and I now have. When I open my browser, I have Copilot as my homepage, just waiting for the drop right of Wave 2. Because I feel like it's a big change. You know that's coming with the navigation structure, the new features, the agents, the notebooks. What feature are you particularly most excited about and what's coming?

Daniel Rohregger: 12:36
For what I'm personally most hyped about as someone who is holding a Copilot license. It's definitely the new create experience. When we get those GPT-4O image generation, because yeah.

Mark Smith: 12:49
That's good, that's good. One of the things like as a power user, are there any kind of prompts that you run to to understand the version, the back end, etc. You know, one of my, my things that I think about is, um, if I'm using chat, gpt, um, I know I, I know what an 03 model does, I know what the forum or the 4.5 model, deep research, does, I and I choose based on what I'm going to do. One of the limitations I find, and and of course you know, copilot's designed for everybody rather than just the power user, but is I find it slightly limiting in that I want to know, hey, what is the version that's underpinning what I am doing?

Daniel Rohregger: 13:42
You're missing, like the Pro Switch or like the advanced configuration switch.

Mark Smith: 13:47
Yeah, like I know what I'm doing, switch, take the kiddie gloves off. I'm okay, I know what I'm doing.

Daniel Rohregger: 13:56
That's an interesting part, to be honest, and I love this discussion because I had it with Microsoft and Redmond. So that's one of or this was definitely probably the biggest honor currently in my professional career that I was invited to the MVP Summit, to come to the Microsoft campus this year, to the MVP Summit, to come to the Microsoft campus this year, and the discussions that we had with Microsoft were really interesting and we were discussing exactly that. And there are a few things and, to be honest, I can't decide for myself if I want to go your way, because I love your way and I love how you think about that, because that's what we as professionals or pro users like to do. And, by the way, what we also discussed is just, maybe, for a week, make a little bit fun of it and implement such a switch and just let the switch. Do absolutely nothing, and I would bet that people start. I get the best response, but you need to set the switch. Do absolutely nothing, and I would bet that people start. I get the best response, but you need to set the switch on four or something like that. You know, you need to set the switch on this level, for example. And I mean the discussion that we're having here.

Daniel Rohregger: 15:10
Yes, it would be great to have such a switch or to have like a configuration, but the audience that it's targeting to is probably smaller than the audience that. It probably would make it worse. So people think they know what they're doing. Often I say, yeah, of course I'm using that model because I want to do this stuff. No, man, you don't need a deep research model to find an error in your I don't know 50 line type of code. You don't need the deep research there. But if you're using it, you're just, I would say, wasting resources.

Daniel Rohregger: 15:48
And yeah, that's, of course, something that we don't want to do, but yeah, as I said, I understand it, I can't decide, and I would think a few people like maybe you and myself would profit from it, but I think it would also cause confusion all the way. Yeah, we maybe need the admin control for that.

Mark Smith: 16:06
So the other little furball that I run into is RAI over-interference. So I'll give you two examples. One is I asked it the other day to create a list of companies based on a certain parameter in a specific country. It did that, no problem. It based on an industry that I was targeting. I then said give me the their, their, the company websites, and you know, and it goes and puts it into loop or pages you know to work on All the URLs, went in there and then about three seconds, two seconds later, it redacted out all URLs and said to protect your privacy, we've removed the links. I'm like I asked you.

Daniel Rohregger: 17:04
Before you go with your second example also that we have addressed and it's going to be fixed by tomorrow, probably so when this podcast came out Microsoft has implemented a new configuration where, from now on, every link you click that is coming from Copilot gets redirected to Windows Defender Safe Links and it checks it. So those links that are going to external and were removed earlier will not be removed. They will be directed via the Safe Links service. So that's actually up that it will ship, or that is shipped on the day that people are hearing this episode, awesome, awesome.

Mark Smith: 17:46
The other one is this so let's say I do a sales call with a customer and I've got transcription on, they're happy for it to be on. We get the summary of it and teams and all that kind of thing At the end of the call. I'm wanting to do a retrospective on my ability as a salesperson, so I'd use this type of prompt. I say what I'd like you to do is assess, you know, the the this call, and I want you to act as an expert sales coach and show me what I could have done better. Guess what its response is.

Daniel Rohregger: 18:26
Yes, I know what the response is.

Mark Smith: 18:28
I can't give. Sorry, I can't make those recommendations to you.

Daniel Rohregger: 18:32
Probably the exact phrase that I would prefer not to continue this conversation at this point. I think that what is Microsoft doing and that's also a thing that I pointed out um and microsoft, I can tell they're all aware of that, but it's pretty hard to really what's I like, program it into the tool, or program it into the responsible ai um engine, or check that is done to really decide is he's trying to ask for himself or is he's trying to ask for another? You know, because that's a fear.

Mark Smith: 19:06
I was on the call. Like my license matches the team's license. Like they've got all that stitching there, yeah that's right?

Daniel Rohregger: 19:14
Yeah, for sure. But you know people get quite I would say creative when it's coming to prompting. So they're trying to know.

Mark Smith: 19:22
In that scenario, what do I do? I export the transcript, take it into chat gpt. Please analyze which. That's bad because what it's doing it's making me take my data outside of my tenant, my the whole why. You know the microsoft environment is a safe and secure and the data boundaries are honored. You know the Microsoft environment is safe and secure and the data boundaries are honoured.

Mark Smith: 19:46
You know, within your tenant and you know any Joe Bloggs that's going to want to get that type of outcome is going to want to do that because I think that feature for a sales team when I started my career 30-odd years ago in IT and I went in and I would implement crms for contact centers, right, and they used to have like these kind of uh y um head headphones and so the manager would sit down and they would plug into the same cable as the other contact center person and they would listen to the conversation as I having it and then after the call they would go.

Mark Smith: 20:22
I would recommend you do this. You should have done that there, that type of thing, and I'm like in the age of ai, I could get the the foremost guru in the world on how to do a good sales call. You know um name any kind of author out there in the space and say use that methodology. You know, spin selling is an example I know of Apply that to what I did and coach me on how I could do it better next time. I think, man, that's massively advantageous.

Daniel Rohregger: 20:52
Yeah. So three points on that. First of all, I have a session, or like a keynote, where I show like my top 10 use cases and actually there are screenshots in there from exactly that prompts working from probably a year ago. So that was stuff that was working and what Microsoft needed to remove after customers feedback, but of course not in the context about themselves, about we don't want Copilot to let people analyze others and with that feedback it also killed the analyze for myself thing and currently they're working on it to, of course, getting the feedback for myself back, but not doing that type of analysis on myself.

Daniel Rohregger: 21:37
That type of analysis on myself, even if your, I would say like motivation is good and positive, some people really can use it for a negative thing on colleagues or on you know some people that work for them. That's yeah, that's the first thing. And the second thing is probably you can do this. You don't need to go outside the M365 world. You can definitely do that with an agent um, but I'll be honest with you, that's also like only a pro scenario. No usual user can do that. So this um, again, it's just like a technology thing. But yeah, that what is currently built into responsible ai. Uh, microsoft is working on that, and that's the third point. I would say maybe we wait a few months and then this will be hopefully working in this case again what's it?

Mark Smith: 22:31
you talked about a keynote there in your top 10. Uh, use cases, give me your top three let me.

Daniel Rohregger: 22:37
Let me do like maybe my my best use case that I have in mind, because it's a very german use case and you know, I always I would like imagine you are in a really old german factory. So, like you know, with all the steel machines and stuff and you know, currently it's very hard to find new experts, it's hard to find people doing the job, and especially when we have like this language barrier in Germany sometimes. So what we did with a customer they had, like this old machinery where they only had books for operations manual that were in German. So we were able to get a German version as PDF from the manufacturer and what we did with that was really incredible. We had like one or two people left who were really experts in that machine and we grabbed them for a few workshops and they really explained us how they need the manuals when finding errors and all that stuff. And we put that knowledge and the instruction they gave us at first in an agent and we just trained it to be multilingual. So we had like a point of contact. They would just type in the error code and they would get first of all an explanation and then also, as you said like a link or a source where they can hop into the manual to get off it.

Daniel Rohregger: 24:00
That was the first part, but we did not stop there and hop into the manual to get off it. That was the first part, but we did not stop there. We go into Copilot and, for example, generated video scripts to show people the most important things. That were also of course. We then again talked with those experts and said, hey, what are the important things when someone is new at this machine, what do they need to know? And they just gave us some bullet points. We gave it to the AI and said, hey, make a real nice video script about that topics and about how to use that machine. And he just created that script and we did a podcast version of it, just for you know, in the notebook, alarm style, yeah, so people can listen to it. Then we put those information into Microsoft Forms and people need to take a quiz after they have listened to that.


Daniel Rohregger: 24:46
In some form we also get like handouts, all AI generated, and the thing is we have like different machines at every location. So then we gave those processes and all the prompts to the customer and they were able to do it multiple times for multiple machines and those agents have by far the largest activity on the whole company and that's really it's a more complex use case. But it was all to be done without Copilot Studio. It was all done within Copilot and Copilot agents. It's co-pilot studio, it was all done within co-pilot and and co-pilot agents and, yeah, it was a really nice wary I would say german handcrafted use case, but I really like that one I love it.

Mark Smith: 25:33
Daniel, we're already five minutes over time. You're one of my longest guests. Uh, on on the show I could talk to you for hours, no problem.

Daniel Rohregger: 25:39
Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Mark Smith: 25:40
I could talk to you for hours, sorry for that, no problem. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really enjoyed it.

Daniel Rohregger: 25:43
Thanks, Mark, for having me, Wish you a great day and for everyone listening. Thanks for staying so long, five minutes longer. I hope you enjoyed this.

Mark Smith: 25:54
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 buymeacoffeecom. Forward slash NZ365guy. Thanks again and see you next time. Thank you.